by Ron Ripley
“No. Not at all. Worse, if that’s possible,” Tom said, keeping his voice at a whisper. Anything louder was painful to process.
“I am sorry to hear that,” the dead man said, taking his cue from Tom and lowering his own voice. “Have you inspected that small camera of yours?”
Tom frowned, confused, and then he straightened up. Still, in a whisper, he said, “The GoPro.”
“Whatever you call it,” Nicholas said, nodding. “You had it strapped to your forehead. It was, I must confess, exceptionally uncomfortable. However, I had noticed the care you put into it while putting it on. Therefore I left it in place.”
“Oh, that’s awesome,” Tom said. His heart thumped in his chest, his head ached, but he ignored it as he got up and hurried to his room, leaving the dead man behind. Tom powered up his laptop, found the GoPro on the floor by the bed, and picked it up. He connected it to the laptop, opened the file, and waited for the video to play.
Nothing happened. He tried it again and received the same lack of information.
Clenching his teeth, Tom looked at the camera and checked the power supply.
It was dead.
Tom shook his head.
Can’t be. It can’t be dead. It had a full charge yesterday! He turned the camera over in his hands, looking for something, anything that could explain what had happened.
Nicholas entered the room, and the laptop’s screen flickered.
Tom switched his attention from the GoPro to his computer, and his eyes locked on the power indicator for the battery. Even as he watched, the laptop was drained, and in less than a minute, the screen went black. Tom looked at Nicholas and realized that it was the dead man who had drained the GoPro. Not intentionally, but simply by his existence.
Without a word, Tom closed the laptop. He set the GoPro on the computer and stretched out on the bed.
“Tom,” Nicholas said, “what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Tom answered.
“Did your camera not work?” the dead man asked.
“It did not,” Tom confirmed. “I think I need to sleep now, Nicholas. I’m not feeling well.”
“Alright,” Nicholas replied. “I hope you feel better soon.”
Tom nodded, and the dead man exited the room, leaving the teenager to his own thoughts of misery and rejection.
Chapter 29: Happy Trails
At the age of sixteen, Faye had won a spot on the local country and western radio station. She sang jingles and accompanied local singers on vocals that required a woman’s touch. By twenty-two, she had married Albert Burrell, and she had enjoyed fifty-one years of marriage with him. They had raised three boys in their small house in French Hill in Nashua, and by 1997 all three boys were dead. One taken by cancer. One by suicide. The last, Ralph, murdered when he had left his restaurant at three in the morning.
When Ralph died, so too had Albert. A heart attack killed her husband. So when Ian Dingman had killed their son, he had murdered her husband as well.
None of the boys had any children, and their wives had been widowed with little to their names. Faye had sold her home to pay for four funerals, and to help two of the three wives get back on their feet. The third had vanished into the great wilds of the world.
Faye tried not to think of them too much. She still received birthday cards from the two who had remained. The occasional phone call and the rare breakfast at Joanne’s Diner on Main Street. The women were nice to her, but it was as painful for them to see her as it was for her to see them. Each was a reminder of loss.
Painful, heart-wrenching loss that never grew easier. Even after twenty years.
Faye filled her plastic watering can, carried it to the window, and watered her lucky bamboo and spider plants. She checked on her African violets, and her Christmas cacti. In the background, the radio played what the station considered to be oldies. Songs by artists whose parents hadn’t even been born when Faye had been singing and performing.
She knew it was all relative, but it still brought a smile to her face when some radio announcer would state they were playing a song from the late eighties.
Faye finished with the plants and brought the watering can back to the sink, pouring out the remainder. She held onto the handle for a moment longer, then, with a sigh, she set the can down and returned to her small family room. There was little variety in the apartments in the Arel community, but overall, she didn’t mind.
She had enough to clean and dust, so there was a fine balance between having too much to do, and not having enough to keep her occupied.
Faye picked up her dust cloth and went around the room. She cleaned the framed pictures on the walls, the old awards she had won and the various, bronzed baby shoes of her sons. As always, she hesitated in front of her wedding photograph and smiled at Albert’s visage. He had on his sailor’s uniform, the hat cocked to the left and a lopsided grin on his face.
Finally, Faye dusted the frame and moved off the shelf of knick-knacks.
The radio in the kitchen squawked and cut out, and Faye turned around, confused. It was a newer model, a gift from Nurse Sofie when Faye’s older model had finally broken down and stopped working.
Faye’s shoulders sagged, and she shook her head. Music kept a smile on her face and helped her to forget the pain of the past. At least for a little while. Faye shrugged and turned back to her work. Eventually, she would get another radio.
Perhaps Sofie can help me again, Faye thought.
“Happy trails to you,” a man’s voice sang in a soft voice.
Faye straightened up, suddenly afraid.
Happy Trails was her favorite song. And had been since she had heard Roy Rogers sing it decades earlier.
She twisted around as quickly as she could and stared at the radio.
The display on it remained dark, showing that the radio was still switched off.
But there was a man standing beside it. A stranger whose face was hidden in the shadow of the small kitchen.
“Hello, Faye,” the man said. “How are you?”
“Who are you?” Faye demanded.
“A friend,” he said in a soothing voice, taking a step towards her.
Faye moved to the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked, the question friendly, but Faye sensed an undertone of viciousness in the words.
“I’m going to open the door, so you can leave,” she answered. “I don’t know how you got in, but I know how you’re getting out.”
“Oh, do you?” he asked, chuckling. The stranger took several more steps in her direction, and the light of the sun as it streamed into the apartment passed through the man.
He’s a ghost, Faye realized, and the stories from her childhood raced up from the past.
Her eyes darted to the small kitchen table, fell on the saltshaker, and she lunged forward. When her ribs cracked against the table’s edge, her hand closed on the shaker. The dead man let out a pleased laugh even as she twisted off the metal cap. With a shaking hand, she poured the salt into her palm, took a deep, painful breath, and blew the granules at him.
The individual pieces of salt struck him and the dead man’s laugh transformed into a hideous shriek of rage.
She watched, transfixed as the dead man pulsed, then vanished.
Faye didn’t wait for him to reappear.
Instead, she fell back toward the door, managed to open it up and took a single step into the hall before she fell.
As she struck the industrial carpet, Faye heard someone call to her from the nurse’s station. She raised her head to answer and felt a pair of deathly cold hands wrap around her ankles and jerk her back into her apartment.
“What did you do?!” the ghost screamed, dragging her into the kitchen, the apartment door slamming closed and locking automatically behind her.
Faye tried to twist free, but the dead man threw her against the wall. In a split second, he was there again, grasping her by her arms and jerking her into the air, and his hands w
ere steel clamps. She let out a shriek of pain as he continued to squeeze, the flesh freezing and then her old bones breaking. The pain was intense and horrific. She sagged in the ghost’s grasp, but that only placed more pressure on her shattered arms and she screamed again.
He let go of her right arm, hissing, “You’re going to suffer. More than any of the others. I promise you that, you stupid cow.”
She felt a thin cord slip around her neck and cinch tightly beneath her chin. Just enough to strangle her, but not enough to do it quickly.
Faye felt herself being lifted up. Within seconds, her feet no longer touched the floor and she kicked out, trying to free herself. Trying to do anything to draw a full breath.
Nothing worked, and Faye soon, could no longer struggle.
In the silence of her own home, Faye hanged by the neck until she died.
Chapter 30: Aftermath
Sofie sat in the chair, hands clasped together to keep them steady. Around her, the radios of the police were turned low, the grumbles and squawks strangely obscene in the corridor. Faye Burrell’s door was open, an officer posted outside of it while forensic technicians moved in and out in a flow that never seemed to lessen.
Terry Goodwin sat down beside her, the supervisor looking haggard and worn.
“How are you holding up, Sofie?” Terry asked.
Sofie glanced at the older woman and shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Sofie admitted. “Three deaths. All in this wing. We saw her get dragged back into the apartment, Terry. We tried to get the door open, but we couldn’t.”
Terry nodded. “They still don’t know how the perpetrator got in. Or out, for that matter. None of the windows were open.”
“God, I wish I had a cigarette,” Sofie muttered.
Terry looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t think you smoked.”
“I don’t,” Sofie replied. “Not anymore. I did when I was a teenager, you know. When I thought I was cool. I want one now, though.”
They were silent for several minutes, and a pair of men came in, pushing a gurney in front of them. The two of them wore the somber, black pullovers of the medical examiner’s department. They would, Sofie knew, gather up Faye’s body and transport the corpse for an autopsy.
But she knew what they would find.
Sofie had seen Faye’s body, the thin, black line around her throat a grotesque desecration.
Terry put her hand on Sofie’s shoulder, and Sofie offered a small, tight smile of thanks.
“We’ll have someone from the J.R. Cote security company coming later,” Terry said.
“Why?” Sofie asked, her eyes fixed on Faye’s door.
“Management has made the decision to install some cameras, in the hallways,” Terry explained. “Hopefully, we’ll catch this guy sooner rather than later. And the police will be stepping up patrols in the area.”
“What about the grounds?” Sofie asked, finally averting her eyes when one of the black-jacketed men backed out of Faye’s room.
“We’re putting security on the doors,” Terry said. “Armed security. A few of the custodians have asked if they could carry concealed weapons. Management said no. The last thing we need is someone panicking and shooting up the residents.”
Sofie snorted in agreement as the gurney, with Faye’s body, rolled past. Once it had gone by, she straightened up and watched as an older man in a worn, dark blue suit came over to them. He sighed and smiled tiredly at them.
“Detective Lopez,” he said, introducing himself. “We’ll be here a little longer. Maybe an hour.”
He took out a plastic sheaf filled with business cards, and he managed to slide two of them out. The detective handed one to each of them, saying, “I know you’ve already been questioned. Sometimes the trauma of an event blocks out individual aspects of the event, but within a few days, those missing parts return. If that happens with either of you, could you please give me a call?”
“Sure,” Sofie said, and Terry agreed as well.
Detective Lopez put the sheaf away, glanced back at Faye’s door and said, “I hope nothing like this happens again.”
“You and me both,” Terry said.
Sofie nodded, but she couldn’t speak. She knew that the killer wasn’t finished, and wouldn’t be until she, Victor, and Frank did something about it.
If they could do anything at all.
Chapter 31: A Personal Touch
Bontoc watched as Stefan Korzh climbed back into his pickup truck and pulled out of the parking lot. Korzh had returned to Unionville to mail out some additional items, and done so in the guise of the injured steelworker. Bontoc suspected that each town the man shipped items out of, required a different personality.
Korzh’s Unionville’s disguise consisted of the injury and the pickup, and whatever additional items he felt were necessary.
Bontoc understood. Camouflage was an effective and necessary tool.
Yet both the hunted and the hunter could employ camouflage effectively.
When Bontoc pulled out of the parking lot, less than a minute after Korzh, it was in a pickup truck as well. His car bore the emblems and insignia of a local plumbing company. One that promised 24-hour service. Bontoc wore a pair of overalls, a trucker’s cap with the company’s logo, and he carried a 9mm semi-automatic. The weapon was untraceable, and the rounds he had loaded in it were hollow points. Both the pistol and the ammunition would get him in serious trouble with the law if he were stopped.
But Bontoc had no intention of being stopped, or of allowing Stefan Korzh the chance to survive the upcoming confrontation.
Bontoc needed the man dead, and the head packed on ice for the return trip.
Korzh, from what he could gather, would prove to be difficult to kill.
Even Ivan Denisovich had warned him of that.
Ahead of him, Korzh shifted lanes. Bontoc stayed in his own lane and kept his speed the same even as the other man slowed down. With his eyes straight ahead, Bontoc didn’t glance at Korzh as he passed him, nor did he look in the mirrors. Instead, he focused on the road.
Korzh fell back a little more with each passing moment, and when Bontoc didn’t speed up, the other man’s truck settled in at the new speed.
Bontoc kept his attention on the road, allowing his eyes to flicker from mirror to mirror, but never moving his head. He knew that Korzh was watching him, Bontoc could feel it.
The man was as dangerous as Ivan Denisovich had warned.
Bontoc’s respect for Ariana increased. She was lucky to have escaped at all.
Adding Stefan Korzh’s head to his collection would be most welcome.
In the mirror, Bontoc caught sight of Korzh signaling. He watched as the man exited the highway, and he made a note of the exit’s number.
Bontoc continued on to the next exit and got off the highway. A combination gas station and general store was up on the right, and he made his way toward it. He parked at one of the pumps and filled up the tank. When he finished, Bontoc went into the store and took his time. He picked out some food to snack on, paid for it, and returned to his truck. As he started up the engine, Bontoc saw Korzh pass by, and he smiled.
He waited a moment, then he exited the gas station’s lot. Ahead of him, Korzh continued on. Bontoc let the distance increase, knowing that the flat land around them would afford him an excellent view of where his prey might turn to.
After almost ten minutes of driving, Korzh turned left down a narrow drive.
When Bontoc passed it, he saw a weathered and damaged sign that read, Hawkins Shipping. A bright, orange and black sign telling trespassers to stay away, hung below the word Shipping.
Bontoc chuckled, kept the pickup at a steady speed and passed by a giant warehouse surrounded by barbed wire and set back far within the center of the defunct company’s property. With the building receding behind him, Bontoc began to look for a place to park and eat, and decide best on how to approach Korzh’s sanctuary.
***
/> Stefan Korzh felt uncomfortable when he lowered the garage door and locked it. For a short time after leaving Uniontown, the hairs on the back of his neck had stood up, a sure sign that someone was following him. But when he had taken an earlier exit, the sense had gone away.
And it had stayed away, at least until he was almost home, and then it appeared again.
I’m tired, he told himself. And I’m going to need to get some rest. If I keep this up, then I won’t be able to do anything, let alone get rid of all of those damned items.
As always, the destruction of his parents’ obsession brought a smile to his face, and Stefan walked to the kitchen. He poured himself a tall glass of vodka and carried it back to his observation room. Making himself comfortable, Stefan checked on his security, found everything to be as it should, and did a cursory examination of his sales.
There were no emails to respond to, or auctions to update, so Stefan turned his attention to the news.
In New Hampshire, he read, another death had occurred in an assisted living home. The third such death, and the news outlets were asking if a serial killer was on the loose.
Stefan smiled.
Of course, there is, he thought, sipping his drink. Only this one’s already dead.
Chapter 32: A Slight Disturbance
“You’re not Victor.”
The words, spoken by a woman, snapped Tom out of sleep.
Around him the bedroom was black, the speaker invisible.
He lay still, hesitant to breathe.
“You can breathe, child,” the woman said, her voice rough and raw. “I will not kill you. I’ve no quarrel with you. I know that my friend is dead.”
“Jeremy?” Tom whispered.
The woman scoffed. “No, not Mr. Rhinehart, although I was saddened to learn of his passing as well. No, I speak of Jean Luc.”
“The goblin,” Tom said. “You’re Madame Le Monde.”
“I am indeed,” she confirmed. “You have excellent manners, young man. I appreciate that. Tell me, where is your friend Victor.”