The Scream Catcher Read online

  Lightning shoots down from the black sky, maybe one-hundred yards from the house. A crash follows. It echoes and bounces off the surface of the lake.

  If it’ll make you feel better . . .

  Jude feels the claw inside his chest. It’s trying to pierce his heart.

  He tries to swallow, but there’s little saliva inside mouth.

  “A man’s house is his castle,” he says not without a grin.

  “Safety first,” Rosie adds as if the two are entering into a round of dueling clichés.

  “Mack made me promise that no matter what happened tonight, we’d stay put. Anyway, there will be nowhere to go in this blackout. The village will be crazy. Fort Anne and Glens Falls will be even crazier. The only choice after that is Saratoga or Albany and it would be insane to drive all the way down there in this weather under blackout conditions.”

  Rosie runs open hands down her face, as though to wipe away her concern.

  “We’re staying then,” she says like a question. “You’re absolutely sure about that?”

  “No,” Jude says, gazing down at the black-plated shotgun. “I’m not sure about a goddamned thing. But this much I do know: under no circumstances are any of us to leave this house until I hear from Mack.”

  “And if you don’t hear from Mack?”

  Jude turns, eyes Rosie up and down, the same way he did it when she first entered that downtown café web.

  “Bite your pretty little tongue,” he says.

  The Molloy Gravel Pit

  Thursday, 9:02 P.M.

  Mack poises the old .38 on the human target. Light rain seeps into wired eyes making it impossible to focus. The heat that radiates from the Jeep fire stings the left side of his face and head. No other option but for the old Captain to stand his ground. He has other things to be concerned about other than his own pain.

  Hector “The Black Dragon” Lennox is covered from head to toe in black, full body dry suit and black body paint. His silhouette is nearly impossible to make out when standing against a backdrop of the black night. If not for the light of the fire, the beast would be invisible.

  All invisibility aside, Mack knows precisely the identity of the man standing before him in the dark and in the rain. The fact that Fuentes’ cruiser is consumed in flames only verifies his worst fears: Lennox has already paid a visit to his son’s home.

  For the moment, all is stalemate.

  Until Lennox steps away from Mack’s cruiser, lets out a high-pitched laugh. So loud, it drowns out the roar of the vehicular fire.

  Right hand wrapped around the worn pistol grip, index finger poised on the trigger, Mack uses the left hand to support the wrist on the shooting hand. Feet planted firmly, shoulder-width apart, full combat position. Just like he learned it at the Police Academy in Yonkers back in the mid-1970s.

  He shouts, “Down on your knees, Lennox. Do it now.”

  But when the beast drops to the gravel pit floor, rolls himself behind the Jeep, he seems to simply disappear into the wet night. As though Mack dreamt up his very existence in the first place.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:10 P.M.

  Jude and Rosie lock up the screened-in porch and head up to say their goodnights to Jack. Outside the boy’s bedroom, the ex-cop once more leans the shotgun up against the wall, makes his way inside. But not before working up a smile, almost forcefully planting it on his face (All teeth, as Mack would say back when Jude was a moody teenager). He immediately finds Rosie already sitting on the edge of the bed, Jack’s right hand in hers. He sits himself down beside her while Jack looks up at his father, bright-eyed but at the same time yawning—a tired little guy not long for the night.

  Coming from outside the slightly open double-hung window, Jude can’t help but make out the gentle slap of the lake water against the wood dock and motorboat that’s tied off to it.

  Jack asks, “Do you think the lights will come back on tomorrow?”

  Reaching out with his hand, Jude runs it through his son’s fine brown hair.

  “I’m sure of it,” he says. “Tomorrow when you wake up and the sun is shining, you’ll have all the electricity you need.”

  Forehead scrunched, lips pouting, Jack says, “That’s too bad.”

  “Too bad,” Jude poses while shooting Rosie a quick glance. “How can having your electricity back be such a bad thing?”

  “Life by candlelight,” the boys says. “Me likey.”

  Rosie laughs, says, “Believe me, Jack, you wouldn’t likey for very long.”

  “Huh?”

  Glancing over her right shoulder at the now useless television and game system hooked up to it, she says, “Well, how would you expect to play your Nintendo or X-Box?”

  Now Jack laughs.

  The suddenly bright-eyed boy says, “I have a great idea. I’ll go to the Pet Smart, buy a hamster and a running wheel. I’ll hook up a motor to the wheel. When the hamster runs inside it, he’ll make the motor work. Then I’ll have all the electricity I need to work my games.”

  Jude says, “I do believe we have a mechanical genius on our hands.”

  “Sesame Street,” Rosie adds. “Never underestimate its power.”

  “I don’t watch Sesame Street anymore,” Jack barks like he’s just been insulted. “I don’t watch Blue’s Clues or Barney. That stuff is totally gay.”

  Without another word, Rosie pulls the brown and red comforter over the boy’s chest, tucks it under his chin. Outside the lightning sparks and bursts from way out on the lake past the bay. Jude gets up, goes to close the window. But Jack asks him to leave it open.

  “Storms don’t scare me,” he says. “Only the dark monster.”

  “No dark monsters ‘round here,” Jude says. “Get a good night’s sleep. Maybe tomorrow afternoon after my court date, we can take the boat out and catch some fish.”

  “Why are you trying to put that man in jail?” the boy says as Rosie leans over to plant a goodnight kiss on his brow.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” he says. “That man has hurt a lot of people.”

  “What if he gets mad and hurts you?”

  Jude feels Jack’s question lodge like a bullet in the center of his chest. They tried to keep the kill game Prelim Hearing a secret from Jack. But Jack is smart. He’s picked up on the signals, on the whispered conversations of the past couple of days.

  “That’s why I’m trying to put him in jail. So that he never hurts anyone ever again.”

  Picking the burning candle up off the nightstand, Jude goes to blow it out. But not before Jack stops him with a vehement, “No!”

  “Can’t I leave it burning for just a little while longer?” he pleads.

  Rosie and Jude communicate with their eyes. They read one another’s minds.

  The dark monster . . .

  Against better judgment, Jude sets the burning candle back down on the far edge of the nightstand beside the boy’s Game Boy.

  He says, “Remember, the flame is just as dangerous now as it was before.”

  Another snap-flash of lightning just outside the window. Thunder follows, quicker than before.

  What’s the rule? One second of silence between lightning strike and thunder for every mile between us and the center of the storm . . . Three seconds means three miles away, at most.

  Squeezing the edge of the comforter tight under his chin, Jack closes his eyes.

  Husband and wife exit the bedroom, quietly closing the door behind them.

  “Do you know what I think?” Rosie poses while Jude snatches up the shotgun. “Half of me thinks, well isn’t this the part of Friday the 13th where the audience is screaming for us to get the hell out of the house? But then the other half of me thinks, this is reality. And reality tells me we’re all being just a little silly. We’re no better than Jack and his dark monster. We’re worrying over nothing.”

  The candlelight that leaks up from the timber-framed living room illuminates only a portion of
Rosie’s straight, calm face. The fact that she’s trying to talk some sense into Jude carries with it a slight tinge of shame for the ex-cop. He finds himself glancing down at an eight pound, double-barrel twelve gauge that now seems to be growing heavier and heavier in his hands. Suddenly, his anxiety does seem “a little silly.” Even if he can’t help imagining a clawed demon living inside his ribcage.

  He says, “It’s not like Lennox has actually threatened us in any way.”

  Hector Lennox: just a man . . . not a real black dragon . . . not a dark monster.

  “There’s a reason Mack told you to stay put no matter what happens,” Rosie adds. “We live on Lake George. Not Cape Fear. It only makes sense that Ray and the lake patrol have been asked to help out with the blackout crisis. They’ll be back at their posts soon, I’m sure of it. So why get all paranoid now just because the lights go out?”

  Jude can’t resist growing a smile while his wife reaches out with her hand, runs soft fingers though his cropped hair.

  She says, “Tell you what. First, I’m going to put the food out for the babies. Then I’m going to draw a bath.”

  Jude senses the constriction in his facial muscles. Tell-tale constriction. It means he’s really smiling again. Or is it for a change? Smiling and relaxing. But then maybe the Celexa has finally kicked in. Or maybe Rosie’s words of wisdom are all he needs in order to ward off the demon. In any case, Jude’s newly wed wife is making an honest-to-God go of keeping hers and her husband’s composure all together.

  She adds, “I’m picturing some of those white wedding candles laid out along the rim of the tub; maybe a little bubble bath, my man rubbing some body wash on my belly.”

  “I’ll go lock up,” he exhales, “while you go feed the babies.”

  “Hurry,” Rosie grins before gliding back down into the kitchen.

  Breathing easier now, Jude heads back into the master bedroom, fits the shotgun back inside its plastic safety case, leans it upright against the wall beside the bed—easy access.

  Coming from outside, a lightning bolt.

  “One Mississippi, two Mississippi,” he counts aloud before the thunder concussion rattles the log home.

  The Molloy Gravel Pit

  Thursday, 9:16 P.M.

  Mack pivots one way, then the other, pistol held out before him like the cannon on tank turret. There’s the cruiser fire roaring behind him, the impenetrable darkness overhead, surrounding him on all sides. The rain has intensified. It’s coming down steady and cold. The rain runs down off his brow into his eyes. He’s going on forty years Violent Crimes. While eyesight is essential, survival has become a matter of feel, intuition, instinct. He knows Lennox is out there, stalking, playing, plotting. Mack does not sense his presence, so much as he feels him like a sudden sharp chest pain.

  Then, just like that, the beast bursts out of the night.

  Lennox simply appears from out of nothing. With one hand, he presses a cold, silenced pistol barrel against the old Captain’s upper back and reaching around with the other, he placed an iPhone before his mouth as if it were a walkie-talkie.

  “Scream. For. Me.”

  But Mack doesn’t scream. Nodding his head slightly forward, he then rears back with all his power, skull-butting the Black Dragon in the chin.

  The beast draws back a quick step or two. But then just as quickly he stops and stands his ground, that silenced pistol held out before him, aimed point-blank at Mack’s spine.

  “Play right, Captain!” screams the Black Dragon a split-second before squeezes the trigger.

  Although he hears no explosion, Mack feels the sledge-hammer kick of the round tearing through him. All strength escapes him. He drops to his knees onto the hard wet shale, a dime-sized exit wound in his upper right shoulder spurting blood.

  “Christ,” he spits. “Oh Christ . . .”

  Lennox stands over the old Captain, stares him down like a black widow spider contemplating a fly caught in its web. He holds out the iPhone once more.

  “Scream. For. Me.”

  “Fuck you,” Mack groans. “As God as my judge, I will see you die before this night is over.”

  But the words ring hollow and distant, even in his own ears.

  Lennox giggles. He slips the automatic back inside its shoulder holster and the iPhone into a hip pocket. About-facing, the beast bolts in the direction of the pit’s opposite west end and the aluminum culvert that will lead directly through the earth to Assembly Point Road.

  As Lennox’s muscular image fades to black, Mack positions his left hand onto the wet shale. He tries to prop himself up only a half-second before falling flat on his face.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:20 P.M.

  A newly arrived electrical storm is going full bore when Jude takes the stairs down into the vestibule. A quick white flash lights up the living room, exposes pine ceiling beams, polished walnut floors, log walls stripped of their bark and a large stone fireplace with its darker than dark, creosote-soaked railroad tie mantle.

  The flash is followed by a crash.

  But not of thunder.

  “Damnit!” shouts Rosie from inside the kitchen.

  The curse tells him that his wife has dropped the bag of bird seed.

  “You okay in there, Rosie?” Jude poses. “Remember what the doctor said.”

  But when she doesn’t answer he knows she’s too angry for words. Angry with herself.

  Rosie doesn’t like to make mistakes . . .

  Instead of words, he hears the familiar sound of the broom closet opening, a dust pan and broom being pulled out. He’s about to head into the kitchen, clean the mess up for her. But he feels a cool, wet breeze blowing against his face and bare arms, the sound of the rain coming down now in sheets as if it’s pouring directly into the living room.

  Glancing over his left shoulder, he discovers that the front door is opening on its own. For a frozen moment, he stands straight and stiff inside the vestibule, staring at the suddenly open door.

  Is he somehow responsible for leaving it open?

  He approaches the door with right hand extended, grabs hold of the damp brass knob, pushes it closed, locks the closer, attaches the safety chain. The door now secured, he decides to throw on a rain slicker and a hat, make a check on every bit of the home’s exterior. Starting at the dock and the tied-off motorboat, he’ll work his way up the back lawn, make a check on every ground level window, every door of the three-thousand square foot home.

  Just to be goddamned sure that me——the head-case of Lake George——does not make a crucial mistake at the expense of my family’s safety . . .

  It’s a mission he would start on sooner than later if only Rosie does not step into the living room and scream.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:23 P.M.

  His name was Charlie.

  He was one of Rosie’s beloved babies.

  A Betta fish, Charlie was born a kind of decorative blue, feathery aquatic creature. The reason for Rosie’s sudden shriek is that she’s discovered the now suddenly deceased fish atop the coffee table where it looks to have drowned in its own air—drowned after its translucent vase of fresh lake water was somehow tipped over.

  . . . by accident when I walked into the coffee table to relight the wedding candle?

  For what seems forever, Rosie and Jude do not exchange a word. Instead, he tries to play the good husband by crossing over the living room floor, taking her into his arms, holding her tight.

  “It’s alright baby,” he whispers. But everything is all wrong. Not only are things getting weird, he’s also sensing an unbearable guilt pressing down upon his shoulders.

  Releasing Rosie, he makes his way into the kitchen, gathers a fistful of paper towels off the roller above the sink. Back in the dim living room, he lays some of the towels out flat onto the surface of the coffee table and the water that has pooled there. He wraps up Charlie in what is left over of the paper towels. Standi
ng straight, he can feel the dead fish’s feather-lightness through the damp paper.

  As this is happening, Rosie sits herself down on the edge of the stone fireplace ledge that extends the entire length of the far wall. Knees pressed together, she plants elbows squarely atop her thighs, buries her face in her hands.

  “Poor Charlie,” she utters through trembling fingers. “My poor baby.”

  Jude holds the fish in the palm of his hand. He stares at his wife, feels the pain of the word “baby” inside his sternum. For Rosie, her pets, no matter how small, are just as cherished as Jack, as the little baby girl growing inside her belly.

  Not quite knowing how to console his wife, Jude makes his way over to the half bath off the kitchen. He’s going to take care of the fish situation as quickly and painlessly as possible. But just as he’s about to dump the shrouded fish into the toilet, he makes out footsteps slapping their way from the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen.

  Rosie sticks her head into the open bathroom door.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she snaps.

  An electric shock jolts Jude’s heart.

  “We have to dispose of it,” he calmly points out, eyes peering not at his wife, but through the narrow window onto the rain and the night.

  After a silent time, Jude turns to see her standing in the open doorway, left shoulder leaning against the wood jamb, naked arms folded tight over her chest. In the near total darkness of the narrow half bathroom, he can make out only a portion of her distraught face, long smooth hair veiling much of it. She has no more words for him. But her silence screams for understanding.

  Trapped between the walls of that small room, the dead feather-light fish held in the palm of his hand, what Jude realizes is this: there is something Rosie needs for Charlie. Knowing now what is expected of him, he wraps the fish back up in the damp paper towel, carries it back out into the candlelit kitchen.