by James Swain
“Your killer.”
“What?”
“That thing took me over to the other side. At least, that’s where I think I am.” She sounded terrified, and was breathing hard. “I’m running down a gravel driveway on the side of a steep hill. A guy in a Volvo is chasing me. Oh, my God, he’s leaning out of his window—he’s pointing a gun at me!”
It was the same nightmare he’d experienced. Liza had been taken to Dr. Death’s house, and was being chased down a rural road by the serial killer in his Swedish-made car. A gunshot ripped through his earpiece. Peter’s heart skipped a beat.
“Keep running,” he whispered.
“This maniac is shooting at me! Bring me back!”
Onstage, the shadow person was going in convulsions. Forms appeared from within. A hand pushed at the spirit’s lining, as if trying to break free. It was both fascinating and horrifying to watch. The kids in the audience appeared hypnotized. Maybe part of the process was a form of hypnosis that prepared your soul to be whisked to another place. If that was the case, then a large number of kids from Fort Apache were not going to make it home this afternoon.
One of the oldest rules in show business was never to turn your back on your audience. Peter broke that rule, and turned his back while stepping in front of the convulsing spirit. The moment he did, he let the anger festering inside of him come out. The anger had been there for as long as he could remember. He’d been raised to keep a lid on it, even if it meant biting his tongue, or turning the other cheek, or any of the other passive things that civilized people did.
His anger changed him. His psychic powers grew, and so did his physical strength. Overall, the effect was extraordinary. But it came with a price, as the evil side to his personality came out as well. It wasn’t pretty, and certainly not suitable for kids to see.
With his back turned, he plunged his fist into the shadow person’s midsection. The evil spirit emitted a painful sound, and appeared to shrink in size.
“Peter!” Liza screamed.
“I’m coming! Hold on!”
Another shot rang out, this one closer than the first.
“Oh, my God, he shot me in the leg!” Liza said.
Peter struck the shadow person several times. It shrunk in size, until it was no bigger than a beach ball. He shoved it back inside the dollhouse, and pressed the secret mechanism which let Liza escape from her hiding place. His girlfriend poured out of the illusion into his waiting arms, her eyes firmly shut. He looked at her leg, and did not see a bullet wound. So much for small favors. He kissed her, and she snapped awake.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said.
“What took you so long?” she whispered.
“We need to finish the show.”
She slipped out of his arms. Clasping hands, they bowed to the audience, and were showered with applause. Peter looked at the crowd, and saw a sea of smiles. And the huge false one planted on Liza’s face that was there to reassure the children.
13
Peter sat on the couch in his dressing room, holding Liza in his arms. Entering the spirit world was a harrowing experience, and Liza had not completely fallen back to earth, her mind still wandering in the shallow space somewhere in between.
“Drink this,” he said.
The water bottle touched her lips. Eyes still faraway, she sipped. “Explain what just happened to me.”
“The shadow person sent you forward in time to a house in Westchester where a serial killer lives. That killer was getting ready to pick up his next victim, a woman named Rachael, when you dropped in on him.”
“Was he the same guy from your séance last night?”
“Yes. I nicknamed him Dr. Death. He has a beard, and dresses like a college professor.”
“That’s the guy I saw. How many people has he killed?”
“Nearly a dozen, according to the FBI.”
She took another sip. “Why did the shadow person send me to see him? To get to you?”
“I guess.” He stared at Liza’s bare neck. His face grew into a deep frown. “You took off my mother’s five-pointed star. I asked you not to do that.”
“It was scratching my neck, so I took it off for the show. Big mistake.”
“Promise me you won’t do that again until this is over.”
“I promise.”
He kissed her on the forehead. It had a calming effect on her, and she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. An eerie scratching sound at the door made them both jump. Peter jumped up and sprang open the door. A white ball of fur came bounding in.
“Norman! Oh, my God, we forgot all about you,” Liza said.
Norman was panting hard. They took turns stroking his fur until he calmed down.
“I wonder where he was,” Peter said.
“He was with me,” Liza said. “He was running down the road with me, barking at Dr. Death. Dr. Death started yelling at him, and tried to run him over with his car. It had to be the most cruel thing I’ve ever seen. What kind of person would run over a lovable dog like this?”
“An evil one. What happened then?”
“Norman ran between the car’s tires, and somehow escaped.” She petted Norman’s furry head. “Can you imagine what’s going through his little brain?”
Peter could hardly understand what was going through his own head, much less the poor dog’s. Rising from the couch, he walked down the hall to Liza’s dressing room, removed his mother’s five-pointed star from the pewter jewelry dish, and returned to his own dressing room with it dangling from his finger. “Please put this back on.”
Liza fitted the star around her neck, and tucked it beneath her collar. “I won’t take it off, even if it rips my throat.”
They played with the dog for a while. Peter had taught Norman how to walk on his hind legs while balancing a red rubber ball on the tip of his nose. He had used animals in his magic show since he was kid. Back then, his doves had lived in a drawer of his dresser, while he’d kept a Dutch dwarf rabbit in a cardboard box in his closet. These days, his pets lived in large pens with plenty of sunlight, and were showered with daily attention by himself and his staff.
“So, how are we going to catch this guy?” Liza asked.
Her words caught him by surprise. They were not what he’d expected her to say, and it took a moment for them to sink in. “Did you say we?” he asked, just to be sure.
“Yes. I want to stop him from killing Rachael. So do you.”
“But you’re putting yourself at risk.”
“So are you.”
“I have powers. I can fight back.”
“Then I’ll make sure to stand right next to you.”
“I don’t want you doing this.”
Liza stopped playing with the dog. “I have to. I heard her voice.”
“You mean Rachael’s?”
“Yes, Rachael’s. As Dr. Death got out of his car, his cell phone rang, and he answered it. I heard the caller. It was Rachael calling to say that her train was running late because of a delay out of Grand Central Station. She sounded like a good person.”
“You’re sure about this.”
“Positive. I’d like to think she’d do the same for me.”
Liza had connected with a woman in the future she didn’t know, and now wanted to prevent her from perishing. It was an emotion he knew all too well, for it was one which consumed him also. Rachael with no last name was a life that needed saving.
“You’re probably right,” he said.
“So you’re okay with it?”
“I appreciate and support your position.”
“Thank you, counsel.”
“What else do you remember about your experience? Any little detail might help the FBI to figure out who Dr. Death is.”
Liza stopped petting the dog, her face a study in concentration. “It was dark. I didn’t see all that much. The interior of his house was kind of drab. Judging by the decorations, I’d say he’s a bachelor, doesn’t
have any lady friends. The car he was driving stuck out. It was an older make of Volvo my parents drove when I was a kid. My father always complained about the suspension.”
“How old?”
“Twelve–thirteen years.”
“This is great. Keep going.”
“Do you think we can really catch him?”
“The FBI has a profile. If we give them enough clues, they’ll find him.”
She shut her eyes and tried to bring the rest of it back. “He had a really bad vibe. Like he was carrying around a huge chip on his shoulder.”
Dr. Death had called the town he lived in a hellhole, and Peter guessed something traumatic had happened to him growing up. His soul had been seared, so he sought revenge against those who had wronged him. It was as good an explanation as any for what he was.
“That’s all I remember,” Liza said. “Does it help?”
“Everything helps.”
There was a tap on the door. Snoop stuck his head into the dressing room. Snoop was Peter’s stage manager, and one of his closest friends. Snoop wore his blond locks combed over his eyes, and looked like Norman’s older brother. Snoop had seen a lot of unusual things, and never said much about it. He was cool with the strange comings and goings in Peter’s life.
“You two lovebirds okay?” Snoop asked.
“We’re doing fine,” Peter said.
“I’ve got a question. Is that black thing that came out of the dollhouse going to be a permanent part of the show? That was one heck of a trick.”
“I don’t think so,” Peter said.
“You’re not going to do it again? Why not?”
Snoop got his name because he enjoyed prying into other people’s business. Lying to him was pointless because he’d eventually figure out the truth. Better to level with him up front, and be done with it, Peter decided.
“The thing you saw wasn’t part of the show,” Peter said.
“Then what was it?”
“An unwanted guest.”
“You mean a ghost?”
“Ghosts are friendly. That thing wasn’t. It’s called a shadow person.”
“That’s heavy. I’m glad I got it on tape. Wait until I post it on YouTube.”
“You taped the show?”
“You betcha.”
Peter sometimes filmed his shows so he could later critique himself. The Saturday matinee hadn’t been filmed in a while, and it was a stroke of luck that Snoop had chosen to film today. Ghosts and spirits did not like to be captured on film. When watched frame by frame, their true identities often revealed themselves. Perhaps Snoop’s film of the shadow person would reveal its true identity, and lead them to Dr. Death.
“You’re a genius,” Peter told him.
“Glad you finally noticed,” his assistant replied.
14
Garrison arrived at the theater after the evening show let out, and gathered with Peter, Liza, and Snoop in Peter’s dressing room. Peter kept a TV in the room, and it was on this that they watched the video Snoop had shot of the shadow person during the matinee.
The video’s resolution along with the bright stage lighting gave remarkable clarity to a presence that was normally viewed in a fleeting glance before disappearing. About five feet tall, it was shaped like a woman, but could have easily been a man. They watched Peter stuff it into the Dollhouse illusion, and make the lovely Liza reappear, her body falling into his arms. It was here that the video ended.
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” Garrison said to Liza. “While that thing was on stage, you were hidden in a secret compartment in the bottom of the illusion, but your spirit was whisked away to the future, where you encountered Dr. Death.”
Liza had changed into a pair of gray sweats. The strain of two shows and her nerve-racking trip had taken its toll, and she looked exhausted. “That’s right.”
“What do you remember about him? Think hard.”
“He tried to run over a little dog in the road. He has to be the most rotten person I’ve ever met. I mean, who runs over little dogs?”
“That’s a very helpful piece of information,” Garrison said.
She brightened. “It is? Why?”
“People who are really angry with the world run over dogs and cats, and leave them in the road for other motorists to see. The FBI has seen this before in serial killers. I can think of three off the top of my head.”
“Will it help you catch him?” Liza asked.
“It just might. The three serial killers I’m thinking of all shared something else in common. They’d all gone berserk in public, and been arrested. They all had records which detailed what they’d done. If we’re lucky, our serial killer in Westchester will have a record, and that will make it easier to find him.”
Liza smiled. She was a person who searched for meaning in just about every situation. She’d been searching for the meaning of her harrowing trip, and Garrison had just served it to her. The FBI was one step closer to catching Dr. Death. “Thank you for sharing that. I’m going to think about what happened some more. If anything else pops up, I’d like to call you.”
Garrison handed her a business card. “Call me anytime.”
She slipped the card into her pocket. Her world was back on keel. It occurred to Peter that this was an important moment in their relationship. She had not run. His other girlfriends had all done that at some point. His psychic gifts had scared them, and they’d gone from being lovers to Facebook friends in a New York minute. Not Liza. She was in it for the long haul. No girlfriend had ever done that for him before. Somehow, he would find a way to thank her.
“Let’s see the video again,” Garrison said.
Snoop punched the remote, and the shadow person danced across the screen. The FBI agent brought his face close to study the unearthly presence.
“You’ll go blind doing that,” Snoop said. “My mother told me that, so I thought it was worth passing along.”
“Shut up,” Garrison said.
Snoop and Garrison were not friends. One of the agents in Garrison’s team had arrested Snoop in college for hacking government computers, and Garrison had made it clear that he thought the public would be well served if Snoop was locked up in prison. Snoop knew of these feelings, and made it a point to needle the FBI agent whenever they were together.
The video ended, and Garrison twirled his finger. “Play it again.”
“Only if you say please.”
“Don’t push your luck, son.”
The tape played again, and Garrison went back into his pose. He resembled a baseball umpire crouching behind home plate, his face scrunched up in anticipation of a hundred-mile-per-hour fastball ready to fly into the catcher’s mitt. His eyes squinted, and then he smiled.
“Isn’t that something,” he said.
Peter assumed a similar pose beside him. Whatever Garrison was seeing was invisible to his untrained eye. “What did you see?”
“Your spook is dancing in front of those kids,” Garrison said. “Look how it sways back and forth while shrugging its shoulders. That’s modern dance.”
Liza made it a threesome, also staring. “Oh, my God, you’re right. You can see how it moves across the stage in rhythm to the music. How weird is that.”
This was not how evil spirits acted. Usually, they did scary things around kids, whom they liked to torture. It was a part of being evil that Peter had never quite understood. Hurting adults was something he could vaguely understand, but how could someone hurt a child?
Certainly not the shadow person. It seemed more intent on entertaining the crowd of kids than scaring the daylights out of them. But Peter was letting his imagination run away with him. This was an evil spirit they were looking at. Perhaps the dance was a preamble of what was about to come, and the shadow person was preparing to enter the audience, and kidnap the spirits of several kids in the front row.
It could happen. Peter had heard stories about evil spirits abducting children. They’d
always ended badly. The poor kids had come back traumatized, and were never the same.
He’d been justified in hurting this thing, and stuffing it back in the box. In hindsight, he should have hurt it more when he’d had the chance. Only he hadn’t wanted the kids to see the full force of his rage. It would have scared them as badly, so he’d held back.
“I need to take this tape, and have the forensic boys analyze it,” Garrison said.
“It’s yours,” Peter told him. “Make sure they study the face. Ghosts and evil spirits are ashamed to have been left behind, so they hide their faces, and avoid the light.”
“Sounds like some girls I’ve dated,” Snoop said.
“Skip the commentary, and get me the tape,” Garrison said.
Snoop produced the video. He’d burned it onto a CD, which he dutifully handed over. He started to raise his arm, and give the infamous middle finger salute. Peter caught his assistant’s attention eye, and shook his head. Snoop lowered his arm dejectedly.
“We’ve got until Friday to catch this madman,” Garrison said. “We’re off to a good start because of your efforts. Call me if you remember anything else.”
“Will do,” Peter said.
* * *
Peter and Liza walked Garrison to the back alley where the agent’s SUV was parked. The temperature had dropped, with the promise of another bitterly cold night. Garrison produced his keys and hit a button that unlocked the doors and killed the security system.
“I heard her voice,” Liza said.
“Whose voice?” Garrison asked.
“Rachael, his next victim. It was over the phone. Dr. Death was setting the trap.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
“I didn’t see her—I just heard her voice.”
“You formed a mental image of Rachael while listening to her speak. It’s something we all subconsciously do. Describe that image to me.”
Liza tried to remember and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
Garrison did not seem discouraged. He was a family man, with a wife and kids out in a small town on Long Island. He could have been home with them right now, but instead he was here, trying to solve a difficult case. Peter decided to help him.