Dead and Gone

by Tina Glasneck

  But Dee was not afraid. Careful, but not scared.

  “Nothing,” he said. “You got it, or not?”

  “Well, well, why don’t we cut right to the chase?” Jacob said. “I might have it, but just one question. If she won’t let you smoke, how does she allow you to do this stuff?”

  “That’s not your concern, man,” Dee said, and left it at that. He would meet Jacob on his terms, but he would be damned if he would let the little shit into his business.

  “You aren’t sounding too friendly, Dee,” Jacob replied. “I can always take my wares someplace else.”

  “We don’t need to go through this every time, J,” he said.

  “Don’t treat me like your bitch, then,” Jacob said evenly. “If you keep on doing it, you could find yourself in trouble.”

  “I meant nothing,” Dee said, but the words caught in his throat on the way out.

  Jacob stared at him for a moment, apparently weighing whether or not to do anything.

  “All right,” he said finally, and reached into his pocket.

  It was then that Dee first heard the rumbling. It was low at first, a kind of rhythmic beating that he couldn't place.

  Jacob glanced nervously about.

  “You invite somebody?” he asked, glaring at Dee.

  “Hell no,” he replied.

  They both looked down the road near them. As far as either of them knew, there was never any reason to come out here. It wasn’t even a spot people picked as a make out place. It was too damned creepy.

  The rumbling turned into a pounding and grew steadily louder, enough so that Dee could recognize it for what it was.

  “Who the hell would be riding a horse at this hour?” he asked out loud.

  Jacob shook his head.

  It was then that Dee noticed the air had become completely still. A few minutes ago, it had been active, and now—everything was silent. He didn’t like it.

  “The cops?” Dee asked.

  “No fucking way, man,” Jacob said. “They don’t ride horses around here. Probably some rich dude out for a ride.”

  Dee glanced at his watch.

  “How many fucking rich dudes you know that go riding at 11:00?”

  Jacob didn’t answer. The sound was now getting steadily louder—almost too loud, Dee thought. Should it echo like this?

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” Jacob said. “We’ll just let them pass by. If he stops, we’ll deal.”

  But Dee, already nervous here, didn’t care about the jibe.

  “You stay if you want to,” he said. “No weed is worth this.”

  Dee turned to go to his car.

  And then he saw it, tearing down the road in front of them. The sound seemed to come from all around them and Dee found it hard to take his eyes off him.

  The horseman was riding incredibly fast, his black cape swinging out behind him.

  “Holy shit,” Jacob said, but Dee didn’t look at him. He couldn’t look anywhere else.

  The galloping grew louder and the wind that had vanished came back with a vengeance. Dee felt blown backward, as if it was moving ahead of the rider in a wave. The branches on the trees above him bent backward and he had trouble breathing.

  “Shit, shit,” Jacob said.

  For a second, Dee tore his eyes away to look at Jacob standing on the road. It appeared he could not move either. He just stood there, almost directly in the horseman's path.

  Dee looked back at the rider. He had crossed the distance in remarkable time. Dee clenched his hands and felt sweat gathering on his forehead. He felt the urge to run but was rooted to the ground.

  “Holy shit,” Jacob said.

  Dee looked at Jacob to see what was the matter, but could see nothing.

  Looking back at the rider, he knew.

  The horseman coming at them—his cape billowing—had unsheathed a sword. And there was a second, much more urgent problem—the rider had no head.

  Both boys started screaming then.

  The Headless Horseman came full tilt at Jacob, never slowing or pausing. As Dee watched, the Horseman moved to his left side, letting his blade down on a perfect level for Jacob’s neck.

  Dee wanted to scream or run, but could do nothing.

  Instead, time seemed to slow down and he watched as the Horseman blew by them both, his sword clearly going through Jacob’s neck.

  And then he was gone, riding off into the distance. Dee watched him go, still yelling at the top of his lungs.

  When he looked at his friend, he wasn’t sure what he expected. But whatever it was, he was in for a shock.

  Jacob stood there, in the center of the road—his head still firmly attached to his body—screaming.

  Dee moved over to him and was immediately hit with a foul smell. Looking down, he could see that the other boy had wet himself, or maybe something worse.

  “What was that?” Dee asked.

  But Jacob didn’t respond, his lungs gasping for air and then screaming again. Dee looked for a sign of the blade, some cut or scratch.

  But instead there was nothing.

  All around them, everything had returned to its former shape.

  It seemed like the horseman had never been there at all.

  Dee ran to his car and got moving. He didn’t care about Jacob. He just wanted to get very far away.

  LH File: Letter #3

  Date: Oct. 8, 1994

  Investigation Status: Closed

  Contents: Classified

  Mr. Anderson,

  The article on Weissman was a vast improvement. Even I wanted to cry after reading it. Such promise! Such talent! Such a tragedy!

  Your article made his death sing, it really did. ‘Bob Weissman stares at a photo of his son, who will now be 16 forever.’ Have you been saving that one up? ‘All they want to know is why.’ Well, you could have told them that, couldn’t you? Their son died because he is a sign of the rot that is eating this county from the inside.

  Bob Weissman should never have moved here. He’s not a farmer, he’s not even working class, like most of the Sterling residents. No, he’s just another suburbanite.

  They will take over Loudoun County, I promise you that. They will overrun us like a plague of locusts, tearing down everything in their path so they can put up rows and rows of shiny, metal boxes with no artistry and less personality than a concrete block. I know them, Mr. Anderson. They did it to Fairfax County already. Falls Church was once a small little town. Now, what is it? Just rows of street lights with tacky stores and sub-par restaurants.

  Can you imagine what Leesburg will look like in 10 years, or 20? It will be just another suburb of Washington, D.C., a lifeless carbon copy of Fairfax or Reston. Think of all the history that will be destroyed. Union troops marched through this town, did you know that? They fought with their Confederate enemies at Ball’s Bluff. Over in Waterford, there was actually a Union regiment from Virginia. Many of them died, holed up in Waterford Baptist Church yelling for their mothers as their Virginia brothers shot lead into the building.

  Weissman and his ilk will destroy this. They won’t mean to and that just makes it worse. They’ll come because they want a bigger house, and they won’t care about the added commute, or the acres of farm land that are plowed over to make their new dwelling space. Did Bob Weissman see his son much? Of course he didn’t. He had a 35-minute commute to RBS Industries in Rosslyn.

  That’s the tragedy here. He grieves for a son he barely knew. He worked so hard to “provide” for his family, he never truly had one at all. Did his son think of that, as he bled to death, slowly dragging himself away from me? He didn’t say much, I can tell you that. He just stared at me, whimpering.

  Will I stop the Bob Weissmans of the world? I can’t. I’m one person and the battle to save this land has not been joined. By the time others figure out what is happening, it will be far, far too late. But I will exact a price to pay. There are real ghosts
here, specters that lurk just beyond the streetlight. I am their voice.

  Here I am ranting again, I’m afraid. I’m giving your police handlers lots to think about. Maybe I’ve joined a preservationist organization? I could even be a Civil War reenactor! What do you think?

  I’m glad you finally thought to use my name this time. I would have been so very displeased if you hadn’t. Of course, no mention of the letters—are you planning to save them? Maybe write a book when this is all over? And your description of me is so dry, so impersonal. “Police attribute the murders to a serial killer who calls himself ‘Lord Halloween.’” That’s it?

  But I shouldn’t complain. It’s a start and we have some time left. I promise this will be a month that no one around here ever forgets.

  Yours Sincerely,

  Lord Halloween

  P.S. The next body? Just look around. I made sure even the idiots at the police force could find it quickly.

  7

  “Robert Crowley is hard to quantify. As a poet in his own right, he was mediocre at best. His poems tended to be overly-symbolic with a poor sense of pacing. And yet it would be unfair to leave him out of a discussion of British poetry during the 19th century. Other poets at the time considered him bold and innovative, and later, better masters of the art were influenced by him. But it seems his real claim to fame unfortunately comes from the rather bizarre circumstances surrounding his disappearance. That—if nothing else—assured he was unlikely to be forgotten.”

  Ross MacFarlane, “Scottish Poetry Through the Ages”

  Monday, Oct. 9

  Quinn sat in the early morning darkness staring at his living room wall. He was not really conscious of being there—his thoughts had drifted somewhere else—and it was only with a sudden start he realized he had been staring at the same spot for over an hour.

  He supposed it must have been some manner of dreaming, though he knew he was awake.

  Maybe this will be enough sleep today, he thought grimly.

  He could not be surprised, or even too disappointed. After Saturday evening had gone so well, it was only natural that the night would go badly. The nightmares, always intense, always realistic, had been worse than ever.

  So bad, in fact, that sleeping on Sunday night did not appear to be much of an option. Instead, he had stayed up—at first by watching the TV—and then by reading. He had not nodded off—though he felt incredibly tired—but his mind had wandered.

  Quinn stood up abruptly and crossed over to the window. Sometimes he thought he could still hear the sound of hoof beats out there. But he heard nothing this morning. He tapped his fingernail against the glass and then turned around to get in the shower.

  He was at work by 7:00 in the morning, far ahead of everyone else. He had three goals for the day: the first, and most important, was to talk to Kate again. He wondered if her brief kiss on his cheek had felt the same to her—the electric impulse that had spread through his body. He doubted it. Then he smiled at himself. This is what it was like when he was depressed and running on no sleep. He doubted everything.

  The second goal was to attend Sheriff Brown’s press conference on the stalker. Quinn leaned back in his chair. Well, maybe “stalker” was a little strong. Peeping-Tom, perhaps? It didn’t matter. The story had provided him with fodder for two months. A man, always hiding in shadow, spying on houses in Leesburg’s outskirts. More than a dozen people thought they had caught a glimpse of him, and on at least two occasions, police had been called out to find evidence of an attempted break-in.

  It was, sad to say, Quinn’s favorite story at the moment. He had slim pickings in the town itself and crime was usually crowded out by Kyle. But Kyle had dismissed the stalker story as unimportant—a phantom no less—and so it had become Quinn’s. And if now it was a story “with legs,” it remained in Quinn’s purview.

  He hated the idea that he could be territorial—he despised Helen’s insistence that any article on the board of supervisors go through her first—but good stories were hard to come by.

  Though he was not expecting much, he assumed the sheriff would face the normal angry parents and concerned citizens during the conference. Enough for a story. Enough so that Quinn actually had something other than business to write for the week.

  He sighed. It was not supposed to be like this.

  The phone startled him out of his reverie and for a minute he glared at it like it was some strange alien being. It was so early in the morning, who the hell would be calling him?

  “Quinn O’Brion,” he said, picking up the line.

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Hello?” he asked again.

  “Quinn,” the voice said. “I didn't expect you to be there.”

  It took a second for Quinn to place the voice.

  “Then why were you calling now, Gary?” he asked.

  They both knew why. Gary was notoriously hard to catch on the phone, mostly because he hated talking to the press. Quinn was an exception. But Gary still felt that every conversation with Quinn endangered his job with the Leesburg police.

  He was probably right.

  “Uh...” Gary drifted off.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Quinn said quickly, worried Gary would hang up.

  “What's going on?”

  There was a long silence on the other end.

  “Gary?” Quinn asked. “You still with me?”

  “Yeah,” Gary said finally. “I’m here.”

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  “The press conference is off.”

  “What? Why? Did they catch him?” Quinn asked hopefully. His pulse quickened as he smelled a good story.

  “If they caught him, don’t you think there would be a bigger press conference?” Gary said. “They certainly wouldn’t cancel it.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Quinn waited. This was the best policy with squirrelly sources. Secretly they want to talk. It is just a question of pausing long enough for them to spill it all out.

  “There is a lot of commotion,” Gary said after some time had passed.

  “What kind of commotion?”

  “It’s very hush-hush,” he said. “They won’t tell anybody anything.”

  “What do you mean by commotion?”

  “Yesterday, they called in a bunch of guys,” Gary said. “But they never told us what it was for. A lot of us were just standing around with nothing to do.”

  “So they called in a lot of guys on a Sunday and then didn’t do anything with them?”

  “About right,” Gary replied, keeping his voice low. “And then...”

  Quinn paused again. It was all he could do not to ask more questions, but he paced himself. It wouldn't do to rush this.

  “Then Stu came out. You know Stu, don’t you?”

  “Brown’s deputy? The one always hovering around him that looks scared of his own shadow?”

  “Er... yeah,” Gary said. “Anyway, Stu came out and told the boys to go home. Said it was a mistake made by a dispatcher or something.”

  “That’s weird, but I guess it’s possible...”

  “Well, we all thought so too, but... then he said something weird,” Gary said.

  The conversation drifted to silence.

  Finally Quinn couldn’t take it anymore.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that we shouldn't mention this to anybody,” Gary replied. “He said it would be embarrassing if everybody knew about it.”

  Quinn laughed.

  “Who gives a shit if the dispatcher called in a few guys for no reason?”

  “That’s what we thought,” Gary said.

  “And then Stu called a couple guys back. Johnny Redacker and the Kaulbach kid. They looked confused and went into his office. We caught up with them later and Kaulbach looked sick.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were at the bar…”

  “On a Sunday?�
�

  “Hey, we already had to come into work, why not?”

  “Fine, fine,” Quinn said. “What do you mean sick?”

  “I was telling you,” Gary said.

  “Okay,” Quinn said.

  “No sense in me talking to you if you are just going to interrupt,” Gary said again.

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “I’m sorry.”

  Gary waited.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said again.

  Gary cleared his throat and continued.

  “Kaulbach and Redacker came in and the two of them were all sullen and quiet. That isn’t like Johnny at all, of course, and we were all curious to know what the hell was going on, so we started asking them questions. But they wouldn’t say nothing. Johnny started giving us the procedural bullshit, you know, ‘It’s against policy,’ all that jazz. I swear he is to big for his britches ever since Stu promoted him. Last week, he actually told me…”

  “Gary?” Quinn interrupted. It was best to keep the guy on track.

  “Right, right,” he said. “So Johnny is clamming up and the whole time Kaulbach looks like he is going to faint or something. Finally, he excuses himself. I went after him, because the kid is new, you know?”

  “Also you thought he might spill his guts?” Quinn asked.

  “Well, that is what he was doing,” Gary replied. “He was puking his lungs out. I mean really just pouring it out.”

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “You don’t need to paint a picture.”

  “I asked him if he was okay, you know, after he finished, and he said he was. I asked him what had happened and he said, ‘Stu said we could lose our jobs if we said anything.’”

  “That it?”

  “Well, then this morning I get in early and I find this voicemail from Stu. It said the press conference today is canceled, and if anybody asked why, I was to tell them that Brown is sick or something.”

  “Pretty lame,” Quinn said. “And since when do you handle press? You won’t talk to Kyle so...”

  “That cocksucker,” was all Gary said.