The Frighteners

by Michael Jahn

  Dammers remained oblivious to the firefight. He stood in the bright moonlight, holding his shirt open. He suddenly spun around, showing Lucy a torso covered with a mass of cultish tattoos and scars. She couldn’t see his face at that moment, but watched his finger trace a series of voodoo and other symbols, roughly carved into his chest.

  “You took off your lead breastplate, Dammers,” she said. “Are you sure Frank won’t will your heart to stop?”

  “Not from where you sent him, he won’t. Look at this one. Nineteen hundred and eighty-one . . . Haiti . . . I infiltrated the Baron Samedi’s Cult of the Dead. I was involved in ritualistic cannibalism, in orgiastic dances, reaching painful thresholds of intense eroticism.”

  “I knew it, Dammers. You get turned on by pain. You’re a sick man and need help.”

  Just then, the Reaper’s severed right arm sailed past Dammer’s head. The Reaper’s body collapsed as its face flew into the air. Frank stopped firing. He surveyed the multitude of shiny black puddles that had once been the Reaper.

  Dammers stepped away from his car. “I have suffered for my country, Dr. Lynskey,” he said.

  “I hope you suffer forever.”

  He screamed at the night sky, the veins on his neck bulging. “But I cannot be broken!”

  Lucy seized the moment. She pulled against the bar with all her might, ripping it free. Within a second she had slipped the cuffs free of the bar and was desperately trying to lock the car doors as Dammers spun around.

  He hauled on the back doors as Lucy scrambled over the seats and into the front. She started the car and gunned the engine. The clock on the dash read nine forty-two. Dammers screamed as the squad car rocketed away toward the cemetery entrance. He raced after it.

  Frank stood amid the remains of the Reaper. He was looking for something—anything—that could go wrong. He spotted a movement on the Reaper’s face. It lay on the ground like a slice of Jell-O. Its mouth gaped soundlessly . . . eyes following Frank with hatred.

  The Judge’s top half walked over on his hands, surveying the remains of the Reaper. “I gotta hand it to you, Frank,” he said. “You’ve taken out Death himself.”

  “This ain’t Death,” Frank said, scooping up the twitching face and holding it at arm’s length. It hung from his fingers like a quivering, snarling jellyfish.

  “Who are you?” Frank asked.

  But the Reaper’s face only sneered.

  “Don’t fear the Reaper,” it gasped.

  In a burst of anger, Frank swung the face against a gravestone, slapping it hard like a wet towel. “Who are you?” he yelled.

  Frank flapped the face against the gravestone again and again, and with each blow the Reaper’s face changed slightly, becoming more human.

  At last, Frank threw the face against a grave. It slid to a stop on the stone slab, grinning evilly at Frank. The Reaper’s face had become that of a twenty-two-year-old psychopathic killer the state put to death forty years ago.

  “Johnny Bradley,” Bannister said quietly.

  John Charles Bradley, circa 1954. His face slowly slid, grimacing, along the stone, oozing a puddle of ectoplasm.

  “How’d you know me?” Johnny asked.

  “From your mug shots in the papers. I thought guys like you fried in hell.”

  Bradley’s face twisted into an arrogant sneer. “I got out, Frank.” He giggled.

  Bradley’s face slipped over the edge of the stone slab and slid down the vertical face of the grave, leaving a slime trail like those slugs leave on cobblestone walks on wet mornings.

  “I been carrying on the good work. I got me a score of forty.”

  “Are you proud of that, Bradley?”

  “You bet your ass I’m proud. I’ll be in the history books as the world’s top serial killer. Long after your rotting corpse has turned to dust, people will read about my exploits. How you get to be an emanation, Bannister? Did the cops kill you? Or was it a jealous husband. Maybe that idiot Ray Lynskey?”

  “What happened to him?” Bannister asked.

  “I got him twice, Frank. Think of it, I killed his body. I killed his emanation. That’s two for the price of one. How many other killers do you know of who can claim that?”

  An elderly emanation loomed out of the darkness, freed to walk around now that Hiles and the Gatekeeper were history. He offered his hand to Frank.

  “Who are you?” Bannister asked.

  “Harry Sinclair. I just want to shake the hand of the man who’s finally avenged my death.”

  Frank shook hands with Sinclair, and Bradley started giggling.

  “Did I slit your throat or rip out your liver, old man? I don’t recall.”

  Frank looked at a number twelve etched into Sinclair’s forehead.

  “You’ve got a number,” Bannister said quietly.

  Sinclair touched his forehead self-consciously. “Bradley carved it into my forehead as I lay dying.”

  “You sick bastard,” Frank swore at the disembodied face.

  “We’ve got all twelve of them here,” Sinclair said. “One through twelve.”

  “Where?” Frank asked. “Here, in the cemetery?”

  “Yes.”

  “I got one more than Starkweather,” Bradley boasted.

  “I was his last victim,” Sinclair said.

  That comment elicited a chuckle from Bradley.

  “He couldn’t be more wrong, could he, Frank?” Bradley said.

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” Bannister swore, and moved forward, intending to smash a foot into what remained of Bradley’s face. But before he could get there, Bradley’s face suddenly flowed into cracks in the base of the grave. It looked like some leftover Jell-O being sucked down a sink drain.

  Frank looked around and saw that the other glutinous black remnants of the Reaper were gathering, like black mercury, and scuttling into cracks and crannies . . . disappearing below the surface of the graveyard.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  Frank looked a few moments into the future and saw the horrible creature re-forming itself in the rotting and moldy ground that was planted with skeletons. He had to get to it before that could happen.

  He took a couple of paces then, like an Olympic diver starting a jump, dived headfirst into the same grave that Bradley’s remains had gone into. Bannister slid into a coffin, landing in a crouched heap on top of a dusty skeleton.

  “Sorry. I’ll just be a minute.”

  But he was gone within seconds, propelling himself through the side of the coffin and into another. This one held a Spanish-American War veteran whose corpse was buried in full-dress uniform, including sheathed sword.

  “Give my regards to Teddy Roosevelt,” Bannister said.

  When he got there, he just caught a glimpse of a slippery black mass disappearing through the floor. Frank sank his head through the same floor and used his feet to push against the coffin lid, propelling himself downward.

  Bannister went sliding through the stone-block ceiling of a deep vault. This was a series of interconnecting dark rooms lined with dusty coffins, all of them bearing dates in the 1700s.

  Frank landed in a heap on the floor and quickly looked around. Bradley was crawling on the floor ahead of Bannister, his legs and other body parts re-forming as each and every black particle that leaked down from above rejoined his dark spirit body. The Reaper was taking shape again.

  “There was a time when I would have thanked you for getting rid of Hiles and the Gatekeeper for me,” Bannister said. “But they’ll only be replaced by others. And this is for Cyrus and Stuart.”

  Frank dived onto Bradley’s back, holding him with the left hand and punching him with the right. Bradley stirred and snarled and twisted his head around. His face suddenly distorted into the Reaper’s angry, piranha-toothed mouth. Unafraid, Frank spun the Reaper around and sank his fingers into its throat and squeezed. As he did so, the Reaper’s sticky black body parts crawled over Frank’s back, re-forming themselves into the Reaper�
�s cloak and soon, encapsulating Frank within the Reaper’s body. Frank had but seconds left before he was totally absorbed.

  “Got any more tricks up your sleeve, Johnny?” Frank asked.

  Bannister felt the Reaper growing in strength and fury. The angry yellow slit eyes were blazing again, and the razor-sharp teeth were snapping at his face, just inches away. The breath from hell was coming harder and more regularly now; the beast was nearing full strength.

  Frank took one hand off its throat and reached into the Reaper’s black sleeve.

  “Bad idea to let me inside the cloak, Johnny,” Bannister said.

  He pulled from the sleeve the wooden staff. As the look of fury on the Reaper’s face turned to a look of surprise, Frank banged the end of the staff on one of the nearby coffins. The steel blade swung out of the staff and clicked into place.

  Sudden fear glinted in the Reaper’s eyes.

  Frank slid out of the Reaper’s grip, raising the glittering blade over its prostrate body.

  “End of the line, you murdering freak,” Bannister said.

  The Reaper’s features suddenly shriveled into Johnny Bradley’s screaming face as Frank swung the scythe down toward his neck.

  He slashed at the beast time and time again, shredding it back into a thousand tiny pieces, a million tiny pieces, until none of them looked anything like a piece of the gruesome creature.

  Frank stood there, holding the scythe at the ready, watching to see if any of the parts began to re-form. He stood there one minute, then two, and then three minutes. When at last it seemed that the creature was gone for good, Frank tossed the scythe down onto the ground and sighed.

  It was then that it hit him. He was running out of time. He had to get back to the medical center.

  He jumped up through the ceiling of the vault and crawled his way through the two layers of coffins above it. When he popped out onto the ground, Dammers’s car was long gone. So was Dammers. But instead of finding a deserted cemetery, he found a ghost playground. Everywhere he looked, emanations were scampering around, having the time of . . . well, having the time of their deaths. They were playing hide-and-seek around the headstones, taking casual strolls with old friends, sitting beneath trees smoking ghostly pipes.

  The Judge was sitting there, head and shoulders resting on the grave marker of an eighteenth-century fishing-boat captain.

  “Well, if it ain’t the kid who took the cork out of the bottle,” he said upon seeing Frank.

  “What?” Bannister asked, perplexed.

  “You took the cork out of the bottle and let the genie out—you let out hundreds of genies, if the truth be told. Without Hiles and the Gatekeeper here, it’s party time.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun,” Bannister said.

  “Did you kill the varmint?” the Judge asked.

  “Deader than he’d ever been. Look, I gotta get back into my body before it’s too late.”

  “Don’t forget your old pardners,” the Judge said.

  “Never,” Frank replied, and took off at a run toward the cemetery gate.

  Once again he sprinted through fence and yard, through bedroom and dining room, through warehouse and car wash, on his way to the medical center. Frank ran down the middles of roads and right through the middle of the red-brick water pumping station. He even cut through the newsroom of the Fairwater Gazette, sending papers flying.

  He tore across the parking lot and ran, gracefully this time, right through the same metal door that had given him so much trouble on his way out of the medical building. By the time he got to the cryolab, his body was already out of the freezer and lying on a gurney. A puddle of melted water covered the floor around it. He was relieved to see Lucy and her boss, Dr. Henry Kamins, tending to his corpse.

  “Hi honey, I’m home,” Frank said as he slipped into his body and closed his emanation eyes.

  Seventeen

  A few minutes later Frank opened his human eyes. As he did so, he heard Lucy say, “Frank! It’s me!” Her voice sounded elated.

  He gasped for air and looked at the paddles of the defibrillator as Lucy put them back on the bench. The combination of thawing and shock to the heart had worked. A huge smile lit Lucy’s face. Dr. Kamins looked pleased but busy, preparing a syringe that he quickly jabbed into Frank’s arm.

  “A hundred milligrams of Lydocaine, Lucy,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “Get me one CC of intracardiac adrenaline—quick now.”

  Lucy hurriedly prepared another syringe. Frank tried to talk, but his lips still seemed partly frozen. He felt his words were blocks of ice that took forever to form.

  “I . . . didn’t . . . get him . . . tried . . . not sure,” he said.

  Dr. Kamins jabbed the syringe into Frank’s chest. He felt the long thin needle go into his heart, but curiously there was no pain.

  Lucy brought her lips close to his ear. “Who didn’t you get, Frank?” she asked.

  “Bradley . . . Johnny Bradley’s come back . . . He’s . . . killing again . . . I think I got him . . . not sure.”

  Lucy was shocked. She said, in a worried and hushed tone, “Patricia.”

  Dr. Kamins smiled at her. “Don’t worry, Lucy,” he said. “Frank is hallucinating. Johnny Bradley went to the electric chair forty years ago. It’ll pass.”

  Kamins glanced at the cardiac monitor. “We’ve got sinus rhythm. Frank is stabilizing.”

  “Good,” she said, backing away from the gurney.

  “Good? That’s great. We’ve just brought Frank back from cryopreservation and you say its ‘good’?”

  “There’s something I have to do. Will you be able to handle Frank on your own?”

  Kamins looked around, then said, “Sure, I guess. He’ll be up and about in a little while. Where are you going?”

  “According to what he just said, another of my patients is in danger. I have to go check on her.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Patricia Bradley,” Lucy said.

  “Be careful,” Kamins warned.

  Unable to move and prevented from speaking by the medication, Frank stared helplessly as Lucy left the cryolab and the door swung shut behind her.

  Lucy’s car sped through the old hospital gates, taking the corner too fast and sliding to a halt in the driveway. She leaped out of the car and raced up to the front door of the Bartlett House. A light glowed from the front door. To someone who couldn’t see the ghost blood oozing from every board in the place, the place looked comfy and almost inviting.

  Lucy knocked on the front door, which swung open at her touch. She stuck her head inside the door and called out, “Patricia?”

  There was no response, so she stepped inside the door and closed it behind her. “Patricia?” she called again.

  There was a sound and then Patricia Bartlett came walking out of the living room. Her eyes widened at the sight of Lucy.

  “Dr. Lynskey?” she said, surprised.

  “Hi, Patricia . . .”

  “What are you doing here? Mother . . . you should have called.”

  Lucy hurried over to the woman. “Look, Patricia,” she said. “This may sound crazy, but I think you’re in danger.”

  “Do you mean from the pills? Did you have them analyzed or something?”

  “The pills? Oh, them. No, I’m not talking about the pills.”

  “About Mother keeping me here? Because—”

  “Patricia, I’m trying to tell you that you’re in danger from Johnny Bradley.”

  Patricia tensed up and a look of terror came over her face. “Johnny,” she said flatly.

  “Bradley, Johnny Bradley, who killed all those people forty years ago and was executed. Some thoughtless people said you had something to do with it, but I know they were just being small-minded. Johnny is why your mother has kept you in the house all these years.”

  “What about Johnny?” Patricia asked.

  “I don’t know how, but he’s
come back . . . He’s killing again.”

  Patricia shook her head. “He always said he would. Before he was executed, he told me he would be back.”

  “Somehow he’s responsible for this string of deaths we’ve been having in town recently,” Lucy told her.

  Patricia’s expression turned from surprise and shock to pain. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Who told you?”

  “What do you mean?” Lucy asked, looking at the woman questioningly.

  “He visits me at night,” Patricia confessed, her hands trembling. “I don’t know why he comes . . . he torments me.”

  “How does he torment you, Patricia?” Lucy asked, a look of deep concern on her face.

  The woman untied her scarf to show the ugly purple welts on her neck.

  Lucy said, “May I?”

  “If you want.”

  Lucy ran practiced fingers over the welts, then bit her lip. “How often does this happen?” she asked.

  “Sometimes every night. I never know when it’s going to happen.”

  “What does he look like?” Lucy asked.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . . horrible,” was all that she said.

  “I can imagine,” Lucy replied, thinking of what Frank had just gone through.

  “Why has he come back?” Patricia asked. “Am I being punished?”

  “Why would anyone want to punish you?”

  “For being his girlfriend, I guess. I was so very young then, and didn’t know anything. And for that I get a lifetime of suspicion and torment.”

  “No,” Lucy said gently, touching the woman’s arm and repeating what Frank told her. “Sometimes when you go through a trauma, like you did forty years ago, it alters your perception. It allows you access to the part of your mind that connects with the spiritual world.”

  “The spiritual world?” Patricia asked.

  “Bradley is using this access to prey on you again.”

  The woman dissolved into a flood of frightened tears, and Lucy wrapped her arms around her and hugged her.

  After she calmed down a bit, Patricia said, “There’s something about this house. He comes and I’m always here. It’s like being in prison. And my mother . . .”