“You can’t come. Not yet,” she said. “Go back and help us.”
“How, Jane?”
She began to fade and her voice sounded far away.
“By being who you are.”
“Who am I, Jane?” I asked.
“A murdered child. Who came back.”
SEVENTEEN
I sat on my bedroom floor with a little notebook. I had decided that I needed to get this all down. Some kind of explanation about what was taking over me. I was changing into something that science could not explain. The reflection I saw wasn’t mine. My actions were shared with others. I was not alone, and I feared that I was fading away. Me, Jackie. And if I didn’t make a record of it, no one would know. So I started to write, and the words that poured out came from me—and from Patricia . . .
It begins very slowly, a tiny tug that I shake off. Bumps and bangs in the dark, voices in my pillow, waking in different places. Now I say my name over and over just to confirm my own sanity.
I lie in my bed, watching the walls turn to ash. The room closes in. The sounds of cruelty in my ears form a picture. For each vision, the painter adds to the masterpiece of horror that was this other person’s life.
My body twists and turns with the unbearable physical and emotional pain. Doctors can’t help—they haven’t studied the other side yet. No one listens. Is this what it’s like to be in a coma? Can anyone hear me?
Something is growing inside me. I see her, I act like her, walk different, talk different. Sometimes I am locked in the closet, where no one can hear me. My hands bleed from pounding on the door. The sounds get louder. I see the night in different shades, looking for the home she never had. She speaks to me while tracing a life with a thick black marker.
The demon also sees the marker and walks behind, every step of his big heavy boots leaving a trail of mayhem and murder. For the first time, I see and know my killer. My killer. The words can crumble the highest mountain, bring the strongest to their knees.
He climbs the tenement stairs, runs through the drug-infested hallways. Babies crying, people fighting, music blasting. He leaves drops of my life behind that will be stepped on by others, then mopped away. I stand in each stairwell corner, just watching. He has no regret. He just took me, wiped me out. As though I were trash.
I bow my head. If only my existence in this world had been different. The mental hospitals couldn’t help me. The medicine didn’t work. All that inhumane treatment . . . Did anyone care? My family . . . did I let them down? Was I ever loved? Will I be remembered?
His boots bang on every step. He can wash away the blood on his hands, but he can never wash away his actions. The monster in the flesh. I’m seeing a murder. I’m living his victim.
I long to be Jackie. My mind is cluttered with memories of death. Fears I never had before now consume me. I have outbursts of rage that only a victim would have. Or a person with schizophrenia. Sharing space in one body can’t last long. My life has become a time bomb, ready to go off at any moment. After the smoke clears, I will be someone else.
I am being held by a serial killer. I am possessed by his victim and by a child who wants me to remember who I was.
Is this happening because somehow I pushed my work away and ignored the existence of pure evil? Am I being forced to face my faith? What is my purpose in life? What was her purpose in life? To suffer the torture of mental illness and die at the hands of a serial killer? The secret of that killer lies deep within me, put there by Patricia. I can smell him near. I walk through his room, the sick smell of his hamper of soiled clothes, my life staining them.
He runs to his book and takes notes of his work. Using the same hands that snuffed me out. He kneels beside his bed like a child would. “Dear Father . . . Now I lay me down to sleep, a hundred souls for me to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray to God that soul I take! And mine is the kingdom and glory. Amen.” He jumps into bed, a warm smile across his face. “I had my first girl. A hundred times.” He chuckles . . .
All of this was in my head. I took the paper, now covered with my writings, and stuffed it between my mattress and box spring. So if I went away, it would be there to be found. It felt like a suicide note, and in some odd way, maybe it was. I felt like I was leaving and I wasn’t sure if I would return.
My name is Jackie.
* * *
Even getting ready for the day had become a chore. Normal tasks, like brushing my teeth or taking a shower, would be interrupted by Patricia, with the tall man in black right at her heels. My heels.
This was not only making my personal life impossible, it was making my work much more difficult than it already was. My days were always packed with clients who needed my insight or guidance, who sought truth or spirituality in today’s cynical world. We all need to return to what is real, restore our souls, put peace in our hearts. And none need this more than people on both sides of the divide caused by murder.
The crime files stacked on my desk weighed heavily on my heart. I would look at all the faces, gently rubbing their photos, consoling them. Then they would get individual containers, with small tokens of happiness around their files. I knew what each victim had liked in life and placed little keepsakes inside, along with fresh flowers. Then in would go the photos of happy times with their loved ones. I noticed long ago that survivors always sent pictures of the happy times, of their families together. They wanted me to know the strength of their love, of course. And I always did.
But now, I needed a break from the desperate expressions of those left behind. I instructed Joanne not to book any homicide cases for the whole week. I just couldn’t look at any more despair. And to be honest, I was afraid that this company of mine would awaken and frighten the hell out of these people who were already victims. I cringed at the thought of Patricia, half dressed and vulgar, coming out to greet these grieving families. How would I explain that? Oh, I’m sorry. You see, I’m possessed by a victim who was murdered by a serial killer. That was not what my clients came to me to hear.
So today, I looked myself in the mirror as I fixed my hair and face.
“I don’t want a peep out of you. I want to be alone. You can’t keep acting out.” I turned from my reflection and looked around my empty bedroom. “Stay put and don’t make a noise. I have to work.” There was no response. Good.
I heard the knock on my outside office door and went to answer it gladly. Today was about life, not death. There was a woman who was wondering how to go about telling her family she wanted to get married. Oh, the trials and tribulations of the blossoming heart. I wished all the problems brought to me were this lovely.
I let this beautiful young woman in, and she gave me a big hug, filled with excitement and fear all rolled up together. My motherly instinct started to flow, and I guided her over to the couch and took her hand. She did not know that her reading had already begun. The physical touch was like plugging an electrical cord into a socket. I was powered up. Her voice began to go in and out. Her eyes became an open pool. I looked deep inside her.
She started to get a bit lost, so I offered her water and a tissue for her tears. This relaxed her at least a little, and we continued. I often begin my sessions by sharing stories with my clients, using things only they would relate to or recognize. The young woman finally began to relax and had just cracked a smile when a loud noise from upstairs made her jump. Crap. I tried to laugh it off. “I’m sure it’s just a ghost,” I said.
Her eyes grew huge. “You have ghosts?” she murmured.
My dear, if only you knew.
The bumps and bangs got louder. “There’s nothing to fear. I’m sure they’re just saying hello,” I said cheerfully. I excused myself as nonchalantly as I could and raced upstairs. There was no one there, nothing out of place. I returned to my office.
“My apologies,” I said. “Let’s get back to you.”
The s
weet thing asked if her intended really loved her. I could answer yes with certainty. I knew she would marry this man. I saw their child, yet to be born, sitting in her lap. Her life unfolded for me. There were a few future roadblocks that I made her aware of, but what’s life if it doesn’t make us stop and change lanes every now and then?
It was a session of pure happiness, and I think it helped my heart as much as hers. On her way out, she stopped and hugged me and then asked if I had a young child—a girl. I stared at her and stammered that I did not and that there was no little girl in this area. She shook her head. She said that when she had walked up to the house before her appointment, she saw a little girl sitting on the outside steps, holding on to the railing. I suggested that it might be the lighting playing tricks on her.
“No, Ms. Jackie,” she insisted as she left. “I saw a little girl on the steps.”
After she left, I locked up behind her, exhausted not from the session but from what she had seen on my stoop. I stomped upstairs. “Great . . . now you’re showing yourselves to clients . . . just what I need . . .”
I was just getting warmed up—I can yell a blue streak, which shouldn’t be surprising—when I smelled fresh coffee and stale cigarette smoke. That shut me up. I turned the corner into the kitchen and there, leaning over the counter, was Patricia. A pile of letters sat in front of her. They were all from the Zodiac Killer.
“I’m going to write him,” she said, blowing smoke in my face. She grabbed a handful of letters and shoved them at me. “Look at these letters. Did you read them?” she asked me. “He’s tricking you, Jackie. Just waiting to escape.”
“Patricia, he already knows how to come in,” I said. “First in spirit, then in body.”
Patricia sucked on her cigarette. “You’re seeing what didn’t happen yet, Jackie. The escape of the New York City Zodiac Killer. You’re seeing what he will do—what’s to come. He’s using your psychic energy to transport himself. He’s reliving his glory, the bodies lined up like trophies. And the letters are proof. What he did, and what will be.”
I stood there in shock. She sounded just like me! Which one of us was real? Or were we both? God, my head hurt. I just wanted her to leave. I lunged for her, trying to scare her away. The letters fluttered to the floor, and behind them was only an empty room. There was no one but me, holding a half-finished cigarette. A cup of joe steamed on the counter, surrounded by spilled sugar and cream, as if the person fixing the coffee had rushed out.
I could taste the smoke in my mouth as I put out the cigarette. I rinsed my mouth at the sink and turned around. There were letters all over the floor. Pictures of Eddie. Drawings by Eddie. His signature with the symbol of the Gemini. “We are both. We are twins. We are each other.”
He was using me to roam past those secure bars, past the armed guards and concrete walls, toward me. He was trying to take me over. If I can’t be out . . . I can be you; I can live in your eyes . . . Slowly I can gain the power and knowledge of the outside world so when the timing is right and all is lined up, the planetary signs will open the gate to hell and I shall roam, and drink once more.
But his victim was interfering. Her smoke stayed in my nose as I began to gather the letters, matching them with the proper envelopes. It was as though I were seeing them for the first time. There among them was one bigger envelope with . . . my God. Him requesting information, needing research on how to get out of a maximum-security prison, on guns and weapons that could take out a small city. Asking me to assist him, step-by-step.
I thought I’d had all of his letters boxed away—all the pictures, the handprints, the mask. Where had these others been? Why didn’t I remember seeing them? I sat there on my kitchen floor and read them. Letter after letter, many posted a year and a half ago, all telling me to keep them safe and to use a different name when writing back. It was as if the letters I knew about were meant for me, while these were for someone else, even though they were all addressed to Jackie.
I gathered them up and tied them with a leather strap that I found among them on the floor. Where had I been hiding them all this time? I went up to my bedroom and stood quietly, looking deep inside myself. Holding the bundle, I moved in front of the mirror and stared past my own image. The mirror began to move like water, and the little waves parted to reveal scenes . . . faces . . . a child and a woman holding hands and going into my closet. A deep walk-in, it had top-to-bottom shelves and cubbies that Will built for me years ago. Lots of places to hide things.
I turned from the mirror and went to my closet, pulling things down, rummaging through shelves and drawers. Finally, I found a drawer in the back that was empty except for a Polaroid picture. Of Eddie. He had written on it: My friend Jackie Barrett, and my sign, Sagittarius. Then came his name and the Gemini symbol. And a stick figure drawing of a child. This spot, where I hadn’t looked for years, was where the letters were hidden. Why would the ghosts of a woman and a child hide all this? To save the world from what they endured at the hands of serial killers? Is it possible for the dead to save the living?
Yes, I thought as I sat on my closet floor with tears in my eyes. Yes, it is possible. They interact with us every day. They come to us in our dreams. They influence our decisions. They give us clues. We use the phrase, “I had a feeling . . .” They live alongside us. They love.
They exist.
* * *
Sometimes, when I talked to Eddie on the phone, he would answer my questions about his planning and his crimes.
“How does it feel, Jackie, asking me questions and knowing all the things I have done? Only we know . . . I can hear your voice change when we talk about the screams, the little animals, the women and men. It’s inside of you now, too . . . Did you know when someone screams hard enough from the gut, the extreme panic yaks over and you foam from the mouth like a wild dog. Wild, right?”
Before Eddie found Patricia, his prized soul, he would walk dark alleys and stare into corners and windows, looking for the right victim. He would climb trees and look down on potential prey. The hunt was on. He told me he had done so many things, to so many people. Things the police didn’t know about. They had no idea what he was capable of.
Like the evening he decided to lurk outside an apartment building. A man came out with a little dog on a leash. When the man turned to go back inside, he carefully aimed his gun and pulled the trigger. The door swung shut behind the man, but it was all glass, so he could watch the suffering as the man fell to the ground. He wasn’t dead, but he was in pain, so Eddie had been at least somewhat successful. And the fear in the dog’s face as his master collapsed was even better.
He watched carefully. He was curious to see how the man would struggle. And it was fascinating to see the loyal little dog sitting next to him, barking the whole time. He wanted to get close enough to watch his victim’s eyes lose color and turn gray as he took his last breath, but it was not to be. He walked away, wanting more.
He began to practice his shooting. He would go sit near the highway by Highland Park and fire at passing cars. He shot at police vehicles a couple of times, always slinking off before he was discovered. He took target practice in bad neighborhoods littered with abandoned cars. The bullets on metal—ping, ping, ping—confirmed his aim. He set fire to a few of the clunkers, just because he felt like it.
He sauntered through Times Square several times and enjoyed asking the cops what time it was. Like he was an ordinary guy. He even asked them if they had any clues about the Zodiac Killer yet. That was particularly amusing.
And then he expanded his plans. He wanted to increase his body count tenfold. New York was full of places that were always packed with people. He spent the years after his Central Park shooting sizing up his city’s landmarks. He considered Rockefeller Center, with its double bonus of office workers and tourists. He thought he could shatter the windows with a slingshot—that would be terrifying. He made a big one of so
lid wood and carved the Gemini sign into it. It could fling a six-pound rock. And then he was patient. He planned to wait until Christmas, when the whole place was packed with revelers, ice skaters using that famous rink, people gawking at the Christmas tree. Crowds of people made him smile, especially when they were running for their lives. But the flying rock would only be a diversion. He would plant pipe bombs in the lockers at the side of the ice rink—that would be the real show.
He thought about the Empire State Building. He rode to the top and looked out through one of the telescopes. The view was beautiful, and he saw in his mind’s eye the change he could make if he bombed it—the smoke and the chaos, the fire trucks trying to get through the choked streets, the screaming victims. It made him feel young and powerful.
Neither of these plans ever came to fruition, thank God. But he made his own bombs, just like he made his own guns, using instructions from military books and catalogs. And he prowled the city looking for the best places to put his handiwork. The sewer system, the manholes, schools, the posts where cops stood. He walked the subway tunnels and noticed the homeless people who lived deep in their depths. He set a few fires there, hoping to burn someone, but never knew whether he actually had.
He set several bombs in the subway tunnels and listened to them go off as he stood back by the station turnstiles. He was pretty sure he hadn’t successfully hurt anyone, but at least he got the terrified reactions he wanted. He carefully mapped out all sorts of other potential locations. If he could hit them all, his kill count would be up into the thousands. Nice stacks of body parts, everywhere.
When he needed a rest from his bombs and his maps, he would break into houses. Any little crack—an open window, an unlatched basement door—he would slip through and then just sit. Once, a family ate dinner upstairs while he lurked below and listened. He said he loved spying on people. He loved that they did not know how close the devil was.
The Haunting of the Gemini Page 17