Spookshow: Book 3: The Women in the walls

by Tim McGregor

“Move!” Gantry’s voice was barely audible above the blasting wind.

  ~

  The squawk box in the unmarked police car was faulty, the distortion often garbling the radio calls when they came. Mockler adjusted the dial. “Did I hear that right? Kidnapping?”

  Odinbeck was behind the wheel, cruising down Wentworth Avenue. “That’s what I heard. You don’t hear that one very often.”

  Kidnapping was an unusual call, Mockler agreed. “Did you catch that address?”

  “Wait for it,” Odinbeck said. “Catch it on the repeat.”

  The box squawked again. It was definitely a kidnapping but when the address was relayed, the speaker buzzed with feedback.

  “What a piece of shit,” Odinbeck grumbled.

  Mockler took up his phone, about to call in for verification but the phone rang. “Mockler,” he answered.

  “Mock?” the voice said. “It’s Hoffmann.”

  Mockler sat up. He hadn’t heard from the detective since the investigation had changed hands. He hoped the call was good news. “What’s up?”

  “I’m at the warehouse. The Essex building. You need to get down here. Pronto.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t even want to try to describe this,” Hoffmann replied. “You’re gonna wanna see this for yourself. It’s beyond insane.”

  Mockler hung up and turned to Odinbeck. “Turn the car around.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Essex Street. Back to the warehouse.”

  46

  DETECTIVE HOFFMANN WASN’T kidding. Mockler couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  Rushing down into the basement of the old warehouse, he jumped aside to make room for the paramedics hauling out a stretcher. Strapped to the gurney was Aaron Napier. The man thrashed against the restraints and his head waved frantically from side to side. The man was weeping openly, muttering nonsensically through his tears.

  Uniformed officers moved about the room, setting up lights. Detective Latimer and two constables were shining flashlights through the broken masonry into the hidden room behind the wall.

  Mockler caught up to Hoffmann, who was still shaking his head. “Was that who I think it was?”

  “Damndest thing I ever saw.”

  “What happened?”

  “Call came in about twenty minutes ago,” Hoffmann relayed. “Anonymous. Caller said there was a man in trouble at this address. In the basement. Constables Guerlik and Rowe over there, they came to check it out. Heard a man screaming but they couldn’t find him. The guy, and I shit you not, the dude was bricked up behind the wall.”

  Mockler regarded his colleague, waiting for some kind of punchline, some hint that the detective was pulling his leg. Hoffmann just shook his head. Mockler looked out at the gaping hole in the wall. The same hidden chamber where the bodies of the seven women had been hidden.

  Odinbeck let out a long breath. “You gotta be shitting me. Napier?”

  “The man was out of his mind,” Hoffmann corroborated. “Screaming and crying and saying all kinds of crazy stuff.”

  “How the hell did he get walled up like that?” asked Odin. “Did he do it himself?”

  “No idea.”

  Mockler forced his eyes from the breach in the wall, shuddering to think what it would have been like to be trapped inside. Turning to Hoffmann he said, “What crazy stuff was he saying when they pulled him out?”

  “Guerlik said he was carrying on about ghosts and shit.”

  The one word prickled up the back of Mockler’s neck. All kinds of other questions bubbled up in his head but he didn’t dare give utterance to any of them.

  “Aaron Napier,” Odinbeck hawed. He rabbit-punched Mockler’s shoulder. “Son of a bitch, son. Looks like you were right after all.”

  Mockler kept his trap shut out of respect but he couldn’t help a quick glance in Hoffmann’s direction. The other detective’s face had darkened by a degree.

  Odinbeck, tactless as a bull, went on. “Jesus, Hoff. I sure as hell don’t envy you writing this shit up. Gibson’s gonna think you’re spinning stories.”

  ~

  There were even more cruisers on scene when Mockler ascended the stairs and stepped outside to get some air. The twinkling cherries of the prowl cars lit up the street like it was Christmas, the red flashing lights reflected in the puddles of the yard.

  Mockler leaned back against one of the cruisers and scratched his chin over and over. The exoneration put forth by Odinbeck was obscured under the bizarre nature of the events. The barely-audible kidnapping call that had come over the wire earlier turned out to be the abduction of Aaron Napier. Followed shortly by this call, the discovery and rescue of the same man at the focal point of the case that had been taken away from him. Aaron Napier bricked up and entombed in the hidden space like something out of an old Edgar Allan Poe story. The poetic retribution of it too impossible to be real.

  Turning it over and over in his head, he scratched his chin raw. One of the cruisers pulled away from the scene and he glanced up, catching sight of a figure on the far side of the street, watching everything. His heart knocked out of rhythm at the face under the streetlight staring back at him.

  Billie. The eye contact lasted less than a heartbeat.

  The twinkling lights of the prowl car flashed hot for a moment before going dark as the vehicle pulled away and rumbled off down the street. Mockler looked back to where the face under the street lamp had startled him but the space was empty, the solitary figure long gone.

  47

  STARING UP AT the cracked plaster in her bedroom ceiling, Billie thought about dying.

  Who would find her body if she expired alone in this shitty little apartment? She didn’t get a lot of pop-in visitors and it wasn’t uncommon for her to be negligent in returning messages. Jen and Kaitlin and Tammy would all shrug off her lack of reply as Billie “just being Billie” and leave it at that. The most likely candidate for discovering her lifeless remains would be Bruce, downstairs. He’d come knocking to see where the bad smell was coming from.

  How many people, she wondered, die alone every day? Shut up inside other shitty little homes like hers, forgotten and unwanted, waiting for some unlucky person to come complain about the smell and discover their corpse, bloated to bursting by internal gasses caused by decomposition.

  Jesus, Billie. You need to lighten up.

  Something in her guts churned the wrong way and she scrambled for the bucket beside the bed. With nothing left to vomit, she heaved up a thin slime trail and collapsed back onto her pillow sweating. The last twenty-four hours had passed in this manner, feverish in her sickbed and retching into a bucket. It was little wonder that she mused over her own death.

  What would happen after she died? Would there be a light to draw her away or would she be like so many of the others she had witnessed, drifting and lost? Trapped here on this side of the veil but unable to be seen or heard by anyone but another medium or psychic? Maybe, she wondered, that was what Hell truly was. Forget the fiery cauldrons and pitchforks, Hell is wandering the same streets one walked in life but unable to connect with anyone or anything.

  Turn off your brain, Billie. Take a shower.

  She did as she was told. The nausea had abated but the dizziness was so bad that she ran a bath instead, afraid she’d keel over if she stayed on her feet. After scrubbing off the grime, she managed to pull on the bathrobe that hung on the back of the bathroom door and made it as far as the sofa. Going back to bed would mean changing the foul sheets first and that task was too daunting to face at the moment.

  Her eyes opened at the sound of a knock on the door. She lifted her head to see who was going to win the title of unlucky-person-to-find-Billie’s-corpse.

  Gantry.

  Barging in after one knock, he swept into the room with a paper bag in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “Alright, luv?”

  “Put that out,” she said. “It’s gonna make me hurl again.”
<
br />   Gantry placed the bag on the table and took a good look at her. Then he looked around the flat, sniffing the air. “It’s a bit rank here, isn’t it?”

  He opened the window and a fall breeze pushed a newspaper off the coffee table.

  She shivered. “What are you doing here?”

  “Came to check on you,” he said, flinging the cigarette out the window. “I had a nasty thought I’d find your bloated corpse.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  He took another look at her. “You’re not far off, are you?”

  The breeze from the window chilled her flesh. She nodded at the chair behind him. “Toss me that blanket, would you?”

  “How bad was it?” Gantry draped the blanket over her and then dug into the bag he had brought.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Breakies.” He lifted out a carton of orange juice and cartons of take-out. “Eggs, bacon and even some donuts. Don’t tell me uncle Johnny never takes care of you.”

  She covered her nose, the smell of a greasy breakfast made her stomach rumble.

  “Eat something. Get your strength up.” Looking for a place to sit, he gathered up the magazines and stray clothes from the armchair and tossed them onto a shelf. “I’m starting to worry about you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve been getting sick a lot.”

  Billie shrugged.

  “Every time you come into contact with the dead,” he said. “How bad was it this time?”

  “Worst one yet.” She opened one eye. “You think it’s making me sick?”

  “Can’t be good for you, being that close to them. All that dead energy travelling through you.” He rifled a pocket and came up with a piece of chalk. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  “What for?”

  “What if it’s doing some damage?”

  Billie watched as Gantry held the chalk to the floor and drew a circle completely around the armchair. Then he muttered something, tossed the chalk out the window and dropped into the chair.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Protection circle,” he said, propping his feet up on the coffee table.

  “Protection from what?”

  Gantry wagged his chin at something behind her. “That little shit.”

  Half-Boy clung to the darkest corner of the ceiling like some demented spider. The hatred in his eyes was lethal.

  The missile he flung at Gantry this time was a cast iron duck, an antique paperweight that Billie found at a garage sale. Heavy, with sharp edges, fired at a velocity to do some real damage to an unlucky skull. It sailed in a straight line but veered off course when it came near Gantry and thudded into the wall. A chunk of plaster broke off and fell away.

  “See?” Gantry said to Billie, greatly pleased with himself. Then he turned his attention to the small ghost. “Piss off, son. Let mum and dad talk, yeah?”

  The Half-Boy crept away, crawling over the lintel and disappearing into the bedroom.

  “How can you live with that thing in your flat?”

  “I’ve had worse room-mates.” Billie sat up and looked at the take-out carton steaming on the table. “Thanks for this.”

  “Down the hatch.” He got to his feet. “I need to run. Think about seeing a doctor, yeah? You never know.”

  “You’re worried about me?”

  “You’re me best psychic,” he grinned. “Need to keep you in fighting trim.”

  “You have others?”

  “Yeah but they’re all tossers.” Gantry made his way to the door. “Rest up, Billie. Maybe stay away from the dead folks for a while.”

  “See ya around, Gantry.”

  He opened the door and then stopped. “You did a good thing back there. Helping those women.”

  She turned back to look at him but didn’t know what to say. Gantry gave her a wink and closed the door behind him.

  48

  IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, there would be no way to avoid seeing Detective Mockler. Not after what happened. When his name popped up on her phone she almost didn’t answer it, too sick and too spent to deal with him. He needed to talk to her but didn’t say why. A time and place was arranged and that was it. End of conversation.

  Sitting on the broad lip of the fountain in Beasley Park, Billie checked the time, wishing for some excuse to bail on the whole idea. She needed to see him. She never wanted to see him. She was almost getting used to this bizarro push-and-pull she felt around the detective but it was baffling. Why couldn’t anything ever be simple?

  Checking the time again, she noted that he was one minute late. That meant he wasn’t coming. That also meant that she could leave. Quickly too.

  When he came around the side of the church, relief quashed her nerves but that was followed by the panic rising in her belly. She faked a smile. “Hi.”

  “I’m late. Sorry.”

  The greeting went sideways. No hug or even a handshake. “Sit down,” she finally said.

  He looked into the fountain with the dead leaves collected in the dry basin, like he had lost something. “Did you bring the coffee?”

  “What?” Then she remembered, smacking her head. “Oh my God. I totally forgot.”

  “No big deal.” He sat down.

  “Sorry. My brain’s been mush lately.”

  “How come?”

  Billie shrugged. “Just sick.”

  He looked at her face. “You look tired. Anything serious?”

  “Nah.” She folded her hands in her lap and watched a woman pass by on the sidewalk and then turned to him. “So. How have you been?”

  “Busy. Work is eating up all my time lately. That’s why I called, actually.”

  “Right.” She rolled her gaze away. “Business.”

  “Have you seen the news? About what happened at the old warehouse?”

  “About Napier? Yeah. Weird. I guess you got your man, huh?”

  “Not me,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  She felt his eyes watching her. “Where’s Napier now?”

  “He’s still at Hamilton General, in a near-vegetative state. Hasn’t said a word in three days.”

  “Oh,” she said. “How bad is he?”

  “They don’t expect him to recover. The man’s mind is just gone. You can see it in his eyes.”

  “So the truth won’t come out?”

  “No. We got lucky. His assistant unearthed a whack of documents he’d been hiding. It should all come out in the wash.”

  A tiny smile broke over her face. “That’s good news. I hope your bosses apologized to you. You were right all along.”

  “They didn’t go that far,” he said. Then he winked at her. “But I made employee-of-the-month. My picture’s in the front lobby and everything.”

  “Amazeballs,” she said, reflecting his smile back at him.

  Mockler let out a small laugh and then the moment passed and the smiles faded away. “They should have given it to you, actually. You’re the one who solved it.”

  She didn’t know how to respond. Her hands fidgeted in her lap.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Her hands would not sit still so she sat on them, feeling the cold stone of the fountain on her palms.

  “Billie?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did Aaron Napier get down in that hole? Where the bodies were found?”

  Thirty seconds ago, she thought that she had dodged that bullet but here it was. She still hadn’t decided what she was going to say if he asked. Was she prepared to lie to him about it?

  “They wanted me to bring Napier to them,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The women. So I did.”

  His eyes narrowed. “So you kidnapped Aaron Napier and brought him down to that cellar? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you walled him up in that…that tomb?”

  “No. They did that.”

  The detective scratched his chin
then he lowered his hand and looked up at the sky and then scratched his chin some more.

  After a moment, he finally turned to her. “You do know that’s illegal. Right?”

  “Kinda slipped my mind. You gonna arrest me?”

  “I don’t make up the laws, Billie. But I do deal with the mess when they get broken.”

  “You do what you gotta do. I don’t care. Napier got what he deserved.”

  Billie blotted her wrist against her dampening brow. She wondered if the fever was coming back. She chanced a glance in his direction. “So. What now?”

  “Well,” he said with a sigh, “I’m going to choose not to believe you. Napier outweighs you by a hundred pounds at least. How could you have nabbed him.”

  “Well I didn’t do it alone,” she cut in.

  “Stop.” He held a hand up. “Just leave it there.”

  She watched him rub the bridge of his nose and she noted the dark circles under his eyes. He seemed a shade of his usual self. “You look tired.”

  “I am.”

  “Is everything okay? Like at work or at home?”

  “It’s fine.”

  She looked at her hands. The palms were gritty from the stone beneath her. “Why are you sleeping on your buddy’s couch?”

  Mockler’s eyes shot up, caught off guard. He looked away. “Shit happens.”

  “You can talk, you know? You don’t have to be a tough guy about it. With me, I mean.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Things are just rough right now. That’s all.”

  Shame bloomed quickly and covered everything. She felt sick. Mockler was going through something tough and what had she done? Blurted out ridiculous things to him. Made everything worse, as usual.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  Maybe she could fix it.

  “What I said the other day? In the park?” She tried to look him in the eye but couldn’t. “Forget I said all that. I wasn’t myself. I get messed up sometimes and don’t even know what I’m saying.”

  He looked at her sharply then looked away and then he was was about to speak but didn’t.