The latch on the door turned and Donald felt his heart become swollen in his chest and beat on him like an eight-ounce glove.
When the door opened it was his daughter who spoke first.
“What are you doing here?” She looked more surprised at first but then he could see irritation flit into her eyes.
“I came to see you.” He sounded meek, not like himself and feared his lack of confidence would only further her annoyance.
“Why?”
He looked at her without saying anything for only a moment. He wanted to take the easy way out, deal the death card. But he didn’t, he didn’t want her back that way. He wanted her to forgive him or at the very least let him tell her he was sorry.
“I got on a plane this evening because I wanted to see you. I didn’t plan it, I just had to do it.”
“Well, you’ve seen me, now I think you should go.”
He had lost her already but was not ready to give up, not after making it this far.
“You know I’m an asshole, I know I’m an asshole. I was engrossed with my career when I was working. I made a lot of money that now disgusts me. I miss your mother. I was a terrible husband and an even worse father. I’m no good and I’ve always known it.”
Donald looked at his daughter. He had experienced his first moment of true humility and that was enough. She said nothing. He said nothing. He turned and made his way down the steps of the porch.
“Mr. Kroft?
Donald turned and found Jim standing behind his daughter in the doorway. He was an honest and decent man who ensured his daughter’s happiness and safety, when Donald could not. Jennifer looked up at her husband; he stood much taller than she and was offering her his confidence in the moment.
“Would you like to see your grandson?”
“Yes, I would.” His lack of hesitation in answering surprised his daughter more than it did himself.
Jim invited him in. The interior of the home was warm and felt lived-in. The furnishing was modest but cared for. Donald could see a small fireplace burning hardwood in the living room. He was proud of his daughter and her honest achievements. They didn’t need him but he would still offer the papers he’d brought. Jennifer watched her father as he absorbed his surroundings. She softened a little, sensing his vulnerability.
Upstairs the three of them entered a quiet room. The room was familiar, so much so that Donald felt immediately at ease.
“Would you like me to wake him?” asked his daughter.
Donald looked at the small child sleeping soundly in the crib. He could see himself in his daughter’s work. He looked over at her; his eyes were red and heavy.
“If I could just sit for a while, you know, and watch him…” Donald trailed off, not really sure if he would be granted this small favour, or if he actually deserved it.
Jim went and fetched a chair and set it beside the crib. The two young parents left the room and Donald stood there for a moment, a small tear passing across his smiling lips. He walked towards his sleeping grandchild and took a seat in his wife’s antique wooden chair.
When
Inside the walls of the Forbidden City
Having tea
The fragrance of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Under the cypress trees
I know that all of this will never be.
That old man in Georgia
Our last night in Alexandria
The oranges in Seville
The lost soul of the Barrier Reef
There was that, wasn’t there?
And time. Always time.
Outside in the October rain
That final maple leaf falling
Joining the others among the detritus
Waiting for your plane to leave.
If you ever make your way back
I will forgive the promises you’ve made
I won’t forget your moments of generosity
Nor your frequent cruelty
The nights we spent driving aimlessly.
I think you tried.
I’ll say you did.
I’ll tell them everything I should
But we both know you were mostly no good.
So I’ll wish you well
Watch for your debut
While they all drink and smile with you,
And you’ll always be the person I only knew.
No man should ever know
Thing
“IF I TELL THE TRUTH about that night, you won’t believe me,” said the man from across the table at which we sat. He was dressed in a grey hooded shirt and spoke with a smooth Yorkshire accent.
He had only arrived five minutes earlier and had kept me waiting an hour. When asked why he was so late, he said he’d been outside watching the place since nine o’clock. I’d asked what he was watching for and he shook his head and ran his soiled hands through his greasy hair. He was nervous, that much was plain, and his alertness was unsettling. I signalled to the waitress for another round while holding up two fingers, thinking a drink might do him some good. He slid further into his seat and a small shadow covered half of his face, for which he seemed appreciative. The beverages arrived and he stared at the bottle of lager like it might be filled with coiled snakes.
“Just a lager,” I said, trying to ease his trepidation.
He reluctantly put both hands around the bottle and shakily brought it to his lips. He took a half-hearted swig and his eyes flitted about the room as he did so.
“Why don’t we start right from the beginning and the reason you felt you should contact me.”
“You’re a policeman, a detective. Am I right?”
“That’s right, a Senior Detective,” I replied, holding my lager patiently before my lower lip.
He slid out from the safety of the shadows enhanced by the poor lighting of the pub for just a moment, enough for me to make out his features a bit better. There was no doubt that this man wore his life on his face; the lines around his eyes and mouth told stories of their own.
“I have a friend you once helped and she spoke of you often and quite fondly. She said you’re not like other policemen. She said that you don’t just listen but you’ll pay attention too.”
“Who might your friend be?” I asked, still questioning why I’d ventured out for this.
“Carol,” he answered meekly, looking down at his trembling fingers.
Carol was a convicted prostitute with an eye for vein candy. I had once done my best to help her get clean and had turned a few familiar stones to get her a terrible job that paid her poorly. It was better than what she was used to and it was the best I could do. She wasn’t that smart, but she had managed to stay clean for over a year.
“So you know Carol and she told you to come see me. What about?” I asked, doing my best to hide my already apparent impatience.
“She’s dead.”
“Who’s dead?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“Carol.” He looked sullenly away from me when he replied.
I took a moment to collect my thoughts. Carol’s dead. Surely I knew it would happen someday so why was it so surprising to me?
“Did anyone report it?”
“No.” He had still not been able to make eye contact with me.
“Was it an overdose?”
“It wasn’t drugs,” he replied, shaking his head while focusing on the bottle in front of him.
“Well, where is she?” I shouted at him, leaning across the table with my arms outstretched. “You better start talking with clear and concise answers or I’ll put cuffs on you and take you out of here right now!”
He stared right through me with his hollow grey eyes and seemed not the least bit rattled by my sudden abrasive outburst. He wasn’t at all afraid of me, yet he seemed so very afraid of something else.
“That’s why I’m here detective. I was there the night she died. I was her friend, maybe the only one she had besides you.” His gaze cooled my temper enough to
hear him further.
“You have to understand, I am not even sure she’s dead. My God, I wasn’t even supposed to be there, but she insisted.”
I kept mum, waiting to see if he’d make more sense.
“I was going to meet some pals from the east end. I’d heard of a party and thought I might see a woman I’d met a few weeks earlier.” He took a sip from his bottle of lager then looked down at the label. “Carol came by my place that night before the party. Her eyes told of an unbelievable fear but her silence was even worse. It took me twenty minutes just to get her breathing normally.”
“Was there some sort of trouble with a dealer?”
“I thought the same thing. I’ve seen her in a bad way many times before, but this was very different. It was like she’d seen, well, a ghost.” He paused again to wet his mouth with drink, then turned and searched the rest of the pub with his eyes.
“Who are you looking for?” I asked sternly.
“I know how this appears detective. I know. A man you’ve never met calls you, asking to meet you and then tells you someone is dead, someone who you know. It’s just so hard to get myself together when what I know, what I saw can’t really be explained. It’s not…”
“Look, just try to calm down. I’m listening and I want to know what’s happened so we can figure this out. But I need you to be very straightforward with me and tell me exactly what has transpired. Take a deep breath and start with when Carol arrived at your flat.”
My faith in him and my sincere words seemed to have settled him slightly. He had another sip of lager and then took a deep breath, as if he was going to regurgitate the entire story in one sentence.
“Take it slow. I’m listening,” I said, trying to reassure him.
“When Carol arrived at my flat I didn’t take her seriously, not at first. She was hysterical, almost flailing her limbs like some kind of Bellevue Betty. Then I saw the blood on her.” He stopped momentarily and made eye contact with me. From the half shadow that obscured him, he looked maniacal and in that moment I felt my skin grow cold. I took a drink as he continued. “It wasn’t her blood, that much I could ascertain. After I calmed her and cleaned her up a little I managed to get her talking, although she made little sense.”
“What did she say?”
He looked at me and his eyes silently scolded my interruption. As much as I hated his cryptic delivery, it was obvious things would have to continue on his terms in order to hear the entire tale.
“She told me she’d seen a monster.”
I rolled my eyes. I was now confident she must’ve been high. What a waste of time this was. I’d get the report in the morning and it would read part time hooker-junkie found face down, a park needle still in arm.
“Ah, detective I can tell I’ve lost you. Maybe she wasn’t a friend to you. But to her, well, she considered you a saint. Shall I finish or have I wasted your time?” He read my expression perfectly and I felt momentarily guilty, despite the ridiculous direction the story was heading in.
“I’m sorry, as an officer of the law I don’t put much stock in monster theories.”
“I didn’t believe her either, but she was scared enough to rattle me, so I agreed to hear her out.”
“I’m still listening. But let’s speed it up some, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.” He fiddled with his bottle nervously, like it was going to take some great effort to carry on. “Like I said, I didn’t believe her either, but there was the blood. I asked her whose blood it was. She said it was Terri’s.”
That’s another name I knew well. Terri was a hooker who had been working those streets before most girls had their license.
“As you probably knew detective, Terri and Carol sometimes worked together at night. Well, they intended to do so that night. That’s all I could get from Carol before she started sobbing like a scared young girl. I put my arm around her to comfort her, then she looked up at me. My God, I will go to my grave never being able to forget the terror behind those eyes.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Yes, she said Terri had been taken and was probably dead.” At this point in his story, he looked at me like the next words he would speak would be his last. He was trembling terribly.
“She said that some thing killed her. Please understand detective that she was quite mad at this point. I did my best to comfort her but it was, in point of fact, useless. I asked her to tell me exactly what had happened, much like you with me just earlier. So you’ll know I can appreciate how you feel. I rushed to the kitchen and offered Carol a glass of cold water, which she cradled like a child and sipped as such. Then she continued on with a tale so fantastic I’d thought she’d lost what sanity she still held onto.”
“What did she say?” I must admit that at this point, whether I believed the man in front of me or not, his retelling of the story was much more intoxicating than the lager.
“Carol said they’d been working the Easy corner for more than an hour without a single john between them. They were cold and about to call the night, when Terri spots a large hulk of a man lumbering towards them from down the alley. He’s walking crooked and erratic and they both figure he’s drunk and ripe. They catcalled him, trying to entice him. He didn’t respond but loomed closer, growing in size as he neared. Terri continued with her crass dialogue but Carol said she noticed something off about the man, something strange. As he approached, his figure looked wrong, then Carol saw his hands. They drooped abnormally low along the torso and the fingers were gnarled like ancient oak limbs. Then he emerged from the shadowed cloak of the alley and Carol was sure it was she who screamed first.”
He stopped here, too afraid to continue. He moved from the wall slightly, as though it was listening to his every word, ready to expose him to whomever or whatever was terrifying him. I, however, needed resolution. Surely this was not where the story ended.
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. Carol couldn’t finish, she was too distraught. I did manage to help her to her feet and she threw her face into my chest and buried it there for several moments, sobbing painfully. Then she looked up at me and said that she wondered if Terri might still be alive. It was at this point that I contemplated contacting the authorities, but I have a criminal record that involved some robberies and was worried about getting mixed up in a murder investigation.”
He could tell by my expression that I wondered about his name and the true extent of his record. I stayed any questioning, allowing him to continue for now.
“I didn’t make any calls and said that I’d go have a look, all the while thinking she’d gotten high with Terri and hallucinated something more than a regular john getting too rough with a street girl.”
“I would have thought the same,” I added, which was a true statement although I said it with the intent to urge him further to the finish.
“As I opened the door, Carol used both hands to slam the door shut and bolted the dead lock. I asked her what was the matter and her reply was that she couldn’t go back there, not during the day and certainly not at night. I took her hands in mine and told her it would be okay and that the fiend would be long gone but that we needed to see if Terri was okay and in any need of medical attention. Carol shook her head frantically, telling me that I had no idea what was out there. I tried to reason with her but could not, and told her she could wait in my flat while I went to investigate. Well, the idea of being alone seemed far worse for Carol than returning to the scene in which some apparent grisly act was committed. I of course continued to harbour reservations that anything at all was afoot.”
“So you visited the Easy corner?” I asked, urging him along.
“I did, and found nothing. All was in order, so much so that when I looked at Carol she had a hardened look of impossibility upon her face. There was not a single splash of blood, in fact the corner itself was immaculately clean and well lit. Carol now looked lost in her thoughts, riddled with confusion. I was now
convinced that nothing had happened and the two had been under the influence. It was when I took Carol by the hand to lead her home that I saw it. At first my mind tried to overlook it, lying to itself that the object couldn’t possibly be what it was. I crouched down beside the storm drain near the curb. I was in total disbelief. But there, trapped precariously in the ribs of the storm drain was a human ear. I reached down and plucked it free, careful not to let it slide between the steel slots of the drain. It had been severed clean from its victim in what looked like a precise and skilled cut.”
The man telling his story looked directly into my eyes, scanning mine to see what I was thinking. Although I found the story interesting, I felt that some sick prank was behind all this. He realized this and shook his head disdainfully.
“I was the same, detective. I believed nothing Carol said, not a word of it. But there it was. A human ear in my hands, as real as the ones on your own head.”
“I am sorry, but this is a fairly fantastic story. I’ve known Carol for a long time and she has been involved with some pretty interesting characters and some even wilder situations.”
I relaxed back in my seat and finished the last of my lager. I was ready to leave and figured the guy for a king nut. I dipped into my pocket for my wallet to leave enough for both drinks when the man in front of me threw a clear plastic bag onto the table. The bag contained one unequivocally genuine human ear.
“Shall I finish or does this still no longer interest you, detective?”
I looked down at the small human part, sealed behind a zipped sandwich bag like some piece of jerky. Its pink fleshy colour had long since left and was now only a pale creamy grey.
“What have you done?” I asked, hot with emotion bubbling dangerously close to the surface.
“Not I, detective.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re sick!” There it was, red hot rage burning to come out. I’d seen some things, bad things, but this…
“I wouldn’t believe me either, detective. But I can prove it. I know where they both are, where all of them are. Hades couldn’t be worse than what I have witnessed!”
Charleswood Road Stories Page 3