The Disappearance of Grace

by Vincent Zandri

  “I’m making my own separate peace now,” I say after a slow beat. “My wars are over. I can give you that. I want to give you that, Grace. I want to give our precious child that.”

  I stare into her eyes, take in her black hair, her thick lips, her slightly blushed cheeks. I see tears begin to slowly fall down those cheeks and I want to swallow them. Swim in them.

  Behind us, a little boy has begun to kick a soccer ball in the square. He’s kicking the ball against the fountain, in the pouring rain. Some of the people who occupy the surrounding tables take notice of him, and they begin to laugh and smile.

  Grace turns and eyes the little boy. He’s dressed in a button-down shirt, short pants and black shoes with white ankle socks. A little boy who’s just gotten out of school for the day and who now wants to play in the rain.

  Grace turns back to me.

  “Well,” she says, “shall we?”

  I toss a twenty Euro note onto the table and together we stand, head out from under the awning and into the rainy square. As if anticipating us, the little boy kicks the ball to me and I kick it to Grace. She laughs and kicks the ball back to the little boy and the rain begins to soak her thick hair and the black turtleneck sweater she wears. It begins to soak my leather coat and coat my cropped hair. The rain runs down my face, mixes with my tears. I look up at the sky and I see the clouds and the raindrops falling from them. Every one of them is for Grace and for me and for our child to be. I let the rain soak my face. I let the raindrops fall into my open eyes and seep into my mouth.

  I see now. I see with full clarity. I see the meaning of it all.

  I see my life flash before my eyes like a lightning strike off in a distant horizon. I am haunted by its fleeting essence. I tremble at the thought of losing this moment forever. But then, it is already gone.

  Lowering my head, I lock eyes with my Grace, standing in the rain in the open square. She tosses me a smile. I toss her one back. We’re learning how to love one another again. We’re learning to love. We’re making progress.

  Real progress.

  Making my way to her, I hold out my hand. She takes it in hers as she bids the now rain-soaked little boy a heartfelt goodbye. Together, we head out across the square towards the stony banks of the canal that will lead us back to our hotel. I feel her hand in mine and I hold it tight. I hold onto my Grace like she is the last breath in my lungs and just as precious.

  Over my left shoulder, just beyond the corner of an old brick building, the Grand Canal appears for us. The boats and gondolas bob in its never-still wake. The dark water flows in from the sea through these channels and feeder canals like blood through our arteries and veins. And it is eternal. But for us, it is what we have now, for our memories, for when we no longer have one another. It is what we have for a moment, for all our spent yesterdays and for all our borrowed tomorrows.

  It is all that we have.

  And it is nothing.

  But it is everything.

  THE END

  Also by Vincent Zandri

  Scream Catcher

  Prologue

  Sweeny’s Boxing Gym

  Lake George, New York

  Tuesday, August 15, 6:10 A.M.

  The man is hiding. Has been for a long time now, since his life—his physical body—became reduced to a shadowy reflection of his own fear. A fear so real, so palpable and heavy, it seems like there are times it might be possible for him to unzip it like you would a second skin and maybe hang it up on a sixpenny nail to dry. If only that were possible.

  But his fear is more than skin deep. It is an internal demon and it is lodged inside bone and flesh like a cancer. It is what he has in the place of a soul. Rather, it is what has replaced his soul. Only when he least expected it did it reveal its beastly head of pale white skin, black eyes and fang-like teeth before entering into his body and holding him hostage.

  Ever since that day he has since been trying his best to purge the demon from his body. But he does not use a priest for his exorcist. He does not use a shaman. He does not use a psychiatrist. He does not use God.

  Instead, he uses only physical exertion.

  He attempts to push the fear out through his ribs by improving his physical body with exercise. Grueling exercise on a daily basis. Running, lifting, boxing, stretching, sweating, groaning, pushing, pulling, crying, bleeding, sucking air and, on occasion, passing out.

  It’s bad that those closest to him no longer trust him. It’s worse that he no longer trusts himself. And a man who cannot trust himself can never know what it is to truly love or be truly loved in return.

  Yet, he lives and carries on as if today—this very moment in time—will be the end of something bad and the beginning of a new life free of the demon.

  But today will not be one of those days.

  Because today, Jude Parish, forty-five year old ex-cop turned bestselling true crime writer, gets to be the eyewitness to a murder.

  Here’s how it happens:

  He’s just exited Sweeney’s Boxing Gym by way of the back door. It’s raining, the new summer dawn hidden by a black and blue sky; its heat by fierce wind gusts; its calm by lightning and thunder. The early morning workout—six rounds jump rope, six rounds speed bag, six rounds heavy bag—is all but historical fact. Now oxygen starved lungs crave the fresh air; tired muscles and joints welcome cool rain. Kissing the sky, Jude allows the rain to pelt his stubbly face, to soak his cropped hair, to dampen his gray sweats.

  Mounted to the block wall behind him is a reflective exit sign and a lit spotlight. To his right a blue dumpster, the letters B.F.I. printed on the four metal side panels. To his left, an open sea of cracked and blistered blacktop. Beyond that, a too dark nothing that stretches all the way beyond the Canadian border.

  Dead ahead he spots two people.

  What at first glance appears to be a long-haired man chasing a T-shirted man from out of the old Malloy gravel pit. Two grown men stumble down the pit embankment, crash through second growth woods like two hunted deer, until spilling out onto the flat lot.

  Back pressed up against the block wall, Jude watches, listening to his heart beat inside his temples. He’s no stranger to the pit. As a boy he used to play Johnny Quest inside the big dig during the day, but never at night when the Lake George dark monster came out of hiding. Standing in the rain his mind recalls deep craters, jagged shale, abandoned automobiles, empty beer bottles, used condoms and rock piles galore. The images flash back while he works up a smile. Black Bear’s Bar and Grille is located on the opposite north end of the old pit. Black Bear’s is open all night for the commercial salmon and charter fishermen and their pickled livers.

  As for the running men?

  They must be drunk as rabid skunks.

  Pulling himself away from the wall, he sucks in a wet breath, prepares for the two-mile jog back home to pregnant wife and child when the T-shirted man drops to his knees on the pavement, and Longhair raises up a hand exposing a silenced automatic.

  What happens next takes forever and an instant.

  Longhair extends his right arm, presses the automatic to T-shirt’s head.

  “Scream,” he orders in a strange, high-pitched voice. “Scream. For. Me.”

  The man on his knees hesitates. Peering slowly up at the long-haired man, he doesn’t scream. He produces only silence and a frightened smile. Until Longhair thumbs back the hammer on the automatic.

  “Scream. For. Me.” he repeats, bringing a handheld device to the mouth of the T-shirted man.

  T-shirted man loses his smile. He lowers his head, swallows a deep breath.

  He screams.

  Screams so loud the guttural shriek bounces off the side of the gym and rattles Jude’s bones.

  He screams directly into the handheld device. A device that by now Jude is certain is an iPhone.

  When the scream is finished, and the T-shirted man’s lungs are empty of oxygen, silence returns to the lot. That’s when two muzzle flashes light the dark
sky for two brief instances.

  Longhair takes a step back.

  T-Shirt falls face first. French kisses a rain puddle.

  “God almighty,” Jude whispers to himself.

  But there’s nothing God Almighty can do now.

  Longhair slides the automatic into a shoulder holster, and pockets the iPhone. Sensing another presence, he turns, laser beams a gaze in the ex-cop’s direction.

  It’s then that Jude’s body suddenly becomes a pinpricked balloon.

  All strength bleeds out of his feet.

  He drops down onto the wet lot, rolls his body behind the B.F.I. dumpster, hides himself behind stacks of cardboard and rain-drenched newspapers.

  Heart beats a berserk rhythm. Hands tremble. Adrenalin-filled brain becomes an orchestral symphony warming up inside the skull, until the roar of a car engine and burning rubber kills the music.

  Longhair is getting away.

  What’s the ex-cop gonna do?

  Ex-cop is gonna listen to the demon inside his chest, and he’s going to sit still, play dead.

  The car approaches, downshifts to a crawl, then brakes to a hard stop some fifteen or twenty feet away. As soon as the passenger window goes down, Jude can’t miss it: gunmetal death staring him in the face.

  Longhair’s got an unobstructed shot.

  When the hammer comes down the ex-cop never sees the flash. Never feels the pain.

  What’s it like to die?

  It’s like the lights in a room being turned out. It’s about silence and stillness and darkness. It’s freedom from the demon. It’s like falling . . .

  . . . falling into a deep and painless sleep.

  Preview of "SCREAM CATCHER"

  Chapter 1

  Sweeney’s Boxing Gym

  Tuesday, 6:30 A.M.

  BUT JUDE IS NOT DEAD.

  Instead he’s jarred awake to the voices that belong to the handful of boxing students who’ve arrived at the gym for their early morning, pre-work workouts, two of whom promptly assist him off the damp pavement.

  Standing awkwardly, out of balance, eyesight blurred to the point of being blinded, he’s become the crippled sum total of his fear. He begins to realize that there is both good and bad news in his situation.

  First the good news: the bullet discharged from the killer’s silenced automatic only grazed the right side of his skull. The bullet, while knocking him out cold, did not penetrate the brainpan.

  As for the bad news: his skull feels like it’s been rammed into the block wall.

  His head rings and throbs with jolts of pain. His swelled brain feels like it’s about to explode out the ears, eyes and nostrils. Something is bothering Jude, too. Something that only a former cop can’t help but contemplate: if the long-haired killer finds out he missed his target, he’ll have no choice but to hunt Jude down, destroy the eyewitness to a murder.

  * * *

  The Lake George summer tourist paradise is gearing up for another beautiful beach ball-cotton candy day. The newly risen sun has already burned off the predawn rain. Maybe Jude has no way of seeing them clearly, but he can feel the rays warm on his face. Sweatpants and sweatshirt are heavy with the rainwater that’s saturated them; sneakers damp, squishy, his feet itching.

  His fellow boxing students do their best to hold him upright and steady, one on each arm. He tries with all his powers to regain his equilibrium while big iron bells relentlessly toll inside a bruised skull. But the imaginary bells are not loud enough to drown out the distressed voices of the boxing students.

  Managing to free himself from their grips, Jude stumbles a step forward, gently touches his head wound with the tips of his fingers, comes away with sticky blood. From where he’s standing, he’s able to make out one student who’s crying inconsolably, another student ordering the distraught woman, “Don’t look at it!” referring no doubt to the assassinated T-shirted man. Yet a third student—this one a man—asks him if he’s going to be okay.

  “I’m having trouble seeing,” he whispers. “But it’ll pass.”

  “Police are on their way,” the same man adds in a shaky voice. “So is Jimmy Mack and an ambulance.”

  At the mention of his adoptive father and former L.G.P.D. boss, Jude feels a knot begin to twist itself around his intestines. Not only did he witness a murder, but he froze up, allowed the murderer to get away. That clearly in mind, he isn’t sure if he can bear to look into Mack’s face when the old Captain finds out about it. Maybe he has no idea how Mack will react. But already he can taste the top cop’s disappointment on his tongue, as if he’s just swallowed a mouthful of sour milk.

  By the time the first emergency siren can be heard blaring from out of the near distance, the sight is already returning to his eyes.

  Chapter 2

  Wooded knoll behind Sweeney’s Boxing Gym

  Tuesday, 6:37 A.M.

  BRIGHT BLUE EYES PEER through the narrow tree branch openings.

  Eyes focused not on all the people scattered behind the boxing gym, but instead on one man. A man the people sometimes refer to as Jude and at other times as Parish. A former Lake George policeman turned best-selling author. Or so the people whisper to one another.

  Blue Eyes sees that Parish stands a bit unsteady, wobbly. The ex-cop is holding his head in his hands. When Parish finally raises his head up, Blue Eyes spots the small but noticeable gash between the temple and the right ear lobe. It’s where the .22 caliber round from the silenced automatic must have grazed him instead of killing him.

  Blaring from out of the distance, sirens.

  The police are coming . . .

  Black Dragon studies the face of Jude Parish, commits it to memory. Black Dragon wants to hear Jude Parish scream.

  In his right hand, he grips the iPhone. He turns on the scream catcher app he created himself. He presses play, puts the phone to his ear. He listens to the scream the T-Shirted man made just before his death. The scream sends ice water up and down his backbone.

  When the first cop car turns the corner into Sweeney’s back lot, Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox is already bushwhacking back through the woods towards his silver sedan.

  “Scream. For. Me.” chants the blue-eyed beast. “Scream. For. Me.”

  About the Author

  Vincent Zandri is the international bestselling Amazon author of The Innocent, The Remains, Godchild, Moonlight Rises, Blue Moonlight, Scream Catcher and more. He’s a photojournalist, foreign correspondent, professional blogger and world traveler. Presently he divides his time between Albany, New York and Florence, Italy. For more information, see his website at http://www.vincentzandri.com

  Vincent Zandri © Copyright 2012

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  StoneHouse Ink 2012

  Boise ID 83713

  http://www.stonehouseink.net

  First eBook Edition: 2012

  ISBN: 978-1-938426-84-1

  Cover art: Fuji Aamabreorn

  Vincent Zandri is represented by MacGregor Literary

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published in the United States of America

 

 

 
r />