What Hides Within

by Jason Parent

  Clive found little solace in his answers, his circumstances, or what purported to be reality around him. He couldn’t even figure out why he was handcuffed. Why was he talking to a dead man, a man he was sure he’d killed? Why was the world around him being taken over by all the creatures he feared and despised? Am I dead? Is this my tomb? Is this… hell?

  Kevin seemed to read Clive’s thoughts. “You’re not dead, Clive. You’re where she can’t go. The only place where she has no control. The place where you are you, and nothing stands between you and the truth. Yet you still aren’t you. So it seems the problem isn’t her doing but your own.”

  Clive’s head felt as though it would explode if he tried to follow Kevin’s logic. He looked at his dead roommate, bewildered.

  “Still, your death may be preferable,” Kevin said.

  “Not to me.”

  “It would stop a lot of heartache. You’re a monster, Clive. No better than I was. Worse even. At least I felt remorse.”

  “Please! You can’t even compare me to you. I would never have done the things you did.”

  “I can see there’s no getting through to you. It’s impossible to reason with someone so closed-minded. So I guess that means I’ll have to go to Plan B. Do you want to find out if the old saying is true? You know, if you die in your dreams, you die in real life? I’m not sure how anyone could actually know that since the dead tell no tales. I guess that makes me just another figment of your tormented imagination, huh? But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun.”

  “Argh!”

  The sharp pain and his own screaming told Clive that even apparitions could inflict real hurt. The rat gnawing on his shin certainly seemed real, and the pain was truly unbearable. It increased as more rats began gnawing and thrashing. Roaches hopped from the walls onto his head and body. They blocked his sight and forced their way into orifices. A stream of insects entered his screaming mouth and dug their way down his throat. Worms and maggots burst from Clive’s navel. They swam in and out of his pores as though his skin were liquid. The creatures ate away at his body. He agonized in terror.

  All the while, Kevin laughed maniacally like some villain in a second-rate soap opera. His face continued to distort. Through the swarm of insects, Clive thought he saw the true face of evil. “Clive?” it called.

  The earth-spawned villains tugged at Clive’s body. Kevin’s face drew nearer. A few roaches fell dead to the floor.

  “Clive?”

  His body shook again. More of the insects fell dead. Clive watched as his skin turned black and rotten where they’d once been. His screams became deafening.

  “Clive!”

  A last scream, then silence. Clive awoke in his hospital bed. He sat up in a room not dissimilar from that in his dream. His hand was cuffed to the bedrail. His sheets were stained with sweat and, he feared, other bodily fluids. His heart mass-produced beats faster than a Taiwanese production line.

  And to his left, he saw Morgan. She’d wrestled him from the depths of nightmare. She’d shaken him free from the devil’s grip and called him back to the living world. Morgan, his savior. She’d kept her promise. She would always protect him.

  “Shhhh,” Morgan said, gently caressing Clive’s chest.

  “Morgan,” Clive said, slowly catching his breath. “Something isn’t right. I may have done something awful.”

  “Shhhh.” Morgan brushed the wet hair from Clive’s forehead. “You were having a nightmare. It’s okay now. Everything’s all right now.”

  “But Kevin accused me—”

  “Relax, Clive. Your mind is your own worst enemy. You’re feeling guilty for what you had to do to him. It’s not your fault. Everything is as it should be. I’m here now. No one is going to hurt you.”

  The strain of his overworked heart was too much for Clive to bear. His body collapsed, and his arm went limp. It hung suspended in the air by the metal clasp tightly affixed around his wrist.

  As he fell unconscious again, he heard Morgan say, “No one will hurt you. Everything is as it should be.”

  CHAPTER 43

  W

  hen Detective Reilly arrived at her desk a few days later, a thirty-four-page fax awaited her. It contained a Somerset Police report, complete with exhibits and some typewritten notes entitled, “The Unofficial Version.” Neither the fax nor the notes were signed, but she knew it was from Officer Gillespie. He had come through on his promise.

  Reilly breezed through the typed summary. Under “Items Confiscated,” she found what she had hoped she’d find.

  Reeboks, size eleven. I knew it! And I’m sure the knife will match Page’s wounds too.

  Reilly was confident she’d solved the Page murder. Kevin had been her scumbag all along. Hunches didn’t lie. She pushed the report aside, in part satisfied. But something else ate at her.

  It’s not my problem anymore, she told herself, but to no avail. She needed to know about the explosions. She needed to know that they’d been properly investigated and concluded. She needed to know that the FBI had pegged the right guy.

  She riffled through the remaining pages, not knowing what to look for. She scanned for anything varying from the usual boilerplate lingo. One of the attachments caught her eye, though she couldn’t immediately determine what about it had been so eye-catching. It was a hand-scratched note that read:

  Providence Place,

  Food Court, 2 p.m. Saturday

  Underneath it, someone else had written, “Date of assault per PPD.” Reilly presumed this latter note was written by Gillespie. She hoped he’d only written on a copy of the evidence, not the original.

  Reilly thought back to the call she’d received from Clive Menard that Saturday. He sounded frazzled, claiming to have been attacked without provocation by his roommate while shopping at Providence Place. Kevin Ventura drew a knife and tried to kill him, he said. He ran. The scenario had always seemed plausible, but it had never sat well with Reilly.

  Yet Morgan Donnelly flawlessly confirmed Clive’s story. So did a host of mall goers. On Reilly’s advice, Clive and Morgan filed a joint police report in Providence two days later. Her involvement in the matter was over.

  Apparently, the draftsman of the Somerset Police report didn’t bother to investigate the matter beyond the initial Providence Police report. They are way behind in their investigation if they can’t figure out who the unknown “mall patron” was. Unless Menard never filed a report. What sense would that make?

  She looked again at the scribbled note. Something about it bothered her. It seemed out of place. The words revealed that the author of the note had a specific appointment at the mall that day. The time of the appointment roughly coincided with Kevin’s attack on Clive.

  So? Ventura planned the attack. Makes sense. But why would he do it in a public place? She allowed her speculative mind to run wild. Maybe there was another reason he was supposed to meet Clive there. Maybe he didn’t write this note.

  She plodded through the case files overflowing from her desk drawer, searching for handwriting samples she had “acquired” through dumpster diving. As she suspected, the note didn’t match Ventura’s handwriting. It didn’t match Clive’s, either.

  One of them had to write it. It came from their apartment. Reilly was confused. Her samples were taken directly from the roommates’ garbage. She knew they were accurate. Who else was supposed to be at that mall? Morgan? The writing didn’t look feminine, but looks were often deceiving.

  She studied the note, trying to pinpoint the source of her skepticism. Then she realized that it wasn’t the words themselves that bothered her. Rather, it was the way in which they were written. Every character slanted slightly to the left.

  Reilly had a slant to everything she wrote too. In grammar school, her penmanship teacher would slap her hand with a ruler if she didn’t tilt her writing pad slightly to the left. When she would write along the lines on the paper, her characters would always be slightly tilted. It became so ingrai
ned that from then on, she wrote everything at a slant. But her characters always slanted to the right. Those on the note slanted left.

  A left-hander? If true, the revelation would drastically limit the note’s potential authors. She re-reviewed her handwriting samples. Kevin Ventura is not left-handed. But Clive Menard is!

  All of Reilly’s samples—medical-release forms signed by Clive, grocery lists, credit card payment receipts, and a host of miscellaneous notes—all had the same slant to them as the writer of the note in question. Same slant, but the handwriting was remarkably different. Clive’s handwriting did not appear to be a match. It was as if two left-handers lived in the same apartment. Or Clive is two different people?

  Reilly shook her head and sighed. What am I missing? She was no handwriting expert, however. She had no idea how many variations one person’s writing could have. One lefty’s notes ending up in another lefty’s trash, though certainly possible, seemed less likely than the note belonging to the lefty trash owner. It was enough to raise Reilly’s suspicions. Maybe it was nothing. She decided to give Clive a call to see if she could provoke a response.

  “Hello, Clive. It’s Detective Reilly.”

  “How are you, Detective? Thanks again for all your help resolving things. I’m so happy this nightmare is over.”

  “Me too, Clive. Me too. I’m actually closing the file. I just had a few questions to ask so I can complete all the paperwork. You know, the usual administrative bullshit.”

  “Sure, Detective. The FBI already grilled me back at the hospital on anything and everything, though.”

  “Really?” Reilly played dumb. “Then this should only take a moment.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks. Did your roommate have any friends or visitors while he lived with you?”

  “Ever? I’m sure he must have, but now that I think about it, none that I can recall. So he may have, but I don’t remember any.”

  “No one came by recently to see him?” Reilly asked.

  “Not when I was around.”

  “Did he have a girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Family?”

  “Not sure,” Clive said.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “Through a website. It matches potential roommates, kind of like a dating service. It was cheaper for both of us to shack up than to live alone.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “We didn’t hate each other, not until the last month or so, anyway. He just lost it. I’m still not sure why. But before that, we got along well enough. We didn’t hang out or anything.”

  “Did he ever do anything strange or illegal in your presence?”

  “Everything about Kevin was strange. He kept to himself. Locked himself in his room all the time. Yeesh! It’s true what they say about the quiet ones.”

  “Did you ever get a chance to look around his room?”

  “Nope. Sorry, Detective. I wanted to, and I wish I had. Maybe we could have stopped him sooner. His room was always locked, though.”

  “You don’t have a key? You never had one made?”

  “No.” Clive didn’t seem to like the question. His answer seemed uncertain. After a pause, he said, “I mean, yes, but I never used it. I got it to sneak in there like you asked me to, but he was always around when I thought of it.”

  “Do you know Ventura’s cell phone number?”

  “Not offhand, but I’m sure I have it somewhere.”

  “Did you ever call it?” Reilly asked.

  “Probably. I can’t remember when or why, though.”

  “Did you ask him to meet you at the Providence Place mall that day he attacked you?”

  “No.” Clive sounded indignant. He seemed to catch on that the question was more than simply administrative. “Are we almost finished, Detective Reilly? I have to be somewhere in a few.”

  “Just a couple more questions. Why were you at the mall that Saturday?”

  “I already told you, the FBI, and the Providence Police. I was shopping with my girlfriend.”

  “Do you shop there often?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you know why Ventura was there?”

  “How the fuck would I know?” Clive blurted.

  Apparently, he’d picked up on the accusatory nature of Reilly’s questions. He let out a deep breath. “Maybe he followed me there. I’m sorry, Detective. I’ve just been under a lot of stress lately, what with someone trying to kill me and all.”

  “I’m sure you have, Clive. Just one more question, please.”

  “All right.”

  “What do you know about explosives?”

  “Not a damn thing, Detective! Well, that was your one more question,” Clive said. “So I guess we’re done here. If you need anything else, please hesitate to call.”

  Reilly listened as the line went dead. In her line of work, she had heard so many lies that she’d learned how to distinguish them with ease. With Clive, though, she couldn’t tell. Although he seemed overly angered and defensive in response to her questions, he also seemed convinced of his own answers. The underlying tremor in his voice gave his words the slightest touch of doubt. And when there was the slightest doubt affecting closure of one of her cases, Reilly could not let it go.

  CHAPTER 44

  T he metal was cold. It tasted of sour indifference. Its velvet-smooth oil smeared his palette. The weight of the barrel on his front teeth held his jaw open. The stock scratched along their jagged edges.

  He hardly thought of Victoria as he sat, hopeless, at the edge of his bed, bellowing like a schoolgirl with a scraped knee. A virile mixture of tears, alcohol, and vomit stained his T-shirt. He shoved the barrel deeper into his mouth, so deep that he thought he might vomit again, if he had anything left in him to vomit. He felt his gag reflex activating. He would need to pull the trigger before the dry heaving began anew.

  Saliva coated the weapon from its nose to its revolving chamber. Three bullets. Six chambers. A fifty-fifty chance. Just like yesterday. And the day before that. He removed the gun from his mouth and spun the chamber one more time like some dark spin-off of Wheel of Fortune.

  There was never any doubt that his luck would soon run out. The chamber’s spin ended with a click. Will today be the day? he wondered, shoving the revolver back into his mouth. He had only enough courage to pull the trigger once. If it failed, he would have to wait until the next day, when he could summon the strength to try again.

  Maybe I should buy more bullets. He snickered in his despair. Then he pulled the trigger.

  Blamm! The blast sent chunks of flesh and bone from the base of his skull onto the wall and bed covers behind him. He fell backward upon it. The bullet’s trajectory, however, only clipped his brain and missed his spinal column entirely. Though irreparable, the wound itself wasn’t instantly fatal.

  Kyle twitched miserably in a state of catatonic shock. Controls over thought and function shut down as if God flipped a switch inside him. His brain halted, cutting off all synaptic responses from his body’s many nerve endings. Death would come slowly but painlessly. Hours upon hours would pass before his remaining functions stopped and the blood drained from his body. The only sensation he would feel was the chilling gust of death’s frigid breath. In death, Kyle finally succeeded.

  Victoria watched silently from a crack in the doorway. She remained composed, expressionless, even uncaring. She felt nothing. Her father’s suicide had no impact on her. In her mind, her father had died weeks ago. The bullet just made it official.

  She drew the door closed and tiptoed backward. She pulled on the doorknob until she heard a click, sealing away her father’s resting place from the harsh outside world. She grinned, thinking that now her father would be with Mommy again. She wondered if she might join them soon. Then she went to the kitchen counter and poured herself a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.

  CHAPTER 45

  “F

  ollow
me.” Something about the man’s whispering was soft and friendly.

  In the darkness, Clive couldn’t make out his face. He turned away from Clive, signaling for him to follow with a waving hand. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”

  Clive grinned, happy in his adventure. The stranger before him didn’t seem so strange. His voice and mannerisms, even his build, all had an air of familiarity. Any uncertainty Clive may have had succumbed to comfort. Nothing about the stranger struck Clive as threatening or unwelcoming. He filed in closely behind him, excited to see whatever was waiting at the end of the tunnel.

  His surroundings were unfamiliar. Yet something in the hidden recesses of his mind hinted that maybe Clive had been there once before. He glanced at the dark, dilapidated hallways, unalarmed by their worn and condemning attributes. The leader led on, never turning around to see how his follower was doing. If he stuck close to the man, Clive knew he’d be safe.

  “It’s just ahead,” the stranger muttered. He again beckoned Clive onward.

  Clive’s anticipation grew. What lay hidden in that foreign place? He imagined he was following an experienced guide through a mysterious cavern, on a quest to find some mythical treasure. With each step, he could sense that whatever they searched for was nearing his grasp. He felt more and more exhilarated. That was, until he heard the screaming.

  Clive halted and listened. The hollering of a man in a desperate struggle roared through the hallways. Clive didn’t like this adventure anymore. He dared not go any farther.

  The ruins around him lost their mystique. He saw them for their true worth—grimy, damp, rotted wood and plaster, in greater disrepair as they ran deeper into the structure. The place was as lifeless as the walls of an ancient catacomb, earthen and buried.

  Ahead, the walls were crispy and dry. Black ash flaked from their surfaces. What was it—a funeral pyre gone awry? Perhaps the better question was: who had burned there?