Cold Dead Past

by John Curtis

  Abe returned to his seat in front of the desk, lips pursed, brow wrinkled. "I think that it would be safe to assume that anyone involved would be better off considering a change of address if this doesn’t work. That might save them." And then, sotto voce and with a drop of two octaves in pitch,"At least for a while."

  Turning to Jay, he continued, "Jay, I need you to pick up a few things in town while we’re gone."

  Abe dug around rather officiously in one of his pants pockets, pulling a wad of papers and change out of one of them and dumping it out onto the desk.

  "Nope."

  Rummaging around in the other pocket of his slacks produced a similar wad, this time of cash, mostly ones.

  "I know I had it here," he said.

  Finally, digging into one of the pockets of his parka, which he had slung over the back of his chair, Abe's fingers found what he was searching for. When he withdrew his hand from the pocket, it held a neatly folded sheet of unlined bond paper, which he slowly opened on the desk in front of him, taking his time to smooth it out so that it sat flat on the surface, before handing it to Jay.

  "Here’s the list. Follow it to the letter."

  Jay scanned through the list with a frown on his face.

  "I don’t know where I would find some of this stuff around here." Turning to Gary he asked, "A spear gun? Who would use that sort of thing around here?"

  "I know a few people who dive," he replied. "I’ll give you some phone numbers. You won’t have any trouble with them if you say you’re doing this to help me out."

  Abe slipped back the sleeve on his shirt to reveal a gold Rolex.

  "I suggest that we meet back here at five-thirty. That will give us the time to complete our assignments." He nodded at Gary. "I agree with you on that point. I don’t want to get caught out after dark. He may already know what we’re up to and I don’t want to run into him out in the open without being prepared."

  CHAPTER 32

  Jay found himself standing alone in the cold on the sidewalk. He was relieved that he was no longer dealing with the situation on his own. Beyond that, though, he didn’t like the idea that he had been reduced to a supporting player in the events that were unfolding.

  He had very little interest in being an errand boy for Abe. Most of the items on the list were easy to find, but, as he had feared, even with the help of Gary’s list of phone numbers, finding someone with a spear gun in a town that was hundreds of miles inland wasn’t that easy.

  By the time he had dropped off the items from the list, it was dark outside.

  There was almost no traffic on the streets and only the odd pedestrian. Fear had come to town. He saw it in the few faces he passed on his drive back to the hotel. Faces in the windshields of passing cars as they drove under streetlights. Looks of determination mixed with stares, wondering whether the person in the next lane could be the one. Jay even found himself doing it, unconsciously and even knowing the truth, sitting at a traffic light carefully looking over a man on the sidewalk, who was himself looking over his own shoulder every few steps.

  He and Meg had already arranged for her to move into his hotel room for the duration. Much better to be in a public place where help would be easier to come by should Frank show up. That night, with her curled up against his chest, it was still small consolation. He slept fitfully.

  Abe sat working on their problem at the back of his store. The only light was from the fixture above his table. Gloom had settled heavily into the corners of the room. The only sound as he pored over a pile of reference books and the demonic cookbook they had found at Gene's was the melody of pen scratches on paper set to the back beat of the wall clock as he took notes. The results of Jay’s shopping trip were piled behind him, next to his computer desk - a shopping bag full of supplies, a spear gun, and nasty-looking spears with well-honed tips.

  Abe heard something from the store and looked up with a start. He began stroking the amulet he had lately taken to wearing round his neck and peered off into the darkness beyond the curtain.

  As usual, he had tied the curtain up clear of the doorway so that he could keep the store in view. He didn’t like being alone late at night and didn’t like to admit the fact that he was still afraid of the dark. It wasn’t because of his line of work. It was because in the darkness lay the true unknown. Mankind's fears, real and imagined, dwelt in the shadows.

  Abe no longer bothered to explain himself to other people. They found it easy to dismiss his fear by telling him to get over it and grow up. But that wasn't a convincing argument against his belief that the imagination is right. Things beyond human understanding lurk in the dark places beyond the edge of the light.

  The ticking clock suddenly grew louder and then stopped short. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he surveyed the room. Nothing. Then, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around. There, at eye level above the table, was a lick of flame.

  A cosmic blowtorch was being used to break into the back room. It cut through the interdimensional wall. As space and time melted, they ran like candle wax, puddling on the table and floor. Soon, the jagged circular hole was a ring of fire surrounding a deep, velvety blackness blew out a draft of cool, fetid air.

  Abe's curiosity almost got the best of him, but primitive survival instinct kicked in. He bolted over to the spear gun in the corner of the room. He grabbed it and fumbled with the pile of spears until he had one firmly in his grasp. As he struggled to load the spear gun, a waterfall of gray mist poured out of the inky portal. When it hit the table, it fumed up into a column of smoke that soon engulfed the center of the room and obscured Abe's view.

  Abe was a thinker, not a man of action. His attempt under pressure to load the spear gun was clumsy. As he tried to lock down the rubber bands that provided the power behind the spears, his fingers became entangled. By the time he had managed to cock and load the spear gun, the smoke had condensed and solidified. Frank stood there, on the table, frowning.

  "I know what you’re doing old man," he said, matter-of-factly, as he hopped down from the table. "It won’t work, you know. Do you realize how pitiful you looked fiddling with that thing?"

  Abe’s heart fluttered like a bird trapped in a cage. His palms were slick with perspiration. Great droplets of it ran into his eyes and they burned. He blinked, clearing them enough to be able to see Frank as a blur, drifting toward him, and pointed the weapon.

  "I know all about you, you son of a bitch," Abe muttered. "I can see right through you and I can stop you."

  Frank somersaulted as Abe fired and came down behind him. He grabbed the spear gun and threw Abe across the room. He landed against the wall with a loud thud. Abe lay crumpled at the base of the wall, a thin line of blood flowing from the corner of his mouth to his chin, where it dripped onto his old flannel shirt. He rubbed the back of his head and gave a snort as he tried to clear plaster dust from his nose.

  "Did you like that? I learned it from a movie. You’ll never be fast enough to catch me." Frank laughed.

  Abe rubbed the side of his mouth with the back of his hand and glared back. "Give up now while I’m feeling generous."

  Frank picked up one of the spears and held the tip of it up close to his face. "Wow, this is sharp. Imagine what I could do with this." He grinned, then looked down at Abe as he ran his finger along the sharpened edge of the projectile.

  Abe braced against the wall and got back up onto his feet.

  "I’m not afraid of you, you know," said Frank.

  Abe edged closer, his breathing hard and raspy, chest heaving.

  "You wouldn't have come here if you weren't afraid of me."

  He didn't wait for an answer and continued. "You're a bad boy, Frank Jordan. You're an angry, lonely little twelve-year-old. You're an immature brat who can't face the fact that the rest of the world has moved along and that you no longer have a place in it."

  "You ought to be able to come up with something better than that. I’m
not lonely, after all. Meet my friends."

  He fixed Abe in a piercing gaze. His eyes reminded Abe of a shark’s, black. They glinted like marbles in the light and had the curious quality of reflecting and absorbing the light in the room at the same time. When he looked deep, he could see the reflections of Frank’s victims in their last, terrified moments before death. The effect was mesmerizing and he found it difficult to pull his eyes away.

  The ploy backfired because Abe didn’t stand for cheap jack tricks and low-level acts of intimidation.

  "You think you can scare me, but now you’re just pissing me off."

  His body began to tremble and sweat poured down his face. Frank snarled at Abe as he lunged for the spears. If he had been a younger man, the attempt might have succeeded. Frank backhanded Abe and sent him crashing into the wall once again.

  He left a deep impression in the wall and raised a cloud of plaster dust. It settled onto his head and shoulders and when he breathed it in, it caused him to choke and cough. Frank cackled gleefully. He walked over, spear in hand, and wrapped his fingers around Abe's neck. Frank plunged the spear deep into his shoulder, right into the joint.

  Abe grimaced and gritted his teeth so as not to give Frank the satisfaction of hearing him yell out in pain. It was like someone had taken a lit match and shoved it under his skin.

  "You’re not so smart," Frank said. He released Abe’s neck and twisted and jerked the spear, more out of a detached interest in what would happen than to see how much anguish he could cause. He had done the same thing with ants and a magnifying glass.

  The pain was excruciating. Abe bit his lip. The perspiration beaded up and ran down his forehead. He could taste it, salty, as it collected on his upper lip. It stung his eyes. He could feel an ache creeping down his left arm as his heart pounded out an uneven rhythm.

  Frank grabbed Abe by his shirt with his free hand and lifted him up off of the floor. Abe couldn’t contain his agony any longer, as the spear shifted around, tearing through flesh and tendons. He screamed, loudly. His shirt, soaked through with sweat and blood, began to tear as Frank lifted him even higher, still working the spear around with his other hand.

  Abe's blood, as it dripped down onto the old, wooden floor, painted a Jackson Pollack abstract. Streaks here, splashes and drops there, as if the master had thrown away the rest of his palette and concentrated on murder red.

  Frank smiled a dead smile and ran his tongue along his lips. He gave a questioning look and said, "When Jay and I were together… well, when we were kids together… we used to collect bugs for science class. We used to mount them with little pins we pushed into a board. It’s great to know that I can still enjoy my hobby."

  Pain stabbed Abe’s chest. His arm felt like someone was dragging a fork down the length of it to his fingertips. He moaned and his breathing became raspy.

  "Fuck you," he gasped.

  Abe’s eyelids began to flutter. He could feel himself losing consciousness. Blackness descended and silver sparks danced in front of his eyes.

  Frank could see what was happening and he said, angrily, "Oh no you don’t." He paused, regarding the specimen in front of him. "The real trick was to make sure that they didn’t break apart when we pushed the pins into the wood."

  He shoved the spear hard, driving the tip through Abe’s shoulder blade and into the thick brick and plaster wall beyond. He released Abe’s shirt and leaned in close, so that his foul breath, smelling like four-day-old road kill, washed across Abe's face.

  "This is just a warning. If you keep it up, I'll be back." The grin on his face turned to a dark scowl. "Tell Jay I’ll see him in the funny papers."

  Frank's laughter was the last thing that Abe heard before the lights went out and the curtain came down.

  CHAPTER 33

  When the kid showed up for work in the morning, he thought that the spear point sticking out of the wall behind the counter was some sort of new promotional gimmick. That was, until he almost slipped and fell on the black-cherry slick of blood on the floor.

  Abe was lucky to be alive. That’s what the paramedics told the cops. When he was rolled out of the store on the gurney, he was bare-chested. The areas not swathed in gauze were covered with dried blood and hooked up to wires from a portable EKG monitor.

  Abe was too weak to move. The only evidence that he was still alive was the condensation in the oxygen mask caused by his shallow breathing. His heartbeat was sketched out on the monitor in the ambulance by a green thread that looped every inch or so into a peak-cliff-valley that was monotonously consistent. The paramedics listed his condition as "stable".

  When Jay and Meg arrived at the hospital, a polite, rotund little nurse with a permanent smile directed them to a bench across from the nurses’ station and asked them to wait. As the hustle and bustle of the busy hospital whirled around them, they looked up from time to time to be met by that porcine woman’s fluoride-stained teeth. It was annoying to Jay that she could take everything with such ease. Then he stopped to consider that he was being unfair. Perhaps it was true that the ignorant should be allowed to live blissfully unaware.

  He was jacked up on concern. Frank's attack might have cost them the one person who had some idea of how to deal with him. Jay was angry with himself because he hadn’t thought of the possibility that Frank might make a run at Abe. He should have spent the night at the shop with him instead of hiding in the hotel like a little boy frightened of the dark.

  Then it occurred to him that Frank could have very easily taken on both men. Then they would both be lying helpless in hospital beds with no one in Frank's way to protect Meg or the rest of the town.

  He clenched and ground his teeth. It was an old habit he had picked up after Frank had drowned. He had shed it during his years of therapy and then, unconsciously, it had returned when he had returned to Haddonfield. Jay tried to rub the soreness out of his jaw and caught a questioning glance from Meg.

  "Oh, it’s nothing," he said, and slipped his hand back into the pocket of his coat.

  They had been sitting on the bench for a little over an hour when they saw Gary come walking out Abe's room. A guard had been placed on the door and Gary stopped to talk to him before approaching them.

  "How is he?" asked Jay.

  Gary shook his head and replied, with a grim look, "He’s in pretty bad shape. Couple of broken ribs, possible concussion, and his shoulder’s torn all to hell. Doctors say that it’ll be some time before he’ll ever be back the way he used to be."

  "And then there’s his heart. He ever say anything to you about a heart condition?"

  They both shook their heads.

  "Well," he continued, "when we went through his clothes after the paramedics had cut them off, we found a bottle of nitroglycerin tablets in one of his pockets. I can’t believe him, taking on a job like this."

  There was an uncomfortable silence, which Meg broke with the only question she could think of. The moment it passed her lips, she winced because of how obvious the answer should have been to her.

  "Did he say anything?"

  "I don’t think that there was ever any doubt, but yeah. He had to whisper it to me, but Frank paid him a visit. Let’s go down and get some coffee, we need to talk."

  As they were waiting in front of the doors to the elevator, Jay turned to Gary.

  "I guess this leaves us at square one again."

  Gary pulled a bundle of folded papers bound in a rubber band from his pocket and showed them to Jay as the elevator doors opened.

  "I don’t think so," he said. "He was working on these notes and I managed to scoop them up before anyone else saw them."

  They stepped out of the elevator into a small break area in the basement. Gary motioned for them to sit at one of the tables.

  "Go ahead and sit down. My treat."

  Jay and Meg picked out a table in one of the corners while Gary walked over and began feeding change into a vending machine.

  "Anybody want anything other
than black?"

  Jay replied, "No. Black’s fine."

  "Same here," chimed in Meg.

  As each of the first two cups filled, Gary set them on the counter top next to the coffee machine. When the last had filled, he carried all three back, gingerly.

  As he reached the table and set their cups down in front of them, he said, "I’m glad you just asked for black. I’m not so sure that thing’s ever been able to put out anything else." He gave a nervous laugh. He knew it was a lame joke, but sometimes bad humor is better than none when you're trying to put yourself at ease.

  He spilled some of the coffee on his hand.

  "Son of a bitch. Watch yourself, it’s damn hot." He pulled a napkin from the dispenser on the table and wiped off the reddened spot on his hand where the coffee had burned him. He slipped off his jacket as he sat down, then took a tentative sip before continuing the conversation he had started with Jay outside the elevator.

  "Yeah. Anyway, Abe was working on his plans." He reached back to the pocket of his jacket where it hung on his chair, pulled the bundle of notes out, and handed them to Jay. As Jay unwrapped them and began to leaf through, scanning each one carefully, Gary went on.

  "It looks to me like it’s some sort of ceremony. Did you get all the stuff he asked for? We found a bag with some things in it and a spear gun that had been cocked. If he got it loaded, it didn’t do him much good."

  Jay looked up from the notes and answered tersely, "I picked up everything on that list." He passed a page over to Meg. "This looks like he found an incantation in that book for calling and binding a spirit."

  Meg asked, "What’s that mean?" He slid over closer to her, their heads almost touching over the piece of paper. Gary craned to get a closer look.

  Jay noticed and slipped the paper into a position where they could all see. "Sorry, man." He cleared his throat. "Well, apparently, he was going to try and drag Frank into a spirit circle, then hold him there while he tried some of the standard stuff."