Hallowed Page 22

  Claudia continued to scrutinize me. She looked down at my hand cradled like a hurt animal in my lap and then back up at me with wild excited eyes. “You have got to be shitting me? You cut your hand in your dream?”

  I withdrew my attention back to the road. “I never said that.”

  “Where were you? What was happening? We’ve got to analyze this puppy!” She opened her backpack and pulled out her spiral notebook.

  “Y’see, I figured you would make a bigger deal out of this than it deserved.”

  “Were you attacked? Did you see a face?”

  “No, for God’s sake I cut my hand on broken car window. I was at the school. It was destroyed. There were mass graves in the marching field.”

  “Of course that couldn’t possibly be interpreted as meaning anything,” she quipped. “Was there someone in the dream with you?”

  “No, I never saw another body, dead or alive. Just the graves.”

  “Any other unusual detail?”

  “No. Well, other than someone blowing a trumpet.”

  Claudia was scribbling like a madman.

  “Oh, and the moon was breaking apart.”

  Claudia stopped writing and just stared at me. “And you weren’t going to tell me about this dream? Are you missing a vital piece of your brain?”

  I was a little alarmed by the expression on her face. “Y’see, this is why my first instinct is not to tell you these things.”

  “These are pretty vivid details, Paul.”

  I shrugged, attempting to make light of it. “It’s just the end of the world. I’m pretty used to it by now.”

  “But this is a different ending. That’s got to be significant.”

  Sitting in her driveway, we discussed the details about tonight and the “stories” that we would tell our respective mothers. I would be back around six to pick her up if they bought that we would be studying at the library. Until then, she told me that she would be busy analyzing my dream on the internet.

  One of my grandfather’s favorite sayings, Mom is fond of telling me, is “Man plans. God laughs.”

  Dad had just finished filling the coffeemaker with fresh grinds when I came home. I could tell that something unexpected was about to happen—more so because of the fact that he was rarely home before Mom and I were asleep than from the decisive look he gave me as he took a seat at the kitchen table.

  “What are you doing home so early?”

  “I’m working from home tonight.” He patted the seat next to him. I sat with some trepidation, removing my backpack and setting it on the floor between my feet.

  “You were friends with Bridgette Sullivan.”

  “I talked to her a few times but if you’re asking me if we hung out, then ‘no.’”

  He patiently stared into my eyes, and I realized with dread that my father was questioning me not as a son but as a “person of interest.”

  “Relax, son,” my father suddenly said, giving me a disarming smile. I couldn’t help but wonder how many suspects had been on the business end of those prying eyes. “Your name came up a couple of times during routine questioning. I just want to know what your relationship with her was, and how often you had the occasion to talk to her.”

  “We talked on the band bus a couple of times, and we had a long conversation about the Sa… the murders during the Homecoming game.” I lowered my head. “I think she kinda liked me, Dad.” For one terrifying moment I thought I was going to burst into tears in front of my father, but I summoned all my will and settled down again.

  “You’re going to hear more than you want about it eventually, but I need to know if you want to know anything from me.”

  I peered up at him in confusion. “What, are you asking me if I want to know what happened to her?”

  “I’m leaving that decision to you, Paul,” he told me. “I feel that you’re adult enough to handle it, but I don’t want you to be blindsided, when you start hearing about it on CNN.”

  You mean blindsided again, I thought.

  “I think I need to know,” I heard myself saying before I had even given it the briefest of thoughts.

  He rose and I felt his hand on my shoulder. “C’mon.”

  As I followed him upstairs, I felt the plans I had made with Claudia slowly drifting off the predetermined track. The dying afternoon sunlight lit up a desk littered with paperwork. He led me inside, retrieved a thick sheaf of pages bound together with aluminum brads, and held it out to me.

  I glanced over at the crime scene photos scattered across his desk. He shook his head. “Not yet,” he answered my unspoken request. “First, the facts gathered at all four of the crime scenes. I haven’t made up my mind about the photos yet.” He started into the hall. “I’m going to get myself some coffee. You care for some?”

  I wasn’t altogether sure all of this wasn’t some kind of test. “Sure?” I said with a questioning lilt to the word. “Where’s Mom by the way?”

  “Out getting groceries. Don’t worry about her, Paul. This is between you and me. I’ve already made up my mind.” When a Graves’ mind was made up, neither hail nor high water could divert us from our predetermined path.

  And with that, I was left alone with the entirety of the Samhain investigative materials that had been gathered by the Broward County Sheriff’s Department up to that point.

  I had only managed to get through the first few pages of the report when he returned, but in that brief amount of time, I had managed to read one of the worst descriptions of mutilation my mind could ever imagine given a lifetime of horrors.

  The body had been found stuffed into the trunk of a 1967 Chevy Corvair by several college kids looking for spare parts for a classic car. The chest cavity had been spread open, the heart removed, and wrapped in thorns. Both the hands had enfolded a wooden Celtic-style cross lying atop the abdomen and a silver crucifix lying in the trunk next to the body as if discarded.

  I firmly compartmentalized the fact that I was reading about a friend.

  When my father returned, he found me sitting on the fold-out couch, the report about three feet away from me atop the coffee table. I must have been just sitting there shell-shocked, because he asked me if I was okay.

  “I-It’s horrible,” I managed.

  “Yeah, Paul, it is.” He set the two mugs of coffee on the table and returned to his desk, collapsing with a grunt. “This kind of work, it drains the soul.”

  This I could understand, but it was the sort of thing I would have expected to hear from Uncle Hank, not Dad. Did my father even believe in the existence of a soul?

  “I know you and Claudia think this is a little exciting and it can sure look that way from the outside, but the kind of person you sometimes deal with is the worst this world has to offer. Human garbage.”

  I lay back, deliberately distancing myself from the material, when something occurred to me and I leapt forward to look at the report again.

  “What is it?” Dad asked, sitting up.

  “There were two crosses, right? One wooden cross and one silver crucifix, right?” I asked, knowing the answer. “That crucifix doesn’t belong to Bridgette.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the most obvious reason is that Bridgette’s family is Baptist and a crucifix--the crucified body of Christ-- is distinctly Catholic.”

  Staring at me with slowly gathering interest, he nodded. “Her parents couldn’t identify the crucifix, but they thought it might have been a gift from someone.”

  “Even if it was, I doubt she would have worn it,” I replied. “From what she told me, she was more into Buddhism.” I rose from the couch with excitement and rushed over to him. “Her parents couldn’t identify it because it didn’t belong to her, just as the ankh didn’t belong to Sadie and the tarot card didn’t belong to Kalim.”

  He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing with interest. “Go on.”

  “They’re trophies taken from the previous victim,” I pronounced and even as the words left my m
outh, I knew it felt right. It made sense. “That’s why Grace didn’t have one with her, because she was the first.”

  My father didn’t reach for a pen or a phone or make any movement at all like I’d expected. Instead, he just stared at me with a smirk that I couldn’t read.

  “It fits,” was all I could manage. “Bridgette was interested in Buddhism. That’s what we talked about at the game. If you look into it, I’ll bet you’ll find that that crucifix belonged to Kalim, the ankh belonged to Grace and the tarot card belonged to Sadie.”

  “Would you be surprised to know that that’s exactly what the Feds are looking into as we speak?” my father announced. “But I’ll wager those big brains don’t know about her interest in Buddhism yet. Not even her parents knew that tidbit.”

  My eyes wandered over his shoulder and targeted a photo lying atop all the others, obvious from its position directly in front of where he was sitting that he had been studying it. It was a black convertible, the 1967 Chevy Corvair mentioned in the report.

  Protectively, my fingers curled over the bandaged cut on my palm.

  I shuddered because I had seen it only the night before. In my dream.

  When my father caught my reaction and understandably misinterpreted it, he swiveled his chair slightly to block it from my view. “They’re pretty graphic, Paul. Why don’t you concentrate on the report for now?” He finally reached for the phone on his desk. “Can you give me a minute?”

  As I started outside, I heard him call out to me and when I turned, he told me: “Not one of us at the Sheriff’s Department caught that. Just you and Feds.” There was a pride in his eyes that I’d never seen before. “After I’m done making my calls, you can look through as much of this as you’d like--tonight, and only tonight--but you are not, and I repeat, not to tell anyone any of the information you learned here.” He made eye contact with me then, just to make sure I understood him. “And if you do tell a certain someone, I don’t want to hear about it. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

  When I called and told Claudia that our plans had changed, she hung up on me.

  I gave her about five minutes to cool down then called her back. She was more willing to listen the second time.

  When I told her everything that had transpired including the crime scene and the monstrous condition of the body, there was silence on the other end. She finally responded: “A crucifix and the symbolic Sacred Heart. Well, there’s no doubt now that we’re dealing with a religious motivated killer. We now have a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Christian.”

  Of course, she wanted to see the evidence for herself, but I told her that Dad had made it clear that this was as close as she was ever going to get. She was a little upset until I promised her that I would fill her in tomorrow on any new info I found.

  “By the way, in my research into your dream, I found something interesting,” she told me. “Did you know that an angel is supposed to blow his horn at the end of the world on Judgment Day?”

  Funny that I had forgotten, but now, with her reminder, it all came rushing back to me. Every child who had gone through Sunday school knew this little piece of trivia.

  It was Gabriel, the archangel.

  Chapter 22 (Thursday, October 22nd)

  Thursday morning began like any of the others for the last month since Dad had started helping the Sheriff’s Department with the investigation. He was up early and out the door before I had even awakened.

  Mom left early, giving me a peck on the cheek and an appraising look. “When I get home tonight, I want to know all about what’s going on around here between the men of the castle when the queen is absent.”

  I drove myself to school and the first period started without incident.

  Midway through second period Algebra 2, Principal Smalls showed up at the door with an officer I recognized from the church and interrupted class. Can’t say that I minded. After all, it was Algebra 2.

  Smalls spoke with Miss Gelsing and before I knew it I was being escorted outside to a cruiser parked in front of the school. The driver looked was the same deputy that escorted me to the church on Saturday. I could see that Mrs. Wicke and Claudia were seated in the backseat.

  I opened the back door and looked in at Claudia, sitting demurely with hands folded in her lap. My first words to her: “What did you do?”

  She looked at me with wide innocent eyes and shook her head.

  The interior held a musky smell that was an unpleasant combination of cleaning products and beer. I couldn’t help thinking as I sat down, what other fine upstanding citizens had shared this very same seat.

  “Paul, do you know what’s going on?” Mrs. Wicke asked.

  I leaned forward. “Deputy Baxter, right?”

  “You got it,” the cop answered. “Call me Nick. Sorry but I’m out of the loop as usual.”

  I gave Claudia a look. “Here we go again.”

  Deputy Nick leaned over and pushed open the passenger side door. “Why don’t you ride shotgun and I’ll try to get your Dad on the horn.”

  As we started out down Fountain Valley toward Highway 98, Baxter raised my father on the radio and handed me the receiver. Though it had been a few years, I still remembered how to use it.

  “Dad, it’s me.”

  “Hi Paul. Pat and Claudia with you?”

  “Yeah, is everything okay? Mom with you?”

  “Of course, she’s fine.” There was a moment of silence before his distorted voice came back to me. “Sorry for the secrecy. You can trust Nick Baxter. He’s taking you all someplace safe.”

  I looked from Baxter to Mrs. Wicke and Claudia in the backseat. “I don’t understand.”

  “Just be patient, son. I’ll talk to you soon. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  I hung the receiver back on the radio and glanced over at Claudia, who was staring out the window in dazed frustration. If this feeling of helplessness was bugging me, I knew it must be practically driving Little Miss Control Freak absolutely bonkers. I turned back around and speculated about our destination as I watched Deputy Nick make the turn onto Highway 98 and head east toward the Louisiana state border.

  Twenty minutes into the ride, I figured out where we were headed, and forty minutes later, we reached the Graves’ family camp out on Douglas Lake. The last time me or my mother had been here was over three years ago. There was a time when we’d come here as a family once or twice a year to swim, fish, or just get away. Now Dad only made it out here to deer hunt maybe once every couple of years.

  The camp was an unremarkable little two room shanty obscured by live oaks. A single unnamed dirt road wound up from another unmarked road off of Highway 98. The lake was little used even during the season, and the closest neighbor was too far away to be heard. No electricity. No phone. No running water.

  To Dad it was his little slice of Heaven away from Haven.

  There was a single cruiser in front of the cabin and two officers wandering around outside. Whatever was going on was serious enough to warrant leaving me and my mother’s cars parked at the school and the bank respectively. Deputy Nick went over to confer with the other officers.

  “Oh yeah,” Claudia murmured dreamily as she stepped out of the police cruiser. She and Mrs. Wicke had been to the camp a few times over the years.

  Mom threw open the front screen door and stumbled out with a garbage bag in her hand. “Oh God,” she exclaimed when she saw Mrs. Wicke and Claudia. “I didn’t realize anybody’d be here so soon.” She dropped the bag, rushed up to me and gave me a fierce hug. “This place is in shambles, but I keep asking myself why I expect anything less than that when the housekeeping is left up to your father.”

  Mrs. Wicke stepped over to Mom. “Kathy, do you know what’s going on?”

  A look passed between Deputy Nick and Mom as the other two officers started back to their car. “He’s on his way down the road right now, Mrs. Graves. I’ll be over by the car if you need anything.”


  “Why don’t you all come inside while I finish chasing the dust-lions out?”

  We followed Mom inside the interior of the camp which was basically a large kitchen/gathering space. The only other two rooms were bedrooms in name only. Our father being something of a packrat, the family’s discarded bed frames and mattresses (along with other miscellaneous furniture) had managed to make it here in lieu of the garbage dump where they belonged. Call it thriftiness or laziness; it all amounted to the same thing.

  There were cobwebs everywhere. The two windows were open in an attempt to drive the stale air out, but it still smelled of petroleum and death. Petroleum because of the gasoline-powered generator I knew was somewhere out of sight, along with a decomposing animal rotting not far away, possibly beneath the floor on which we stood.

  Wearing her most tolerant face, Mrs. Wicke attempted to make the best of it, but Claudia was visibly disturbed. “Okay, I can’t stay here if that’s the idea.” She turned to my mother. “That is the idea isn’t it?”

  “There must be a very good reason for all this,” she responded, glancing over at me. “I’ve never known your father to be an overly reactionary man.”

  It was then that we heard the arrival of vehicles outside.

  We stepped out to see Dad talking to Deputy Nick beside his truck as the other cruiser started away behind them. “Are you sure, Jack? I can hang around here and...”

  “No, get back to your wife, Nick. I can take it from here. Thanks again.” Deputy Nick gave a wave over his shoulder to us and started down the road after the other cruiser.

  When Dad turned to us, the first thing I thought was that he looked like he had just run a mile at full speed. His hair was more disheveled than I’m used to seeing it, his face was pale, and his eyes were red and puffy. My father looked completely exhausted, both physically and emotionally.

  “Now before everyone starts ripping me to shreds, I want you to know that we don’t have to stay here. I just wanted us to be somewhere other than our respective houses if just for tonight,” he announced, reaching down through the open passenger window of the truck and taking out his brief bag from where it sat on the seat. “After we discuss this, Pat, you and Claudia can decide what you want to do from here.”