Clay stifled a smirk until Peter slipped off one of the little cotton gloves Dunk had given him. He showed the miniature movie in the palm of his right hand.
Clay’s face—as might have been predicted—drained of color. (No shit, Petey. This was the guy’s father shown being stabbed.)
McFadden let him in, closed the door, showed him over to the couch, and poured them each a drink of a moderately splendid scotch.
“That a trick? Because I can’t figure it out,” Clay said, after each downed their first glassful and he poured seconds.
Pete showed him the other hand. He also unbuttoned his shirt.
“No trick, sir. I wish all to hell it was a trick.”
“Mind if I look—there—again?” Clay indicated the right palm.
Peter extended it as if to shake hands. McFadden held it, scrutinizing as if he was about to read Beta’s fortune from it. “The guy that murdered my father was a dwarf?”
“A child,” Peter corrected, recalling his vision.
“Oh. You ever see a movie called DON’T LOOK NOW?”
“Yeah.”
“A child, you say? How’s that possible?” Clay really focused to see the tiny figure. “Looks like he’s only six or seven.”
“Kids these days do drive-by’s and shoot up their schools. Why not in the 1950s, too?”
“How do you get these psychic reactions of yours?”
Peter pressed his lips shut tight, wouldn’t meet McFadden’s eyes. They were such intelligent eyes, those of a thoughtful man. What would this guy think of him?
“I—uhm—lick the picture and become the victim.” Peter stared at his hands to keep from making eye contact with Clay, waiting to hear the say again?
“Lick the picture?” Clay, to his credit, didn’t sneer at this bizarreness. Didn’t roll back a few feet or grab for a crucifix hidden beneath his collar to ward his guest away with. Didn’t curse or pray or condemn in any manner. He just widened his eyes and remarked, “That’s fascinating. Have you always been able to do that?”
It wasn’t as if McFadden could readily deny the presence of something startling and supernatural.
Supernatural not only being defined as ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that went bump in the night, but as that quality or event which transcended the laws of Nature as we generally perceived them.
“I’ve never done anything—had anything…”
“Are you like that all over?”
“Uh huh. What’s really hard is that this just started last Thursday night, on my birthday. I haven’t exactly had time to adjust to the idea. And I don’t know if this is permanent or if I’ll wake up in a week or two with the whole sh-bang vanished.”
“Son, this must be terribly difficult,” Clay said gently. “I can tell by your demeanor that you’re mostly concerned right now with my reaction. These are from my Dad’s scrapbook…”
“Only the unsolved cases,” Peter interjected. “And they have to have been murder.”
“And one is my father’s,” Clay agreed, nodding, pouring yet more scotch. “Please know that I was a mite shocked, initially. But no matter how you look at this, it’s got to be harder for you than for anybody. Am I right?”
Clay handed him another glassful. Peter gratefully accepted it, thinking why can’t I be as together as this man is? He liked McFadden immensely. Respected him, too.
“Besides,” Clay noted, “you just showed me Dad’s killer. After almost fifty years! That’s a kind of closure. For which I can only be eternally grateful.”
— | — | —
CHAPTER 19
“His book was written all in symbols…
When the book was finished it replaced the
loose leaves as his constant companion by
day and night.”
—Arthur Machen
The Hill of Dreams
Pete got up Monday morning, considered calling in sick. At least requesting a personal day. Hell, he had to find himself a lawyer to represent him against Diane—if he ever wanted to see Ellis or Melody again. He knew if his wife really had the video she said she did, then he wouldn’t get custody. But he’d like to at least try for visitation. Zane McFadden never saw his kids again. And Peter didn’t want history to repeat itself here.
He’d come out looking pretty weird in any case. Especially if Diane insisted on his being medically and mentally evaluated. In addition to a viewing of her tape, her side’s legal team would force his body to be shown in court as proof of his deviance.
Peter worried about what his kids were feeling right now. If they really did see him during his experiencing of Agnes Mathewkitty’s death, witnessing the horrific scene appearing on their father’s flesh of a girl only a little older than Melody and a year younger than Ellis being raped and murdered, then they must be traumatized. They might not even want to see him again.
Was it even possible that Pete would agree it was in their best interests not to see him? For what had he become?
A conduit to the other side.
(The other side of what?)
He decided to work Monday, then take all of Tuesday off, since he had the appointment with Dr. Noll in the morning anyway. He’d see about a lawyer in the afternoon. Maybe Nika could recommend somebody.
He drove to the school, halfway across L.A. Nowhere near La Cállese. But, then, it was for Diane’s job that they’d bought their house. He’d had to look pretty far afield to find a position open for a high school history teacher. In an older neighborhood partially taken over by yuppies, rebuilt in some places and others turned into ‘historical’ homes—which to Pete just meant more rules so you couldn’t have a trampoline.
He knew the school had been rebuilt, that years ago it was a small elementary facility. He also knew there’d been sightings of ghosts but he’d never seen any.
Funny, wasn’t it? Considering what his psyche was up to these days.
Driving into the parking lot, he saw that most of the teachers’ spaces were filled. There were also several police cars. And a crime scene unit van.
Hmm. He hoped there hadn’t been another gang killing. Last time, the victim was one of his best students. Pissed him off to see so much wasted.
He got out, locked the car, turned around, and found himself facing a homeless man. The guy was middle-aged, hair sticking out in every conceivable direction—and not by artistic design. He stank of cheap hooch and an age of collective undeodorized perspiration.
“Int’restin’ that ya work here, ain’t it? It bein’ where she died, ya know,” the vagabond said, breath of germinating plague species.
Peter stepped back, bumped his ass against his car. “Where who died?”
The guy grinned, revealing gaps in black teeth. “Agnes!”
“Mr. Beta,” the vice-principal, Kelly Cooper, summoned him from the doorway. “Would you join us, please? There’s been a terrible accident.”
Peter nodded, glancing back to find the homeless man gone. Somehow the man’s disappearance didn’t surprise him in the least.
Bob had also just parked. The two nodded at one another.
“Why the gloves, Pete?”
“I burned my hands.”
“Hope it isn’t too bad.”
“Nope. Just don’t want to gross out the kids. And, you know, keeps infection down.”
Kelly led them down the hall. Peter noticed the throng of cops around the art class. Investigators snapped photographs of a body, nude from the waist down, part of a broken easel rammed behind the testicles, breaching the scrotal sac. As if to create a pussy. Did this qualify as impalement?
Jerry Fuckstick, the nickname given him now an excruciating word play for a mode of death.
The stench of urine was powerful, although there were no wet pools of either it or blood. Everything had congealed in a curdled yellow/red. Flies darkened the windows, had descended upon painted canvases like buzzing critics. They sat everywhere, in fact, along with their offs
pring—except for the caul Peter had coughed up Thursday night. This was on a table just beyond the corpse. It had been carefully stretched over a clear plastic head until it resembled an Aztec relic.
“And these are?” asked a detective of Ms. Cooper.
“This is our history teacher, Peter Beta. This is the biology teacher, Bob Reisner,” Kelly introduced the two.
“Okay, you first,” the detective said to Peter. The man was tired and it was only 7:30 A.M.
How many teachers had he already interviewed? Well, down the corridor was the lounge, and everybody was standing in the hall with coffee, looking while trying not to appear to be looking at the art room.
“Mr. Beta, where were you on Saturday, noonish?”
Peter replied, “With my doctor, Nika Noll. At her office.”
“A doctor’s office on a Saturday?”
“I’m special,” Peter said, not trying to be funny. “I go back tomorrow but there were tests she wanted to do immediately.”
“You got that number?”
Peter produced her card. The man took it and pocketed it. Peter felt he was spoken to only out of routine.
The detective frowned slightly. An almost imperceptible alteration of expression, but one that definitely noted a switch away from merely routine. “Now you, Mr. Reisner. Where were you?”
“You already know that,” Bob answered, shrugging with a self-conscious little smile. “There were three teachers here Saturday. Jerry Fu-Schaech, Natalie Gabbard and me.”
“Natalie Gabbard says she left at eleven thirty,” the detective repeated from his notes. “She says Mr. Fu-Schaech and you were arguing in the art room.”
Bob just gestured helplessly. He was almost cute, adopting the semblance and mannerisms of some of the you-caught-me-red-handed-but-I-don’t-give-a-fuck students found smoking weed in the bathroom. “Yeah, I guess Jerry Fuckstick ripped me off once too often.”
Well, he could see they knew. Maybe he was going to plead temporary insanity or something. Or maybe he really didn’t care.
Besides, a DNA test of the urine would nail him.
Now Pete was bothered, knowing that the caul of Rosaluna’s tragic baby would end up the centerpiece in a murder trial. Maybe if he hadn’t given it to Bob in the first place…
Or was it intended to be thus? Another connection from Zane McFadden’s scrapbook. Had Agnes Mathewkitty’s body actually been found outside the original school here, the one on the first page? And now the caul, barely visible stuffed inside ‘Baby’ Pasolini’s mouth.
And another view, from Zane’s vision, obtained while sitting in a car outside a dark house only a block or so from the original elementary grounds—now incorporated into the vaster complex of the new school. An angelic-looking child walked by with blood on his knee. A bit of information about finding out later that the woman Zane was there to guard was murdered in the back yard. Hers was the third portrait from the last.
But Peter didn’t recall this specifically from when he’d tasted Zane’s death photo yesterday. How come he knew it now?
(Because he’d tasted them all and he kind of knew everything. Because he had Zane’s eyes and ‘Baby’ Pasolini’s eyes, and they had his. Made no sense. Dunk would say, Ya! Id is in-zane!)
“You may go on to your class, Mr. Beta,” Ms. Cooper told him, staring down—perplexed—at the white cotton gloves on his hands. But apparently she was too concerned with the murder of the art teacher to bother to ask why he wore them.
««—»»
Homeroom had been noisy, kids talking about the murder.
Peter heard excited whispers as he marked attendance.
#1: “I saw Mr. Fuckstick’s…”
#2: “Dude, you shouldn’t call him that now that he’s dead…”
#1: “Right, I saw Mr. Foo-Shy’s ghost, walking with that Indian spirit.”
#3: “Ya did not!”
#1: “I totally did.”
#4: “Me, too. The Injun kid had the art teacher wearin’ that old Spanish helmet he carries.”
#1: “That’s right!”
#5: “Are they going to hold art or biology classes today?”
#6: “Yeah, they’re doin’ art theory so we don’t have to use any of the supplies, part of the crime scene don’tcha know? That’ll be in the auditorium. And biology’s gonna be in the usual place. They don’t wanna, like, mess up our routines any more than necessary.”
#7: “Not until they can bus shrinks in to talk to anybody so frail they can’t take a piss without major anxiety.”
Chuckles all around. Not as if the dead was one of them, providing further proof that they weren’t immortal. It had only been an unpopular teacher. These were kids who—the year before—had flocked to see THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST for the gore, and then had made the very next number one box office hit the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD. Splatter-Jesus the opening act for brain-scarfing zombies. Rockin’ and sockin’ in the pews. Go figure.
#8: “Anyway, where was this you guys saw the spooks?”
#4: “Near the cafeteria. I’d gone over because the smell was really bad and it made me wonder what the fuck they were cookin’ in there. I was tellin’ myself for sure I’d be hoppin’ down to Taco Bobo for lunch.”
#1: “Not me. After seeing that conquistador’s helmet on Jerry Fuck… Fu-Shy…and all that gore running out from under it, the idea of any food with a Spanish name kind of turns on my hurlinator.”
#9: “Speaking of hurling, did you hear about Friday…?”
#10: “…and what Tara and Linny saw…?”
The whispers dropped to where Peter couldn’t hear anymore. But teenagers glanced slyly in his direction.
Tara and Linny were the names of the two young blondes who’d been standing in the doorway when Pete came out of the Elizabeth Short trance.
First period arrived. He felt like he was a rare specimin in a cage at the zoo. Natural habitat for a photo-backed chameleon. He’d attempted to act concerned over their possible grief and confusion—cops were still right down the hall, after all.
“Just read Chapter 27 in your texts,” he’d said.
Then took out a notebook and tried to make lesson notes for later in the week when hopefully things returned to a reasonable fascimile of normal.
Would that ever happen? How could you be certain if it was just a facsimile?
Yet all Pete seemed capable of today was woolgathering. Thinking of Bob and Jerry—and a baby’s disembodied face placid from a sea of spectral stomach acid. Ectoplasmic choke from a pic-lickin’ joke.
It was when he caught the kids looking at him, staring in winks and bleeps sideways—exactly as his homeroom students had done—that he wondered. He finally looked behind him.
He hadn’t noticed any writing on the board when he’d come in that morning. Maybe because it wasn’t in the standard issue white chalk but a rich violet which, unless the flourescent light hit it exactly right, seamed into the black slate as little more than scratches.
Now he saw several lines written there.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Chicken.
Chicken who?
What did the Black Dahlia taste like, Master Bater?
(Pete knew this was their nickname for Mister Beta. The obvious juvenile choice.)
Not a particularly good witticism. Referring to either his school appellation or the bon mot on the blackboard.
Humor might not have been the point.
And two big kids, senior guys from the football team, stood up in the last row. A half-back and a full-back, buzz cuts across eternally raw scalps, piggish eyes squeezed between the bones of bulging foreheads and cheeks.
One of them took down from the bulletin board the picture of the two parts of a body being carried from a park, lifted from the class photographic history project. He stuck the thumbtacks which had held it up into Ronald Reagan’s eyes in another portrait.
There were gasps and snorts as these two
steroidal punks came down the aisle toward him. Peter didn’t even stand up from his desk. It was as if he were frozen.
One slapped meaty hands on their teacher’s shoulders and dragged him to his feet.
“Hey!” Peter protested.
One slapped him hard across the mouth. “Shut up, perv.”
They threw him face down on the floor, then fell on him, tearing off his clothes, revealing the motion picture atrocities swirling on his flesh. The Black Dahlia’s photo was stuffed in his mouth.
“Show us how it works,” the two commanded. “How does Satan tattoo your ass?”
Pete couldn’t struggle, each boy outweighing him by at least fifty pounds. He was terrified and utterly humiliated. He wanted to explain that he hadn’t paid somebody to put this on him. He hadn’t asked for this at all.
Didn’t I?
No! It asked for me. I was set up since childhood for exactly this fate. All I wanted were scary movies. Fiction. Never really did go as much for the plain slasher as I did those supernaturals.
(Then what were Last House on the Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?)
{Come on, fool. Nothin’ plain about them. The directors were geniuses…doing these long before this type of earthbound maniac became cliché. Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper invented the genre, man. Altered the configurations of many a brain through the eyes and ears.}
“Let me…” Pete tried. (“UP!” he wasn’t allowed to finish before he was slapped on the back of the head.)
His face was mashed on one side against the floor, nose twisted sideways. He could only breathe through his mouth. He couldn’t strike out; he’d have to be double-jointed to even try.
Everyone in the class was up out of their seats now, crowding around for a look. Many shouted encouragement, eyes widening, bulging from their sockets as weirdness displayed on Master Bater’s skin.
“It’s like he’s a walking snuff-porno billboard for a cum theater.”
“This is some high-tech shit. I wonder where he got it.”
“Man, Tara and Linny says he just licked the picture.”
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