Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense

by Fynn Perry

  John watched as Jim sat staring blankly at a wall, taking one swig after another from a whiskey bottle that stood next to a half-empty glass of water on a small table in front of him. Reaching under the sofa, he pulled out a battered metal box. Opening it, he took out a syringe, filled it with water from the glass, and squirted an amount onto what John guessed was heroin powder that he had tipped out onto a grubby metal spoon. With a small cigarette lighter that produced a flame like a miniature blowtorch, he heated the underside of the spoon, causing the mixture to boil. Taking the filter out of a cigarette, he moistened it in water before he stuck the tip of the needle into it, and sucked the contents of the spoon through it and into the syringe. After applying a tourniquet of rubber tubing to his arm, he waited for a vein to pop in a heavily tattooed area of his forearm, and injected the contents into it. It was now clear to John where the money—his father’s money—had gone. Rising feelings of anger and disbelief soon gave way to deep, gut-wrenching disgust. He didn’t know this man at all and, more importantly, neither did his father.

  Leaving Jim with his mind elsewhere, John started looking at the papers strewn across the couch. He scanned the letterheads. There were all sorts of bills and demands from the types of companies that would be expected to supply a pub with alcohol and custodial services. He singled out a demand from a company called Supreme Security. It didn’t fit because John could not recall seeing any cameras, security-alarm boxes, code-entry keypads, or for that matter, warning signs anywhere in the building. What’s more, the amount seemed very high at $6,000 for a month’s protection. O’Donnell’s Irish Pub was named as being covered by the service, but the invoice was addressed not to Donovan but to a company called Supreme Bars & Clubs. Maybe his father, as an investor in the pub, had advised Jim to set up a limited liability company as an owning entity? But then why would the security company have the same word ‘Supreme’ in its name? It couldn’t be a coincidence—both companies had to have the same owner. He checked the registered address on the invoice. It was Suite 1023, 124 East 53rd. Street, Manhattan.

  From what John knew, that was a very good address. Either John’s father and Donovan owned the security company and the pub, or someone else now owned both. He looked at the other bills and found a demand for rent. It was from Supreme Bars & Clubs, showing an amount in the sum of $18,000 due from James Donovan for rent of the pub for the month. The invoice bore the same registered address as before, of 124 East 53rd. Street. John stared at the paper. Had Donovan sold the pub without his father and was now only renting it? Of course, none of Donovan’s half-assed reports stated anything about it. Or was this part of an elaborate tax dodge? Donovan wasn’t smart enough for that, John decided, and if it had been his father’s idea, he surely would have heard about it. His father was keen to teach him everything about real estate so that one day he could take over his business. The thought that he and his father might never be able to see each other again crushed him momentarily. But his need to find out what was going on and perhaps, in the process, find out why he was stabbed, spurred him on.

  He rechecked the rent and security demands side-by-side, wishing that somehow his father could help him make sense of it all. Apart from having the same first word in their company names, the invoices issued by Supreme Security and Supreme Bars & Clubs also had in common the same fonts and layout. Then John noticed as he glanced at some smaller print at the foot of the papers, that both companies were stated as being ‘A division of Supreme Holdings.’ That suggested a large company was behind the two Supreme companies. Given his drug addiction, it seemed entirely plausible that Jim had sold the pub to pay debts to dealers and was probably trying to scrape enough money together each month to pay the rent and other demands.

  John checked the other bills. They all referenced the Irish Pub but were all made out to Supreme Hospitality, and each one had a small piece of the left corner ripped off. It looked like they had all once been stapled to another document. After two minutes, he found it. It was an invoice with a Supreme Bars & Clubs letterhead and the missing corners from the other bills stapled to it. He read the invoice. It referenced, in a list, all the other invoices John had seen, together with an item described as a ‘Management Fee.’ The value of the fee was fifteen percent of the total of the invoices, and that came to $50,000. That made the management fee a whopping $7,500—just for one month. It didn’t seem right––whoever was behind the Supreme name was ripping Donovan off.

  John looked at his father’s so-called best friend again. Eyes dilated and vacant, gaping-mouthed and with his head flung back, he was clearly on a high. He would probably shoot up again and again. John worried if he might overdose, and for a second, considered if that mightn’t be a bad thing. He chided himself for the thought, but the truth was that he didn’t want to help Donovan, who had squandered his father’s help and betrayed his trust. He decided to leave, concluding that Donovan was more likely to eventually come down alive and well. ‘God favors the stupid,’ as his grandmother used to say.

  Five

  Leaving Donovan at the pub, John headed toward the person he most wanted to discuss all this new information with. She also happened to be the only living person who could see and hear him, and her father, David Miller, seemed to have a direct line to the detective on his case. Remembering that there was a bus stop a short walk from O’Donnell’s, he took himself there and caught the first bus heading in the general direction of Brooklyn, unsure where he would have to get off or what further buses he’d need to get to Jennifer’s house.

  A route plan inside the bus gave him a set of directions and was a welcome distraction from the stare of a belligerent-looking male spirit close to his own age. He could hear the words of the old man from the hospital storeroom in his head: “The bad‘uns can still harm us,” and John wondered what exactly one spirit could do to hurt another.

  Still in Queens, he got off in the Parkside neighborhood to change buses. He looked at a plan of the area and a schedule that was posted at the stop. According to the map, he needed to cross the freeway in front of him. On the other side would be a street taking him to another bus stop with buses that would take him close to Jennifer’s street

  As he headed toward the freeway, he noticed a pedestrian underpass. John had usually tried to avoid underpasses in his mortal life. He considered it common sense, like walking away from a fight when you can. It just didn’t seem smart to enter a concrete tube, thereby narrowing down your escape route options to two exits, should a mugger appear with an accomplice stationed at one end of the tunnel.

  Approaching the underpass, he noticed several faint orange glows appear and disappear from the mouth of the opening. As he got closer, the spirits he could see now hanging around the mouth of the tunnel were, like their mortal counterparts in real life situations, on the lookout for trouble. He remembered from his own experience that solid earth was impenetrable to spirits so if the spirits were to confront him inside, it would be the wall of earth not the concrete lining of the tunnel that would, just like in real life, limit his choices of escape to reaching either end of the tunnel. Crossing the freeway was definitely the better bet.

  He ascended the grassy bank and stood curbside. Traffic thundered past him on a four-lane highway, transporting both mortals and spirits. Most spirits sat as passengers, but there were also a number, like the ones he’d seen earlier on the way to the police precinct, who were surfing on the roofs of the cars. A group of them approached him, and he could see that they were a different breed to those he had seen before. There was a great deal of shouting between them, and they were very lively, sporadically jumping from car to car.

  As one approached in the middle lane on top of a speeding black Mercedes sedan, John noticed it was the spirit of a solidly built, bare-chested man, tattooed and dreadlocked. As he shot past, the spirit noticed John staring at him. His eyes were flaming, his face was heavily scarred, and his expression cruel. There was a distinct evil about him that would ha
ve made John’s skin—if he’d had any skin to crawl.

  Three more surfers approached close behind, standing on the flatbed of a large pickup. They stopped pushing each other around as soon as one of them pointed John out. They all locked onto him with same intense and penetrating stares as the truck hurtled past.

  The traffic was still heavy, but the roads now looked clear of surfers. John decided to cross. He wove his way between the cars in the first two lanes. Crossing the second lane, he caught a glimpse of the spirit of a middle-aged woman through the window of a car that sped past. She shook her head at him in concern, her eyes wide open. What was she trying to tell him?

  He reached the island in the center of the freeway. Traffic approaching from the other direction looked free of surfers. He moved out into a gap and was between lanes, waiting for another gap to appear, when he saw a silver pickup, about half a mile off, coming toward him in the near lane. Three glowing figures who must have been lying flat on the truck bed stood up. A feeling of dread spread through him from the pit of his stomach as he recognized them; it was the group of three that had glared at him just minutes before. They must have switched to a truck going in the opposite direction, back toward him. John could hear that they were chanting something and, as the truck drew closer, he could hear perfectly.

  “Roadkill! Roadkill!”

  Roadkill? John was starting to panic. The truth is, the bad ‘uns can still harm us. The words of the spirit of the old man now monopolized his thoughts. He felt his heartbeat pound as he tried to weigh up his options: the cars speeding past had spirits in them. What if he collided with another spirit while trying to cross? Instinct told him: nothing good. If other spirits could hurt him then it seemed a reasonable conclusion that smashing into another spirit at fifty-five miles an hour could also hurt. He didn’t want to take the chance and he had already run out of time—the truck was upon him.

  He crouched as low as he could between lanes with his head ducked down. His stress may have been virtual, but it felt very real and was reaching unbearable levels. Above his head he heard crackling sounds, like a sort of static electricity, followed by shouts of disappointment. As soon as the truck had passed, he stood up to assess the situation. He felt and looked no different. In a split second, he registered a second pickup coming up fast in the other lane. It was the dreadlocked surfer he had seen earlier, now hanging off the side of the truck with one arm, his other arm outstretched, hand in a fist. John tried to duck again and leaned into another lane, but it was too late to completely avoid the blow. He had almost descended to his previous position when he felt clawing, ripping, and icy pain shoot through his left shoulder, followed by a victorious scream as the truck hurtled past.

  John looked up and saw the gang member holding up a red glowing mass, which was entangled in his fingers. John looked at his shoulder. There was a chunk missing about the size of a small apple and a deep red glow pulsated from the area. He saw a break in the traffic and ran through the remaining lane just as a car was approaching.

  John carried on running for five minutes before he was comfortable that no spirit was in pursuit. He sat down against a tree for a while, panting from the pain through gritted teeth. The reddening of his shoulder had increased, and he felt considerably weaker, as though he was losing energy. Whatever was happening to him, he had to keep moving and get to Jen’s house, where he could properly rest. What if there was no way to recover? What if he just kept on feeling weaker and weaker? Would he just disappear, never able to get back to the life he once knew?

  The bus stop wasn’t far, and the thought of resting on the bus propelled him on. He would still have a twenty-minute journey on foot at the other end of the ride and he hoped his energy would hold out.

  Evening had arrived by the time he got to Jennifer’s neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was the antithesis of downtown Manhattan with its bright lights and loud noise. Here, he found sleepy, vapor-lit streets lined with leafy, shadowy trees and filled with rows of regimented, cookie-cutter houses, their windows covered with backlit curtains. There was the occasional glow from a spirit moving behind a window or riding as a passenger in the few cars passing him on the streets. Thankfully, they seemed to want to keep themselves to themselves. John found himself thinking he would be grateful for a little less interaction with the spirit world from now on.

  An elderly mortal couple passed him, walking their dog. A few yards behind them followed the spirit of a middle-aged woman. John guessed that she might be their daughter. She stopped walking. John did likewise, not knowing what to expect. Her expression had changed from sorrow to sincere concern.

  “You’re hurt!” she exclaimed and moved closer to him with her hand outstretched, trying to touch his shoulder. John pulled back.

  “You need to trust me,” she reassured.

  She was right, of course. John had to trust someone and this time he didn’t move as she approached and pushed her hand toward and into his shoulder.

  He braced himself for the pain, but there wasn’t any.

  “This will help you,” she said calmly as her hand entered under his wound. It felt soothing, and John saw the redness was disappearing.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We can help or hurt each other through our interactions,” she explained. “The outcome depends on our intentions, good or bad. Whoever did this to you obviously wished you harm.”

  “Yeah! I got that part!” John exclaimed, smiling.

  She smiled back briefly and continued. “I can’t do any more but you will see, it will get better over time as long as you rest now. It will heal over, but it will not grow back. You were lucky you weren’t literally torn to pieces.”

  John looked more confused.

  “If too much of your energy is separated from you, you will simply cease to exist in this form or any other. You will simply not be ‘you.’ That’s final. Remember that!”

  John nodded as he tried to process what he had just heard.

  “We’re all here because we’re not ready to move on,” she continued. “We’re either looking for answers as to how we got here, or we can’t let go of something from our mortal lives. But we get so caught up in our quests, when we first arrive, that few of us realize the dangers we can face from other spirits.”

  ‘But I’m not actually dead—as a mortal, I mean,” he protested.

  “Ah. One of those, are you?” Her tone had changed to one of annoyance.

  “One of what?” John asked.

  “A doubter, a disbeliever…a crazy person! I can’t believe I wasted my time on you!” She hurried back to the elderly couple who had not moved much farther down the street, ignoring his shouts for her to return and leaving John to consider what had just happened. Maybe to other spirits he really did sound crazy in claiming not to be dead. Doubting that he had enough energy to run after her, and then try to convince her that he wasn’t in fact unhinged, John decided to conserve what little strength he had into getting back to Jennifer and a place where he could rest.

  It was 9:30 p.m. by the time John turned the corner into Jennifer’s street.

  As he approached the house, he saw David’s gray Volvo parked in the driveway. The hood was still warm, signaling he had not long ago arrived.

  He walked through the closed porch door, still amazed at his ability to pass through solid objects. Inside, the hall was dimly lit and paneled with dark wood. In front of him rose dark wooden stairs, carved with the decorative, angular details of the Arts and Crafts style popular in the Fifties. He made his way up them to a brighter, pastel-colored landing with less paneling, a choice of four wooden doors and a window seat beneath a stained-glass pane. He caught a waft of Jennifer’s perfume and, hearing movement behind the first door on the right, chose to pass through it. Expecting to see Jennifer, he was instead brutally confronted by the rear view of her father, naked and entering an en-suite bathroom. His eyes widened in surprise—that was not a naked body he wanted to see. Despite knowing he
couldn’t be seen, the situation was still extremely awkward. He quickly turned around and passed through the door and was out on the landing again.

  John decided to choose the next door along and this time cautiously stick his head through first. Relieved, he saw Jennifer lying on her bed. He cleared his throat and offered a quiet “Hi” so as not to alarm her.

  Jennifer gasped, and he watched as the look of wonder on her face changed to disbelief, then confusion. “John? Is that really you? I thought I’d imagined it when I saw you this way that night in the hospital. But then I saw others like you— in the hospital, in the streets. Either I can see the dead or I’m completely insa––” Her breathy voice choked as the precision in every detail of his virtual form clearly hit her for the second time.

  Seeing the wonder in her eyes, he waited in silence for her to take him all in again: every blink of his eyes, every gentle rhythmic expansion, contraction, rise and fall of his chest. He could feel her assessing him, like she had done the first time they met, her gaze darting between his eyes, mouth, and hands.

  “It’s amazing. I can see every pore on your face, every hair in your eyebrows, on your head, on your wrists, every stitch in your shirt!”

  “I’m so glad I trimmed my nose hair before being stabbed,” he joked.

  She smiled, but only briefly before she noticed the reddened pit in his shoulder. “What the hell happened?” She stood up immediately, instinct guiding her to want to touch and care for his wound, but the same cold sensation she had felt before, when John had tried to touch her hand the previous night, made her draw her hand back.

  He felt a momentary calmness wash over him. She exuded a warmth and concern for his safety that he hadn’t even realized had been missing from his life.