Kill Her Again

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It was growing dark by the time they left the prison.

Anna could tell that Pope was in no mood for conversation, so she sat quietly in the backseat of the Suburban, thinking about Susan’s words.

And about her madness.

As much as she understood Pope’s desire to see the woman dead or locked up here forever, Anna didn’t believe she deserved either. What she needed was help. A long, heavy dose of psychological therapy. And even that wouldn’t guarantee she’d ever be whole again.

Anna knew it all stemmed from that moment in the alley. If Susan’s terror had been only half of what Jillian’s was-or Anna’s, for that matter-then it was more than enough to permanently damage her.

Then again, maybe Susan wasn’t so crazy after all.

She believed that her son had visited her, had forgiven her for her sins. But if Anna’s mother could pay a visit, why not Ben? Perhaps the dead return when we need them most. To reassure us. To guide us.

To save us.

If nothing else, Anna now knew that the world did not quite operate the way she once believed it did. There were entire levels of existence at play that most people never even knew about.

So where did she draw the line when it came to deciding who was crazy and who was not? Or what was real and what was merely fantasy?

Did ghosts inhabit our homes? Were aliens among us? Did parallel universes exist? Were there tears in the fabric of time?

And oh, yes What about the bogeyman?

Pope’s house was located several miles north of the Las Vegas Strip, in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Anna had grown up in Northern California, where most homes had wide green lawns, but the houses on Pope’s street had front yards full of rocks and cactus.

Pope’s was also full of weeds.

It was a two-story, Spanish-style home that stood in the middle of a cul-de-sac. There was activity in both of the neighboring houses, but Pope’s stood silent, its windows caked with a year’s worth of dust and grime.

“Never thought I’d see this place again,” he said, as Worthington pulled to the curb out front.

“You never thought you’d be face-to-face with Susan again, either.”

“Thanks for that, Jake. It was a treat.”

“Don’t mention it. You think she was telling the truth?”

“The part where she was completely off her rocker? Or the one where she was only mildly insane?”

“About her bogeyman book.”

Pope shrugged. “Maybe you should’ve asked me that before we drove all the way out here. We don’t even really know what we’re looking for. Could be a book full of random gibberish.”

“So you’re saying you don’t believe her?” Anna asked.

“Who the hell knows? Right now you wouldn’t have much trouble convincing me the Earth is flat, so I guess I’m pretty much up for anything.” He popped his door open. “But there’s only one way to find out, so let’s get this over with.”

Pope’s keys were in a drawer in his hotel room.

He’d seen no use for them when he fled the place, so it looked like they’d have to resort to some good old-fashioned B and E.

They decided to go in through the back and were surprised to discover that someone had beaten them to it. The glass in the rear-door window had been shattered and the door was unlocked.

Squatters, most likely.

Both Jake and McBride shifted into law enforcement mode and pulled their weapons. Jake brought out a flashlight, flicked it on, then gently pushed the door open.

“County sheriff,” he called. “Whoever’s in there, identify yourself.”

Silence. No response.

“We have weapons,” he said. “Identify yourself now or risk getting hurt.”

Nothing.

He and McBride exchanged glances, then stepped inside.

Pope took up the rear. One thing he had learned during his encounter with the twin defenders was that he was no hero. Let the people with the guns and expertise lead the way.

As he stepped through the doorway and took the place in, he was overcome by a sudden feeling of sadness.

The kitchen was on the right, with its checkerboard floor and double-wide refrigerator. There was a breakfast nook in one wall, where he and Susan and Ben had spent many a morning, slurping bowls of oatmeal and talking about the day to come.

Pope couldn’t help but yearn for those days. The warmth he’d felt. The glow of family. As much as he hated Susan now, as blind as he’d been to her illness, he did remember those times with fondness. With love.

And it hurt his heart to know that he’d never see them again.

The spell was broken when he spotted the mess on the floor. Shattered plates and glass, rotted food. Whoever had been squatting here would not get the Good House keeping seal of approval.

They moved into the living room.

He’d left the place as-is, but Jake and Ronnie had gone through and cleaned up, putting sheets over the furniture in the hope that he would one day return.

Some of the sheets were missing now and the furniture had been rearranged to suit the squatters. There was clothing strewn across the carpet, along with discarded food wrappers, some old magazines, faded newspapers.

Jake crouched down and shone his flashlight beam on one of the papers.

“Over a month old,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling the occupants have moved on.”

Maybe so, Pope thought, but from what he could see in Jake’s flashlight beam, they’d managed to do a pretty good job of destroying the place first. His plasma TV was missing. The carpet was stained and littered with cigarette butts. The decorative mirror Jake and Ronnie had given them as a housewarming gift had been ripped off the wall and discarded in a corner of the room.

The whole place reeked of stale body odor and vomit, and unlike the prison they’d just come from, there was no smell of disinfectant to cover it.

Pope had stopped caring about this place months ago, when he left it behind. But now his sadness turned to anger. How dare these people invade his home? His sanctuary?

This room was where he and Ben had watched The Jungle Book. Had played video games together. And now some thoughtless, desperate motherfuckers had taken that memory and turned it into this.

“Let’s hurry up,” he said. “I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”

There was a small door with a pull chain in the ceiling above the second-floor landing. Pope pulled on it, and springs groaned as the door opened and a ladder unfolded, leading up to the attic.

Pope went first this time. McBride handed him a Maglite and he flicked it on, then climbed to the top of the ladder and shone it into the cramped space above.

Nothing had changed up here. By some miracle, the squatters had never ventured inside, leaving the boxes of old clothes, legal papers, and discarded toys untouched. Pope had been up here a hundred times over the years, depositing unwanted junk, but he didn’t remember ever seeing any marks on the floorboards.

Not that he’d been looking for any.

The attic walls and ceiling were unfinished, made of tar paper and two-by-fours. Pope shone the light toward a nearby stud and spotted the Stick N Click light fixture he’d mounted there. The electricity in the house had been turned off months ago, but there’d never been a line up here anyway, and the Stick N Click ran on a 9-volt battery.

Reaching over, he jabbed it with a finger, and it came to life, illuminating the small room. Not well, but it was better than nothing.

Pope pulled himself all the way up, then shone the flashlight down the ladder.

“There’s room for one more,” he said. “That’s about it.”

“You go on,” he heard Jake say to McBride. “I’ve got some calls to make anyway.”

A moment later, McBride was at the top of the ladder. “Did you find it?”

“Give me a break,” Pope said, “I’m still trying to get my land legs. This place wasn’t built for full-sized human beings.”

As if to prove this, he pulled himself upright and nearly bumped his head on a crossbeam.

The floor was made of narrow wooden slats, and as McBride stood up next to him, he ran the flashlight along them, looking for Susan’s mark.

Nothing there.

“We’re gonna have to move some of these boxes,” he said.

McBride nodded and they spent the next several minutes shifting boxes from one pile to the next. But they found no marks of any kind, except for the usual scuffs and scratches.

“I knew this was too much to hope for. Chalk it up to another one of Susan’s-”

“Wait,” McBride said. She was staring at a nearby ceiling beam. “Let me have that flashlight.”

Pope handed it over and she shone it toward the crossbeam, then moved in for a closer look.

“I found it,” she said. “This is it.”

Pope was surprised. Stepping over to the crossbeam, he took a look for himself, and sure enough, etched into the wood with a knife or an ice pick or a screwdriver was a small, crudely drawn circle with several spokes-about the size of a dime.

The gypsy wheel.

He turned to McBride. “This isn’t right. She said she marked a floorboard.”

“No, she said she hid it under a floorboard. The wheel is just a reminder of where.”

Swinging the flashlight downward, McBride shone it on the wooden slat directly beneath the mark, then touched the slat with her toe.

It wobbled slightly. Loose.

They crouched down and Pope stuck his fingers into the space between the slats, carefully prying the loose one free.

“Why do I feel like Geraldo Rivera about to break into Capone’s vault?”

McBride shone the light inside, but they saw nothing, and Pope felt a twinge of disappointment.

“Maybe it shifted,” she said, then reached a hand in and patted the space between the floor joists. From the look on her face, she wasn’t finding anything.

Then her expression changed.

“I’ve got it,” she said, then reached in farther and brought out a thick, canvas binder. The kind they’d always used in school. It was crammed full of papers and news clippings, but instead of the usual hearts and flowers drawn on the cover, the typical “Suzie loves Joey” adornments you’d find on a young teenage girl’s notebook, this one was covered with gypsy wheels. Some small, some large. Some crude, some intricate. Each one of them the sign of a serious obsession.

“I don’t believe it,” Pope said. “The goddamn thing is real.”