Katherine sighed with relief and looked up the street toward the other parking lot. The pickup truck was still sitting there in the gathering dark. She reached out and took the proffered can of cold beer.
* * *
Chapter 72
“Hey,” Blake said, when she opened the front door and stepped into the living room still holding the unopened can of Michelob the guys in the car had given her, “drinking and jogging? A new way to stay in shape?”
“Hon,” Katherine said, cutting short his joke, “something happened.”
Blake looked at her and slowly sat down at the kitchen table with his chin in his hand.
“A guy in a truck was after me. Blake, hon, the bastard was after me. And you know what else?”
“Kath. Kath.” Blake said. “What happened?”
“A guy in a pickup truck. A red pickup, Blake, he followed me jogging. He tried to grab me off the sidewalk, I think. And then he was sitting there in the parking lot later waiting for me.”
“Kath, how do you know that? How can you be sure he was after you?”
“And you know what else, Blake? You know how I really know?”
“How, Kath?
“It was the same man,” she said, her voice shaking a bit. “The same guy in our house that night in Ohio and now tonight. Do you believe me?”
“That prowler who broke into our house while I was up here in Massachusetts--I mean I always just thought that was some random thief in the night.” Blake stood and paced.
“That silhouette. The way he stood so still and moved his head back and forth. It was the same as the guy in the parking lot tonight. Exact. The same creep tried to get me in Ohio and tried again to get me tonight.”
“But why, Kath? Why?”
“Connections, Hon. Connections. One little thing. And you and I both know what it is.”
Blake shook his head as if he’d been swimming and was now clearing water from his ears. “Kevin Flanagan?”
“The body of your buddy from Vietnam is discovered,” Katherine said holding up a thumb and starting to count off a list. “That’s number one.” She snapped her forefinger up in the air next to her extended thumb.
“Two, they send his body here to Massachusetts and somebody steals it. Why?
Katherine snapped her middle finger into the air. “Three, you come here to say goodbye to try and straighten out things that happened 25 years ago but on your way here somebody kills your friend James Bradley there in Worthington and then comes to Ohio and tries to get me. Why? Maybe to warn you off something you don’t even know about.”
Katherine took a deep breath and slowly raised her third finger into the air. “Four, you’re still here and so am I. But somebody doesn’t want us to stay around. They don’t want us to figure out where those old bones of Kevin Flanagan ended up.”
Katherine snapped her little finger into the air and held up her hand, palm out with all four fingers and thumb splayed wide like a traffic cop. “Five, somebody wants to do something with the body of Kevin Flanagan and maybe our assignment, though we don’t know why, is to stop whatever is happening. To stop things by getting that body back.”
“Whatever is happening is happening,” Blake said.
“But,” Katherine said. “Big question. Whatever is happening is happening, yes, but the finale hasn’t taken place yet. Somebody doesn’t want us to stumble upon that finale.”
Blake shook his head again. “My big chance,” he said with a forced smile. “My shot at redemption. Interrupt the final dance.”
“Don’t laugh, Hon. That could be it. Really.”
“And the guy in the red pickup trying to get you?”
Katherine looked up at Blake. “Hon, you know it as well as I. He gets me; he takes me out, I disappear and you get frantic but you go away. That’s what he’s after.”
Blake looked at Katherine. “You’re beautiful when you’re sweaty,” he said with a smile.
“Let’s forget that bath together,” Katherine said. “I need a shower and some time to think. Why don’t you come grab me in the bedroom in a bit?”
“Sounds good,” Blake said. “Oh, by the way. Forrest called. Wanted to know if you could do a special weekend show this Saturday with a remote hook up. I guess they really miss you back in Ohio.”
“I guess I could do that,” Katherine said. “Is he going to call back?”
“I told him to call around 9,” Blake said. “Maybe we should fool around after he calls? Certain things shouldn’t be interrupted.”
“Ok,” Katherine said. “I’ll take a shower and lay down for 25 minutes or so. After Forrest calls, I’m going to lure you into bed by standing on my head naked.”
“That, I’ve got to see,” Blake said. “Forrest could talk about that on the show.”
Katherine turned and went upstairs. She stood for a moment on the upstairs porch looking at the purple mountain ranges girdling the Pioneer Valley. She walked into the bathroom and quickly shed her running outfit. The hot pinging water of the shower felt wonderful and bracing. She would figure this thing out. She and Blake together could find the missing bones of his Vietnam buddy. And then they could go back to Ohio.
* * *
PART XIV: The Blue Light
Chapter 73
Katherine finished toweling herself dry from the shower. She walked naked into the guest bedroom that she and Blake had occupied for the past three weeks and partially closed the door, leaving it enough ajar to let in a shaft of light from the hall. She pulled open a bureau drawer and sorted through her underwear, and then put on a pair of her best underpants and a clean tee shirt top. She would rest for 25 minutes or so until Forrest called, and then after that bring Blake upstairs. But now she needed to nap, to drift a bit and think, and try to sort out the day’s events.
She was tired. Fear could do that. Drain your body of its resiliency like a small leak in a swim tube, and she had been terribly afraid less than 30 minutes ago before the college guys had whisked her away from that parking lot and the stranger in the pickup truck. She needed now to lay in bed and rest and let her mind drift over the possibilities revealed that day.
What did she actually know?
Not that much, really. A series of random events connected by a gossamer thread no more visible than a spider’s web at dawn; obvious to her at least, but not to others; now those events were about to coalesce and burst open like an angry thundercloud containing hailstones. Lester Carlson was involved; so was Quabbin Reservoir, where 4 towns and 200 years of history lay buried and forgotten. And there was a crazy old legend about a bitter and fiendish old man who claimed to be a sort of devil. And all of this connected back to the return and subsequent theft of the bones of Kevin Flanagan—MIA soldier from Vietnam; best friend of her husband.
Katherine could hear the television humming softly downstairs. Blake was watching The Simpson’s and Homer Simpson’s sandpaper voice drifted up the stairs as he railed at Marge. The bedroom was in that semi-darkness perfect for a nap; Blake was downstairs, and she felt warm and safe here in this house.
Katherine lay down on the bed and stretched her legs out rubbing her toes together. Twilight had folded into early evening, a wonderful time of day, she thought. When you were lonely, it was the loneliest time of day, but if you were with somebody and happy, it was the best time of day.
There was a quote from Albert Camus that she vaguely remembered about twilight being the hardest time for non-believers. And that was probably true if you interpreted the quote, as she did, that a nonbeliever meant anybody who didn’t have a sense of life and its great possibilities. Evening was a hard time for the moaners and groaners in life; those people who never let in enough joy to balance the knowledge that the whole thing was one big joke that ended the same for everybody anyhow. God, she was getting heavy here—weighty and philosophical all at once.
Katherine stretched her legs again, wiggled her toes, and folded her arms over her chest. Downstairs she could h
ear Blake switching channels on the television. The window was open in the bedroom and Katherine could feel the warm summer breeze rustling through the curtains and gently patting her naked legs. She closed her eyes and drifted toward sleep. She was in that mid region of half consciousness where one lies suspended and almost hypnotized by the weight of approaching sleep when she heard it. A great gust of wind blew straight through the open window throwing the curtains aside. And then the room was still again.
Katherine heard the wind but as if from a great distance. That’s strange, she told herself. It’s not that windy out. I must get up and close that window. But her body would not respond. I must get up and close that window, she told herself again. Wake up. Get out of bed. Close that window. But instead of waking, Katherine felt herself jolted into what she thought for a moment was a dream.
It was like the old falling dream she’d had for years. In that dream she would be someplace high and suddenly start to fall. She would go plummeting down, her head spinning wildly, her stomach constricted in an iron knot and dragging the rest of her body with it in its downward plunge. It was always a fast, jolting descent, and she would come awake the instant before her body struck the ground. A common dream, a psychologist friend had told her, a very common dream.
This was different. She felt the old sensations of the falling dream only in reverse. She was rising up into the air at a sickening pace. Her head was spinning and her stomach fluttering and beating against the cage of her body like an angry hawk trapped in a net. Her stomach tightened and then lurched upward against her windpipe. Katherine couldn’t breathe. She gasped and fought for air.
Wake up!
Wake up, she commanded herself.
This is a bad dream—nothing but a really bad dream. It had always worked with the falling dream. At some point, she could command herself back into control.
Wake up, she shouted in her head.
Stop this now! Right now!
Wake up!
But nothing happened. Instead, she was flying upward at a dizzying speed, launched like some gyrating rocket in a dark cave, twisting and turning and spiraling through a glazed black world. Gasping. Twitching. Moaning.
And then, as she seemed to be hitting the top of her panicked ascent, when it felt as if her stomach would be pulled from her throat by centrifugal force, and her head explode like a balloon forced full of too much air, she unexpectedly felt a popping sensation. Her awful assent stopped. Katherine was now floating peacefully above her bed. The panic and grinding rush of stomach and brain spinning in her body ceased. She looked down. Her body lay on the bed in the dusk, a shaft of light from the hall creeping across the floor. She lay calm, asleep, no longer twitching and fighting; clad in bikini underpants and a red undershirt, her dark, blonde hair spread over the pillow, and her long slender legs stretched out toward the foot of the bad.
This was how Blake would find her, she realized. Katherine looked at herself. What a nice body she thought. Not spectacular, but nice, and reliable, and useful, and well cared for. So easy to look at yourself in the mirror every day and not really see your body. So easy to take it for granted.
Blake would find her. He would walk into this room and see her half naked. In the old days, he would have loved that. He had always admired her body that she took so much for granted.
Even as Katherine floated above her body, another voice was whispering urgently inside her. This isn’t right, the voice kept saying. Get back down there.
Get back to that body of yours.
Don’t drift away like this.
Do something!
Katherine heard and tried to obey. I’ve got to get back inside my body, she told herself. She tried to move toward her body, willing herself downward, but in her suspended state she simply swung about in a slow circle.
This isn’t right. This is just not right, the voice inside her was now screaming. Get back in there!
Katherine struggled again and looked down. She was drifting upward and away, floating beyond the room. Below, her body lay still on the bed, but smaller, at a greater distance.
* * *
Chapter 74
In the guest bedroom, Katherine struggled again for control but still she drifted upward and away. Panic seeped into her like a dark stain slowly spreading over her body.
“I can’t wake up,” she cried to the voice urging her back.
“I can’t get back. I’m dreaming and it won’t stop and I can’t wake up.”
And then she heard it.
High above her a small black hole appeared in the ceiling—or was it carved out of the night sky? She couldn’t tell. From the dark hole came a whooshing sound, the sound of the wind she had heard blowing into the bedroom. It grew louder and she realized she was floating upward toward the hole which was growing larger. The sound of the wind grew into a howl—a hurricane tearing through space. Katherine looked down again. Her body was smaller, tiny really, like a half-naked doll tossed over a toy bed.
The wind howled closer and whistled near her head. Katherine felt suction from the dark hole as if a great pump was drawing in air. A whirlwind boiled near the mouth of the darkness drawing her toward it. Katherine struggled, twisting and turning in space, but the wind drew her toward the hole easily like a vacuum cleaner sucking up dried leaves.
I must wake up, Katherine told herself. I can’t let myself go into that dark hole. All I need to do is wake up and get back to my body and this whole thing will end. Katherine tried to escape from the trance that held her, but even as she summoned her greatest effort the wind and the dark hole pulled her back toward unconsciousness.
The effort was too great.
Not worth it at all.
So soothing to just lie back and let the wind carry you into that peaceful darkness.
The black hole beckoned closer—large and turbulent and swirling with wind like those pictures from the surface of Mars that showed great funnels of dust skipping along a barren surface.
Once more Katherine looked down at her body. It was slim and graceful and had served her well. But it was now time to say goodbye to it. Blake would find her like that. Asleep, but for good. One of those unexplained and puzzling deaths that you read about in the newspaper obituaries.
Katherine struggled at the thought. The black hole was now directly above her, cavern-like, sucking her toward its mouth, a relentless tide drawing her inward. She made a great last effort to break away, thinking of it as an ocean current that she must swim out of to get back to her body that she loved so much.
The black hole broke her effort easily and slowly began to engulf her. She looked down frantically at her body on the bed—miles and miles away. It was goodbye to that body, warm and dependable carrier of the personality known as Katherine McGovern.
Katherine looked up, up into the blackness of the wind-filled cavern. The wind tore at her and howled. Inside, she saw eyes, and hands reaching out to grab her, and deep shimmering pools of coal-black water, and deeper in the cavern, a tiny, sparkling, hard blue light that immediately focused on her.
It was like a hypnotic eye capable of instantly paralyzing its victim. She felt like a small insect caught in a spider’s web and the blue light was the spider drawing her toward it.
The blue light rotated counter-clockwise and spun toward her through the darkness.
No, no, no, she screamed silently. Let me go.
Slowly, inexorably, even gently, the wind began to lift her and draw her into the mouth of the cavern, the hands reached out ready to take hold of her, and the blue light closed the distance swirling closer as it rotated counter-clockwise and re-focused its eye--now larger and brighter and more hypnotic than before. Katherine looked behind her at her bedroom, now a tiny etching in the distance, and then forward where the blackness of the cavern was waiting to engulf her. Was this it—the great beyond that everybody so feared?
This is the end, she thought. I’ll be as brave as I can. And then unbidden, the memory of her father
came to her. He was dead now. Dead for the past 15 years. Dead at the age of 61 from too many cigarettes. Dead from emphysema, a bad way to go. He was dead and released from his furious daily battle for air. He had died hard—a long, drawn-out, and painful death, his last two years spent fighting for the oxygen his lungs could no longer deliver, his face often covered with an oxygen mask that was connected to an inhalator that stood by his bed an impassive and unblinking sentry to his last moments.
He had been a journalist for most of his adult life, and Katherine had gone into radio partly because of him. As a journalist, he had covered local politics, wrote his own column twice a week, and occasionally produced long profiles of local literary figures. The profiles were full of insight and empathy but clouded by a yearning her father couldn’t conceal. Katherine had gone back and read most of her father’s work and the profiles of the famous and the near famous touched her deeply. Her father’s own hopes for literary recognition whispered throughout the writing like a well-mannered understudy mouthing cues from behind the stage. Later in his career, a local publisher had collected his best columns and profiles and published them in a book. Her father had been proud of that book.
They had buried him on a cold grey day in November with the wind blowing hard up North Street, the main street in town, and the sun peeking intermittently through the dark clouds. Though the day was cloudy, Katherine wore her sunglasses sitting in the limousine with her brothers and later at the graveside. And it didn’t seem possible or fair, and it still didn’t seem so today, that he was gone for good. She would never be able to see, touch, argue with, or borrow $20 from him again.
Her father had been so sick toward the end that she had looked upon his death as a blessing--a release from pain. But the hardest adjustment after his death was accepting that she would never see him again. Ever. That was the tough part. The finality of it.
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