Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
“Turn this—” I begin to say.
Before I can finish my order, she launches from her chair and wraps her arms around me, squeezing me tightly and hugging me like I haven’t been hugged in a very, very long time. Honestly, it’s strange. It’s like putting on an old jacket that’s been sitting in the attic, stiff from years of neglect. I feel her body against mine and I can’t help but feel sad for everything that I’ve lost over the years. I think of Kelly, all the hugs that I’ve missed, all the hugs that could have been mine, that should have been mine, but I tossed away too ignorant to know what I was getting rid of. I was a fool. I’m carrying that to the grave with me. I’ve come to accept that.
“I can only imagine the day you’ve had,” Lola says into my ear, barely registering over the so-called music that she’s playing.
I grab her arms and gently push her away from me. She looks at me with concerned, curious eyes. She wants to know more, but I’m not sharing. I’m not telling her anything that she doesn’t need to know. “I’m off the case,” I tell her flatly, feeling the words escape like they were always meant to escape. Like I never should have held onto them. “The FBI is taking over and they don’t want me near the case.”
“What?” She looks at me with a horrified expression. “How is that possible? What does this mean?”
“It means I’m out,” I tell her flatly. I can barely hear her over the screaming and shrieking. “Turn that shit off.”
With a few clicks, the music dies and we’re left in silence, with only the humming of the machines around us to keep us company. I look at her and feel the confusion and the disappointment radiating off of her. She looks at me with a questioning expression, groping for the words to say, but there are no words. That’s what Lola doesn’t understand yet. It’s over. I turn and look at the screen on the wall.
I can’t help but feel like all of this is just one really bad nightmare, that I’ve been asleep while all of this has been happening. None of this feels like it’s real anymore. Turning back to Lola, I question what’s real and what isn’t. Is she even here? Have I completely lost it? Have the imaginary and the real crossed boundaries and joined into one for me? I shake my head. No, I’m a fool. This can’t be right. The killer has broken me and I’m chasing fairytales now. I’m chasing after things that don’t exist. I look at her and then back at the computer screen. How could I bring her into all of this? How could I be such a fool? How could I be so blind as to what’s really happening here?
I suppose that there’s only one thing I can do. The footage is there, even though everything inside of my mind and inside of my soul is screaming that I’m wrong, that I am not witnessing what is true, but there it is. Hell, I’ve seen it personally. I look at the screen and know that I need to see one more time. I need to see it again. I have to know what I’ve seen as true.
“Show it to me again,” I tell Lola coldly. “One last time.”
XI
“Everything is going to be alright,” she says to me, but I don’t know what to say to that. As she says it, I look at her and can’t help but feel like she doesn’t want me here. She says it to me like it’s something she has to say, something she’s obligated to say. This is the opposite of what my parents gave me at home. Rather than doubt and apathy, she’s giving me cookie-cutter responses that I’m sure we’re all going to hear at school when they have the assembly to remember all the dead who lost their lives earlier today. I don’t want that. I want something real. I want the Miss Larsen that I knew all last year and who sat down with me this year. “I promise you that everything will be okay,” she says to me with a warm smile.
Her house smells like cinnamon and apples. I’m not sure if I’m the only one with her in the house. Part of me thinks that there’s someone else here, a man or a roommate or something. I don’t feel like I’m alone with her, like I’m unwanted, intruding. I can feel ears pressing to doors or lingering in the silence, picking up little things that I say. I feel like I have the weight of an audience around my neck and it bothers me. It’s like a mosquito bite that I can’t reach. I feel a general unease as I look over everything that’s in this house. I’ve made a terrible mistake coming here. I’ve been foolish and stupid. I should have just stayed at home. I should have just wallowed in my own misery.
“I think I was in love with her,” I tell her softly. I can feel her soft hand on my back and I feel a cold shiver run down my spine, like I’m being touched by the hands of Death itself. There’s something deep inside of me that screams, something that flees from me the moment she touches me. I don’t know why I feel this way, but I do. I feel sick. I feel like dying. I feel like everything around me is crumbling.
“Who?” Miss Larsen asks me, her soft lips crafting the words as she says them delicately and sweetly. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard before. She has the voice of an angel and a kind heart to match. I look over at her, at her eyes that are wide with fear and worry.
“Alice,” I answer softly, feeling like a fool as I say it. Why am I telling her this? Why am I wasting my words? No one will ever understand me. No one will ever understand the passion I have for her, the love that burns in my soul for a dead girl. How could anyone possibly help me? There’s no one who can even comprehend what is happening inside of my mind. I was stupid to think that Miss Larsen would understand.
“Oh, Patrick,” she says to me with a worried tone in her voice. “Patrick, Alice was a wonderful girl and she was smart and talented, but I’m very certain that you will find love with another. You’ll find someone else that will steal your heart and I don’t doubt that at all.”
“How can they steal my heart,” I ask her with fire in my words, “when Alice died with it?”
She looks at me without any answers to my question. I’ve expected too much from her. This entire time was a waste. I rode my bike here for two hours, searching for where she lives. The map on my iPhone was a lot more difficult to follow than I had previously anticipated. I made a huge mistake leaving my home.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your night,” I say to her as I stand up.
“Patrick, I think you should go have a talk with the counselors tomorrow,” Miss Larsen says to me, rising with me like my shadow. She looks at me with worry in her eyes, but it’s worry for all the wrong stuff. She looks at me with worry that I’m feeling something that’s naïve and stupid, that I’ll never comprehend what’s ahead of me. She thinks I’m just a kid and that makes me even angrier. I look at her with nothing but disappointment and disgust. She has wasted my time. She has betrayed me. “They’re going to set up times for everyone to come and talk with them and they’re going to be counselors from all across the city coming to help students process and discuss what they’ve been through. I think it would be very worthwhile if you go have a chat with them.”
I nod my head. “Maybe,” I say to her, knowing that I’m not going to go talk to some shrink about how I feel. Been there, done that, and it’s a waste of time. It’s completely stupid. They’ll definitely not understand what I’m going through. They’ll laugh it off or roll their eyes when I tell them the pain and sorrow I’m experiencing. I don’t want to deal with that. I don’t want to have to endure the scorn and mockery of adults. I’ve had enough of it to fill myself for a lifetime. But I don’t want Miss Larsen to worry. I nod to her again. “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” I lie to her, telling her exactly what she wants to hear.
She smiles at me and follows me across the room to the front door with her arms folded around her stomach. This has probably been very weird for her, a student just showing up at her home wanting to talk about his little feelings. I’m not a child though and I refuse to let the world see me as that. I’m just as much of an adult as all of them. No, I’m more than them. I’m wiser than my years.
Stepping outside, the cold air tickles me, freezing my skin and chilling me to the bone. I take a few steps outside before I turn and look at Miss Larsen who is hugging herself at the threshold of her house, watching me as I make my way back to my bicycle. I give her a small wave, but I know that it’s not reassuring to her. She offers one back to me and I feel nothing. It’s an emotionless wave, a gesture like swatting a fly or stretching. I look at her one last time before getting on my bicycle and heading back home.
I pedal for what seems like hours, but I know that it’s just my shame and my guilt for acting like a child that’s weighing me down. I was stupid for having shown up on her doorstep like that and now she’s probably calling my parents or at least the counselors at school. Either way, I know that the future only holds more troubles and more baffled people, groping for a sentence to make me feel better, but they don’t know. They’ll never know what I’m going through because they can’t understand.
The world is too full of greedy people who only care about themselves. They look around at the suffering and the agony that surrounds them, and yet all they see is their own reflection, their own problems and their own pains. I’m sick of that. I’m sick of people faking and trying to pretend like they care when truthfully, everyone is just selfish monsters looking for their own gain in all the misery. It’s like they’re all digging through the shit of the world looking for a mirror. I don’t get it. I’m tired of all of it. I just want someone who understands what I’m going through, but that’s asking too much. I guess that maybe I am being selfish for wanting someone who can fathom the pain I am in.
I am alone. I am all alone in this world because everywhere I turn, I’m met with people who don’t really care about what I’m going through. The few friends I did hang out with have dwindled away. They found new friends, better friends, more lively friends. They’re passing up on me and taking hold of a life that better suits them, leaving me in their shadow, alone and forgotten. Even at home, I’m alone, abandoned in a house where my parents only care about themselves, working less and less on a marriage that’s sinking more and more every day. I am alone with only myself, with only my insights, and with only my misery to keep me company. The world owed me no favors, but it certainly didn’t give me any advantages. I look plain. I don’t have any really good skills. I don’t even have a hobby that I’m good at. I’m just alone and worthless at just about everything. I’m sure it’ll get better when I become numb to all of it, but right now, it hurts too much. I don’t want to become dulled to the painful reality of the world. I don’t want to become cynical and bitterly accept how the world is. I don’t want that for my life. I don’t want to be my parents.
Slowly, I make my way over the interstate, looking down at the lights zipping by, all the people encapsulated and going about their daily lives, oblivious to everything that’s happened today, ignorant of the horrible truth that I’ve been shown. I wonder if they’ve ever felt the loss and the heartache that I feel right now, peddling my way up and over them. At the crest of the overpass, I look down at them, staring with apathy at all the twinkling lights as they go about their ways. I know that I don’t care about them, just like they don’t care about me. That’s the vicious cycle of the world. It’s the wheel of apathy that I’m a victim to. If only I had a choice just to opt out of it all, to run away and live a life where I don’t have to deal with these blind jerks.
Maybe that was what Miss Beasly’s suicide cult was about. Maybe they all got together and discussed how truly awful the world is and they all understood that there was nothing they could do to change the minds and opinions of people. Maybe they felt powerless and helpless just like I do right now. Maybe that’s the point of all of it. I feel sick to my stomach. What if today wasn’t a horrible tragedy, but a wakeup call to me and all the other fools out there who are tearing at the wool around our eyes, trying to get a glimpse at what the world is truly like? I feel sick to my stomach, but it makes sense to me now. I see it. I see the beauty and the purpose behind their sacrifices.
They’re in a better place now, even if that place is emptiness and oblivion. They’re free of selfishness and greediness. They’re free of everything. They don’t have to deal with apathetic parents, confused teachers, and cruel classmates. I can’t help but envy them right now, looking down at the cars that never even see me in the night. I’m just a speck on their way home or to work. Their lives are better than mine, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I step off my bike and let it drop onto the broken and fractured sidewalk, looking at the lights below and feeling drawn to them. Maybe I can opt out. Maybe there isn’t a community elsewhere, but rather another form of existence or nonexistence.
Gripping the chain link fence, I start to climb. It’s time to find a better world.
I wonder if my parents will ever even notice.
XII
I’m not sure what to think, sitting at my desk, listening to the quiet sounds of the bullpen at night. There are a few on-call detectives, but they got up and left twenty minutes ago. Now I’m left with Tammy at the reception desk and another pair of detectives in one of the conference rooms going over a case, burning the midnight oil, even though they won’t see a drop of overtime for it. I admire that for them, the fact that they’re still here, working on cases that make sense, not disgraced by the FBI and lying low while a killing entity is still out there.
I don’t know what I expected, watching the feed again. I stared at that screen, next to Lola and watched in agonizingly slow motion as the horrors that I knew already to be true unfurled before me. I watched as David Marcus passed on the parasitic entity to the next victim. He tossed it to Damian without ever even knowing it, without Damian knowing what he was taking on. I watched it happen and I helplessly groped to understand what it was that I was seeing, knowing that against all my hopes and dreams, I was not a madman. No, now I’m left with the uneasy burden of knowing that I am very much sane, just unhappily informed. I don’t like the feeling, but in the end, feelings don’t mean a damn thing. I’m left with the cold reality that there is truth in this world and it’s found me out.
I click the pen in my hand, staring at the others in the conference room, through the glass. I wonder what they’re talking about and I envy them. I left Lola in hopes that I could find something to do here at the desk, but they’ve taken care of everything that needed my attention. I’m left with just waiting to find something to do. I half expected to find Mendez here, waiting like a gargoyle to chew me out and give me five new assholes. But his office, like my desk, was vacant. I sit here alone, looking for something to bide my time while I wait for exhaustion to claim me.
I’m afraid that I’m going to pass out. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to dream. I don’t want to give my mind the opportunity to betray me and attack me. Plagued sleep awaits me, I can feel it. Sitting here in my chair, I struggle with my tired body and mind, waiting for time to pass.
I wonder if I can hold out until Mendez does return. After a solid ass-chewing from the bastard, there’s going to be so much paperwork with this assignment that I could nestle into this desk tomorrow and spend my last days churning out it. This could be the end of my career, losing the case to the bureaucratic food chain and wasting away with tons of paperwork left to do that I could never possibly get done in the amount of time it will take to pass into retirement. I should resign myself to this fate and just wait for everything to play out, however it’s supposed to. I look at the black computer screen and remember the figure moving from David to Damian. Everything reminds me of this thing. It lingers between my thoughts like a stalker, haunting every silence, every pause, and every moment.
As I wait, I decide that it’s time to go home. I can turn on the TV and drink at home. I can let the thoughts slip away under the tides of infomercials, reruns, and booze. If I’m lucky, I might actually catch something interesting and then I’ll be able to eat away the hours without thinking much. Hell, I’ll end up drunk after a while and hopefully I won’t even dream at all. Letting out a long sigh, I pull myself up and decide that it’s time to wipe my hands clean of all of this. A fresh start, a new beginning. That’s what I need to accept as the future. Maybe tomorrow I can convince Mendez that the FBI has got it all under control and I’ll just coast out the rest of my time at home, when actually I’ll be packing and headed to Florida.
Grabbing my car keys off of my desk, I give Tammy a half-assed wave on my way to the elevator and she gives me a wave in return. I don’t think she really knows a thing about this job, but I don’t mind. I was happier knowing a little less myself just a few days ago. I stand at the elevator, pressing the button and waiting for it to make its way up to me. When the doors finally open, I make my way into the elevator and press the button to close the doors as quickly as possible. I decide that I need to talk to Penny. She’s been my agent here in the dispatch. She’s been feeding me information and it’s time for her to call it quits, just like I have. She has other people she needs to be helping now. God, I need to call Owens too, tell him that it’s all over.
When I reach the ground floor, I take a different turn than I normally do. I make my way in the complete opposite direction, looking for the dispatch room. It’s a large room where usually ten different people work at the phones twenty-four hours a day. Crime waits for no one. Dispatch is the foundation of the entire department. Without them, we all sink into the shit and lose everything. Making a friend in dispatch makes the entire job infinitely easier. Thankfully, I’ve had Penny for several years. She has been my lifeline, especially on this case.
The building is still relatively crowded, officers and detectives making their way through the ground floor, some heading to the parking lot, others to the lockers, and others to their offices. There are a few taking their perps to lock-up but tonight, all eyes are on the street for a killer that isn’t there. I feel slightly guilty for all the wasted time and manpower, but right now, everyone is playing second fiddle to the FBI. I’ll wait for them to pick up the trail where I left it for them. But right now, they’re all wandering aimlessly in the woods.
Pushing through the doors to dispatch, I’m met with a darkened room surrounded by equipment and all the dispatch workers doing their job like the elves at the North Pole, dedicating everything they have to helping make the world a better place. It doesn’t take long to recognize Penny. She’s the only redhead in the room and the only one worth taking a second glance at. Most of them are overweight family members of others who work for the police department. I know only a handful of them and the rest of them are complete strangers to me. I look around the room giving a general curt nod before moving toward Penny.
She sees me almost instantly and finishes up with her call and waves me over to her. She’s wearing a headset like all the other operators and I can’t help but feel like I’m surrounded by people on the set of a sci-fi space flick. It’s so surreal in this place. It gives me the chills. I make my way toward her station and stop to take a moment and appreciate her. She’s the kind of woman that keeps it classy in the workplace, especially one that’s as niche and tucked away as the dispatch office. She has long legs that disappear into a tight pencil skirt that forms perfectly to her legs and hips, not to mention the ass of a woman who spends a solid amount of time at the gym. She’s wearing a white blouse and has her makeup completely done. She’s the kind of woman who puts herself together before work, even when she’s coming to a place like this. I marvel at how a bun can look so sexy on some women and look terrible on others. Penny’s one of the few who can pull it off in a sixties teacher kind of way. Unfortunately for all the moral and decent men in the world, she’s married to a man who satisfies her in ways the rest of us can only dream of. I try to imagine what it would be like to go home to a woman like Penny every night. How incredible would it be to have a sexy piece of ass like that waiting for you? I try to remain focused.
“There’s been another.” Penny keeps her voice low for me so that everyone around us doesn’t immediately start eavesdropping, but I doubt there are many secrets in a place like this. I look at her and try to protest any desire to be involved, but she keeps talking. “A boy, a teenager, he rode his bike up an overpass and then climbed the fence and jumped straight down into the traffic, hit right on the hood of a car, rolled off and a driver in the next lane smashed right into him. There’s not much left to identify him with, but—”
“He went to Parker High School,” I tell her immediately.
She looks at me as if she’s just seen a ghost and I decide that I’m getting real tired of that look. She blinks several times and looks at the screen. “His name is Patrick Henrys and he’s a sophomore at Parker High School,” she tells me with a dazed and baffled expression on her sweet, alluring face. I try to wonder what it is her husband does to her first when they’re in bed together. Does he kiss her neck sweetly, massage her, or is he more of the ambitious sort and goes down south for his endeavors? Whatever he does, it must be incredible to keep her. “Is it one of them?” she asks me. I stare down the soft opening of her blouse while she’s turned away, getting a good glimpse of the soft, perfect complexion of her skin. I can almost imagine what it’s like to take ahold of one of them and squeeze it, softly putting my lips on her nipple. But then again, I will never know.
“Ask the officer on the line if there was a note,” I tell Penny. She looks at me and nods.
She relays the information to the officer and waits, looking at me with a confused look on her face. “It’s Evans and Waters on the scene. They caught it. The person who called it in said that it looked like someone threw him off the overpass, but when they showed up, there was no way someone threw the boy. Apparently there’s a fence or something.”
I look at her and know that this is part of it. The entity must have used the boy to get closer to Kelly and dumped him. His death was probably nothing more than tossing away a pair of used socks. I wonder what the boy was doing, though. What was his last stop? Did he see another student, or was he going for a teacher?
Penny holds her slender, manicured hand to her earpiece and then looks at me with a peculiar expression while she nods and listens. Finally she puts the caller on hold. “Detective Evans says that they sent over Detective Redman to investigate the parents. They didn’t have a clue that he was even gone,” Penny says with a baffled expression. “They were asleep and said that he’d been at a friend’s house the entire time and that they thought he’d come home already and just went to sleep. Sound like real bang-up parents.”
“Did they say who the friend was?” I ask her.
“Peter something,” she answers. “Detective Evans didn’t have the information all the way yet, but they’re going to send uniforms over to see if Peter Something is around.”
I want to get involved, but I know better. I know that the best thing I can do now is help Kelly. She’s the only responsibility that I have right now and that’s where my dedication and my loyalty need to be, not the case. I look at Penny and want to tell her everything, that it’s a demon, that we’re all in way more trouble than we realize, but I know that it’s in vain. I know that whatever I tell her, she’s not going to believe like I do. She would have to see the images, have to have been there to see David end his own life and know that the footage isn’t doctored. There’s too many factors, too many problems. I can’t tell her. All I can do is give her what I do know.
“It’s definitely part of the case,” I tell her. “But you need to send it to Agent Halbert over at the FBI. He’s coordinating everything from here on out.”
“Owens said that we were still going to keep looking.” Penny furrows her brow. “Did you get in trouble, King?”
I’m thrilled that she’s worried about me, but there’s nothing to be done now. I shake my head. “No,” I tell her. “But it’s time to give this up to the Feds. The killer has gotten to too many people. We provide support now just like everyone else. It’s time to shut everything down.”
“If you want to,” Penny nods to me. “I’ll send word out to everyone. You should probably call Owens, though. If he doesn’t hear it from you, he’ll keep pulling his own strings and running his own show. You know how he is.”
“I will,” I smile, knowing exactly how he is. “Thanks for everything you’ve done, Penny.”
“A pleasure, King,” she says with a flirtatious smile that is probably just her being nice. She’s one of the girls where being nice always looks like flirting to other men. I pat her on the shoulder and start to head out. “Just remember, when you get that beach house in Florida, who helped you all the time.”
I smile at the thought of Penny in a bikini on the beach at my house in Florida. I could deal with that. I nod to her and head for the door. I don’t want to be here anymore. The thought of distracting myself with work is no longer appealing in any sort of way. I just want to get home and to get into my recliner and to get a whole lot of bourbon inside of me. Pushing open the doors and heading for the parking lot, I know that I need to talk to Owens, but I’m sure he’ll contact me. Tomorrow, I’ll show up and let Mendez have his time with me, berating and verbally beating the hell out of me, and then I’ll join the rest of the manhunt in support. So far, everyone else knows just about as much as I do. I’ll make sure Kelly is safe and far enough away that the creature can’t find her. After that, I’m sure Agent Halbert will incur the wrath of the creature.
Sitting down in my car, I can’t help but wonder about all the murders. How they’ve evolved over the course of the investigation. They’ve gone through an entirely different series of mutations than I would have ever expected. When this started, they were elegant, almost poetic to the victims. The artist who dabbled in social rebellion ends up mutilated like a crucifix, the sex bot slut hanged with her own sex toys and scarves, the drop-out artist who stabs his utensils into his body, and all the others before I even got on board with all of this darkness and insanity. But today, none of it made sense. None of it has made sense, even Damian’s death. There’s nothing symbolic or poetic about a Marine heating up coils and taking a back dive onto them. But more importantly, today at the school, the creature panicked. It freaked out and it got worried. It killed three people to try and shake me. For all it knows, it has shaken me. It has gotten rid of me and now I’m just another supporter in the witch hunt for the creature. It killed three people violently and quickly. The home economics teacher killed herself with whatever equipment was around her. The girl, Alice, rammed her head into a doorknob and the boy decapitated himself with an archaic paper cutter. What was the beauty and poetry in all of these kills?