The Bleeding Season

CHAPTER 10

Near the end of Main Street, the train tracks curved off into a wooded area where the shrubbery and grass grew wild and tall. The track was laid on a raised hill of dirt topped with crushed stone that tunneled through the otherwise natural setting, snaking along for as far as the eye could see. Following the tracks had been a popular pastime since our preteen years, and later, while in high school, the particular section near the end of Main Street, the section right before it disappeared into the overgrown landscape, became a meeting place. Though on foot it was accessible within moments from the street, the uneven and wild terrain discouraged most adults, including the cops, and as a result kids recognized it as a good hangout spot. We were no exception, and often congregated there to smoke cigarettes, a joint, maybe drink a beer or two, or sometimes to take a walk with a girlfriend.

Beyond the bend of one section of track was a low field that could be reached by a narrow dirt road carved through the forest on the far end. The ground there was disturbed on a regular basis and hastily packed back into place. The grass grew only in sparse patches, and a tiny rundown shed sat at one corner. Everyone knew it housed some tools and things—nothing of interest—and except for Mr. McIntyre, Potter’s Cove’s only animal control person, no one ever went down there.

That afternoon we’d decided to skip the latter portion of the school day. Bernard was depressed; his dog Curly had died the night before. Bernard had found him behind the picnic table in his backyard just that morning. Apparently the dog had been hit by a car and had somehow managed to get to the yard, where it collapsed behind the table and died. Mr. McIntyre had taken Curly away in a large, heavy duty plastic garbage bag, and since we all knew the town used this field as a burial ground for animals, we knew where to find his final resting place.

“How come you didn’t just bury him in your yard?” I asked.

Bernard was sitting on the slope of hill between the tracks and the field below, a long piece of grass between his lips swaying with the wind. “I wanted to,” he said softly, “but he was so big Mom said we couldn’t dig up the yard like that even for Curly. She tried to hand me some line about how McIntyre would give him a good burial and all that—yeah, right.” His eyes, still trained on the field, narrowed. “That must be where he put him,” he said, pointing to a small patch of freshly turned earth in the distance. “You can tell that was just dug up. That must be where Curly is.”

I felt bad for Bernard. I’d lost my cat a few years before, and I knew even though we were fifteen and at a stage where maintaining our level of cool was paramount, he was in a lot of pain. He’d had Curly since he’d been a toddler, and we’d all known and loved the dog too. “What kind of asshole hits a dog and keeps going?” I said, standing behind him while doing my best to look anywhere but at the field.

“I should’ve got him in before I went to bed,” he mumbled. “It must’ve happened in the middle of the night. He was probably across the street digging through Mrs. Petrillo’s garbage like he used to.” Bernard chuckled. “Fucking dog always ate her garbage. He was probably on his way home when he got hit.”

“Still, the fucker should’ve stopped.”

“Maybe he did. It was late, and I found Curly in the backyard. He probably crawled back there and it was dark and shit and whoever hit him probably couldn’t find him, figured he was all right and ran off. I don’t know. Maybe it was just some prick who mowed him down and kept going, never gave it a fucking thought.” He pulled the piece of grass from his mouth, studied the small chewed section a moment then looked up at me. “Curly didn’t move as fast as he used to, he was old. Maybe he tried to make it but didn’t. He was bleeding out of his ears, and Mr. McIntyre said that was probably because he got hit in the head by the car.”

I stood there, unsure of what to say.

“I’m gonna miss that fucking dog, man.”

“Me too,” I said. “Curly was cool.”

Bernard turned back to the field. “Thanks for taking off school with me.”

“No prob.” I kicked a stone from the slope. It bounced, clicked along the tracks. “You going to that party over at Michele Brannon’s house tonight?”

“Nah.”

“Might get your mind off shit.”

The blade of grass was back between his lips, bouncing again with the breeze. “You ever seen anything dead, Al?”

I shrugged. “I guess so, yeah.”

“Have you?”

“My cat Doc died.”

“I remember. He got cancer.”

“Yeah. Doctor Halstrom said he couldn’t do anything to save him, he had this big tumor.”

“So he killed him for you.”

“He put him to sleep.”

“Yeah, he killed him.”

“I didn’t want Doc to suffer, man. He was real sick.”

“Did you see him do it or did you leave before?”

I walked around near the tracks, not wanting to think about such things. “We left the room before he actually did it. Doc was out of it though; he didn’t know what was happening. My mom let me take him when it was over, and we buried him in the yard.”

“I remember,” Bernard said. “It’s fucked up, seeing something that’s dead.”

“Yeah.”

“Especially something you knew when it was alive.” Bernard nodded, as if agreeing with himself. “Like, if you see something that’s dead on the side of the road or something—something you never knew or gave a shit about or even saw when it was alive and walking around—it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s gross and all and you might think it’s sad or whatever, maybe even kind of interesting in a way, but it’s just dead. This dead… thing. But when you knew it before, when you’re used to seeing it alive and then it’s dead it—it’s fucked up.”

“You ever seen a dead person?” I asked.

He nodded. “Been to a couple wakes.”

“I saw my grandmother after she was dead,” I told him. “She looked so weird in the casket, all powdery-faced and everything—shit, didn’t even look like her, not really.”

“Because it wasn’t her,” Bernard said. “Not anymore.”

“Everybody kept saying how good she looked—how peaceful she looked—and I was just a kid and even I knew it was a crock of shit. She looked awful, man. She looked fucking dead, that’s what she looked.”

“What do you think they look like out there?” Bernard motioned to the field with his chin. “What do you think it looks like under all that dirt and dead grass?”

“Probably mostly bones.”

Bernard plucked the blade of grass from his mouth and tossed it in the direction of the field below. The breeze caught it, and it spiraled and danced away, riding the wind. He pulled his glasses off, wiped the thick lenses with his shirttail then replaced them. “Worst thing is, we’re all gonna end up the same way. No matter what you do in your life—or what you don’t do—no matter where you go or who you are everybody croaks; everybody ends up dead and buried. Unless they torch you, spread your ashes all over. My mother had a cousin they did that to, sprinkled his ashes on the ocean.”

“Guess it won’t matter once you’re dead.”

“Guess not,” he agreed. “But still, it’s fucked up. We live our whole life knowing sooner or later, we’re going in the ground. One day’s gonna be the last.”

“Nobody, nothing lives forever, Bernard.”

He nodded absently. “We should though.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s cruel not to. It’s like, from the minute you’re born, you start getting older, right? So it’s like, you’re kind of dying right from the minute you’re born. What’s the point of life if it just ends and you’re gone and the world keeps going like you were never even there? Yesterday Curly was playing in the yard, chewing his tennis ball, having his dinner, drinking out of the toilet—being a dog. Then bang, gone. Just like that. Like he was never here at all.”

“That’s why we have memories,” I told him.

“Memories aren’t worth shit.”

I hopped off the tracks and sat down next to him. A cool breeze blew through the distant trees and across the field. The sky had turned ashen; a storm was brewing, rolling in off the ocean. We sat quietly, listened to our thoughts.

“You believe in God, Al?” Bernard asked.

“Sure, don’t you?”

“Yeah. You ever wonder about Him?”

“Like what He looks like and shit?”

“No, like why He does what He does.”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“I wonder why God hates me.”

“Bernard, God doesn’t hate anybody. He’s God.”

Bernard drew his knees up close, rested his chin on them and wrapped his arms around his legs. “You believe in the Devil?”

“I don’t know, man. I guess so.”

“If there’s a God there has to be a Devil too.”

“OK.”

“Well, it’s true. Everything has an opposite, right?”

“Sure.”

“Sometimes I get so fucking pissed, man, I just want to go crazy, you know?” Bernard looked at me and shook his head, as if the words bothered him more than they ever could me. “I want to say fuck it and just smash everything, smash everybody because none of it matters anyway. You do what you do and the world keeps going, nothing stops. If it mattered—if there was a point, it would—it would stop. It’d stop and take fucking notice. But it doesn’t.”

I put a hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze then shook him gently, playfully, and let him go. “Everybody feels like that sometimes, dude, don’t worry about it.”

Bernard’s eyes blinked slowly, slightly distorted behind thick glass. “I’m not worried,” he said. “One of these days I’m gonna snap, Al, and when that happens somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

Normally I would’ve teased him for making such a statement, but I let it pass and remained quiet, like I believed him.

“Hurt bad,” he muttered.

Just Bernard being Bernard. Couldn’t fight a lick, intimidated no one. Talking tough but never able to back it up. He was angry and frustrated and missed his dog, so I let him be. I let him be whatever he said he was.

“You ever think that maybe God’s just fucking with us?”

“He definitely has a twisted sense of humor.” I laughed dutifully.

“I’m serious.”

“Life sucks sometimes, that’s just how it is.”

“I think I like the Devil better.”

“You shouldn’t say shit like that, man.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“No it’s not.”

Bernard shrugged. “At least with him you know where you stand.”

“Oh yeah?” I elbowed him, doing my best to lighten the mood. “You been talking to him lately?”

“Sometimes I think I hear him talking to me.”

“Shut up!” I chased away a chill with another forced laugh. “Fucking whacko.”

Bernard offered a glimmer of a smile and pushed himself to his feet. “It’s gonna storm.”

I stood up, brushed the dirt from the seat of my pants.

“You think when you die you get to see other people who died first?” he asked.

“I think you do, yeah.”

“How about animals?”

“Sure. God made them the same as people, why wouldn’t they have a soul too?”

Bernard thought about what I’d said for a moment, his eyes again focused on the fresh dirt in the field. “I think you’re right.”

“I’ll bet you anything Curly’s running around in Heaven right now, knocking over garbage cans and eating everybody’s trash.”

“Maybe we got it all backwards,” he said softly. “Maybe none of us really start living… until we’re dead.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

As we left, a gentle rain began to fall.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ventured to that part of the tracks, and now, all these years later I sat in my car across the street from the animal burial ground and watched the goings on up to and beyond the yellow police tape. On the seat next to me was the newspaper from the evening before, the headline of which described the grisly discovery a town worker had made in the early morning hours. A body—nude, mutilated and partially decomposed—had been left amidst the field containing the bones of generations of animals in a shallow grave that had given way with the change of season. The worker had noticed something he could not immediately identify protruding from the earth, and upon closer inspection, realized it was the foot and calf of a human being. The article and subsequent television reports revealed that the body was that of a young woman who had been dead for a number of weeks, but her identity had not yet been established. State police investigators, who were scouring the field and surrounding areas, had joined the local police force, and a flood of media people had converged on Potter’s Cove to cover the event.

There had only been three murders in town in the last two decades. A teenager had shot his former best friend with his father’s handgun. A woman who had endured years of physical abuse took a hammer to her husband’s head one night after he’d passed out drunk, and a man known by police to be a drug dealer had been executed gangland style in an alley downtown. Those had been the most infamous killings Potter’s Cove had ever seen, until now, and those cases were cut and dry, easy to close. This was different.

And it was only the beginning.

Although the body had already been removed, a throng of people still filled the surrounding streets, milling about behind the police tape like fans huddled near a stage door awaiting a glimpse of a rock star. At the far end of one group, standing near the curb, arms folded and brow knit, stood Donald. In the past two weeks I hadn’t seen much of him or Rick, had only spoken to them on the phone a few times, in fact, as being apart was somehow easier for the time being.

Even though a few capsules remained on the anti-anxiety prescription, I’d stopped taking the pills several days before, and my head felt clearer, my senses sharper. Toni had retreated into a distant mode, and I honestly couldn’t blame her, as I’d not even attempted to look for work and had refused to discuss counseling or anything that had happened that night. Lately, I’d spent most of my waking hours thinking, remembering; searching my mind for anything that might lead me in the right direction. And I spent a lot of time driving aimlessly around town, as if hoping to find answers on the side of the road. Now I wondered how many times in the last few weeks I’d driven within a few dozen yards of where the body had been found. Cruel, really, the irony.

The frequency of the recurring nightmare had decreased somewhat, but the dark thoughts and strobe-like memory flashes of the night in the abandoned factory continued to haunt me with vicious consistency. I got out of the car, leaned against the side of the hood and stared at Donald until he noticed me. He was dressed for work, in a suit, but his tie was undone and hung loosely, giving him an unusually tousled look. The moment he saw me he walked across the street to my car.

“How are you?” he asked.

“How are you?”

It was a clear and pleasant day, but not terribly sunny. Donald removed his sunglasses long enough to paw at the dark bags under his eyes, then replaced them, concealing himself behind black lenses. “I got up, shaved, took a shower, got dressed for work as usual then called in sick and came here instead. I don’t even know why, exactly.”

“Sure you do.”

He joined me against the side of the car, pulled cigarettes and a lighter from his shirt pocket. “They haven’t released much about the victim yet.”

“Only that it’s a young woman.”

He rolled a cigarette into the corner of his mouth, left it there and returned the pack to his pocket. “Yes.” Cupping the flame, he lit the cigarette then snapped shut the lighter, his actions emphasized. “And that she’s been dead for weeks.”

“Are you still having the nightmare?” I asked.

His nod was barely detectable. “You?”

“Not as often as before.”

“Heard from Rick?” he asked.

“Not in a while.”

“He wants to get together at Brannigan’s later this afternoon. Four o’clock.”

I wished I could see his eyes. “I’ll be there.”

He took a few drags before he spoke again, the smoke slowly releasing through his nostrils. “Things are going to get worse, Alan.”

“Of course they are,” I said. “We’re damned.”

Face expressionless, he flicked his cigarette away. “Think so?”

“Don’t you?”

Without answering, Donald gave my arm a reassuring pat, moved back across the street and faded into the crowd.

CHAPTER 11

I drove down Main Street, left the festivities behind and turned onto Sycamore Way, a quiet tree-lined street that acted as a kind of palisade between Potter’s Cove’s largely commercially zoned working-class downtown and the beginnings of the middle and upper-class, exclusively residential neighborhoods to the north. The buildings on either side of the street were original town structures—historical landmarks all—restored but constructed in colonial times not long after the town itself was founded. Only a few were residences, the rest housed the town’s historical society, an art center and several small medical and law offices. Unlike the area I lived in, this part of town was clean and manicured and quaint. Here, Potter’s Cove was still more a small town than the burgeoning city it had become in the less affluent districts.

At the end of Sycamore I turned right onto Bridge Street and followed it slowly, reducing my speed to a creeping roll. Like everything else, the street had changed over time. Some new inexpensive homes had been built where small sections of woods had once resided, and many of the houses had been renovated, but for the most part it looked basically the same as it had years before when I’d grown up here. Bridge Street, named for the small wooden bridge built above a stream that cut across the very end of the road, was still a relatively poor neighborhood abutting the beginnings of more exclusive parts of town. The last outpost, the last street where houses weren’t quite as big, where cars weren’t quite as new and where people weren’t quite as well dressed, even after all these years, good bad or indifferent, Bridge Street summoned true feelings of home. Yet at the same time I felt strangely uncomfortable here as well. Familiarity, in this case, did not exclusively breed warmth and solace. I studied first the stretch of sidewalk where my mother had taught me to ride a bicycle, then the ancient stone wall where I’d had many a crash and where years later my friends and I congregated and spent hours talking, smoking cigarettes and hanging out. Despite these and a wealth of other landmarks that invoked fond childhood reminiscences, this hallowed ground also brought forth a great sense of uneasiness in me. Good and bad, even here, even amidst the perceived simplicity of the past, had melded into a single enigmatic entity.

Blinking away phantoms, I pulled over in front of our old house. I lived less than two miles away, but seldom returned here. Bridge Street was out of the way, a place people only went to if that was their destination, and it was rarely mine.

The house, a small single-story set back from the road had sat in the middle of a dirt lot when I’d lived there, but the dirt had been replaced by a lawn years ago, and instead of cracked and weathered shingles, the house now sported relatively new vinyl siding. Still, beyond the aesthetics, it basically looked the same. My old bedroom window was now dressed with lacey curtains, and I wondered who lived there these days. We had never owned the house, and after my mother’s death the landlord sold the property to another family. Since that time ownership had changed hands again, but I knew nothing of the current tenants. In fact, as far as I knew none of the families who had resided on Bridge Street at the time of my childhood were still there. Even smaller-town America had become transient it seemed, the days of families occupying homes for generations relegated to a nostalgic quaintness of yesteryear.

Hesitant to leave the false sense of security the car provided, I turned off the engine and looked to my left, further down the street toward the squat two-story house Bernard and his mother had lived in. Of all the houses on the street, it was the only one unoccupied, and since Bernard’s mother had died less than a year before, the only one still closely tied to the past. A modest two-story badly in need of a paint job, the windows were dark, the front yard unkempt and the driveway empty. Taken over by the bank, it had apparently sat unsold, empty and sealed shut since, and was well on its way to becoming the neighborhood eyesore. If it remained vacant much longer, the kids in the area would undoubtedly dub it the local haunted house—if they hadn’t already—never realizing just how near the truth they might be.

In her later years, Bernard’s mother had lost much of her beauty to the ravages of cancer. In and out of the hospital for months, eventually the doctors had admitted there was nothing else they could do for her, and she was sent home to die. Less than a month later, in the upstairs bedroom just to the right of the staircase, that’s precisely what she did. Bernard later told me he had been in the room when she died, that he’d held her hand and watched her take her final breath. I knew all too well what it was like to see that happen. My mother had died in my arms, gray skin stretched across a face I barely recognized, eyes sunken but open, awaiting things only dying eyes could comprehend. To watch your physical creator, the human being from whom you came, the literal flesh and blood vessel responsible for your conception and birth, wither and die, was something beyond explanation. Like soldiers who have survived the horrors of combat, you’d either experienced it or you hadn’t. You either understood what it was like, what it meant to be infected to your core by such things, or you didn’t.

She went quietly, he’d said desperately, as if determined to convince me. I don’t think she could even feel the pain anymore, she—she went quietly. His voice murmured to me from the past, sounding the same as it had through the phone line that morning. I’d told him how sorry I was, and that I understood what he was going through.

I know, he’d said. That’s why I told you first.

The squeak of the car door echoed along the pavement as I stepped from the Pontiac. I made my way slowly along the sidewalk, waiting to cross until I was in front of Bernard’s old house. Memories ricocheted about—mostly blurs—but large chunks of the past remained elusive. Particularly those portions of the past tied directly to this street, this neighborhood, and this house. I had always assumed those uneventful periods in life simply faded and all but vanished over time because they held nothing of particular importance, but now I felt differently. As I approached the waist-high fence surrounding the backyard, it seemed a better bet that those things just beyond the grasp of memory had been forgotten deliberately, and not because they were unimportant, but because they held within them things too unpleasant to confront. Even now.

I felt the aged wood against my hand, pushed open the gate and stepped through into the side yard. The lawn was dead, a victim of winter, the parched brown grass accompanied by occasional patches of bare dirt scattered about like a sprinkling of landmines. As I moved deeper onto the property an unseen bird shrieked more warning than welcome from its perch somewhere within the half circle of lofty trees just beyond the fence in the backyard.

Several windows on the side and rear of the house had been broken or cracked by thrown stones, and someone had written Eat Me in spray paint along the back door. On the cement patio off the rear entrance sat the same lawn furniture that had been there the last time I had visited, days after his mother had died and only a month or two before the bank had seized the house. The white plastic table and chairs had faded and cracked in places, and one of the chair legs had been broken clean off and tossed aside. Next to a weather and time ravaged chaise lounge, several large garbage bags had been left in a neat row along the back of the house. Each bag had been filled to capacity, and I tried to imagine what they contained. The day Bernard lost the house he’d been served with a warrant and had been unable to retrieve many of his personal items still trapped within. I pictured workers gathering items—his items, his mother’s items—and stuffing them into those garbage bags.

Two entire lifetimes seemingly reduced to a neglected shell of a building, some broken furniture and a row of trash bags, as if nothing else remained of either of them.

I looked up at the back of the house and the darkness on the other side of the smudged windowpanes on the second floor. The sensation of someone watching me from just beyond the swathe of shadows rattled my already frayed nerves. “Bernard,” I whispered. “Are you here?”

The trees, stirred by a momentary breeze, answered for him.

Small windows along the foundation of the house reminded me of the cellar in New Bedford where he had hanged himself. But this was his home, a place of history, so what had Bernard conjured here, in this house where he’d once claimed the Devil sometimes spoke to him? What demons had he summoned and brought to life here? And why? Why had he done it in the first place? Why had he listened when evil beckoned—even if it had come from within him—why had he chosen to embrace it?

I moved to the edge of the patio and crouched down; eyes fixed on the old chaise lounge, its canvas backing tattered and soiled. What had I seen and experienced here, incidents my mind had relegated to hazy spirits that haunted me from the shadows even now? How had they blinded me, stolen my vision and left a void where their memory should have existed instead? Or had I given it away, buried the knowledge so deeply myself that it no longer seemed real?

If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.

Just as a lie, told countless times in one’s own mind eventually becomes memory rather than fantasy, blurring the line between that which was imagined and that which actually took place, could the same be true of real experiences? If one pretended a literal occurrence never happened with enough passion and over a sufficient amount of time, did it eventually cease to exist in the conscious mind? Did it too blur the lines between the imaginary and the actual? Even as I reached for the decaying chaise lounge, I knew the answer to those questions was yes.

On particularly warm and sunny days the chaise lounge was always moved to the center of the backyard, where Bernard’s mother could lay out and sunbathe, the house blocking any view from the road and the trees in back forming a barrier between her and the houses beyond. How many times had I seen her stretched out under summer sun, skin browned and glistening with tanning lotion, head back, eyes closed, chin tilted toward the sky, soft blonde hair contrasting with the gaudy flowery pattern on the padded pillow of the chaise lounge, Jackie-O sunglasses and a fluffy white beach towel resting next to a portable radio on the grass, playing disco tunes always a bit louder than necessary? How many times had I watched her breasts, barely contained in a bright bikini top, rise and fall, her legs outstretched, toes pointed like a prone ballerina while the sun caught the gold bracelet adorning her ankle? How many times had I touched myself and thought of her—my friend’s mother, for Christ’s sake—how many times?

In those years before she’d become sick she was beautiful, but not like everyone else’s mom. Linda was different. She was still a parent, but younger, sexier, more like us than other adults. She’d possessed an impish quality, with expressive light blue eyes, a tiny nose and thin though shapely lips, dyed blonde hair that she kept relatively short in length but that was thick and always a bit wild, as if she’d not quite had the time to style it properly, and a deep, bawdy laugh that sounded implausibly obscene coming from such an otherwise delicate woman. So delicate, in fact, that she often seemed practiced, studied in the ways of carrying oneself in an unquestionably female, unmistakably sexual, undeniably alluring manner. In a boring town like Potter’s Cove, she was the most glamorous being any of us had ever laid eyes on. A misplaced movie starlet banished with her bastard son to the ends of the Earth, sentenced to a life of boredom and loneliness in a place where but for those who ridiculed her, the only attention a woman like Linda Moore was paid was at local bars after dark. I’d once heard my mother talking on the telephone with a friend about her, about how she had gone from her native New Bedford to New York City, where she had become involved with some shady characters. Underworld types who liked to have a woman like Linda on their arms and in their beds. But there had been a murder, so the story went, a mob hit where she had been caught in the middle of a bad situation and fled. She had returned home pregnant, with a drinking problem and a bad reputation, and ended up in Potter’s Cove. Most felt her stay would be temporary, that a party girl without a party would quickly tire of life outside the fast lane and eventually return to it. And in a sense, she did, albeit a small town version. Under more typical circumstances, she was the kind of girl who left the area and went on to bigger things in more sensational locales. But instead she’d become a scandalous woman the older townies spoke about softly, sometimes in outright whispers, hands raised to cover their mouths and eyes cast askance; a woman most grown men and teenage boys alike fantasized about, and a woman Bernard worshipped.

I stood up and stepped back, away from the house, and again watched the upstairs windows for a time. The sense that someone was watching me surfaced a second time, though I had the impression whoever or whatever it was had now moved to some point behind me—perhaps the trees just beyond the fence. I ignored the feeling and without looking back walked slowly around to the side of the house from which I’d come. As I closed the gate I glanced at the backyard, gradually lifting my eyes to the still gently swaying trees.

Satisfied that no one was there, I crossed to the front of the house. The front door, a door we had always been told to knock on once and then feel free to enter through, drew my attention. It was an odd thing, to simply knock once then walk into someone else’s home, not to mention a practice foreign to me and in direct opposition to the more formal rules of etiquette my mother had taught and insisted I adhere to. But it was Linda’s rule. And that was another thing. Calling an adult, particularly a friend’s mother, by their first name was not done and considered disrespectful. But again, it was Linda’s rule. So, when visiting, I’d knock once on the front door then enter, and whenever in her company I’d address her simply as Linda, just like everyone else.

The countless times I had walked in and caught Bernard’s mother in some state of undress trickled through my mind, images of flirting ghosts and sneering demons blurring one into the next to form a single spectral whirlwind. So often when I stopped by she just happened to be scantily or sexily clad, or was changing or had just stepped out of the shower, a skimpy towel somehow managing to cover all the right spots, though just barely, except for those occasions when it slipped or fell completely away to reveal a quick flash of nipple, buttock or pubic hair as she nonchalantly climbed the stairs or pranced into her bedroom. In those days, I’d often wondered if she did the same thing when Bernard’s other friends came to the house.

Bernard’s in his room, sugar. Go on up and see him.

All these years later, I had no doubt that she had.

I stared at the house, called on all the recollections and mysteries it held within its slowly dying walls, summoned them from its bowels to the light of day, to the sidewalk where I now stood. And like the slow rise of blood from an exceptionally deep wound, they came. Slow and seeping at first, and then, as I held the wound open wider still, it gushed, this blood of memories and secrets, leaking from the windows, dripping across the walls, bubbling from cracks in the foundation, frothing and swelling free like waves crashing shoreline, determined to knock me over and drag me under.

And down I went.

The house opened before me like a parting curtain, a yawning mouth vomiting forth the past like the repellent thing that it was.

Knock once and enter.

Just beyond the front door, the staircase at the head of the small entranceway came into focus, the living room to the left, a small closet to the right, the smell of cigarettes, booze, and Linda’s perfume in the air as always. Barely audible sounds of the television in the other room turned down low lingered in my ear even when the stairs began to creak as I climbed them, shifting with each hesitant step.

The door opening—no—already open on the bedroom just to the right of the stairs. Linda’s room, where the bed sat against the back wall, mismatched nightstands on either side of the headboard cluttered with overflowing ashtrays and empty liquor bottles, garments stuffed into plastic clothesbaskets and strewn about the room as if thrown or dropped there, an ironing board against one wall, a dressing table with mirror and closet against another. Lipsticks and makeup, small bottles of polish and colognes and body sprays, tins of soap and powder rattling, clicking one against the other until it all faded to black.

The house watched me now, offering nothing.

While I glared back, the ghosts led my thoughts to the cemetery instead. I hadn’t been there in quite some time, even in my mind. Bernard’s mother and my parents had been buried in the same one, and while I often felt guilty for not tending more consistent attention to my mother’s so-called final resting place, I knew she would have understood. “It’s only our bodies there anyway,” she’d once assured me, eyes blinking tranquilly, telling me everything, and nothing at all. “I’ll be in Heaven with Daddy by then.”

She’d always referred to my father as “Daddy,” as if sweetening his moniker might make his absence more tolerable, the void somehow more human once assigned an innocent and childlike title. But he remained a stranger to me, a character in other peoples’ stories, a smiling and gentle-looking man in faded photographs, a name chiseled into granite. At least I’d had that much; Bernard knew virtually nothing about his father, though I’d never been quite sure which experience was preferable. His mother had rarely spoken about the subject, and it wasn’t until I’d become an adult that her reasons began to make sense. Although Bernard and I never discussed it and I had no way to know for sure, I believed Linda had never told him who his father was because she hadn’t been certain herself.

Visions of the cemetery scurried about, reached for me, revealed Linda sitting atop her headstone, laughing while Bernard crouched before her, digging furiously with fingers raw and bleeding, flinging soil across the flowers decorating her grave.

The demons were at play but the house fell silent.

For now, the ghosts had stopped talking.

CHAPTER 12

In a matter of weeks the public beach would be packed with tourists and locals alike, though for now, but for the steady toll of waves lapping the shore and the occasional cackle of a soaring gull, the area remained quiet. I seldom went to the beach during the summer season, preferring instead to come in the quiet months when it was an entirely different experience. Although I harbored a rather primitive fear of the ocean, I’d been coming to this beach since childhood, and it had figured into many seminal points during my life. I remembered coming here the day Rick was released from prison, in fact, just one of numerous memories of this place, so despite my inherent uneasiness, I also found an ironic sense of comfort in the waves, in the majestic and familiar power of it all.

I drove carefully along the dirt lot, my old car throttled by purposely uneven terrain designed to prevent people from speeding, and parked near a row of stump-like wooden posts connected with heavy rope that separated the sand from the parking lot. Mine was the only car in the lot, but further down the beach, near a stone jetty that stabbed quite a distance into the ocean, I noticed a young woman in a windbreaker playing with a black lab. I wondered if she knew about the body that had been found.

On the seat next to me was a hardback composition notebook I’d picked up a few days earlier. I had begun to transfer my thoughts, memories and dreams to paper in the hopes of perhaps better sorting through them, and decided to consult my notes one more time before making a definite move. The nightmare still haunted me, but not as frequently, and thankfully, there had been no more hallucinations or visions—no more women, no more little boys—only a continued sense of dread and the persistent flicker of memories both recent and distant I found impossible to shake.

I flipped open the notebook, eyed my latest list of options and drew a line through the first, Nightmares, then the second, Hauntings. My pen hesitated at the third, Abandoned Factory, then the fourth, Photograph of Mystery Woman. I skipped over both, moved to the fifth, Memories and Questions. Beneath that I’d written down the most disturbing or curious memories that had come to me of late and followed them with questions.

So many goddamn questions.

Of course the discovery of the young woman’s body changed everything. I had no choice but to continue to force myself to remember the darkest corners of the past, but if I ever hoped to know who Bernard had really been, simple memory would not be enough. To fill in the blank spaces, to know for sure what he had done, and what he hadn’t, I’d need to reconstruct a history of sorts. Bernard’s history.

Somewhere in the distance the black lab barked. I looked up, saw the woman throw a tennis ball. The dog bolted after it along the sand, retrieved it then gleefully galloped back to her. It suddenly occurred to me that had I been so inclined, it would have been ridiculously easy to step from my car, walk across the deserted beach and slaughter this woman. Strobe-like flashes of her covered in blood blinked across my eyes, vanishing quickly. Similar thoughts had almost certainly coursed through Bernard’s mind as well, but allowing even the faint beginnings of the evil he had called upon and held so close to seep into my own head was wildly unsettling. I pushed it all away and focused on the woman instead. She crouched down, took the lab’s head in her hands and kissed his nose. The dog licked her face, his tail wagging. We were so vulnerable, all of us so ripe for the picking without even realizing it, and there wasn’t a fucking thing we could do about it. I closed the notebook, tossed it into the backseat.

The day had slipped away. It was nearly four o’clock.

Brannigan’s was surprisingly busy for a late afternoon weekday. One of the older establishments in town, over the years it had undergone a series of incarnations and varied themes but had essentially remained a sports pub with an attached dining area. It had been a townie watering hole for years, a place to go and have some beers, shoot some pool or play pinball, order a pizza or a wide range of appetizers from the menu and eat them right at the bar or in the darkened booths that lined the back wall, and a place where for the most part, everyone knew one another. But just like those who had come before us, and those who followed, the older we got the less we frequented the bar and opted for the dining area instead. Although I still occasionally stopped in for a beer or two, the bar always had and always would pander to a predominantly younger crowd, and the farther I crept into my thirties the less tolerance I had for the language, music, fashion, and overall attitude of those ten years or so my junior.

I entered through the side door, which led directly to the dining room. It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, as both the dining area and bar were always annoyingly darker than seemed necessary, but after scanning the room I could locate neither Donald nor Rick.

“Hi, Alan.”

I turned, saw a waitress fly by, a large tray of entrees balanced on her shoulder. “Hey, how’s it going?” I muttered, unable to remember her name but recognizing her as a local I’d gone to high school with and who had worked there for years. I wasn’t sure she even heard my response, as she’d already slipped between the tables and been absorbed into the noise, so I followed the wall to an archway with double swinging half-doors and moved into the bar. It was packed. All three of the pool tables were in use, and against one wall people were huddled around the pinball machines, the bells and electronic noises barely audible over the strains of a Stevie Ray Vaughn tune playing on the jukebox. The televisions mounted above either corner of the bar normally featured sporting events, but both were tuned to newscasts, neither of which could be heard.

As I walked slowly through the crowd it became apparent that nearly everyone was discussing the discovery of the dead body.

At the far end of the room, I found Rick and Donald sitting in the last of a row of booths. It was even darker there in the corner, a candle in the center of the table and encased in tinted glass providing minimal flickering light.

I slid in next to Donald, who was absently playing with a thin red straw floating in his drink. He stopped long enough to acknowledge me with a slight nod. Across from us, Rick sat clutching a bottle of cola with both hands, his expression darker than usual. “Heard the latest?”

“I haven’t seen the news since this morning,” I told him. “They found a body, it’s a woman, and she’s been dead for weeks. That’s all I know.”

Donald spoke without looking at me. “They’ve identified her.”

“Twenty-two years old, single mother from New Bedford,” Rick said. “Been missing almost two months.”

I looked back across the room, hoping to locate a waitress. The throng of patrons reminded me of the days in our early twenties when we’d come here, so full of life, young and strong and together, still so certain we were indestructible. All the time in the world, we’d thought then. Downing drinks, smoking cigarettes and eating whatever the hell we pleased without giving any of it another thought. Until that moment I hadn’t realized just how much I missed feeling like that, so enthusiastically alive.

“Remember when we used to come here before I got married?” I asked.

Rick stared at me like I’d spoken Mandarin, but Donald allowed the slightest quiver of a smile and nodded. “Can you believe we actually once found this place fun?”

I caught the attention of a waitress near the bar. When she got to us I ordered a beer then turned back to the table. “Those were good days,” I said. “Weren’t they?”

“Are you asking?” Donald gazed into what was left of his drink. “Or only hopeful?”

“A little of both.”

“Missing your youth, Alan?”

“Almost.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not old yet,” he said softly. “We’re just not young anymore.”

Rick leaned forward. “I hate to interrupt you two and your stroll down memory-fucking-lane over here, but we got some important shit to talk about.”

“So talk,” I said. “You’re the one who called the meeting.”

Rick’s eyes swept across me, sized me up. He opened his mouth to say something but the waitress appeared with my beer and asked if he and Donald wanted anything else. Donald ordered another vodka and tonic. “All set, sweetie, thanks,” Rick said.

The waitress hesitated just long enough to give him a flirtatious smile then vanished.

“We need to decide what to do,” Donald said.

“Do?” I looked at him, then at Rick. “What’s there to do?”

Eventually Donald said, “Could Bernard have really done this? Could he have killed that girl?”

My immediate inclination was to tell him to keep his voice down, but the din in the bar was such that I could just barely hear him myself. “We don’t know for sure that he did, but—”

“Yes we do,” Rick said. “Don’t be an idiot.”

I sighed. “Look, all I’m saying is—”

“I just can’t seem to get my mind around this,” Donald interrupted.

Rick cracked his knuckles and fired Donald a cross look. “Donny thinks we should turn the tape over to the cops.”

“I said we should consider it.”

“All that’s going to do is drag us right into the middle of this,” I said.

Donald looked at me with glazed eyes. “We’re already right in the middle of this.” He threw back the remainder of his drink just as the waitress appeared with a refill. Once she’d gone, he lit a cigarette and continued. “Look, we’re in possession of potential evidence here. We need to do the right thing, and the right thing, it seems to me, is to at least consider turning the tape over to the authorities.”

“No,” Rick snapped. “Fuck that.”

I took a gulp of beer, ran the cold bottle across my forehead. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to give it to the police. Rick has a point, with all the news coverage this thing is getting, why draw attention to ourselves?”

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Donald said. “What is it with you two? The entire area is in a panic. People think a killer is on the loose in Potter’s Cove, and if what Bernard said was true, it won’t end here. More bodies will be found. We’re going to have something on our hands here the likes of which this town has never seen.”

“And eventually it’ll pass.” Rick pushed his cola aside, put his hands flat on the table between us and again leaned in close. “What’s done is done, Donny. That tape’s not gonna bring anybody back to life, it’s not gonna prove a goddamn thing, and turning it over to the cops isn’t gonna do anything except get our names in the paper. I tried to make this crystal fucking clear before. I’m an ex-con. I don’t need the cops up my ass, snooping around my personal life. I want nothing to do with any of this, you hear me? Nothing. I got no doubt Bernard told the truth on that tape, that he did this shit for real. But it’s over. It’s not like he can kill again and we can do something to stop it—that’d be different—he’s dead and buried. There won’t be no more victims.”

“Fine, what if I turn it over to them? I’ll say it came to me and—”

“No chance.”

“Look, this isn’t just your decision. This involves all three of us.”

Rick shook his head. “I’m making the final call.”

“This is absurd.” Donald gave me a pleading look. “Alan, for Christ’s sake, help me out here.”

“Sorry, man,” I said. “I’m with Rick on this one.”

His eyes searched mine. “Tell me why.”

“Because in the overall scheme of things, the tape doesn’t mean shit.”

Rick and Donald exchanged glances. “What’s that mean?”

“We all know there’s more to this than meets the eye,” I said. “The only way to get to the bottom of it, the only way we’ll ever know for sure who Bernard was and what he did is to go back to the beginning.” I powered down the rest of my beer, belched under my breath and explained my plan to construct a history of Bernard’s activities.

Donald drew on his cigarette, expression thoughtful. “I understand your desire to put all of this into some semblance of order, Alan, sincerely I do. But…”

“But what?”

“Aren’t things bad enough? The deeper we delve into this the higher the odds that we’ll begin to open doors that are almost certainly better left closed.”

“We might find even worse things,” Rick added. “Things we don’t want to know.”

“Yeah.” I nodded at him through the graceful trails of smoke weaving between us. “We just might.”

“Then what’s the point?” Rick shrugged. “We can just keep our mouths shut, lay low and wait until the storm passes, you see what I mean?”

“Are you afraid of what we might find, Rick?”

His features hardened. “I’m not the one who freaked out and saw shit that wasn’t there, now was I?”

I set the empty beer bottle on the table and pushed it closer to the edge, ignoring the desire to smash it over his head. “You do what you want. I’m going to get to the truth.”

“A young woman was butchered and left in a shallow grave in a field the town uses to bury dead animals,” Donald said flatly. “Bernard almost certainly did it to her and who knows how many others, and the entire time we never even suspected he was a psychopath. That’s the truth, Alan. How much more do we need to know?”

Rick gave an enthusiastic nod. “Finally making some goddamn sense, Donny.”

A sudden cheer from a group of young men at one of the pinball machines startled us, and we turned in unison to look. “High score!” one of them yelled.

Donald rolled his eyes. “Notify the networks.”

I laughed lightly without really thinking about it. Odd, how laughter could defy the darkness of nearly any situation. But it was out of place here, and dissipated quickly. “Are you sure we never suspected what Bernard was doing?” I let the words hang between us for a few seconds. “Or did we just ignore it, not pay particular attention? Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe there’s so much in the past we can’t remember or don’t want to remember that what really terrifies us is what we might find out about ourselves.”

Rick stabbed a finger at me. “Listen, when you had your problem with the shit you were seeing, who was there to help you out? When you were outside my apartment all freaked out and in the middle of a total fucking breakdown, who was there to get you home?”

“You were, and I appreciate it. What’s your point?”

“Yes, Bernard wasn’t who we thought he was. Yes, bad shit happened and people died. But there’s a limit to how much of this heebie-jeebies bullshit I can deal with. That’s my fucking point, OK?”

“You said yourself something more was happening here,” I reminded him. “Didn’t you have the nightmares too? Didn’t you have the dark thoughts, the fear, just like Donald and I had? That is what you said, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know anything anymore.”

“Oh, so now that a body shows up and all this becomes something real, all bets are off? Time to go hide under the bed, is that it?”

“What the fuck are you trying to prove, Alan? That shit goes bump in the night? That maybe there’s stuff at work here that we never asked to know about and don’t want any part of anyway?” He looked to Donald for support but got none. “Remember on the tape when Bernard talked about waking up in the middle of the night and hearing something, a sound that’s not supposed to be there? Remember how he said we usually just roll back over and go to sleep? Well, I say that’s the smart move here, OK? I say we just roll over, go back to sleep and wait for morning.”

“You do what you want,” I said again. “But I’m telling you that whatever it is out there in the dark making those noises isn’t going to just go away, Rick. Bernard was connected to it, and we were connected to Bernard. Bernard’s gone, but it’s still here.”

Donald tilted his glass, slid some ice cubes into his mouth and crunched them. “And what would ‘It’ be, precisely?”

“I don’t know yet,” I answered. “But I’m going to find out.”

“Could be a Pandora’s Box.”

“This goes back years,” I told them. “Things happened in the neighborhood, in that house, and later, when we were all adults. Dark things. And somehow they all tie together.”

Rick leaned back against the booth, pulled his money clip from his pocket and fired some bills onto the table. “Tell you what, you decide to start making some fucking sense, you let me know.”

“Evil.”

The word froze him. “What?”

“You heard me.”

He swallowed so hard I saw his throat bob. “What about evil?”

“I think Bernard conjured it. I think he was responsible for it.”

“Yeah, real magical bastard, Bernard,” he snorted. “I wish you could sit over here so you could hear yourself saying this shit. You sound like a fucking mental case.”

“Stop it, Rick,” Donald said suddenly.

“Well, for Christ’s sake—”

“Just stop it.” Donald rubbed his eyes. “Don’t do that to him.”

Rick waved his hands, dismissing us. “Whatever.”

“I’m hearing those noises in the night and I’m going to go see what they are,” I said. “Now are you coming with me or are you going back to sleep? We’re either in this together or we’re not. In or out, Rick? What’s it going to be?”

Anger, maybe something more, simmered in his eyes. “I’m in. OK, you fuck? I’m in.”

I looked to Donald. He answered with a slow nod.

“I’ll be in touch.” With the solemn faces of the dead still congregated in my mind, I slid from the booth and crossed the bar.

CHAPTER 13

The days were becoming longer, the nights shorter. In winter, night fell prior to six p.m., but with spring came a more gradual darkness that allowed daylight to linger. With my newfound anxiety, I welcomed the change, and had spent the early evening in the bedroom, sitting on a stool in the closet doorway rummaging through a storage box filled with old stories I’d written years before. It was only when reading became more difficult that I glanced at a window and realized the sun had finally gone down. Still, I continued to paw through the stacks of stories, there in the near dark, and although silly and often juvenile both technically and in content, the old tales seemed irrefutable evidence of whom I had once been, and that a dream had existed within me, a dream that in many ways had defined me. Or maybe still did.

The feeling that I had been joined by someone else in the room crept along my spine as Bernard’s taped voice played back in my mind. Do you ever go through your old stories? Shit, do you even still have them? Do you ever think about what might have been?

My eyes searched the room. Nothing.

The slam of a door nearly sent my heart out through my mouth, and I sprang from the stool so quickly I lost my balance. After staggering about I regained my footing and looked to the bedroom doorway. Toni stood there with a baffled expression.

“Are you all right?” It was all she ever asked anymore, and I couldn’t blame her.

I nodded, drew a deep breath and struck a casual pose.

“Did you get the message I left on the answering machine?”

“Yeah.” I glanced at my watch. “I didn’t realize you’d be so late.”

“Hadn’t planned to be, I was just going to work late for a bit, but then Martha called and asked if I wanted to get a bite to eat. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks so I figured, why not? Didn’t think you’d mind.”

Martha had always been exclusively Toni’s friend, not mine. We hadn’t gotten along since high school and probably never would, so we kept our distance. When Toni felt the need to socialize with her, she did so alone. “How is Martha?”

Apparently assuming it to be a rhetorical question, Toni offered no reply. I moved to the nightstand and turned on a lamp, but she remained in the doorway, just beyond its reach, a small purse dangling from one hand and the other at her side. Her skirt suit looked somewhat disheveled but I told myself that was normal since she’d been wearing it all day. “So you had to work late, huh?”

“I figured a little OT couldn’t hurt. I was behind this week anyway, had tons of paperwork to do, and Gene didn’t mind, so—”

“No, I bet he didn’t.”

I expected her to defend herself, or maybe to fight back. Instead, she said, “I saw the news earlier. Do they know anything else yet?”

“They’ve identified the woman, that’s all. Single mother from New Bedford.”

“Awful,” she said. “Just awful.”

“That it is.”

She made eye contact with me for the first time since she’d appeared in the doorway. “Do you really think Bernard had something to do with this?”

“Yes.” I sat at the foot of the bed. “And I don’t think it’s going to end here.”

“Then you have to go to the police. You have to tell them what you know.”

“I don’t have any proof. Not yet, anyway.”

She shook her head, placed a hand above her eyes. “This is beyond belief.”

I allowed a slight smile. “Tell me about it.”

“What about the tape he sent to Rick? Did it—”

“I need to ask you about that,” I interrupted. “I know you’ve spoken to Gene about all this, but I need to know if you mentioned the tape to him.”

“What I spoke to Gene about was the night you had those… problems. I never mentioned the tape or anything else we’ve discussed.”

“It’s very important that you tell me the truth about this.”

She stood perfectly still in the doorway. “I just did.”

I gave a reserved nod.

“Don’t you think you should turn the tape over to the police?”

“We decided against it.”

“Why don’t you want them to have it? I don’t understand.”

“Rick doesn’t want us involved in this anymore than we already are.”

“But—”

“And neither do I. Besides, we already put it to a vote.”

“A vote? You still behave as if you’re ten-year-olds playing in a tree fort, for God’s sake. This is a very serious situation, Alan.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what it is.” I let the words loiter awhile. “What I do need is for you to promise me that you won’t tell anyone else about the tape. Not Gene, not Martha, not anyone.” I could only hope the look on my face left no doubt as to how serious I was.

She stared at me for a time before she finally complied. “All right. I promise.”

“We’re going to handle this on our own, Rick and Donald and me. We’re going to get to the bottom of this shit pile one way or another.”

Toni wrestled with a frown. “But you just said you didn’t want to be involved.”

“We don’t want to involve or be involved with the police.”

“Sounds like something a criminal might say.”

I let it go. “We need to do this on our own, that’s all.”

“And what makes you think you’re equipped to do that?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Anger brewed just beneath the controlled exterior she was trying so furiously to sustain. “Right, what was I thinking? Not like it’s any of my business or anything.”

“A few weeks ago, I was crazy. Now a body turns up and all of a sudden—”

“I never said you were crazy, Alan. It’s just—I mean, how could Bernard have done this? I just can’t fathom it. A man we’ve known for so many years, someone who was there at our wedding, who we had in our home, had conversations with and socialized with and ate with and laughed with and shared so much with, how could… Someone we trusted, for God’s sake. How could he have been slaughtering people at the same time? How could he be both of those things? Do you honestly believe he did this?”

I looked away. “I don’t know.”

Toni stepped into the room and noticed the box of manuscripts in the closet doorway. “Your old stories,” she said with a fondness that surprised me.

“Yeah, I was going through them before. Silly, I know.”

“No it isn’t. You should’ve never given up on your writing. You had such potential.”

“Can’t pay the rent with potential.”

“You should start again.”

“It’s the strangest thing.” I went to the closet and crouched next to the storage box. “Half the time I can’t remember what I was thinking ten minutes ago, but when I went through these stories I could remember exactly what I was feeling when I wrote every one of them, exactly what was going on in my life when I’d written them, and even what I was thinking when I’d written certain sentences.” I looked back over my shoulder at her. “Isn’t that something?”

She nodded and let her free hand rest on my shoulder. I studied it, so slender and delicate, the hand of a partner, a nursemaid, a lover, a friend, a vulnerable girl and a strong woman, victim and protector, predator and prey all residing beneath that soft skin, so many sides to the same being bound by a single soul. I turned away, packed the papers back into the box and slid the entire thing into the rear of the closet where I’d found it. By the time I’d closed the closet door and turned back in Toni’s direction she’d tossed her purse onto the bed and begun to undress.

“Look,” I said in the gravest tone I could muster, “we have to keep this tape business and any suspicions we have about Bernard quiet and strictly between us, all right?”

“You already said that.” She draped her suit jacket over the foot of the bed and unbuttoned her blouse. “I heard you the first time.”

“I just need to be sure—”

“I heard you the first time, Alan.” She glared at me with a level of belligerence I’d never seen her express. Then, like a slowly receding tide, her small body began to relax, her shoulders drooped a bit and she turned away, slipped out of her blouse and let it fall to the floor. “Am I supposed to swear on a stack of Bibles or something?”

“I just want you to understand how import—”

“Wait, I know! A lie detector test.” She turned and glared at me again. “You could hook me up to a lie detector, how’s that sound?”

I felt impervious to her jokes, if that’s what they were, and wondered if she felt the same. Once she realized I had no intention of answering her she aimed her death stare elsewhere, kicked off her pumps and busied herself with the zipper on the back of her skirt. She peeled the skirt down beyond her hips, wiggled it off the rest of the way until it slid down into a heap at her ankles, then she stepped away and hitched her thumbs into the back of her pantyhose.

The smells from the pizzeria downstairs were suddenly unbearable, or perhaps they had been all along and I’d only just then noticed them. Regardless, I went to the window and opened it wider in the hopes that fresh sea air might overpower the reek of pizza dough, canned tomato sauce and fried meats. Outside, the darkness continued to gain power, to deepen and develop and take shape.

Toni’s nude form reflected in the window drew my attention. An odd feeling washed over me and although I did my best to shake free, it hung tight. It was as if everyone I had ever known that had died was watching us. Flashes of them—each and every one—appeared in my mind then faded as I stood there, pretending to watch the night but really watching Toni reflected in the upper pane as she carried her dirty clothes to a small hamper in the corner and silently dropped them in.

Behind her, blurred figures, faceless and vague, appeared in the glass as if they were passing, pushing through the wall gradually, reaching for her. I closed my eyes and held them shut until I was certain the feeling and visions had retreated to wherever they’d come from, then turned and saw Toni slipping into a lightweight robe. Oblivious, she grabbed two towels from her bureau, headed for the bathroom and mumbled, “I’m going to take a shower.”

“It’s not about love, is it?” It wasn’t a question, and she knew it, because she stopped and looked back at me. The anger had escaped, replaced by sorrow. “This thing that’s going on with you and Gene. It’s not about love.”

Her expression was one that might follow a round of violent tears or uncontrollable wailing, only none of that had happened. At least not in front of me it hadn’t. She simply looked at me with sadness so overwhelming no amount of tears could ever sufficiently convey its depth. And there in the lamplight, with night in full swing, Toni looked like she had aged for the first time since I’d known her. The tiny lines around her eyes and along the sides of her mouth seemed more evident, as if she’d somehow brought them to life just then. She was tired just like I was, exhausted and drained and doing what we all did: Getting out of bed every morning and doing the best she could, trying her best not to scream or cry or explode in violence and rage or cut her wrists or throw herself in front of a bus or just drop out and allow the streets and shadows to swallow her whole. She was doing what was necessary for survival and sanity, but survival was a tough business, and not at all what life was solely meant to be about.

I closed my eyes again, this time because the pain on her face was hurting me too. “Or am I wrong again?” I asked.

“Yes,” she managed, “you’re wrong.”

“Then it is about love?”

“It’s about friendship, support, listening. It’s about helping me when I need it.”

“You’re having an affair with him.”

“I can’t believe you’d ask me such a thing.”

“It wasn’t a question.”

She sighed. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Toni,” I said, hopeful it hadn’t sounded quite as desperate as it felt, “good, bad or indifferent, I need to know that something in my life is real, that something is what it appears to be, do you understand?”

“Yes, I do. I do understand what you mean. I understand exactly what you mean. And do you know why? Would you like to know why I understand so well, Alan?” She waited a moment then said, “Because I need that too.”

A breeze blew in off the cove, sent the curtains fluttering while sirens blared from the street below. A fire engine rushed by, followed by an ambulance. It wasn’t warm enough yet for the windows to be open so wide at night, so I took my cue and closed it, hoping perhaps to shut out the rest of the world along with the clamor of Main Street after dark. I hesitated at the window, refused to look into the glass for fear of what might be looking back. Everything suddenly seemed so goddamn futile.

“Just tell me it’s not about love,” I said so softly I wasn’t sure she’d even heard me.

“Why do you always assume we need different things?”

“Just tell me.”

“It’s not about love.”

My throat then stomach clenched, and I thought I’d be sick, but the feeling passed more quickly than I’d imagined it might. The circumstances didn’t seem to require conflict, screaming or tears or any of the drama these things normally entailed. Rather, a quiet, nearly calm sense of irrepressible grief, an immediate mourning of sorts, assumed control. Bernard was a butcher. My wife was fucking someone else. The world had ruptured, shattered into millions of pieces. And none of it had made a sound.

“You’re always so infuriatingly alone,” she said. “Even when I’m standing right next to you.”

I resisted the urge to reach out and touch her, to hold her in my arms and to tell her everything would be all right. Instead, I shrugged, unsure of what to do.

Toni saw my indecision as an opportunity for escape, and with a frustrated shake of her head, disappeared behind the bathroom door. A moment later the pipes rattled, the water kicked on and I pictured her nude beneath the spray from the showerhead, wrapped in rising steam, soapy hands gliding along wet skin, cleansing a body I knew every inch of.

I wondered if the woman they’d found had showered the day of her death. Had she tried to wash herself clean, too? Had it been too late? Had she known that day would be her last? Had she moved through her final day on Earth with any knowledge of the horrors awaiting her or had it all come as a big surprise, the grim reaper darting out from behind a papier-mâché rock like some cheesy carnival funhouse prank?

We were all the same, it seemed to me, all of us dented and scratched and damaged, held together with pins and duct tape, the walking wounded making one last stand in the dark before giving in to the inevitable. Sometimes it was easy to see the truth behind the lies, sometimes not. Either way, it didn’t really matter. The truth was what I needed, and the truth—however terrible—was exactly what I planned to get.

In response, visions of Bernard coiled in my brain and nested there, a teenage Bernard sitting near train tracks and gazing out at the old animal burial ground, black clouds boiling and churning overhead, carrying with them an incoming storm no mortal could ever hope to stop. Maybe we got it all backwards, he whispered from our past, his dead breath cold in my ear. Maybe none of us really start living… until we’re dead.

“Maybe so,” I whispered back. “Maybe so.”

CHAPTER 14

For the second time in a week I found myself on Sycamore Way, in the more exclusive section of Potter’s Cove, but this time I’d been sitting in my car for nearly an hour, watching the small law offices across the street. A plaque that read Henderson & MacCovey was mounted to the wall next to the front door, along with some other information of no use to me. I checked my watch then stepped from the car and moved quickly to the corner so I could time my “accidental” encounter with Brian Henderson.

He had always been more a casual friend of Bernard’s than mine, but as youngsters I had hung out with him now and then as well, though always on the fringe and often like a third wheel, of sorts. Brian had gone on to become a successful personal injury attorney and lived in a beautiful waterfront property with a social circle that didn’t include people like me. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d seen each other, much less spoken, so I knew instigating a conversation with him now—particularly one that might yield pertinent information—was a long shot, but it was all I had.

I had called his office a bit earlier in the day, posing as a telemarketer, and learned he had gone to lunch, so I parked near the usual lunch haunt for local yuppies, a small coffee and sandwich shop around the corner. When Brian finally emerged I noticed he was reading a newspaper as he strolled toward Sycamore. My head down, I walked directly into his path, and just before we bumped into each other I pulled up and met his annoyed gaze. “Excuse me. Sorry, I didn’t see you.” He glared at me over the newspaper, but his scowl slowly changed as vague familiarity dawned in his eyes. Only then did I pretend I’d recognized him as well. “Hey,” I said, “Brian, how’s it going?”

He straightened his posture and slowed his stride until he’d come to a full stop, then folded the newspaper and put it under his arm. “Hi there.” His smile was dazzling, but I could tell he still couldn’t quite place me.

“It’s me, Alan.”

“Alan, of course,” he said, but it was obvious he still had no idea who I was. “Hi.”

I didn’t know if he was aware that Bernard had died, or even cared, so I decided that unless he brought it up, I’d avoid the topic entirely. “How are you?”

“Can’t complain, and yourself?” He casually scratched the side of his neck so I’d be sure to see his manicure and the gold watch on his wrist.

I shrugged. “Doing all right.”

He jerked his thumb in the direction of Main Street. “Did you hear about the body over at—”

“Yeah,” I said. “Couldn’t believe it. Crazy, huh?”

“Imagine that kind of thing happening here? Like that won’t drive the property values down faster than shit through a goose.” He chuckled at his own joke and seemed puzzled that I hadn’t done the same.

“I just hope they find whoever did it,” I said.

“Yeah, let’s hope.” Because I was blocking his path, he shuffled about a bit and glanced around, as if to be certain no one could see him talking to me. “So, what are you up to these days?”

“Still working security. Sucks, but it’s a living.” I smiled. “You’re doing well as ever, I see.”

“Well, we could all do with more.”

While he stood there grinning at me I tried to find some semblance of the little boy I’d once known. But the always jovial and unassuming person he’d been was lost somewhere beneath a perpetual tan, his hand-tailored Italian silk suit, and indifference.

“How are Liza and the kids?” I asked.

“Oh, fine, just fine.”

“Still haven’t had any of our own yet,” I said.

He offered the typical silent look of superiority those who have children often level at those who do not; as if being alive for a certain amount of time without eventually reproducing was a sacrilege simply too depraved to verbalize.

After an awkward silence I asked, “Hey, how’s Julie doing?”

Brian’s eyes widened almost comically. “Well, Jules is—Jules is Jules.”

I smiled innocently. “I haven’t seen her in years, she still living in Massachusetts?”

“Cambridge—in one of the worst neighborhoods, of course—for a few years now.”

I felt my pulse quicken. “Well give her my best next time you see her.”

He looked beyond me, toward his office. “Actually,” he said quietly, “I don’t see her that often. Sometimes on holidays, but that’s about it. Julie still has a lot of problems.” He pointed to his ear with his index finger and made a quick circular motion.

He said this as if it were, and had been, common knowledge in town for years—and maybe it was—but I had never involved myself in local gossip. Brian apparently assumed otherwise, so I played along. “What a shame. She’s still having those same difficulties?”

“Well, you know, she’s just out there.” If I hadn’t known, I’d have never guessed it was his only sister he was referring to with such disdain. “After a while you pull back and throw up your hands in disgust. We all have our own lives—and I have my standing in town to think of—you know what I mean.”

When we’d all been younger, before Julie had developed the problems he was so quick to point out, she’d been the main attraction in their family, while Brian, an inconspicuous kid with a buzz cut and bad skin, was relegated to supporting role status. Over time the tables had turned, and he seemed nothing short of ecstatic about it. “The last I heard she was working as a waitress. Imagine Julie still holding down a menial job at her age? There’s a shocker.” His sarcasm approached glee.

“Hey, it’s an honest living.”

Brian looked like I’d amused him. Perhaps I had. “Yes—well—at any rate, listen, it’s great seeing you, Alan.” He used my name cautiously, as if to be certain he had it right. Apparently he’d become far too important to remember someone like me. When I said nothing, he offered up a burst of insincere laughter. “At any rate, we’ll have to get together one of these—”

“Yeah, can’t wait.” I offered an insincere smile of my own. “See you around, Brian.”

I walked back to my car without looking back. It felt great to dismiss the bastard, and besides, I’d lucked out. Julie was living a little over thirty minutes away in Cambridge, and my thoughts had already turned to her.

Once I got back to the apartment, I called Donald at work and asked him if he could search the Internet for some information. I knew he had Internet access at work and at home, and since I had no idea how to even turn a computer on and didn’t have time to go to the public library and dig through microfiche, I figured he was the best person to assign with information gathering. “Do you think you might be able to find anything about homicides in New York City during 1982?” I asked.

“I’m sure there must be some web sites out there with statistical info,” he said softly, keeping his voice down so no one else could hear what he was saying.

“Well that’s the year we thought Bernard was in the Marines,” I reminded him. “If he told the truth on the tape and was really in New York City for that year then there should be some evidence of the things he claimed he did. Articles, police logs, whatever you can come up with that might somehow tie into all of this.”

“I’ll do it when I get home. There’s no privacy here, such is the life of a lowly corporate word processor. I’m not sure I’ll find any specifics but I’ll see what I can do.”

“OK, I have to get going but I’ll be in touch tonight,” I told him. “Depending on what time I get back, I’ll either give you a call or swing by the house.”

Silence answered me until he said, “Get back from where?”

“Cambridge.”

“And do I want to know what’s in Cambridge?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll talk tonight.”

I was familiar with Boston but not so much with neighboring Cambridge, so after finding a listing for Julie in an area phonebook, I jotted down the number and address then headed out. I shot up Route 3, the coastal highway that leads to and ends just shy of the outskirts of Boston. Thoughts detonated one after another, blurring my mind as I did my best to focus on the road. The two tallest buildings in the city—the Hancock Tower, a reflecting spire of tinted glass built to appear one-dimensional from certain angles and three-dimensional from others, and the contrasting, more traditionally designed skyscraping Prudential Center, needle nose piercing the clouds—dominated the horizon. A dull sun dangled low in the sky, partially obstructed by the cityscape, as if hiding and mischievously peeking out from behind it.

I had no idea, no plan as to how I might approach Julie—or even if I should—much less broach a conversation about what may or may not have taken place in the forests of Potter’s Cove more than twenty years before. Odds were, she’d have no memory of me. In all the times I’d been to Brian’s house or played in his yard, Julie and I had probably spoken fewer than twenty words to each other. If I got lucky, she might have a vague memory of me as one of her little brother’s friends, but that was the best I could hope for.

I needed a starting point, and trying to find the truth about her and my memories of that day in the forest with Bernard was as good a place to start as any. If Bernard had done something to her all those years before, it didn’t necessarily prove he’d later graduated to murder, but it would give me a more objective view of him and hopefully point me in the right direction in terms of solving the rest of what I’d experienced.

Traffic was light, and I made my way into the city quickly. It was a bit warmer here, the air thicker and less typical of spring in Massachusetts. I drove along Washington Street then hopped onto Charles Street, cut through the Boston Common public gardens and headed toward Beacon Hill. The Longfellow Bridge took me into East Cambridge, past Kendall Square and onto Broadway.

I found Demaro Street, a narrow boulevard, a few blocks in and away from the hustle and bustle of the main drag. The phonebook had listed Julie Henderson’s address as #12. I slowed the car and noticed many of the addresses were not clearly marked. The neighborhood was rundown, the streets littered and the tenements in various stages of disrepair. The gaps between the buildings were so small the entire street had the confined feeling of an alley. On the corner was a graffiti-decorated and burned out building that had once been a convenience store. A group of guarded-looking young men and one woman stood nearby, watchful eyes locked on my car, lips moving subtly, as if speaking to each other in code. I moved on, their stares still boring through me, and a bit further up I found #12, a two-story apartment building with a flat roof, severely chipped paint and cement front steps. I pulled into the first available space across the street and checked my rearview. The group on the corner was still there but no longer seemed interested in me.

Before I could change my mind I forced myself from the car and jogged across the street to Julie’s building. A breeze kicked up but quickly dissipated. Litter and debris blew about at my feet, scraped the pavement then settled quietly.

Not surprisingly, the front door was unlocked. I stepped through into a closet-like entryway. To my right I saw a row of mailboxes, none of which were marked with anything but an apartment number etched directly into their front panels. The interior door before me led to a short foyer and a worn and dusty staircase with a hallway to its left. There was a strong musty smell, like fresh air seldom found its way here, and the industrial tile floor was filthy, the dark tan walls shabby and stained. I looked up at a ceiling beset with watermarks and thick clumps of dust and grime, and released a lengthy sigh.

The address in the phonebook had only listed the building number, not any specific apartment, so I moved past the staircase, into a narrow hallway and followed it to the first door. I hesitated, listened a moment. A man and woman were having a rather heated argument on the other side of the thin wall but were speaking Spanish, so I had no idea what they were saying. I moved to the second and only other apartment on the first floor. A small plastic sign that read: Beware of Dog had been tacked to the door, and beneath it was a thick piece of masking tape on which the name Barnett had been printed.

I returned to the staircase and slowly climbed it, ignoring the spent paraphernalia and telltale rubbish in the corners along the floor that indicated the foyer was a regular stop for neighborhood junkies when shooting up or smoking crack. The entire stairwell smelled of decay. A bleary shaft of sunlight from a window facing the street cut the second floor landing in two. Dust motes danced in the colorless light, sprinkling the shadows just beyond the reach of the sun. I could hear a television playing somewhere nearby, the sound muffled but loud enough to echo throughout the building. Once I’d reached the top of the stairs I looked in both directions—the hallway was empty—then stepped away from the sunlight, into the dusty shadows and toward the first door.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Startled, I looked to my right; saw the outline of a man standing at the far end of the hallway. “Uh—Hello,” I said awkwardly.

“Yeah, howdy-do, motherfucker. You deaf?” He came closer, clad in a soiled t-shirt and grungy jeans. His body was gaunt and his gait clipped, as if walking were something of an effort. I noticed a series of dark purple track marks along his arms. His face emerged from shadow to reveal hollow blue eyes that had probably once been piercing but were now faded and foggy from drug abuse. His hair was mussed and badly in need of a shampoo, and black and gray stubble covered his scruffy face. “I asked you a question—who the fuck are you?”

“I’m looking for Julie Henderson,” I said, squaring my shoulders, “that’s who the fuck I am. Which apartment is hers?”

Realizing he had failed to intimidate me, the man dropped his tough guy routine and shrugged dejectedly. “I don’t know nobody, all right?” His eyes darted about as he nervously crossed then uncrossed his arms and shuffled his feet like a child in need of a bathroom. When his eyes finally settled on me again they did so with such intensity it was like being stared at by someone who had never seen another human being and was trying desperately to get his mind around the concept. “I don’t know no—nobody.”

“Look,” I said, relaxing my stance a bit, “I’m an old friend of Julie’s. We grew up in the same town. I haven’t seen her in years and I—”

“She’s at work.” His statement seemed to surprise him as much as it had me.

“You live in the building?” I asked.

The man nodded rapidly then stopped the motion just as suddenly.

“Does she work around here?”

“Yeah, she—she should be back any time, OK? Any time now.” He pawed at the bruises on his right arm and shivered slightly. “Any time now.”

“What apartment does Julie live in?”

“Same one as me,” he told me through a hard swallow, cocking his head quickly in the direction from which he’d come but indicating only the darkness behind him.

I was stunned but tried my best to mask it. “You her boyfriend?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m Alan,” I said, offering a casual wave since I had no intention of touching him. “Alan Chance.”

“Cool name. Should be a spy or a movie star or something with that name.” The man leaned against the wall and sighed. “You ain’t a cop or nothing like that, right?”

“Nope, just an old friend of the family.”

“Julie’s shift ends at two,” he said, wiping some spittle from the corner of his mouth. “She should—she should be home by now, I—I don’t know what the fuck’s taking her so long.”

I looked at my watch: 2:19. The hell with this, I thought. I wanted out of there anyway. “Well look, let her know I stopped by. I’ll be back around to see her some other time.”

I turned to leave and nearly ran into a woman standing in the sunlight at the top of the stairs; a paper bag stuffed with groceries tucked under one arm and a set of keys dangling from her free hand. Images fired through my mind’s eye, a veil of memories slowly lifting to expose the woman now standing before me. Gone was the honey colored hair, the clear brown eyes, the perfect complexion and model body. In their place was a rather disheveled and tired-looking middle-aged woman in a polyester waitress uniform, nylons and dingy white sneakers. “Julie?”

She exchanged a quick glance with the man then returned her focus to me.

“Julie,” I said again, my heart racing, “you don’t remember me but—”

“Baby,” the man said from behind me, “please can we take care of that other thing first? You got it on the way home, right? You—you got it, right?”

I looked back at him, then at Julie. Eyes trained on mine, she gave a slow nod, reached into her uniform pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag. The man blew by me and rushed to her with speed I wouldn’t have guessed he had, snatched the baggy from her hand and shuffled off toward the apartment. “Beautiful, beautiful—I knew—I can always count on you, baby.”

Julie approached me. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“My name’s Alan Chance. I’m from Potter’s Cove. Your brother Brian and I used to play now and then when we were kids.”

“Chance,” she said, expressionless.

“Yeah, Alan. I was a few years behind you in school,” I said. “Like I say, you probably don’t remember me but—”

“What do you want?” she asked, this time softly.

I extended my hand and smiled. She left it hanging there, so I said, “I was hoping maybe you and I could talk for a few minutes.”

“About what?”

“Well—look, I—I know this is going to sound strange, but I want to talk to you about someone I think we both knew. Do you remember a kid my age—Brian’s age—named Bernard?”

A slight crack appeared in her otherwise vacant expression, but she said nothing.

“Bernard Moore,” I pressed. “Do you remember anyone from town with that name?”

“I knew it,” she mumbled, as if to herself.

I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “I’m sorry?”

Rather than answering or repeating herself, her eyes dropped the length of my body with the detached air of a formal inspection, finally settling then locking on my chest. I looked down, following her stare, and realized the small gold crucifix I wore had come out of my shirt at some point and was dangling over my collar in full view. I grasped it and carefully dropped it back inside my shirt. When I looked back at her she was still staring quite intently, but now directly into my eyes.

“I don’t mean you any harm, Julie,” I said gently. “I only want to talk.”

“Not here,” she said in monotone. “Inside.”

CHAPTER 15

Despite having been invited in, I still felt awkward and out of place in Julie’s apartment. We entered in single-file and with an unspoken but shared sense of sorrow—livestock to slaughter—Julie in the lead and myself bringing up the rear. She stepped to the side, let me pass, then closed the door and engaged a vast collection of locks.

A tiny parlor opened into a substantial but modestly furnished living room, where an inexpensive circular rug covered most of the worn hardwood floor. The furniture was mismatched and old, and the walls had been painted a light gray, which gave the apartment a gloomy feel even in the light of day. Two windows dressed in faded white curtains stood at the rear of the room overlooking an empty playground and an adjacent avenue beyond. Small silver crucifixes dangled in each window, facing the street like sentinels. I pretended not to notice.

Julie brought me through the living room and into an equally dismal kitchen. A card table, its vinyl top littered with burn marks and small tears, sat in the center of the room surrounded by four folding chairs. A large glass ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, a deck of cards and various religious books, including an old Bible, lay scattered across it. Suspended from a curtain rod in the window over the sink was another silver crucifix.

The apartment was filled with religious trinkets and small statues, but I couldn’t be certain if I’d entered a temple or a bunker. I’d not seen a single photograph of her family, or anything that linked her to anyone for that matter, only an impersonal and joyless space that seemed a shrine to isolation.

Julie motioned to the table so I slid into one of the chairs while she put a kettle of water on to boil and excused herself; vanishing down a hallway off of the kitchen. Though I hadn’t seen him since entering the apartment, I caught a whiff of the pungent odor of cooked heroin, and assumed the man was down that hallway somewhere too, filling what was left of his veins. I was still stunned that Julie had let me in at all, and I couldn’t lose the disconcerting feeling that she’d somehow been expecting me. That was wildly improbable, of course, but it seemed the only reasonable explanation for her saying, I knew it, when I’d first mentioned Bernard, and for allowing a stranger into her home with virtually no questions asked. Coupled with the general feeling of unease the apartment emitted, my nerves were on edge and the back of my neck had begun to tingle. But there was certainly no chill in the stagnant air. In fact, it was then that I noticed all the windows were shut, and I found myself wondering why they would be on such a pleasant spring day.

I could feel the man’s eyes on me before he emerged from the hallway and glided over to the table. Much calmer and under control now, but to the point of being just barely conscious, he sat down in slow motion and leaned heavily against the rickety table, a ludicrous drug-induced grin on his face. He seemed incapable of small talk so I looked at the Bible without trying to be too obvious. Like the other books on the table, it was tattered and dog-eared, and an inordinate number of pages had been book-marked with small sticky notes.

But for the man’s slow steady breathing, the apartment seemed impossibly quiet.

“You ever ask yourself,” he said, slurring the words, “how you got to be here—you know, like—like in this place at this time?”

I looked into his filmy eyes. “Been asking myself that a lot lately.”

“You look… tense.”

“It’s a tense time for me.”

“Well,” he said, his eyes closing, rolling slowly back into his head, “I figure worry is like this essentially useless, like, thing, you know? Because—dig it—because it like, it like makes us feel safe because it gives us this illusion, this lying-ass illusion that we have power. More power than we really have, you see what I mean? But in the end, man, in the end, all that leads to is fear, right? And fear leads to confusion.” He opened his eyes, smiled at me. “So the way I see it is, we all got to, like, to do whatever we can to clear our heads. You see what I’m saying, man?”

I wanted to get away from him, but continued to hold his gaze. “Yes.”

“Questioning where some burned out spike addict gets off tossing around advice, right?” He laughed dreamily.

The creaking floor distracted me, and I turned to see Julie crossing the kitchen to a row of cupboards above the only counter space in the room. “Hush up now, Adrian,” she said coolly. She had changed into a pair of old jeans and a lightweight sweater, and had let her hair down, which now hung to just above her shoulders. Tied back, as it had been when I’d first seen her, the gray at the roots was far more evident. “Would you like some tea?” she asked.

“No. Thank you, though.”

She took two cups and saucers from the cupboard and placed them on the table along with a bowl of sugar, then went to the refrigerator and returned with a small pitcher of milk. She considered me a moment, as if she planned to speak, but instead moved back to the counter and rummaged through her purse until she’d found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit the cigarette with her back to us, only turning around once she’d drawn an initial drag and exhaled it with a sigh.

Julie Henderson was not aging gracefully. She wore no makeup and had gained some weight, and that, combined with a look of exhaustion and a clearly intentional effort to mask her natural beauty and appear average—if not outright unattractive—gave her a slovenly look. She took another heavy drag from the cigarette, and I noticed nicotine-stained fingers with nails gnawed down to nearly nothing. She was six years older than I, which still only made her forty-four, but in her current state she looked closer to sixty. An unhealthy, emotionally ravaged and physically debilitated sixty. Somewhere nearby, her magnificence remained, buried beneath lines and crevices and dark rings, as if every instance of pain and fear and sadness and loathing had left a physical mark, a reminding scar. The nineteen-year-old bombshell was long dead, and despite her obvious difficulties, living in her place was an adult, a woman, someone of substance, and someone for whom Madison Avenue-defined beauty was clearly no longer relevant or even of interest.

Julie swept her hair back away from her face. “How did you find me?”

“Your address is in the book, but I didn’t know you were in Cambridge until Brian told me. I bumped into him in town.”

“Brian.” She spoke his name as if it left a foul taste in her mouth. “Does he know you’re here?”

“No.”

She quietly smoked her cigarette for a moment. “Why did you come here?”

It was a good question. What had I been thinking—who the hell did I think I was? Whether my suspicions of what had happened years before were accurate or not, what right did I have to appear from nowhere and disrupt this woman’s already difficult life? “It might be better if we spoke privately.”

“Whatever you have to discuss with me can be said in front of Adrian, it’s all right.” Her tone wasn’t angry but she had obviously already grown impatient. “I trust him completely.”

I saw Adrian grin and wink from the corner of my eye. My palms had begun to perspire so I nonchalantly wiped them on my pants and attempted a coherent sentence. “Look, I know this is beyond odd—my showing up out of the blue like this, someone you never really knew that well and haven’t seen in years—but I didn’t know where else to turn. It’s probably ridiculous, my being here, but I needed to talk to you, Julie.” I folded my hands and placed them in my lap in an attempt to hold them steady. “I asked before, but—do you remember someone from town—from Potter’s Cove—a boy named Bernard Moore?” This time she gave no reaction, so I described him.

She drew on her cigarette, the smoke slithering about causing her to squint. “What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“So, what do you want from me, a sympathy card?”

“He killed himself. Hanged himself.”

Julie crushed her cigarette in the already overflowing ashtray on the table between us and expelled a final burst of smoke from her nostrils. “What was he to you?”

“He was my friend.”

She backed away, folded her arms over her chest and leaned back against the counter. “Is that a fact?”

I looked to Adrian almost reflexively, but he was staring at the table as if it were the most miraculous thing he’d ever seen, so I turned back to Julie. “But I think maybe Bernard wasn’t who I thought he was. Some things have come to light since his death that—”

“What things?”

I stood up. “Look, I’ve made a mistake. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered you like this.”

“I saw the news this morning,” she announced abruptly. “A body was found in Potter’s Cove.”

“Yes. The body of a young woman.”

“That kind of thing happens around here quite a bit. Bet it’s big-time news in that little shit-burgh though.” The kettle began to whistle. Julie strode to the stove, retrieved it and filled the two cups on the table. It occurred to me how easily she could have scorched me by removing the top of the kettle and flinging the scalding water in my direction, and although she had given no indication of violence, there was a troubled expression on her face that concerned me. “Sit down, Alan. You came here for answers, didn’t you? Why run off now that you’re so close to getting some?”

Adrian dunked his tea bag and suppressed a giggle.

I felt myself sink back into the chair, and once Julie had returned the kettle to a cool burner and rejoined us at the table, I said, “You knew Bernard then, I mean—you do remember him?”

Julie clutched her cup with both hands, brought the tea to her lips and sipped quietly. “I remember he raped me.”

At that point her answer should not have surprised me. But it did.

“God, I… I’m sorry, I—”

“That’s what you wanted to know, wasn’t it? That’s what you came here to ask me about. There’s nothing else, no other reason to link him to me that you’d know about. You already knew the answer. You would’ve had to.”

“I suspected. He hinted before his suicide that he’d done some things, some horrible things.” I propped my elbows on the table and rested my face in my hands. “God almighty, this can’t be happening.”

“I never told anyone,” she said.

They never tell.

“I’m sorry, but I need to know what happened, Julie. It’s important.”

“Oh, I know it is.” She took another sip of tea, her hands shaking, and before I could respond she said, “It was near the end of summer, 1975. It happened in Potter’s Cove Woods.”

“I don’t mean to be insensitive or—”

“Just ask your questions.”

“Bernard wore those thick glasses and was physically small—a weak little runt in those days—how was he able to—”

“The element of surprise. A knife. And help.”

My heart was ready to explode. “He had help?”

She nodded, reached again for her cigarettes. “I was doing my usual run, and there was a section of woods I always cut through.” She pushed a cigarette into her mouth with a distant gaze, like the memories were just over some horizon only she could see. “Do you remember the stone fireplace out there, the one near the old campgrounds?”

“Yes.”

“He was sitting next to that when I first saw him,” she said, her voice sliding into monotone. “I stopped, I—I thought he was hurt. He was small, like you said, and he looked younger than he was, I guess. He was just sitting there rocking back and forth and moaning and rubbing his leg. I stopped and asked him if he was all right and he said he’d fallen and twisted his ankle. He said if I helped him he thought he could walk, so I gave him a hand. Why wouldn’t I have? He looked like this defenseless and injured little kid. Why—why wouldn’t I have helped him? Was I supposed to just ignore him and keep running?”

“No,” I said, the word catching in my throat. “I understand.”

“When I got him to his feet he pushed me—hard and suddenly—and I lost my balance and fell backwards and…” She drew an angry drag from her cigarette, leaving the filter crushed. “I hit the ground hard, hit the back of my head. I just missed that fireplace. If I’d hit that with the back of my head I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, I can tell you that much. I would’ve died in those woods that day. I still… I still thought I would. I wasn’t unconscious exactly but everything was blurry and swirling and… and the next thing I knew the kid was on top of me. He had a knife, a switchblade he opened right near my face, and he was laughing but it wasn’t like any laughter I’d ever heard before, it—it didn’t even sound human. He held the knife to my throat and he was talking but I don’t remember what he said, only… I only remember the sensation of being undressed, my shorts being pulled down and my legs being forced open.”

Adrian slowly rose to his feet. “I need to go lay down for a while.”

As he hobbled off down the hallway, I saw Julie wipe a tear from the corner of her eye then take another angry stab at her cigarette.

“I’m sorry to bring all this back up, but… but can you tell me who was with—”

“I couldn’t believe what was happening,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard me. “I couldn’t believe what this little kid, this—this child was doing to me. Even the way he’d tricked me seemed like some playground prank or something, it—it just seemed so impossible, like a dream where nothing makes sense—you know those kind? The kind where nothing looks right or makes sense?”

I felt myself nod.

“None of it ever felt real. He was physically so small too, like this little person crawling on top of me, it—even when he was raping me it—I couldn’t believe what was happening.”

I held closed my eyes until the visions her descriptions had created left me.

“When he’d finished—I don’t know exactly when that was because I came in and out of consciousness a couple times during it—I felt him rolling me over. I was on my stomach and he pushed my face down and there was dirt and pine needles in my mouth.” With the back of her hand she pawed away tears. Tears of rage, a rage in bondage finally set free, escaping her now like a departing soul. “I don’t… I can’t remember how long I was out there. I had a concussion from hitting my head so hard, and I remember it being light, being able to see the sun through the tops of the trees, the blue sky up there looking down on us and… and then the next thing I knew it had gotten dark. Not total darkness like late at night, the kind of darkness there is right after dusk or right before dawn, you know how I mean?”

“Julie,” I whispered, “you said Bernard had help. I need you to tell me who was with him that day.”

She wiped away the remaining tears and seemed to regain total control of her emotions. “You do, huh?”

“If you can tell me, yes.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“And you think you’ll understand?” she asked, her tone even more sarcastic. “You think you’ll have the capacity to understand? Even if I did tell you, you wouldn’t have the vaguest fucking clue as to what I’m talking about.” She slammed her lighter against the table. “You wanted to know if your friend was guilty of raping me. Now you know. Go home to Potter’s Cove and get on with your insignificant little life and leave the rest of this alone.”

“I wish I could,” I said.

“Leave it alone. Walk away.”

“I can’t. It’s not that easy. And I think you know that, don’t you, Julie.”

“People think I’m fucked up,” she said. “Fucked in the head—and I am, I admit it. Since that day I’ve had problems, but—but I’m not crazy. I wasn’t then and I’m not now. I’m not.”

“Right about now a lot of people think I’m crazy too.” I managed a halfhearted smile. “Whatever you’re willing to tell me, I’m prepared to believe.”

She sipped her tea, smoked her cigarette; said nothing.

“Julie,” I pushed, “who was with Bernard in the woods that day?”

“There weren’t any other people with him—not really,” she said blankly. “But he wasn’t alone.”

CHAPTER 16

With Julie’s words still hanging in the air, I tried to convince myself that her statement had been made metaphorically. But even then I knew it hadn’t been. I pushed the fear back like the bile that it was, did my best to keep it under control and contained beneath the surface.

“When it was over, he left me out in the woods,” she said, splitting the silence. “Like I told you, I had a concussion from hitting my head and I was dirty, had leaves and twigs and things in my hair and all over my clothes from being pushed down into the earth. It was like for a few seconds he had contemplated killing me, suffocating me there in the clearing, forcing me to breathe in all that loose dirt. I realized later that it was probably just his way of letting me know he could have killed me had he really wanted to. In some ways it would’ve been more merciful if he had.”

As Bernard’s friend, as an intruder in this shattered woman’s life, I couldn’t help but somehow feel a sense of responsibility, a need to assume the fault in his absence and to apologize for what he’d done, for what he’d become. “I’m sorry,” I said pathetically.

“I told my parents I tripped while I was on my run,” she said, her mind still far away and trapped in that horrible forest. “I told them I hit my head and knocked myself out and came to a while later. I never talked about the rest of it. I couldn’t, I mean—even if I had they all would’ve thought I was crazy. Most ended up thinking so anyway.”

“I’m not passing judgment with this question,” I said carefully, “but why didn’t you tell, Julie? Why did you let him get away with doing that to you?”

She let out a burst of pessimistic laughter that was brief and violent and possessed the cadence of rapid automatic gunfire. “My parents kept taking me to doctors. They were sure my bump on the head had caused the changes in me. The nightmares I had, the screaming in the middle of the night, the inability to focus or concentrate anymore because it always felt like I was being watched, the depression and the suicide attempt not even a year later. That little trick landed me in a special hospital in Boston.” She sat back a bit in her chair and assumed a more defiant posture. “And that was my first stop. Been in and out of nuthouses for years. Ever been on the inside of an asylum, Alan?”

I shook my head in the negative.

“Well, let me tell you, there are some crazy motherfuckers in those places. Full throttle, out of control nuts—I’m talking crazy. Only I wasn’t one of them. And you know what? I wasn’t the only one. There were other people in there just like me, people who knew, people who’d seen. Only they talked about it. They talked about it until their medications stopped them from talking or thinking or being anything with an intellect higher than that of a fucking coffee table. But I knew the truth about things too, and all I wanted was to die, to snuff myself out and hopefully put an end to the chaos. Of course no one could understand why. Just months before I’d been this perfect little Barbie doll with perfect grades and perfect friends and everyone loved me and just knew I was going to go to college and meet the perfect Ken-doll man and have the perfect Ken and Barbie life. I was Julie-fucking-Henderson. How could Julie go crazy?” Tears again filled her eyes, but she somehow managed to prevent them from spilling free. “And I wanted to tell them, believe me I did. I wanted to tell my friends, I wanted to tell those doctors and nurses and the other lost souls in that awful place, I wanted to tell my parents and anyone else who’d listen that I wasn’t crazy, that there was an evil in this world I’d never known existed, but I’d seen it, I’d witnessed it, experienced it firsthand. It was real. That’s what that day in the woods taught me. That evil isn’t just a concept or a theory. It’s real. It destroyed my life. Destroyed it. You live in Potter’s Cove; I’m sure you heard all the whispering and talk about how I’d gone off the deep-end. Everyone knows everyone else’s business there. Can’t fart in that town without someone hearing it.”

“If it’ll make you feel any better,” I said, “I had no idea until your brother told me you’d had some problems. I always just assumed you’d gone on to college and moved off somewhere else.”

She gauged the candor of my reply before she spoke again. “Will you answer a question I have?”

“Of course.”

“Do you expect me to believe that you were his friend—his close friend—and never suspected, never knew what Bernard had done?”

“I had suspicions, but—no—I never knew for sure that he’d done this to you.”

“You never knew what he really was?” She slowly shook her head, as if she pitied me. “Jesus, you really don’t.”

I leaned forward over the table and slowly brought myself closer to her in as non-threatening a manner as I could. “I need your help. Please tell me what you know.”

Without breaking eye contact, Julie reached for her cigarettes. “Careful, I just might.”

“What really happened in those woods that day?” I asked. “What was it you saw?”

“The dark,” she said softly. “I saw the dark.”

I waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, I grabbed her lighter from the table, produced a flame and held it out toward the cigarette resting between her fingers. The ignition sound, or perhaps the flame itself, caught her attention and broke the trance that had fallen over her, and with a startled jump, she rolled the cigarette into the corner of her mouth and leaned into the flame. I placed the lighter back on the table and watched as she ran a hand through her hair, stopping to rub the skin along her hairline before continuing on toward the back of her head. She’d left the cigarette in her mouth, and it dangled there like a tiny smoking limb.

I wondered if she always smoked so heavily.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to have your life become one continuous nightmare? I guess we all do on one level or another, huh?” She raised her head, plucked the cigarette free after a deep drag and exhaled a cloud at me. “But how do you describe evil, what it looks like, what it feels like? How do you describe darkness, how do you describe oxygen? I felt… I felt things watching us, watching me.” Her eyes narrowed. “And they were pleased.”

I wanted out of that apartment more than ever, but gripped the edge of the table and held myself in place. What if Julie Henderson really was insane? What if we both were?

“He had a stick,” she continued, staring at the wall over my shoulder now. “He was saying things but I couldn’t make out the words. They were strange words that I later learned were an obscure, ancient form of Latin. But he spoke them quickly and under his breath, and I was dazed and sound seemed to filter in and out—everything came and went like that while I was on the ground—sight, sound, and sensation—all of it. But he had this stick and he made drawings in the dirt next to me while he chanted those strange words and phrases. Urgent drawings in the dirt, he kept scratching them into the ground like he only had a certain amount of time, like he had to do this fast or it might not work. I couldn’t see what they were because I couldn’t lift my head, I—I tried to lift my head but I couldn’t, all I could do was let my eyes fall in that direction. All I could make out were glimpses but I started to feel… I felt something welling up all around us, and then inside me like—like the way a yawn starts in the back of your head and then that tingling slowly spreads out across your body, you—you know how I mean? It was like that sort of sensation, only instead of feeling good, instead of feeling like a release or relaxing, it was just the opposite. It gave me that feeling in the pit of my stomach, deep in my gut, the kind like you get right before you’re sick or… or have you ever heard the brakes on a car screech at night? In the dark, you lay there listening for that awful sound of impact, and when it comes, you get that twisting feeling in your stomach—it was like that. Only worse. Much worse.

“Then I heard voices,” she continued. “His at first, when he got on top of me. His breath, I—I could feel his breath on me and it made me want to vomit, I wanted him off of me and away from me but I couldn’t stop him. He kept saying these odd things and his voice was distorted, like in a dream, only… only then there were other voices too. Voices of torment, of people screaming and wailing in agony and all of it swirling around us like a whirlwind, it…” A tremor coursed through her and she took another greedy drag on the cigarette. “And then I saw things no human being should ever have to see. Things I can never erase from my mind. Things beyond comprehension, beyond description.”

Like I had seen when the woman had grabbed my arm in the abandoned factory, I thought, the visions of depravity and gore that had surged through me, as if summoned directly from Hell then injected into me through her.

“I can tell from your expression that you think I’m out of my mind,” she said.

“No, Julie, I don’t.” One of her hands was resting on the table. I reached out tentatively and let my hand touch hers. “I don’t think that at all.”

She slowly slid her hand free from beneath mine but seemed to understand it had only been an attempt at comforting her and nothing more. “You don’t just go on with your life after something like that. You don’t just pick up and move forward as if nothing ever happened, as if you never saw or experienced those things. Oh, you try, but it doesn’t work, the denial doesn’t take. It lingers like a foul odor. It clings to you the way perspiration clings to your skin. And slowly, eventually, like the slow drip of water torture, it drives you insane.”

I believed her, fearful that in looking at her I was glimpsing my own future.

“One of the strangest things about everything that happened that day,” she mumbled, that distant look returned to her face, “was that in a way, he seemed afraid too, kind of like he wasn’t sure of it yet, of what he had, of what he could do. It was like he had this genie in a bottle, and he’d let him loose, only he didn’t have total control, he didn’t have complete command yet.”

“So he was experimenting with—what—Satanism, or something?”

“Or something,” she said. “It’s not as simplistic as people think.”

“What isn’t?”

“Good, evil—all of it.” Julie pushed her chair away from the table, stood up and motioned first to the books between us and then to the crucifixes hanging in the windows. “Those are my reality, my beliefs, so they protect me. I’ve read and studied as much as I can since that day and all I know is that there’s a force in this world we can’t just dismiss as a bad dream. It crosses all boundaries: age, race, religion, gender, culture—all of it. But there’s also a force of positive energy—of good—you just have to seek it out. Evil is always there, like a loyal companion; see what I mean? It’s always available to us, always there, waiting, tempting. The only thing evil requires is consent. You don’t have to sacrifice, you don’t have to deprive yourself of anything, you just do; you just take it. Good’s there too, but you have to search a little harder, dig a little deeper to find it. Good requires that you look beyond yourself, it does require sacrifice, thought, awareness of something greater, better than all of us.” She wandered to the sink, fired her cigarette into the basin then ran the water. The butt extinguished, she turned and leaned back against the counter, facing me again with those sad, telling eyes. “And hanging on to it is a whole other story.”

“Did you ever see him again?” I asked.

“Every day. Every night. Every time I closed my eyes. Every time my mind wandered, it led me back to him. To that frail little boy, to those woods.” She shook her head and seemed to snap out of the trancelike fog that had enveloped her earlier. “It was only a matter of time before he took it to the next level. I knew what he did to me wouldn’t be enough later on, the more consumed he became. Before me, there were probably other steps—maybe he tortured animals or molested children in the neighborhood or God knows what else before he was able to do what he did to me. From there, killing was the next step. I knew sooner or later the bodies would start piling up, and the more I researched, the more I read and tried to learn about all that Bernard was and what he was still becoming and would eventually become, the more it all made sense. Read the papers, watch the news—there’s a commonality in the crimes happening—and it’s existed since the dawn of humanity. Do you think that’s an accident?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But even if it isn’t… isn’t it just human beings being…”

“Themselves?”

“Yes.”

“You think I’m one of those do-gooders who believes no one is responsible for the shit they do? Do I strike you as that sort, Alan? You think I went through the torture of my life—and continue to—because I believe everyone’s innocent, everyone’s just a puppet to some grand evil no one can help themselves against? The Devil made me do it, right? The Devil made me do it.”

I stood up, wiped a single trickle of sweat from my eyebrow with the back of my hand and asked, “Then what are you saying?”

“If you take the Devil’s hand, it’s still your fault, it’s still your choice, and you’re still to blame for whatever happens, for whatever you do, for whatever that evil causes in you.” Julie moved closer, as if she wanted to be certain I heard what she was going to say next. “But just because you’re to blame doesn’t mean the Devil was never there.”

“He once told me the Devil spoke to him,” I said.

“Maybe you should’ve believed him.”

An odd moaning sound echoed from the hallway. Adrian’s slurred, distant, indecipherable voice seemed to beckon.

“Is he all right?” I asked.

Julie nodded. “We all chase away bad dreams in our own way. He’s trying to kick it. I did more than two years ago now. I met Adrian in rehab, ironically enough. We don’t have much, just each other, but that’s more than a lot of people have.”

“I’m sorry.” The words were out before I had a chance to stop them.

“Don’t be sorry for us, Alan. Feel sorry for yourself. You’re the one in the dark now. We’re the meek, just waiting on our inheritance. Burn the days and survive the nights.”

“Honey?” Adrian called, his voice breaking and on the verge of tears.

“He needs me.”

Time was short, and I knew it. “I don’t think Bernard killed for several years after he attacked you. He claimed to have joined the Marines, but he admitted before his death that he went to New York City instead.”

“And you think that’s where he learned to kill?”

“Yes.” I swallowed. Hard. “Or maybe where he perfected it.”

“Look for ritual crimes,” she said with a nearly casual air. “Ritual murder, do you understand? Once he embraced evil, rituals would’ve been important—everything he did, every act he committed would have had purpose. His murders wouldn’t be simple killings. They’d be sacrifices. I’ve spent years studying these things, reading everything I can get my hands on, trying to make sense of something that makes no sense, trying to protect myself from something most people will tell you doesn’t even exist.” She nervously nibbled at one of her fingers. “I may be crazy, Alan, but I know what I’m talking about.”

Adrian called from the bedroom again.

“What about the time between his coming home from New York City and the last couple of years?” I asked quickly. “Could he have stopped for several years and then started again just before he took his life?”

“No, I don’t believe he would’ve stopped.”

“But—”

“Look, all I know is what happened that day—and I’m sorry if it’s not the answer you want. I didn’t see devils with yellow eyes and red horns prancing, or cheesy monsters or some Hollywood version of evil in the woods that day—I told you—you feel it. You feel them, because they’re everywhere, and nowhere at all. Never there, but always with us.”

“Who, exactly?” I asked.

“Demons.”

“Demons,” I said, tossing the word back at her.

“You experience evil but… you can’t describe it. Describe wind,” she said defiantly. “Tell me what it looks like.”

“I understand.”

“You understand nothing.” An odd smile grew along her face. “But you will.”

CHAPTER 17

Once outside I realized late afternoon was bordering on early evening, and though the sun had shifted a bit, darkness was still a few hours off. Just the same, I felt a strong need to get off the street and out of Julie’s neighborhood well before nightfall. I walked to my car quickly, then hesitated and looked around. The group that had been on the corner when I’d arrived was gone, leaving the street empty and jarringly quiet. Yet I felt anything but alone.

Maybe Julie Henderson was right. Maybe we were never really alone. Maybe demons watched from everywhere, and nowhere at all.

By the time I got back to town and pulled up to Donald’s cottage, the beginnings of dusk had settled in. On the drive back I’d replayed my conversation with Julie at least a dozen times in my mind, but still wasn’t certain I’d be able to relay any of it in anything even approaching a coherent manner. As I sat in the car gathering my thoughts for a moment, I noticed Rick’s Jeep Cherokee parked on the street. I hadn’t expected him to be there but was glad he was.

Donald answered the door with his usual bleak look. “We were getting worried about you,” he said as I stepped into the living room. “I gave Rick a call, told him you were coming over. I thought it might be a good idea if we were all together for this.”

Rick was standing in front of the television watching a baseball game with a level of intensity most people reserve for serious news footage. He jerked a thumb at the screen. “Fucking Red Sox. Season’s only a few weeks old and they already suck.”

Donald flashed me an unexpected grin and held up a glass of vodka. “Drink?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

He went to the kitchen and a moment later I heard ice slap glass. He returned with Jack Daniels on the rocks. I thanked him and he slid over to the coffee table, snatched the remote and switched off the television.

Rick turned from the set. “OK, it’s not like I was watching that or anything.”

“What are you, a fucking clown?” I said. “Who gives a shit about baseball at a time like this?”

He leveled a severe look at me. “Who are you talking to, Alan?”

I sipped my drink. “I’m talking to you.”

Before he could respond Donald thrust a folded section of newspaper into my free hand. “Have you seen tonight’s paper?” A black and white photograph of a young woman stared back at me, beneath the headline: MURDER VICTIM REMEMBERED.

“No,” I said quietly, “I knew they’d identified her by name but I—I hadn’t seen this.”

Before that moment she’d been a single mother from New Bedford, a name, a vague casualty—like anyone you heard or read about but had never met, or even seen—but the photograph transformed her into a real person; a young, vibrant woman smiling from beyond the grave. I looked into her eyes, studied her features and tried to imagine what she had been thinking about when the photo had been snapped. She looked so happy and carefree. I wondered what her voice sounded like, what her laugh was like, if she was a good mother, a nice person. I tried to read the article but couldn’t tear my eyes from the photograph. I tossed it onto the coffee table and this time took a gulp of whiskey.

“You know Jimmy McCarty,” Rick said suddenly, all apparently forgiven.

“Yeah,” I said. Jimmy was a cop, a townie we had gone to school with and known since we were kids. While none of us were particularly close to him, he had played high school football with Rick, and over the years they had retained a friendship of sorts, albeit a casual one. “What about him?”

“I was telling Donny before you got here. I ran into him downtown today, and we got talking. He said the state cops are all over this one and the guys on the local force are pissed, but there isn’t much they can do. They’re in over their heads and they know it. Anyway, we got talking, you know, off the record, and he said there was a lot of shit they weren’t telling the press. Shit only the killer knows.”

“That’s standard procedure, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Rick shrugged. “He couldn’t go into it but he said they found some crazy shit. That chick was tortured bad before whoever did her killed her. He said it’s not your usual homicide, jealous boyfriend or whatever. He said whoever did this was a major league psycho. His exact words were: We got a for real fucking nutcase on our hands.”

Donald rolled his eyes. “Such the wordsmith, that Jimmy.”

“Did he say anything about the murder having a religious or spiritual angle?” I asked.

“We didn’t talk about religion.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Rick held his hands out at his sides in an exaggerated motion. “Jesus, man, what the hell is your problem tonight?”

“Just answer the question. Did he—”

“No, he didn’t. I just told you what he fucking said.”

“Enough. Both of you just calm down.” Donald stepped between us and put a hand on my shoulder. “What happened today?”

I walked away and sat on the couch. “You first. What’d you find out?”

Donald disappeared into his bedroom, where his computer was set up, and came back carrying a small manila folder. He sat next to me on the couch and flipped it open to reveal several sheets of paper he’d printed out earlier. “I did some searches for homicides in New York City in 1982, like you suggested. Most of the web sites I was able to find didn’t have information that went back that far. Remember, 1982 is almost twenty years ago now. The ones that still list ’82 provided general statistical information but virtually no specific case-by-case detail.” He slowly ran a finger down the center of one sheet until he found what he was looking for. “For example, in 1982 there were a total of sixteen hundred and sixty-eight murders in New York City. Now, I found a couple sites that list the neighborhoods where they were committed and some other details of no use to us, but that’s about it.”

“Sixteen hundred murders in one year?” I asked.

“I know,” he said. “When you see hard numbers like that it’s disturbing, isn’t it?” He shuffled the papers, settled on a new sheet. “OK, so I tried a few more searches and I stumbled across a cold case site, one that showcases particularly nasty or sensational homicides from all over the world that have never been solved. I was able to search New York State specifically, and then by year, all those that had taken place in New York City in 1982. You said to look for anything unusual, so I found a couple that investigators believe were linked. This site had a lot of info, much of it surprisingly specific. They even have a link where you can contact officials if you have any information pertaining to the cases. But just so you know, a lot of what I came across is disturbing. I went through it a couple times before you guys got here. It’s brutal stuff.”

Rick began pacing near the television but I knew he was listening.

“Go on,” I said softly.

“OK, again, this is ’82, so this was only five years after the Son of Sam killings,” Donald said through a sigh. “Whether everyone in the city was still looking for serial killers behind every car or not is impossible to say, but there were two cases—both homicides—that, according to these reports, police believed were committed by the same person. The first took place near the end of January 1982. Bernard left here in late ’81, a few months after we graduated high school, so assuming he told the truth about going to New York rather than joining the Marines, he would’ve been in the city at this time.”

“He’d have been there for a few months already,” I said.

Donald looked up from the stack of papers. “In other words, he’d been there long enough to get situated, to come to know the city better, maybe to prepare himself for what he had planned, or to convince himself to actually go through with it.” He returned his attention to the paperwork. “At any rate, the first victim was an eighteen-year-old girl, a prostitute. Her body was found in an alley in the Bronx. According to the reports, she was stabbed more than a hundred times. Her throat was also slit. Police described it as a ‘rage’ killing; one where they initially suspected the killer may have known the victim, because there was clearly such frenzied anger associated with it. Overkill, they call it, where the killer just goes berserk and tries to obliterate the victim. Early on the prime suspect was her pimp, but the fact that the woman had been mutilated as well concerned investigators, apparently. Between the incredible number of stab wounds and the slitting of her throat, the killer had not only purposely bled the victim out, he took the time to… Christ, sorry.” Donald reached for his drink, took a long swallow then returned it to the coffee table. “He took the time to remove certain body parts.”

Rick stopped his pacing and whispered, “Jesus.”

“Her tongue had been cut out.” Donald’s voice splintered. “And her eyelids were gone, sliced off and removed entirely from her face. None of what was removed was ever recovered.”

“What the hell’s the point of that?” Rick asked.

Julie Henderson had told me to look for ritual crimes, murders that had meaning, purpose. Evil purpose. I remained quiet and listened.

“I don’t know,” Donald said, “but due to this, and due to the fact that there was a decided lack of blood where the body was found, police believed the killing had happened elsewhere and the girl’s body had later been dumped in the alley. A subsequent autopsy revealed the body had sustained damage consistent with torture and abuse prior to and even after death, which confirmed their beliefs that this had all taken place in some other location.”

“New York City’s expensive,” Rick said. “Even with the money he saved, how much could Bernard have had? He probably lived in a cramped room in some shitty-ass neighborhood with people all around him. How the hell could he do something like that to a woman without anybody hearing it?”

“Look what Dahmer got away with in the middle of an apartment building,” I said.

“At any rate,” Donald continued, “the case remains open to this day. The next killing that investigators say was perpetrated by the same individual took place not quite two full months later, in March. Because the specifics surrounding both killings were identical, the police have no doubt the same person was responsible for them. The second victim was another woman, this one twenty-two-years-old.”

Rick started pacing again. “Another hooker?”

“No, an aspiring actress working in retail clothing sales originally from Nebraska. She’d only moved to New York a few weeks before her death. And according to the rundown on the case, the police believe it wasn’t a random or impulse killing, but rather one that was planned. They believe both women were probably targeted, followed and marked, as it were, for death.” Donald focused his grim expression first on Rick, then on me. “And what’s worse is that this murder made the first look like child’s play.”

More rituals, I thought. More madness.

“To begin with, the woman’s throat was slashed and she was bled the same as the first. Very little blood was found at the scene itself, and the physical evidence of mutilation and torture prior to death was consistent with the previous murder. Again, the eyelids had been removed and the tongue cut out.” Donald paused for another quick shot of vodka. “But this time, rather than dumping the body in an alley it was left on a bench in Central Park. Several occult symbols were found carved into the body. They believe this was done prior to the woman’s actual death.”

“Fucking wonderful,” Rick said. “This is nuts, what does any of this have to do—”

“The body was left sitting up, the head turned completely around to the point where the neck was broken,” Donald went on. “The police felt it was more than likely tied to one of the satanic cults known to be operating in the area at that time. Apparently some were very violent. This was never proved, but no other murders took place with these same specifics. According to the info on the site regarding both cases, police believe the killer was either apprehended for some other crime and was sent to prison, moved elsewhere and continued his killing in another location, or died.”

“They had two of the three right,” I said.

“We have no way of knowing if those murders were committed by Bernard,” Donald said, “but let’s face it: the similarities between those murders and what little we know about the murder here in town is disturbing to say the least. While they’re holding out on some of the specifics, we do know that the woman killed here suffered a very violent death and that her body was bled out in another location, a location where she was probably killed before being dumped in the field. The papers have reported that much. And they don’t end there. There’s another consistent aspect to all three killings that’s absolutely chilling. All three women were single mothers with young male children.”

Rick froze. “Are you serious?”

“Just like Bernard and his mother,” I said.

“Knowing what we know now, and after listening to Bernard’s tape, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Yes you do, Donald. We all do.” I shut out the sudden memory of the woman in the warehouse. Her eyes had begun to bleed after she’d grabbed hold of me and filled me with those hellish hallucinations. They had also seemed unnaturally wide. The way a pair of eyes would if the lids were removed from the face. “Bernard did it. He’s guilty as sin.”

“You’re talking almost twenty years ago,” Rick reminded me. “Come on, this is crazy. You’re telling me Bernard was killing people for that long and never got caught, never fucked up? Bernard? Yeah, fucking maybe. Even if he was capable of doing some of this stuff, he couldn’t get out of his own way half the time.”

“He’s got a point.” Donald put the folder aside. “Bernard was hardly criminal mastermind material.”

“He didn’t even have his shit together enough to be psycho material,” Rick said. “None of this adds up. None of it.”

“It does once you realize that Bernard was more than a criminal, more than a psychopath.” They looked at me in unison. “He was evil.”

“Here we go again with this shit,” Rick sighed.

“You’ve changed your tune since the talk we had at Brannigan’s,” I said. “You were convinced Bernard did this.”

“Yeah, the murder here in town. Bernard had problems, and maybe we didn’t have any idea how bad they really were. Maybe he couldn’t take it anymore and one day he snapped and killed this chick. I can believe that, Alan, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to believe he was some fucking serial killer.” Rick stomped around the room like a spoiled child then stopped suddenly and glared at me as if another thought had just then occurred to him. “And I’m sure as hell not ready to believe all this boogieman horseshit. Bernard was our friend, but he was a huge fucking loser, and we all know it. He couldn’t do anything right. He—”

“Remember Julie Henderson?”

His face turned pale as a corpse in winter. “Yeah, sure, I remember Julie—Brian’s sister. What about her?”

I killed my drink and let the glass rest in my lap. “I went to go see her today.”

By the time I was finished telling them all I had learned from Julie, Rick had stopped his incessant pacing and taken up position in the recliner. Donald remained on the couch next to me throughout, listening quietly, and now stared down into his empty glass with his usual look of isolated sorrow. I let the silence hold us a while as memories of crucifixes dangling in windows flickered through my mind.

After a while, Donald slowly rose from the couch. “Well,” he said softly, “who needs another drink?”

I handed him my glass and he headed for the kitchen, moving as if sleepwalking. Rick hadn’t moved since I finished talking, and was looking everywhere but at me.

Neither of us said a word until Donald returned with my drink. He remained standing. It was his turn to pace. “You believe her, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

The recliner squeaked as Rick pushed himself to his feet. “OK, look, maybe you didn’t hear, but Julie Henderson has some serious problems herself.”

I nodded. “And now we know why.”

“But you’re—you’re putting all your faith in some broad that’s out of her fucking mind, Alan.” Rick looked like he might burst into millions of tiny pieces at any moment. “The bitch is crazy. She’s been in and out of nuthouses for years. Ask anybody in town, they’ll tell you. Julie Henderson’s a loon. She had some kind of breakdown or something and—”

“Have you heard a word I just said?” I stood up. We were all standing now, three grown men trying to figure out what in the hell to do with ourselves. I looked to Donald, but he was staring into space as if in a trance.

“Yeah, I heard you,” Rick growled, “I just don’t believe any of this shit.”

“Why not?”

He moved closer to me in a manner that would have felt threatening had he not been so obviously nervous. “You’re awful quick to sell a lifelong friend down the river, aren’t you? You believe what some girl with mental problems says about ghosts and goblins and demons and whatever the hell else she was babbling about without even stopping to think that it’s probably all in her demented head. She’s nuts, Alan, you understand? She’s fucking insane.”

“You knew, didn’t you.” There was no doubt I had made a statement, not asked a question.

A spasm-smile wrestled with his face. “What?”

“You knew.”

“What are you, serious?”

“He told you he raped Julie Henderson, didn’t he? You two talked about it, fantasized about it like typical hormone-crazed teenage boys, maybe even plotted and planned out how you’d do it. But you never expected him to actually go through with it, and when he did and he told you, then it was too late to—”

“You know what, Alan? Fuck you.”

I took a sip from my drink then placed it on the coffee table. “No, Rick. Fuck you.”

He was on me so quickly I didn’t have time to react. Before I knew it he had grabbed hold of my shirt and pushed me clear across the room. As he slammed me against the wall I grabbed his forearms and tried to loosen his grip, but there was no chance. I could have hit him, but I didn’t want to escalate it into anything more violent than it already was. He slammed me a second time and I heard Donald screaming for him to stop as my head snapped back and slapped the wall. Pain fired from behind my eyes and blossomed across my face. “Who the fuck are you to accuse me? I don’t have to take this shit!”

As my vision cleared I saw Donald trying to push himself between us. Rick let go of me then, pushed his way by Donald and headed for the door.

I regained my balance and stepped away from the wall.

“Are you all right?” Donald looked into my eyes then spun back toward Rick. “Are you out of your mind? What the hell is the matter with you?”

Rick stood near the door looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to leave or stay. Finally he turned back toward us, his anger apparently softened. “How did… How did you know he told me?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I guessed.”

He dropped his head like a reprimanded schoolboy. “Bernard said a lot of things, you guys know that. He lied all the time—exaggerated about everything—made himself out to be more than he was. I never believed half the shit he said and neither did anybody else.” He raised his eyes to meet mine. “He told me he made it with Julie Henderson. He told me that he did it but I didn’t believe him. Why would I? Why would I believe him? I thought it was just more Bernard bullshit. I blew it off, never thought about it again, you see what I’m saying?”

“This is real, Rick,” I told him. “It’s all real.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, the last word catching in his throat. “I swear to Christ, I didn’t know.”

I had never seen such emotion from him, and wasn’t sure what to do.

“Of course you didn’t,” Donald said for me. “Alan only meant—”

“I shouldn’t have…” Rick reached out as if to touch me, but he was too far away. “Look, man, I… I’m sorry. Are you OK?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“This’ll destroy us if we let it.”

“Well then we won’t let it,” Donald said quickly. “We’ll get through this. We’ll stick together and we’ll get through this.”

“I’m as scared as you guys are, but we can’t deny what’s happening here.”

Rick shook his head. “But Jesus Christ, dude, demons?”

“It’s just like Julie said. You can’t see evil, but you know it’s there. Maybe I’m the only one who had visions, but we all had the nightmare. We all experienced it. We all felt it. You gonna stand there and tell me we’re all crazy, Rick?” I grabbed my drink and powered it down in one swig. “I’m telling you right now, there’ll be more bodies, more death, and more darkness. Bernard may be gone, but the evil he used isn’t.”

Donald lit a cigarette. “Let’s go with the fantastic then and assume it’s true, that this evil is real. What’s the solution?”

“We find it,” I said, surprised at how calm my voice had become. “We root it out, get it out of the shadows, into the open and into the light where we can see for ourselves just what in the hell it is we’re dealing with.”

“And then?”

“We kill it.”

CHAPTER 18

In an instant, life can change. Sometimes it is reduced to fragments, disjointed shards of a once larger and intact whole, strewn about like pieces from a shattered vase. And those things once striking and beautiful are suddenly rubble, as without warning, existence changes, sometimes irrevocably, sometimes not. If we’re wise, or even just lucky, these experiences remind us of who we are, and why. If we’re unlucky, we fade to black. No explanations, no condolences.

When I got home, Toni was packing, transferring neatly folded items from her bureau to the suitcase without looking at me, without saying a word. I stood in the doorway to our bedroom and watched, helpless. “What’s all this supposed to be?” I said. She shot me a quick, oddly neutral glance, and continued her duties with motions so repetitive and studied they seemed more robotic than human. “Great timing. This is the last thing I need right now.”

“The last thing you need.”

“Come on, Toni.” She stopped then, a tan silk blouse I’d bought her as a birthday present a few years before dangling from her fingers. “I remember when I got you that,” I said. “The clerk wanted to know if it was a gift, and I said it was, so she offered to wrap it for me. I told her—”

“No. You told her no.”

I nodded. “Even though I can’t wrap for shit. Never have gotten the hang of it. I told the clerk I always wrapped your presents myself anyway.”

Toni pursed her lips to prevent them from trembling. “And what did she say?”

“She said that was very sweet, that most men would jump at the chance to have a gift wrapped for them, especially men with no talent for doing it themselves.” I wanted to reach out and pull the blouse from her grasp, or maybe to just hold it with her. “I told her I wasn’t most men.”

A glint in her eye told me that despite it all, she still believed the same thing. She turned away, folded the blouse as neatly as her shaking hands would allow and slipped it into the suitcase. “When I got home from work today, instead of coming right in I went over to one of the benches by the water and watched the ducks and swans for a while.” She pushed some hair from her face and even smiled a little, though not at me. “I sat there and smoked a cigarette, and for a little while everything—all the noise and the bullshit—seemed to soften a little, like somebody had lowered the volume. It was so nice. There was that feeling in the air—you know the one—when you can actually feel the change in season, you can feel spring slowly becoming summer. The air changes, the light, everything. It’s new, but it’s familiar, and I started to think about how spring used to last so much longer when I was a little girl. Remember when it was more than just a couple weeks? Nothing stays the same—not even the seasons—yet nothing really changes. Maybe that’s the whole point. I watched this one swan gliding along the water and I thought, I could stand up, get into my car right now and drive away. Just… drive away. No one would kill me or put me in jail. I could just slip away and no one could stop me. If I wanted to do it, I could. I could, and the world wouldn’t even notice.”

“The world never does,” I said.

“It made me wonder why we do what we do, you know? Why we stay. Do we do it because it’s the right thing to do, or because we’re afraid of the consequences?”

I found it interesting that she hadn’t included love as a possible reason—on either side of the argument. “Regardless, you’re leaving town, is that it?”

She shook her head, disappointed. “You’re such a literalist.”

“Oh, sorry about that. I figured packing your bags was pretty fucking literal.” I’d mustered as much sarcasm as I could, and it hardly seemed enough. “So you’re not leaving town then. Just me.”

She looked genuinely surprised. “Do you want me to?”

“No.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Am I supposed to leave? I mean, is that what I’m supposed to do? I’m not sure how this kind of thing works.”

She gave a little shrug. “Me either.” She looked so beautiful I could’ve killed her.

“I can’t believe you think this is the way to—”

“You know the little cottage Martha has down by the beach, the one her parents left her? She said if I needed it for a while I could use it, which is nice of her since she could easily rent it for the entire summer.”

“Yeah, how thoughtful.” I needed another drink but stayed where I was for fear she wouldn’t follow me if I slipped back into the kitchen, and the conversation, such as it was, would end right then, right there. “So I guess you need it.”

“Yes, just for a while. I need some time away, some time to think.”

“Oh, but after your time at the think-tank you’ll be back? Well, there’s some good news after all.”

Toni closed the suitcase. The sound of the zipper sealing went right through me. “You’re obsessed with this Bernard business, and you’re getting in over your head. You’re becoming involved in things you’re not equipped to handle.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You need to get some help, Alan.”

“Is that what your boyfriend suggests?”

“You’re such a child sometimes.”

“You’re right. The mature move is to go fuck someone else.” I saw her wilt, as if the words had physically injured her, and for a brief instant, I felt a rush of satisfaction. I wanted to share the pain. “I never had any idea you hated me so much.”

She dropped the suitcase to the floor with a deliberate thud, and I pictured the patrons in the pizza parlor downstairs all gazing up at the ceiling. “I don’t hate you, Alan. The only thing I feel right now is sorrow. There’s no room left for hatred or anything else.”

I steadied myself against the doorway, maybe because I’d had too much to drink at Donald’s, maybe not. “Have I really failed so horribly?”

“We need some time apart right now. I need—”

“You know I think I could handle this if you just let me have it, both barrels,” I said. “If you just called me an asshole or a lousy husband or a fucking loser. But this ‘I need some time apart’ bullshit just makes me want to puke. Don’t make this out to be anything other than what it is, Toni. You’re having an affair and you’re leaving to lessen your own fucking guilt about it, to make yourself feel better, because if you leave, well then we aren’t together anymore and then it isn’t really cheating is it? At that point you aren’t betraying me, and that just feels so much better than feeling like a spineless conniving whore.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “Finished?”

“No. Fuck you for doing this. Now I’m finished.”

“Feel better?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well maybe this’ll help. Fuck you right back, Alan.” She picked up her suitcase and started to leave the room, but hesitated once alongside me. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe there is no affair? You believe what you should question, but never question what you should believe.”

“Yeah, OK, who are you, Confucius now?” I laughed lightly, but it was merely a defense, an attempt to prevent myself from imploding, from crumbling and collapsing into myself. “If you leave, don’t come back. You leave tonight and that’s it, you hear me? It’s done.”

“You don’t want to play it that way.”

“Oh no?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell do you want me to do? You want me to ask you not to go? You want me to beg—what? What do you want from me? Tell me and I’ll do it.”

“I’m tired, Alan. I’m tired and sad and even a little frightened, but I need to do this.”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I love you.”

“Then why do you need to get away from me so desperately?”

“Because right now love alone isn’t enough. It seldom is.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “Love is enough. If it’s real, it’s enough.”

“I want—”

“Yes, by all means let’s make sure we attend to what you want. The world is in fucking flames, everything is going to shit and right in the middle of it, right when I need you the most, you bolt. That’s your solution, to go run and hide. Fine. Go.”

“You may not want to admit it,” she said, speaking in a loud whisper, “but right now this is best for you too. It’s something we both need.”

“So that’s where we are then? Just like that.”

“For now.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“We need some time apart.” She approached me slowly, and until she raised herself up on the tips of her toes so her lips could reach my forehead, I hadn’t been certain if she’d planned to kiss me or strangle me. Her mouth lingered, warm and soft against my skin, then she dropped down to her natural height. “That’s what it means. And that’s all it means.”

I heard her descending the staircase, struggling with the suitcase, bouncing it against each step as she went, and felt guilty for not offering to carry it down for her. The guilt vanished the minute I heard her car start. Until that moment, when I heard the car pull out of the space and saw the headlights glide past the windows, the engine sound slowly absorbed into the night, the authenticity of the situation hadn’t quite hit me. But she’d done it. She’d really left.

I had the conversation again, this time alone of course, and I caught myself mumbling my lines aloud as I stood in the newfound silence of the kitchen, numb and unsure of exactly what to do with myself. I wondered if we’d ever be all right again, if we’d ever be whole again. The two of us. All of us. Any of us.

I found an unopened bottle of whiskey in the liquor cabinet, stared at the label a minute, then grabbed the phone and dialed Donald’s number. I figured if I could catch him before he finished the vodka at his house I could convince him to drive to mine. “Hey, it’s me,” I said. “I’m going to get really shit-faced, you want to join me?”

“What’s wrong now?”

“What isn’t? Come on over, let’s get trashed.”

“Call me psychic, but I don’t think Toni would be too thrilled with that idea.”

“Yeah, well she’s not here.” I held the phone with my chin, broke the seal on the bottle and poured a glass. I could hear Donald breathing through the line.

“Where is she, Alan?”

“She moved out for a while.”

“Oh, God, I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Come on over and get drunk with me. Bring ice.”

“I’m already too drunk to drive,” he said guiltily.

“OK,” I sighed. “I’ll catch you tomorrow then.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

Our roles had switched it seemed, even if only for a night. “Too early to tell.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you ever think about him? About what he might do if he was still here?”

“Bernard?”

“Tommy.” He said it like it should have been evident, like I should have realized he couldn’t have been referring to anyone else. “I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately.”

“I miss him too.”

“Sometimes it seems like we lost him only yesterday, but other times it seems like it’s been a hundred years, doesn’t it? Sometimes it seems like it couldn’t be possible he’s been gone for so long.” Ice cubes clinking glass echoed through the phone. “But he would’ve known what to do, don’t you think? Tommy would’ve known what to do.”

Donald was right, of course. Somehow Tommy—or at least our memory of him, the teenage version, the version that remained forever young, forever frozen in perfection even when I remembered him dying along the side of the road—that Tommy would’ve known what to do, would’ve gathered us all together like the natural leader he was and made everything all right with a cool, collected sentence or two.

I started drinking. If Donald wasn’t coming over there seemed no reason to delay the inevitable. “Yeah, Tommy would’ve known what to do.”

“Maybe he’s guiding us.”

A comment so lacking cynicism sounded peculiar coming from him. “Let’s hope so.”

“Do you ever… do you ever feel him around you?”

“Right after he died,” I admitted. “But not for a long time now.”

“Sometimes I do. Or—well, at least I think I do. Probably just wishful thinking.”

I heard him swallow, crunch some ice. “Everything’s changed,” I said. “Anything’s possible now.”

“You’re right. If we’re expected to believe demons exist then why not angels too?” His voice cracked. “I loved him, you know.”

“Me too, man.”

“No… I loved him, Alan.”

I poured another drink. “I know.”

“And I don’t know if I’ve ever quite recovered from his death.” Although when he spoke again he had done his best to collect himself, I could tell by the cadence of his breath he’d been battling sobs only seconds before. “Christ, maybe Bernard was right when he said we’re all a bunch of clichés and don’t even realize it.”

“Bernard was wrong.”

“Yes, well Bernard may very well have been the Devil.”

“No, just a devil.”

“Maybe he was right about me. I’m a lonely, pining, overemotional, self-loathing, alcoholic gay man—gee, there’s a new twist—never seen that characterization before. Could I be a little more ’70s formula, please? Lip-synching to Diana Ross records in a bad wig until the wee hours of the morning can’t be far behind.”

Even under the circumstances, his sense of humor was contagious. “Far behind?”

“OK, I’ve done that too. Apparently my political incorrectness is terminal.”

“And I’m a huge loser with no job. And my wife just left me. What’s your point?”

“You’ve lost enough people you loved to know there aren’t any second chances,” he said softly, his tone serious again. “You and Toni were made for each other, Alan. Don’t let her go. Do whatever you have to do, but get her back, because it’s a terrible thing when someone’s gone—really gone—and you’re left wishing you could say all the things you feel, all those things you need so desperately to say. And you do say them, trust me, you do. Only by then, no one’s there to hear it.” The sound of a hissing match was followed by a slow, deliberate intake of breath. “Get her back, Alan.” Then release. “Just get her back. You need her. Hell, we all do. Toni’s our den mother.”

I laughed lightly. Toni would have loved that description. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Don’t get too drunk.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, though I could no longer be sure of anything.

I hung up the phone and turned back to the bottle.

Let the demons come, I thought. And I knew damn well they would.

But this time, they’d come on my terms.

CHAPTER 19

A while later I found myself sitting in the den, a Robert Johnson CD playing on the stereo as I worked at finishing off the whiskey. The glass no longer necessary, I had taken to occasional swigs directly from the bottle while rummaging once again through Bernard’s planner. I studied the photograph of the mystery woman for a while then slipped it behind the lip of a pocket on the inside cover. I wondered if she could be another victim, but that seemed unlikely. Still, he’d known her—he didn’t have her photograph for no reason or by coincidence—I was certain of it. There had to be some connection.

I flipped through the remaining pages of the planner, and just like the times before, found nothing unusual. In one of the plastic storage pockets I noticed a few business cards. All were people I didn’t know, and I assumed they were most likely customers he had met while at work. The only other card belonged to one of the salesmen Bernard had worked with. Chris Bentley, Sales Representative, it read. The dealership name was emblazoned above his name, and a telephone number was listed beneath it, followed by the italicized phrase: Nobody Beats Our Deals! I pulled the card free and stared at it. I remembered Bernard mentioning Chris Bentley now and then. He was one of the few people he worked with he ever talked about, and from everything I could recall, if Bernard’s side of it was to be believed, they had a decent working relationship. It was a long shot, but I didn’t have much else to lose, so I figured I’d pay Mr. Bentley a visit in the morning and see if he could shed any light on anything.

I closed the planner and put it aside, pictured Toni sleeping in Martha’s cottage—maybe somewhere else—then thought of the woman in the newspaper. Her face faded, replaced by Tommy’s. “Here’s to you, man.” I raised the bottle, took a long pull.

The room tilted and distorted as Robert Johnson’s mighty Blues riffs echoed and slurred; his haunting voice singing of hellhounds on his trail and the Devil’s relentless pursuit sounding like it was coming to me from the far end of a tunnel.

As my drunken stupor gave way to something resembling sleep the ghosts ended their silence, slipping memories to me piecemeal like a demonic slideshow from the past.

Behind the curtain separating then from now, I saw Tommy sitting on a big boulder out in Potter’s Cove woods. The same boulder we’d all congregated around now and then in years past. Tommy, with that knowing smirk and… I had to think for a moment what color his eyes were. Why couldn’t I remember something so basic about him? Gray. I remembered them as a kind of light gray. He sat atop that old boulder, smiling down at me, sunlight breaking through the trees and shining against his blond hair and fair complexion, casting him with an angelic aura. Like some wise forest prince, he looked down at me from that boulder and smiled. But now, unlike when he was alive, there was nothing to it, nothing behind it. Blood dripped slowly from his hairline, trickled along his cheek. He seemed disinterested.

And while he sat bleeding, Toni and I leaned against the base of the boulder, our arms around each other the way young lovers constantly cling together so desperately, sharing a beer while Donald stood a few feet away with a can of his own, laughing and talking with Bernard. Bernard—much younger than I remembered him—dressed in fatigues as counterfeit as he was, spinning tales about the Marines and his ill-fated early return, drinking his beer and laughing with the rest of us. We’d all gone to that spot in the woods to celebrate Bernard’s homecoming, taking along a couple six-packs as we’d done for years, knowing this could be the last time now that adulthood had caught up to us, now that spending Saturday nights out in the woods drinking like a bunch of high school kids would no longer do.

Rick, still serving his prison sentence, was absent. Bernard raised his beer to toast him, his hand clutching the can, the same hand that just months before had slaughtered two young women in New York City, hands that had stabbed and mutilated, that had held heads steady while cutting, slicing away pieces of flesh, hands that had mingled, played with the dead.

And now he was playing with us, pretending to be the same old harmless and unexceptional Bernard he’d always been, chugging a beer and contemplating his future just like the rest of us. No longer merely a torturer or a rapist, he had by then become a killer—savage, unremorseful, performing rituals and making sacrifices to whatever dark gods he served. Surely there was some sign, some clue we’d missed.

Even in the realm of dreams and whispers, it all seemed so absurd.

Tommy, long dead himself by then, watched us from the top of the boulder, his hair tinted red; the blood from his cracked skull leaking faster, dribbling down the front of him in a steady, sticky stream. His eyes shifted, gazed off toward another section of woods not so far from there, where an even younger Bernard had brutalized Julie Henderson.

Julie, all these years later, existing in that dark apartment, silver crucifixes hanging in the windows, Bibles and used syringes scattered about, the putrid stench of cooked heroin lingering in the air while she struggled so desperately to hang on to whatever slivers of sanity and well-being remained. Working a job slinging diner food, one eye always on the door, hurrying through the neighborhood with head bowed, making drug buys in filthy alleys and on desolate street corners, waiting for the demons to come looking for her again, hoping to make it to the safety of her apartment, her sanctuary, her fortress and tomb, where Adrian waited, scratching at bruised arms.

She emerged from shadow gradually, rocking gently, her nightgown pulled up around her waist as she rode Adrian’s emaciated form. Lying beneath her on the bed, his eyes rolled back in a heroin daze and little eruptions of intoxicated laughter escaped him between slurred words of encouragement.

As she bucked harder, increased speed and ground deeper, tears fell from her eyes like the initial slow and steady raindrops that precede a heavier storm. She wrapped her arms around herself and twisted at the waist as if suddenly forced into an invisible straight jacket. The tears grew worse, flooding eyes crazy and wild and stained with madness wrought by unclean spirits, eyes that had seen Hell, and not from a distance.

Teardrops became the ticks of a clock, and I knew then that the recurring dream had begun again. I had joined Julie in the gulch between that which was real and that which was better left imagined.

The ticking clock began to irritate me right on cue, and from my position on the bed, I heard the floor creak, felt it shift. The headache tingled behind my eyes, same as always, but I ignored it and sat up. I knew Bernard would be standing in the room staring at me, so I wasn’t surprised to see him there, pale and dead, smiling his sad smile. This time, I knew why I was afraid. I looked to the doorway. The others would be coming for him soon. He stepped closer, gleeful in the madness, and reached for me with dirt-caked fingers, his nails cracked and brittle and looking as if he’d been burrowing through earth and stone and scraping at casket lids for hours. He leaned closer, touching me now, leering at me the way a butcher leers at a prize hog, rubbing my legs and squeezing my thighs, running his hands over me as I sat paralyzed.

His hand slid between my legs, stroked me roughly before cupping my scrotum. Vomit burned the back of my throat. He laughed soundlessly, his fingers pulling at me, prodding; his breath rancid and warm against my face.

In his free hand something flashed, reflecting what little light existed in the room. Small razor blades moved quickly, individually between his fingers, from one to the next in rhythmic motion, turning and rolling and flipping the way a gambler manipulates a deck of cards with a single hand.

“Stop—Bernard, for God’s sake—stop.”

He smiled at me, his lips cracking and crumbling like all the times before, dripping blood and spittle. The ticking of the clock became instead a steady buzzing sound. Something moved down by his feet. Flies. They gathered on the walls, along the ceiling, crawled across the window casings, their number steadily growing as they converged on the room, swarming forth from unseen portals.

As they covered the room in a living blanket, Bernard opened the ragged bloody hole that had been his mouth and held it in a silent screech. Over his shoulder shadows appeared, crossing the doorway and signaling the approach—their approach. The others.

His cold dead eyes looked directly into mine, and his hand knifed across my lap. I felt quick, dragging, savage pressure, then the gradual and increasingly agonizing burn razors leave in the wake of slashed flesh.

When the others came for him I was still screaming, kicking and flailing and trying to press both hands over my groin in a frenzied attempt to stop the spray of blood that even then was painting the wall.

Splashed with crimson, the glut of flies rippled and heaved like a single disturbed mass, surging higher along the wall.

Then it was all gone, and I realized I was alone. Rick, Donald and I were on our own, alone with Bernard, alone with all he had done.

And with all that remained.