Shade of Pale

by Kihn, Greg;

  Jukes still felt bad about that. He felt bad about the cute little raccoon he’d killed and worse about disappointing his father. What had he been thinking? It was too long ago to remember.

  Memories washed over him as he held the rifle in his hands.

  Would the gun still work? It had been stored in the secret place for thirty-five years. He’d always kept it clean and oiled.

  Jukes Wahler knew deep down inside that it would work; otherwise he wouldn’t have wasted his time pulling it out of the wall. Besides, he had no other weapon, except the Swiss army knife he had brought along with the flashlight.

  He cursed the fact that he’d left New York without another weapon. He didn’t want to confront Bobby unarmed. The knife wouldn’t help him much in an open fight; Bobby was young and strong, and he … he wasn’t.

  Jukes knew he didn’t have the killer instinct that allowed guys like Bobby to hurt other people. In a physical confrontation, the good doctor would no doubt be afraid of hurting the other person.

  Still, he had this mental image of cutting Bobby down. After all, he was the avenger now; he was the stalker. He had the rage, the anger. He didn’t need anything but his own righteous conviction to nail that squirmy toad, right? Wrong. He needed the rifle, and as it rolled on his hands he felt the fire and passion of his youth rising up within him.

  Of course the rifle would work. Just because it had been sitting in a wall for thirty-five years didn’t mean a thing. It was primed for duty then as now.

  He checked the barrel and pulled back the bolt. Everything seemed all right. He wondered if he should go outside and fire off a shot to test it but decided not to. It would attract too much attention. Old Tom Rayburn would probably hear it and come over for a little look-see.

  Jukes cradled the rifle in his arms. He felt brave and invincible with it, just as he had so many years ago.

  Fiona’s eyes were wide as he walked back into the room carrying the rifle.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s my old rifle. It was right where I left it. I thought it might be a good idea in case there’s any animals down there.”

  He knew what he had to do next, and he also knew that he’d been procrastinating. The cellar, he had to check the cellar.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  O’Connor studied the door with the black dog painted on it. Like all the doors in the warehouse, it was metal-plated and built for security. He put his ear against it and listened.

  A loud rock band was pounding away in the next studio, making it hard to hear anything.

  Ska music.

  But O’Connor did hear something else. Rising above the music was the sound of a motorcycle, coming from behind him.

  O’Connor spun, and the sound got louder. Someone was driving a motorcycle down the hallway.

  O’Connor dived for cover, crawling behind a trash container down the hall.

  Bobby Sudden roared around the corner a split second later, gunning his motorcycle. He looked crazed, as if he been running and fighting.

  Bobby frantically unlocked the door, cussing and fumbling with the keys.

  He dashed inside, leaving the door ajar.

  O’Connor slipped out of his hiding place and approached the motorcycle. He stealthily planted a magnetic homing device under the rear fender and crawled back behind the garbage container to watch.

  A few minutes later, Bobby reemerged, dragging Cathy. O’Connor watched intently as Bobby threw her and a saddlebag across the bike and started the engine. It roared loud and throaty in the enclosed hall. O’Connor could smell the acrid taste of carbon monoxide, and Bobby turned and pointed the bike back down the hall, back to the loading dock door.

  He gunned the engine and drove the bike down the hall. O’Connor heard it rattle through the loading dock.

  O’Connor stood up. He knew he had about fifteen minutes to follow Bobby, as the range on the homing device was limited, so he wasted no time getting back to his vehicle—the rented Jeep Cherokee. From his laptop computer O’Connor tracked Bobby over a grid of maps, out of the city and to the north.

  The hunt had begun.

  The door to the cellar had a stark and ominous look to it, like so many of the doors you see in horror movies. Jukes could almost hear the trailers: “Don’t open that door! Don’t go down the stairs! Don’t go into the cellar!”

  There was nothing really distinctive about it. It was just an old wooden door. Jukes had seen it before.

  Yet he felt a great amount of trepidation about opening it. Holding the rifle in his hand, at the ready, he put his other hand on the doorknob.

  He shook his shoulders, shrugging off the goose bumps. He kept the gun pointed at the center of the door.

  He slowly turned the knob, heard the lock disengage, and felt the pressure on the door release. Then, in a smooth, quick motion, he pulled it open toward him.

  There was only darkness, and the dank odor of mildew.

  The steps went down into the blackness as if they descended into the bowels of the earth, into Hell itself. Cool, fetid air came up to greet him, to welcome him into the abyss.

  Come on down, it seemed to say. We’ve been waiting for you.

  A small puddle of light illuminated a portion of the dirt floor. The world was reduced to that size, and Jukes’s concentration followed the same periphery. One inch beyond that limited circle of understanding, the darkness swam like a thousand black eels.

  He looked around for a light switch and then remembered that there was no light in the cellar, never had been.

  Jukes thought it odd that these cabins had cellars at all. But it was one of their distinctive selling features. Dirt floor cellars were considered very chic in the 1950s, especially around these parts. Maybe they intended to make them into bomb shelters, he thought cynically.

  The steps were moist and unsafe. For a moment he considered forgetting about it, but a search was a search, and he would never feel safe enough to sleep unless he knew for sure. Bobby could be hiding anywhere. Jukes wanted to secure this area once and for all; that meant getting on with it. The rifle felt substantial and powerful in his hands as he descended into the unknown.

  His first step brought forth such creaks and groans that he almost cried out in surprise. The steps actually seemed to bark like a living thing as soon as his weight was brought to bear.

  He made his descent gingerly.

  The basement was small, low-ceilinged, and not very hospitable. Nature had nearly reclaimed it. There were many huge spiderwebs, Jukes noted unhappily.

  He shone his light around and saw nothing. Over in the corner was a wood box. It was taller and longer than a coffin but just as foreboding.

  He reluctantly put his gun down and, with his flashlight in his left hand, opened the box with his right.

  He pulled the lid up and looked inside. What he saw there made him jump.

  Two feral eyes shone up at him from the dark. They glowed like fluorescent gems. He gasped, profoundly frightened, and stepped back.

  There was a scuffle of claws and teeth; he dropped the lid and screamed a short burst. His shaking numbed him for a few seconds, debilitating him, costing him valuable gun retrieval time. He reached for the rifle, knocked it away, rummaged for it again, and cursed.

  Inside the box, the scuffling continued. Then, it receded into the earth below.

  Raccoons, he thought. Jesus, that woke me up.

  Fiona called from the door, “Jukes! What’s going on down there? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m OK. It was just a raccoon. I surprised him.”

  “Well, come back up here. I don’t like this. That cellar gives me the creeps.”

  “I’ll be up in a second.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it? There’s no one around here.”

  Jukes spoke loudly toward the stairs, trying to sound confident. “I have to make sure. We’re not going to spend the night in a cabin in the middle of the woods until I know that every s
quare inch of it is safe.”

  He realized he was sweating uncontrollably, almost gasping for breath, and shivering like a wet dog. On unsteady legs he walked toward the stairs, surveying the room with his flashlight as he went. He looked back again, became still, and listened. The industrial pounding of his pulse was all that came to his ears.

  “OK, I’m coming up,” he said so she could hear.

  When he was satisfied that there were no people or ghosts or creatures down in that earthen pit, he made a quick retreat back upstairs.

  “It’s all right. The place is clear.”

  “Thank God for that. Does this cabin have a fireplace or something? Let’s try to cheer it up a bit.”

  “Are you scared?”

  Fiona smiled. “Not as long as I’m with you.”

  “You think I should erase the tire tracks from the car?”

  “Why?”

  “In case Bobby comes along.”

  “Now I’m scared. You really think he’d come here?”

  “I don’t know, but this is where the Banshee said I’d find Cathy.”

  “OK, erase the tire tracks if you like, but I think you’re getting carried away.”

  “It’ll only take a minute; I’ll be right back. There’s a wood-burning stove in the living room and some firewood on the porch.”

  He went back out into the night. The wind was soft and fragrant through the pines. Their limbs brushed and rattled, rubbing each other intimately, sending dust and pine needles off into the waiting world.

  He used a branch to sweep away the tire marks, feeling a little silly doing it.

  Maybe Fiona is right; maybe I am overdoing it.

  Bobby Sudden piloted his motorcycle into the green possibilities of pastoral New York State, unaware that he was being followed.

  Cathy, sluggish from drugs, clung to his back like an infant baboon. One or two times she leaned too far to the left or right and came into danger, for a split second, of falling off.

  Bobby pushed her back with his free arm and shouted for her to hang on.

  He wasn’t quite sure what to do with Cathy, but at this point he knew he couldn’t keep her. Cathy had become a liability, too strung out on drugs to be any good to him as a lover or a model and too docile to take out his pent-up hostilities on.

  Once or twice he considered letting her fall off the bike and smash her stupid head on the roadway at seventy miles per hour. But the cops would find her and link her to him.

  No, he couldn’t do that.

  But he had made a personal decision that, one way or another, up at the cabin by the lake, he would lose her.

  He’d never considered murdering Cathy like he had the prostitutes. She was different. It seemed to Bobby she liked being abused, that she actually enjoyed his humiliating games of bondage and scenario.

  That turned Bobby on. So few things, outside of murder, did. That meant Cathy was a good thing.

  But she’d let herself go and now she looked like an anorexic coke whore, and he seriously doubted he could get a boner even if he beat her to within an inch of her life.

  Besides, she was too hot right now. Jukes was no doubt looking for her and had probably pulled the cops into it. Her corpse showing up anywhere would most likely put Bobby squarely at the forefront of any murder investigation.

  And Bobby couldn’t afford that. He had too many skeletons in his closet, literally.

  His mind stung from the revelation that somehow the cops had tracked him down to the theater. How was that possible? There were no physical clues to link that part of him with the murder investigation. It had to be a phenomenal, once-in-a-lifetime coincidence.

  Bobby knew the way to the lake; he’d been there before with Cathy. He expertly guided his bike over the hills and past the boarded-up stores and onto the dirt road leading to the cabin.

  Cathy hung drunkenly on, and he cursed her as a useless deadweight, intent on slowing him down.

  George Jones followed Bobby’s trail through the alleys. The dogs found the wig, then lost the trail. Twenty blocks later, somebody found a guy in a dumpster with a broken arm, and Bobby’s gun. He’d tossed it into the dumpster behind a warehouse used for rehearsal studios.

  They found Mohawk, barely conscious, his arm shattered. The paramedics were loading him onto a gurney when George arrived.

  “Where did he go?” George asked.

  Mohawk, thinking George meant O’Connor, the arm breaker, managed to speak. He said, “Bobby’s studio, last door in the corner, dog painted on it.”

  George rushed to the door, shot the lock off, and opened it.

  Inside, he found the computer with the pictures of Dolly Devane.

  And Cathy.

  “Holy shit,” George said. “Looks like we found Dr. Wahler’s sister.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Fiona brightened the cabin considerably. She’d started a fire in the fireplace, done some basic house-cleaning, and made the bed. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better.

  The cold, dusty cabin now hummed with warm life.

  Jukes replaced the lightbulb in the barren bedroom, and they made love again. Afterward, Fiona drifted into sleep, secure and safe in the arms of her lover.

  Jukes, however, was restless and consumed with the Banshee’s prophecy. He believed that Cathy would be here, and Bobby, too. He believed a showdown was coming. He strengthened his resolve that this time, he would not back down. This time, he would save Cathy.

  Jukes stared at the peeling paint of the ceiling and wondered about the complicated lines of fate that had brought him here.

  “They will appear to be a series of unlikely coincidences,” O’Malley had said.

  Another thought occurred to Jukes—maybe Cathy didn’t want to be saved. He’d considered that before, even though it hurt him deeply. Maybe it was her destiny to be the victim, just as it was his to endlessly try to rescue her.

  He eased himself from the bed without waking Fiona and padded into the living room. He slipped on his coat, hefted the rifle in his hands, and went out onto the porch to wait. If Bobby came, Jukes would be ready.

  The temperature was dropping and Jukes pulled his collar high, propped the rifle under his arm, and rubbed his hands together. He hunkered down against a pile of firewood and looked for a place where he could stay out of sight.

  The porch area opened into a workshop/toolroom that had been built along one side of the cabin. There were tools hanging from the walls; Jukes recognized a power drill and a belt-sander.

  Jukes decided it would be warmer and safer to wait in the workshop, so he propped up a piece of log to sit on. He positioned himself near the screen door where, in the dark, he could look out onto the porch and the front area beyond.

  Jukes heard a curious sound coming from somewhere in the dark beyond the porch. At first he thought it was an owl—an upper-mid-octave mournful whoo, whoo, but the more he listened, the more it seemed to him that it was not an owl but a woman crying. He could hear a tremble in the tone, like a grievous angel sobbing over a lost soul.

  Jukes listened carefully, thinking it might be Cathy, out there in the night, in need of help. Taking his flashlight, he went outside and scouted the area around the house, finding nothing. The sound faded and left Jukes perplexed.

  He returned to his perch in the toolshed.

  Twenty minutes later, against his will, he dozed off.

  He awoke with a start, wondering how long he’d been asleep. An odd sound roused him. It was a gentle thumping above his head.

  He looked up and saw the moth, one of those huge luna moths, pounding headlong into the lightbulb. Drawn by the light, it frantically flew toward it, trying to merge with it, only to eventually die of exhaustion.

  Momentarily hypnotized by the sight, Jukes forgot where he was and what he was doing.

  It all came back in a few seconds. He looked out across the porch and into the yard.

  Something was different.

  Jukes cursed himself
for being so lax. In his stressed condition, his mind was losing track of the little things, all those little details that could be so important now. What the hell was different?

  The porch light is on!

  Of course! But had he left it on? Damn! He couldn’t remember for sure. He remembered coming out to the porch and entering the workshop in the dark. Had he gotten up and turned it on? In his groggy state, Jukes tried to sort out the details.

  After a careful mental review, he came to the hazy conclusion that he had not turned the light on.

  OK, then who did?

  Adrenaline pumped. He instantly went into a state of edginess that made his skin crawl.

  Maybe Fiona got up and came out here looking for me, he thought. That was a good, plausible explanation. But some sixth sense tingled in Jukes’s mind —everything was so strange, so alien, his life had been in such upheaval lately, that somehow the disorientation actually had begun to work in his favor. He found himself primitively come alive with the challenge.

  Whatever the reality, he knew he could face it. Within the false security of that sense of well-being, he got his second shock.

  There was movement in the darkness beyond the porch.

  He sat up, the rifle cold and numb in his hands, and strained to see.

  The Banshee was there.

  She was standing just out of the pool of light thrown by the porch light.

  He clearly saw her now through the shadows. She was unmistakable, her pale skin luminous against the darkness. The movement that caught his eye was the ghostly waving of her hair as she combed it, in a breeze that didn’t exist in Jukes’s universe.

  My God, what’s she doing here?

  She stood deathly still, a specter in the dark, generating her own ghostly light.

  Jukes’s heart jumped up into his throat.

  Was he in danger? Did the Banshee want to kill him? She’d been stalking him for days—maybe he, not Bobby, had become her target.