Hallowed Page 21

  Word had gotten out by 10am Tuesday morning before they had even called a general assembly in the auditorium just before lunchtime. Principal Smalls delivered the news at the same podium from which he had told us just last Friday that our varsity football team was going to the quarter finals for the first time in ten years. His voice shook with emotion and that more than anything else sent all of us the clear message that our world would never be the same again.

  The fourth victim’s body was found in a town called Schiller Park, twenty-three miles southeast of Haven. Further away in distance than the last victim, but closer to me.

  It was Bridgette Sullivan.

  She was dead.

  By two o’clock, the student body of Haven High had been dismissed for the day, and by three, the whole community was in mourning. Girls were having crying fits in the hallways, and everyone else walked around in a wide-eyed half-awake daze of unreality. Both Greg and Sonny came over and gave me what felt to me like a pre-planned psychological assessment. They even asked me if I wanted to hang out with them over at Sonny’s house and play the new football game he got for his game system. I lied and assured them that everything was fine.

  On the way to my car, the reality of it swept over me, and I had to grip my open door to keep from falling to the pavement as a wave of nausea hit me. I dry-heaved a few times, my stomach knotting up into a tight steel vise.

  Why hadn’t my father warned me? Why had he left me to be blind-sided by this news? Was he so consumed by doing the right thing for the investigation that he would not consider the pain it might have caused me to find out along with everyone else.

  I rested on one knee where I had fallen when an unfamiliar girl came to kneel beside me while I recovered my composure. She introduced herself as Annie and a sudden rude recollection blindsided me. It was “Crazy” Annie.

  Annie Harnsworth was a shy girl that had moved here in fifth grade and had a total nervous breakdown while attempting to address the student body from the podium during Student Council elections. She had been so taken with stage fright that one of the senior students (not a teacher, mind you) had gathered her up around the shoulders and walked her off stage.

  She was as cool as a cucumber now as she helped me get into my car. In that moment, it struck me how that act of kindness that she had received from another student had just been reciprocated by helping me in my moment of need.

  An act of charity by a single individual, I thought, thinking of Tracy Tatum again. An act of Creation. An act of Good.

  Feeling embarrassed, I calmly thanked Annie for her concern and made it home without any further incidents.

  Bridgette was dead.

  For the next two days, the empty reality of it would strike me at odd moments and reverberate through my body like a dark tuning fork sensitive to emotion instead of sound.

  As I was taking out the trash.

  “I think it’s the end of the world with a capital ‘E.’”

  Sitting at the table for dinner.

  “It’s safe, Graves. Serial killer free.”

  Brushing my teeth.

  “Nice save, Graves.”

  That memory hurt the most, because it almost seemed to mock me and Claudia’s pathetic efforts. There were human lives at stake and here we were kicking back in the bleachers during lunch, discussing murders like Monday morning quarterbacks after the big weekend defeat.

  After dinner without any discussion, I went outside and began to disassemble my grand display. Around ten o’clock, after having been at it for a good hour and half, Mom took me around the shoulder and told me, “Your Dad and I can finish this up for you, if you’d like to go on up to bed.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get this over with tonight.”

  She simply nodded and went back into the house.

  That night my dream changed. It wasn’t the House this time, but something much more familiar.

  I awaken in the field back behind the school near the agriculture building, the one we use when we don’t have access to the stadium because of football practice.

  It is sunset and the sky is that eerie crimson that I remember so well. I stand and look around. There are twenty-five mounds of dirt surrounding me, each about a foot and a half by six. Unmarked graves. The graves of my fellow band members.

  Then I hear a tone. It starts low like a moaning in the distance, almost like a foghorn. Then the volume increases and I think it must surely be an ambulance or police siren. But the sound gets louder still, increasing to a supernatural level until I recognize that it is brass. It is indeed a trumpet I’m hearing. The world’s loudest and clearest trumpet.

  My body goes cold.

  I rise and run toward the school, but already I find it in smoking ruins. The band hall is a gray skeleton and the cafeteria still clicks and snaps with the dying embers.

  I’m too late for them.

  How far am I from home? A good ten miles.

  The parking lot is mostly empty and the few cars that remain are rusting piles that look as if they last saw service sometime back in the sixties. I hear another teeny sound, almost totally obscured by the wailing of the horn. I find the black 60’s model convertible, the rag top peeled back and warped from heat, but lo and behold, the radio still works.

  “Well if she come walkin' over.” I draw close to see if what I’m hearing is truly coming from the radio and not my own mind. “Now I been waitin' to show her.”

  My lips begin to move along with the wavering voices of Tommy James and the Shondells. “Crimson and clover. Over and over.”

  The ground moves beneath me and I’m reduced to a child four years old atop my bed, staring wide-eyed down at the shadowy space beneath my bed, afraid that a monster that never quite solidified into any definite form, has finally come for me.

  But I’m seventeen now. I’m an adult. I’m a man.

  Just to prove how hallow those reassurances are, the earth gives me another good shake, and I have to grip the car in front of me to stay on my feet. I feel a sting and draw back my hand with an intake of breath. A narrow, almost surgical cut goes through my palm, and I realize that I grabbed the edge of glass. I stare at the crimson light hitting the upright shard of glass and realize that safety glass crumbles and does not shatter like conventional glass.

  I wipe my palm across my pants legs and look up into the sky. Horror overtakes me and my knees go weak. The moon, a permanent fixture in my world, is shattering and coming apart in the heavens above me. My world is being destroyed before my eyes and there is nothing I can do about it. I scream in helplessness as I watch the pieces drift slowly apart.

  The sound of my own scream awakened me, and I leapt up and threw a hand over my mouth. Moments later, I saw shadows in the crack beneath my door and I realized I wasn’t the only one awakened by my scream.

  “Paul?” Mom slowly opened the door and looked inside. “Are you okay?”

  I realized then that I had been holding my left hand up over my mouth and I let it fall. “I’m fine. I just had…”

  Mom’s eyes grew wide and she rushed forward to hover over me. “God, Paul, you’re bleeding.”

  That’s when I felt the sting in my palm and I saw the cut.

  “You cut yourself.”

  I could only stare at the cut with a sense of unreality. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. Was I still dreaming? Was this my mother or something I’d conjured in my subconscious sleep-state?

  “C’mon, let’s get that cleaned.”

  She led me into the bathroom and when the light went on, I saw myself in the mirror and realized what must have alarmed her. A streak of blood covered my face.

  That’s what ultimately brought me back to reality. The sight of one’s own blood tends to have a sobering effect.

  “What… How did you do this, Paul?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied. If truth be told, how did I do that? Certainly, I cut myself in my bed, because the alternative was impossible
.

  After wiping my face, Mom cleaned and dressed the cut and, of course, gave it a mother’s kiss to speed the healing and sent me back off to bed. I spent the next ten minutes running my good right hand over every straight edge within reach. I didn’t find a trace of blood anywhere and nothing even remotely sharp enough to do the damage I had awoken with.

  The clock on my nightstand said four-thirty and I could hear the whispered bedside conference of my parents through the ventilation ducts until around five.

  By the time I got up at six, I was sure it had all been a dream, until I saw the gauze on my hand spotted with blood… and the smear on my pants leg where I had wiped my hand in another world.

  Chapter 21 (Wednesday, October 21st)

  As I sat on the edge of my bed debating whether I cared enough to go into school on Wednesday morning, the phone on my stand began to buzz and spin in circles.

  “Come pick me up.” By the time I registered that the voice belonged to Claudia, she had hung up.

  For one bizarre moment, I thought I had fallen asleep in front of the TV watching “Ferris Bueller,” and this was all a dream.

  When I attempted to call her back, her cell went straight to voice mail.

  It had been debated by the city council to cancel classes for the day, maybe even on through the weekend, (hey it would give our varsity team more time to prepare for Friday’s game, right?), but in their infinite wisdom, our elected officials decided that the best thing for the delicate psyches of the students were to carry on as close to a normal routine as possible.

  Classes would go on as scheduled.

  Cursing Claudia under my breath, I dragged myself to the shower and less than thirty minutes later I was in her driveway.

  She was sitting on the swing on the porch her legs pulled up beneath her and her head bowed. She looked like a Goth Buddha.

  A dagger of pain shot through my heart as I thought of the last conversation I’d had with Bridgette.

  Claudia leapt into the car giving me the once over with those scalpels of hers.

  “That was pretty lame, y’know,” I muttered as I put the car in drive and started for school.

  “I knew it was the only way I could get your butt out of bed,” she returned lightning fast. With a little more compassion, she asked, “How did you sleep?”

  I put my left hand as casually as I could down by my side. “Never better,” I grumbled. “Look, Claudia, I’m not going to be able to meet you today.”

  “I know what you’re going to say…”

  “Then you know that I think what we’re doing is ridiculous,” I replied angrily. “Here we are a couple of high school kids thinking we’re going to find something that trained professionals can’t? We’re just spinning our wheels and worse than that, we’re being disrespectful of the dead!”

  She was quiet for maybe a minute. I thought maybe she’d actually heard me for the first time and going to take my position at face value, but I knew that wasn’t in her character. “I’ll say one thing here, then I’m going to let it go. I don’t look at what we’re doing as amateur vs. professional. It’s just two different perspectives. Personally, I think we’re closer to the truth because we’re the same ages as the victims, unlike your father and the Sheriff’s Department. Besides, what does it matter if we’re just spinning our wheels? If we can give just one small insight that might help catch this guy, it was worth all the effort.”

  It pissed me off to no end that she was right again.

  “If anything, we owe the victims that much. The more time that passes on this thing, the better chance this guy becomes a Zodiac--one of those unsolved cases that can only be speculated about today. I mean, do you know how close they were to catching that guy? He walked right down the sidewalk past a couple of cops because they thought their suspect was black. Can you imagine how those two men must feel today?”

  I remained stoically quiet.

  “I’ll be up in the bleachers at lunch,” she concluded. “With or without you.”

  When we pulled up at the school, she told me, “Thanks for the ride,” and started to her locker.

  I remained behind a few minutes longer, noticing the two Sheriff’s Department cruisers conspicuously parked in front of the main office.

  “You get questioned?”

  I had to give her credit. When I arrived in the bleachers for lunch five minutes later than usual, she made not one snide remark, but instead just started talking as if I’d been there sitting beside her all along.

  “No, did you?

  “They called a couple of the twirler girls out from Mrs. George’s class and took them up to Mr. Smalls’ office to talk to a couple of uniforms, though, I haven’t seen your dad.”

  “He didn’t mention anything to me about all this.”

  “Well, you had to expect it. After all, a girl from our school was murdered,” she quipped, turning back to her notes. “Okay, our victims are three girls and one guy.”

  We now return you to our normally scheduled program already in progress.

  I made a queer chuckle in the back of my throat.

  Claudia glanced at me indifferently. “All of them were teenagers still in high school, except for the first victim who had just graduated a month or two before she was killed. Who would have access to teenagers, besides other teenagers?”

  I watched Claudia nibble on her Count Chocula cereal and thought about it. “Other friends’ parents, teachers, counselors, job recruiters.”

  “Military recruiters, too.” Claudia saw me staring at her cereal, noticed that I had come empty-handed, and passed me the baggie (which I dutifully began to shovel into my mouth). “How about extra-curricular activities?”

  “Well, Martin told me that Grace was a hair-dresser. She was attending a beauty school in Austin.”

  “Which brings us to Sadie.”

  “Sadie was on the debate team, right?”

  Claudia was quiet. I could almost see the tumblers in her head slowly clicking into place. “Kalim was in the Honor Society and on the Student Council. I know Bridgette was a twirler.”

  “She was also in band. Played the flute,” I muttered.

  Claudia spared me a quick glance. “She was on the track team and belonged to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.”

  “Christian,” I heard myself murmur, thinking back on the conversation I’d had with her about Buddhism.

  After a moment, I caught Claudia searching my face. “All different religions and all involved in extra-curricular activities. I’m working from the assumption that the killer made contact with the victims through a common activity. What sort of activity would link all four victims?”

  We sat in silence and considered the question.

  “Maybe none?”

  Claudia looked up at me with raised brows.

  “Well, if the killer specifically chose victims based on their different religious beliefs…”

  “No, you’re assuming he chose the victims based on the specific activity. He only came in contact with them based on the activity and through that, learned about their religious beliefs.”

  “Still, they could all be different activities, couldn’t they? After all, this guy could be consciously trying to misdirect whoever might be looking for a link.”

  Claudia nibbled her lips. “That’s possible. He’d have to be a busy little bee and somehow manage not to look busy to any outside observer.”

  Something in the words she’d used triggered a connection, but as I attempted to grasp the straw, it slipped away again. I shook my head in frustration. Something in the dream last night. What was it? I looked down at my left hand, wrapped in gauze. I must have been unconsciously hiding it down by my side until now.

  The way her eyes shifted away as I looked back at her, I could tell Claudia must have seen it and took note of it without actually acknowledging it aloud. “Either that or he has help.”

  I looked up at Claudia. “Tracy Tatum?”

  She
shrugged. “I think you should talk to her again.”

  “Not only do I have my mom and dad keeping tabs on me, but now my uncle too. You’ve got to do it.”

  “Me?” she said with surprise, then her eyes drifted inward and she gave a half-nod. “Yeah, you’re right, but what if she won’t…”

  “She told me herself. She wanted to meet the son of the man who saved her life. You’re your father’s daughter. That’s all you need.”

  “When are we going to do this?”

  “Tonight. Uncle Hank’ll be making the rounds at CCD class,” I announced. “I’ll run interference. If there’s a problem, I’ll call you and vice versa.” I reached into my pocket and retrieved my cell phone.

  She retrieved her own phone, staring down at it with a look of trepidation. I think that was the first time I saw fear in those fathomless eyes of hers.

  On the ride home that afternoon, I winced making a left hand turn, dropped my hand from the steering wheel and nearly put us into the oncoming lane of traffic.

  “So, are you going to tell me what happened to your hand or do I have to guess?”

  What was I thinking trying to hide anything from Special Agent Wicke?

  “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Does it involve shaving a body part that you can only see with the help of a mirror?”

  I just gave her a tolerant look and sighed. “I cut it in my sleep. Thing is, I can’t for the life of me figure out how.”

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “Well, what does that have to do with anything?” I snapped.

  “Easy, tiger,” she said evenly, her eyes narrowing into microscope lens.

  I held my tongue. Why was I getting so edgy?

  “Are you still having the dreams of the House?”

  “These are worse,” I managed. “Much worse.” Where to begin? “Okay, isn’t it well established that if you hear a noise while you are sleeping, you can incorporate that sound into your dream?”