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

by Fynn Perry

  Seconds later, the receptionist burst in with a panicked expression. “David, something has...” She gasped at the sight of the blood, and the blade impaled in his hand but didn’t say a word. Instead, she rushed out, returning with the office first aid kit, which looked as if she had literally pulled it from the wall.

  “Oh, my God! Who . . . who did this?” she asked while she nervously fiddled with the clasp on the box. “Robert? . . .Tell me, David . . . was it Robert?” She got it open eventually after a few calming words from David, who tried to convince her it had been an unfortunate accident. Grasping the handle of the letter opener, he rocked it from side to side, just enough to free it from the table surface. The tip came out from the desk, but the handle snapped clean from the blade, leaving it stuck in his hand.

  “Oh, my God! They have to take it out at the hospital… You’ll need stitches...I already called the paramedics for Robert… they can take you.” She rattled off these disjointed statements between panicky gasps for breath as she applied a dressing around the embedded blade.

  “For Robert? What do you mean, you called the paramedics for Robert?”

  “He just collapsed, right here in the office, just a few yards from your door… The paramedics will check him over… He must have had some kind of episode… You sure you don’t want to wait for them?”

  “No, it’ll be quicker if I go myself,” he assured her. As he walked out of his office, he noticed there was a group of people standing over Devereux. He looked at his attacker’s face in disbelief. The lawyer was unconscious. As much as he’d mistrusted Devereux when they’d worked together, he’d never known the lawyer become this irrational and enraged.

  “You’ve got this, right, Abigail? There’s nothing I can do here then. I need to get this fixed up. I’ll be at the hospital.”

  He rushed out before she could stammer out a response.

  Forty minutes passed before a female nurse called out David Miller’s name for the second time. He was sitting in one of the beat-up hard plastic chairs in the waiting area of his nearest ER. So preoccupied was he with trying to understand Devereux’s behavior that he had barely registered the whimpering boy on his mother’s lap next to him or any of the other people that filled the neighboring seats, pressing icepacks or blood-stained bandages to injuries, clutching limbs and, in one case, holding a garbage bag to catch vomit. He had been called up once already, only to be told to wait when more pressing cases arrived––fast-tracked through on gurneys, with flurries of medical staff shouting instructions and coping with distress from loved ones. He got to his feet, now fully aware of, and happy to escape, the sounds of coughing, labored breathing, murmurs of complaint, and tedious daytime television.

  “Mr. Miller, would you follow me, please?” the nurse said politely and walked him down a corridor. “All the rooms in the ER are full. We will have to find an examination room in the main hospital. Are you OK to walk, Mr. Miller? It’s just an injury to your hand, right?” she asked.

  “Yes, just my hand,” David replied.

  They turned into another corridor, and then a farther passage. Eventually, she asked him to sit outside a room. “A doctor will be here in a little while.”

  She left him there, and he waited another ten minutes. The nurse came back alone. “The doctors are all busy. But I’m a qualified trauma nurse, so I can handle this. You OK with that, Mr. Miller?” she asked, pulling on a pair of pale-blue latex gloves. She clearly was in no mood to be challenged over her competence and was not waiting for an answer.

  “I guess so,” he said cautiously.

  She led him into the room opposite and closed the door behind them.

  “So, let’s have a look at this,” she said, unwrapping the bandage.

  “It’s the blade of a letter opener,” David explained.

  “Right. Someone not very fond of you at work, Mr. Miller?”

  “It was kind of an accident.”

  “Aha, and where do you work, Mr. Miller?” She rotated his hand to get a good look at the wound.

  “Law office.”

  She said nothing and slid her chair, which was on castors, to a tray where she took a hypodermic needle and filled it with a substance from a small glass bottle. “I’m going to inject a local anesthetic into your hand at the base of the blade. We won’t be able to see if there is any tendon damage until we pull the knife out,” she explained in a tone that was both professional and pleasant.

  She placed the syringe down on the tray and let it lie there. “I hate lawyers. No offense,” she said, her tone and expression emotionless.

  David was surprised but decided not to respond. He wanted the anesthetic. The constant pain was just about bearable, but pulling the knife out would be excruciating.

  “Is it private or clinic work that you do?” the nurse inquired.

  “Clinic,” he said, confident that this answer would resonate better––a man of the people rather than a lawyer helping the rich get richer and lining his own pockets in the process.

  “My son was represented by a lawyer from a clinic. He was holding a package for a friend of his. He didn’t even know what it was. When he was asked to deliver it to an address, he got stopped for speeding. The cops searched his car and found it. There was a gun inside that had been used in a shooting.”

  David said nothing. He looked longingly at the syringe on the tray.

  The nurse placed cotton pads around the base of the blade to soak up the blood that would come gushing forth when it was removed.

  “That son-of-a-bitch lawyer only spoke with him for twenty minutes,” she said, placing her hand over David’s hand just behind the embedded blade and over his wrist. “He wasn’t interested in the truth—he just told him to plead guilty.”

  She pressed down on his hand and with her other hand, brought a pair of surgical pliers into view. David wondered whether he would ever get the anesthetic. He really wanted it.

  “That’s all he got. Twenty minutes alone with his lawyer and five minutes in the courtroom,” she said as she clasped the end of the blade with the pliers.

  “Anesthetic!” David pleaded, but it was too late, she was already pulling out the blade. The pain was excruciating.

  “He got the maximum sentence of five years. Fucking lawyers!” she hissed as she pulled the blade free. David screamed with pain as he watched the white cotton pads around the wound turn crimson and swell with his blood.

  “You put Juan away, and he got fucking stabbed to death in prison, Counselor!”

  David tried to catch his breath as he looked at her with wild surprise in his eyes. He was sure he hadn’t misheard. How does she know about the Santiago case? “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

  The nurse ignored him as she replaced the dressings and bandaged them in place. “Make a fist for me, Mr. Miller,” the nurse said calmly and firmly, acting as if he was a difficult patient and she might any moment have to call security.

  David did it automatically, without saying anything. His head was spinning with confusion and he just wanted to leave.

  “Good! No tendon damage. You don’t need to see a hand specialist.” Her voice was now soft and calm. She turned on her swivel chair to grab a clipboard with some forms.

  David wasn’t listening; he wasn’t going to stay another minute. He got up, turned right, and walked up the corridor. There was something wrong, something seriously wrong and odd about this. Devereux—and definitely a random nurse in ER—should know nothing about his involvement in the Santiago case. Maybe there was something wrong with him, like a brain tumor, which was causing him to hallucinate?

  “Have a good day Counselor!” the nurse called after him.

  When he found his car and got in, David was dizzy from adrenaline, fear, and confusion. Something was happening that he couldn’t explain, and it involved a case that he had tried to put behind him. It was so strange that it seemed almost supernatural.

  He switched on the ignition and set off for
home. As he drove, he tried to steady his nerves. The Santiago case had traumatized him, that much was certain; during the trial he received countless threats to his life and his family. Maybe, somehow, these traumas were combining in his brain and he was imagining what he had heard. One thing he was sure of—he couldn’t tell Jennifer. She had been through enough.

  Jennifer and John had exhausted all the research from her books and articles. The information was so far from the reality that they were experiencing, it didn’t seem to assist them in any way. They had read a lot about spirits but hadn’t found anything that would help either with John’s return to his mortal state or how to deal with the spirit that Jennifer had witnessed emerging from Hardwell.

  “Let’s try and find out something about the company names you saw on the invoices in Donovan’s apartment. We might find something to explain his connection in all this.” Jennifer suggested, reaching for her MacBook.

  “Good idea. Check ‘Supreme Bars & Clubs.’ That’s the company that owns the pub now.”

  Jennifer tapped away at her keyboard. “I’ve got a Supreme Bars & Clubs registered at Suite 1023, 124 East 53rd. Street,” she confirmed.

  “That’s the same address,” John recalled. “It was the same for Supreme Security.”

  “Yeah, but look. What also comes up is that it is the address of an exclusive nightclub called DNA.” She carried on, typing out more keywords in the search bar. “And the club is owned by…” her voice trailed off as she looked at John with surprise. “It’s the same company, Supreme Bars & Clubs, same address.”

  “I don’t understand,” John said.

  “Supreme Bars & Clubs is owned by…”

  “Supreme Holdings,” John interrupted, remembering the information contained in the footer of the invoices he had seen.

  “Yes! A company registered in Delaware at 420D, Park Avenue…Wait . . . There’s a link regarding the sale of the club.” She pulled up an article in the Manhattan Chronicle and read from it. “Six months ago, DNA and another much larger club known as Mayhem were sold. The clubs were purchased, for an undisclosed amount, through several shell companies registered in Delaware, ultimately financed and controlled by a company in the Cayman Islands, the name of which was not disclosed at the time.

  She skimmed over the rest of the article before stopping. Her mouth dropped open, and she glanced at John before reading out the last paragraph. “This reporter’s research has confirmed that the company in the Cayman Islands is, in fact, owned by a Miguel Vargas, who is believed to be a major drug baron in New York City and sole importer of wholesale drugs from the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, where he is commonly known as ‘El Gordito,’ meaning the ‘the chubby one,’ because of his physique.”

  “What the hell has Donovan got himself into?” John stared at Jennifer in disbelief. She could see his jaws clench and his eyes ignite in anger for a moment. “Jim sold the pub to a fucking drug lord!”

  “John, listen to this.” Jennifer recited some more of the article. “Vargas, who has been the subject of some drug distribution and related murder charges, but has never been convicted, purports to be a legitimate nightclub business owner. So strong is his apparent commitment to the nightclub business that he is said to hardly ever leave DNA, his favorite club, where private parties—best described as playgrounds of excess for rich, influential and often criminal patrons—have frequently provided him with an alibi and are said to be the venue for meetings regarding all his operations. The NYPD has made several raids on his registered offices, located next to the exclusive VIP lounge in DNA, in an attempt to gather evidence against Vargas, but each time they failed to find any incriminating evidence of drug activity.”

  She pulled up several photos of Vargas. Most of the press had adopted his nickname, referring to him as El Gordito in the captions. All the photos had clearly been taken from a safe distance—safe enough to avoid the wrath of several mean-looking bodyguards. Often the shortest figure in a group, he was paunchy, in his forties, with short black hair. His mouth, eyes, and nose appeared to huddle at the center of his cinnamon-colored, round face. He was clearly a lover of bright, patterned shirts, wearing them casually or as part of a suit.

  The lock to the main door of the house clicked open, and for a bad moment, it struck Jennifer that it might not be her father who had just come in––there was no familiar clank of the keys hitting the metal tray by the door.

  “Pumpkin, it’s me.”

  Jennifer was relieved to hear her father’s voice.

  “I’m in my room, Dad,” she called out as she quickly put all the books away. From her bedroom she could hear the loud creak of the middle and last treads whenever someone was on their way upstairs. The first creak would mean her father would be five seconds from opening the door. The second creak, two seconds. She finished putting her stuff away, but the first creak never came. She started to worry. “He always comes up to my room when he comes home. I’m going to check and see what’s going on.”

  She walked out of her room and went down the stairs, omitting the creaky ones just in case someone else might be in the house. John followed her. As she walked through the hall, she could hear heavy breathing coming from the living room. She looked back at John, who just shrugged.

  She walked in and saw her father collapsed on the sofa. His head was resting back on a cushion, and he was looking upward.

  “Oh, my God! What the hell happened to your hand?” Jennifer exclaimed noticing the bandage spotted with blood.

  “It’s all fine now. I’ll tell you, but make me a sandwich while I do, OK?”

  “Sure,” said Jennifer. She wasn’t surprised at the request. Her father was often hungry, and it would take something truly remarkable for him to lose his appetite.

  She went to the kitchen, got the bread and everything else she needed out of the fridge: tomatoes, butter, coarse grain mustard, cheese, and ham. Anticipating that one sandwich would not be enough, she made another.

  David gratefully started to work on them.

  “This,” he said, lifting his bandaged hand, “came completely out of the blue and I still can’t quite understand it.” He paused, taking another bite of the sandwich. “Devereux came to visit me at the clinic. He didn’t want to talk about the Hardwell case but instead questioned me about an old case I had worked on. He started playing with a heavy letter opener on my desk, and then, before I knew what had happened, he had stabbed me in the hand. He must have had some kind of episode, because as soon as he left my room, he collapsed. We called an ambulance. I didn’t have time to check on him because I was bleeding and had to drive myself to the hospital.”

  She waited for him to finish taking another bite, her concern mounting.

  “The nurse said that as long as I can keep clenching my fingers into a fist, everything is healing properly.” His tone was now more upbeat. As he staggered up from the couch, Jennifer’s emotions gushed out. “Are you telling me everything, Dad?” He sat back down and motioned for her to sit next to him. He knew real concern when he saw it in his daughter’s eyes. “I think so, sweetheart. I mean, I’ve never known Devereux to become so fiercely angry before. It’s like his eyes were actually blazing for a moment. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like he was someone else.”

  Jennifer’s face went pale, literally from blood loss, like wax, as she put two and two together and realized that the spirit she had seen leave Hardwell and enter Devereux must have stayed inside him when Devereux had gone to see her father. She had restrained herself before but, this time, she had no choice but to tell her father about the existence of spirits––she never imagined that he would somehow be affected by them. But how? She decided to just launch in without telling him yet that she could actually see these things. “Dad, extreme as it sounds, I think this guy Hardwell was possessed by an evil spirit when he tried to kill John.” She put a hand up to stop him interjecting. “I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous. Just hear me out. I think it moved on then,
and possessed Devereux in order to threaten––”

  “Sweetheart! Sweetheart! That’s ridiculous. We know Hardwell is deeply troubled. But the idea that he might be possessed . . .” He shook his head and fell silent for a moment. “He imagined you to be your mother and stabbed John because he was jealous of him. That’s all this is about. When you feel unsafe, you deal with it by imagining ghosts, like you did with grandma when she died, but Hardwell is in Rikers and not going anywhere. You have nothing to worry about. Devereux has obviously spent too much time with Hardwell, and with the stress of starting his own practice, he’s had some kind of psychotic episode. Perhaps he was on some meds nobody knew about and he forgot to take them today.”

  “No, you don’t understand! It’s not him,” she protested. “It’s the evil spirit inside him!”

  Darling, I know this has been a tremendous ordeal, but that’s ridiculous. I thought you’d grown out of this ghost story obsession of yours.”

  Jennifer gave a small nod. She stopped the conversation and put her arms around her father, resting her head on his chest. He had always been her hero, her rock, the one to turn to in her greatest need. But he was just a mortal and unable to help her this time. Her eyes started to moisten.

  She sat there for a few moments until she was able to compose herself. She was stronger than she thought. She changed the subject. “Mom’s not coming today; she’s flying back tomorrow.”

  “I know—she called me. The best thing you can do is get some rest, Pumpkin.” He embraced her for a moment. “It will all soon be over.”

  She nodded. “I’m being silly. Don’t worry about me. You need to rest, too.”

  David looked exhausted. She let him make his way up to his bedroom.

  John watched him go and said to Jennifer, “I know you’re not going to like this, but I think I need to check out DNA. It’s the only lead we have. Maybe I can find something that will explain all of this. I have a feeling that what happened at O’Donnell’s, the mess Donovan’s in, and the spirit you saw are all somehow tied up with this gangster El Gordito. The spirit was wearing a jumpsuit, right?”