Night Terrors

by Dennis Palumbo

  Now, sitting at my desk, making some quick notes about Sophie’s case, I couldn’t help but think about my own experience with life-changing trauma. And about how so many of the symptoms that Sophie, and others like her, suffered, were those with which I was intimately familiar myself.

  Especially tonight. January 6th. The Feast of the Epiphany. Like many another lapsed Catholic, though I’d fallen away from the faith and no longer attended Mass, the dates of the Holy Days are indelibly etched in my mind.

  Historically, the Feast of the Epiphany marked the final day of the Christmas celebration, though most stores and homes had long since taken down the holiday lights and ornaments, the yuletide trees and the mistletoe.

  January 6th. The same date, many years ago, when my wife Barbara and I had come out of a restaurant down at the Point, only to be mugged by some armed thug in a hoodie.

  I’d been an amateur boxer in my youth—Golden Gloves, Pan Am games—so when the thief started to manhandle my wife, I tried to intercede. The gun, a 9 mm Glock, went off. Three quick shots.

  The one that entered my skull kept me in the hospital for months. The two that entered Barbara’s heart killed her.

  For two long years after that, I felt like my life was over, too. Then, with help, I managed to move through the layers of remorse and shame—the paralysis of survivor guilt—to come out on the other side with a renewed sense of purpose. Something I’d rarely known before, having been wrapped up solely in my career, my ambition, my own needs and wants.

  This coincided with the arrest and conviction of a notorious serial killer named Troy David Dowd. Dubbed “the Handyman” by the media, he’d killed and dismembered twelve people with pliers, screwdrivers, and other tools before his eventual capture.

  One of his two surviving victims, a middle-aged single mother, had been so traumatized by her ordeal that the police were concerned about her welfare. Particularly Angie Villanova, who, in addition to her position in the department, was a distant cousin of mine. It was she who referred the woman to me, and it was this experience that led to my signing on as a consultant to the Pittsburgh Police.

  I sat back in my swivel chair, bracing myself with a knee against the edge of the desk. I didn’t have to turn my head to to hear—even feel—the push of the wind against the window glass. The storm was increasing in intensity, as though gathering strength from the approaching darkness of night.

  What, I wondered, should I do? Go down to the parking garage, pull out onto the snow-draped streets, and fight my way through the log-jam of cars for home?

  There was every good reason not to. The weather, the traffic, the potentially treacherous climb up the steep winding road to Grandview Avenue, my street.

  But there was also one very good reason to make the trip: which was so that I could do what I always did on the night of January 6th. Go home, turn off all the lights, put on Gerry Mulligan’s recording of “The Lonely Night”—a song he wrote with his wife, the actress Judy Holliday, shortly before her death—and then, quietly and without any fuss, get sincerely drunk. My annual ritual. For Barbara.

  Though with every passing year, it was a ritual that seemed more and more pro forma. Mere habit. Having less to do with the person Barbara was, and more to do with some image of myself as loyal. Steadfast in my memory of her loss. The grieving widower.

  I pushed away from my desk and stood. Stretched. Feeling suddenly exposed. Discovered.

  After all, it wasn’t as though I hadn’t been involved with women since Barbara’s death. Obsessively involved, in one particular case.

  And even as I contemplated the journey home to honor Barbara’s memory with booze and self-pity, wasn’t I now attracted to another woman? Someone with whom I’d worked closely on a police investigation last summer?

  These conflicting thoughts were still swirling around in my mind when the office phone rang, jolting me out of my reverie. It was a Detective Chief Avery Block, phoning from West Virginia, who said that he’d gotten my number from the Pittsburgh Police Department.

  And that his call was urgent.

  Chapter Three

  The house loomed up out of the wash of the storm like a ship emerging from a North Atlantic fog.

  “That’s it,” Wes Currim said, gesturing with both cuffed hands toward the isolated structure. “Just pull up on the lawn there, Harve. Won’t have so far to walk.”

  Randall growled under his breath, but didn’t reply.

  Under Chief Block’s baleful gaze, the sergeant manuevered the Range Rover across the uneven, snow-layered yard. I heard the tire chains crunch and pop as they struggled for purchase on the slick new snow.

  “Stop right here, Harve,” Block said, the nose of our vehicle about a dozen feet from the sagging, mesh-enclosed porch. Randall cut the engine, but left the headlights on.

  The house was low, wood-framed, its ranch-style contours blurred by the hurtling snow. Windows glistened dully with frost. Roof gutters sagged under the weight of packed old snow and the accumulation of fresh.

  Then, unsure that I was seeing correctly, I leaned up and squinted through the windshield. Given the purpose of our journey, what I saw was as tragic as it was surreal.

  The house was strung along its eaves and around its front windows with multi-colored Christmas lights, twinkling forlornly in the blur of the storm. There was even a lopsided snowman on the front lawn, three lumpy balls of dirty rolled snow, with sticks for arms and a wind-battered hat jammed on top.

  Randall leaned forward in his seat as well, using the palm of his gloved hand to clear fog from the windshield.

  “Are those Christmas lights? Damn!”

  Beside me, Currim ducked his head between his thin shoulders and giggled.

  “Okay, then.” Block sniffed once, which Randall somehow interpreted as his cue to get out from behind the wheel. Which he did, coming around to open the rear door for Currim.

  A blast of frigid air hit me square in the face as that door opened. Grunting from the effort, Currim pulled himself out into the storm, helped to his feet by Randall’s firm hand on his elbow.

  I got out on my side, meeting Chief Block at the front of the Range Rover. Within moments, I could feel the cold wetness of the cascading snow on my coat. The bite of the wind on my cheeks.

  Randall and Currim joined us, indistinct figures trudging up into the light of the twin highbeams.

  I nodded at the house. “This your place?”

  “Nah,” Currim said. “Belonged to my uncle, died a couple years back. Me an’ my brothers use it all the time, though. For huntin’, fishin’ in the Shenandoah.”

  “We don’t give a shit ‘bout your life story, asshole.” Randall’s shoulders hunched as he shoved his gloved hands in his coat pockets. “Right, Chief?”

  Block didn’t answer, just stepped a few feet away, boots crunching on the snow. Shivering, our breath coming in crystallized clouds, the three of us stood looking at him. Waiting.

  Finally, Block turned to Currim.

  “You do all this? The lights and everything?”

  “It’s Christmas, Chief. I always decorate the place for the holidays. In case my brothers and their wives wanna come up. Bring the kids.”

  “Any o’ the family come up here this year?”

  Currim shook his head sadly. “Nah. Had the place to myself. No reason not to make it look nice, though. Right?”

  Randall tugged on Currim’s elbow again. Hard.

  “Enough o’ this shit. Where’d you bury Meachem? Out back somewheres?”

  Currim pulled himself from the sergeant’s grasp. “In this weather? You got any idea how hard the ground is, Harve? Hell, I’d break my back tryin’ to put shovel to earth this time o’ year.”

  I stepped between Randall and Currim.

  “Look, Wes, you brought us all this way. You said you wanted to give Mea
chem’s family the opportunity to bring him home. Give him a proper burial.”

  “And I meant it.”

  Chief Block raised his head, like a bull roused from a deep slumber. His small eyes burned.

  “Then show us where he is, Currim! Now. Or maybe you don’t get to come back from here, either.”

  Currim pivoted toward me. “You hear that shit? See why I wanted you along, Doc? To protect me. Make sure these fuckers don’t do somethin’ awful to me, just for the hell of it.”

  “Nobody’s going to hurt you, Wes.” I stared at Block. “Kinda defeats the purpose, right, Chief?”

  I turned back to Currim. “Now why don’t you show us where Ed Meachem is, okay?”

  The prisoner shook some snow from his sleeves and straightened his shoulders.

  “Sure,” he said casually. “Why the fuck not?”

  I saw Randall’s hands ball into fists, but he kept himself in check. Currim indicated the porch, and then led the way up the three wide, snow-carpeted steps.

  The front door was unlocked, and though the interior was dark and cold, it was a relief to be out of the storm. No lights were on, so Randall pulled his departmental flashlight from his belt and clicked it on.

  Meanwhile, Chief Block reached for a wall switch and flipped it up and down. Still no lights.

  “Sorry, Chief.” Currim smiled. “Most o’ the bulbs went out a while back. Never got around to replacin’ ’em.”

  Block’s only response was a thick grunt, a throaty sound threaded with as much weariness as disgust.

  Guided by the flashlight beam bouncing jerkily down the darkened, wallpapered hallway, the four of us headed into the bowels of the old house. The air thick, heavy as a shroud. Stale smells. Muffled sounds. Barely discernable shapes—a wicker chair, a ceramic-bowled table lamp—emerging from the shadows, as if summoned from some bleak, distant past.

  “Holy shit…” Randall’s voice was barely a whisper. The sergeant was clearly spooked. And, I thought, with damned good reason.

  The old wood floor creaked beneath our feet as we moved forward. Carefully, more hesitently now. Beyond the beam of the flashlight, there were only shadows.

  I felt my chest tighten. The hairs on my forearms were standing up inside the sleeves of the parka.

  “Let’s go through here, okay, guys?” Currim leaned against an opened door at the end of the hall. “I think you’ll find what you’re lookin’ for in here.”

  Randall spoke again under his breath. “Prick.”

  Ignoring him, Currim grinned and stepped into what appeared to be the living room. The three of us followed.

  Randall’s light swept the room, revealing the shapes of old stuffed chairs, a coffee table, and a cold, long-unused fireplace. A broad, stained area rug, bunched at the corners. Brass floor lamps, with fake Tiffany shades. All straight out of the fifties.

  Beyond the single, wide picture window, the storm raged on. Rattling the dust-coated blinds tied to opposite sides. Through the ice-encrusted glass, I could just make out the uneven yard, scalloped with snow. Some spindly trees, pencil-stroke branches bending in the wind.

  “What’s the idea, Currim?” Block planted his feet, bristling. “I don’t see nothin’.”

  Currim frowned. “Must be the wrong room. My bad.”

  Randall lifted his flashlight like a cudgel, its light flaring off the ceiling. I thought he was going to bash Currim’s head in. God knows, I wanted to do it myself.

  “You better not be jerkin’ us around here, Wes!” Randall took a menacing step toward the prisoner. “I mean it, asswipe, I’ll just—”

  “I have half a mind to let ya, Sergeant.” Chief Block sighed heavily, eyes narrowing. “I’m done playin’ games, Currim. Where the fuck’s Meachem?”

  Currim snapped his fingers. “Damn, now I remember! Okay, fellas…to the kitchen!”

  Before anyone else could move, Currim strode from the living room and back out the door we’d come in. The rest of us were right on his heels, Randall training his flashlight on Currim’s back.

  The prisoner made an abrupt turn, momentarily vanishing into the darkness. Then, with equal suddenness, a room light flickered on, to our left.

  With Randall in the lead, Block and I went through this second room’s opened doorway. The uneven light was coming from twin ceiling fluorescent bulbs, only one of which was working. Sputtering, flickering on and off.

  Like an eerie, slow-motion strobe. One moment, everything was cast in an ash gray, sepulchral light. Objects appeared, were given outline. Then, just as suddenly, they disappeared, swallowed up by a cold, hungry darkness.

  Things seen, then unseen. There, then not there.

  It was the kitchen, as Currim had said. Even in the blinking, uncertain light, I could tell that every appliance was old, long-used. The small formica table in one corner, with its twin lattice-backed chairs, another 50s relic. As was the patterned tile floor.

  Where our eyes were drawn. Riveted. Straining to make sense of what we were seeing. Images out of a nightmare, bathed in a sickly light for a single, frozen moment. Then veiled once more by darkness.

  Currim, standing in a far corner, folded his arms.

  “Told ya,” was all he said.

  What was left of Ed Meachem was revealed to us in flickering patches of light. Scattered about the kitchen floor, like pieces of a blood-soaked jigsaw puzzle.

  A spray of body parts, in no particular pattern. An arm, curled like a dried leaf. The jagged stump of a leg. Hands severed at the wrists. Feet at the ankles.

  “Dear God in heaven,” Block muttered.

  Suddenly, the sole working fluorescent went out, with a loud, sizzling pop. Darkness enveloped us again.

  “Holy shit!” Randall cried out.

  I whirled, trying to gauge his position from the sound of his voice. Then I saw his flashlight beam plume up, flitting wildly against the dark.

  “Steady, Harve,” I heard the Chief say.

  Breath coming in short, staccato bursts, Randall brought the light down and directed it shakily around the room. Poking into shadowy, stubborn corners. Searching, as though compelled against his will, for yet more horror.

  He found it.

  In the center of the room, a naked male torso lay marinating in a dark pool of old blood, blackening at the edges. Nearby, strands of human entrails were curled around chair legs, or looped like coils of garden hose.

  Jesus Christ, I thought.

  Randall started to retch then, struggling not to vomit. As I felt the gorge rising in my own throat.

  But it was Chief Block who spoke, voice a rasp.

  “Wes, you sick bastard, why’d the fuck you do this?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  Randall, still gasping, swung his light back and forth across the tile floor. “But his head…Where the hell’s Meachem’s head?”

  The same question had occurred to me, at almost the exact same moment the answer did.

  Without a word, I turned and raced out of the room. Slamming once against a table in the dark, but never breaking stride. Chief Block calling after me, voice raised in surprise, anger.

  I ignored him as I ran down the darkened hallways and through the opened front door. Pounding off the groaning, wood-planked porch, out onto the yard. Slipping and stumbling over the slick, dead-white earth. Unmindful of the bitter cold, the hurtling snow.

  Until I stood, breathing hard, eyes stinging from the storm, staring at the snowman in the middle of the yard. The three balls of snow, piled awkwardly into the form of a man. The small snowball at the top, wearing the floppy hat.

  Except it wasn’t a snowball.

  It was a head.

  Ed Meachem’s severed head.

  Chapter Four

  “Hey, Danny, I saw you on CNN!”
<
br />   It was Noah Frye, bellowing from behind the wall-length bar as I entered his saloon on Second Avenue. Called Noah’s Ark, it was a refurbished coal barge permanently moored at the edge of the Monongahela River.

  I came in out of the night and closed the door behind me. As I stood in the threshold, stamping my feet to loosen the snow from my boots, I could feel the musty warmth of the softly-lit room begin to chase the chill from my bones.

  Over the years, Noah’s Ark had become almost a second home to me. A convivial refuge after a particularly hard day. Or two.

  Though boasting a gleaming, brass-trimmed bar, cozy café tables, and a small raised stage where jazz musicians performed nightly, the saloon’s interior couldn’t disguise its nautical heritage. Tar paper hanging from the ceiling. Port holes looking out on the black, ice-choked waters. That unmistakeable riverfront smell.

  As I took a stool at the bar, just filling now with early evening customers, Noah sauntered over and put his beefy hands on the counter. He was a big, burly man in stained overalls, with a thatch of unruly hair and a lunatic’s glint in his eyes.

  Which only made sense, since Noah was—technically speaking—crazy. A paranoid schizophrenic, his grotesque delusions were kept barely in check by psychotropic meds and the devotion of his girlfriend—and the bar’s sole waitress—Charlene.

  I’d known Noah Frye since my days at a private psychiatric clinic, years before, when I was an intern therapist and he was a patient. Now we were friends.

  “This must be old hat for you by now.” Noah had turned to fill a schooner with draft Iron City from the beer keg behind him. “I mean, talkin’ about whacko killers on the national news.”

  “It’s not as much fun as you’d think.”

  He brought me my beer with a commiserating look.

  “Hey, don’t feel bad, Danny. Remember, the camera adds ten pounds.”

  I smiled at his open, generous face. “Thanks. I feel better already.”

  “Cool. Maybe I oughtta give up the bar and go hang out a shingle somewhere. I mean, hell, except for you and Dr. Mendors, every shrink I ever met was crazier than I am.”