Redlands, California can be found approximately two hours' drive due east of Los Angeles, if the freeway traffic is bad. The town is atypical for the dry near-desert area. Its climate in the winter is warm and stable, with generally clear blue skies, although the rains and wind sometimes descend between November and January for a week at a time without much warning. The smog from Los Angeles, more than sixty miles to the West, clears with the winds of autumn. The Santa Anas brush like invisible fire down from the desert, cleaning the skies.
In winter, the air seems crystal clear, and the snow-topped mountains of Big Bear and San Gorgonio rise above the temperate landscape below, palm trees and the tan-brown houses along the low hills and the flatlands of the orange groves among such towns as Mentone, Bannock, Yucaipa, San Pascal, Little Orange, and Redlands.
2
In his house in Redlands, Trey Campbell awoke in a cold sweat.
Unsure of where he was. Of who lay next to him. Another bad dream.
But it was only a dream.
A dream and a memory: he and his family had been attacked the previous summer by an escaped murderer named Agnes Hatcher. It was in the past now. He had been working through his fears. His family had been in many therapy sessions dealing with it.
It only was alive, still, in his dreams.
And in his work, to which he had to return after months of an enforced sabbatical of sorts.
Today was D Day.
His work involved daily encounters with men and women who had committed the most unimaginable acts of violence and murder.
And he loved, and missed, his job.
But he dreaded it, too.
3
He tried to wipe it from his eyes, the last of the previous night’s dream.
Everything was out of focus in his room.
The blur of purple light from the window.
He reached across to the bedside table, feeling around the small stack of paperback books, the clock radio, for his glasses. He had only begun having to wear them since summer. He had been told that his vision problem might be a result of the trauma from the experience. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t like to think of himself as so psychologically weak. All he knew was that one morning, he’d woken up and had not been able to see anything—it had all been a blur. Then, he had seen some things in focus, but not everything. Then, he could see better, but his vision was no longer twenty-twenty.
Then, the psychiatric examination, and then the glasses.
That’s how it had affected him.
His vision.
His kids, they’d had nightmares, and his wife woke up sometimes fighting him as if for her life.
With him, it was dreams and lack of good vision.
Within three months, he was used to the glasses, wire-framed, round. His glasses on, he felt better, more secure. The night, and its dream, was gone. Not just a dream.
A rerun of how I spent my summer vacation.
He was too old for this kind of silliness. Dreams. As if they were anything other than just the messed up innards of a guy who had spent most of his adult life working with the criminally insane.
Nearly thirty-seven, and he still had a fear of his own stupid nightmares. Jesus, he thought, you can be rational all your waking life, but in dreams, that damn irrational superstitious side comes out again.
You never feel safe again.
Not after he’d watched his family be threatened by a killer. He knew he’d never feel the same about people. About people near his wife and kids. Once that had happened, it had changed everything.
Before the previous summer, Trey Campbell had not believed that evil had a human form. He had believed that the killers he encountered in his job were products of abuse. Many of them were, some of them were not. But whether they'd been abused or not, it didn't matter once they got power over someone.
All they needed was a feeling of power over someone.
He had learned that with Agnes Hatcher.
She's gone now. Put her out of your mind.
It was the problem of his job: it put him in proximity to killers and sociopaths constantly. Where he worked, they had no power.
But if they were on the outside, they might.
Then, they were truly evil. It didn't matter to Trey about their past once they stepped over that line.
Nothing mattered but protecting his family, when it came right down to it.
At a certain point in life, making the world safe for your own family, for your kids' futures, and for others', was the only thing worth doing.
He just wished, sometimes, that someone would tell him it would all be all right. The worries, the stress, the struggle and tests that life put you through.
Trey Campbell was never quite sure that life would be all right.
Not anymore.
4
He turned over, seeing the dark hair of his peacefully sleeping wife, Carly. He smelled her hair—it had an herbal scent to it from some new shampoo. He kissed the back of her neck, not out of ardor but from the need to feel connected, to be away from the world of his nightmares and of the recent past.
In sleep, lost in a dream herself, she pulled away, turning onto her back. Her face, so relaxed, watching her mouth open slightly to breathe in and then out...he wanted to wake her and hold her tightly to him, but he knew that she wouldn’t appreciate it.
This wasn’t the first time in the past several months he’d had this nightmare.
This would not have been the first time he’d awoken to want to hold her, and press his face beneath her chin to find some comfort.
But as with those other times, he would let her sleep.
His side of the big California King bed was soaked with sweat. His left arm ached from sleeping on that side. The smell of impending rain outside the half opened window—that sweet almost flowery smell, before the rain clouds would dust down across the hills. The fresh cool air of December. He could hear the steller's jays screeching in the garden. None of this was about insanity. None of this was about the people he’d worked with. Their faces.
Their eyes.
Eyes are the places where we live. That’s what Agnes had told him once. Agnes Hatcher, of last summer, of his nightmares, of his children’s nightmares.
That's over, he thought. Over.
Remember what the shrink said: You are enmeshed with the people you treat. Stop identifying with them.
Four and a half months of three times weekly sessions with a psychiatrist had not erased the nightmares. One of those sessions per week included the whole family. Even the kids seemed to have put their nightmarish vacation in some perspective. But not you. Maybe nothing could. Not that you have a great history of respect for psychiatrists...
The light had not completely come up outside the bedroom window. He could see hazy shadows of the oleander hedged that bordered their property.
5
He sat up, sliding his feet to the edge of the bed. He wiped at his face, as if to iron out the last vestiges of the dream. He glanced over at Carly, who was snoring lightly. Her face had the slight crease of the pattern from the pillowcase—she’d been sleeping on it. They had barely made love since summer. It had been his fault. He was almost afraid to touch her at times, as if anything he came in contact with might be threatened.
Anyone he was close to might be touched by something far worse...
He wanted to not feel so alone, even surrounded by his family. Even next to his wife.
Alone. Like having a secret that you can’t share with anyone, because it will affect them too much.
So as not to wake her, Trey rose slowly and gently from the bed. He padded over to the chair by the dresser, grabbing the underwear he’d left there. He slipped into these. Caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the dresser. Christ. He combed his hands through his greasy brown hair. His eyes were puffy, and his stomach seemed to be a little too paunchy. Four months of therapy, classes, studying and housekeeping—and not much else. Oh, except
dwelling on all the bad things. The Nasties, as he had described it to his son.. Not just what happened to the four of them last summer. But what always happened at that place. Only Nasties.
For the first time in nearly six years, Trey thought of his father. It was the face. Trey was beginning to look more and more like his father.
Trey Campbell went out into the hallway. He shut the door lightly to the bedroom.
The sun was only just coming up.
He loved dawns. Loved them because they were peaceful. Nothing bad happened before the day started.
It was only the day itself that brought the Nasties with it.
Clouds gathered beyond the window.
Clouds gathered in his mind, as well.
He dreaded going back to the job that had nearly cost his family their lives over the summer.
It was not going to be a good morning.
D Day.
Dreaded Day.
Doomsday.
Ward D Day.
Chapter Three
1
Before the sun rises over the mountain, the blue truck stops abruptly, brakes squealing.
From within the truck, a girl cries out as if someone has just struck her.
December, southern California, a side road off the main highway up the San Bernardino Mountains toward Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead and Bluejay and Moon Lake and Green Mountain. Trucks lumber up the main highway, groaning with gearshifts. Beams of purple light cut through the trees, burst from the cloud cover like an escaped convict. The sun lurks. A dark kind of light comes up. Melting snow along the rim of the road. Mud on boots as he walks away from the truck, and the girl inside it.
Male, Caucasian, mid-forties, 5'10", stocky build, wearing chinos, a red flannel shirt, and a brown leather jacket over this. Brown, brown, with distinguishing marks, an unusual gait, as if he has a slight limp. Behind him, a woman. Female, late teens, dyed blond hair, 5'4", buxom, tanned. Breasts big and full, hips curved like a horseshoe.
She follows him, barely a woman, little more than a teenage girl, her white-blond hair pulled back and twisted, her brown and red-checked donut shop uniform still on from the night before, over which she wears a light beige jacket. She smells of crullers and coffee and cigarettes. She pulls the ear buds from her Sony Walkman off as she goes, and the distant, nearly indistinct tinny sound of a pop teen princess' hit mingles with the noise of distant trucks on the lower highway. The ear buds dangle from the Walkman, clutched in her fist.
The air is cold and clean.
At the roadside, on the slight dirt shoulder, the truck, its engine idling. Passenger door flung open.
"I said," she has the thick accent of backwoods redneck even in a southern California landscape. "Get back in the truck, dammit! Do not do this to me. Don’t run to your little hidey hole and leave me to deal with you-know-who up there. Not that witch and her nastiness. You owe me. Big time. Now get back here right this minute. You don't take my car in the middle of my shift like that. You hear me? And that shitkicker truck, I hope I never see it again. You was gonna sell it. You told me we'd get the money for it. But you didn't. Didja? Nobody wants that goddamn truck. Nobody! Jesus! Jesus! Sometimes, I swear you are nuttier than a shithouse rat!"
He only slightly turns, grunts, and then continues on, slinging his backpack carelessly around as he goes. She is mad enough to spit.
"Duane? Are you listening to me? Get your ass back here. Jesus. All I can say is you better be inside for supper, or I'm not gonna wait for you, and you best not give me that look, or I ain't gonna wait on you no more, don't you go treatin' me like some flophouse maid, you goddamn...you don't talk trash to me like you did or you may not be eatin' your supper, you may be wearin' it, and that dog of yours may just wind up with a bullet in its head that's all I'm sayin'. I swear to God I will take down that huntin' rifle and put that poor dumb animal out of its misery!"
He stops when he hears this. Full turn to face her.
"You hear me, Duane?" She says the name Duane as if it has four syllables. Dew-ay-enn-ee. "That's right. I'm gonna take my daddy's gun and put that poor dumb animal out of its poor dumb misery, it can't even stand up to take a shit, you don't give me that look, Duane. You don't give me that look. That's your mama's look and I know just what it means." She talks fast and barely takes a breath until she stops. Then, one final string of shrillness. "Look, you owe me an explanation, that's all I'm sayin' and hell yes I'm pissed off for waiting for three hours, you could at least tell me something or use the damn phone instead of running off to your little hidey-hole every time you go all fetal on me."
"Leave me alone. Just go home, Monica. Leave me alone." His voice is soft, barely audible. "And don't you touch my rifle. My rifle. It ain't yours."
He turns back around, shaking his head, and continues on into the woods.
The backpack around his shoulders, heavy.
Something squirms inside it.
"I did not move up to the backwoods to be treated the way I could've been treated if I stayed back in Palmdale!" she shouts, her voice becoming twangier as it grew louder. “Maybe I shoulda run back to Palmdale and then where’d you be? You and the old witch.”
2
Sun glinting off the edge of the mountain as the man she has called Duane enters the shadows of the woods on the side of the mountain.
3
The girl goes back to the truck, tosses the Walkman onto the seat, shutting the passenger door. She lights up a cigarette, and leans against the truck, shivering, puffing away, for a minute, looking out over the valley below. She mutters something about families and men and love.
Then, she tosses the cigarette, and sashays to the driver's side of the truck, and opens the door. "I hate this goddamn truck!" she says as if he can hear her. "I hooked a loser!" Using the truck's door, she raises herself up slightly, and slides into the seat. "You hear me, Duane?" Tears begin to sprout from the corners of her eyes. She swipes at the first tears, as if trying to erase something that she doesn’t want to full face. She glances out the window, up the mountainside, to the turn in the road, the house that sits in the lightening darkness as the sun reveals itself through the mist to the east. The light is on at the front porch, and she thinks she even hears the damn dog barking.
Adjusting the rear view mirror, she notices that her lipstick is smeared.
She dabs at the edge of her lips with her thumb, and glances at her reflection. Unhappy with the result — more of a lipstick smear than before — she reaches in the glove compartment. Feels around for some tissues. Pulls one out and wipes it across her lips.
Then, reaches down and presses her hand against her belly.
She can't feel the baby yet, but she knows it's there.
Chapter Four
1
It didn't like that whore Monica always yelling at it. It had messed up in its head and messed up its night, and had left her stranded down in the valley at her donut shop, but it had other things going on. It couldn't wait on that bitch hand and foot just because she was pregnant now.
Now, when it had important work to do.
Holy work.
It was heavy in its arms, its backpack, its bundle, its gift.
In the haze of steam, soaking its entire body with sweat, it could make out the edges and curves of the rock wall. It stepped carefully along the perimeter of the cavern so as to avoiding the bubbling water. It moved as swiftly as it could. Even so, it was almost positive it heard their footsteps close behind, could hear the gang of them whispering, knowing that they were closing in on their prey.
It almost slipped when it came to the drop.
It set the bundle down, and then squatted beside it. It felt the smoothness where the now cooling waters flowed down the stones into the deeper chamber of the cavern.
The Chapel.
The Mad Place.
It sat down, grabbed the gift.
Something touched it, from behind.
The feeling of warm breath on its neck
.
It felt its heart go cold.
Something bad inside it took over.
It pushed hard down through the drop, feeling the water wash over it.
Not looking back to see what had scratched the back of its neck as it had leapt away from whatever it was
It lifted the door and went through into the stone room.
The lights were all on—twinkling outdoor garden lights strung around that always made the place look like a starry night.
Gave a sacred look to the Mad Place.
It was safe. That was all that mattered.
2
The little bird had awoke. It got scared when that happened, because it wanted the bird to sleep right up until the time of the offering.
The bird cried out, a muffled scream.
NOW!
The Other One clawed at the cage.
The Other One would be out soon.
It unzipped the backpack to see the little bird's face.
Ripped off the duct tape.
It brought out the little pills and forced them into the little bird’s mouth. Then, it held the child’s mouth shut, making it swallow.
“Good,” it whispered.
Chapter Five
1
Rays of sunlight through a cloud hangover. The foothills of Redlands, green-brown in winter. The vast valley beyond. The snow-capped mountains. Palm trees between the valley and the sky. Parrots, gone wild years ago, squawk as they fly in a flock, tree to tree. Beyond the oleander hedge, a dog barking.
Trey Campbell fumbled through his morning routine.
Stepped outside to the flat pavement at the edge of the garden to do twenty push-ups, and twenty sit-ups.
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 20