Whispers of the Dead

by Kope, Spencer

  And then the shadow steps forward.

  For a moment, the doorway is filled with his silhouette, and then he fades into the interior, shadow into shadow. Without a sound, he crosses the hardwood floor, as if gliding rather than walking … as if he has no feet at all.

  * * *

  When Carlos sits up in bed at 1:33 A.M., he’s not exactly sure why he’s awake. He listens for a car or a barking dog, but there is nothing … and something at the back of his mind is coiled, defensive. Fear rushes through him and he doesn’t know why. A dream, he reassures himself. It’s only a bad dream.

  Yet still he sits, hardly daring to breathe for the noise it makes.

  Several stints in prison had allowed Carlos to hone his lizard brain, that collection of primal instincts centered in the brain stem that signal danger, even when none is immediately apparent. Right now his lizard brain is on fire, and it shows in the sweat beading on the back of his neck and in his palms.

  “Is someone there?”

  He feels foolish as soon as the words are out of his mouth. If anyone had actually answered, he would have run screaming from the house, but he really didn’t expect anyone to answer. It was a reflex comment, something to break the quiet and reclaim night. Hearing his own voice should have calmed him, reassured him, but it doesn’t.

  The same overwhelming sense of apprehension continues to claw at him, and he forces himself to breathe slowly, deeply. It’s just the night, he tells himself, just the utter quiet of the house, nothing more. But there’s a patch of darkness in the open doorway to the walk-in closet that he didn’t notice before; a darkness deeper than normal—deeper than it should be.

  His eyes are now fixed on the spot, almost to the point of tunnel vision, and then he sees it: the barest reflection of light on metal … and the metal is moving.

  Terror-stricken, Carlos recoils against his headboard in an instant, pulling his legs tight to his body and kicking over a lamp in the process. He opens his mouth to scream, but the shadow is upon him. Electricity snaps and sparks, strobing the room with miniature lightning bolts. Convulsing, the scream dies in Carlos’s throat before ever reaching his lips.

  In the darkness that follows, the shadow goes about his business.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Big Perch—September 8, 8:38 A.M.

  It was a rough night.

  Jimmy and I worked on the kitchen until just after ten, and only stopped when our muscles went on an involuntary sabbatical. When you can no longer grip a screwdriver, you know you’ve pushed your body past its tolerance level.

  When I arrived home just before eleven, Jens was playing Xbox with Darius and Spider, his friends and frequent companions from Western Washington University. Fall classes don’t start for two weeks, so they’re making the most of what vacation they have left. They needed a fourth for their game and tried shaming me into it, but I was too far gone. My fingers wouldn’t have worked, even if I wanted to.

  Before going to bed, I took three ibuprofens and washed them down with orange juice. They helped … and then they didn’t.

  By three A.M. even my eyebrows were aching.

  * * *

  Jens, Darius, and Spider are still playing when I stumble out of my bedroom a little after eight-thirty, walking like a ninety-five-year-old man on a hunger strike.

  “Morning,” Jens says without looking up.

  I mutter, “Morning,” in response, though it sounds more like some otherworldly moan. Jens doesn’t seem to notice. The coffee table is covered with empty soda cans; they stand like a small forest around five open, half-eaten bags of chips. I grab a single chip from one of the bags as I stumble by, and Spider decides to give me grief about my hair, which is standing up like a rooster’s comb.

  Like he has room to talk.

  He’s got the whole nerdy-punk thing going on, with his thick-framed glasses and odd clothes, not to mention his constantly changing hair color, and the plugs in his ears. I try not to judge too harshly. He’s as odd as they come, but has a heart the size of Texas. Plus, he’s a brilliant programmer.

  Ignoring the dig about my hair, I pour a glass of milk from the jug in the fridge, and then glance at the calendar. Opening the slider, I walk out onto the large west-facing deck and I lean on the rail, taking small sips from the glass. My eyes walk across the great expanses of the Puget Sound and the many islands peeking up from her depths. It’s a beautiful view and one of the things I like most about Big Perch, my home.

  I bought the twenty-four-hundred-square-foot two-story home in a foreclosure auction three years ago and never changed the name, probably because it’s such a fitting title. Nestled in the cliffs above Chuckanut Bay, Big Perch sometimes seems like an eagle’s aerie, a great perch in the sky with the whole world laid out below.

  The auction included a second, smaller house called Little Perch. At just over thirteen hundred square feet, it was built by the former owner, Ellis Stockwell, as an in-law apartment for his mother-in-law … well, his ex-mother-in-law. The home is in the same style as its big brother, just one level instead of two.

  It’s now Ellis’s home.

  I like the old guy; it didn’t seem right kicking him out of the two homes he took so much care designing and building. In exchange for maintenance around the property, I let Ellis stay in Little Perch rent-free.

  He’s become family.

  Still, he’s an odd fellow. He frequently speaks in a British accent, and lately has been learning to speak like a Texan, with particular emphasis on the drawl. He also has a peculiar penchant for nude sunbathing and for hats—all types of hats. He has an impressive collection of historic headgear on display inside Little Perch, but he also has scores of hats that he wears on a daily basis, sometimes wearing three or four different hats throughout the day, depending on his mood.

  Jens and I have made a game of this obsession. We try guessing which hat or hats he’ll wear on any given day. Those guesses get marked down in two-letter codes on the calendar hanging from the side of the refrigerator.

  Today I selected the fedora, code FD, and Jens selected the beret, code BR.

  Ellis is an early riser, so I was hoping to catch a glimpse of him before getting a shower and driving to Heather’s apartment in Seattle, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Waiting another minute, I gulp down the last of the milk and head inside.

  “No sign of Ellis,” I say as I close the slider behind me.

  “I’ll send you a photo when I see him,” Jens says.

  “Just make sure it’s a photo from today.”

  “Right, like I’m going to cheat,” little brother says. “Now, if there was some money riding on it…” He looks up from the game just long enough to shoot me a grin.

  Johnston Ridge Observatory—September 8, 2:12 P.M.

  On a pristine Sunday morning on May 18, 1980, at 8:32 A.M., Mount St. Helens, which had been rumbling for months, erupted in a spectacular way that stunned the nation. It began when an earthquake triggered a massive avalanche of rock and debris that swept down the north face and slammed into Spirit Lake. In moments, the lake was buried under hundreds of feet of debris, and the flow swept on, up and over a thirteen-hundred-foot ridge, before rushing down the Toutle River, destroying everything in its path.

  The slide was just the beginning.

  It triggered the release of pressurized gases within the volcano, and the resulting explosion destroyed 150 square miles of forest. Most of the trees were blasted to the ground by the force of the explosion; a few remained standing, scorched and dead—silent tombstones in the bleak landscape that came after.

  Night descended at noon as the volcano spewed gray ash thousands of feet into the air, blocking out the sun. Superheated pumice issued from the crater, scorching the landscape further as the mountain continued its grand geological performance for the next nine hours.

  The tally of destruction was immense: fifty-seven dead, 250 homes destroyed, forty-seven bridges gone, 185 miles of high
way erased, and fifteen miles of railway buried.

  David A. Johnston, a thirty-year-old volcanologist, was stationed at Coldwater Ridge to observe the mountain. He was too close. When the volcano erupted, and just moments before the swift-moving pyroclastic flow swept over his position, he radioed his famous last words: “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” Pieces of his trailer were discovered by a road crew thirteen years later, but his body was never recovered.

  Johnston Ridge Observatory was opened in 1997. It sits on a ridge just five miles from the hollowed-out crater that is the north face of Mount St. Helens. Named for Johnston, it was built near the observation post the young volcanologist was manning when he died.

  “It’s magnificent,” Heather says. She’s standing at the railing just outside the observatory complex, and looking across the valley to the fractured mountain beyond. It rises before us, large and imposing.

  There are a number of interesting places to stop on the drive up to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, but Heather and I have both been here before, so we skipped the sideshows and headed straight for the main event. The unopened picnic basket beckoning to us from the backseat may have had something to do with that decision. If time permits, we’ll stop at the visitor center on the way down. There’s also a Forest Learning Center that has some nice displays.

  With our bellies full, the sun nestled in the sky, and the raw power of the mountain on display before us, I wrap my arms around Heather and rest my chin on her shoulder a moment. Now would be the perfect time to tell her about the odd ability I have that may or may not freak her out.

  Not knowing what to expect is the worst part.

  I know Heather well, but everyone reacts differently to shocking news. It can range from calm and accepting, all the way to Lizzie Borden on ax-sharpening day. I tried telling her on the long drive south from Seattle, and again as we made the fifty-two-mile drive from Interstate 5 to the mountain.

  The first time, the soft melancholy of Aerosmith’s “Dream On” began to bleed from the radio just as I opened my mouth to speak. It’s one of her favorite songs—along with about two hundred others—and she immediately closed her eyes and soaked up the music. Then she began to sing in soft, barely audible tones.

  It was remarkable, sexy, and powerfully moving.

  On my second attempt, she had her head laid back with her eyes open behind her sunglasses, and a small smile on her face. The wind teased the top of her hair through the open sunroof, and the sun caressed her face.

  She caught me looking over and slipped her hand into mine. In that instant, any thought of shine or the Special Tracking Unit slipped quietly into oblivion. If I could have frozen time I would still be there, lost in the moment.

  Two attempts, two failures.

  If this was baseball, I’d be feeling the pressure.

  Moving to the rail beside Heather, I turn away from the mountain and lean my back against the concrete and steel barrier, partly so I can look at her, but mostly so I can see if anyone wanders our way. About two dozen people are milling about, though none are within earshot.

  Resolving to be bold, I brace up, take a deep breath, and open my mouth.

  “There’s something—”

  “Didn’t you say—” Heather begins in the same instant.

  Our words fall over each other and we laugh.

  “You first,” she says.

  “No, please, after you.”

  Her mouth curls up on the right side, and her dimples jump. The look is alluring, but it’s her eyes that always captivate me—the wells to her soul; like staring into the bottomless depths of the ocean and wondering at its mysteries.

  “I was just going to ask about your dad,” she says. “Didn’t you say he was near the mountain when it erupted?”

  “Well … near is a relative term, I suppose. He was at Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat in the mountains above Lake Chelan. Everyone heard the boom as it raced over the camp that morning, but to him it sounded like two separate explosions.”

  “Two?”

  “I think it had something to do with the way the mountain exploded, the lateral blast, and then all the atmospherics. Witnesses much closer to the mountain remember how utterly quiet everything was, like they were watching a silent film. Scientists called it the quiet zone. That was the case even in Portland, which is fifty miles to the south.”

  “It’s so hard to imagine,” Heather says, shaking her head.

  “We sometimes forget what nature is capable of.” I take Heather’s hand. “That Sunday was Dad’s last day at Holden after a weeklong stay, and the only way in or out was on a lake ferry that operated out of Chelan. It was a two-hour boat ride back to civilization, and about halfway there the captain came over the PA system and said there was a wall of ash headed their way.”

  “And they went into it?”

  “They didn’t have a choice, not if they wanted to get home. Even if they went back to Holden Village, there was no escaping the ash, so they pushed on. By early afternoon, the sun looked like a shrouded moon and there was an inch of ash on the ground. Some areas were hit much harder. In Eastern Washington, they were pushing ash off the road with snowplows. It was crazy.”

  We start strolling slowly along the railing, hand in hand, heading west toward the outdoor amphitheater. Our conversation wanders from Mount St. Helens to Pompeii, and Heather admits that she’s always been a bit haunted by the body-shaped castings they’ve pulled out of the ash at Pompeii.

  My mind begins to drift back to shine, and what I need to tell Heather. I feel my stomach begin to ball up again as I summon the will to do what must be done … and then my phone rings.

  “It’s Diane,” I say, glancing at the screen. “Do you mind?”

  “No, go ahead. I’m going to take a look through the giant binoculars.” She gives me a peck on the cheek, and heads for the observation binoculars permanently mounted on an upright support at the railing.

  “Hey, Diane,” I say.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she replies, sounding sincere. “Thought you might want a quick update on those two things you asked for when you were in Tucson.”

  “You find something?” I say, as I begin frantically searching my shirt and pants for a pen and some paper. I come up empty on both counts.

  “I found something,” Diane echoes.

  “On which one?”

  “Both.”

  “Okay, let’s start with the DNA.”

  “I tracked down a detective at the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office: Miller or Mulder or Middler or something like that. He was the lead detective on the Corinne Winship disappearance. The short answer to your question is no, they don’t have Larry Wilson’s DNA. They couldn’t get a warrant because they didn’t have enough for probable cause. On a couple occasions they followed him around for the better part of a day, hoping he’d discard a cigarette butt or soda can, but never had any luck. Then Wilson moved and the case died.”

  “That’s … disappointing.”

  “Yep,” Diane agrees. “But if it’s any consolation, I had better luck with your second request.”

  “How so?”

  “I found Penny’s cousin.” She lets the words sink in before finishing. “He wants to help.”

  Penny Dellal has been haunting me since we visited her dingy trailer in the run-down trailer park. Travis Duncan may not have been much of a nephew, but he was the only family she had. With him gone, I don’t give Penny a year before Tucson PD is responding to a bad smell at her trailer.

  If the alcohol and drugs don’t kill her, she’ll find another way.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “His name is Mike Keiding from Provo, Utah. He remembers Penny and her sister, Paula, from when they were kids, but says none of the family has heard from them in decades—they didn’t even know Travis existed.”

  “Wow, how do you just lose family?” I say.

  “Good question,” Diane replies. “I didn’t press, but Mike said that t
heir mother died when Penny was thirteen and Paula was eighteen. After that, their stepdad moved them to Arizona looking for work and the family slowly lost touch.”

  “Does he know that Paula died of an overdose years ago and that Penny’s not doing much better?”

  “I told him. He seems like a good man; has a large family of his own. I gave him Penny’s address and he said he’d be on the road within a few hours. He’s going to bring her to Utah and get her into a program.”

  “Nice work, Diane,” I say, feeling for the moment as if I had just sloughed a battleship anchor off my shoulders.

  “I just tickled the databases,” she replies. “This was all you.”

  * * *

  On the drive back to Seattle, I make six unscheduled detours.

  I’ve been slowly checking off addresses on a list that Dex gave me in late June after I discovered Leonardo’s shine on the ground at Bellis Fair Mall in Bellingham. The crime analyst was able to identify the make, model, and even year range of Leonardo’s car from surveillance video, and printed out a list of all the black 2000 through 2002 Saturn L-series sedans registered in Washington State.

  It didn’t take long to go through all the addresses in and around Bellingham, and I’ve been picking off those throughout the rest of the state as I’m able. Day trips like this are perfect opportunities to reduce the list even further. Each address takes but a moment. If Leonardo lives there, his shine will be overwhelmingly evident upon the ground, on the front porch, and along a wide swath to and from the mailbox; whether the car is there or not is irrelevant.

  Heather is everlastingly gracious.

  I tell her that I’m hunting for a black Saturn with a large white decal running across the top of the windshield—something easy to spot during a quick drive-by. There is no decal, of course; Leonardo’s Saturn is as plain as any other. The lie may be harmless, but the aftertaste is foul nonetheless.

  I should have told her when I had the chance.

  I should tell her now—at this moment. If it means I’m a monster in her eyes, so be it. Better to know than to wonder. I tell myself these things, and I pluck at the edge of my courage, and the sun warms my face, and I try … I try.