The Scream Catcher Read online

  She stirs, mumbles, “Are we safe now?”

  He can’t be sure if she’s awake or dreaming.

  He stands, still feeling the warmth from her cheek on his lips.

  “Everything is secured. We’re safe.”

  But in his head, Jude pictures his father.

  Where the hell are you, Mack?

  Back to his own bedside, Jude drinks down the rest of his beer. For a split second he considers slipping out of the damp jeans and T-shirt, crawling quietly under the covers.

  But not tonight.

  It’s just a matter of time before Ray or Mack or somebody pulls up in the driveway. When it happens, he will be dressed and ready to greet them. In the meantime, he’ll close his eyes, ignore the demon inside him, and try to get some rest. Tomorrow promises to be one hell of a trying day.

  For a time, he finds himself staring up into the darkness.

  Flat on his back, Jude avoids eyeing the end of the bed. The Burns mother and daughter: they’ll be standing there when he finally falls to sleep.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Friday, August 18, 12:01 A.M.

  Then a noise.

  Something that sounds like a thick strip of metal slapped against hardwood.

  The slap is not something that goes bump in the night. The slap vibrates from out of the stormy darkness; from out of the lower regions of the log home. It penetrates the density of the humid summer air.

  At the same time, the foreign noise acts like a spring.

  It triggers eyelids, drawing them wide open. Just a quick, solid slap that, should it occur during daylight hours might not register a second thought. But that now in the deep night becomes cause for serious alarm.

  The slap comes and goes so swiftly that by the time the first wave of adrenalin rush passes, Jude begins to believe he must have imagined or dreamt it in the first place. It only makes sense to believe that after falling asleep, the subconscious took over, decided to play a dirty trick on his brain. Because who really wants to believe that someone or something is breaking into their home in the middle of a blacked out night?

  A glance at his watch tells him he’s been asleep for almost two hours.

  He throws a glance over his shoulder at Rosie.

  She hasn’t stirred an inch. So it seems.

  But then the darkness of the night is so absolute he can’t see ten feet in front of his face even with the now fading candlelight. Or perhaps it’s just the effects of having been asleep—the eyes not yet adjusted to light no matter how dim.

  Get a hold of yourself, Parish. Don’t let the demon get the best of you.

  He almost feels himself smiling at the stupidity of it all. Smiling at the overactive thump, thump, thump of his carotid artery and the moist sweat that coats the skin beneath the down comforter.

  All is well, he attempts to convince himself.

  Until a second sharp slap rings out in the night.

  The Molloy Gravel Pit

  Friday, 12:02 A.M.

  Mack wakes with a startle.

  How long has be been out?

  No clue.

  Best not to think about it. Best just to do something.

  Now.

  Do something now.

  He crawls, makes it as far as the Jeep where he manages to open the door, dropping himself into the front, driver’s side seat. It takes almost all the strength he has left to lift his left arm, take hold of the radio transmitter, bring it to his mouth.

  “Village base,” he spits. “Base . . . Do. You. Copy?”

  Before he can even hope for a response, his fingers go numb. The transmitter falls out of his hand, onto the cruiser floor. There’s no real pain. Only a bone-thick exhaustion.

  “Copy on that number nine. Where the hell have you been, Captain? Over.”

  But Mack can not read, copy or respond. He just lies still, chest flat on the front seat of the Jeep-cruiser, legs hanging out the open door, blood dripping from the exit wound just below his right shoulder, pooling onto the carpeted floor.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Friday, 12:03 A.M.

  Eyes wide open, Jude springs up, swings his legs out, presses them flat onto the wood plank floor. He does it without waking Rosie. The last thing he needs right now is for her to be awake and alarmed.

  The shotgun case is leaning against the log wall on the opposite side of the nightstand. He sets the case down flat on the wood floor. He opens it, grabs hold of the weapon. Breaking the breaches, he rechecks the No.1 buckshot loads. Slowly and quietly closing the breach, the shotgun if officially locked and loaded.

  The weapon secured in his right hand, he holds the flashlight in the left, aims the white light dead ahead. The back of his neck is cold, damp; stomach tight and cramped.

  This is not just fear. It is realization.

  My fear, my disability, my demon…has it clouded my judgment? Was I being naïve in assuming we’d be safe inside our home? Should I have hauled my family out of here while we still had the chance? Because under the circumstances, Mack would have understood my going against his order to sit tight. But then the blackout was the very excuse I needed for keeping my family home, even when our protectors had abandoned us . . .

  But there’s no use in assigning blame at this point, even if the blame is all his. Because now an intruder has breached the security of his home.

  And now is too late.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Friday, 12:03 A.M.

  Black Dragon lays himself down flat on his chest at the far end of the home. From there he is able to eye Mr. Parish (his Player) as the ex-cop gradually emerges from the master bedroom exactly as planned—shotgun held in one hand, a lit flashlight in the other. Black Dragon observes the ex-cop as he inches his way along the top floor corridor.

  From down in the prone position, night vision device positioned over ice-blue eyes, Black Dragon can taste the fear that oozes from the Player’s lips.

  I am your pursuer, Mr. Parish. You are my Player.

  Black Dragon raises the fighting knife, bitch-slaps the table leg, bites his lip to suppress a hyena laugh.

  You will scream for me…But not yet.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Friday, 12:03 A.M.

  Pressing his body out the open bedroom door and into the hall, Jude finds himself alone in the dark and what should be familiar spaces. But now the spaces are not familiar. In the blackout, the spaces have become a suffocating opaque maze of log walls, wood beams, floors and high cathedral ceilings.

  The perfect setting for an ambush.

  The sharp slap: he hears it again; feels its impact inside his chest.

  Definitely metal against wood, coming from the direction of the living room or beyond it, the dining room.

  Pumping heart is about to bore its way through his chest.

  Walking, inching, he inhales short swallows of air, exhales even shorter breaths. Not through his nostrils, but through his open mouth. He breathes the damp air, but the oxygen does not reach his brain.

  Lightheaded and jerky, he moves on past Jack’s bedroom door towards the short staircase that descends into the vestibule. At the bottom of the stairs he aims the beam of white light directly ahead while holding the shotgun as steady as possible, index finger tickling the first of the two, back-to-back triggers.

  He takes a step towards the living room, all the time shining the flashlight against the vacant rectangular space. It’s at the end of the light beam that he expects to see a face and along with it, the ceasing up of his heart.

  The face of Lennox . . . the Black Dragon . . .

  Instead, Jude gets a whole lot of nothing. Just a mute display of log walls, bare overhead beams, and furniture.

  Maybe he’s just imagining things. There’s no reason to believe that Lennox is inside the house. Jude resigns himself to turning tail, heading back to bed when the hand brushes up against his lower leg.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

 
; Friday, 12:06 A.M.

  It’s possible that he screams.

  But then, it’s just as likely he does nothing of the kind. It’s impossible to judge in the heat of panic. All Jude knows is that one second he’s making his way down into the stone vestibule, and the next someone or something is grabbing at his right ankle. Thumbing off the shotgun’s safety, he aims both barrels straight down at his feet as if it’s possible to shoot off an intruder’s hand without crippling himself in the process.

  But then what he thought might be a hand is nothing of the kind.

  In the end, it isn’t a human hand that’s grabbed his lower leg. As it turns out, Atticus the cat has emerged from the basement for something other than food.

  But the damage is done.

  Nerve damage.

  The strength bleeds out of Jude like a major artery suddenly severed. Shock sets in. Legs grow wobbly before completely giving out. Jude must look like a limp noodle seated on the cold stone floor.

  Inside his head, a loud humming noise begins to grow louder, more forceful with each passing second. The demon is screaming. Breathing in, he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  The fat, orange cat jumps up onto his lap, lays his furry body down.

  From where Jude sits on the hard floor, he can’t help but feel the animal’s rapid beating heart through the warm flesh and thick fur. It’s along with the comfort of the cat that he begins to feel some of the strength returning to his muscles, the blood to his limbs. Enough strength and blood to raise the shotgun up with his right hand, pick up the flashlight with the other, give the living room one last sweep.

  He finds himself holding the beam of light steady on the bird cage located on the far end of the room beside the fireplace. He can’t be sure what’s attracted him to the wire and metal cage in the first place; what made it suddenly seem so important that he focus all his attention on it. But then, maybe it has something to do with its emptiness; its profound silence; its lack of life.

  Because aren’t canaries supposed to sing?

  Now, standing inches away from an antique bird cage that Rosie picked up at a Sunday village flea market, Jude grips the flashlight. But he doesn’t require the light to see that the bird cage door has been left wide open. That the bird lies upside down on the flat metal bottom of the cage atop a bed of scattered seeds and shed yellow feathers.

  Fucking sadistic Black Dragon . . . fucking dark monster . . . It must be you . . .

  Jude turns, lunges the short distance from the living room through the dining room, into the kitchen, out the back door. He bolts through the rain, down to the docks. But he doesn’t cover the entire distance to see that the Lund motorboat is no longer floating on the lake surface. The motorboat sits on the rocky bottom. Motorboat’s been scuttled. In his mind, he pictures Lennox standing on the dock aiming a silenced .22 cal. at the boat’s bottom, pumping six or seven holes into it while Jude dozed off in bed.

  But then Lennox is inside the house. Jude is down on the dock.

  Turning too quickly he slips. Feet fly out from under him. He goes down hard onto his side on the wood planking. The air is knocked out of his lungs. He bolts up anyway, sprints his way back up to the kitchen door, plows through it, hooks a sharp left down the stairs to the garage door. Jude opens the door, shines the flashlight on the Jeep CJ-7, sees immediately that the hood has been propped up, sees that the engine has been sabotaged, bits of metal and wire scattered all about the concrete floor.

  Back up the stairs in the kitchen he grabs the cordless phone, presses it to his ear.

  The phone is dead.

  Blackout . . .

  Blood boils inside his brain. Maybe the air is gradually returning to his lungs, but Jude is going insane from panic. Slamming the phone down onto the hardwood counter its electronic guts explode and scatter. That’s when Jude pulls the cell phone from his pocket, punches Send to re-dial his stepfather’s number.

  Mack’s seven-digit number appears along the digital readout.

  He puts the phone to his ear.

  “Answer! Answer! Answer goddamnit.”

  But he gets nothing other than busy signals. Then a total signal disconnect. The heavy realization sinks in: he is all alone with a wife and child asleep in their beds. He stands paralyzed in the center of the kitchen floor with the rain falling steadily outside the picture windows, a lake flanking one side of the home, a dirt road and thick woods flanking the other. He knows now that Hector Lennox, the man he is to testify against, is hiding out somewhere inside his home and there isn’t a fucking thing he can do about it. Lennox has begun to play a kill game, starting small by killing two of Rosie’s pets. Black Dragon is working his way to larger, more complicated thrills, spills, and kills.

  What is there to stop him?

  No cops, no phones, no transportation, no protection . . .

  Jude tries to swallow his fear, hold down the demon. But it’s impossible. He’s too weak.

  Where is Ray Fuentes? Where is Mack?

  He swallows something cold and bitter.

  Shining the flashlight into the vestibule, he goes for the upstairs bedrooms.

  Lake George Village Precinct

  Friday, 12:10 A.M.

  “You still haven’t made contact?” barks Lt. Lino.

  The dark-suited, mustached, thirty-nine-year-old detective stands over the young uniformed woman in charge of the switchboard inside basement Department Communication’s Center.

  “Mack radioed but did not respond with a copy,” she nervously explains. “That was only minutes ago. We’re running the show by generator. Like, half power. Now the best I can do is static.”

  Eyes back on the dispatcher.

  “The blackout is killing us. Please try one more time.”

  Fingering a series of keys on the keyboard, the dispatcher speaks into her headset, “Number nine, number nine. This is dispatch. Do you copy? Over.” White noise oozes over ceiling speakers. “Captain Mack this is dispatch. Do you copy? Over.”

  “Shit,” Lino moans.

  “I’m doing the best I can, Lt. Lino.”

  Exhaling, the Lieutenant sets his hand on her trembling shoulder.

  “Sorry.”

  Fingers hovering over the keyboard, the dispatcher exhales, awaits further orders.

  “What about transponders?” Lino says after a time. “Holy Christ, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier. What if we trace the transponders?”

  Typing, the dispatcher glues her eyes to the flat monitor where the department’s entire list of Jeep Cherokee cruisers appear by license plate number, including numbers 8 and 9—Fuentes’ and Mack’s respective rides. Thumbing the mouse, she sets the little red cursor on the plate marked 9, fingers Enter. A real-time satellite-generated map appears on the flat screen. Towards the upper right-hand corner of the screen in the area marked Northeast can be found a small yellow triangle.

  “Enhance,” Lino requests.

  The dispatcher types yet another command. The screen zooms in on the yellow triangle, enough so that the satellite-generated black and white flames that shoot up from Fuentes’ cruiser become clearly visible. In plain view, only a few feet away from the fire, Mack’s apparently undamaged Jeep.

  “Can you get a fix on that?”

  “Parcel 445, Fort Anne Road and Lake George Road. Site of the old Molloy Gravel Pit.”

  What in God’s name is he doing out there?

  “You want me to print a hardcopy, Lieutenant?”

  “Hurry.”

  The dispatcher prints it.

  Lino pulls the sheet from the printer before she has a chance to retrieve it for him.

  “Alert Command of possible policemen down,” he shouts while jogging out of the Communications Center, up the two flights of metal pan stairs, on his way to the building’s rear exit.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Friday, 12:11 A.M.

  She’s lying on her back when Jude throws open the bedroom door.

>   Rosie, all four limbs tied to the four opposing legs of the mahogany bed frame, white panties stuffed in her mouth. Standing paralyzed inside the open door, Jude senses that his pregnant wife is trying to communicate with him.

  Not with her gagged mouth. But with her eyes.

  The back of her head is pressed deep into the pillow. Half her face glows in the candlelight while the other half remains concealed in shadow. He’s able to make out her brown eyes. Eyes that in the burning firelight are wide and unblinking.

  The bedroom is as still as an empty church.

  Jude gazes up and down Rosie’s naked body with a kind of frightened curiosity. There is a small cut that’s been made just below her right breast. A thin line of blood trickles from it, runs down along her ribcage. There’s the small bruise on her lower left forearm from the I.V. she was injected with the night before. The tiny silver hoop that pierces her naval glistens in the candlelight. So does the pale skin immediately above the carefully trimmed pubic hair. Her long black hair is disheveled, some of it spread out over the pillow, some of it veiling the right side of her face. The tangled hair and the small laceration tells him she put up a silent struggle against the Lennox’s assault.

  Jude’s Police Academy training comes to mind: one must be completely aware of one’s surroundings.

  But even by then he has no idea how long he’s been standing inside that open door, just staring at the naked, bound image of his wife. A half second maybe. Or a full minute.

  Fear warps time, bends it the same way it cripples his insides.

  For Jude, the present moment no longer possesses any logic or proportion. He knows he has to do something. What he wants is simply to lift his feet, put one foot in front of the other. He wants to rescue Rosie. But he discovers that he can do nothing more than watch her struggle against the ropes; watch her eyes watch his own.