“Jesus,” Jennings said, frowning down at the dog. “What the hell?”
“What the hell seems to be the operative question of the day,” Spencer said.
Jennings attention was immediately drawn to something on the wall above the television. Three symbols that looked like words in some exotic language had been drawn meticulously in what looked like heavy black ink.
He’d seen the symbols before but didn’t know what they meant, didn’t know if they meant anything, for that matter. He moved closer to the wall and stopped abruptly, staring. There was another image below the three word-symbols. Jennings had no idea what it was but it looked something like the broken off point of an ancient arrowhead. It seemed to have been photo flashed there by some method he was unfamiliar with.
Jennings studied it, cocking his head this way and that. “What does it mean?”
“Don’t know,” said Spencer.
“Looks like some sort of artifact,” Jennings said. “Old. Like maybe an arrowhead or the point of a spear.”
“That’s what it looks like to us, too,” Spencer said and shrugged.
“What about the symbols above it?” Jennings asked.
“They’re Aramaic. It’s an ancient language, sort of like Hebrew only older. From the time of Christ.”
“Jesus,” Jennings said, “how the hell do you know that?”
“Nothing too complex,” Spencer interrupted. “The bureau employs experts in ancient languages.”
“That’s a surprise,” Jennings said sarcastically. “How long have you known about this?”
“Years.”
Jennings shot Spencer a look of utter disdain. “What does it say?”
“Tleeqa, which means “Lost”, Shweeqa, which means “Forsaken”, and Minshiya which means “Forgotten”, respectively.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Jennings said.
“Wouldn’t think of it, Rick.”
Jennings thought for a minute before showing Spencer his bared teeth. “So, Doug was right. He knew when he was eight years old what those symbols meant.”
“Well, for some reason he was able to translate them. I’m not sure he knew what they meant. What do you think, Rick?”
“Don’t have a clue, Spencer. But I can see that you boys have really done some homework on this one.”
“It’s our job, Rick. You didn’t really think we forgot about those other cases just because they weren’t solved, did you? Christ, they were the most exciting things to happen to the agency in years.”
“Exciting?” Jennings said in amazement. “People died. Lives were destroyed.”
“Not my fault,” Spencer replied. “I didn’t cause any of this. My job is to find answers.”
“Yeah, well did you have any success?”
“No thanks to you.”
“Wait a minute—”
“No, you wait a minute, Rick. You were the one closest to the boy that saw all this shit happen yet you wouldn’t let us near him.”
“He was just a kid.”
“Well, he’s not a kid anymore, and we will do whatever it takes to protect the national security.”
Jennings face became hot with rage and he had to fight to keep his hands from going around Spencer’s neck. “Don’t you pull the national security card on me, Spencer. We have a history, remember? A sordid and shitty history. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what happened on Apocalypse Island.”
“Oh, I know you haven’t forgotten, Rick. But you see, it doesn’t matter. Everything I do I do for the greater good.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Spencer. Truth is you’re just a puppet for a group of greedy men who live in the shadows. You do their dirty work for them.”
“Doesn’t matter what you think, Rick. Trust me, the world is a better place for the work I do.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Jennings stared at Spencer and concentrated on his breathing, trying to get himself under control. He still wanted to strangle the asshole, but decided that his confrontational style might not be the best way to find answers to the toughest questions. “So, Spencer, you’re so damned smart, fill me in, just what is this nut case trying to tell us?”
Spencer shrugged his shoulders. “Lost, Forsaken, Forgotten. Don’t have a clue, but there are theories. We have shrinks in the bureau, too, you know. Maybe he wasn’t loved the way he thought he should have been as a child. Maybe he was spurned by a lover. Who the hell knows why these nut jobs do the things they do.”
“So you’re assuming the guy who did this is human?” Jennings said.
Spencer smiled dryly. “Aren’t you?”
“I’ve never seen a human do this.”
“So you’re willing to buy into the possibility that he’s not?”
Jennings narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m willing to buy into, Spencer. This whole thing has been crazy from the get-go. I thought it was over a long time ago. Christ!” He sighed in frustration. “What about that symbol beneath the words?”
“Photos have been sent to Washington.” Spencer shrugged. “We’re working on it. It seems to have somehow been transferred onto the wall as though it’s a real object and not just a drawing. If you look closely it appears to be in bas-relief and it looks like it’s made of either stone or pitted metal.” Jennings put his hand up as if to touch the symbol. “Don’t touch it!” Spencer said and Jennings’ hand froze midway. “We’ve got a team coming in to remove that piece of wall, take it back to the lab. No one’s ever seen anything like it and we don’t want it contaminated.”
On the stand beside the TV Jennings spied a family photo. Not able to wrap his brain around the image on the wall, he strode over and picked the photo up to examine it. “This is them, right?” He said, pointing at the images. “The whole family.”
Spencer nodded.
“There are four people in the picture. I only saw three bodies,” Jennings said. “Where’s the little girl?” But even as he asked the question, Jennings thought he knew.
Spencer motioned for Jennings to follow him. In the kitchen he spoke in low tones. “That’s the part I didn’t want to mention over the air. The little girl, her name is Ariel. She’s six years old and she’s missing.”
Jennings sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
“We’re not jumping to any conclusions just yet,” Spencer said. “There’s no evidence she was taken.”
Jennings croaked out a harsh laugh. “Well, where the hell is she then?”
“We’re looking into it, checking with all known relatives and close friends. So far she hasn’t turned up.”
“Who found the bodies?”
“When the father didn’t show up for work and nobody would answer the phone, his employer sent someone over. The porch door was open and he saw the boy.”
“Did he go into the house?”
“No way. He went back to his car and called the police on his cell phone.”
“So he didn’t see the little girl.”
Spencer shook his head. “Nobody saw her. Listen, Rick, we have a very strange situation here.”
Jennings eyed the agent. “She’s missing, right? Either she ran away and hid somewhere or she was taken.”
Spencer’s expression was dour. “This is the strange part, the part I probably shouldn’t be talking about, but I really do need your help on this. Truth is there’s no forensic evidence in this house that proves she ever existed.”
“What?” Jennings said.
Spencer said, “Her clothes are in her bedroom along with her toys, pictures, even a birth certificate. She’s got relatives and all the neighbors remember her. They all say she’s a gifted little girl; some sort of savant actually, and that she has a kind and pure heart. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that there’s no scientific evidence that she was ever in this house, no scientific evidence that she ever existed at all, for that matter. No fingerprints, no hairs, no epidermis. There’s nothing in her bed or the bat
hroom or the kitchen. Nothing! The house is filled with forensic evidence of all the other family members. That’s just normal. When you live in a space you contaminate it with your presence. Either she hasn’t been here in a very long time or she was never really here at all.”
“Come on, Spencer, are all those people wrong? It’s not logical.”
“You see anything this morning that’s logical, Rick?”
“Then what’s the explanation?”
“There isn’t one. Just like there’s no explanation for those bodies over there that miraculously turned into blocks of salt. Whatever happened to these people goes far beyond our present knowledge of science into the realm of the unknown.”
Sweat poured off Jennings. He remembered a very young and a very vulnerable-looking Doug McArthur lying in a hospital bed with his face taped up trying to absorb the reality that the two young friends he had been playing with just hours before had vanished without a trace. In his mind the boy hadn’t seen the kids disappear, but he had seen the strangeness in the second floor apartment that preceded their disappearances. And there had been others. Oh yes, there certainly had been.
Spencer was droning on about something in the very background of Jennings’ thoughts. “Rick, are you listening to me?”
“I hear you loud and clear, Spencer,” Jennings said, even though he hadn’t heard one word the asshole had spoken. He was still trying to put together those memory fragments, to no avail. He performed an almost military about face and strode back into the living room leaving Spencer with a puzzled expression on his face. The teams were still busy with the bodies, taking samples, photographing, swabbing, examining hair and teeth. Jennings stared at them, shaking his head. “What do you make of this?” he asked a man who looked to be in charge of the forensic team.
“Supernatural,” the small bespectacled man responded, getting up from examining one of the husks.
“Rick Jennings, this is Tad Kohler,” Spencer said, coming into the room. “He’s the agency’s lead CSI on the case.”
Jennings nodded, avoiding shaking the man’s latex-sheathed hand. “What did you mean by that?” asked Jennings.
“What?” Kohler said.
“You said supernatural. What did you mean by that?”
Kohler’s laugh was small and a little unsettling. “It was a joke.”
Everybody in the room stopped what they were doing and looked over at Kohler, and Jennings thought it was because none of this was actually very funny. Kohler nervously cleared his throat. “That’s the only explanation I can come up with,” he said, his face reddening slightly. “Nothing else makes sense.”
“Give me your best shot as to what happened to these people,” Jennings said.
Kohler looked nervously around the room. All eyes were on him and all ears were tuned to what he might say. “You want logical?”
“I want what you think happened.”
Kohler nodded. “Whatever it was happened fast, okay? I can tell you that. But not so fast that the victims didn’t know what hit them. Just look at their expressions. Tell me they didn’t see their killer.”
Jennings did not respond.
“I think the killer purposely left them this way,” Kohler continued. “He wanted us to see their expressions. He wanted us to know their terror. I can’t think of anything in the real world that could accomplish something like this.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“These bodies seem to be mummified in some way. But not in the way we’ve come to understand mummification. There were no chemical processes used here, no, these were done almost instantaneously, as if everything that made them alive was sucked out of them. These killings are like a work of art. They were done for effect, for shock value. The sole purpose was to instill terror.”
“It’s working,” said one of the female techs who kept glancing furtively around the room as though the killer might reappear at any second for another round of fun and games.
Suddenly the whole room went still, not a soul stirred, everyone alert for what Kohler might say next and perhaps dreading it.
“We’ll have to get them back to the lab, of course,” Kohler continued, “you know, before I can draw any final conclusions, but . . .”
“But what?” Jennings asked. The room was suddenly alive with electric energy. Jennings could see by the look on Spencer’s face that he was just as creeped out as the rest of them. “You have something more to tell us, Kohler?”
Kohler was now looking a little sheepish. “I don’t know.” He faltered momentarily. “It’s just a feeling.”
“A feeling?”
“Yeah, you feel it too, don’t you? I can tell.”
Jennings did not answer the man. He might have to be truthful with him, and right now the truth seemed much too weird. He felt static run in the hairs on his arms and gooseflesh erupt over his entire body. Inside the room you could have cut the dread with a knife.
“It’s like there’s something still here,” Kohler said, looking around the room as his eyes darkened with terror. “Some kind of residue or something left here by the killer. It feels like evil.” He pointed at the Aramaic words written on the wall and the symbol beneath them. “He left that for a reason. These people were more than murdered,” he said. “This is some sort of warning, perhaps an omen of things to come. If I was a religious man, which I’m not, I’d say that their souls were taken. That’s what it feels like to me, anyway. Empty. Yep, I’d say somebody or something walked right in here last night and took more than these people’s lives, it took their souls.”
Chapter 10
August 12, 1996. Regressive Therapy
“To the best of my knowledge the visions began when I was nine years old,” Doug said, “and I always associated them with that punch Tommy Ricker gave me in the nose. I could be wrong about that but I don’t think so because there is not a conscious memory of anything even remotely similar to those experiences before that day. From then on it seemed that I was in possession of some terrible power of sight, something that would haunt my life for years to come. I tried to dismiss it, I tried to deny it, but every time I became complacent something would happen that reminded me of who I was and of the terrible things I was capable of seeing. Yes, I believe it all began the day Tommy Ricker broke my nose.”
“That’s a very good beginning, Doug,” Dr. Pasternak said in a soothing voice. “Just lie back and relax. I’m going to take you back to that first incident. I want you to tell me in your own words what happened on that day. I want it to be as if you’re there and you’re living it all over again. Think you can do that for me?”
Doug swallowed nervously. “Sure,” he said, “but I’ve already told this story a thousand times. I told the other doctors and the police . . .” Doug’s friend, Portland Police Lieutenant, Richard Jennings was in the room and Doug gave him a helpless stare. “You know the story better than I do.”
“Yes, Doug, you’re right,” said Jennings. “I do know it very well. What Dr. Pasternak and I are hoping to do is open a new doorway, bring something through that perhaps you’ve forgotten, some key that might shed a little more light on what actually happens to you during these incidents. If we can do that then maybe we can figure out what’s causing it to happen, and just maybe, if those kids are still alive, we can find them.”
“You guys think I did it, don’t you?” the young man said. “You think that if you can get me under hypnosis I’ll confess and then you can solve the damned case.”
“That’s not true, and you know it,” said Jennings. He was sitting across from the couch on which Doug was reclining. “How long have I known you, Doug?”
“About ten years.”
“That’s right. Since you were eight years old, since the time of that first incident. And I’ve never believed that an eight year old boy could do the things that happened to those people. Nobody believes that. What Dr. Pasternak and I are trying to do, is exactly what he said we were trying to do.
Deep hypnosis can sometimes dig beneath the conscious mind to areas of the brain that might store forgotten or forbidden information. Now, I think it’s worth a try if it can save those kids. Don’t you?”
Doug’s eyes moved from Jennings to Pasternak and then back to Jennings again. Finally he nodded, staring at Lieutenant Jennings as only one who truly trusts another human being can do. “Okay,” he said, “but I think it’s too late. Tommy and Savannah’s voices faded long ago.”
“But don’t you think it’s worth a try anyway, Doug?”
“I guess so,” Doug said. “If you think it will help.”
“All right then,” Dr. Pasternak said. “Any time you’re ready.”
The eighteen year-old licked his lips and said, “I’m ready. You can start any time.”
“Now, Doug, I’m going to count slowly backwards from ten, and as I do so, you’ll begin to feel sleepy. By the time I get to number three your eyelids will be too heavy to keep open. By the time I get to number one they’ll be closed and you’ll be sleeping soundly and peacefully. Okay, here we go. 10, 9, 8, 7, you’re getting sleepy, 6, 5, 4 . . . your eyelids are getting heavier, 3 . . .”
Doug’s eyelids fluttered then closed and his breathing became rhythmic.
“. . . 2, 1 . . . Now, Doug,” Dr. Pasternak said. “What are we going to talk about?
“The day Tommy Ricker broke my nose.”
“Very good. Try to remember everything, all right? Every little detail.”
“Okay.”
“What are you doing at this very moment?”
“I’m playing with Tommy and Savannah in the front yard of their apartment house. It’s directly across the street from the house where I live with my parents. We moved there when I was two. Tommy and Savannah have been my friends for as long as I can remember. Tommy is nine and Savannah is seven.”
“Are their parents home today?”
“No, they had to work. But Janet’s upstairs.”
Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) Page 7