Call Me Dreamer

by Ryan Maitland

  Now, for anyone that says I should be trying to help the ghosts, I’ve got a few things to say to you… For one thing, what makes you so sure I can help them? Ghosts are just like people in that they are needy, avoid the obvious issues, and may refuse to listen to any advice you care to give them. For another thing, what makes you so sure that wherever they’re going is better? What if hell is real and they’ll go off to face eternal suffering? Or what if there isn’t anything beyond here? Which is better? Their scant existence now or total oblivion? And finally, why should I sacrifice my life for their afterlife? Haven’t I suffered enough?

  There; rant over…

  It was a long day spent touring the various cemeteries and graveyards in and around the city. Earl looked tired, while I was exhausted. The weirdest part? I hadn’t had anything to eat since I tried a slice of Earl’s pizza last night and yet the thought of food made me a little nauseous…

  Earl looked like he worried about me… It’s unusual for me to turn down food, but I had done it several times today…

  I told him to chalk it up to the goriness of what I had seen throughout the day and he seemed to accept that, muttering that he was grateful he couldn’t see them.

  I confess that I envied Earl that day…

  It was early evening when we drove away from the last site. I had narrowed the list from twenty possible spots down to three likely spots, assuming our theory that the killer was using ghosts to scare his victims to death was correct.

  Earl relayed the three locations to Simon over the phone. A few minutes later, Earl growled in annoyance as he hung up.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, pushing back my rising panic.

  “According to Simon,” Earl answered, clenching a fist, “the local police are a little… strained at the moment… something about budget cuts and layoffs and a seminar or something…”

  “So, there won’t be as many people watching the three locations?” I asked, not liking the sound of this.

  “Not just that,” Earl sighed, looking at me mournfully. “With so many access points to the locations, and so few personnel to keep watch, we’ll have to take one of the sites to watch…”

  “Tell me you’re joking!” I demanded, panic rocketing to the surface.

  “I wish I was…” Earl retorted sorrowfully…

  “Hell and blast!” I scoffed, hating everything about this situation…

  Earl just nodded before driving to our assigned stakeout location…

  Chapter 18

  Stakeout

  “You know,” Earl mentioned, looking at me as I nervously looked out the car windows, “I could take you back to the motel. There’s still time.”

  “Oh no!” I insist, banishing the idea from his thoughts. “You are not leaving me alone on Halloween night in a motel where people have probably died!”

  “So, you’d rather be here in the car next to a cemetery?” Earl asked patronizingly.

  “At least here I have someone that understands what I’m going through,” I mutter more to myself than to him. “Someone who won’t think I’m crazy…”

  “Someone that won’t be bothered too much by your screams of terror?” Earl mocked, earning him a sharp glare from me.

  “I am not going to scream!” I insist just before I hear a scream that makes me jump coming from the graveyard we’re parked across the street from.

  “What are you hearing?” Earl asked, sounding genuinely interested for a change.

  “Screams,” I tell him matter-of-factly. “Moans, wails, sickening crunches, and disgusting gurgles…” I add, panting a little.

  Of all the sites we could have picked for our stakeout, Earl had volunteered to monitor the place I pegged as number one on my list of worst places I wanted to be on Halloween night. It was a medium-sized cemetery, with only one entrance, but from what Earl found out, they had shuffled some graves around at one time, so some of the coffins might have been… stacked. This meant a… higher than average population of ghosts, many of whom were disgruntled at having to share space with so many others…

  We had already been sitting here for over an hour and we still had an hour to go until nightfall, when we suspected the killer would make their move. Hell and blast, they probably already had their next victim by now!

  That is, assuming they would strike tonight and in this city at all… For all we knew, they were a hundred miles from here or taking the day off!

  My stomach grumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since this morning… Dr. Drake, my hematologist, would not approve of me skipping meals! It’s just that, after seeing all the mutilated ghosts on our tour of the cemeteries, the very thought of food made me nauseous…

  I guess that’s past now…

  I reach into my bag and pull out my stash of homemade jerky. Glancing to my left, I see Earl eyeing me quizzically…

  “Would you like a piece?” I ask out of politeness.

  “Sure, I’ll give it a try!” he answers enthusiastically. “Jerky is great stakeout food!”

  “Good to know,” I acknowledge before pulling out my own piece. I set it on my tongue and let it sit there for a moment as my salivary glands wrench painfully for a moment before settling down. I let my tongue rehydrate the meat somewhat before I start chewing, enjoying the savory tang of the teriyaki and the slight hint of heat from the chipotle peppers whose heat is moderated by the honey. Oh, yes! This was a recipe I would definitely keep on hand! Maybe next time I’d try it with some pork…

  “Wow!” Earl exclaims, looking surprised. “This is really good!”

  “Thank you,” I smile, glad to be appreciated.

  “Is this homemade?” Earl asked after swallowing.

  “It is,” I answer, trying not to preen at the praise.

  “Ever consider selling your jerky?” he asked, sounding slightly serious.

  “Too much work,” I murmur, shrugging the thought away. “Besides, it’s not like I need the money…” I add as an afterthought.

  “Fair point,” Earl conceded gracefully, scanning the area around us.

  Hours passed as we tried to keep ourselves awake and sane. We chatted for a bit about nothing in particular. We listened to the radio, which I preferred since it helped drown out the sounds from the cemetery, and we took turns looking out with the night-vision binoculars Earl had brought.

  The sun had set hours ago and I was beginning to hope that we might have been mistaken about this whole thing and nothing would happen tonight.

  When have I ever been that lucky?

  It was almost midnight when I heard a loud cacophony of shouts, screams, and sounds of blistering rage coming from behind us.

  I looked back, but I couldn’t see anything, so I yank the night-vision goggles out of Earl’s hands and I see him… The man is tall… like basketball-player tall, but that’s all I can really make out of the killer directly.

  Besides, it’s not him that holds my attention… it’s the limp body slung over his shoulder that has me worried.

  “Earl!” I hiss, pointing. “It’s him!”

  Earl grabs the binoculars a bit more gently than I had and points them out the side window.

  Funny thing about being a spooky is that ghosts don’t show up when viewed through a digital screen, but do show up when using purely optical cameras or binoculars. When I had looked at the killer through the night-vision binoculars, I didn’t see anybody, but now that I was looking at him with my own eyes, I saw at least a dozen ghosts surrounding him!

  “He’s killed more times than we know…” I murmured to Earl, starting to panic a little.

  Earl glanced at me, but stayed silent as he watched the man head up to the cemetery gates, use some gadget that looked sort of like a gun on the lock, and open it before heading inside.

  Earl hastily dug out his phone and barked out instructions to the person on the other end. His temper flared as whatever conversation he was having dragged on before ending with a growl of frustration!

&nbs
p; “What’s wrong?” I asked, trying hard to tamp down my rising panic. “How soon before backup gets here?”

  “Backup’s not coming,” Earl sighed angrily.

  “What?!” I gasp, my own anger helping me deal with the dread that one sentence instilled in me.

  “They’re getting reports of break-ins at other cemeteries,” he tells me, frustration heavy in his voice. “Including some that weren’t on your list!”

  “You think there are other killers out there?” I ask, appalled at the idea.

  “No,” he answers, shaking his head. “It’s probably just kids playing pranks or being evil little bastards. This happens everywhere on Halloween night…”

  “But you need to get the cops here!” I hiss, anger overwhelming my fear at the moment.

  “I know!” Earl hissed back. “But I can’t convince them that the man I saw is the real killer!”

  “So, what now?” I ask, panic threatening my voice.

  “Now,” Earl tells me, his voice turning to one of resignation. “Now I go in after him and you stay in the car!”

  “Um, okay…” I whimper, hating everything about this idea.

  “Here,” Earl says as he hands me something that looks like a pen, but is much heavier. It feels like metal, but has grips along the side for easy handling. As small as it is, it feels pretty hefty.

  “What is it?” I ask, bringing it closer to my eyes to get a better look at it. The back end of it is flat, but when I push it, it doesn’t click like I expect it to. Further examination reveals that only by twisting one end does the actual pen come out.

  When I reach out my other sense, I get a strong signal into Earl’s head.

  Jane shouldn’t be here. She should be safely back in her haunted house, where she’s safe! Not here, with a serial killer on the loose!

  All these thoughts rush through his head, before he answers, and I’m more relieved than I probably should be that he’s worried about me.

  “It’s a tactical pen,” he tells me as he checks to make sure his gun is ready. “If anybody but me comes up to the car, stab them with the pen.”

  “Is this legal?” I ask, a little horrified at hurting somebody.

  “Everywhere,” he answers simply, a malicious smile on his face.

  “Now,” he adds, his voice turning deadly serious, “stay here!”

  I nod understanding as I clutch the little pen.

  As if I was going to go anywhere…

  Earl gets out, gun in hand, and locks the door, before heading into the land of the dead…

  Yeah, the spooky atmosphere of the cemetery was definitely getting to me…

  Chapter 19

  The Cryptic Killer

  It felt like Earl was gone for hours, but the clock on the car’s dashboard insisted it was less than five minutes, meaning there were just a few more minutes to midnight, the hour that some call ‘the witching hour’ which is stupid, since witches aren’t real… take it from someone accused of being a witch every day of my young life!

  Earl tapped on the passenger-side window, startling me enough to scream like a little girl in a horror movie! Earl quickly shined his flashlight on his face, showing me it was just him, which made me breathe a little easier.

  “I need your help,” he told me, sounding desperate.

  “With what?” I asked, getting angry. Hell and blast! Haven’t I done enough already?

  “I… well… I lost him in the cemetery!” he admitted, looking embarrassed.

  “You lost him?” I gasped, my anger rising. “How could you lose him?” I hissed at him.

  “There are a lot of large memorials,” he explained, his own anger starting to heat his voice. “You can hear him, but I can’t!”

  Dammit Earl! I felt like I was doing all the heavy lifting on this case and I wanted nothing more than to run home, turn on all the lights of my house, and snuggle up with Mr. Fluffybutt while singing to Peter and Wendy. Instead, I was far from home, in the middle of the night on Halloween, and being asked to walk into a cemetery full of ghosts to find a serial killer in order to save their next victim!

  I could refuse… I could stay in the car and deny that Earl was there…

  But if I did that, then somebody would surely die tonight and a killer would get away… and that death, and any that would follow from that would be on my conscience!

  “I cannot believe I’m doing this!” I mutter as I get out of the car, clutching the metal pen Earl had given me. Earl just nodded, looking totally focused on the task ahead of us.

  I moved with faltering steps into the cacophony of the cemetery. Whoever coined the phrase ‘silent as the grave’ was clearly not a spooky…

  As I moved deeper into the cemetery, figures leapt out at me, startling me badly enough that I was afraid that my little shrieks would alert the killer that we were here and they would run and we’d never catch them!

  “I hate this… I hate this… I hate this…” I chanted quietly to myself.

  “What do you hear?” Earl whispered. I could still hear him despite all the noise around me, which I took as further proof that the sounds I was hearing completely bypassed my ears and entered straight into my head.

  A man in a business suit stumbled towards me, making me falter a step as I hastened to get away from him. The man had a red stain on his white shirt that told me he had been shot.

  “Please, there’s been a mistake!” he wailed. “I shouldn’t be here! I’m not dead! I can’t be!” he rambled, trying to latch onto me as if I was some kind of savior.

  “Begging, pleading, screams, and wails,” I answered Earl in a whisper, hoping he heard me.

  “Can you find him?” Earl asked, starting to sound panicked. Was he starting to hear them, too? Or was it that he was just creeped out to be in a graveyard in the middle of the night?

  “I’m not sure…” I mutter, part of me hoping we wouldn’t find them… After all, what business did I have confronting a serial killer?

  After a few more steps, though, I heard something odd… I heard… laughter! The sound was so… out of place that I turned to it, focusing in on it. I turned to my right, leaving the paved track, and started moving towards the sound of the laughter, if only to see where it was coming from!

  “Jane?” Earl asked, following me.

  “I hear laughter…” I told him, starting to feel numb.

  “Laughter?” he echoed, sounding perplexed.

  “Laughter,” I repeated.

  Then I thought about it and it started to make sense. If our theory was right, and the killer was targeting people who had ghosts anchored to them, and was then killing them with fright, then it would make sense for the ghost anchored to the victim to rejoice that their killer was being brought to the most permanent justice…

  “I think it’s the ghost anchored to the victim,” I whisper to Earl, still stepping slowly, cautiously, towards the laughter.

  Earl seemed to consider this a moment, probably thinking along the same lines I had just done, before responding with a quiet, “Okay, good. Follow it, Jane!”

  Tch… as if he had to tell me…

  I follow the sound over a low hill, ignoring every other ghost that is begging me for help, and come across a disturbing scene. I see a tall, blonde, man crouching over a limp man on the ground as the killer shines a light on his own face with a small flashlight. The killer has tight, curly, blonde hair and his face is set in one of righteous fury as he mutters something to the victim on the ground. Beside the large man on the ground is a younger man, perhaps high-school-aged, wearing shorts and a t-shirt that is laughing and dancing around the victim.

  This is the source of the laughter…

  The young man has short black hair that looks like it just came out of a shower. His clothes are soaked as well, and, at first, I think he drowned, especially given how pale he is, but then I see two long red gashes on the young man’s arms. They are inflamed and bleeding, running from his wrists to the middle of his forear
m.

  The young man had committed suicide… and now he was laughing at the man on the ground…

  “Distract him while I run around behind him,” Earl commands urgently in a whisper.

  “Why can’t you just arrest him now?” I hiss back at him, wanting this ordeal to be over with…

  “If I try to arrest him now, he’ll run and then I’ll lose him again!” Earl retorts, anger coming back into his voice. I guess he doesn’t like having his orders questioned…

  “Oh, fine!” I pout at him, stamping my foot a little. “But if he tries to kill me, you shoot him! Clear?”

  “Don’t worry,” Earl reassures. “I’ll keep him in sight the entire time. If he tries anything, it’ll be the last thing he ever does!”

  I nodded mutely, only mildly reassured at this promise, and Earl moved off to my left. He seemed surprisingly quiet, so I gave him to the count of twenty before I moved closer to the scene.

  I confess that I could not have been more terrified at this point… If the killer had a gun or something, then there would be little Earl could do to protect me… I envisioned what would happen: I would get close, startling the killer into drawing their gun. He’d panic at being discovered and fire before Earl could aim. I’d get shot, perhaps in a way that wasn’t immediately fatal, but with my blood disorder, any wound would bleed out and I’d be dead.

  Yet, despite this, I found my feet moving forward, towards what could only be my doom.

  Then, inspiration struck! I didn’t have to be Jane! I could be the cold-hearted bitch Agent Dreamer! Would Agent Dreamer be intimidated by this psychopath? Hell no! She’d see him as the scum on the bottom of her shoe! This bastard would only be worth noticing just long enough to scrape him off!

  With this realization, I decided to wear Agent Dreamer like a mask, as if I was a character in a play. I could convince myself this wasn’t real just long enough to get through this. I could fall apart later, but for right now, I needed to play the bitch to save the killer’s next victim!

  I stepped up to the three people I could see, the killer, the victim, and the ghost. Rather than fear, I tried my best to show a face full of anger at being inconvenienced at having to be out here in the middle of the night. I glanced, briefly, at the man on the ground. He was a portly man wearing dark trousers. He was naked above the waist and I could see a pale, hairy, chest that had bigger boobs than I did. On the upper left part of the man’s chest, I could see a patch of red, inflamed, numbers that I couldn’t make out from where I was.