Scream Catcher (24 page)

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 finally, he 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.

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 is startled awake.

How long has be been out?

No clue.

Best not to think about it. Best just to 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 onto 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 is 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.

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 lies himself down flat onto 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.

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

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.

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, feel the ceasing up of his heart.

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 birdcage 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 upon 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 the antique birdcage that Rosie picked up at a Sunday village flee market, Jude grips the flashlight. But he doesn’t require the light to see that the birdcage 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.

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.

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 redial his adoptive father’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.

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 the basement Department Communications 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.”