Night Conjurings: Tales of Terror Page 8

  “There’s something about a book and a flashlight,” Denise said. “Something like ‘Better bring a bright flashlight ’cause it’s dark down below.’ You remember that line?”

  “Nope,” Ginger said. “You’re getting weird, Denny. Maybe you need another hit.”

  “Flashlight, blanket, better pack a novel,” Denise said. “That’s what he wanted Tommy to pack today, just like in the song. It’s weird.”

  “Nope, you’re weird, Denny. You’re getting freaky on me.”

  “I guess I am. Sorry, Ginger, but it’s been a rough week and I’m not feeling so hot. I think I better go home and go to bed.”

  “Damn, girl, you just got here!”

  On the way home she called Tommy to make sure he was all right. “I caught three great big bass,” he said. “Daddy cooked them on the Hibachi, and he said they was the best fishes he ever ate in his whole life. Now we’re reading Harry Potter out loud.”

  It was obvious Tommy was eager to get off the phone, so she told him she loved him and hung up. When she got home she drank a glass of wine and went straight to bed. She felt exhausted, maybe because of the marijuana, and soon she was dreaming she was lying on the bed Carey used to keep in the old house. Carey was lying next to her, flat on his back and deathly still with his eyes open. He was naked and so was she, and she felt uneasy because she didn’t think she was supposed to be lying in bed naked with him. She was trying to explain to him that they shouldn’t be in bed together like this when suddenly, without moving, Carey let out a high-pitched shriek.

  Denise sat up, terrified. It was the same siren she’d heard at Ginger’s house, but it wasn’t somewhere outside—it was right in the room, in fact right inside her head, and she realized it was Carey’s voice shrieking.

  She grabbed her cellphone from the nightstand and called Tommy’s number, but he didn’t answer. No wonder—it was after two in the morning and he’d be fast asleep—but she let it ring until it went to voicemail and then tried calling again. Carey didn’t own a cellphone because he thought they caused brain tumors—like he’d notice.

  She told herself there was nothing to worry about, but she threw on her clothes anyway, and a few minutes later she was driving fast in the direction of the cabin. October drizzle painted the highway dark, and the siren seemed to be following her car, warbling in the wind like lyrics of an old song she couldn’t quite remember. Headlights glared on her wet windshield, and she saw Carey’s sweet ruined smile in the smear of the wiper blade. Then she thought she heard his voice.

  “Babe, I have seen the other side,” he sang. “And I’ve found a secret place where I can hide.”

  The drizzle turned into a hard rain as she turned off the highway onto a narrow back road that twisted through the hills. A cold wind was trying to blow her car off the wet asphalt, and soon she had no idea which direction she was going. Some months had passed since she had traveled these roads, and then it was Greg who had always done the driving.

  But she felt that Carey was the one steering her wheel now. She slowed down and turned into a muddy gravel lane. Yes, this was the place. She remembered a warm glow of long-ago nights, the smell of marijuana smoke and wood crackling in the fireplace, Carey’s face young and handsome in the flickering firelight and still filled with hope. Those were good days while they lasted.

  The pitted gravel lane ended at the cabin, and his red Volkswagen was parked beside it. She got out and knocked on the door, but no one answered. She knocked again.

  There was a rustling sound behind her. She turned and saw Carey emerging from the dark woods. He was stark naked, his long hair plastered against his thin shoulders in the cold rain. He stared at her with a look of utter confusion.

  “Jesus Christ, you asshole!” she yelled. “You’re stoned out of your fucking mind. Where’s Tommy?”

  He staggered closer, still staring at her as if he had no idea who she was or even what country he was in. He stopped a few feet away from her and tottered on his feet like a thin drenched weed swaying in the wind.

  “Where is he?” she yelled. “He better not be out here in this rain. I swear to God I’ll press charges.”

  Carey opened his mouth to answer, but only a gargling noise came out. Suddenly a red gash opened in his throat and blood poured out. He clutched at it with an agonized expression, and blood trickled out between his fingers, turning the rain on his naked chest red.

  Denise stepped back, confused and terrified. She opened the cabin door and groped her way inside. The only light came from a few embers in the fireplace, but it was enough for her to dimly make out a flashlight on the table. She switched it on, aimed it around the room, and yelled Tommy’s name several times.

  The front room was a small living room with a tiny kitchenette attached. The doors to the two bedrooms were shut. She opened the nearer one and saw Tommy lying in the bed, but as she moved the flashlight beam to his face she saw that it wasn’t Tommy after all. It was Carey, covered with blood. His throat was slashed, and though his eyes were wide open she knew he was dead.

  But she had just seen him outside.

  She screamed and fell against the doorframe, barely able to stand. When she was able to stop screaming she went to the other bedroom door and opened it. Tommy lay crumpled on the floor with the side of his head bashed open.

  ***

  Carey Linden, male Caucasian thirty-six years old, killed his son Tommy Linden, age ten, by beating him to death with a ball bat. He then killed himself by severing his left carotid artery and partially severing his larynx with a box cutter. The violence of the homicide suggested it was an unpremeditated crime of passion.

  So said the police report, but Denise didn’t believe the act was unpremeditated. “I think he was planning this for years,” she told Greg. “Somewhere in the back of his mind, anyway. Maybe not killing Tommy, but killing himself at least.”

  “Quit thinking about it, Denny,” Greg said. “This isn’t helping you.”

  Today was day thirteen, and it felt just as horrible as the other twelve days. Her throat was so sore from crying that she didn’t think she could do it anymore, but every few minutes the painful, racking noise would emerge again from her throat like a vomit of razor blades. Tommy’s funeral had been Saturday, a full week after his death because the police had kept his body for several days. Though funerals are supposed to comfort the grieving, she could imagine nothing worse. Greg had practically needed to carry her to her chair at the graveside, and then he’d needed to hold her shoulder tightly to keep her from falling out of it.

  “Listen to this,” she said.

  Carey’s first album was already on the CD player because she’d been listening to it much of the afternoon while Greg was away at work. She put on the third track, and the long instrumental opening filled the living room, muted drums beating slow, thin shriek of a guitar somewhere in the distance like an ambulance far away coming closer, and Carey’s keyboard following behind it weaving together a sad sweet hymn that built slowly into a thundering, drug-demented funeral dirge.

  “What is this?” Greg asked.

  She handed him the CD case and watched him stare at the cover, a cemetery scene painted by Carey. The name of the band, The Messengers, was scrawled in red letters in the brooding night sky like graffiti finger-painted in blood. The name of the album, “Telegram from the Tomb,” was carved in the stone marking an open grave. She remembered when he had painted it, and the blood-red letters were her own idea.

  The instruments suddenly hushed. They drew their breath and started again, like quiet dark figures rustling in the misty distance, and Carey’s small hollow voice tiptoed between them like a mournful ghost.

  Babe, I have seen the other side

  and I’ve found a secret place where I can hide

  in the darkness waiting there beyond the gate,

  safe from ugliness and pain and beastly hate.

  She hit the pause button and said, “You see what I mean? It’s like he t
hought of death as some kind of secret hiding place. I think he killed Tommy so he could keep him all to himself in his secret place, like in death Tommy would belong to him.”

  “I don’t think that’s what the words mean,” Greg said. “I think it’s just some kind of drug message.”

  The coroner had found no trace of drugs in his body, and the police had interviewed two of his close friends who said he’d been clean for twelve months, but she didn’t believe it.

  “Even if he was clean, it didn’t make any difference,” she said, though Greg had already heard this argument several times before. “He did so many drugs for so long that he made himself permanently crazy. Do you think a ghost can be insane too? I mean, is he just as demented now as he was before?”

  She hit the play button, and Carey sang:

  Babe, you have thrust me in the hole,

  you stole my heart stole my house stole my soul,

  guess our secrets are all that I can keep—

  I’ve hid them safe beneath the ground six feet deep.

  “It’s so weird,” she said. “He wrote those words long before we split up, like he already knew I was going to leave him.”

  “Please, sweetheart, let go of it.”

  “Listen to this one,” she said, and kicked the player up to track seven. This song was faster and louder, drums pounding deep and a furious guitar clashing like steel against the angry keyboard. Carey’s voice sounded lean and hard.

  They say you can’t take it with you,

  but I’m gonna try,

  gonna pack some equipment

  before I die.

  Gonna bring a heavy blanket

  ’cause it’s cold in the ground,

  gonna bring my radio

  ’cause worms make no sound!

  The keyboard and guitar clashed together like swords. “Can you please turn it down?” Greg yelled.

  The instruments screamed louder, and Carey’s voice screamed over them.

  Better bring a bright flashlight

  ’cause it’s dark down below

  better pack a good long novel

  ’cause forever goes by slow!

  Denise shut off the stereo, and the sudden silence made the room seem huge and empty. “Blanket, flashlight, novel,” she said. “Those are exactly the things Carey told Tommy to bring.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. People bring flashlights and blankets when they go camping.”

  “It’s like he was planning this years ago,” she said.

  “Denny, you’re just making things harder for yourself.”

  “Carey’s mind was complicated,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  She heard the tone of contempt in her voice, but right now Greg’s feelings didn’t seem very important. What was important was her intuition, and it was telling her that Carey had planned this for a long time—and his dirty work wasn’t finished.

  “He’s going to kill me next,” she said quietly. “If he can.”

  “What?”

  “Carey’s ghost wants to kill me. He killed Tommy to keep him for himself, and he wants me all for himself too.”

  Greg held her and said, “Denny, please, you have to stop thinking like this. There’s no such thing as a ghost and nobody’s going to kill you.”

  “I told you a hundred times, I saw his ghost outside the cabin.”

  “No you didn’t. You need to let go of these horrible thoughts, sweetheart. They’re just making things worse. You were in a state of shock that night, and you thought you saw something that wasn’t there. There wasn’t any ghost, and nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  He was patting her back awkwardly, as if he were burping a baby, and she didn’t feel soothed. She was thinking of the final words Carey had spoken to her: “Just Tommy and me and babe makes three.”

  ***

  “You think you’ll be able to sleep tonight?” Greg asked.

  “Yeah, I’m halfway there now,” Denise said. “I’ll be all the way in a few more minutes.”

  It was a lie, but Greg sounded so tired that she didn’t want to keep him awake again. It was already past midnight, and his usual bedtime was right after the eleven o’clock news. She’d kept him awake many nights now with her talk and tears, but she intended to face the rest of this night alone.

  “You promise you’ll see the doctor Monday?” he asked.

  “I promise.”

  “You need to ask her for some kind of sedative to soothe your nerves.”

  “I will.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Love you too.”

  She kissed his forehead and watched his eyes fall shut. He was a good man, but she wondered if he had fallen in love with the wrong person. He had no idea that she still took drugs occasionally and sometimes even slept with other men. And he’d surely be shocked if he knew some of the things she and Carey had done years ago, long after the eleven o’clock news was over.

  Though he loved her, she knew he would never understand her, just as he would never believe in intuition or premonitions or ghosts or the link she and Carey shared. Her link to a dead murderer.

  Her mind was racing, and when she was sure he was fast asleep she eased out of bed and put her robe on. Downstairs she poured a glass of wine and sat at the kitchen table in the dark. She felt something pulling at her thoughts, and she believed it was her link with Carey. He was trying to influence her in some way, trying to draw her into his darkness, and she waited to hear what words he would say, but no words came.

  It occurred to her that by slashing his own throat maybe he’d rendered even his ghost speechless; in front of the cabin he’d tried to speak, but then the gash had appeared in his throat and only a gargling noise had come out.

  She was sipping her wine when a terrible thought suddenly came to her: This isn’t the first time he has killed!

  The thought startled her. Had she been married to a serial killer without knowing it? Had Carey murdered others while they were living together and raising their son? It seemed hard to believe, but the thought was lodged in her head and refused to go away. Certainly Carey had always been a deeply private person, with his dark songs, his secret places, his unknowable mysteries.

  She had no doubt he wanted to kill her so the three of them could be together. Surely ghosts couldn’t kill, since they had no substance, but she believed he was trying to use their link to drive her to suicide. It wouldn’t be difficult; suicide had been on her mind every day since she’d found Tommy’s body.

  She felt him pulling at her, trying to draw her outside into the night. She told herself she wasn’t afraid of Carey’s ghost and didn’t fear death. Life was what frightened her. She wanted to confront him, scream at him, call him a bastard and a murderer, shout him away into whatever deep circle of hell he belonged in, and most of all get him out of her head.

  She put on shoes, slipped a warm coat over her robe, and stepped out the back door. The late October breeze was chilly. The woods were dark and deep, gnarled trees still clutching some of their leaves, unwilling to let go of the dead. The old farmhouse was a blot of deeper darkness, but as she approached it she thought she saw a dim light in one of the downstairs windows. Impossible—the electric had been shut off three years ago, right after Carey moved out.

  But something pale and luminous kept flitting across the window of the big front room that Carey had turned into his music studio. Then she heard him singing, if singing was the right word. It was the kind of mournful wailing that he used to call his “elemental music,” but this sounded gargled and strangled, as if it was coming out of a slashed throat.

  A sudden gust swept a confetti of dead leaves down from the trees, and she pulled her coat tighter. Pale ghost-light flitted across the dirty glass, and when she was a few feet away from it she saw him.

  He was stark naked, his thin white body glistening like a luminous eel in the front room lit by no light other than his skin. He was dancing slowly with his slender arms
stretched above his head, but as she came closer and stared through the dirty glass she saw that his feet weren’t quite touching the floor. His arms seemed to be suspended by ropes from the sagging ceiling, but there weren’t any ropes.

  He spun slowly in the ruined room, blood leaking from his throat whenever he sang too loudly. His penis was erect, and it looked longer and thicker than she remembered. His sad elemental wailing turned into the semblance of a tune she recognized, and though he apparently wasn’t able to utter the lyrics her mind filled them in:

  Tommy, we have reached the other side

  and I’ve found a secret place where we can hide

  in the darkness waiting here beyond the gate,

  safe from ugliness and pain and beastly hate.

  She must have let out a sound, because he suddenly spun around and spotted her with bloodshot staring eyes of death. He tried to speak, but the wound in his throat opened wide and an ugly gurgling noise came out. His face contorted with horror, and he clutched the wound and tried again to speak, but there was just the wet wheezing sound of bloody air blowing between his fingers.

  Denise wanted to scream curses at him, but she wasn’t able to speak much more clearly than he was. Her words came out in a hoarse dry rasp: “You bastard, you fucking bastard! You killed my son.”

  His naked white body suddenly swept toward her, and his head and shoulders came crashing through the window, the glass shredding his face as it broke.

  Denise had fallen to the ground, and Carey’s wounded throat bled onto her face while he stared down at her. His trunk was hanging out of the window, his bare chest cut and pierced with broken glass. He was trying to reach down and grab her, but the window ledge was too high and his arms were shaking spasmodically, as if he could control them no better than his voice.

  She tasted his blood dripping onto her lips. She tried to get up but couldn’t. Her body was paralyzed; it felt like part of the dirt. She was sprawled in an awkward position with her legs wide apart, and she didn’t want to be exposed to him like that, but she couldn’t close them. As he stared down at her, a cold gust of wind blew a dead leaf up her robe, and she felt it inching up her bare thigh like a dry withered hand.