by Tim McGregor
There was a lot of them, strewn over the floor, but not in a random mess. Femurs and ulnas were laid out on the grimy linoleum in a pattern that chilled his blood. A pentagram. The candles were there too, placed at the points but where a bowl of water had sat at the northernmost point of the star, there was now a human skull. The hollow eye sockets rippled with light cast from the wicks.
The whole tableau was a horrorshow. Mockler had been in bad situations and had seen terrible things in his job but this unnerved him in a way that was entirely new. He wasn’t a man prone to flights of fancy or hippy-dippy shit. He worked with facts and human weakness. Things that made sense, even when it came to how one human being could murder another. Although he would leave it out of his written report, the scenario he had stormed into felt evil. He didn’t know any other way to describe it.
He ordered the suspect to identify himself.
The Englishman shook a cigarette from a crushed pack. “Me? Pope Pius. But my mates call me Pi. You?”
The gun in the detective’s hand lowered a notch, drawing a bead on the man’s knees. “I’m detective Mockler, Hamilton Police. And you, mister John Gantry, are under arrest. Now get on the floor before I knock your brains in.”
“Can’t, detective,” Gantry blew out the smoke. “I’m late as it is and you’re cutting into my work hours.”
“Fine with me, asshole.” Mockler felt his trigger finger itch with an irrational urge to pull. There was no one else on the scene yet. How easy would it be to claim the suspect charged at him, forcing him to fire to protect himself. The limey asshole could bleed out on the floor for all he cared.
Rationality won out as he rushed the suspect, eager to throw him to the floor and get the restraints on. Gantry remained seated on the milk crate, in a weak defensive position and Mockler had already sized up the skinny creep. No contest.
The man was slippery and he was fast and Mockler never did figure out exactly what had happened. He’d rushed Gantry only to find himself flat on his back, the dry bones crunching underneath him and the Englishman’s boot stomping his guts in. And he could kick hard for such a scarecrow. Enraged, Mockler swung the barrel of the gun up fast and fired.
The trigger piece locked, the round jammed in the chamber. He roared up and tackled the creep, hurtling them both into the spray-painted wall. Decrepit plaster and lathe crumbled over them, dust roiling the air and into Mockler’s eyes and he punched out blind, praying to connect.
Something hard broke over his skull and he flattened. A hissing sound spit into his ear and it took a moment for the sparks to clear before he realized it was Gantry.
“Stay the fuck out of it, copper. This shite will poison you.”
Mockler shot to his feet and that’s when he felt the heat wash over him. A fire raged to life all around him. Rising up from the floor in a distinct pattern, the pentagram blazed high with tall flames that blackened the ceiling. The whiff of sulphur returned, stronger than before and as he waved the smoke away, Mockler caught sight of the human skull in the flames. The hollow eyes seemed to mock him now.
Gantry was gone. Poof, just up and vanished and Mockler scrambled for the door as the entire tinderbox flat flared hot with fire.
Ten minutes later, he sat on the bumper of an ambulance and relented to the prodding of the paramedic. His shirt was soaked through with sweat but he shivered like a little kid running for his towel after a cold swim. His gut was pushing at him to get away. This is spooky shit and you don’t want to mess with it. Gantry’s words still rang in his ear, something about poison and nightmares. Mockler had learned the hard way to trust his gut. Its first instincts were often the right ones.
Not this time. Gritting his molars together, he resolved to see this through. To get his hands on the murderer named John Gantry, no matter what sort of spooky shit he had to endure. He asked the paramedic for a tissue but no matter how hard he blew his nose, he could not get shed of the stench of sulphur burning his nostrils.
18
BRISTOL STREET WAS quiet and serene when Ray Mockler pulled into his driveway. It always was.
Getting his bag from the backseat, he stopped to give the street a once-over. The houses were an odd lot of Victorians and mid-century bungalows with narrow lots and a few trees. It wasn’t the prettiest street in town but he liked the way the way the streetlight dappled through the leaves of the elm tree out front.
For a man raised in an overcrowded and smelly apartment building, he cherished the house he owned now with its narrow front lawn and peeling green trim that needed painting. He and Christina had taken the plunge three years ago, when the house came on the market. From the outside, it was perfect. Even with the battered soffit that badly needed replacing and the crumbling parging around the base, it was still a dream home and he loved everything about it.
At least from the exterior. Pushing open the side door and coming into the landing, the familiar crush of dread rolled over him like a wave of heat from an oven. How long had it been like this, he wondered, this almost unnatural gloom that came every time he stepped over the threshold and into the house. After the misery and frustration he waded through at work on a daily basis, home should be a refuge from all of that. A place of safety and comfort that welcomed him in like a traveller in a storm.
It hadn’t been like that in a long time.
Two steps up brought him into the kitchen and he looked over the mess. Dishes and glassware cluttered across the counter, two pots left on the stove. He dropped his bag onto a chair and took the lid off the bigger pot and looked inside. Whatever it had been was now baked into crusty mess.
“Christina?”
No answer. Not that he’d expected one. She would either be in front of the TV in the living room or in her studio. The only real question was, how bad was she tonight? Catastrophic or just mildly tragic?
Pulling off the tie, he shrugged out of his jacket and hung both over the back of a chair. A soft chatter filtered in from the other room and he knew she was still up.
Christina was curled up under a blanket on the sofa, her eyes glazed over as they reflected the light from the television.
“Hey,” Mockler said, standing in the doorway. “How was your day?”
The same boring question. He needed to cut that entire phrase from his lexicon and think of something new. A different opening that might get her talking.
“Great.” Her eyes didn’t move from the television screen.
She pulled her legs in to give him room as he sunk into the sofa. Her bare feet poked out from under the blanket and he could see the red scrape mark on the back of her Achilles tendon, worn raw from a new pair of shoes.
“That looks like it hurts.” He touched her ankle. “You want a band-aid?”
She flinched and pulled her feet under the blanket. “Don’t.”
A bottle of wine stood on the coffee table, an inexpensive Spanish red that she liked. The glass beside it was empty.
“What happened to dinner?” he asked.
“Please.” Her head lifted slightly from the cushion, half tilting in his direction before settling down again, as if the effort exhausted her. “You know what happened.”
He did and should have known better than to ask. Christina had gotten overwhelmed, as she often did, trying to coordinate it all so everything was ready at the same time. Frustrated, she had simply abandoned the whole thing. He could almost picture the cursing and the slamming of a pot, followed by tears and then fetching the bottle and retreating to the sofa.
She hadn’t always been like this. Christina used to love to cook, couldn’t wait to get home to try her hand at something new. What had happened? Mockler took up the bottle and splashed some into the glass and knocked it back. Staring at the television screen, he said nothing.
It wasn’t just Christina. He had changed too. In the past, he would have killed the TV, made her sit up to look at him and they would have talked it through. Neither was a stranger to the frustrations of work or the
toll it takes, the way it feeds on one’s energy and leaves them drained. In the past, they would have let it all out until the gloom passed over their heads like a thunderstorm moving on.
Now he sat silent as the grave and let himself be hypnotized by the mindless images on the screen. His fiancee lay no more than three inches away from him but they didn’t touch.
He poured more of the wine. How much of it could he blame on his job? It came home with him sometimes. No matter how hard he tried to leave it parked outside their front door, the misery he worked in slithered inside like a rat finding a crack in the foundation. He scolded himself for doing that. He needed to take advantage of the counselling provided by the force. There he could unpack all of the nasty shit and come home clean. Or, if not clean, at least not so stained with it all.
Christina rose into a sitting position, her toes brushing his leg as her feet swung to the floor. She sighed. “I’m going to bed.”
Seeing her hair cascade over her shoulder, he reached out and touched her arm. “Anything happen today? We could talk. If you want.”
“Nothing happened. Maybe that’s the problem.” She didn’t flinch at his touch but her arm slipped away all the same. Her words drawled slightly and he looked to see how much wine was left in the bottle but the glass was too dark to tell.
She took the glass he had poured and downed half of it and settled the glass down again. “Goodnight.”
He watched her drift from the room and listened to her footfalls on the stairs. Scavenging up the remote, he killed the TV and the room went dark. He took the bottle and the glass to the kitchen and looked at the disaster littered across the counter. It would wait until morning, he decided and went to check the studio before turning in. Hitting the light switch, he saw that nothing had been moved, nothing changed. The easel stood empty. She hadn’t painted a thing in months. He turned off the light and went upstairs.
Sometimes he blamed himself, other times he blamed her. Christina had always been prone to dark moods but in the past, the dark spells would last a day or two. In the early days of their relationship, he made the mistake of thinking he could cure her mood with jokes or gifts or surprise outings. She appreciated the gesture but said there was nothing to do when the moods struck. She simply needed to let unfurl and it would pass of its own accord and their world would tilt back to normal.
That wasn’t the case now. The dark mood came on over the winter and settled in to stay. Therapy wasn’t helping and the couples-counselling they had tried was a bust. Christina had all but given up, medicating the problem with red wine and camp-outs on the sofa.
He draped his tie over the chair in the bedroom and flung his damp shirt into the hamper. Christina came out of the bathroom and shimmied out of her clothes, leaving them on the floor where they dropped. He stirred instantly, fanning hot at the sight of her naked body. That’s how it was for him. It could be the furthest thing from his mind but one look at her and it was there. A sudden heat and a longing that wrenched deep into his chest.
Coming up from behind, he folded her in his arms and put his lips to the back of her neck.
“I’m tired,” she said, slipping away.
He pulled her back in. “I need you.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“How long has it been?” He hated having to beg. “Two weeks?”
“Who’s counting?”
He lowered her onto the bed. “I am.”
She relented with a sigh. He smothered her body with his own and felt slightly lightheaded once he finally got his hands on her skin and dug his mouth into her long neck. He pushed her legs apart and leaned up to kiss her mouth, already feeling like he would explode but Christina turned her face to the side, her eyes looking out the window. Her face was as blank as it had been while staring at the television screen, disconnected and lifeless. Her hair fell over eyes as he smacked into her and something flashed through his mind. The eyes of a dead woman in a crime scene photo, glassy and unseeing and not dissimilar to his fiancee’s eyes at this moment. He winced and rolled off and lay on his back.
She looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you done” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m done.”
Christina turned onto her side, pulled the sheet up and switched off her bedside lamp.
He lay there in the dark, still hard and his heart still thumping and he tried to flush the image from his mind. Of all the things to pop into his head, why that? It was a war of attrition, really. It was only a matter of time before the wreckage he witnessed infected everything. He forced his inner eye to conjure something, anything, else. A beach, the lights over the harbour, a Christmas tree hung with decorations. Flipping through mental snapshots but the dead eyes lingered. He stopped the scrolling images and backed up. Something had snagged.
The young woman with dark hair. The one he’d knocked into the water. Billie. A boy’s name for a pretty girl.
He tried to shoo that from his mind too. It felt wrong to be thinking about Billie Culpepper while his erection throbbed unrelentingly and his girlfriend lay next to him. The dead woman’s eyes flashed back. The white paint of the pentagram underneath her head. A second image popped, the photograph of the dead English woman found murdered in the same fashion. Gantry’s late wife and his Jane Doe could almost be sisters. Same hair, same build and roughly the same age.
His eyes shot open as it hit him. Billie Culpepper looked a hell of a lot like the two women John Gantry had murdered. That explained why he was stalking Billie. The sick son of a bitch was grooming her.
19
CLINICALLY DEAD.
That’s what Gantry had said. The reason why this ability had awakened in her after being dormant for so long. How could she have had this her whole life and not known about it until now?
Unless she had blocked it out somehow. Or it was quashed from the outside. Did aunt Maggie know? Was that why her aunt was so religious, dragging Billie to mass every Sunday and confession every second Friday until the time when Billie had put her foot down at the age of thirteen and refused to go anymore? Was Maggie capable of that?
As unsettling as the idea was, it gelled the more she chewed on it. With a click, another piece of the puzzle locked into place. Her troubled history with attention spans and learning disabilities. The ADD, the OCD and a raft of other labels she had been subjected to as aunt Maggie sought treatment for her foggy spells and poor performance at school. None of those diagnoses had stuck, none of their corresponding therapies had helped. Had this latent ability to sense the dead been the real problem all along, forever misdiagnosed by a rational world that refused to believe in such things?
Underscoring all of it was the shadow of a mother she barely remembered. Poor Mary Agnes Culpepper, the town crazy woman. The woman abducted from her home twenty years ago and presumed dead. More than that though, Mary Agnes Culpepper was also the town’s only psychic. Billie had few tangible memories of her mother but she remembered the cards. How her mother used to make her run the tarot and how Billie hated it.
Did she come by this gift honestly? Bred in the bone and brought forth in the flesh? Did Mary Agnes have this same gift and if she did, had it driven her out of her mind?
Noting the time on the clock, Billie reached for her phone and dialled the house on Long Point.
“Oh hi honey,” Aunt Maggie replied after hearing Billie’s voice on the line. “How are you feeling? Have the headaches gone?”
“Yeah. Much better. Are you busy?”
“Watching the neighbourhood boy cut the lawn. He always does such a poor job.”
“Justin?” Billie said. “He always does a nice job.”
“Not Justin. He lives in Guelph now. Liam’s younger brother, Wyatt.” Maggie clicked her teeth. “Not a straight line anywhere. Anyhow. It’s nice to get a call out of the blue. What can I do for you?”
“Uhm. Well.” Billie choked. She hadn’t thought this through befor
e picking up the phone. What exactly was she going to say? Say, aunt Maggie, did I see dead people when I was a kid? “Uh, I was thinking about mom.”
“Oh?” The warmth in her aunt’s tone cooled by a degree.
“Do you know what was wrong with her? I mean, she had some form of mental illness, right? Do you know what it was?”
Silence hummed down the line. Then Maggie replied “No. Your mother hated doctors. Refused to see them. Honey, is everything all right?”
“I’m fine. Just been thinking about stuff.”
“Why all this interest in your mother? What brought it on?”
“I dunno. I was wondering if it was hereditary, ya know?” Billie chewed her lip for a moment. “Was she always like that? Even as a kid?”
“Mary was different,” Maggie said slowly. “Even when we were little. God, was she a nightmare when she hit her teens. But it grew worse as an adult.”
“Did she have foggy spells back then? Like mine?”
“What are you getting at? Has something happened?”
“No,” Billie fibbed. “It’s just, sometimes I worry that I’ll get it too. What she had.”
More silence filled the line and it went on too long. Billie sat up. “Maggie? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I’m here,” Maggie sighed. “Billie, there’s always been a history of mental illness in our family. That’s not what they called it back then, of course. I remember aunts who had it. God, how they were treated. It scared the heck out of me when I saw Mary Agnes heading down that same road.”
Billie heard the crack in Maggie’s voice as all of this ancient history was dredged up from its muddy sediment. She shouldn’t have called.
Her aunt cleared her throat and went on. “Your mother’s foggy spells used to frighten me when we were kids. It was like she became a different person. She used to talk to people that weren’t there. Your grandfather tried to beat it out of her.”