Ghost Trackers
Page 11
He was living proof that people could change for the better, and for that reason, he was proud to be there. Maybe it was a little arrogant on his part, but he hoped he might serve as an inspiration to his former classmates and that by doing so, he could make up, at least in some small way, for the things he’d done back in high school.
Jerry finished, zipped up, and washed his hands. He looked at his face in the streaked mirror hanging over the sink, and after a moment’s inspection decided that he didn’t look too bad. He carried a few pounds more than he had in high school, but he wasn’t fat, and he wasn’t in danger of going bald anytime soon. But what impressed him most when he looked at his reflection these days was the gentleness in his eyes. It was something that had grown slowly over the last few years, and it was his hardest-won and therefore most prized possession.
He figured he’d stalled long enough, and it was time to get back to Patty. He decided he’d endure her chatter a few more minutes for the sake of politeness, and then he’d say good-bye and head on out. His parents still lived in town, but his dad was the same abusive bastard he’d always been, and Jerry didn’t visit them any more often than he had to. Instead, he figured he’d go back to the hotel and chill until the banquet. Maybe he’d check out the bar, see if there was anyone else around to strike up a conversation with.
“You really know how to live the high life, huh? Big-time partier, that’s you.”
The voice came from behind Jerry, and he turned around to see a teenage boy standing and looking at him with an expression of utter contempt. The boy wore a Skinny Puppy T-shirt, faded jeans, and an old pair of running shoes with holes in them. Jerry understood at once that he was seeing his younger self right then, the recognition occurring on a deep instinctive level. Part of it was the cruel mocking smile on the younger Jerry’s face, part of it was the cold, calculating look in his eyes, but what clinched it was those shoes. Jerry—thirty-three-year-old Jerry—knew those shoes. Every hole, every scuff mark, from the feel of the dingy threadbare laces as he’d tied them to the soft flapping sound the loose rubber soles made when he’d walked. Those were his shoes, no one else’s.
He didn’t question how this could be happening. He accepted the presence of his younger self, as if it was nothing more than a dream. It sure felt real, though. Smelled that way, too. Even through the restroom’s miasma of sour piss and urinal cakes, he could smell that his younger self was in dire need of a shower. He hadn’t been big on hygiene back in those days.
Teenage Jerry stood with his head thrust forward, muscles tense, and hands balled into fists, as if he was ready to rush forward and attack any second. He exuded anger and sullen menace, and he reminded Jerry of a tiger he’d once seen in the zoo, pacing back and forth behind a thick glass partition, its mouth open to display sharp white teeth and a moist pink tongue, eyes gleaming with a mixture of hunger and resentment. You’re lucky this glass is here, those eyes had seemed to say. Damned lucky.
Is that what he’d looked like back then? Is that how the kids he’d tormented had seen him? The thought shamed him, twisted his stomach in a knot of nausea, but most of all, it made him feel angry.
Teenage Jerry’s mouth twisted into a cruel smile. “You used to be tough. More important, you used to be feared. But look at you now. You were a big dog, but now you’re about as scary as a toy poodle.”
Jerry’s jaw muscles bunched as he gritted his teeth, and his hands curled into fists so tight that the skin over his knuckles turned white.
Teenage Jerry started walking toward him, cruel smile fixed so firmly in place that it might have been painted on. “I bet your balls are shriveled up like prunes, and your dick’s retracted into your body like a little turtle head afraid to peek out of its shell. You’re pathetic. A joke. Only you’re the worst kind of joke, the kind no one laughs at. They look at you, shake their heads, and think, man, what a total fucking pussy!”
Teenage Jerry continued walking toward him as he spoke, and now he stood a few inches away from him. As he said those last three words, he punctuated them by poking Jerry in the chest with his forefinger, each time harder than the last.
White-hot rage raced through him like electricity, and he felt his muscles tingle. Involuntarily, his body wanted to reach out, grab this little motherfucker by the back of his scrawny neck, and slam his face into the porcelain edge of the sink. The bastard wouldn’t be smiling anymore once Jerry had knocked his fucking teeth down his throat.
The fingers of his right hand uncurled and flexed a couple of times, as if in anticipation of sinking them into the flesh of his younger self’s neck. He imagined the jolt of impact that would race up along his arm as he smashed the kid’s face against the sink, imagined teeth ringing on porcelain, blood splattering everywhere. It would be so easy to make it happen. All he had to do was reach out . . .
It was a near thing, but in the end, he relaxed his hands and allowed them to hang at his sides. That wasn’t who he was anymore, and no one, not even himself, was going to make him turn back into the sorry son of a bitch he’d once been.
Teenage Jerry, still grinning that insufferable grin, gave his older self slow, mocking applause. “Way to show self-restraint, Jer. I’m impressed. Of course, all I did was say a few nasty things and poke you in the chest a couple times. I wonder if you’ll be able to hold back under more . . . direct provocation.”
Without waiting for a response from his older self, teenage Jerry drew back his right hand, made a fist, and slammed it into Jerry’s gut. Dull pain flooded his abdomen, his breath gusted out of his lungs in a whoosh, and he doubled over, gasping for air. He’d had the breath knocked out of him before and knew that it would take him a couple of seconds before he’d be able to inflate his lungs again. But teenage Jerry wasn’t about to give his older self time to recover.
He was still bent over, and his younger self stepped back, took hold of both sides of his older self’s head, and, with a single savage motion, brought his knee up against Jerry’s jaw. White light exploded behind his eyes, and when his vision cleared, he found himself looking at those oh-so-familiar running shoes. It was strange, though. They were close to his face, and he was looking at them from a funny sideways angle. It took him a few more seconds to realize that this was because he’d fallen to the restroom floor and was lying on his side. His teeth hurt like hell—he wondered if the impact had knocked any of them out—and his mouth was filled with the thick, coppery taste of blood. His tongue throbbed, and he figured he’d bit it. He tried to spit the blood out, but he was barely conscious, and the best he could manage was to make the blood dribble out of the corner of his swollen mouth.
Teenage Jerry crouched down, hands on his knees, head cocked to the side so he could look his older self in the face.
“Jesus, you have let yourself go, haven’t you? I barely touched you, and you folded like the proverbial fucking house of cards. Pathetic.” He straightened then and gazed down on his older self with sorrowful contempt. “Might as well wrap this up. I’ve got bigger and better fish to fry.”
He gestured, and both the toilet in the stall and the urinal began flushing. But instead of flushing once and then stopping, they continued flushing, over and over. Jerry couldn’t see the urinal from where he was lying, but he could see into the stall, and he watched as water began to run over the edge of the bowl and splash onto the floor. He heard water splattering behind him, felt it slide across the tile floor and begin soaking into his clothes. It was cold, damned cold, Arctic Ocean cold, and he began shivering as the water touched his skin and the cold began penetrating his flesh. The toilets continued flushing, and water continued pouring onto the floor and sloshing up against him in tiny waves.
He tried to rise, but he still was having trouble catching his breath. His head was pounding, and he felt dizzy. He wondered if the blow he’d taken to the jaw had given him a concussion, or maybe he’d gotten one when he hit his head as he’d fallen to the floor. Either way, he couldn’t make his bo
dy listen to him when he told it to get up. All he could do was lie there while the freezing water kept pouring out of the toilets and onto the floor, making him colder and wetter with each passing moment.
Teenage Jerry kept looking down at his older self and grinning. Jerry was surprised to see that the water level had risen an inch over the soles of his younger self’s shoes.
“You gave more than your fair share of swirlies in your time, old man,” teenage Jerry said. “High time you got one, don’t you think? But you deserve more than a run-of-the-mill swirly. You’re going to get the greatest swirly ever!”
Teenage Jerry laughed, and water bubbled forth from his throat and dribbled over his chin to soak the front of his Skinny Puppy T-shirt. He continued laughing, water bubbling out of his mouth like a fountain, the toilets flushing and disgorging frigid water, the water level rising. Jerry still couldn’t move, and all he could do was lie there while the water began to cover his face. Finally, he was able to draw in a breath and did so, but all he managed to do was suck in water, and when he tried to scream, it came out in a gurgling burst of bubbles.
The water’s cold seeped into his brain, rendering his thoughts sluggish and dim, and if he had any final profound insight before the darkness rushed in to claim him, he wasn’t aware of it.
TEN
“Now are you willing to believe that something funky is going on?” Trevor said.
Drew ignored him, mostly because he wasn’t sure how to answer.
The three friends stood on the sidewalk outside Flying Pizza. The paramedic vehicle was long gone, taking Jerry’s body with it, but a police cruiser still sat parked outside the restaurant. They’d spent the last half-hour being questioned by one of Ash Creek’s finest before they’d been given permission to leave. The cop was still inside, interviewing some of the other customers.
“I thought that guy was going to haul us down to the station and book us,” Amber said.
For a time, Drew had thought the same thing. But evidently, the officer decided that they’d had nothing to do with Jerry’s death and let them go. But not before giving them the traditional “Don’t leave town” warning. He wondered if it was something cops were trained to say or something they picked up from bad movies and TV shows.
“You can’t blame him for being suspicious,” he said. “Two people in town for the reunion have now died, and in both cases, the three of us found the body and reported it. You don’t have to be a master detective to suspect there’s something more than coincidence at work there.”
“So, you are admitting the possibility that there’s some paranormal aspect to Sean’s and Jerry’s deaths,” Trevor said.
“I’m not sure that I’m willing to go that far yet,” Drew said, “but there are some strange similarities. Both men died in proximity to us, both screamed before they died, and both bodies were found covered with fluid. Formaldehyde in Sean’s case, water in Jerry’s.”
“Both of them seemed to scream more in fear than in pain,” Trevor added. “And while they were covered with their respective fluids, there was, for the most part, none in their vicinity. Seems like there should’ve been some puddles or at least a few drops somewhere. But in both instances, the floor around them was dry as a bone.” Trevor paused, then frowned. “Sorry. Bad choice of phrase.”
“There was a sink near Jerry,” Amber pointed out. “That’s probably where the water came from.”
“Again, there was none on the floor,” Trevor insisted. “You can’t soak yourself from head to toe in a restaurant bathroom without splashing at least some water, and you’d probably end up splashing a lot of it, and it’d end up all over the place.”
As frustrating as it was, Drew couldn’t fault Trevor’s logic on that point, but he also didn’t see how Jerry could have managed to avoid dousing himself without making a mess. He decided to table that problem for later. The paramedics hadn’t been able to give them a specific cause of death for Jerry, but there’d been no outward signs of violence—no bruising or bleeding—just as with Sean. Earlier, Drew had told Trevor that while it was uncommon for a man as young as Sean to drop dead unexpectedly, it wasn’t unheard of. But for two men in their early thirties to die suddenly within twelve hours of each other? That was definitely in the realm of the weird.
“Maybe their deaths weren’t natural,” he mused aloud, “but that doesn’t mean anything paranormal killed them. Maybe they were poisoned.” He hurried on before Trevor could interrupt. “Both of them cried out before they died, and both were covered with some sort of liquid. Maybe they cried out in pain and not fear. If that’s the case, then we’re dealing with a mundane murderer and not malevolent forces from beyond. I’m sure the police will have the chemical found on Sean tested, and they’ll do the same with the liquid on Jerry.”
“You better hope that it’s not poison,” Trevor said. “You gave CPR to both Sean and Jerry, which means if they were poisoned, you got plenty of the stuff on you.”
His thoughts had been running along similar lines. “I didn’t get much on me, and I washed my hands afterward both times. Still, if they had been poisoned, you’d think I’d have suffered at least some ill effects from contact with the substance. But I feel fine.”
“And what sort of killer covers his victims’ bodies with poison?” Amber pointed out. “And who’d stand still long enough for him to do it? It seems like an impractical way to murder someone.”
Drew smiled at her. “Well, when you put it that way, my poison theory seems a little unlikely, doesn’t it?”
“More than a little,” Trevor said. “But maybe you should get checked out by a doctor, just in case.”
Drew and Amber looked at him.
“What? Just because I believe something paranormal is going on here doesn’t mean I think you should take a foolish risk.” He smiled. “The last thing I want is for you to drop dead, too, buddy. Better safe than sorry, right?”
“There’s an urgent care on the other side of town,” Drew said. “I’ll head on over and get looked at, but I’m not worried. Any poison strong enough to kill someone as fast as Sean and Jerry died would’ve had some effect on me by now.”
Amber put her hand on his arm. “Trevor’s right. You should go, just to be safe. I’ll come along and keep you company, OK?”
He wasn’t sure how he felt about her offer. On one level, he was happy to have her go with him, but on another, he was concerned that she’d attached to him too strongly, too quickly. They’d only started to get to know each other again after years apart, but now it seemed that she didn’t want to leave his side. She’d spent so many years living alone, dealing with the depression that had resulted from the trauma they’d experienced in the Lowry House, and he feared that she was latching on to him emotionally, not only as someone who might help relieve her loneliness but also as someone who could be a stabilizing influence in her life.
One of the drawbacks to being a psychologist was that some people sought out his company because they hoped, consciously or subconsciously, to derive therapeutic benefit from it. He’d dated more than one woman over the years who’d secretly hoped that he could “fix” them. As much as he cared for Amber and as much as he wanted to rekindle their friendship, and perhaps take it further, as a psychologist it would be unethical of him to allow her to get too close to him while she was in such a fragile emotional state. Hell, given the fact that they’d witnessed two men die since returning to Ash Creek, he wasn’t sure he was in all that stable a frame of mind himself. Better to keep things more casual between then, for both their sakes.
“Thanks, but I’ll be all right on my own,” he said. “The last thing you need to do is sit around in a doctor’s office reading old magazines while I wait to be seen.”
She looked crestfallen. “But I . . . I don’t want to be alone right now, not after everything that’s happened.”
Trevor gave him a look that he couldn’t read before turning to Amber. “Tell you what. We’ll modify our pla
ns a bit. We’ll drop Drew back off at the hotel so he can get his car and drive over to the urgent care, and you can hang out with me for a while. I was going to head over to the police station to ask them some more questions about Sean, but now that a second guy has died in our presence, that might seem a tad on the suspicious side. I think we’ll go straight to the Historical Society and see what else we can dig up on the Lowry House. Sound good?”
She looked disappointed and more than a little hurt by Drew’s rejection, but she nodded.
Trevor turned to Drew. “And assuming you get a clean bill of health from the doctor, you can head back to the hotel, track down Greg, and see if he remembers anything about what happened that night at the Lowry House.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said.
They started walking toward Trevor’s Prius, Amber keeping Trevor between herself and Drew. He regretted hurting her feelings, but he told himself that it was for the best, and as a psychologist, he believed it. So, why did he feel so shitty?
“This may sound kind of morbid,” Amber said, “but if Sean and Jerry didn’t die of natural causes, then I hope they were murdered by some ordinary human killer. Because if there was some kind of paranormal cause to their deaths, something connected to the Lowry House and to the three of us returning to Ash Creek after all these years, then that means they died because we stirred up something that we shouldn’t have.” And then, in a voice so soft Drew almost couldn’t hear it, she added, “It means we killed them.”