The Two-Knock Ghost

by Jeff Lombardo

  Through a cumulus nimbus cloud that looked like a faceless body builder on steroids, emerged the crimson Lucifer carrying his pitchfork. He too was ablaze with flame, though undeterred as he directed the clouds to give up more lightning bolts to the tree.

  The live oak was helpless this night as piece by piece it ignited with a ferocity that only the devil himself could conjure. Christine and I were still on the swing, terrified that at any instant we too would ignite and suffer torturous deaths. And then it happened again—knock, knock—sounds differentiated from the thunder claps. But the knocks were not coming from the once idyllic scene, now ruined by Lucifer’s demonism. They were coming from my front door, twenty feet away from my dream bed. Suddenly my attention was divided between how to get Christine and I off the swing, which was a high fifteen feet off the ground and what the Two-Knock Ghost might do if it got into the house and made its way to my dream.

  As the oak continued to burn, I noticed the flames drawing near to the ropes that supported the swing.

  “Christine,” I said both logically and comfortingly, “if you scrunch down next to me, we can wait for the fire to burn through the rope allowing our end of the swing to fall five feet closer to the ground, then we could jump. It would only be a fall of ten feet, a lot better than fifteen.”

  “You lead, I’ll follow,” she said, confidently.

  I liked the sound of that, even though I knew it was only a dream. The devil was still in the muscle bound cloud laughing at our plight.

  Yet again, knock knock, this time sounding closer, as if it was at my bedroom door. “Come in already you pathetic sissified demon. What more could you do to me than the devil has already done?”

  I was angry now, angrier than I’d ever been before in a devil dream because Christine was with me. I would fight with the strength of Spartacus to keep him from hurting her.

  The swing jolted an inch toward the scorched grass beneath the oak.

  “After we land, we get up right away and get to the brook as quickly as possible.”

  “Okay,” she said frightened but compliant.

  Knock, knock!

  “Come in already!” I screamed angrily.

  Christine couldn’t hear the knocks. The ghost behind them was my solitary curse.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “No one, Christine.”

  And I wasn’t lying. I didn’t know still, after all these weeks, who or what the Two-Knock anonymous was.

  The rope burned through, the swing slid closer to the ground and Christine and I jumped. Only slightly shaken, we held each other’s hands and raced for the brook. The refreshing water cooled our overheated skin and we huddled there in a tender embrace. For once, it felt like I had beaten the devil. He was still up in the muscle cloud, but I couldn’t figure out why he was laughing. Christine and I were safe in cool water. We hadn’t burned to death. Why was he laughing?

  A moment later, he told me in no uncertain terms as he began to speak, the knocks could be heard behind him as if a demon accompaniment.

  “You can have her in a dream, McKenzie, but you’ll never have her in real life. I’ll see to that. In real life you’ll both go up in flames. There will be no brook or tree to protect you. You’re higher power is a wimp compared to me. You’ll have no one to protect you because you believe you have no one to protect you from me, while I have legions to back me up in my quest to destroy you.”

  I clung to Christine in the brook, as she clung to me. Yet I was aware it was only a dream. I wondered for a moment if she could help me fight the devil, but even in the dream I realized that in real life she had been aloof from me since I had moved out. She may not be punishing me, but I know she had high expectations for me to become a better man. I knew I was in the fight of my life, not only to win her back, but to defeat the devil in his evil nocturnal assaults and get the Two-Knock Ghost to reveal itself and face my fear of it head on.

  Slowly, I watched the devil fade into the thunder cloud with only his hideous grin remaining—an atrocious antithesis to the Cheshire cat. As I held my wife in the soft purling of the cool brook, I watched the entire scene around me begin to dissipate. The flaming oak began to dissolve. The clouds turned black and slowly their blackness descended to the emerald grass inching its way toward the brook. I turned myself to face my wife and kissed her with conviction.

  “I love you, Christine. And I promise we will be together soon.”

  In the fleeting instant of that moment I wanted to believe we would be together soon. I prayed to my higher power that we would be together soon. But I was doubtful I could keep my promise, especially as Christine and I began to fade, the last thing I saw from the corner of my evaporating eye was Satan’s malevolent grin.

  * * * * *

  If I had not been a focused and determined man before that dream, I became an obsessed and compulsive man the next morning. I was out of bed fifteen minutes before the alarm clock clicked on to WFLA, Jack Taylor, and Ted Webb. Perfect. I walked straight to my small console piano and played Christine’s new song two times, slightly up tempo to save time. I had it down now, no mistakes. Then I left the piano, put my socks and tennis shoes on and was ready for my forty-five-minute run across the street through Five Towns.

  My run completed, I was ready to face the day with vigor. My bad habits were becoming behaviors of the past. And my new habits were old friends with whom I had fallen out of touch. I was being dogged by the devil and a cowardly ghost in my dreams, but I was taking steps to face them down. And even though the devil had told me that I had no one to help me, I still believed in my new relationship with my higher power and my new psychologist, Dr. Banderas.

  I told myself: “Live for your new behaviors and you’ll be living for the people you love and care about.” Where that thought came from, I am not certain, but once I had it, I wondered about what it really meant even though I would say it repeatedly throughout the passing days.

  I thought about what it actually meant to live for the people I loved and cared about, by living my new habits. Part of that concept was easy to understand, as I realized that I was already making progress to rebuild relations with Christine and my children. But what about my clients, each of whom I cared about in various ways? In my recent new age of awareness, another one hit me abruptly as I was driving and thinking at about Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street North. How many clients had I cheated through subpar thinking, considering their cases with a sluggish alcohol muddled brain? It hurt me to ponder that, but I didn’t let it destroy me. The past was irretrievable. The only way I could make up for damage I caused my clients due to my shoddy homework, was to cease drinking and think with a clearer head in the future. I would do it. Night terrors aside, I doubted there was anything now that could provoke me to drink. Like the times I used to think that all other alcoholics were totally different and weaker than I was, I now started thinking that I would be completely free from alcohol substantially quicker than any alcoholic I’d ever met or listened to speak.

  The next week I lived for my date with Christine and my appointments with Mary Bauer and Dr. Banderas. First came Dr. Banderas. When he asked me how I was doing, I was proud to tell him that I had jogged six times since our last visit, lost three more pounds, switched to a high protein diet, logged four and a half hours of practice time on the piano and was writing my second song for Christine in the past ten days. When I told him my personal accomplishments, I noticed a bright glint in his eyes which accompanied a wry smile. Here I was, sitting across from him in the luscious plant room, proud to tell him of my accomplishments and he was looking back at me, a man I hardly knew, exuding a sense of appreciation for those accomplishments. How easy it was for me to like somebody.

  “What about your dreams?”

  I recounted my singular dreams of consequence that I’d had in the past week with as much detail as I could.

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sp; “What do you think it means?” he asked me when I finished speaking.

  Lazily, I answered, “I don’t know. What do you think it means?”

  He wrinkled his face for the first time since I met him.

  “I don’t think I know you well enough to venture an opinion at this time, Dr. McKenzie.”

  He used the more formal tack with me than the familiar Robert to make a point.

  “I did notice a couple of similarities to the dreams you had previously, however. You dreamed about the devil again and as terrifying as that may have been, he was upstaged by your Two-Knock Ghost who was loud and persistent but who remained behind its protective curtain. Even though you cannot explain to me what you think about your dream in its entirety, perhaps you could suggest to me why the devil, who you don’t believe in, continues to haunt you or at least why you think the Two-Knock Ghost persists in intruding into your dreams, but not revealing what it is.”

  I wanted to say, “That’s why I’m here, Doc, to have you tell me as soon as possible what’s going on with these nocturnal demons.”

  Again, all I could do was to shake my head no and to look totally ignorant, which I was. I thought but did not say it, “Not a very good psychologist, am I?”

  “I have continued to think about your dream characters extremely often, Robert.” The glint in his eyes having given way to a more serious, but caring affect.

  “I have begun to theorize that your disbelief in the devil may have come as a reaction to having been introduced to him in a terrifying way as a child. Somewhere along the development of yourself as a man, you probably concluded that however frighteningly the devil was introduced to you, it was wrong to teach a child in that manner—the manner of threatening a child’s immortal soul with fire and brimstone. Yet all these years later this demon is entrenched in your subconscious and wreaking havoc in your dreams. As far as the Two-Knock Ghost, my theories are more inchoate and obfuscated.”

  “So are mine,” I answered. “It’s been a multi month annoyance and I still know as little about it now as I did in the beginning.”

  “I will venture to say this,” Dr. Banderas continued, “I believe these two entities to be somehow inexorably linked. I believe that as we research one, we will inevitably understand more about the other. What do you think about that?”

  He had put forth a theory, yet he was engaging my opinion about it.

  “I think you may be right,” I answered, feeling exactly that.

  “When you dream about one, do you dream about the other?”

  I thought for a very long moment. My therapist was extremely patient with me.

  “When I think about it, I would conclude that in the far greater majority of times when I dream about them both.”

  “That is good, Robert. You’re answer supports my theory. Would you like to hear more of what I have been hypothesizing of your Two-Knock Ghost?”

  “Please.”

  “Because of the uniqueness of the ghost, I believe that the ghost itself is inexorably linked to you, as much, if not more to you than it is linked inextricably to Lucifer.”

  “We’ll have to see about that,” I said, more surprised than disbelievingly. He was much farther along in his speculation of the Two-Knock Ghost in ten days than I was after several months.

  “I don’t know what conclusions that you’ve come to in your long years of practice Robert, or in your even longer life, but where I’m at in my thinking at the age of seventy-two, is that nothing stands alone in our minds. Everything is closely intertwined. Even the distance of years between events does not negate how closely things are connected in the confine so of the subconscious. The key to understanding these emotional proximities is to unravel them string by string until we discover the truth at the core.”

  He made sense to me. And it was comforting knowing that I was no longer alone in pursuing the core of the Two-Knock Ghost. My dilemma was not remotely knowing how the strings were wound around its core. I’d only had a few variations to the theme of this invisible pest. One was the loudness of the knocks. Another was whether they seemed frenzied or relaxed. Another was how many times the dual thuds had occurred within a dream. Otherwise, the Two-Knock Ghost was shapeless, formless, faceless. Was it Dr. Banderas’s objectivity that had him moving along more quickly than I was in solving the riddle of one of my rude demons?

  “I know that you are pondering this all the time Robert. But the prospective that I am going to pursue this from is that the devil and the Two-Knock Ghost are inseparable in your mind. You cannot have one without the other.”

  We continued talking with one another for the rest of our hour, with me sharing all kinds of revelations of my children, Christine, my parents, grandparents, my drinking, my practice, my childhood, my fears, my joys, my nocturnal dreams and the aspirations I had for the future.

  I left there liking him more than I had at the end of our first session. I had more respect for him also, primarily because I could see him systematically turning the cup of my life over and over in his attempt to find the truths at my core.

  CHAPTER 16

  AT 3:30 THURSDAY morning Toby Magnessun was at headquarters with his partner, Patrick. They were both fully suited, including a bulletproof vest, meeting with Detectives Mills and Barclay. They were discussing how they were going to make the arrest of Reubin Tatum at 5:00 a.m. at Eddie Green’s baby sister’s house on Sixteenth Avenue and Fourteenth Street South, less than four blocks from Eddie’s home. Their information on how to do this was based on a mountain of credible intel that Eddie Green had given Toby and Detectives Mills and Barclay. There had been three meetings of approximately an hour in length. Eddie explained to them that Thursday morning would be a perfect time to execute an arrest warrant because Reubin was a habitual Wednesday night “clubber” and that he’d always take Natalia, get shit-faced, dance like a mad man until 2:00 a.m., then do or sell drugs or both, then go back to the house with Natalia and collapse into bed about 4:00 a.m. Eddie had assured the detectives and Toby that Reubin’s patterns were unalterable.

  After extensive discussions with their superiors, it was decided that the four men in two police cars would be sufficient to arrest Reubin Tatum. Eddie had assured them that Reubin would be there alone with Natalia. There would be only one bad guy to deal with and he would be fast asleep. The detectives would enter through the front door soundlessly, using a key that Natalia had given her big brother for emergencies. She had one to Eddie’s house also. Toby would wait in the back yard in case Reubin somehow made it out the back door. Patrick would wait outside the squad car in the alley blocking the get away from that slot.

  They all agreed that this would be an easy arrest. The key to the front door would assure the inevitability of a successful operation. There was little or no fear from any of the four arresting officers. In fact, there was excitement and happiness, joy even, in each of them because they knew that by 5:08 a.m. one of St. Pete’s most dangerous thugs would be out of commission.

  At exactly 5:00 a.m., before the slightest bit of daylight graced the morning sky, Art Barclay, father of three, devoted husband of twenty-seven years, twice decorated police officer of thirty-two years, inserted the key in the lock on the front door. His partner of sixteen years, Larry Mills, also a father of three, devoted husband of twenty-three years and also twice decorated, with thirty years of service, was at his left side. One minute earlier they had commented how dark, quiet and peaceful the house looked, as if it were sleeping along with the inhabitants inside.

  “Piece of cake,” Barclay whispered as he turned the key.

  It was pitch-black inside the room they were entering. The only sound was the gentle whirring of the air conditioner. Barclay handed the opening door off to Mills so Mills could make sure that the door opened all the way and without sound. That small task completed, both officers of the law placed their initial footsteps simu
ltaneously inside the house. The pellets hit each of their faces with such force that they nearly flew backward out the open door. They collided in midair in their flight to their final resting spots. But they were oblivious to the colliding because both men were dead already from scores of pellets that blasted their foreheads, eyes, mouths, and necks and nestled in various parts of their brains. Death had been instantaneous. A loud sound, a flash of fiery light, then nothing.

  At the instant of the blast, three men reacted in different ways. Reubin Tatum knew that he was going from sleep to a fight for his life. In the back yard, 15 feet from the backdoor, Toby drew his weapon and assumed a readiness stance he had learned at the Police Academy, gun pointed toward the back door. A hundred feet behind him, Patrick radioed for backup.

  Tatum grabbed his second shotgun—his favorite weapon of choice—that was resting next to his right side while Natalia woke terrified to his left.

  “Stay here and don’t move,” he told Natalia, not expressing concern, but as a thug who didn’t want her hindering his escape route. She didn’t move, except to shake and cower under the sheet. Reubin, clad only in white Jockey shorts, grabbed for his jeans and T-shirt that were preplaced on a nearby chair. His car keys were in his pants pocket and instead of putting on his regular tennis shoes, he slid on a pair of blue flip-flops. He was dressed in twenty-four seconds.

  He had never planned to exit by the front door. He figured there might be more cops in the front yard, and he didn’t want to see any mess that the shotgun blast might have created. According to plan, he peeked out a small separation he made between the blind slats of his bedroom window. Immediately, he saw the layout of the backyard. Toby was acutely alert with his weapon drawn. That was not good, Reubin thought. He would have to shoot his way past Toby in order to reach his old blue Saturn that was backed into the carport, its front facing the alley. He always left the driver’s side door unlocked for easier access. He saw that Patrick was still in the squad car radioing for help. That was a good thing. He’d probably only have to deal with two cops if he exited right now. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it was doable. He ran wildly for the back door. He unlocked, opened it and immediately felt chips of wood smacking into his face, fragments of the door frame that Toby’s first bullets had hit. Reubin raised his shotgun, pointed it, and pulled the trigger while Toby continued firing. Reubin was moving faster than he ever had. Somehow he was able to pass Toby and get into the Saturn and start it. He felt warm and wet on his left side but there was no pain, just an adrenalin rush like he’d never had before.