The Bleeding Season

CHAPTER 1

I didn’t know it then, but it was impossible to survive the darkest corners of his mind without first surviving the darkest corners of my own. I was headed for the same depths of Hell he had descended to, and though we passed through those flames for different reasons, our journeys are forever entwined. His story cannot be told without also telling mine, and maybe that’s the way it should be. After all, Goodness is a state of grace.

Evil, is a state of mind.

There was a sudden intrusion to the darkness. A brief orange glimmer and the quiet hiss of a lit match faded quickly, leaving behind the scent of sulfur and a single burning ember like a dot on an otherwise murky horizon. I looked back at the silhouette on the bed, the cigarette dangling from her lips; fingers of smoke circling, caressing, and wondered if perhaps this time there was good reason to fear the dark.

Tired and still disoriented, I turned from her and attempted to focus the whirlwind of thoughts blurring my mind…

I guess I thought we’d be friends forever. Even then, it still seemed that way, like we were all joined at the cosmic hip, like somehow our lives existed as extensions or offshoots of one another. Whether we wanted them to or not.

Originally there had been five of us. Tommy was killed early on in high school. We’d hopped off the bus, not paying any attention as we walked into the road. The woman who hit Tommy later claimed she hadn’t seen the flashing lights and the stop sign on the side of the bus. One minute we were talking and laughing, the next there was a dull thud so unnatural that it didn’t register until I saw Tommy fly into the air, suspended in space while the car rushed past, so close I thought for a split-second it had struck me too. And then I staggered back as the body twisted and turned like some gymnast in the throes of demonic possession, the car screeching to a halt in time for Tommy to land against the hood. The braking motion launched him back into midair, a human cannonball soaring soundlessly above the ground, finally cart-wheeling across asphalt, his head striking, neck bending at an impossible angle, body tumbling and flopping about as if boneless, set to the chorus of flesh slapping pavement.

Life support kept his body alive for two days following the incident, but I knew Tommy was dead the moment he came to rest along the side of the road. Those quiet eyes staring blankly at a curiously beautiful sky, a trickle of blood seeping free from somewhere above his blond hairline, the deep crimson just one more contrast painting a face even then frozen in a knowing smirk.

Tommy died the same way he’d lived, like nothing was worth taking too seriously, like maybe you had all the time in the world, or maybe, just around the corner, your time was up. Like in the end none of it really mattered anyway. Ironically, there had always been something undeniably spiritual about him, like he’d been told something the rest of us hadn’t, and had then been sworn to secrecy.

Years later, even though life moved forward, as it always does, those visions—pictures of his face that day, of a casket draped in white carried to and placed before an altar of polished wood and sparkling gold—never left me.

I never mentioned to anyone that within days of Tommy’s death I began to feel his presence all around me. Maybe it was survivor guilt; maybe it was Tommy saying goodbye the only way he could. Maybe it was all in my head. Regardless, Tommy’s death served as a milestone in our lives. We went our separate ways for a while, like most people do once high school ends and real life begins. Bernard joined the Marines, Donald went to college, Rick wound up in prison, and I married my high school sweetheart. But within a year Bernard was home from the Marines, having badly injured his knee in an ill-timed drop from a training platform, and had a job selling cars. Rick had served his time on an assault and battery conviction; Donald had dropped out of college, and I was already working the same low-paying security guard job I’d held since not long after graduation. What had been a bunch of inseparable high school kids had become a group of young men struggling with the past, the present, and whatever the future had planned. Through good, bad, and the often-indifferent detachment tedium breeds, we remained close.

When I married Toni, Donald was my best man and Bernard and Rick served as ushers. That was the closest the three of them ever got to another wedding. Although Rick lived with one of his girlfriends for a few years, he found it impossible to remain faithful, and the relationship eventually dissolved. The others remained bachelors. Marriage wasn’t in the cards for Donald, and Bernard had never had much success with the opposite sex. He’d always been aloof when it came to his social life beyond our group, and although he often spoke of conquests we never actually saw any of them, and tended to write his stories off as just that. He lived at home with his mother until her death, and the bank had foreclosed on the property not long after. Bernard became detached and horribly depressed. He moved into the cellar apartment of his cousin’s house in New Bedford, about half an hour away, and due to the distance and Bernard’s increasingly dejected behavior, we began to see less and less of him.

Back in high school we had all purchased identical silver satin jackets and dubbed ourselves: The Sultans, the only gang in Potter’s Cove, Massachusetts; an otherwise quiet and unassuming working-class town nestled along the coast south of Boston. It was a joke, really, but it signified that we were one. Friends for life, always there for each other, the same blood brothers we’d become years before as kids, huddled in a tree house in Tommy’s backyard, nicking our thumbs and sharing blood like in the B-Westerns.

Nineteen years out of high school I found myself standing in our bedroom holding that old Sultans jacket and wondering how we’d all managed to go so wrong.

Frustrated… marking time…

And now, we were only three.

I slipped the jacket back onto its plastic hangar, slid the closet door shut and moved to the window. My hands were trembling.

I never heard her get out of bed, only felt the sudden warmth of her as she embraced me from behind. Her voice filtered through those whispering in my head; distracted me from memories and the beginnings of a sunrise.

“Why did he do it?” I heard myself ask. “Why didn’t he come to one of us?”

I replayed the moment the phone rang, jarring us from sleep, my startled and angry middle-of-the-night “Hello!” answered by Donald’s voice—cracked, uncertain, vodka-slurred and void of the confidence that often bordered on arrogance in his tone. Alan, I’m—Christ, I’m sorry to wake you, but—Alan, something terrible has happened.

No longer worried she might see the tears in my eyes I looked at her and realized she was trying to comfort me, trying to be there for me, doing her best.

Her brown, doe-like eyes blinked, cleared. “You going to be OK?”

I touched her shoulder, so delicate beneath a plaid flannel nightshirt. Reminded of the nightmare Donald’s phone call had interrupted—one horror replaced with another—I drew a deep breath and tried to sort my thoughts. Bernard was dead and the world hadn’t even noticed. We hadn’t even noticed. “I have to meet Donald and Rick in an hour.”

She padded silently to the bed, plucked her cigarette from an ashtray on the nightstand and took a final drag before slipping her feet into a pair of slippers shaped like floppy-eared bunny rabbits.

I wanted to turn back to the window. I wanted to watch the sun come up, to wander into the living room, to slip the stereo headphones on and listen to The Mamas & The Papas sing about California and dreams and dancing in the streets while a thick and sloppy rain bled from gray skies. I wanted to forget the whole goddamn thing.

“You were having a nightmare,” Toni said suddenly, as if she’d just remembered. “I was about to wake you when the phone rang.”

I clenched shut my eyes. In those few short and blurred seconds before I’d escaped sleep and answered the phone, I’d already known Bernard was dead.

“He’s been dead for five days.” I focused on the slush sluicing along the window, rain becoming snow, night becoming day. “He didn’t even leave a note.”

“Come on,” she said, gently taking my hand, “I’ll make some coffee.”

On our way down the hallway, Toni promised everything would be all right.

She lied.

CHAPTER 2

We stood near the tracks talking; the whistle from an approaching train blaring in the distance as an icy wind blew through the tall grass surrounding us. The snow had again become a light though slushy rain.

Nothing seemed real.

Donald flashed an annoyed look through bloodshot eyes. “Is there some point to being out here?”

“Privacy.” Rick gazed through the grass, across the parking lot separating us from the diner, then considered his watch. “Besides, they don’t open for a couple minutes anyway.”

Fumbling through the pockets of his raincoat for cigarettes and a lighter, Donald rolled his eyes and sighed, his breath already converted to smoky plumes wafting about and tangling with ours like warring apparitions. “For Christ’s sake, it’s freezing out here.”

“Don’t be such a pussy, Donny.” Rick puffed his chest up like a rooster and folded his arms across it. “So what did his cousin say, exactly?”

I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket, shuffled my feet, and exchanged glances with Rick, who seemed unaffected by the weather. Our individuality was more evident at that moment somehow, and I found myself wondering how we had managed to stay so close despite our glaring differences.

Pieces of the whole, Tommy had said back in high school. Our original leader, long dead now, at some point replaced by Rick, the ultimate Alpha Male, always so happy to remind the rest of us how inadequate we were, how we were half the men we’d once been, yet always there to save us, to defend us if need be.

Donald struggled to light the cigarette against a mounting breeze. His eyes, saddled with heavy black bags, seemed more sunken than usual; his complexion more pallid, his frame thinner, bordering on emaciated. “I called him about ten o’clock.” He finally got the cigarette going. “I’d had a few drinks and I didn’t realize it was quite so late. I think I woke his cousin up, he sounded groggy when he answered. Bernard had called me a few times, left messages on my machine, but I hadn’t had the chance to get back to him and I wanted to see how he was.”

The train interrupted him, rushing past, its whistle deafening. We turned and watched the seemingly endless procession of boxcars until they had snaked off around a bend in the tracks. “Trash train,” Rick announced, as if this common knowledge was something only he possessed.

Donald’s wiry frame swayed with the wind as he smoothed his thinning hair with long, narrow fingers. “When I asked for Bernard,” he continued, “his cousin didn’t answer, and I thought for a moment maybe the line had gone dead. But then I could hear him breathing and I knew—I knew something was wrong. He finally said he was sorry and that Bernard had passed away. Those were the words he used, passed away.”

“I still can’t believe it.” Rick shook his head, drawing attention to the blue bandana covering it and the small gold cross dangling from his ear. With his swarthy good looks and athletic, muscular build, he looked younger and better than Donald and I did, and he knew it. He’d stayed in shape playing various sports and lifting weights, still had all his hair, didn’t smoke and rarely drank. Vanity, competition, sex with young women—those were Rick’s vices, and his job as a bouncer at a local club gave him the opportunity to pursue all three.

“I asked what happened,” Donald said flatly, smoking his cigarette with mechanical repetition. “He said he found Bernard Tuesday afternoon.”

“Jesus,” Rick sighed. “He was dead since then and we didn’t even know.”

Donald looked away. “When he didn’t offer anything more, I asked again what had happened. That’s when he said Bernard had hanged himself.”

I ignored the vision of a limp body suspended from rafters as it flashed across my mind’s eye. I considered mentioning the nightmare I’d had, but decided against it.

“It’s state law that an autopsy be performed in all cases of unattended death,” Donald explained. “Of course, Bernard’s death was ruled a suicide, but apparently his cousin didn’t have the funds to provide for funeral arrangements and Bernard was broke, so—”

“Why didn’t this asshole call one of us?” Rick snapped. “Did you ask him that?”

Donald dropped his cigarette, crushed it beneath the sole of his shoe then hugged himself and shook his head in the negative. “I was in shock, I—I just wanted to get off the phone. I didn’t want to hear anymore.”

“So where is he?” I asked.

“The state covered the cost of his burial. Absolute minimum, I’m sure. His cousin said they have a section of one of the public cemeteries in the city for this kind of thing, and that’s where Bernard was buried. He doesn’t even have a headstone.”

Rick put hands on hips and assumed an unintentional heroic-like pose that would have been comical under different circumstances. “We’ll take care of that down the road. I know a guy. Now, what about his things?”

“I don’t imagine Bernard had much left.” Donald motioned with his chin to the diner. The lights had come on. “Let’s get out of the rain.”

Normally the diner was hopping first thing in the morning, but since most of the clientele didn’t work weekends, Saturdays got off to a slower start. But for two elderly and grizzled regulars already slumped on stools at the counter, swapping stories and sipping coffee, we were alone.

Donald and I slipped into a booth near the back while Rick grabbed a toothpick from a cup on the counter, rolled it into the corner of his mouth and chatted briefly with the waitress. He ambled down the aisle separating the rows of booths and joined us a moment later. “Ordered some coffees,” he said, dropping across from me, next to Donald. “I worked last night, haven’t been to bed yet, but I’m too wired to sleep now anyway. I say we take a ride to New Bedford and have a talk with Bernard’s cousin.”

“Look, we don’t know this guy at all,” I said. “He might not want us around.”

“Who gives a shit what he wants?”

Donald scrambled for his cigarettes. “What’s the point?”

“I want to know what happened.”

“For Christ’s sake, I just told you what happened.”

The waitress interrupted just in time, placed steaming mugs of coffee in front of us and asked if we planned to order breakfast. Through a forced smile I told her the coffee would be sufficient. Once she was out of earshot Rick leaned forward and zeroed in on me, forearms on the table between us. “What do you think?”

I warmed my hands on the side of the mug and gazed at the rain. “Bernard’s gone, man. Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what we do.”

Rick flopped back against the bench. “Fine, you guys do whatever you want. I’m going over there.”

“Why?” Donald asked. “For what purpose, exactly?”

“One,” Rick snapped, “I want to know where they buried him. Two, I want to know if he has any stuff left. Might be nice to have something of his, right? Like, remember when Tommy died and his mother sent us stuff?”

I did remember. Specifically, an illustration Tommy had made in elementary school his mother had given me not long after his death. I still had it tucked neatly away in my desk at home, and though I hadn’t looked at it in years, the knowledge that it was there—some palpable piece of him, his history—was somehow comforting. I glanced at Donald, who was twisting a napkin in his hands as if it had done something to offend him. “We do need to know where he’s buried.”

“I don’t even know where the house is,” Donald said.

Rick threw back some coffee. “I do. We went out for lunch a couple weeks ago. I picked him up out in front.”

“Was that the last time you saw him?” I asked. Rick gave a nod and looked away. An uncomfortable silence fell for what seemed an eternity, amplifying the sound of the rain. Flashes of the nightmare slithered through me, summoning a chill that began at the nape of my neck. “I hadn’t seen him in about a month,” I finally said.

“Me either.” Donald threw the napkin aside. “I should’ve called him back sooner, I—”

“Don’t do that to yourself, man.” Rick cracked his knuckles with a loud pop; a nervous habit he’d possessed since childhood. “This ain’t our fault. Bernard had some hard times—just like the rest of us—and he made a decision. That’s it.”

I sipped my coffee. “Why would he do it? Jesus, why would he—”

“Fucking cowardly if you ask me.”

Donald glared at him. “No one asked.”

“He didn’t even have the balls to leave a note.”

Donald crushed his cigarette in a small glass ashtray and slid it away with disgust. “Sometimes you are such an asshole. Do you think maybe we could mourn for a while before you start passing your usual lofty judgements? Don’t we owe him that much?”

“We were his friends. We’re like brothers. He should’ve come to us if it got that bad. He should’ve—”

“Did he call you in the two weeks since you saw him last? Did he? He called me. I know he called Alan, did he call you too, Rick? Did he?”

“I never called him back either,” I admitted. “I kept meaning to but…”

Rick took a gulp of coffee and returned the mug to the table with a violent slam. “Fuck this. Things got tough and Bernard checked out. He took the easy way out, man, that’s all I’m saying.”

“The easy way,” Donald said through a mock chuckle. “Is there such a thing?”

I reached across the table, grabbed Donald’s pack of cigarettes and shook one free. I’d quit a few months prior, but now, recognizing a stressful and sorrowful time, the addiction was beckoning, calling to me once again. I rolled the cigarette between my fingers. “If we’re going to do this let’s get it the hell over with.”

“You don’t need that.” Rick reached across the table, snatched the cigarette and crushed it in his hand. “Took you months to quit, why blow it now?”

Donald’s jaw dropped. “Yeah, crush the whole pack, it’s not like I have to pay for them or anything.”

“Like I give a shit. Those things are killing us.” Rick opened his hand, emptied the torn paper and loose tobacco onto the table then scrambled out of the booth. “Come on.” He dug a wad of bills from his pocket, peeled off a few singles and tossed them over the mess he’d made. “We’ll take my Jeep.”

Rain drummed the roof, struggled with the squealing cadence of windshield wipers for attention. The interior of Rick’s Jeep Cherokee was neurotically immaculate, and since he didn’t allow smoking, Donald, who was already fidgeting about in back, leaned forward and poked his head between the bucket seats. “What the hell is he doing in there?”

I squinted through the blurred window. “Looks like he’s talking with the attendant.”

“Christ, pay for the gas and get on with it.” Donald sat back and crossed his legs, jeans squeaking against leather. “Sometimes, Alan, I could strangle the bastard.”

“It’s just Rick’s way. You know he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“Well I’m getting tired of Rick’s way. God forbid he shows any emotion other than happiness or anger. Wouldn’t be sufficiently butch, apparently.”

I adjusted my position so I could look into the back. “That’s Rick, always has been, always will be. He’s as torn up over this as we are, he’ll just never show it.”

“Just like when Tommy died. The sonofabitch never shed a tear,” Donald said in an almost absent tone. “It doesn’t surprise me two of us ended up dead before we hit forty, only which two. I never thought I’d outlive any of you. Makes you wonder if life isn’t arbitrary after all.”

“Maybe you’re just indestructible, you miserable prick.”

Our eyes met, and somewhere behind the bloodshot roadmaps and dark circles I caught a glimpse of the past in Donald’s expression, one of impish humor and biting exuberance, his trademark in years past, before the booze, before the darkness.

It seemed an inappropriate time for laughter, but we laughed anyway.

It faded quickly; absorbed by the din of a relentless rain.

The grating voice of a local sportscaster droned from the car stereo. The Bruins were struggling for a playoff spot and had lost the night before. Normally I would have been interested, but I focused instead on the hiss of tires against wet pavement and the fast-approaching cityscape of New Bedford.

“Fucking Bruins,” Rick moaned. “You ask me, they need to goon it up, drop the gloves and throw some fists. All these fucking do-gooders are ruining the game.”

I turned from the window long enough to glance at him and offer a quick nod, hopeful he would take my cue and be quiet before Donald let loose on him.

“It’s even changed at the high school level,” Rick said. “Shit, when we played we got the job done—and we played like fucking men. Remember the game against—”

“If I give you a dollar,” Donald said from the back, “will you stop talking?”

Rick grinned. “You’re just jealous because you never played.”

“Yes, positively green with envy.”

“Sure, make jokes, you know it’s true.”

“Can we talk about something else?” I said quickly.

Donald scoffed. “How about nothing at all?”

Rick tightened his grip on the wheel and decreased speed as we left the highway and veered along the Downtown New Bedford Exit. “Same thing with football,” he said. “I was one of the best players our school ever had, but you always made it out like it was no big deal. Guys like you always do, because you got no talent for it.”

“Guys like me. Interesting.”

“You know what I mean, don’t go getting all politically correct on me.”

Donald poked his head between the seats. “I’m glad you found such satisfaction in playing your games, Rick, really I am. But you’re pushing forty, maybe it’s time to focus on something a tad more adult.”

“You’re just bitter. All that fancy bullshit—books and classical music and all that poof-poof crap—none of it mattered in the long run. You can recite a poem some guy wrote a hundred fucking years ago, and you know all about plays and paintings and all that crap. So what? You ended up ditching college and living in Potter’s Cove working a regular job just like the rest of us. At least I got—”

“Both of you just shut the fuck up, all right?”

Donald disappeared into the back and Rick looked at me with genuine surprise. I turned away but heard him mutter something unintelligible, and from the corner of my eye saw him shake his head.

We headed into the south end of the city, one of the rougher areas of New Bedford. Even in such weather, the streets seemed unusually empty, the city unnaturally quiet, as if in anticipation of our arrival.

“Nice neighborhood,” I mumbled.

“Fucking shit-bin.”

“As Melville said, ‘Such dreary streets’,” Donald offered quietly. “Such a historically significant city, such decent, diverse, hard-working people, yet still so dreary in some parts. I wonder what Herman would think of her now.”

“Drugs, that’s the goddamn problem,” Rick said, turning onto a side street. “Drugs are ruining this country, and let me tell you—”

“Is there anything you don’t have an opinion on?” Donald asked. “The city’s been on the rise for quite some time now.”

“I got your rise right here, swinging.” The Jeep slowed and Rick pulled over into the only vacant space, a spot near the top of the block. The narrow street consisted of two-story tenements with tiny fenced-in yards and side driveways. Most were dilapidated and in various stages of disrepair, and even bathed in steady rain, strewn garbage and assorted filth defiantly clogged gutters and stained sidewalks. It seemed darker here; as if night had not yet fully released the city like it had the outskirts and beyond, as if the dreary streets Melville had written about in Moby Dick could still be conjured more than 150 years later. Rick pointed over my shoulder. “That’s it.”

The building stood on the corner; the front yard cordoned off by a rusted chain-link fence, the tiny section of grass beyond unkempt, cluttered with toys and other debris. I felt my stomach clench as I noticed a small window along the base of the tenement. Somewhere on the other side of that grimy pane of glass one of my best friends had lived out the final days of his life and eventually killed himself. My eyes shifted to the windows on the first floor. One facing the street was filled with light.

How could anyone continue to live there after what Bernard had done?

I tried to picture him walking this block, moving through the rickety gate and going inside. I tried to picture him alive here, but all I could see, all I could sense, was death.

“Let’s go.”

Rick’s gruff tone snapped me back, and I was out of the Jeep and standing in the rain before I’d even thought about it. Donald, looking nauseous and pale, stepped out just as Rick rounded the front of the vehicle and set the alarm with a push of a button on his key chain. We all stood there a moment, watching the building like children staring down the local haunted house.

The next street over emptied into an enormous vacant and weed-infested lot, beyond which loomed one of the more infamous housing projects the city had to offer. I vaguely remembered cruising that project nearly two decades before while still in high school, searching for a quick pot buy before heading off to a party in nearby Westport.

This seemed like another life entirely, and maybe it was.

“OK,” I heard Donald say through a lengthy sigh. “Let me do the talking.”

With Donald in the lead we moved through the gate and huddled near the front door. I could sense the ocean nearby, its smells and sounds and physical presence always evident, watching and whispering reminders that it was still the pulse of the city, and like an audacious child, it would not be ignored. Despite having lived my entire life within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean, I was reminded how oddly uncomfortable it made me. Like the living thing it is, the sea had always seemed ominous and threatening to me, a malevolent sentry eager to swallow me whole if only given the chance. The idea of drowning, of dying at sea was terrifying, and unlike most residents of southeastern Massachusetts, I was not an avid swimmer, only set foot on a boat if I absolutely had to, and wouldn’t eat seafood with a gun to my head. The ocean had always been something I found fascinating but beautiful only in a fatalistic sense—much the way a tornado or a particularly violent storm could be beautiful—that by its very nature and power its magnificence was inherent. But it was also something I wanted to experience only from a comfortable and presumably safe distance. Living here meant that the ocean was always with you—always close—and even when you couldn’t see or hear or smell it, you could feel it.

Why I was so focused on the ocean at that point I don’t know, but death was on my mind, sharing space with the first sensations of fear. Beyond the door, somewhere in the bowels of this slowly decaying building, Bernard had died—had been dead—and no matter what was or wasn’t said or done, we were too late.

Donald rapped on the door and the sound brought me back around. When no one answered, Rick gave it a try and seconds later we heard locks disengaging. I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly as the door swung partially open to reveal a tired-looking, slightly overweight woman. Her dark eyes narrowed a bit at the sight of us. From deep within the apartment behind her I heard a child’s voice interspersed with sounds of a television. She stared at us questioningly.

“Hi there.” Donald forced a smile. “Is Sammy in, by any chance?”

The woman nodded, held up a finger then closed the door.

“The bitch even speak English?” Rick mumbled.

Before Donald could argue with him or I could tell them both to knock it off the door opened a second time, this time fully, and a large man in a tank top and a pair of Dickeys stood before us. With thick and well-muscled arms covered in tattoos, a shock of dark bushy hair and more than a day’s growth of beard, he was imposing and seemed anything but pleased with our presence on his steps. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry to bother—”

“What do you want? I know you?”

From his expression I knew Rick felt challenged and planned to respond. He opened his mouth but Donald spoke before he had the chance. “I’m Donald LaCroix, I spoke with you late last night on the phone.”

The man relaxed a bit. “Oh, you Bernard’s friend?”

“Yes, we spoke last night.”

“Right, right, OK.”

Donald motioned to Rick and me. “Rick Brisco and Alan Chance.”

He gave a quick nod, a genuine smile, and shook our hands in turn. “Bernard talked about you guys all the time, come on in out of the rain. Sorry, we don’t get a whole lot of people coming to the door this time of morning, especially on a Saturday. Never know today, right?”

As he stepped back and let us pass, we all moved into a cramped and dim foyer. An adjacent hallway emptied into a well-lit kitchen near the rear of the building. To our immediate right was a modestly furnished den where two young girls sat in front of a console television eating cereal, and to the left was a closed door I knew without being told led to the basement.

Sammy closed the door, turned the deadbolt. “So what can I do for you guys?”

“I apologize for hanging up so abruptly last night,” Donald said, “I was just—well—at any rate, we thought we’d stop by and see if there was anything we could do.”

“Appreciate that,” he said. “I wanted to call one of you guys but I didn’t know your numbers or nothing, so I figured you’d get a hold of me eventually. There really ain’t nothing left to be done.” He looked into the den. His wife had joined the girls there, and all three seemed preoccupied with the TV. “Like I told you last night,” he continued, “they buried him across town in one of the plots the state puts aside for people who can’t pay. He ain’t got no stone or nothing, but if you go to the office the cemetery workers can show you where he’s at. I feel bad about it and all, I mean I wish I could’ve done more but you guys know how it is. I work two jobs, my old lady works; we got two kids, rent; the car. Money only goes so far every month and funerals are expensive.”

“No,” Donald said, “please don’t think you have to explain any of this to us, we understand completely. I’m only sorry we couldn’t have helped.”

Sammy folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “To be honest, I figured the military would take care of everything. If a guy’s a veteran and dies broke they cover the funeral and burial costs—all of it.”

“Bernard was in the Marines for a year before he got hurt,” I said.

“That was bullshit.”

We all stood there silently, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Bernard lied,” he finally said. “They got no record of him. He was never a Marine.”

“How could that be?” I looked to the others for some sort of confirmation. “He joined up right after we graduated from high school.”

“That’s what he told you guys but it never really happened.”

“So how’d he hurt his knee?” Rick asked. “He said he lost his balance on a training platform, wrecked his knee and that’s why he got the early discharge.”

“He went somewhere for a year,” I said.

“Well it wasn’t the Marines.” Sammy shrugged. “It’s nuts, I know. I was confused when they told me too. I mean, Bernard always claimed he’d been a Marine, and hey, I don’t mean to disrespect the dead or nothing, but it just wasn’t true—that simple. To be honest, we weren’t all that close. You guys probably knew him a hell of a lot better than we did. Our family is so small, there ain’t many of us left, and I felt bad for Bernard because he didn’t really have anybody, no wife or girlfriend or nothing. It was kind of sad the way he always lived at home, you know? And when Aunt Linda died he was never the same. Bernard was a strange guy, kind of secretive, and lots of times I was never sure if he was telling the truth or not. He had problems, you guys know what I mean.”

I suddenly wondered if we did.

“When he lost his job things got bad, and by the time the bank took the house he was a mess. Like I say, we weren’t never that close, but he was family, and he was being put out on the street, what could I do? He asked if I’d put him up until he got back on his feet, so I let him move into the cellar.” His eyes again shifted to the den before returning to us. “If I’d known what he was gonna do I never would’ve… I mean, what if one of my kids had found him, you know what I’m saying? Christ.”

“Well,” Donald said, “we just wanted to stop by to see if there was anything we could do.”

“That’s real nice of you guys, but it’s over and done with and I just want to move on, you know? The girls,” he said softly, “they don’t even know he died here. It’s bad enough my old lady knows, still freaks her out. Me too, but what can you do?”

“Did Bernard leave anything behind?” Rick asked suddenly.

Sammy looked at him without bothering to mask his suspicion. “How do you mean? He didn’t have no money if that’s what you’re asking. I already told you he was broke.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Rick answered. “I didn’t mean money, I was just wondering—”

“The only thing was his car, that old Buick he had, and a duffel bag he had his stuff in when he moved in. The car I sold to a guy at work. Didn’t get much, it was a piece of shit, but it paid for the suit they buried him in anyway. The duffel bag I went through the day after he died but there wasn’t no cash in it. Had all of two bucks in his wallet. I didn’t charge him no rent or nothing, but we’d have him up for dinner when he was around, which wasn’t that much. Still, he needed money for gas and shit, and toward the end he was totally broke. He hit me up a couple times, twenty here, ten there, but I ain’t exactly a bank, right? I got bills.” Sammy turned back to Donald, the pissing contest with Rick apparently over for the moment. “Why, you guys looking for something?”

“No,” Donald said, “we just thought there might be some personal mementos he left behind. None of us have anything of Bernard’s and sometimes it’s nice to have—”

“I know what you mean.” Sammy’s eyes shifted between the three of us, lingered on Rick the longest then returned to Donald. “The duffel bag is still downstairs. I been meaning to run it over to the Salvation Army bin but I haven’t had the chance. You guys can go through it if you want. Ain’t nothing special, some clothes and stuff, that’s about it, but if there’s any of that shit you want—whatever—you know, you’re welcome to it.”

Even as he moved to the door I knew he didn’t plan to simply go into the basement and retrieve the bag. Something in his eyes, in the way he sauntered to the door and hesitated, the knob in his hand, told me we’d be accompanying him into the cellar.

“Come on,” he said, “it’s down here.”

The door opened and I forced a swallow. Donald glanced at me; he was on the verge of a major panic. I looked to Rick. He offered a quick wink and moved to the front of the line, but I could see through his cavalier routine, he was just as uncomfortable—if not more so—than Donald and I were. Yet like he so often did, Rick led the way, stepping through the doorway, old stairs creaking beneath his weight as he disappeared into darkness.

A musty odor filled my nostrils before I’d reached the bottom. Sammy flipped a switch from somewhere behind me, and the small section of basement Bernard had converted to a living area appeared. There was no fixture, only a single but powerful light bulb at the end of a thick wire dangling directly from the ceiling. Once we reached the bottom of the stairs I realized that the cellar had been divided into two separate areas. Directly in front of us another door stood closed, concealing what was undoubtedly the larger of the two areas.

Sammy was the last one down the stairs, but hesitated at the foot, bent forward and pointed to an old cot against the far cinderblock wall. “Bernard stayed there,” he said, his voice distorted and unfamiliar as it bounced along the tomb-like cement cell. “We use the rest of the basement for storage.”

At the head of the cot was a makeshift nightstand fashioned from a cranberry crate turned on end. The blankets he must have used were folded neatly at the foot, and as my eyes panned across the tiny cellar, I ignored the beams overhead and instead focused on the lone small window I had seen outside. The idea of living in these cramped and dingy quarters for any amount of time was nearly beyond belief, but nothing indicating the remnants of life resided here. It looked and felt and smelled like death, like a dungeon of sorts, a chamber where one might be sent to wither away and die, and that’s exactly what Bernard had done. Yet I had no specific sense of him here, no trace of his or anyone else’s presence, as if he’d never really been there at all, or perhaps it was this place itself that was void of even the echo of anything alive or vibrant.

Sammy pointed to a canvas bag propped against the wall next to the stairs. “That’s his duffel there.” He leaned further into the room without leaving the staircase and leveled a finger at a particular rafter perhaps a yard from where I was standing. “I found him right there.”

Rick crossed the room in two strides and grabbed the duffel. Donald and I stayed where we were; it felt good to have a little elbowroom. We’d been cramped from the moment we’d entered the house, and the claustrophobic feel had only worsened upon descending into the basement.

“He’d already been dead a while when I found him,” Sammy added.

“You sure you want to go through that here?” I asked Rick.

“It’s OK, I’ll be upstairs. Come on up when you’re done. Just make sure you shut the light off and lock the door behind you.”

He left us, and I wished I could’ve joined him. There was something final about the way he closed the door behind him, and again, the nightmare I’d had began to play in my mind. I forced it away. “Come on, man,” I said to no one in particular, “let’s get the hell out of here.”

“What was that shit about the Marines?” Rick asked. “How could Bernard lie about being a Marine and us not know it?”

“Let’s talk about this later, OK?”

“Don’t go getting all spooky now.”

“Bernard died here, man. Right fucking here. I want to leave, this place is creeping me out.”

“I know it’s freaky, but it’s no different than standing in a hospital,” he said. “People die in them all the time.”

“I hate hospitals.”

“My God,” Donald whispered as if mesmerized. “What an awful place.”

“Hurry the fuck up,” I muttered.

Rick defiantly hoisted the duffel onto the cot, pulled it open and emptied the contents. Mostly dirty clothes tumbled free, wrinkled and old, many of them I remembered Bernard wearing at one point or another. I did my best to zero in on the contents of the bag, but noticed Donald gazing apprehensively at the rafters. His eyes brimmed with tears, so I pretended I hadn’t seen him.

“Hey,” Rick said, crouching over the items, “check this out, Alan.”

My legs felt like they’d been filled with lead but I forced myself over to him. He held up an aged photograph that had been taken at my wedding. Rick, Donald, Bernard, and myself, together at the reception, smiling, holding up drinks or beer bottles, broad smiles spread across our faces. We looked so young. “I remember when that was taken,” I said.

“Me too.” Rick resumed rummaging through the pile.

The photograph trembled and I realized my hands were shaking again. “I remember that moment… that exact moment.”

“He’s got a bunch of them.” Rick handed me a small stack and continued his search.

I rifled through them—six in all—four from my wedding and one of Tommy’s high school yearbook picture, wallet-size. The sixth was of a woman I didn’t recognize. I handed the rest to Donald. “Who is this?”

Rick glanced up and shrugged. “Dunno, some broad he knew I guess. A relative, maybe?”

There was something that told me she wasn’t a relative. There was casualness in the woman’s posture and facial expression that signaled she might have been more to whoever took the picture. She had a medium complexion, thick auburn hair to her shoulders, and dark eyes. Her lips were curled into a combination smile/smirk, like an inside joke had been cracked just before the picture was snapped. The shot was from the waist up, and she wore a low cut shirt knotted just above her navel. Something about her seemed overtly sexual. The smile was more than a friendly one, the glint in her eyes telling yet mysterious. The picture had been taken in what appeared to be a kitchenette of sorts; the woman leaned against a counter. The setting was not familiar. I showed the picture to Donald. “You know who she is?”

He took it and studied it a moment, then shook his head in the negative.

Rick found an old Walkman and a handful of cassettes amidst the clothing. “Anybody want these?”

“This is just too morbid,” Donald sighed.

“Yeah, please, Rick. I’m begging you, man, let’s roll.” I felt like a buzzard picking through a carcass, gnawing scraps of meat from human bones.

He tossed the items aside and began stuffing everything back into the duffel when a small package fell free. We watched as it bounced soundlessly along the mattress, and as it came to rest, Rick scooped up a shopworn nylon appointment book and planner. After a quick inspection, he realized it was zipped shut, but as he opened it several papers and things fell free. “Jesus, it’s stuffed.”

“Probably left over from his job,” I said.

Rick smiled and it struck me as obscene to do that here. But I saw that one of the things drawing his attention was a sports card in a plastic holder that had fallen free. He picked it up and looked at it a while. “It’s his Bobby Orr rookie,” he said. “I’m surprised douche bag upstairs didn’t snag it and sell it. He must’ve missed it.”

Rick stuffed the miscellaneous papers back into the planner and zipped it shut, but his eyes remained locked on the card. For the first time there was something in Rick’s eyes beyond the usual. “Hey, you guys mind if I keep this?”

Before I could answer Donald dropped a hand on Rick’s shoulder and said, “I’m sure Bernard would’ve wanted you to have it.”

Rick held his smile and gave a slow nod.

“Definitely,” I agreed. “Now please, let’s go, all right?”

Rick stuffed the card in his jacket and Donald hung onto the photographs. It was then that I realized I had nothing, so I grabbed the planner, tucked it under my arm and explained I’d just as soon go through it later.

In a way, leaving that cellar was like saying goodbye to Bernard for the first time. Since it was something none of us had been given the opportunity to do except in dreams, we stood quietly at the foot of the stairs, finally able to take it all in, even the rafter he’d been found hanging from. Now that we understood its finality, for the first time it seemed like it was truly over, like Bernard really was dead and gone, and the time for quiet mourning and contemplation, fond memories and moving on had arrived.

In our own ways, we made our peace with that horrible little cellar, then headed back up the stairs. But like the tangible entity it often is, darkness followed.

It was far from finished with us.

CHAPTER 3

Nobody said much on the way back to Potter’s Cove, and that was probably best. The rain continued to pour from dark skies while the three of us, together yet apart, retreated into ourselves for the ride. I considered bringing up the lie Bernard had told about being a Marine but there seemed little point, and along with the nightmare, I pushed it away and remembered happier times instead.

Before I knew it, we were back in the diner parking lot.

Rick parked but left the engine running and the wipers going. “I gotta get home and get some sleep.”

“Me too,” Donald said softly.

I believed Rick but knew Donald would first stop at a bar or package store and hide out with a bottle for a while. Had he leveled with me I’d have joined him, but since he didn’t I tucked the planner inside my jacket and prepared for the sprint to my car. “I’ll call you guys,” I said absently.

“Why do you suppose he stayed in the basement?”

Rick glanced at me, then away, just before I looked over the seat at Donald. “What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t he stay upstairs?” Donald stared at me as if I knew the answer and had refused to share it with him. “Why would you have your own cousin sleep in that terrible little space when you could just as easily put him up on the couch?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it was just easier to—”

“Why? Why would you do that?”

“Donald, I don’t know.”

“I didn’t like that fucker,” Rick said.

“You don’t like anybody,” I reminded him.

He shook his head, the dangle earring dancing as if alive. “Nah, there was something about him, something not right. Almost like the whole thing with Bernard scared him.”

“Well shit, finding someone hanging in your basement is frightening stuff,” I said.

“I don’t mean like that. It was like he was scared having Bernard living there, so he put him down in the cellar, out of the way.”

“Why would he be afraid of Bernard? No one was afraid of Bernard.”

“What about this business with the Marines?” Donald asked suddenly. “Why would Bernard lie about such a thing? It makes no sense, I can’t figure it out.”

Neither could I, but I was relatively certain we wouldn’t solve it right then and there. I rubbed my eyes, a vague headache had settled behind them. “Listen, we all need some rest.”

“Yeah, I haven’t slept since yesterday afternoon and I have to work tonight,” Rick sighed. “Let’s hook up in a couple days and have dinner or something.”

“Sounds good.” I looked into the back. “You going to be OK, Donald?”

His eyes darkened and I wasn’t sure if I’d unintentionally struck a nerve or if there was something he wanted to tell me but for whatever reason couldn’t. “Of course.”

“Drive carefully,” Rick said. “Nasty out there.”

“See you guys soon.” I pushed open the door and darted into the rain.

A coastal town south of Boston, Potter’s Cove had once been a prosperous mill town, but as with the rest of its storied past, the economic affluence the town had once enjoyed was now little more than a vague memory.

Main Street housed an array of inexpensive eateries, independently owned shops and a number of empty storefronts. Several enormous buildings sat boarded up along the northern part of town—reminders of a former status only the elderly could recall with clarity. A clothing manufacturer and a national department store giant employed more than five hundred residents, but Potter’s Cove was mostly comprised of working-class folks who had no choice but to seek employment elsewhere.

I drove across town, turned onto the main drag and parked behind a local pizza joint. Once out of the car, I hesitated and looked out at the train tracks and water beyond—the cove, as it were. I watched a pair of ducks glide along the surface, oblivious to the rain, and was suddenly confronted with the memory of my mother. Before her death several years prior, we’d stood together on that very spot countless times, feeding the ducks and talking quietly about whatever came to mind.

I thought of her often in winter.

I climbed the battered staircase at the rear of the building and slipped into the apartment. The building itself was a two-story zoned for both commercial and residential occupants. One half of the first floor housed the most popular pizza place in town; the other had sat vacant for more than three years. Our apartment constituted the entire second floor, and while it was safe and passably comfortable, we’d lived there for more than a decade. It was to be our “first” apartment. Twelve years later we still hadn’t moved into our second, and unless we hit the lottery the idea of ever having an actual house was, at best, a wild fantasy.

The apartment was dark but for a lamp on an end table in the den. I put Bernard’s planner on the coffee table, shook rainwater from my jacket, hung it in the closet and went looking for Toni.

I found her in the kitchen standing at the sink, staring through the double windows overlooking the fire escape. I wasn’t certain she knew I was there, so I moved deeper into the room, my weight causing the floor to creak. Shadows wrestled with the sparse bright patches filtering through the windows, cloaking her profile in alternate bands of light and dark. She still hadn’t turned to look at me, but I could tell from her expression that she knew I was there. Her eyes blinked slowly; gazed at the row of clay pots on the fire escape.

“In a few weeks it’ll be spring,” she said, wiping her hands with a dishrag.

“Can’t come fast enough.”

“For me either.” She draped the folded towel over the faucet. “I’m going to plant some herbs this year. Parsley maybe. It’s been so long I can’t even remember what it’s like to have a yard… an actual garden, but…”

As her voice trailed off into silence I went to the cupboard, grabbed a mug and poured myself some coffee from what was left in the pot. “I can’t believe you’re giving me shit today. I do the best I can, Toni.”

She finally turned from the window and leaned back against the sink. “That wasn’t a slam.” Suddenly she was wide-eyed and innocent. “Not everything is, you know.”

I sipped my coffee. Lukewarm piss. “Think I’ll take a shower.”

“Do you want breakfast?” she asked. “I have to run to the store but we have some eggs.”

I glanced at my watch. It was only a little after eleven but seemed much later. “No, I’m all set. I just want to get clean and sit down, go through some of Bernard’s things I brought home.”

“Everything all right?”

“We’ve got some questions, but I suppose that’s always the case when someone takes their own life.” I reached around her and poured the coffee into the sink then put the mug on the counter. She smelled vaguely of coconut and some other soap-induced scent I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “You’re not surprised he did it, are you?”

She recognized it as more statement than question but responded with a subtle nod anyway. “I’m sorry he did it,” she said softly, “but not surprised.”

“Why not?”

“Sometimes life is harsh. Not everyone’s cut out for it.”

“You never really liked Bernard much.”

“I didn’t know him that well.”

I studied her eyes. “You’re an awful liar.”

She left the counter and strolled to the table. “Let’s not do this, OK?”

“You knew him for years too.”

“And I’m sorry he died, Alan.” She snatched her purse from one of the kitchen chairs, slung it over her shoulder and faced me. “But you asked me if I was surprised. No, I’m not. Bernard was a strange guy. He lived at home with his mother until she died, he never had a girlfriend or any sort of relationship I know of with a woman—a man or anything else for that matter. He sold cars for a living without ever seeming to realize he was a walking caricature of a used car salesman, and while he could be sweet and was never anything but nice to me we both know he had a penchant for stretching the truth and being evasive. There was something inherently creepy about him, Alan.”

She was right and I could think of nothing to say in his defense.

“He was also very sad,” she continued. “You could see it in his eyes, if you bothered to look for it.”

“Right,” I said, glaring at her now. “If only I’d bothered.” The nightmare had crept back into my mind and I was weakening against its resolve. I’d always had nightmares—even as an adult—but nothing like this, nothing that refused to let go even once I was fully awake. My hands were shaking again and I felt for a moment like I might collapse. I gripped the counter as casually as I could and felt my weight shift against it. Toni stood staring at me with those big brown eyes, the natural curves of her figure concealed beneath a baggy cotton sweat suit.

“You’re finding an argument behind every word I say.” She moved closer long enough to give me a peck on the cheek. “Take a nice hot shower and try to get some rest. I’ll be back in a bit, OK?”

Before I could agree or disagree, go along or scream for help, she was gone.

I’d washed my face and thrown on jeans and a sweater but hadn’t bathed before I left to meet Rick and Donald, so the hot water pulsing from the showerhead felt great. Wrapped in curtains of steam, I threw back my head and let the water cascade across my face and shoulders, savoring the quiet time, the peace.

It was short-lived.

The nightmare was back, replaying in my mind, and this time I allowed it to come, lost in the hypnotic warmth and resonance of surging water.

The ticking of that damn clock is driving me insane. It’s one of those fancy desk clocks, the kind with a sketch of the double globes on it; you know the type. It’s at least ten feet from the bed but in the small room it overpowers everything else, even the faint traces of traffic in the streets below and the occasional sounds trickling in from beyond the confines of my bedroom. A headache has settled behind my eyes and is making me nauseous. That damn ticking only makes it worse, as if the clock is counting off the gongs throbbing through my temples. I move my arm from across my forehead, my eyes focus on the low ceiling overhead and a hint of him at the edge of my peripheral vision. Folding my arms over my chest like a corpse, I draw a deep breath and slide shut my eyes. Returning to the darkness is easier somehow. I hear the floor shift as he moves deeper into the room, hesitating just inside the doorway. He is looking at me now—I can feel it—waiting to be acknowledged. My mouth is bone dry and I know sitting up will only make my headache worse, but I do it anyway. With one quick heave I swing my feet around and settle into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. I rub my temples, look at him, then look away. He just stands there staring at me with those sad eyes. He looks… not sick exactly, but… he doesn’t look like himself. Pale. He looks pale and pasty, like he hasn’t slept in a very long time. I finally ask him what he’s doing there. He smiles, and it’s the saddest goddamn smile I’ve ever seen, and says he came to say goodbye, that they allowed him a few minutes to come and say goodbye. It’s only Bernard… why am I so frightened? Because he’s no longer alive, or because I sense he’s not alone? I clear my throat, reach for a small cup of water on the nightstand and take a quick sip. I nod to Bernard and tell him I’m sorry about what happened. I try to explain just how sorry I am but he smiles that sad smile again and holds up a hand like… like he’s telling me there’s no need for explanations.

I know the others are nearby, and just the thought of them stirs a terror in me the depth of which I have never before experienced. Tangible, choking fear, the kind I don’t want to explore because I know it is bigger and stronger and deadlier than I can ever be. Like some monster in a box. If I let it out, it’s over. I keep talking, babbling now in the hopes that maybe this will quell my terror. Again, Bernard holds up a hand, so this time I stop talking. I notice his hand is dirty, the nails a bit too long and caked with soil. He tells me he came to say goodbye and that he has to go. He kind of sighs and leans against the doorframe, like he might fall over if he doesn’t. I just stand there stupidly by the bed, watching him, not sure what to think. Then… they come. They just file into the room from behind him. My palms are sweating and my heart is thudding so hard I can hear it smashing against my chest. This is my bedroom and I don’t want them here, I don’t know any of them, they—they don’t look familiar to me at all. There are four of them; three men and one woman, and they all just walk in like they belong here.

Bernard tells me it’s OK but I’m so frightened. They scare me, these… people. They scare me because I know what they are. They never say a word, they just stand there staring at me with their black eyes, and Bernard never explains, but I know, I—I just know what they are and why they’re there. Bernard smiles again, but this time his lips crack and crumble like hardened clay, leaking blood and saliva and dirt in one hideous string of drool as his eyes turn cold like the others. I hear a scream but it dies quickly, strangled to silence before I realize it’s my own.

I turned the shower off and braced my hands against the porcelain, head bowed, body dripping as the drain gurgled and swallowed. My heart was racing but I felt that if I could just lie down for a while I’d sleep for days. As the last of the water and soapsuds vanished down the drain, I forced open my eyes and pulled back the curtain. The mirror was fogged over and sheets of heavy steam filled the bathroom. Rain hammered the lone window, shook the casing.

Through the mist the full-length mirror on the back of the door revealed my reflection. My hair seemed thinner every day. I needed a shave but liked the way my five o’clock shadow looked. It better defined my chin and brought out the light blue in my eyes. I continued to study myself as curls of steam rose gently toward the ceiling. Funny how age sneaks up on you, I thought. Gradually, softly—like any good seduction—it had a hold of you before you even realized it. I wasn’t yet forty—was three years away from it, in fact—but felt decidedly older most days. Somewhere within the reflection staring back was the man I’d once been, a man who’d never imagined he could be so tired, so worn down. Not at thirty-seven, anyway.

And yet sometimes it seemed like that man was a total stranger, a detached and isolated character in someone else’s story; someone I barely recognized.

I stood there dripping, until the mirror fogged completely over, then I stepped from the shower and snatched a towel from the counter. My headache had subsided but my muscles ached. I dried myself then tossed the towel over my shoulder, opened the door and stepped into the cool bedroom air. I rolled onto the bed, stretched out and nestled deeper against my pillow as my eyes slid shut. The nightmare had receded, and darkness took me quickly.

My eyes popped open. My back was tight and my stomach was in mid-growl. Had I fallen asleep? If I had, something had jolted me awake in a less than normal manner. I lay there a moment, listening, eyes staring at the faded ceiling and numerous hairline cracks traversing the plaster.

The weather had grown worse from the sounds. Wind whipped angrily outside, rattled the windows. My eyes immediately darted to the source of the sound, and although I recognized the cause it bothered me nonetheless.

Another sound crept in from the den, only this time I wasn’t certain wind had been the culprit. I remained perfectly still and strained to listen, but all I heard was the wind and rain. “Hello?”

I wondered if Toni had locked the door on her way out. She usually did, why would this time be any different? Yet something didn’t seem right. I didn’t feel alone. Slowly, I pushed myself up into a sitting position and slid down to the foot of the bed. “Toni?” I called. “Toni, are you home?”

I sat quietly for a few seconds. Although I heard no other noises, the relaxation portion of my day had clearly come and gone. I stood up; reached for the towel I’d brought with me and wrapped it around my waist. The bedroom door was slightly ajar, just enough to reveal a sliver of the den beyond, and as I moved silently across the carpeted floor, I suddenly realized what was wrong.

Due to the weather it was much darker than normal, and Toni had left lights on in the den and kitchen. Lights I didn’t remember shutting off before getting into the shower. “Hello?” A chill caused my body to visibly shudder.

And then the phone rang.

I nearly jumped out of my skin, staggered back and scrambled around the end of the bed to the phone on the nightstand. The receiver was in my hand and pressed to my ear before it could ring a second time.

“Alan,” a voice on the other end sobbed. “Alan, I—”

“Donald?”

“Alan, I’m…”

“What’s wrong?” I stared at the door. “Where are you?”

“I’m home,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m sorry, I’ve been drinking.”

“It’s OK. Listen, let me call you back in—”

“I wanted to say something today, I wanted to, but—”

“Listen—”

“I couldn’t do it, I just—Alan, I’m having nightmares.”

I nodded into the phone. “It’ll be all right. I’ve—”

“You’ve had it too, haven’t you?”

Something in his tone caught my attention, shifted it from the darkened den to the sound of his voice. “It?”

“The nightmare you can’t get out of your mind, that won’t leave you alone.”

I could hear him crying, sobbing openly, and I knew he was not only drunk but utterly terrified. “I’ve had a nightmare.”

“Did Bernard say goodbye to you in it? Were those things with him?”

My grip tightened on the phone and my legs trembled so violently I thought I might collapse. “How—How the hell do you know that?”

“I’m scared, Alan. Christ, I’m so fucking scared.”

“How did you know that?”

“They never said anything but I knew—I know—just like you, I know what it was all about. They were taking him to Hell. There’s more to this than we know. Why were they taking him to Hell, Alan? Why would they take Bernard to—”

“Answer me, goddamn it! How did you know!”

Donald gagged and coughed. “Because that’s the only difference between our nightmares,” he said in a near whisper. “In mine, Bernard told me he’d been to see you first.”

I sped through the streets of town ignoring the black clouds perched overhead, the rain, and a level of darkness generally reserved for the dead of night. My mind raced, my palms were moist with perspiration, and I felt an odd detachment, as if I were more a passive observer of the reality surrounding me than an active participant in it.

Donald’s cottage was less than two miles from our apartment and located in a small settlement of mostly summer cabins nestled into a heavily wooded bluff overlooking the largest stretch of beach in town. I turned onto the dirt road and followed it through the forest. In summer, this corner of Potter’s Cove was bustling with campers and summer people, the cottages occupied, yards cluttered with lawn furniture and barbecues, people young and old following the dirt paths down to the beach while music played from boom boxes and car radios. But the summer season was still a couple months away, and as the area only housed a handful of year-round residents, most cottages were boarded up and abandoned. A seasonal ghost town of sorts, in dismal weather and at this time of year, it seemed a fitting location for recalling the past and exorcising the demons found there.

I pulled up in front of Donald’s cottage. His old Volkswagen was parked in a narrow side driveway, and faint light bled through the sheer curtains in the front windows.

The front door was open, so I gave a quick knock and let myself in, stepping directly into the living room. It was modestly furnished and somewhat disheveled, and it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment just how long it had been since I’d visited Donald at home. Magazines and paperbacks were strewn about, overflowing ashtrays, crumpled cigarette packs and empty vodka bottles littered most available coffee or end table space, and although the small kitchen at the rear of the cottage was clean, other than for the refrigerator, it was obviously seldom used. The bathroom and bedroom constituted the remaining area. Both were quiet and dark.

A television in the corner was on but muted, which explained the sparse light, and in a recliner on the opposite side of the room Donald had collapsed in a drunken heap, an ashtray balanced precariously on his knee, an empty bottle of vodka on the floor just beyond his dangling hand. His other hand still clutched the phone, which had since gone from dial tone to an annoying buzz. I pulled it free and hung it up. His eyelids fluttered a bit, then I noticed the cigarette he’d apparently been smoking when he’d nodded off had burned well into the filter and was still smoldering on the lip of the ashtray. “Christ,” I sighed, butting it out, “one of these days you’re going to burn this place down with you in it.”

His eyes opened, and he struggled to raise his head. “Alan.”

“You all right, man?”

Dry, chapped lips parted slowly. “I don’t know,” he said groggily. “Are you?”

I crouched next to the recliner. “How could we have the same dream?”

His eyes rolled about for a moment, then he blinked rapidly and seemed to focus somewhat. “I never believed in an afterlife, Alan, you know that. I… I never believed in any of it. You did but not me, not me… But… but this—I don’t… I don’t understand what’s happening.” He tried to sit up and nearly passed out. He wouldn’t be conscious much longer. His bottom lip quivered. “I don’t even quite know why but I… I’m frightened.”

“So am I.” I looked at the near-hysteria in his bloodshot eyes and wondered if mine looked the same. “It’ll be all right. There’s a reasonable explanation, we just have to find it.”

“You didn’t have to come over, I—I shouldn’t have called you like that, I… I’m sorry I—”

“Take it easy, man, it’s all right.” Past experience with Donald’s binges told me he’d only have limited memory of all this anyway.

He struggled to smile, but the alcohol and exhaustion took him, leaving him slumped forward in deep sleep.

I grabbed an old afghan from the back of the couch and gently covered him with it, then went to the phone and dialed our apartment. Toni answered on the second ring.

“It’s me.”

“Where are you?”

“I had to come over to Donald’s for a minute.”

“Is everything all right?”

“He had a little too much to drink, just wanted to make sure he was OK.”

“Something new.” When I offered no response, she said, “I thought you’d be here when I got back from the store.”

“So did I.” An old black and white movie flickering from the TV set distracted me. “I’ll be home in a few minutes, all right? Just heading out now.”

I quickly tidied up the living room and brought the ashtrays into the kitchen. As I emptied them into the wastebasket, I noticed the stack of pictures Rick had found in Bernard’s duffel bag fanned out across the counter. They looked as if they’d been frantically shuffled through several times. The photograph of the woman none of us knew was on top. I don’t know why, but I tucked it into my jacket pocket and returned to the living room.

Though Donald was out cold he was breathing normally. Even in alcohol-induced sleep his face bore an emotional torment that never fully left his expression, but he looked about as peaceful as he was likely to get.

Satisfied he’d be all right I quietly headed for the door.

The aroma of roasting chicken wafted about the apartment, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since the day before, and that, coupled with a lack of sleep and the events of the day thus far, had left me in a less than jovial mood.

While Toni prepared a salad to go with dinner, I took up position at the kitchen table and explained the situation as best I could. Donald and I had somehow shared a nightmare, and even before we realized we’d had the same dream, it had taunted us both as much while we’d been awake as it had in the throes of sleep. She listened patiently; refraining from comment until I’d finished. For what seemed an eternity, she sliced a cucumber and added it to the bed of lettuce, nibbling her bottom lip throughout, a signal I had come to recognize meant she did in fact have a response but was thinking it through before voicing it. Eventually, she looked over at me, brow knit. “Alan, when Dad died I had that dream about him, remember? And a few days later when I spoke to my mother I found out she’d dreamt about him too.”

“This is different,” I insisted. “You both had dreams—but you didn’t have the same dream.”

“Honey, neither did you and Donald.”

“I’m telling you—”

“Listen,” she said, “in my dream my father came to me, talked with me and told me everything would be all right. The dream Mom had was essentially the same. He came to her, they talked, he promised he was fine and everything was going to be OK. It’s the same with you and Donald. You were both close to Bernard, you both dreamed of him in very similar ways, as if he were contacting you. It’s not an uncommon occurrence at all. People dream of loved ones after they die all the time, particularly soon after death.”

“This isn’t the same thing, this—”

“Have you spoken to Rick about it?”

“No, not about this specifically, but I doubt—”

“Maybe the dreams people have—yours included—really are those who have died making contact. Was it really my father who came to me in that dream? I’d like to think so—it’s comforting—and I believe in an afterlife, so assuming that’s true, why would a visitation through dreams be outside the realm of possibility? It wouldn’t.” She smiled. “Maybe that was the only way Bernard could say goodbye.”

“Fine. Then if that’s true why couldn’t we have had the same dream?”

“Essentially, you did.”

“Not essentially.”

Toni smiled. “Alan, first of all Donald’s account is unreliable because of his condition. When someone drinks the way he does you can’t—”

“It’s not like I told him about my dream and in some drunken stupor he claimed to have had the same one. I never even brought it up. Donald told me about the nightmare first—and before I said anything he already knew I’d had the same one.”

“OK, then what did he say when he described the nightmare? What were his exact words?”

I stared at her; already aware of the direction in which her questions were headed, and suddenly skeptical of my own certainty. “He mentioned a few particulars that sounded exactly the same as my dream,” I said, “but I didn’t question him on every little detail.”

“Well, there you go.” She raised her hands, palms up, then let them fall and slap against the outside of her thighs. “You both had a dream where Bernard came to visit you. In both, he wasn’t alone. In both, he had come to say goodbye, and in Donald’s he said he had gone to see you. Is that the size of it or did I leave something out from what you’ve told me?”

“No,” I sighed, “that’s it.”

“Just like lots of other people, you had similar dreams. Similar, Alan, not identical—and I’m not saying that isn’t sometimes a little unsettling in itself—but there’s nothing unique or even unusual about it.” She returned to the counter to fuss with the salad. “Besides, when you two discussed this Donald was blasted out of his mind. Add to that the fact that you’re exhausted and haven’t slept or eaten and the two of you are still dealing with the shock and stress and emotional turmoil of the death of someone you loved, and you’ve got a situation that would almost certainly blur your sense of what’s real—or more importantly, accurate—and what isn’t.”

“You’re—yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just…” I shook my head both in confusion and in the hopes of clearing it a bit. “Neither of us had a good feeling about it. It wasn’t like a nice, reassuring dream. This was a nightmare.”

“Well if one of your best friends was dead in it, of course it’s a nightmare, sweetie.”

“That’s not what I mean.” I was wringing my hands without even realizing it; my palms had again begun to perspire. “There was a darkness to it, a sense of—I know this sounds silly, but—a sense of evil to it. It was like Bernard was going to Hell.”

Toni covered the salad with plastic foil and slid it into the refrigerator. “Honey, Bernard committed suicide, and it was a total shock to you guys. What’s worse, he didn’t even leave a note explaining or maybe shedding some light on why he did it. It’s a horrible and hideous and painful thing.” She looked at me, compassion in her eyes. “You probably feel some guilt—which is wrong but inevitable—and you have confusion and anger and God knows how many other emotions all boiling to the surface at once. What happened is a dark and evil thing, and you’re dealing with it, working through it, trying to make sense of it. That’s all, Alan—and that’s enough—but that’s all.”

Something similar to a smile twitched across my lips. “Not bad.”

“Can’t work for a shrink for ten years and not learn a couple things.” She grinned, but it left her quickly. “Death is a huge factor in a lot of the cases Gene sees.”

Toni worked as a secretary for a psychiatrist in town with a private practice, and had learned quite a bit about human nature in her tenure there. Unlike my rent-a-cop gig, which I loathed, she had a job she genuinely enjoyed, where she got along with and was respected by her boss. Still, if there had ever been a person who should have continued their education beyond high school, it was Toni. She’d always had tremendous interest in psychology, and though I’d encouraged her to take some courses over the years, she never had. Whatever small bit of extra money we had always went directly into the “house fund,” a savings account she’d set up right after our honeymoon. It grew at such an anemic rate we were consistently three or four hundred years away from ever owning a home, but she never closed it out or lost faith. In many ways it reminded me of our marriage, and why despite our failings, she remained with me.

Certainly her physical beauty had lured me originally, and although we were the same age she looked considerably younger than I did and had maintained not only her figure but a good deal of the vibrancy of her teenage years. Still, her visceral advantages aside, it was the genuine connection between us that kept our relationship afloat. I knew better than anyone that I had not become the provider she’d expected—that I was trapped in the same lowly security guard job I’d held since right after high school—and that after twelve years of marriage odds were I probably wouldn’t ever do anything else. For Toni, that was a realization she had accepted and learned to deal with long before I had, and at the end of the proverbial day, she’d chosen to stay.

It was something neither of us had ever voiced, but we were both somewhat disappointed in each other, in the often-monotonous routine our lives had become and in the robotic patterns we executed day in and day out. But there was comfort here, safety, trust, and there was something to be said for those things. Familiarity and reliability had replaced the passion that weakened after the first few years of marriage, and instead of panting lovers we were steady companions, friends, sound and dependable roommates who now and then made love, as if mistakenly.

“Not everyone can handle death,” I heard her say. “Most can’t. But it touches us all.”

That was true, of course, but I’d come to believe Death had his favorites. In my thirty-seven years, death had not only visited my life far too frequently, it had been there from the very start, as if gleefully lying in wait for the carnage to begin, when my father, a mason, was killed in a construction accident only weeks after I was born. While still in high school, Tommy had been struck by a negligent driver and killed right before my eyes. Toni’s parents had both died while still in their fifties, her father from a sudden heart attack and her mother from the same only a year later. My mother had suffered a series of strokes and died in my arms not long after. And now Bernard had taken Death’s hand and stepped off the edge as well. It all seemed so pointless—arbitrary—as Donald had called it, yet I had to believe that somewhere a cogent reason, a plan of sorts did exist amidst the mayhem.

“Look, dinner’s not going to be ready for a while yet,” Toni said. “Why don’t you go lay down and get some rest?”

I stood up, took her by the waist and pulled her close. Her arms found my shoulders and she looked up at me with a smile, but I could feel the tension in her body rise. I was willing to at least entertain what she’d said as fact—I was exhausted and my judgement probably was fogged—but I still couldn’t shake the fear. “I just have a strange feeling about all this.”

“You’re probably worried about Donald,” she said, stroking my neck with warm fingers.

“Well, that too.” I held her tight. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” After another quick kiss, she removed my hands and flashed a behave-yourself smile. “Now go take a nap.”

This time my sleep was dreamless. I barely remembered crawling onto the couch, but that’s where I was when Toni woke me more than an hour later. I emerged from the dark gradually, like a diver rising toward the surface in a slow and steady glide through murky water. For the first time in recent memory I slipped away from sleep as if unnoticed, instead of being jolted then torn from its grip. Still, it felt foreign to come up out of sleep without feeling the warmth of Toni’s body against my own. In those few seconds before I truly understood where I was, I reached out blindly for her but caught only air and a quick glimpse of her as she moved away, back toward the kitchen.

I lay there a moment, eyes again closed. Toni had turned the stereo on and was playing a CD; tranquil piano tunes tinkling softly from nearby speakers. A steady wind and periodic bursts of rain spraying the windows distracted me from the concert, but it was the sudden vision of Bernard—his face gawking at me as if pasted to the inside of my eyelids—that forced me into a sitting position. I drew a slow breath, released it, and pawed at my eyes.

We ate at the kitchen table; small talk interspersed with the occasional clang of silverware against plates, the muted sound of chewing and the seemingly endless downpour drenching the world outside. The meal was delicious, the conversation somewhat guarded. We were both reluctant to pursue the topics we’d discussed earlier, though I’m sure for different reasons. Toni was able to stay removed from it all—and no doubt found it easier that way—while I felt too connected, more level-headed than before, perhaps, but still unable to evade the fear, despite her solutions and explanations. Something was happening, or was about to happen, or perhaps had already happened, but something was going on; there was more to the nightmares and unshakable sensations of dread than Toni was willing to consider or I was able to realize. Of that much, I was certain.

After dinner Toni curled up on the couch with a novel and I went off to the bedroom with Bernard’s planner and the photograph of the woman I had taken from Donald’s apartment. Sitting on the foot of the bed, I went through the planner, searching the scribbles and notes for anything unusual, anything that might stand out. I found nothing out of the ordinary, and other than the photograph, nothing that would raise even remote suspicion. I slipped the picture inside the planner, zipped it shut and put it on my nightstand.

“Was that Bernard’s?”

I saw Toni in the doorway. She’d changed into her bunny slippers and a pair of satin pajamas. The light from a lamp on the nightstand cast her in a subtle yellow glow. “Yeah.”

She looked beyond me to the window. “Is this rain ever going to stop?”

I’d always loved rain, found it more peaceful than depressing. “I hope not.”

“You’re so weird.” She smiled, revealing great teeth.

“Yeah, but you love me.”

She shrugged. “You’re OK.”

I laughed, and it felt wonderful. Like the nightmares, it was disruptive, but in a positive way. A dull and uninteresting life suddenly interrupted by death, suicide, bad dreams, or nothing more than simple heartfelt laughter, existence seemed so easily jarred, so amazingly fragile. I watched her there in the doorway, beautiful and alive, and wondered if I was losing my mind. “Come here.”

Her smile drifted away. “We’re both tired, Alan.”

My heart sank, as it always did, and I could only hope my expression hadn’t betrayed me. “Awful early to sleep.”

“You need to rest.”

“I need…” My voice faded into oblivion.

Toni moved across the room with a purposeful stride, crossed to the other side of the bed and turned down the blankets. “Come on, let’s snuggle a while.”

It felt nice beneath the covers, our bodies cuddled together, arms and legs and fingers and toes touching; her cheek nestled against me in the curve where neck meets shoulder, her breath a warm and steady pulse on my chest. With the wind and rain raging so near, we lay still, silent and undisturbed in the serene eye of the storm. Like lovers.

Dim, but not wholly dark, the room was still awake too, shadows and phantom lights gliding along its walls and ceiling, writhing ghosts slinking from hiding places, beckoning night.

Toni shifted and let out a soft mewling sound. I slid my hand from her back to her shoulder, then down across her breast. She tensed immediately. “Alan, don’t ruin it.”

I stroked her hair instead, brushing renegade strands back and away from her forehead, my eyes closed, welcoming memories of the night my mother died.

We’d been in this same bed, in this same room, probably in this same position, until I’d slipped down between her breasts, nuzzling and kissing them, in need of that warmth. But when I took one of her nipples between my lips, Toni pushed me away. “Stop,” she’d whispered, as if someone might hear. “For God’s sake—now?” What had never occurred to her, what she’d never understood, was that at that moment, that exact and spontaneous moment, I needed to feel strong and masculine and sexual and alive. For her, making love was somehow inappropriate just hours after the death of my mother. For me, it was an essential expression of enduring love, our love, the love that would survive and define and support and protect us both.

Our sex life had not been the same since. Now, more often than not, Toni was disinterested, preferring to snuggle, as if anything more was distasteful, a destroyer of an otherwise wonderful moment. And when we did make love, it was almost always as studied as the other routines we’d come to know so well. Where the sexually charged woman I’d married had gone, I couldn’t say. She wasn’t talking. And I’d stopped asking long ago.

She sat up a bit, looking back at me with an angelic glow. “Tomorrow morning we’ll do something, OK? But tonight let’s just—”

I pulled her close, nibbled her neck. As her head fell back against the pillow she slammed shut her eyes, and I knew I’d lost her. Had never really had her, I suppose. I kissed her gently, without passion, and felt her body relax.

“When did we become these people?” I asked.

She gazed at me with what could only be devotion, stroked the dark hair in the center of my chest and whispered, “Go to sleep, my love.”

And when I did, Bernard was waiting for me.

CHAPTER 4

The shrieking whistle from the morning train slithering through the back of town awakened me with a start, as it did most Sundays. Only a few dozen yards from our apartment, the tracks squealed as the first train of the week transporting garbage from Cape Cod made its usual pass between seven and eight o’clock, giving the whistle a precautionary blow as it moved parallel to the street. It rumbled by, throttling the entire apartment in the process. Glassware and place settings rattled behind cupboard doors, and as I rolled from bed and planted my feet against the floor, I found it impossible to hide my amusement. The fact that most of the trains along this particular route only transported trash seemed darkly apropos. Even things generally associated with romance and intrigue were reduced to inelegant terms when crossing my path, as if indicative of the dismal nightmares haunting me.

The pizza place downstairs didn’t open for another couple hours, so none of the smells that normally invaded the apartment (no matter what we did to try and cover them) had seeped up through the floor yet. I sat there groggily for a moment, noticed it was still overcast and cloudy but the rain had stopped and the apartment was quiet. I looked back over my shoulder, the bed was empty, Toni’s spot a clump of wrinkled sheets.

Apparently, I’d slept through the night without incident, but I still felt worn out, as if perhaps I’d spent the night doing something else. Like lugging cement blocks. Or digging ditches.

The phone rang just as I made my way out of the bathroom, and Toni arrived holding the cordless a moment later. “It’s Nino,” she said, rolling her eyes.

I took the handset and sat on the bed. “Nino, what’s up?”

“Al,” my supervisor’s harried voice answered, “listen, man, I got a scheduling problem, need some help.”

In all the years I’d worked for Battalia Security, Nino Battalia, the owner’s brother and my direct supervisor, never called me at home for any other reason. “OK.” I sighed, glanced at Toni, who stood at the foot of the bed, hands on hips and head cocked. “I’m listening.”

“Craig called in sick, he won’t be in tonight.”

“The new kid?”

“Yeah, you know how these newbies can be. Says he’s sick—got a flu or some shit—I don’t give a rat’s ass what he got, you see what I’m saying? But the thing is, he’s covering Bantam Motors. I can’t piss them off, Al, that’s a nice account.”

I recognized the name as a car dealership in the south end of New Bedford, only blocks from where Bernard had killed himself. “First of all, that’s not the greatest neighborhood,” I said. “Second, that’s a nightshift gig.”

“Yes to both, but—”

“Come on, Nino. Jesus, I don’t do nights anymore, and I don’t do shit details. I’m senior guy. Besides, I just woke up. I would’ve stayed up and slept this afternoon if I knew you needed me tonight. I spend Sundays with my wife, dump it on somebody else.”

I could hear a big glass of Alka-Seltzer fizzing; Nino drank it like most people drank Pepsi. “Al, you think I called you first? I hit everybody on the roster, man, can’t nobody fill the shift. You’re the only one I ever been able to count on. You know that. Just cover this shift for me and you can take Monday off. I’ll toss a couple bucks extra in your check this week too, OK?”

“How much?”

“How’s twenty sound?”

“Like it’s not enough. Fifty, and I want cash.”

“Forty.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it. Is this armed?”

“Nope, leave the piece home. Strictly stick on this one.”

“Good. You on tonight?”

“Yeah I’m working dispatch. I won’t be around on supervisor rounds though, so youse can all relax.” Nino gave a hearty laugh, which was interrupted by gulping sounds as he downed the Alka-Seltzer. “You need directions?”

“Nah, I know where it is. Report time?”

“In at eleven, out by seven.”

“Am I sitting in my car all night or what?”

“Nope, inside. They got a nice desk for you and everything.”

Toni crouched before me and rubbed my thigh. With the heat in my groin rising, I said, “OK. I’ll radio in tonight when I get settled.”

Her hand slipped beneath my underwear, and her fingers curled around my scrotum.

Nino was still babbling, thanking me when I hung up and tossed the phone aside. Toni already had my briefs down around my ankles. I watched her pull them off entirely, and spread my legs wider as my erection grew, reaching for her. One hand moved from the back of my calf to the inside of my thigh, the other gripped and slid me into her mouth. I moaned and held her head as I pumped slowly, timing my subtle thrusts with her motion.

I stroked her hair and leaned forward, draping myself over her and pumping harder as she increased the pressure and tightened her lips. “Jesus,” I gasped, but the words caught in my throat as she released me, still kneeling and just visible over the edge of the bed.

She laughed in a way that struck me as nearly dutiful, then flopped next to me on the bed, the mattress bouncing. My heart racing, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her over on top of me, but she pushed away and stood up.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said, straightening her pajamas.

I reached for my underwear and pulled them on over my dying erection. “This is fucking ridiculous, what is the problem?”

Toni shook her head. “It’s never enough for you, is it.”

“Never enough? Are you serious? When was the last time we made love?”

“That was your dick in my mouth just now, wasn’t it?”

We stood staring at each other for what seemed a long time. “You know what I mean.”

She arched an eyebrow, folded her arms across her chest. “Do I?”

“Well if you don’t then we really are in a world of shit, Toni.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to pretend to have some clue as to what the hell you’re talking about?”

“We don’t make love anymore,” I said, glaring at her now. “You take care of me, service me the way a hooker services a john, for Christ’s sake. No passion, nothing real or heartfelt, just efficient, emotionless and robotic sexual acts.”

“A hooker—that’s a nice thing to say to me.” Her lips trembled. “Asshole.”

“Look, I’m sorry.” I reached out and put my hands around her waist. She felt so small, so easily breakable. “It’s just—I don’t understand what’s happening to us.”

“Neither do I.”

“It’s like everything’s broken, all confused and doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

The heat that had risen within me was gone, leaving behind a void, a feeling of nothingness. “You act like it doesn’t matter,” I said.

She looked away and mumbled something, but the phone rang, interrupting us again.

I snatched it from the bed angrily. “What?”

“Hey man, it’s me, Rick.”

“Let me call you back.”

“We need to talk. There’s some weird shit going on.”

“Fucking now what?”

“We were wrong about Bernard,” he said, his tone nervous. “He did leave a note.”

I felt my heart drop, but it was only my knees as I sank back down onto the bed. “What are you talking about?”

“He left a suicide note, just not in the usual way.” Rick cleared his throat. “I was going through my mail from yesterday and—I know this sounds fucked up but—there was something from Bernard. He left a note, man. He just didn’t leave it down in that basement. He sent it to me.”

CHAPTER 5

The sky had turned an odd shade of gray.

I parked next to an empty basketball court surrounded by chain link fence and hurried across the street, hesitating once I’d reached the dead front lawn of the apartment building. I noticed Donald’s car and Rick’s Jeep parked nearby. Although this was the poorest neighborhood in Potter’s Cove, it was normally a vibrant part of town, but the area was quiet, the streets still. Two old men talking at the base of the front steps shuffled their feet against the raw wind and ignored me as I moved onto the landing and into the relative warmth of the foyer.

A door to my right opened with a loud squeak to reveal an emaciated black woman with a sallow face. I visited Rick often, and despite the high turnover rate, I recognized many of the tenants on sight. But this woman was definitely new; I hadn’t seen her before. Dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, her sunken eyes blinked at me slowly, like a cat. “You here about the plumbing?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“You here about the plumbing?” a high-pitched voice echoed.

I glanced down to see a small boy peeking at me from behind the woman’s frail legs. I offered a restrained smile and winked at the boy, who immediately hid behind his mother. The woman sighed, stepped back into her apartment and closed the door.

A battered staircase eventually led to Rick’s third-floor apartment. I hesitated to listen for a moment then knocked lightly.

Rick answered quickly, his expression tense as he stepped away from the door and ushered me in. The apartment itself was small, decorated modestly and bore the clutter of a man used to living alone. Beyond the main den were a kitchen and a hallway that led to the bedroom. Since his former girlfriend moved out, the apartment had taken on an impersonal, somewhat transient feel. The only items that revealed Rick’s specific presence was one wall covered with framed photographs and newspaper articles chronicling his high school athletic career, and a table beneath showcasing several trophies and faded ribbons. It was a shrine that had always seemed to me nothing more than a constant unpleasant reminder of distant glory and opportunities lost. Most teenagers with the athletic prowess Rick had possessed went on to college with full scholarships. Some eventually made it to the professional ranks. Instead, Rick went to prison after nearly beating a man to death during a brawl over a parking space at a local restaurant. Even though several witnesses testified that the man had swung first, many also testified that Rick had continued to beat the man long after he had clearly lost consciousness. The brutality of his retaliation, along with the massive medical injuries the man sustained, gave the judge ample reason to make an example of Rick. And that’s exactly what he did, sentencing him to twelve months in Walpole State Prison, a maximum-security institution that housed some of the worst criminals in Massachusetts. He served the full term, and that year behind bars effectively destroyed any chance at college or a career as a professional athlete. It also changed him forever. Rick had always possessed a volatile, violent temper, but the time served made him harsher, and in many ways potentially even more violent. Memories of visiting him in that horrible place blinked through my mind. “Aren’t you usually asleep this time of day?” I asked casually.

“Yup.” He tried to appear unconcerned. “You want something to drink? I got Cokes in the fridge.”

“I’m good. What’s this shit about a note?”

A toilet flushed and a moment later Donald appeared from the hallway looking horribly hung-over. He gave a less than enthusiastic wave and lowered himself onto a worn couch. “The plot thickens.”

I wondered if he remembered I’d been at his cottage the day before. “I’m listening.”

Rick sat on the arm of the couch, grabbed a padded manila envelope from the cushion and tossed it to me. “That came in the mail yesterday. I didn’t check my mail until this morning.”

I caught the package; it was nearly weightless. Rick’s name and address had been written across the front in black marker, and a label advertising a private mailbox and mailing service served as the return address. “Mailbox Universe? That’s here in town. If Bernard’s been dead almost a week why did you just get this yesterday?”

“Listen to the tape.”

“Bernard must have left them instructions not to mail the package until a specific date,” Donald said. “You can pay them to do that.”

I nodded. “But why wait so long?” When no one answered I reached inside the torn opening and pulled out an unmarked cassette tape. I felt nothing else, so I peered inside the envelope. It was empty. “What’s this?”

“His note,” Rick said.

“He recorded it?”

“He must’ve used that Walkman we found in his duffel,” Rick said. “I remember seeing a Record button on it.”

I moved to a chair, sat down and put the envelope aside. “You already listened to it?”

“Rick has, I haven’t.” Donald sighed. “I didn’t want to have to do this twice.”

“There was nothing else in the envelope and the cassette’s unmarked,” Rick told me. “I didn’t know what the hell it was until I listened to it.”

I stared at the cassette, entranced and repelled at once.

“When I heard Bernard’s voice I almost shit myself,” he said, drawing my attention to his slowly flushing face. “When I heard what he had to say, I think I actually did.”

Rick took the tape from my hand, walked it over to a stereo in the corner and dropped it into the cassette player. Multicolored lights on the equalizer came to life, rising then falling quickly, accompanied by a loud and steady hiss. The lights continued to dance as the hiss became breathing, and finally, the sound of Bernard’s voice.

“If you’re listening to this… If you’re listening to this then it means I really did it.”

He sounded different than I’d remembered, not just because on tape everyone’s natural tone is somewhat altered, but because he sounded hollow, like he was speaking to us from the bottom of a stone well. I sat forward, hands together.

“Rick, I sent this to you first because it seemed like the right thing to do. I know you’ll listen to it, and I know you’ll make the right decision and share this with Donald and Alan. No offense, guys, but if I sent the tape to either of you I’m not sure you’d tell Rick or even each other. But I know you’ll do the right thing, Rick, you’re the chief. You’re Warlord.”

My eyes met Donald’s, then Rick’s. The Warlord was the leader, the head Sultan who ran our pseudo gang. When Tommy was killed Rick had become warlord—a term we’d used somewhat jokingly, and one I hadn’t thought about in years, but it summoned the past in vivid terms, and I was relatively certain that had been Bernard’s intention. Although toward the end he’d become a shell of what he’d once been, Bernard spent most of his adult life in sales, and like any good salesperson he’d been skilled at speaking to people and eliciting from them the responses he needed or wanted, a flair for manipulation, in terms less kind.

“I had the people at the mailbox place hold off and mail the package on a specific date,” he continued, his voice eerie and laced with a faint echo. “I figured by the time you got this and listened to it you’d know I was… gone. I’m sure you all have questions and confusion and you’re probably pissed with me for doing it, but… believe me when I tell you, guys, it was the best thing. Rick, you probably think I’m a pussy—a coward, right? That’s what you’re saying, anyway, but deep down, you know that’s not true. And Donald, you’re just sad and bitter about it, while Alan, I’ll bet you’re all withdrawn and introspective, like always. We’ve known each other too long, fellas, too long.

“But it’s funny how even after all these years you find yourself wondering just how well you really know anyone. Hell, we’ve all been tight since we were kids—been through a lot together—but we still have secrets, don’t we? All of us. None of us are ever exactly, precisely what we claim to be, are we? We’re one way with some people, another way with other people, maybe another way still when we’re all alone. That’s what it boils down to, fellas. At night, when you’re lying there in bed looking at the ceiling, remembering the day, thinking back through things you did and what lies ahead, when it’s just you and whatever god you pray to in the dark… that’s when all the masks are peeled away and it’s just you. Just you, and whoever… or whatever you are.”

There was a garbled sound, and then the hiss returned.

“Is that it?” I asked.

Rick shook his head in the negative and held his hand up like a traffic cop signaling cars to stop. More breathing followed a series of clicking sounds; Bernard had stopped recording then begun again. When he resumed speaking his voice sounded the same as before: distant and almost artificial. “You guys ever wonder why we were friends? I mean really wonder. The last few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, going back through the past, remembering good times and bad—all of it—as much of it as I can, anyway. When I was a little kid, maybe five or six, my mother told me that in this life we’re lucky if we have one or two true friends, people we can really count on and who stand by us through thick and thin. That’s if we’re lucky.” Bernard gave a quiet sarcastic laugh. “Isn’t it strange the way we stuck together all these years? All of us are from working-class families, all of us townies but… but that’s where it ends, really, wouldn’t you say? Even in school it made people wonder. Guys like us—so different, one from the other—might’ve been friends when we were little but surely once high school hit we’d go our separate ways and settle into the appropriate cliques. But we didn’t. In a lot of ways we got closer, didn’t we? In a sense, anyway. Rick the jock, Donald the bookworm honor student, Alan the rebel without a cause, Tommy the all-things-to-all-people charismatic leader… and then, me. The joke, the dork.” Bernard’s voice cracked, a clicking sound followed; then silence.

I glanced at the windows on the far wall. A light snow had begun to fall. It seemed too late in the season for more snow, but just like Bernard’s distorted voice speaking to us as if from the beyond, there it was.

“Christ,” Donald said softly, “how much more of this is there?”

“He sounds like he’s in a tomb,” I heard myself say.

“I think he recorded it down in that basement,” Rick said as the hiss on the tape gave way to another loud click. “That’s why he sounds so far away, those cement walls are distorting his voice.”

Bernard continued, calmer now, “I’m not stupid, I know how people saw me. Except for you guys, anyway. We were all well practiced at that, disregarding each other’s faults, no matter how hideous. There’s always been a bond, a common ground between us. Rick, you and me were only children; we both knew what it was like, the pros and cons of being the only one. No pressure there, huh?” Heavy breathing, a rustling sound. “And Donald, good old Donny. You and me, we know what it is to be different, don’t we? We know what it’s like to be left out, made fun of… terrorized. Isolation, that’s what we know, isn’t it Donny. Self-imposed or not, isolation’s an old friend too.”

I glanced at them quickly while their names were mentioned. Neither made eye contact.

“Alan, we knew what it was like not to have a father around,” Bernard said next. “How it was to grow up with a single mother, what it is to love and be close to your mother and all the shit people give you for that. Momma’s boys, you and me… and proud of it, right?” He laughed lightly, and this time it sounded somewhat genuine. “And then I think about Tommy and I wonder… I wonder what it was we shared. It took me a long time, going over it again and again… and then it came to me. Tommy was like all of us in one way or another. If you took the best parts of each one of us and put them together into a single person, you had Tommy.”

Donald, who was staring at the floor, nodded slightly. Rick had turned his back on us and was standing in front of the window, gazing out at the snow. But he knew Bernard was right too—Tommy had been the best of us.

“I always felt bad for you, Alan, because you were there when it happened. After he died a day didn’t go by when I didn’t think about staying after school that day, and how if I hadn’t, I’d have been with you guys. Maybe I would’ve been the first one off the bus that day. Maybe I’d have been lying in the street instead of him. Would’ve made more sense…”

My throat cinched and I struggled to control my emotion. I had been two steps behind Tommy that day, and the same thoughts had crossed my mind ever since. How easily it could’ve been me instead. How perhaps it should have been.

“But the one thing we all shared, the one thing we all knew,” Bernard said through a lengthy sigh, “was pain. We all know pain don’t we fellas, and the rage that comes with it. Yeah, we know rage too. We know the rage of never amounting to what we should have, could have been. Falling short, that’s been our specialty.”

Donald pushed himself to his feet and began to pace, arms folded across his narrow chest.

“Rick, you could’ve been a pro football player. It’s all you talked about from the time we were little, and you had it, you had it, man. But the rage got you. You almost beat that poor bastard to death over a parking space. For what, to impress some fucking girl you were dating at the time? The guy was in a coma for three days, for Christ’s sake. A coma, Rick. For a parking space. I remember going to visit you in prison. We’d all pile into the car and make the drive to Walpole, everybody dead quiet—God those were the longest trips because nobody said a word the whole way up and the whole way back. And when I went away one of the things I was running from was having to go see you in that fucking hole. You were always so strong—so much stronger than I was—I couldn’t stand seeing you broken, locked away in that place.

“And look at you now, man. Fifteen minutes of rage in a parking lot and your whole life went to shit. Is that fair? Is it? Is that fucking fair?” Bernard hesitated, apparently cognizant that the volume of his voice had increased considerably. When he continued, his tone had returned to one softer and more controlled. “Are you happy, Rick? Life turn out the way you hoped? A bouncer at a nightclub, alone, still chasing chicks like a high school kid, hanging around your apartment staring at those old trophies. Jesus Christ, man, a far cry from the NFL, huh?”

Donald looked at me through bloodshot eyes. “This is absurd, why—”

“Be quiet,” Rick snapped, his back still facing us.

“I don’t think any of us need to hear this kind of—”

“Shut the fuck up and listen, Donny.” Rick turned slowly, looked at us over his shoulder with dark eyes. “We’ve never had to hear anything so much.”

“And then there’s Donald,” Bernard said flatly. “The king of underachievement. Fucking royalty in that department, huh, Donny?”

The nearly gleeful tone in Bernard’s voice surprised me. I’d never known him to revel in someone else’s pain, particularly if that someone was a friend. Donald’s expression had shifted from discomfort to near-frenzy. He glared at me, and I tried to convey a look that told him it was all right, that everything would be OK.

“I always wondered who you thought you were punishing,” Bernard went on, his lifeless voice cutting the silence. “You’re the smartest guy I’ve ever known, Donny, and one of the most unhappy. Remember when we were kids and you’d talk about moving away when we grew up? You used to talk about going to Paris and Berlin and London—all these places that seemed so impossibly far away back then. You wanted to teach, remember? You had it all planned out. A teaching job in some little European village, where it was quiet and you could sit and read and be at peace, that’s the dream you talked about. The dream you should’ve realized but never did, because the demons got in the way, then the booze fucked everything up. But we all know the booze wasn’t the real problem, don’t we, Donny?”

Donald’s eyes had grown moist. “He has no right,” he whispered, “no right to do this to us.”

“Imagine a good Catholic boy turning up faggot.”

“Jesus,” I groaned.

The pain on Donald’s face was nearly tangible. He’d heard the slurs and hatred for years, just never from Bernard.

“You are what you are, Donny,” Bernard said. “You just couldn’t seem to go with it, to be what you are and be OK with it. Eventually, it’ll probably kill you. Nobody to love but that goddamn bottle, hiding from yourself and from all the shit everyone always gave you. So you hit a bar now and then, find someone to share a few hours with—maybe a weekend—then it’s back to work at that office, wasting away and typing up someone else’s thoughts, not even able to make the ten-minute drive home without stopping at the package store first. That’s how bad it is, Donny. Most people would give anything for your brains, and you tossed them aside like garbage. You met a guy once, some secret lover you had, but it didn’t work out like you thought, like you hoped, like you needed it to. You were in love, you told me so, but he was just experimenting, right? Just pretending, just drunk, just anything but queer. And you were still hurt when you got to college. You brought your bottle with you when it all went to shit, and you couldn’t shake it, couldn’t cope, so you walked away from school like some whipped puppy and you’ve been pining for him ever since, living like some goddamn drunken monk or something. I always thought you were better than all that, I always thought you’d be the one who’d make it out, who’d really be something. We all knew what the deal was, man, you never had to make any big announcements, and when you did you weren’t telling us anything we didn’t already know. We accepted you, man, shit even Rick did. For all the crap he talks and all the arguing between you two, he always stood up for you. Besides, you’re not so different from the rest of us, not really. Not when you get right down to the bare fucking bone. You’re lonely… and angry. Rage, man, always the rage. Always there to remind us how unfair life is, how when we open our arms it kicks us in the teeth every fucking time.”

The tape clicked, and Bernard’s voice was silenced.

Donald sank slowly back onto the couch like a deflating balloon, and Rick braced himself against the window casing, his eyes still trained on the falling flakes of snow.

“Turn it off,” Donald said softly. “You don’t have to listen, Alan.”

But I didn’t turn it off, and neither did anyone else. Instead, another click signaled the monologue was about to continue. I settled deeper into the chair, felt my bowels quiver and the beginnings of perspiration seep through my palms.

“Alan,” Bernard said fondly, “you didn’t think I’d forget about you, did you? How could I, you and I were friends first, remember? Do you, do you remember the first day we met? I do. We were seven, and it was just a few days before Halloween. My mother and I had just moved into the neighborhood and I didn’t know anyone. I was playing on the front lawn in a new costume I’d gotten—a tiger costume—do you remember? Great costume, man, head to toe, built-in feet, the works. I was playing, and you were riding your bike. You stopped to say hello, and I was surprised how friendly you were, how you just talked to me and seemed to want to be my friend. You never even mentioned my glasses, or how thick they were, or how skinny I was, how much shorter I was than most kids our age—none of it. You just told me your name and pointed up the street at your house and said that’s where you lived. Then you told me my costume was cool and you had to be a ghost again for the second year in a row because your mom couldn’t afford a good costume. Plus, she’d cut up a perfectly good sheet making the eyeholes so there was nothing left to do with it except leave it a costume or shred it for rags.”

I was stunned that he had remembered such detail. I looked to the floor, my memories of that afternoon as clear and bright as the day it happened.

“Then the two Berringer twins showed up on their bikes, came to a screeching stop right in front of the driveway, like they came out of nowhere, scared the hell out of me. And I knew by the look on your face that they were trouble. Those little motherfuckers, Christ I hated them, terrorizing the whole neighborhood, always picking on kids younger than them. They were thirteen; we were seven. Jackie and Johnny Berringer. Cocksuckers. I remember you told me to go in my house, but I didn’t get it and just stood there. Then they started making fun of me, calling me all kinds of names because I had that costume on. I was so scared, and I kept hoping my mother would hear them and come outside, but she never did. You told me to go inside again, then the twins got off their bikes and started pushing you, telling you to mind your own business and that I was a baby for dressing like that. Do you remember, Alan?”

I felt myself nod, as if somehow he could see me.

“Jackie grabbed me and pushed me down,” Bernard said, his voice shaking. “I started to cry—shit I was a baby then and they were a lot older than us but… but then all of a sudden you went wild and started attacking them.” Bernard’s tone changed and it suddenly sounded like he was stifling laughter. “You weren’t a hell of a lot bigger than I was physically, and… Christ, they wailed the piss out of you that day, right there in my front yard. But you just kept getting up. They’d hit you and down you’d go; lip all busted up, nose bleeding. But you kept getting up, and you’d come back swinging. I tried to help but they pushed me down again and tore my costume and… I was crying and screaming for my mother, and you were lying in the driveway all bloody but on your way back for more… then the Berringer twins took off. I guess they were afraid my mother would hear all the screaming. They didn’t know yet that she drank too much and usually slept in the afternoons. I never forgot that, Alan. You didn’t even know me, but you defended me because you knew those two little sick fuckers were going to beat somebody up, and you didn’t want it to be me. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me. Nobody.”

At only seven, I’d seen some cruelty and brutality in the world, but not much, and nothing quite like what I witnessed that day. Bernard was so innocent, so small and weak and trusting. A little boy in a special tiger costume his mother had made, playing in his yard, minding his own business, the new kid in town totally unaware what the local bullies had in store for him. Welcome to the neighborhood. And even years later, I was still unable to understand what joy the Berringer twins derived from stopping and terrorizing a little boy who had done nothing to provoke them, a boy they didn’t even know. And yet, the concept that they had so quickly determined Bernard was somehow less human, less important and thereby expendable was both repugnant and curious.

Bernard’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “The next day you introduced me to Tommy and Rick and Donald,” he said, “and we spent the day playing in the tree house in Tommy’s yard. If it hadn’t been for you, Alan, I don’t know if I’d have had any friends at all. Probably not.”

I wanted to let the emotion go, but I kept it bound and under control. He was letting me off the hook for some reason, praising me while he’d torn the others to shreds, and fond reminiscence had again given way to morbid uneasiness and confusion.

“I probably should’ve just mentioned that day,” Bernard continued, “and let you tell the story, Alan. You were always so good at telling stories. As long as I can remember all you ever wanted to do was write.”

When he mentioned my writing I knew I’d been wrong. He wasn’t going to spare me after all.

“You were always scribbling in those little notebooks you used to carry around. Man, some of those stories were really good. You had a natural talent for it, no question about it. My favorite was the one you wrote—oh, I want to say it was around fourth, fifth grade, somewhere in there—about the jet and the UFO. Remember that one? The UFO stopped time and altered it or something and took everyone onboard away then replaced them, only they didn’t remember any of it. Then they realized there was twenty minutes no one could account for, the exact amount of time radio communication had been cut off—shit, that was so good. Just like on The Twilight Zone or an episode of The Outer Limits on TV. All that talent at such a young age, what a shame that just like Rick and Donald you threw it away.”

“Fuck this,” Donald said suddenly. “Shut it off.”

“Let it go,” I said.

Neither of us moved.

“What the hell happened, Alan?” Bernard asked in a nearly tender tone. “You were going to be Steinbeck, man. What was it all the teachers said? If only that Chance kid would show up for school and stay out of trouble and study and use his talents… yeah, if only. But you knew better—and you really did.” Brief, ironic laughter. “You were so cool back then, God I idolized you. It was like you knew who you were and what you wanted and how your life would be, and you didn’t need all the bullshit at school and all the stupid social crap. You always walked your own path, man, and I respected the hell out of you for that.

“I never would’ve guessed you’d fucking blow it by getting married instead. Christ, man, you were going to New York, you were going to write and live in Greenwich Village and hang with artists and date hippie chicks and write great novels and be the coolest guy since Kerouac or James Dean or… Tell me, man, was Toni worth it? Was she? She’s a great gal—I always liked her—but like I said before, when you’re lying in bed at night, alone with God, and you ask yourself that question—and you know you do—what answer echoes through your mind?

“Toni’s a small town girl. Always was, always will be. She wasn’t cut out for all that. She was thinking more along the lines of a nice little house with the picket fence, the two-point-five kids, the dog and a Volvo in the driveway. Nothing wrong with that, but it was never you, was it, Alan? You gave up all you wanted because you knew she could never be a part of the world you’d envisioned and dreamed of creating for yourself your entire fucking life.” Bernard’s volume had increased again, and he stopped and drew a series of deep breaths before continuing. “The only way you two could be together was for you to give up what you wanted and stay here. Get a job, make a life. A life? In Potter’s Cove? Fuck, good luck. How’s that security guard position working out? Making more than minimum wage yet? Never did get that house, or the babies or the picket fence or the Volvo. Shit, you didn’t even get the dog, so what the hell was the point? Do you resent Toni now, all these years later? Every time you look in the mirror and see you’re another year older, a few pounds heavier, a bit more miserable than the year before. Every time you put that uniform on and spend the shift wondering what if instead of doing one of the few things that made you happy, that made you who you were, do you resent her then? And does she resent you, too, Alan? She never realized you really weren’t that good at anything but writing, did she? Bet she realizes it now. Bet she realizes she should’ve picked someone else to spend her life with. But it’s the way it is, and it’s easier than tearing it down and starting over, right?

“Do you ever go through your old stories? Shit, do you even still have them? Do you ever think about what might have been?”

As he paused I could almost see him smiling, lying on the cot in that basement, the recorder in hand, just inches from his lips.

“Why is he doing this?” Donald asked. “Why? What the hell did he do that was so wonderful with his goddamn life? What right does he have to—”

“And what about me?” Bernard said, as if in response. “Yeah, what about me. Christ, we’re all a bunch of stereotypes and we don’t even realize it. But you know what? Most people are, fellas. Most of us have no idea how fucked up we really are, much less those around us, and even given the chance, we’re not sure we want to know. You know, the day Tommy was killed I saw him coming down the staircase at school. He was headed for the exit and the bus, and I was going the other way. We saw each other and smiled then I gave him a playful punch in the arm and told him I’d see him later. Well, I didn’t see him later. The next fucking time I saw him he was in a casket. What I’d really wanted to do when I saw him was just smile, maybe even give him a hug, tell him thank you for being my friend. But, hey, men don’t do shit like that. So here’s a punch in the arm instead and a too cool ‘Seeya later’ mumble. Bunch of goddamn hypocrites, all of us. Hell, I’m as guilty as the rest of you—some might say more so—but I never had the potential you guys did. I couldn’t play sports; I wasn’t tough or good-looking or highly intelligent or talented. All I could do was talk. Always been a decent talker; that’s why sales worked out for me for so long. It was a safe place to hide for a while… but the truth always catches up to us, fellas. None of us can hold out forever. Eventually truth finds all of us and forces us into the light, whether we want to be there or not. Reality’s a bitch, ain’t it? Scary shit, man.

“Almost as scary as being ignored. Not that you guys would know anything about that, you’ve all spent your lives scratching and clawing at the edge of the cliffs you’re hanging off of to make certain of that. That’s what the rebel routine with you was all about, Alan, and it was even one of the reasons why you stepped in and tried to defend me from the Berringer twins that day. Even taking a beating was somehow preferable to being ignored. But, Christ, I’d have given my balls to be ignored just once. To be left the fuck alone by bullies and kids giving me a hard time and girls laughing at me for this or that. Not you guys, though. Our lives may be complete dog shit, but please God, just don’t let us be ignored. Anything but that.

“Rick, that’s why you still dress like a high school kid and go to the gym and try to act like you’re eighteen instead of thirty-eight. Donald, it’s why you drink yourself into oblivion, and Alan, it’s why you stay with Toni and endure. Without all of the window dressing you’d all just fade away, and that’s what terrifies you. I know, because I did it. I faded; I took the fall just to see what was down in that pit, and guess what, fellas? There is something down there in the dark.

“You know what else I realized? The dark’s not so bad. As a matter of fact, I like it.” His breathing rate became a bit heavier. “It’s where I belong, it’s safer here for me.”

Donald pulled his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and stabbed one between his lips without lighting it. “What the hell is he babbling about?”

I shrugged and stared at the tape deck, waiting for Bernard to continue.

“But every road comes to an end,” he said, “and mine’s almost there. I tried, man, I really fucking did, but the shit was already decided—preordained, you know what I mean? Think real hard—try to remember, and you will.”

Rick turned from the window, faced us, his mouth set firmly shut, jaw working as he ground his teeth.

“The point is,” Bernard went on, “I’m not the harmless little loser-boy you thought I was. Outside of our group I never had a social life really. Girls never paid any attention to me, and when they did it was to laugh at me or give me one of those looks to let me know there was no chance in hell they’d ever have anything to do with me. The friendships and bonds I had with you guys only went so far… but when you went off and did your own thing, well, so did I. I stopped running from the rage, man. I faced it, grabbed it; used it.

“Quick confession… I was never in the Marines, but I did take off not long after graduation, I mean, I had to do something, right? You all had shit going on and I had nothing—no life, no plans, no girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife, not even a jail cell to sit in and pass the time.”

“Sonofabitch,” Rick muttered.

“My mother’s lifestyle had started to catch up to her and her health wasn’t the best. All that booze was starting to rot through her system, but she was still relatively young and I knew that I’d probably spend years caring for her, so I started to set things up a few months before graduation. I decided on the Marines because I knew it would blow everybody’s mind. Who’d ever think scrawny little Bernard with the coke-bottle glasses could be a Marine? I told everyone that’s where I was headed, but what I really did was save almost every dime I earned at work after school. I remember the last night I spent in Potter’s Cove. It was a while after graduation, and Rick, you were already serving your sentence, had been for a few months, but Donny and Alan, you guys took me out to dinner at Brannigan’s, remember? We had steaks and potatoes and beer and… Christ, we laughed our asses off that night. For a couple hours life was almost fucking bearable. It was quite a sendoff, only the next morning when you guys drove me to the bus station, I wasn’t headed for boot camp.”

I saw Donald shake his head, draw on the still unlit cigarette and run his hands through his hair. “This is madness.”

“It was a new beginning, though. I went away to begin what I was finally able to admit was my destiny.” Bernard was quiet for a time, but the tape kept rolling. “See, we all have the rage, fellas, but so few of us ever figure out what to do with it, how to love it and nurture it—like a loyal pet. I went to New York City, got a room and lived there until my money ran out. Less than a year later I was back in Potter’s Cove telling you how I’d fallen off a training platform and wrecked my knee. Well I did hurt my knee but it wasn’t from any training platform. I fell chasing somebody, if you want the truth. People run really fast when they’re afraid. When they’re terrified.

“New York was incredible. I had no idea how perfect a setting it was for me to begin my journey, but within a few days it was so obvious. A human zoo, that’s how I saw it, with me as the warden. See, here’s what I figured out down in the dark, fellas… the power I’d lacked my whole life was right there in front of me all along. When you step back and separate yourself from the herd it changes everything. That’s when I figured out I could do whatever I wanted. And that’s when I changed the world around me from a zoo to a slaughterhouse.”

I felt my heart sink and I looked quickly to Rick, who was staring back at me with an I-told-you-so scowl.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Think back through the years, fellas,” Bernard continued. “Think about the things deep inside you can’t remember, don’t want to remember. Think about all the times things with me just didn’t add up, how things seemed just a bit off, just a little strange. Then think about how you reacted, how you dismissed it the same way you choose to ignore an unusual sound in the middle of the night. Ever do that? Have you ever been lying in bed, darkness all around, when suddenly there’s an odd sound? You know you weren’t dreaming; you know you heard it for sure and you know it’s not commonplace. You know it’s an intrusive sound, a sound that doesn’t belong there, and even though it makes no sense, even though it might be an intruder or God knows what, you roll over and forget it… but have you ever wondered what you’d find if you didn’t?

“I’m so tired,” he said through a heavy sigh. “I’m so tired, fellas. I had it under control for a long time—or I thought I did—but it got away from me. I couldn’t concentrate on my job, I knew my mother was dying, I… I knew without her my life would spiral down into nothingness. The only way the mortgage could be paid was through her savings and the disability checks she got every month. Without that income, even when I was working, I couldn’t maintain the house and I knew I’d lose it. I couldn’t hang on anymore, I… things were all confused. I couldn’t think anymore, I… I just couldn’t think clearly, you know? Too many goddamn voices at once, and…

“I couldn’t do my job, lost that, then when Mom died and they took the house, I… Christ, how that woman suffered. For what? For what!”

He screamed the same phrase three times more, the volume and savagery of his voice such that it distorted through the large speakers and became indecipherable. I felt a chill burst through me. Bernard sounded completely, hopelessly insane.

“God abandoned me.” The tremor in his voice indicated he was struggling to hold back tears. “I knew when I moved in here with Sammy my time was over. I did my thing, I made my mark… and I’m not afraid, not anymore. Face your fear, that’s what people always say, and you’ll conquer it. It’s true. It’s true. I faced my fear… then I became it. The things you see are beyond belief, but they’re real.

“I’ll miss you guys,” he said a moment later. “I’m not who you thought I was—what you thought I was—but I’m still Bernard, man, still a loyal Sultan, still one of you, and I always will be. We’ll always be together no matter what. I just wish that could’ve been enough, but ask yourself this—was it enough for you? I wish I could’ve told you the truth about me, about the things I’ve done, but if you’re honest with yourselves and you stop and think long and hard, you’ll realize the answers are right there and have been all along.”

Donald struggled to his feet. “He’s insane.”

“I like the idea of dying in winter,” Bernard’s voice interrupted. “It’s barren and cold and still and it’s the perfect time for me to step away, now that my destiny has been fulfilled and I’ve done all I can to assure my place in the afterlife, in the realm of darkness where I belong, where I was born to be.

“When the seasons change and the world begins to warm and thaw out from the chill of winter, you’ll better understand what I’m talking about. You’ll see firsthand the fruit of my labor. Rancid fruit to be sure but fruit just the same, fellas. Like in the days of old when they’d bleed the illness, the darkness, the wickedness from a person, I’ve shown you the way by bleeding the world, man, by letting it flow in the fucking streets. It’s why as much as I’d like to I can’t slit my wrists. Yeah,” he said in a quietly gleeful tone, “I need it where I’m going… down beyond the dirt… beyond the Earth. And just like here, where I’m going, you might just have to follow. But I have to go now. It’s time.”

The tape was quiet but we could still hear Bernard breathing. Eventually he spoke, but this time his voice was void of emotion, a detached monotone that could have been anyone. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

No one moved until the tape reached the end and the player clicked and stopped with a loud, eerie finality. We sat in stunned silence until Rick removed the cassette and tossed it back to me. I caught it and returned it to the envelope it had been mailed in, no longer wanting to touch it.

“Well, that was fun,” Donald said. “Think it’s available on CD?”

Rick stomped about, hands on hips. “Yeah, good, make jokes, asshole.”

I cleared my throat and rose slowly to my feet. “We need to sort this out.”

Rick whirled around, faced me. “You know what he was saying the same as I do.”

I nodded. “We also know Bernard had problems.”

“No one in their right mind hangs themselves,” Donald added quickly. “And besides, you can hear him at the end of the tape, he’s clearly disturbed.”

“Doesn’t make him a liar.” Rick arched an eyebrow. “Does it?”

“Not necessarily, no.”

“He was saying, without actually saying it that…” I shook my head in disbelief, still hopeful none of this was happening. “He was claiming he’d killed people.”

“Thank you, Inspector Poirot, what would we do without you?” Donald rolled his eyes and took another mock draw on his still unlit cigarette. “Look, this is Bernard we’re talking about, Bernard, for Christ’s sake. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He had some problems, yes, we all agree on that. He had a habit of stretching the truth from time to time, but he didn’t—this is absurd—Bernard wasn’t some—”

“Did you hear that shit at the end of the tape?” Rick asked. “That’s a quote from the Bible.”

Donald shrugged. “I assumed as much. So what?”

“This is bad shit.” He looked to me, eyes imploring support. “Alan, this ain’t Bernard making up some story, and you know it. We all know it. This is a suicide note; remember that. Pretty stupid time for pipe dreams, no?”

Rick had a point. The end was a time for truth, confession and hopefully redemption, not further deceit. But were Bernard insane, would he have even known the difference?

“He said when the seasons change we’d understand,” I finally replied.

“Spring is still a few weeks off,” Donald mumbled.

“This might explain our nightmares,” I said.

Donald looked at me, his face failing to conceal the fear. “The… nightmares.”

Pacing near the window, Rick came to an abrupt halt, mouth open and eyes wide. “What nightmare?”

I exchanged glances with Donald then said, “We’ve had similar dreams where—well—where Bernard—”

“Says goodbye,” Rick said, finishing the sentence before I could. “There’s people—or something like people—with him.”

“Christ.” Donald’s hands were trembling so badly that the cigarette in his fingers snapped in half. “There’s no way this is happening, this can’t be real.”

Rick moved closer. “Not making fucking jokes now, are ya?” He looked at me, what little color he still had in his face draining away as I confirmed his question with a quick nod. “And in the dream, do you know why they’re there, these people?”

I nodded again, feeling dead inside. “To take him—”

“To Hell.”

We turned in unison to Donald. He was shaking violently, still trying to occupy his hands with the frayed cigarette filter. “Why would they want to do that?” he said in a loud whisper. “Why would they want to take Bernard to Hell?”

“Because he wasn’t lying,” Rick answered. “Because everything he said on that tape is true, and when the seasons change we’ll understand.”

“Maybe we should turn this tape over to the police,” Donald suggested.

Rick scoffed. “And tell them what? Hi, we think our friend—you know, the one who just offed himself in his cousin’s cellar—killed some people. Here, listen to this tape, he sounds completely out of his fucking mind on it, and doesn’t mention anything specific, but we thought we should turn it over to you guys.”

“Well why the hell not?”

“Because we’ll look like fucking loons ourselves if we do that.” Rick resumed his pacing. “Besides, what if this shit is true? What if Bernard really did do something? I don’t want to get involved in all that, I don’t want the cops fucking snooping around my life and me just because we were friends. Who knows what kind of fucked up shit we might bring down on ourselves if we get involved?”

Donald seemed to think about what Rick had said for a moment then turned his focus to me. “Alan, what do you think?”

“I think at this point we don’t know what that tape means,” I said. “It could be a confessional to murders and it could be nothing but the delusional ramblings of a mentally ill man at the end of the road, just hours away from taking his life. Either way, I think it needs to stay with us for now.”

“I agree,” Rick said. “Definitely.”

“And if something should happen,” I continued, “and in the following months we learn there is something to all this, then we can decide what to do from there. I just think going to the cops now is a bit premature. Besides, I’m not even certain what we’re dealing with here is—I don’t know if the cops could help.”

“I’ll hang onto the tape,” Rick said, “put it away somewhere safe.”

Donald’s fight to regain control of himself had worked, at least for the moment, and he appeared more levelheaded, less shaken. “Granted, our dreams are strange,” he said. “The fact that they’re so similar and seem to have meaning beyond the norm is a bit unnerving, and that, coupled with the things Bernard said on the tape is frightening, but we can’t lose control here. We have to maintain our own sanity and try to approach this in a logical, unemotional manner.”

“You do what you want,” Rick said. “But I’m gonna keep my eyes open. This is some bad shit—you mark my words—and I bet we don’t know the half of it.”

I checked my watch. “I gotta go, I’m working tonight.” I headed for the door, then hesitated and looked back at them. “And that shit Bernard said about Toni isn’t true. He was always jealous of what we have. If I had it to do again I’d marry her in a heartbeat. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Donald grimaced. “You don’t have to—”

“The best thing that ever happened to me.”

Rick had resumed his position at the window. “Snow’s starting to accumulate,” he said absently. “One last kick in the balls from winter. Motherfucker never dies quietly.”

Few things do.

CHAPTER 6

Located near the water, across from a long-abandoned and decaying factory, the car dealership occupied a large lot between an auto parts superstore and a Chinese restaurant along the tail end of a boulevard less than a mile from the state highway. My shift was eleven at night until seven in the morning, when the owner showed and opened for business. Once an hour or so, I was to take a quick stroll around the property, but mostly the shift would be spent at a salesman’s desk positioned in the front window, which despite the periodic snow squalls gave me a perfect view of the entire lot as well as most of the street beyond. It wasn’t an armed detail, which was good, because I’d never been comfortable strapping on a gun for the money I made. I carried a baton and a handheld company two-way, and usually passed the time either reading a paperback or listening to a portable radio I always brought with me. If anything happened, I was only there to put a call in to the police so they could handle it. I was a babysitter in costume, dressed like I was something more, something official, keeping an eye on a bunch of used cars no one would want anyway.

The vacant factory, only one of many that littered the city—mementos of an age when the textile industry had sustained it—the same as in Potter’s Cove—loomed beyond the shadows of the lot across the street, the enormous rotting structure blocking much of the moon, the remaining portion masked by spitting bursts of snow.

Because I knew my supervisor wouldn’t be around, I’d brought a six-pack with me. The beer relaxed me, and I hoped it might help me forget all that had happened and much of what Bernard had said on that tape. But even alcohol failed to rid me of the continuous stream of thoughts exploding through my mind, because just like the nightmares, we’d all experienced the tape. Now it was just a matter of deciphering it, and the potential danger therein was different than anything we’d encountered to that point. Different than a dream or a feeling, this was more than real; it was palpable. But were the things he’d hinted at on the tape just more of his stories, more dramatics, or had he spoken the truth down in that cellar?

Think back through the years, fellas. Think about all the times things with me just didn’t add up, how things seemed just a bit off, just a little strange.

I dug a beer from a small cooler at the bottom of the gym bag I brought with me on each job, cracked it open and took a pull.

I wish I could’ve told you the truth about me, about the things I’ve done, but if you’re honest with yourselves and you stop and think long and hard, you’ll realize the answers are right there and have been all along.

Visions of Toni came to me then. She’d been asleep when I left for the shift, curled up and warm in bed. She always looked so beautiful and peaceful when she slept, like she hadn’t a care in the world, and this time had been no exception. When I’d returned home from Rick’s I told her about the tape but left out most of the specifics and downplayed the confessional aspect. She dismissed it as Bernard just being Bernard right to the end and was more concerned with how I was doing. We cuddled in the recliner and watched TV until she went to bed, then I sat with her and ran my fingers through her hair the way she liked until she’d drifted off to sleep. Sitting there on the edge of the bed, I wondered if perhaps part of what Bernard had said was true.

Bet she realizes she should’ve picked someone else to spend her life with.

Maybe that’s why our lovemaking hadn’t been the same in eons. Maybe she loved me but was no longer in love with me—hadn’t been in years. Maybe she was afraid she’d become pregnant and the idea of bringing a child into a marriage such as ours was beyond what even she was prepared to endure. Maybe she was getting it somewhere else. Maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe we adored each other and simply had problems like any other couple. Maybe as long as we knew the other would always be there, it didn’t really matter.

I killed the beer and tossed the empty into the gym bag.

Think back through the years, fellas…

But for certain specific episodes of importance or particular impact, the years prior to our teens were vague at best. Life in Potter’s Cove was largely uneventful, and things rarely changed. It was a time when a distinction still existed between “school” clothes and “play” clothes, a time before VCRs or video games or cable television, before personal computers, the Internet and e-mail, cell phones and beepers and microwave ovens, and a time when the handheld (wireless) calculator was about as exciting as technology was liable to get. It was a time when kids spent most of their time playing outside, rarely watched what the seven television channels (nine or ten if you counted UHF and had the appropriate antenna) had to offer, and a period that produced the last generation to grow up in a world not quite so jaded and not yet consumed with technology. It was the beginning of the end of an era of innocence to be sure.

In the summer of 1975 we were all in the process of making the awkward transition into our teenage years. At thirteen, we were no longer considered little children per se, but were still far from adulthood, trapped instead for that and a handful of years to come at some unidentifiable point in between.

The year before, President Nixon had resigned, and Patty Hearst had been kidnapped. In January, men who seemed to be on television constantly at hearings none of us paid much attention to—John N. Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, and John D. Erlichman—were found guilty of the Watergate cover-up and sentenced to jail time ranging from thirty months to eight years. In April, the Vietnam War finally ended as the city of Saigon surrendered and the remaining Americans were evacuated.

Between Vietnam and Watergate, times had changed—even at thirteen you could sense it—both had damaged us as people somehow, and things didn’t feel the same. People had begun to view the world differently, with less trust and higher cynicism. The damage was done, and good, bad or indifferent, the country would never be the same again.

But that summer there were more important things to most thirteen-year-old boys. The Red Sox were tearing it up (and would go on to the World Series, only to lose to Cincinnati in a heartbreaking game-seven). Bernard’s mother had taken us to the R-rated films One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Dog Day Afternoon, but when Jaws hit the theaters it immediately became the coolest and scariest thing any of us had ever been allowed to see. Even in summer hotspots like Potter’s Cove and all throughout Cape Cod, people stayed out of the water in record numbers, constantly on the lookout for killer sharks, seeing fins behind every wave.

Later that year President Ford would survive two assassination attempts in less than seventeen days, then go on to lose to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election.

But the summer prior, the summer of 1975, marked the first real memory I had that signaled there was something a bit different about Bernard.

Of the group, Bernard had the youngest mother, and although all our parents knew one another, none of them socialized or could be described as friends. She was the only one who didn’t work. She had injured her back and received disability checks from the government, though she always looked fine to us. She drank a lot and rarely left the house during the day, but despite her problems, she was a very attractive woman, and considered by us to be a “cool” mom. Bernard slept at one of our houses almost every weekend, as his mother “entertained” various men she met at the local taverns she frequented and preferred to be alone with her beaus. This was common knowledge, but something none of us ever talked about, as Bernard seemed fine with it and only became embarrassed or upset if someone outside our group made a comment.

Of course, between her looks and behavior (which included sunbathing in their backyard in a bikini during the summer months) she quickly became a focal point for much of our hormone-crazed pubescent lust, but it was always kept quiet if Bernard was around. Still, he knew we were all drooling over his mother, but he seemed too preoccupied with every other female in town to notice. An interest in women was still relatively new to all of us, and Rick was the only one who’d had sex, having lost his virginity just weeks after his thirteenth birthday to a fifteen-year-old high school cheerleader the rest of us could only dream about even talking to.

Tommy had a more mature attitude than the rest of us did, and tended to hold back a bit, staying on the fringe of our mania like any sound leader. Yet we knew he easily could have found a girl to “do it” with had he wanted to. He was so good-looking it was unfair, yet he seemed to never use it to his advantage, as if somehow he were unaware of it. Donald was still at a point where he pretended (largely for the benefit of the rest of us) that girls were of sexual interest to him, and Bernard and I pulled up the proverbial rear, spending most waking hours thinking about girls but rarely getting anywhere near them.

The following September we’d enter high school, and within months I’d have my leather-jacket-wearing rebel routine down and my first real girlfriend. But that summer I was still a gangly and awkward kid with a twenty-four-hour erection—a hard-on with feet—my older brother Kenny had labeled me. He was five years older than I was, which had made him old enough to understand what had happened to our father, to miss him, and it devastated him. By the time I entered high school he had already graduated and enlisted in the Navy. He’d always seemed wholly uncomfortable in the role of big brother, much less surrogate father figure, so he kept his distance, and although it never seemed malicious or deliberate, I saw him just often enough to miss him, and frequently felt like an only child. He left home and joined the Navy at the end of that summer of 1975 and never looked back. From that point forward my memories of my brother consisted mostly of postcards he’d send from points all over the globe, and the one or two times a year I’d actually see him, when he’d blow into town for a day or two then head right back out on a ship to some distant locale.

A lot happened that summer—a lot changed, and memories were abundant—but on this night, sitting amidst the pale glow of security nightlights in that drab used car dealership, sipping beer and thinking back, I focused on one particular afternoon.

We moved through the forest purposefully, striding quickly along the path until we reached an incline and finally a large clearing more than fifty yards in. Perhaps fifteen feet high and set on a circular cement platform stood an old stone fireplace. In years past, when this particular stretch of state forest had been a popular camping area, the fireplace had been a necessary intrusion to the natural setting that kept fires set by the hordes of campers who descended on the area each summer safely contained. But due to the continued growth of residential lots being sold and built upon, along with the emergence a few years prior of a more modern campground on the other side of town, this patch of woods had been all but forgotten. Here, the forest had been thinned out considerably, and the new house lots were slowly closing in, but the appeal for us was that you could still reach this relatively private area quickly, in less than five minutes in fact, from the center of town.

Once we’d reached the fireplace I stopped, surveyed the surrounding area for witnesses then gave Bernard the go-ahead nod.

He crouched down in front of the fireplace, removed several round stones blocking the front then reached his hand inside up to the elbow. It returned holding a magazine concealed in clear plastic. My heart skipped a beat—it was true. Bernard hadn’t been making it up.

“Holy shit,” I mumbled, “is that it?”

Bernard scrambled away from the fireplace and plunked down onto a bed of pine needles, eyes blinking rapidly behind thick lenses of glass. “Check it out.”

I sat next to him. The sides of the plastic bag were blurred from condensation and dirt. “How long has it been in there?”

“Couple days.” Bernard laid the bag across his lap and set to opening it as if handling fine china. “I didn’t want to risk leaving it at home. If my mother finds this she’ll freak out.”

Bernard had claimed he’d come into possession of a certain magazine, one that supposedly made Playboy look like a comic book in comparison. He had not mentioned this magazine to anyone but me, or so he claimed, but you could never be totally sure with Bernard. His lies were never malicious, but they were often plentiful, and it left even close friends like me off guard at times as to when he was or wasn’t telling the absolute truth. I’d been very leery when he’d first mentioned it that morning—a magazine so intense he couldn’t keep it at home, couldn’t tell anyone but his closest friends about because it was so bad—the whole thing reeked of a Bernard story. But, here we were.

I looked around, abruptly aware of how quiet the forest was but for the occasional cackle of a bird or the windy echo of a car speeding past on the nearby highway.

“OK, we gotta go easy with it because it’s not in the greatest shape.” Bernard carefully removed what appeared to be a very old magazine from the plastic sleeve. On the cover was a black and white photograph of a blonde woman tied to a wooden chair. She wore a bra, panties, garter belt, stockings and high heels, and some sort of leather harness similar to a horse’s bit had been attached to her mouth. At first glance she looked like a typical model on one of the “true crime” or “detective” magazines we’d managed to get a hold of in the past, magazines featuring scantily clad women and headlines like Knife-Wielding Sex Fiend Tortures Bubbly Blondes! (Or some equally lurid blurb), and yet, even initially it seemed different somehow. The look in this woman’s eyes didn’t look posed or phony like the models I’d seen before. She looked genuinely terrified. My eyes shifted quickly to the words in bold red letters above her picture: BITCHES IN HEAT. The cover was cracked in several places, faded with age and dog-eared, and I couldn’t find a price listed anywhere. It had something of an amateur look to it, not a nice slick and glossy cover, like most magazines I’d seen in stores or on the newsstands.

“You’re not gonna fucking believe this.” Bernard laughed, sounding more guttural than gleeful. “It’s from the ’60s, I guess, and it’s illegal.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Chuckie DiNunzio.”

“Figures.”

“I was gonna buy another Penthouse or something, but I asked if he had any other stuff, you know, better stuff where the girls were doing shit instead of just laying there. Porno.”

“Yeah, dip-shit, I know what it’s called.”

Bernard gave a wide grin. “Anyway, Chuckie said he had some underground stuff that used to belong to his old man. He said there was a big stack of them buried under a bunch of crap down in his basement, so he took me down there and let me go through them. Man, I was freaking out, thinking Chuckie’s old man might show up, but Chuckie said the magazines had been down there so long his old man probably didn’t even remember they were there. Anyway, I went through them real quick and picked one out. I didn’t even know what was in it until I got a chance to sit down by myself and check it out, and then—ohhh, baby!”

I elbowed him lightly and laughed. “You’re such a fucking goof, Bernard, I swear to God.”

He laughed too, but quickly grew serious. “Hey, Chuckie says if they catch you with stuff this bad you’re screwed royal.”

I shrugged. “Chuckie DiNunzio’s a moron.”

“It was more expensive than the other ones, too,” Bernard said as if he hadn’t heard me. “Twenty bucks.”

“Twenty bucks? Where the hell you get that much cash?”

“Lifted it out of my mother’s purse.”

“She’s gonna miss that much, you fucking idiot.”

“She already asked if I took it,” he said through a smile. “I just said no and she believed me.”

I shook my head. “You’re nuts, man.”

“Hey, don’t tell anybody about the magazine, OK? Chuckie said if it got back to him that I told anybody where I got it him and DJ would kill me.”

Chuckie DiNunzio was a squat kid who wore wayfarer sunglasses and his hair slicked straight back. From his skinny ties to his straight-legged Levi corduroys, Chuckie was a neighborhood legend that came from a family of convicts and seemed destined to follow. A year older than we were, he’d run the neighborhood’s version of a black market for as long as we could remember. Whatever you needed, Chuckie either had it or could get it. If he came up empty his best friend and sidekick DJ Jablonski went to work on it. DJ, who was borderline retarded but physically enormous and the only sixteen-year-old still in junior high school, also provided Chuckie with the muscle he needed when deals went bad or “customers” got out of line. Chuckie dealt mostly in cigarettes, Playboy and Penthouse magazines, beer, pocket and hunting knives—even concert tickets once we hit high school. If you wanted it but couldn’t get it, Chuckie DiNunzio was the man to see.

This, however, seemed over the top even for Chuckie.

“I ain’t gonna say shit to anybody,” I mumbled.

Bernard carefully peeled back the cover to reveal a group of pictures segmented into various panels across the page. All were black and white and continued in a series what had begun on the front cover. The same woman was bound to the chair, the photographs tight shots; the background dark and without depth, as if they had been shot in front of a ceiling-to-floor black sheet. My eyes moved slowly, taking in one picture after another, each worse than the one before it. A fat shirtless man in a leather mask had joined the woman, and stood next to a table on which several odd devices and instruments of torture had been scattered. The first series of pictures consisted of the man hovering over the woman threateningly then progressed to a row where he was holding her chin up and slapping her repeatedly across the face.

“That’s fucked up,” I said. This magazine was already having the opposite effect on me that others had. A naked woman was one thing, but this was dark and grotesque and not even remotely sexy.

“Oh,” Bernard said breathlessly, “wait.”

He turned the page and although something told me not to, I looked anyway.

The man had cut the woman’s bra off and let it fall to the floor. In the remaining series he was touching her while she screamed and attempted to squirm away. The last photograph on the page showed the man standing next to the table, an odd metallic device with a long and thin rubber hose dangling from it in one hand, his other pointing a reprimanding finger at the still bound and terrified woman.

“What the hell is that?” I gulped so hard it hurt.

Bernard looked at me and smiled; his small chest rising and falling faster than before; a band of bright sunshine reflecting off his eyeglasses. “You know what an enema is?”

I did, but it took me a few seconds to remember the exact mechanics of it. “Jesus,” I finally said, “he’s not gonna do that, is he?”

Bernard nodded rapidly, his face flushed, but not from the sun. He turned the page.

“She looks all scared at first,” he said, slowly returning his gaze to the magazine, “but then once it starts she likes it, see?”

“Oh, man, that’s fucking nasty!” Afraid I might be sick, I struggled to my feet and brushed the pine needles from the seat of my pants. “Why the hell would I want to see something like that?”

“She likes it,” he said again. “Look, on the last page he unties her from the chair and she—”

“You’re fucking deranged, dude,” I said, forcing a cavalier laugh.

Something changed in his expression, and he gave a subtle shrug. “Nice tits, though, huh?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well, fuck, man, she’s probably older than my grandmother by now.”

He closed the magazine and slid it back into the bag. “You think Julie Henderson’s tits are that nice?”

“They’re not as big as those,” I said, relieved to see he was putting the magazine away. “But much nicer, not even close.”

Julie Henderson was 19 and gorgeous, the older sister of Brian Henderson, one of our classmates. Everything alive and male lusted after her, and we were no exception. To make matters worse, Julie jogged through town in late afternoon wearing short-shorts and a skimpy top almost daily, so of course it was not unusual for us to stop whatever we were doing and make sure to be on the street to see her pass by. From this simple event, which usually took all of fifteen seconds, countless discussions arose regarding all things Julie—most typically locker room in nature, of course—which only further fanned the fires of our sexual fantasies.

Bernard crawled across the fireplace and stuffed the plastic bag deep inside before replacing the loose stones. He stood up and hopped down next to me. “You know she runs right by here, right?”

I hadn’t known that but didn’t want to appear ignorant of her route. “Yeah, sure.”

“Sometimes I hide behind the fireplace and watch when she goes by.”

“Yeah, OK, perv-boy.”

“Sorry I’m not a fag like you.”

“Shut up, asshole.” I pushed him playfully, and not with much force. “Yeah, I’m a fag just because I don’t hide in the woods and beat-off watching some girl run by.”

Bernard staggered a bit, laughed then straightened his eyeglasses. “You watch her just like everybody else does.”

“Yeah but not out here. I mean, if I’m outside and—”

“If? Oh, yeah—right!”

“Fine, so I make sure I’m outside when she runs by.” We were both laughing now, and although I felt better, the pictures in that magazine kept appearing in my mind. “I look and I smile and she ignores me like always and jogs right by. Then I go inside and that’s it. I don’t fucking wait out in the woods and hide like some jack-off.”

Bernard looked at me like the thoughts occupying his mind were more important than returning my put-down with one of his own. “You know,” he said softly, “if you wanted to do something with her… this would be a good place to do it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Julie can’t wait to come out here and fuck you, Bernard. She’s probably home right now, all playing with herself and shit just thinking about it.”

I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. “Maybe she wouldn’t want to at first.”

“Try ever. Shit, if you were the last guy on the planet she’d probably go lesbo.”

“I’m being serious, dick-weed. She’s going away to college in September, you know.”

“So?”

“So, if we’re gonna do something with her it has to be before the end of the summer.”

“Bernard, listen to me. Julie Henderson would never do anything with you. Get a clue, dude, she probably doesn’t even know who you are.”

He walked toward the path leading out of the forest, then stopped and looked back at me. “I was talking to Rick about it.”

“About Julie Henderson?”

“Yeah. He said it would be funny if we waited out here one day, then when she ran by one of us could stop her and start talking to her.” He was smiling again, like he might be kidding. “Then one of us could sneak up behind her and pull her shorts down real fast. She’d be all embarrassed and stuff, but we’d get to see her.”

I moved closer and a shaft of sunlight cut the trees, causing me to squint. “Rick said that?”

Bernard nodded. “See, that way if she got all mad we could just take off running like it was a big joke… but if she doesn’t get mad, then we could try something else and see what happens.”

“Rick said all this?”

“Yeah.”

Another Bernard lie. “Bullshit.”

“We’re going over his house in a couple minutes,” he reminded me. “Ask him.”

“You guys could get in major trouble doing something like that, man. Seriously.”

“She wouldn’t tell.” Bernard’s eyes narrowed. “They never tell.”

Something in his tone caused my stomach muscles to clench. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Girls usually don’t tell when stuff like that happens to them,” he said.

“How the hell would you know?”

“Saw a show about it on TV. That’s what they said.”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t do anything like that anyway,” I told him, still not certain he was serious.

“You wouldn’t want to make it with Julie Henderson?”

“Of course I would, but… but, Jesus, I’d want her to want it too. If she doesn’t then it’s assault, dude—rape—that’s what it is.”

“So what?”

“So I don’t want to fucking rape her, what’s wrong with you?”

“But if she never told on you, and no one knew… then would you?”

“She’d know,” I answered. “I’d know.”

“She’d know,” he said mockingly, holding his chest like he was dying and repeating in a high-pitched voice, “I’d know! I’d know!”

“You asshole.” I laughed and threw a fake punch at him. “I thought you were serious.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Yeah, and maybe you aren’t,” I said as we turned and together, headed out of the forest.

“Besides, being a huge homo, you wouldn’t know what to do with a girl anyway.”

“OK, gay-boy, whatever.”

Our laughter echoed through the trees. As we followed the path on our way from the forest, we continued to insult each other with homophobic phrases and endlessly creative uses for profanity, as most teenage boys are wont to do.

In that regard, my memory of that afternoon seemed in no way out of the ordinary. Confronting Julie Henderson in the forest never came up in conversation again, and I dismissed it as nothing more than Bernard’s wishful thinking.

But I now found myself questioning what until that point had seemed a harmless discussion between two boys huddled over an old porno rag. Had Bernard simply been trying to work through his own sexual awakenings, confusion and desire like the rest of us, talking typical teen male bravado and pretending to be something he wasn’t? Or had it been a signal I’d missed—a warning that something else existed in him even then? Something dark… diseased… deadly.

She wouldn’t tell. They never tell.

I hadn’t thought about that afternoon in a very long time, yet the images that remained most vivid were also the most disturbing; even after all these years.

Glancing at the desk, I noticed three more empty beer bottles sitting in a neat row. I scooped them up, tossed them into the gym bag then propped my feet up and tried to get as comfortable as one can in a hard plastic chair.

A misting rain had replaced the snow. The night had grown darker it seemed.

My belly warmed with brew but my mind still reeling, I closed my eyes and searched for more memories, more clues.

It was just after two in the morning when I saw her.

A thick fog had rolled in off the water, making visibility a few feet at best. The street was quiet, hadn’t seen another living soul or even a car pass in more than an hour, and I was digging through my gym bag for another beer when I noticed movement from the corner of my eye.

I stood up and looked more closely at the fog, a small lamp and a night security bulb over the interior showroom provided the only nearby light. Two powerful beams on the roof sliced a canal through the fog, illuminating portions of the lot and the rows of cars. At the very edge of the property was a woman—a woman just standing there—thin arms dangling at her sides, vines of slow-moving fog curling about her, cradling her with ghost-like fingers.

I returned the unopened beer to my gym bag and moved around the side of the desk, never taking my eyes from her. Slowly, I slid closer to the showroom window. She was looking right at me, everything but her eyes masked in night and mist.

And while gazing into those eyes, it came to me. She looked like the woman with the little boy at Rick’s apartment building. You here about the plumbing?

She looked exactly like her, from what I could remember. I moved so close to the window that I was able to place a hand against it. Had to just be some hooker out wandering the streets in the middle of the night, I told myself. In that neighborhood—even at that time of night—it wouldn’t be unusual. But the woman looked sickly, and New Bedford was miles from Potter’s Cove. It seemed wildly far-fetched, and yet, deep down, I knew it was the same woman.

And from the way she was staring at me, she recognized me too.

Curiosity won out over fear, and I made my way to the door. I unlocked a series of deadbolts on the front entrance, the sound of them disengaging unsettling somehow in the otherwise quiet night.

The woman was still there; arms now folded across her sunken chest.

The weight of the nightstick on my hip reminded me of its presence as I pushed the door open and stepped into the fog. The air was brisk, a bit cooler than it should have been, and the fog seemed to dissipate somewhat. The steady thud of my heart echoed in my ears. I slowly, casually dropped a hand to the nightstick, felt my fingers wrap around the handle and tighten.

I’d either had more to drink than I realized, or the recent events combined with an overall lack of sleep and the recurring Bernard nightmare had finally taken their toll. Or, I told myself, all of this is actually happening.

“Ma’am,” I said through a hard swallow, “you all right?”

The woman gave no discernable response.

“Are you OK? Do you—you need some help, ma’am?”

Without saying a word, the woman let her arms drop back to her sides and left them dangling there, swaying as if broken and no longer of any use to her. But something in those eyes changed. They seemed to be imploring me, beckoning me.

My legs shuddered and I broke eye contact long enough to glance quickly across the front lot. I needed to know she was alone. The lot and street beyond were empty and still. My eyes returned to the woman in the fog.

“Can’t be the same woman,” I mumbled. “Can’t be.” I clutched the nightstick at my side but left it in my belt. “You live around here?”

Again, no response.

“You lost, lady?”

The woman turned away and drifted off.

I stood there, frightened, despising my weakness. “Are you lost?” I asked again, louder this time.

The woman continued on and slipped away into the fog, one final glimpse of her visible through the rolling clouds before they swallowed her completely as she reached the other side of the street.

With a deep breath, I held the nightstick tight and started across the lot after her.

CHAPTER 7

The fog thickened and embraced me from every direction, a giant specter with no beginning, middle or end. I moved to the outskirts of the lot, aware that the dealership was well behind me now and that from somewhere back there the two showroom roof lights were cutting the darkness and fog. Yet, what little light I could discern seemed to be coming from a solitary streetlight just across the width of road separating my position from the beginnings of the abandoned factory. I hesitated, waited for my eyes to adjust, and listened. There was no sign of the woman, and although the normal din of the city was still evident in the distance, it was quiet here, and but for the slow rolling fog, utterly still.

I held my ground for a moment and listened to the argument raging in my mind, wanting to forget all this and return to the relative safety of the dealership, but knowing I wouldn’t, knowing I couldn’t. I slid the nightstick free but kept it down against my leg as I stepped from the curb and crossed the street.

The fog parted, and I continued on to the far curb and what had once been the factory driveway. An old security and information hut sat boarded up and slowly dying a few feet from the beginning of the property, a long section of heavy though rusted chain still run across the lot entrance to prevent trespassers from driving too close to the abandoned building beyond. I pulled my flashlight from my belt, flicked it on and gave a slow sweep of the area. The beam was powerful but did little other than illuminate the fog, so I switched it off, returned it to my belt and allowed the streetlight to guide me.

Once I’d reached the chain I crouched and walked under it. The dark, ominous carcass of the factory stood before me, most of the long vertical windows blown out, the few panes still intact covered with the impenetrable filth of years of neglect. Decades before, those same myopic windowpanes had been blurred instead with sweat, while shadows, faceless and vague, submitted in silence. But I was certain those ghosts were long since exorcised. Something else was haunting this place now.

Or perhaps, only haunting me.

The thin layer of snow still blanketing the area had begun to melt, trickling and dripping from the factory to the pavement below. The windows on the first floor were boarded shut, but the large front doors had rotted and mostly fallen away, setting the mouth of the building in an eternal yawn.

I leaned closer to the opening. A partially rotted wooden plank that looked like it had fallen from above and landed there ages ago was wedged diagonally across the doorway. From within the enormous vacant structure I heard the echo of dripping water followed by a faint scratching sound. I reached again for my flashlight, aimed the beam at the plank and darkness beyond. Squatting at one end of the plank was an enormously plump rat. Making odd grunting noises, it sat back on its hind legs, reared up and bared its teeth.

Startled, I took a step back but kept the beam trained on him. The light reflected off his eyes, causing them to glow, two red orbs cutting the night. The standoff continued until finally, after a few contemplative sniffs, the rat turned, waddled to the end of the plank, and dropped down into darkness.

The acids in my stomach churned and I belched, tasted beer. Despite the chill in the air perspiration had beaded along my forehead, and my mind began to clear a bit. What the fuck am I doing? I looked back over my shoulder. The fog was so thick the dealership across the street was completely concealed by it, though the rooftop lights were just barely visible above the haze.

Something moved behind me.

I spun back around toward the factory, the flashlight in one hand, my nightstick in the other, both leveled in front of me and sweeping across the doorway in unison. Just beyond the rotted plank, partially shrouded in darkness, stood the woman.

Our eyes met and I offered a subtle nod.

She took a few steps deeper into the building then looked back at me.

I felt myself moving forward, swinging a leg over the plank and climbing through the doorway as if I no longer had complete control over myself. The flashlight flickered and extinguished. The darkness mixed with a soft cool breeze, the fear welling up in me in a single frantic rush as I shook the flashlight. The beam returned, casting a pool of light ahead of me, but by the time my eyes had adjusted I realized the woman was gone.

I stepped over a small pile of rubble and garbage and did my best to ignore the array of gut-wrenching smells. I swept the light about, searching for her, but found only a graffiti-covered wall and floors thick with debris. Scratching and then a scurrying sound I recognized as more rats momentarily distracted me, so I swung the light around.

Down a long and narrow hallway to my right, I saw a glint of light but no sign of the woman.

I carefully crossed the room, following the light at the end of the hallway. It led to another room, smaller and in even worse shape. I stopped in what was left of the doorway and saw a single candle burning on the floor, garbage strewn from one corner of the room to the next. The horrible stench of human waste filled the stale air.

The flashlight shook in my hand. I shut it off, returned it to my belt and gripped my nightstick with both hands. As I moved into the room, the flickering candlelight lapped the walls, casting shadows like thrashing demons. The woman was kneeling on the floor in the center of the room, holding something and rocking slowly. A dirty syringe, a spent book of matches and a blackened spoon lay scattered nearby. My eyes shifted; she was holding a boy in her arms—the same little boy who had hidden behind her leg at Rick’s apartment building—but now the boy was lifeless. Cradled, arms and legs dangling, his head lolled to the side, rested in the crook of the woman’s elbow, mouth open, small, swollen tongue protruding, eyes wide but seeing nothing—long dead.

Sinking deeper into madness, I shortened the distance between us. The woman’s head turned to reveal a face tormented and dirty, eyes bloodshot and terrified, cheeks hollow, dark skin pockmarked.

She glared at me like I was to blame, slowly rocked her dead son in sickly thin, needle-ravaged arms, and whimpered softly.

“You here about the plumbing?”

“No, ma’am,” I answered.

She looked away, eyes gliding to the far wall as if she’d seen something else, something more. Lips moving silently, she continued to rock the boy in her arms.

My eyes darted about the room, following the edges of light provided by the candle to the far wall, where painted in either red paint or blood were odd symbols that looked almost like hieroglyphics, hastily smeared about. What was once the door to the room had been suspended between two small stacks of chipped cinderblocks, forming what appeared to be a makeshift altar of some kind. Something lay beneath it in a heap on the floor, dark and unmoving, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

The woman moved, diverting my attention back to her. She laid the boy on the filthy floor gently and with great care then began to pull at the belt holding her robe closed. Bony fingers worked furiously until the belt was undone or torn loose, and the robe had fallen open. She slid one hand beneath the boy’s head, pulled it closer and leaned over him. A single small and emaciated brown breast fell free, the nipple elongated and raw.

She held the boy close, guided her nipple to his lips and pumped the loose skin along her breast, lips again moving rapidly but silently.

“Lady,” I managed, “Christ—lady, let me—let me get you and the boy out of here.”

She looked up at me. “You here about the plumbing?”

“No, I’m not here about the goddamn plumbing!”

Her eyes rolled back in her head as if she’d lost all control of them, and her body bucked, throttled by phantom hands.

I stood frozen as a small appendage emerged directly from the cracked skin along her nipple. At first I thought it was a long hair.

But then it moved.

Another matching thing broke through the skin, moved in time with the other along the boy’s lips, as if searching for purchase. The woman’s hand tightened around her breast, and as her nipple burst the shelled back of what appeared to be some sort of beetle or cockroach squirmed free, followed by another and another. As they bled from her onto the boy’s mouth, forcing their way between his lips and disappearing between them, I realized the hair-like substance had been an antenna. The insects continued to gush from her in impossible numbers, overflowing in the boy’s mouth like renegade parts of a single clicking, pulsating mass.

I reached blindly for the wall behind me, doubled over and somehow managed to choke back the vomit gurgling at the base of my throat. I staggered back, steadied myself against the wall, and looked at her.

She was still kneeling next to the boy, but no longer holding him.

The insects were gone. Her eyes, now unnaturally wide, began to bleed.

“What… what’s happening to me?” I asked.

She lunged for me with inhuman speed and clamped her hands onto my forearm. Her grip was painful and possessed greater strength than she appeared to have, and the moment her flesh made contact with mine, I felt a surge of energy explode through me like an electrical shock. My body jerked to rigid attention, and as my head fell back I heard the sound of my nightstick bouncing along the concrete floor.

Horrible flashes of unspeakable carnage flickered through my mind like an old 16mm film. Faces, such hideous, boil-covered, bloody grinning faces; growls and guttural laughter; fire; the screams of nameless beings engulfed in plumes of brilliant orange flame and blood. Teeth—fangs—ripping at slabs of human meat, what had once been people hanging upside down and gutted like cattle. Depravity—depravity like I had never seen—and all of it gushing through me in a single violent stream, disintegrating into a shimmer and a wisp of fog, trailing away from my vision like a spiral of cigarette smoke snaking toward a ceiling.

But there was no ceiling, only dark sky and thick fog.

I was outside again, standing in the middle of the street between the factory and the car dealership. My nightstick was on the ground at my feet, but the flashlight was on and clutched firmly in my left hand. Heart racing, I crouched down, retrieved my baton and bolted for the dealership.

Consumed by the fog, I struggled to maintain my bearings, running as hard and as fast as I could despite the burning in my lungs and the ache in my legs. And although I could not see it, I knew the evil was still there, still with me. There, in the fog, chasing, circling me, calling to me in low, tortured growls.

CHAPTER 8

Three days. Three days of confusion and disbelief, of vague memory and flashes of terror. Three days of lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if it was night or day beyond shades pulled shut, of drug-induced sleep, of groggy submission even when I was somewhere near consciousness. Three days of trying to convince myself I had not gone utterly insane.

The owner of the dealership had gone to work that morning to find me gone without explanation, the door unlocked and the desk where I’d been stationed littered with a pile of spent beer bottles. Nino had tried several times to contact me via the two-way but I hadn’t responded. I’d left the dealership and driven back to Potter’s Cove, parked out in front of Rick’s apartment building and waited for him to come home from the club.

At about four o’clock he pulled in and I met him on the street. Concerned, he invited me in but I declined, and asked him instead about the young black woman and her son who lived in the first-floor apartment when you first walked in.

That apartment was empty, Rick told me. Had been for months since the last tenant, a single middle-aged man had moved out. Then she was a squatter and had broken in and was staying there without anyone’s knowledge, I’d insisted, because I’d seen her the other day. She’d spoken to me the other day. Her son had spoken to me the other day.

Near total emotional collapse, I explained what had happened, and it was then that Rick insisted I let him drive me home. I agreed, but only after he promised he’d find out what was going on in that apartment.

I vaguely remember Toni thanking Rick before putting me to bed, then laying there, exhausted and spent, straining to hear their voices in the kitchen until I’d drifted off into something similar to sleep. At some later point she appeared with a prescription from her boss, pills that would relax me and help me sleep, she promised. Trust her, she’d said, and I did.

Now, three blurred days later, I found myself parked across the street from Battalia Security’s home office, a small storefront space on Acushnet Avenue, one of the main drags in New Bedford. I sat in the car and watched the place until I felt ready to wade into what I knew would be an unpleasant situation at best.

A pair of tiny bells over the door signaled my entrance. I moved to the front desk where Marge, the receptionist, secretary and occasional dispatcher sat, headset in place, long acrylic fingernails tapping a keyboard. She saw me and offered a tentative smile. “Hey, Al.”

“Hey.”

“How you doin’, hon?” she asked quietly. “You OK?”

I nodded. “Nino in?”

She cocked her head toward his office at the end of a small hallway behind her, the door closed. “He’s waiting for you, go ahead in.”

Nino, stressed out of his mind as usual, glanced up from an enormous pile of paperwork as I entered his office. He tendered a gas-lock smile and motioned to a chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”

I closed the door behind me, stepped over to his desk but stayed on my feet. “Nino, listen, I’m sorry about all this, I—”

Nino held his hands up, tossed a pen onto his desk and sat back in his leather swivel a bit. “I know you are, Al, I know you are.” Again, he motioned to the chair. “Sit.”

I moved to the chair and lowered myself into it, feeling like a child summoned to the principal’s office. “Nino, there’s no excuse for what happened, and I’m sorry, sincerely I am. I give you my word nothing like that will ever happen again. Ever.”

His eyes darted about, looking anywhere but directly at me. He leaned back further in his chair and nervously stroked his mustache with stubby fingers. “You been with us a long time,” he finally said. “You’re the best employee we got. The best we ever had.”

“I got fifteen years in here, Nino,” I reminded him.

“I know you do. You’re senior guy by like ten years, for Christ’s sake.” He again smiled briefly through obvious discomfort. “And besides all that, you—well, shit, you become a friend, you know what I’m saying?”

“I just—I’m having some problems at the moment, but—”

“Yeah, I hear ya.” He straightened the chair, pushed away from the desk and stood up. A squat and bulbous man with a penchant for flashy jewelry, ill-fitting slacks and imitation silk shirts, on this day he had worn a sweat suit and tennis shoes, signaling he didn’t plan to stay at the office long once our meeting was concluded. “Here’s the thing, though. I talked to Petey last night, and I did what I could, but my brother’s the boss, Al, you know how it is. I got say, but he’s got final say.”

“Look—”

“He thinks the world of you too, man, you know that.” Nino waddled over to a water cooler in the corner, found the cup dispenser empty and grabbed a nearby coffee mug instead. “But shit, Al, you walked on a job.”

“I know. I fucked up bad.”

Nino sniffed the coffee-stained mug, then slid it under the nozzle and filled it with water. Watching the bubbles rise in the plastic bottle, he said, “Thing is, we lost the account.”

“Christ, Nino, I’m sorry.”

“I did everything I could.” The mug now full, Nino returned to his desk and plopped into his swivel. From his middle desk drawer he pulled a package of two Alka-Seltzer tablets, tore them open and dropped them into the mug. “I’m sorry, we gotta let you go.”

“Come on, Nino,” I said, standing again. “I fucked up, but I got years in here.”

“You walked on a job! You fucking walked away in the middle of the night and left the place unlocked!” He grabbed the mug and killed the contents in one frantic gulp. “Then, if that ain’t bad enough, the guy finds beers all over the place!” He slammed the mug on the desk and it split from the force into two even halves. He glanced down, realized he was only holding a handle, and fired it at the wall. “Drinking on the fucking job happens now and then, you don’t think I know that? But you clean the shit up, for Christ’s sake! What kinda fucking moron leaves them lying around? What are you, freakin’ stunadz? Petey had to get involved personally; you see what I’m saying? Petey don’t like to have to get involved personally. He had to talk to the guy and calm his ass down. Shit, Al, he mighta sued us. He still might.”

“If you can just give me a week or two,” I said. “Just a week or two to get my shit together. A leave—give me a leave. No pay, just some time off so I can straighten things out.”

“Come on, man, don’t go making this more of a bitch than it already is,” Nino said. “Me and Petey talked it over, and we decided even with the shit that happened we’ll give you a good recommendation, OK?” He grabbed an envelope from one of the stacks on his desk. “Now, here’s the money we owe ya from your last check, plus your vacation pay. I slipped a month of base pay in there, too. Take the money and run, Al.”

I grabbed the envelope, stuffed it into my jacket and dropped my badge and employee/ID card in front of him. I’d clipped the two-way to my belt earlier, just in case, and with a tug, pulled it free and tossed it onto the desk with the other items.

Nino extended his hand across the desk.

After a moment, I accepted it.

It was a little after noon by the time I got back to town. Rick and Donald were waiting for me at the base of the staircase leading to my apartment. Decked out in a black leather jacket, heavy sweatshirt, jeans and a baseball cap worn backwards, Rick stood watching me with concern in his eyes. Donald, in a suit and tie, gave an awkward half-wave and a nervous smile. I didn’t need to say anything; they knew I’d been fired.

“Motherfuckers,” Rick mumbled.

I shrugged. “I had it coming, man. Can’t walk on a job.”

“Are you all right?” Donald asked.

“I’ll live.”

Rick scratched his five o’clock shadow then turned to face a gentle but crisp breeze blowing in off the water. “One of the part-time door guys is leaving next week,” he said a moment later. “Already gave his notice. I can get you in at the club if you want.”

“Thanks, but I need some time. I got to pull myself together.”

Rick nodded; eyes trained on the still water, the slowly gliding ducks. “You didn’t tell them about… you know.”

“Yeah, I told Nino the reason I freaked out was because I’m being haunted by the ghosts of a little boy and his mother.” I shook my head and turned into the breeze myself. “Not to mention the pink elephants under my bed and the flying elves that live in my fucking carpet.”

“I called the landlord, told him one of my buddies thought he saw someone in the vacant apartment the other day. He sent someone from his office down and they checked it out. The door was locked; the place was totally secure. No signs of forced entry or any signs at all that anyone had been in there since the last tenant.”

“I know what I saw, Rick.”

He looked at me. “I was there. I went in with the guy. No one’s been in that apartment.”

“I know what I saw.”

“I’m just telling you what—”

“No—horseshit—you’re riding the fence. You’re either with me on this or you’re not.”

“You’re sure it was the same lady and kid?”

My whole body trembled. “Yeah, I’m positive.” But the truth was, I could no longer be positive about anything. The truth was, I was terrified I’d lost my mind.

“All right, all right,” Donald said, “everyone just calm down.”

Rick turned and strutted toward his Jeep. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Donny’s on his lunch hour,” he answered without looking back, “Let’s go get something to eat and talk this through.”

Five minutes later we parked a couple streets over, about half a block away from a Vietnamese guy selling hotdogs and cola from a vendor pushcart.

He and Donald both ordered hotdogs. I ordered a Coke. Lunch in hand we drifted a few feet away to the entrance to one of the parks in town. The sky was cloudless for the first time in recent memory, and the sun was strong and warming despite the chilly temperature in the air, a teaser now that Spring was only days away. Although the area was heavily traveled, it afforded enough privacy for us to quietly continue our conversation.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “You guys don’t believe me, that’s the bottom line.”

Donald bit into his lunch, chewed for a moment before responding. “No one said that, Alan. But you have to admit there’s quite a difference between nightmares—dreams—we all shared and the things you’ve described. The dream aspect is strange, no doubt about it, but at the end of the day, all we’ve experienced are dreams. You’re talking about things taking place while you’re awake.”

“All I know is that whoever this woman is, whoever this kid is, they’re connected to Bernard somehow.” I sipped my cola then dropped the rest of it into a nearby trash bin. “They’re obviously trying to contact me. They’re trying to tell me something.”

Rick and Donald exchanged glances, but neither said a word.

“You know what? Fuck both you guys.”

“You said you were drinking that night,” Donald said. “Could that have had something to do with what happened?”

I faced him. “Oh, I don’t really think you want to go there, do you?”

“Now, look, I’m just saying—”

“What? What are you just saying, Donald?”

Tension hung in the air like a shroud.

Rick took a bite of hotdog, grimaced, and looked at it as if to be certain he was, in fact, holding something edible. “You told me there was all kinds of weird shit in the factory,” he eventually managed.

“Yeah, shit painted on the wall and what looked like an altar.” I ran my hands through my hair. “The place is fucked up, I…” I can’t even remember the worst of what happened there, is what I wanted to say, but couldn’t. “It’s just fucked up in there. You don’t believe me, go look for yourselves.”

Donald forced down the rest of his hotdog. “Stop being so confrontational. We never said we didn’t believe you.”

I looked to Rick. “So, what do we do?”

The frustration and anxiety etched across his face was disquieting. I was used to Rick having a temper, but I hadn’t seen him struggle with this kind of fear and uncertainty since the day of his prison sentencing years before. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on anymore. Dreams and thoughts and all kinds of dark shit racing through my mind, I—I don’t know what’s happening here, but there’s gotta be something to it. It’s like nothing seems real anymore. It’s all fucking hazy and—”

“Incomplete,” I said.

“Agreed.” Donald lit a cigarette and looked at the ground. “It’s the same for me. I feel like I should be able to remember certain things but I can’t, I try but sometimes nothing makes any goddamn sense.”

“I think no matter what,” Rick said, “we stick together. We stick together and we look out for each other, like always. We go off on our own or start fighting between ourselves and we’re fucked.”

I nodded, welcoming them to my madness, grateful to no longer be drowning in it alone.

Rick spit out a bite of hotdog and fired the rest back in the direction of the vendor. “Jesus, these are fucking disgusting.”

The vendor watched the remains of the hotdog roll along the pavement with a quizzical look.

“Take it easy,” Donald said, “don’t make a scene.”

“Goddamn things crunch, for Christ’s sake.” He motioned to the vendor and increased the volume of his voice. “Peanuts crunch, motherfucker, not hotdogs. Fuckin’ slant. What the hell you doing selling American food anyway? Ass-bags come to this country and—”

“Scoop up all the good jobs like selling hotdogs on street corners and picking produce for pennies a day. Bastards.” Donald flicked his cigarette away and took Rick by the elbow. “Come on, you have to drive me back to work.”

Rick jerked his arm free and started toward the vendor with a slow but threatening gait. “You looking at something, you fucking cocksucker?”

“I cannot tolerate it when he behaves like this,” Donald said. “Goddamn child.”

“Come on, man,” I said, stepping between him and the vendor, who had already begun to move to another corner. “Don’t take it out on him, let’s just get the hell out of here.”

Rick glared at me, looking like he might literally explode if he didn’t hit something, and for a second, I thought that something might be me, but he spun around, stormed back to the Jeep and punched that instead.

The ride to Donald’s office building was quiet and uncomfortable. After some brief and standard good-byes, Rick and I continued on to my apartment. He parked near the railroad tracks and we sat there without speaking for quite a while.

“I shouldn’t have freaked out like that back there,” he eventually said. “I just get—you know, shit builds up and—”

“Whatever,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Maybe we’re all going a little nuts.”

“Maybe.”

There was anger in his eyes, a defiance of fear. “What the hell’s happening?”

“I don’t know. But I think you were right when you said that whatever it is, it’s some bad shit. And we don’t know the half of it.”

“You think we ever will?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Whether we want to or not.”

CHAPTER 9

I blinked open my eyes, escaped one darkness for another. What little I was able to discern of our bedroom slowly blended into focus. The shade was pulled but enough moonlight bled through to partially illuminate the far wall. I couldn’t be sure how long I’d been out, but it felt late. I’d taken another one of those damn pills and slipped into dreamless sleep, and though I was now fully awake, I knew the aftereffects of the tranquilizer would linger for quite some time. The blankets were off and kicked down around my feet. On Toni’s side of the bed they’d been neatly turned back and were still tucked in at the side. In the darkness beyond, the bedroom door stood slightly ajar, a faint light visible along the gap between its edge and the doorframe. I pawed at my eyes, the lids still heavy, and let loose a lengthy yawn.

Somewhere outside a siren blared before fading to silence. It was replaced by the distant sound of Toni’s voice. I lay still and listened. She was on the kitchen phone, talking just above a whisper, the floor creaking occasionally as she walked. I couldn’t make out any of what she was saying, but her tone was somber.

I focused on my feet, there at the edge of the bed. They looked so pale in the dark, so white and bloodless, as if they’d been carved from ivory.

One day I’ll be nude and stretched out just like this, I thought, but instead of being in bed I’ll be slapped atop a cold metal table. Someone I don’t know and have probably never met will hover over me, preparing my body, desecrating it, draining the blood, replacing it with something else, something foreign and unnatural; something that once introduced will render me subhuman. The idea that my body would one day be transformed and treated, protected from decay so that it could lay sealed away beneath the ground—no longer a living organism, more an unseen ornament, a perverse version of what it had once been—seemed both hideous and fascinating. What would it be like? Would I know or even care when it was happening to me?

I wondered if other people looked at their bodies and thought about the same things.

My eyes shifted to the nightstand, and the dark lamp, leather Bible draped in rosary beads, and the clock radio that resided there. I wondered when each item had been manufactured, and realized that regardless, unless purposely destroyed, in all likelihood each would be here in one form or another long after I’d gone.

The events of the last few days flashed through my mind in rapid succession. As the progression slowed, my memories focused on Rick strutting about and screaming at that poor hotdog vendor like some testosterone-gone-wild teenager. We were very different, Rick and I, and though I found certain aspects of his personality appalling, there were also those I envied. I didn’t possess the discipline to hit the gym five days a week, to run three miles a day; I didn’t share his fascination with keeping the body beautiful, his compulsive desire to stay forever young. I’d never longed for immortality. But for Rick, life and age were no different than any of the other games he’d mastered. In his mind they were opponents, and Rick played to win.

Some days it seemed nothing more than a desire to turn back time and erase the year he’d spent in prison, to freeze the clock and live instead as the person he’d been in the days before it all went bad. He never discussed his time behind bars, and I’d always respected that. In many ways, I had a healthy dose of guilty admiration for Rick. He was capable of things I was not, yet it often seemed he did things in order to prove to himself what was already glaringly apparent to everyone else. At eighteen, I wouldn’t have survived a week in a maximum-security prison, and in my late thirties I didn’t have the balls, confidence or even the inclination to go white water rafting or skydiving or mountain climbing the way he occasionally did. I couldn’t remember what it was like to have a girl on my arm I didn’t plan to spend more than a few hours with, or how it felt to make love to more than one person in the same week. That sort of lonely and vacuous freedom was a memory so distant, I questioned whether it had ever been a genuine facet of my life at all. Still, as Bernard had so cruelly said on the tape, Rick had never imagined his life would be spent as a bouncer at a local nightclub. Now, those things that had always given him the edge were necessary tools for survival. Younger, stronger men would soon be bucking for his job, if they weren’t already, and eventually, one of them would show him the curb. Then, all the rugged good looks, pumped muscles, independence and tough-guy-swagger in the world wouldn’t save him. As incomprehensible as it seemed, Rick would one day be old and unable to rely on his physical prowess, forced to admit he was just as frightened and uncertain as everyone else, and in the end, just another lost soul trying to find his way.

Perhaps that had been the source of his anger, his rage at how life had turned out and a fear of what lie ahead. But the violence in Rick had been there as long as I’d known him. Was the constant pressure of living up to the Superman image he’d created to blame, or were there specific incidents hidden somewhere in the past that better explained it?

That day in the forest with Bernard came to mind. Had something happened out there? Had Bernard done something to Julie Henderson in those woods? Had Rick helped him? Would Rick do something like that—could he have done something like that even then, even at thirteen? I closed my eyes, tried to remember back through the years. As far as I knew, Julie had gone off to college that September, but she’d been a lot older than we were and I’d hardly known her. I couldn’t recall seeing her around town after that summer, and my friendship with her brother had waned so I’d no longer been privy to even casual information on Julie’s life. But had something happened, it would’ve been big news in Potter’s Cove. Everyone would’ve known about it, charges would’ve been pressed, assuming she’d told anyone.

They never tell.

I ran my hands through my hair and focused on the ceiling.

Things I’d been certain of no longer seemed absolute. Was Bernard right about a lot more on that tape than any of us wanted to admit? Were any of us what we seemed? Was I just an asshole for thinking Rick capable of such a thing or naïve for never before realizing Bernard was?

I tried to picture in my mind what Rick was doing at that very moment, but my thoughts drifted to Donald instead.

In many ways I’d always felt closer to Donald than I did to Rick, but like Bernard, he could be terribly aloof at times. The difference was that unlike the occasional mystery associated with Bernard, there was never anything along those lines evident in Donald’s behavior. When he distanced himself I’d always believed it had more to do with a desire for basic privacy than it did with anything suspect. In fact, he was the absolute antithesis of Rick in that he was the most nonviolent person I’d ever known. I couldn’t remember a single instance when Donald had raised a hand in anger against anyone. His mind had always been his weapon. A weapon he’d used often, until Tommy died. None of us had been quite the same since his death, but Donald shut down for more than a year after the incident, and any child-like essence or shred of wide-eyed wonderment that had still resided in him was instantaneously snuffed out.

I remembered walking the beach with him the day of Tommy’s funeral. We walked the same stretch of deserted sand again and again, only speaking occasionally, and even then only in clipped phrases. On one pass, Donald spotted a rotting grapefruit resting in the tall grass along the edge of the beach. He picked it up and held it out for me with an awkward expression somewhere between tears and rage. I looked at him questioningly. “Just take it,” he’d said quietly, his voice barely perceptible. “Nothing should ever go to waste.”

Although it was rotten garbage, although it already had gone to waste, I took it anyway, carried it with me until we’d left the beach and returned home. Only when Donald had gone and I knew he wouldn’t see, did I throw the grapefruit away, and even then I’d felt guilty for having done so, because he’d been right. Nothing should ever go to waste. Not a grapefruit, not a teenage boy.

Donald had gone on to college as planned, but his heart was no longer in it, and his excitement and hopes for the future became memories; dreams unfulfilled, dead and buried along with Tommy. He began to drink more, and I suspected his problem had been festering for a number of years now, though only recently had it clearly gotten away from him.

Like Rick he hadn’t had many serious relationships, but unlike Rick, he was not promiscuous. Unless he was with us, he was usually alone. I had only heard him mention a couple of people over the years, and those were more casual acquaintances—occasional dates or friends—not meaningful partners.

As Bernard said on the tape, there had been someone in high school, but that had apparently ended badly and only deepened Donald’s cynicism and depression. He’d been hiding, in a sense, ever since. Even in a room full of people he seemed hopelessly alone, more purposely detached than shunned, as if he and he alone understood how futile and senseless existence could be.

Donald had thrown away a lot, but the list included neither his wit nor his sense of compassion. Though he’d tempered his humor over the years, it remained an enormous part of who he was, as did his genuine concern for others. He was a deeply complex man, and as well as I knew him, some days I wondered if he’d always be there on the other end of the phone, the other side of the door. Like Rick, and to a degree, like me, he was a survivor to be sure, but a survivor in spite of his actions, not because of them.

But maybe Donald wasn’t exempt either. Did he know something else about what was happening? Did he share some secret with Bernard like perhaps Rick did? Could it have been to blame for his downward spiral escalating in recent months?

I sat up and slowly swung my feet around onto the floor. A brief dizzy spell replaced my shameless paranoia. I closed my eyes; saw the faces of the young boy and his mother glaring at me.

My eyes opened. The room had stopped spinning.

I had thought about the others, suspected and betrayed them in thought, but what about myself? Was there something I knew, something I shared with Bernard in all this without realizing it?

Before I could further search my mind I heard the kitchen phone returned to its cradle, followed by the sound of Toni padding toward the bedroom.

As the door opened she balked but quickly regained her composure. “I thought you’d be asleep,” she said through a meager smile. “You startled me.”

“Just woke up. Those pills knock me out.”

“That’s why Gene prescribed them. It’s an anti-anxiety,” she told me. “He said they’d help you sleep.”

“He’s right.” I rubbed at the stiffness along the back of my neck. “What time is it?”

“A little after ten.”

“At night, right?”

“Yes, sweetie, at night.” Toni strode to the window, raised the shade.

I glanced at the moonlight, then back at her. I could almost feel her discomfort. “Look, I’m sorry about the job.”

“You can always get another job.”

“I had it coming, but Nino only fired me because Petey made him. After a few weeks he’ll be begging me to come back. Where are they going to find anyone as reliable and loyal as me? Besides, I got that nice check, that’ll help hold us over for a while.”

Toni moved toward me with an air of caution I’d never seen her display, and sat next to me on the bed. “We need to talk, Alan.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“I mean about what happened the other night.”

I nodded. She’d been smoking heavily; I could smell it on her. “Look, I told you everything that happened as best as—”

“I spoke with Gene about all this, and—”

“What? Why did you do that without talking to me first?”

“Honey, he’s a psychiatrist, this is what he does.”

I stood up, legs shaky. “It’s none of his fucking business. Jesus Christ, Toni, why does Gene have to know every goddamn tidbit of what happens in our personal lives? You work for him, it’s not like he’s a member of the family—I don’t even consider him a friend.”

“Well, I do.” Her hair, thick but styled short, was mussed. She combed a renegade strand away from tired, mascara-smudged eyes. “He’s concerned about you, Alan, and so am I.”

I stood there clad only in a pair of boxers, not certain what to do with myself. “I freaked out, OK? I’m fine.”

“I don’t think—”

“That’s it, end of story.”

She looked at the floor. “I’m afraid, Alan.”

“So am I.”

“I’m afraid of you.”

I felt emotion well up at the base of my throat. “For Christ’s sake, baby, come on.” I sunk to my knees, put my hands in hers. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

Trembling, her eyes brimmed with tears. “The other night was—I mean, I’ve never seen you like that it—you were babbling and insisting all these crazy things had happened and I couldn’t calm you down or talk to you. You had a total collapse, a—a breakdown. That’s not normal, Alan. It’s not healthy.”

“I’m OK,” I told her. “I promise you, I’m OK.”

She removed one hand from mine and wiped her eyes. “Gene feels it could be extremely beneficial for you to go in and discuss what happened that night.”

“Who are you talking to, some patient?” I pulled my hands free and stood up. “Gene. What the hell’s he know about it? Is that who you were on the phone with just now?”

“Yes, we—”

“Getting awful cozy with that fuck, aren’t you?”

Her face dropped, the tears still staining flushed cheeks. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

I moved to the window. “Tell him to mind his own fucking business.”

“I went to him for help, Alan.”

“Well stop going to him for help. Leave him the hell out of it.” I grabbed either side of the window casing as a means of occupying my hands so I wouldn’t put them through the wall. “I’m not some nut who needs a psychiatrist. I’m not one of his fucking whacked-out patients.”

“I never said you were any of those things,” she answered softly. “I just thought it might be a good idea to go and talk with him about it, that’s all.”

“About what, exactly?” I pushed away from the window, turned back to her. “About what? What should we cover first, my nightmares? That maybe Bernard was some sort of deranged psychopath and had been for years? That maybe all the clues were right there in front of us all that time and for some unknown reason we chose to ignore them? That maybe no one—motherfucking no one—including myself are who or what I thought they were? That I’m seeing people who aren’t fucking there? Dead women and little boys in the dark—that’s a good one. Or how about that I know even more things happened in that factory—bad—evil things that I—I don’t want to remember, Toni, I—Christ almighty, they’ll lock me up, I…”

What began as choking sobs quickly evolved into violent, uncontrollable weeping. Without a word she opened her arms, and I went to her quickly. We held each other, arms and tears entwined for what seemed a very long time.

I held her face in my hands, looked into her eyes. “I need to handle this on my own. I know it seems crazy but something is happening, and it’s not in my mind. It’s real. I’m not insane.”

“I never said you were. But you’re having problems, you—”

“It’ll be all right. I need to find the truth now. I can’t ignore it anymore, it—it won’t let me, do you understand?”

She tried to smile as she touched my cheek, and for the first time I realized she was wearing only a long T-shirt and a pair of panties. The dark tint of her nipples showed through the thin fabric, erect and pressed against it as if trying to escape. She looked so helpless and afraid in the moonlight, as if her safety and sanity hinged solely on me, and perhaps it did. “I love you,” I told her. “No matter what, I always love you.”

Soft hands caressed my thighs, warm breath tickled my neck, and moments later Toni blended into focus above me. Soulful eyes blinked slowly, cradling history—our history—as her tongue flicked across my cheek, slid into my ear. My arms wrapped around her, fingers kneading firm buttocks, slinking gradually across her back and onto her shoulders. I felt myself harden between her legs, parting a soft tuft of hair there as she moved to meet me, raising her hips, arching her back, drawing me deeper. She slithered closer, her body moving like a python as she straightened her spine and lay on top of me, eyes holding mine as if fearful she might lose me in the dark.

When it was over she was by my side, her heart beating against me, warm fingers gently tracing the contours of my chest as we lay quietly in each other’s arms, winded and wet. It was the first time we’d made love in quite some time. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she feared it might be the last.

Everything trickled through my mind like falling rain: The cellar, the photograph of the woman none of us could identify, the tape, the nightmares, the hauntings, the abandoned factory. The madness. “Bernard wasn’t what we thought he was,” I said softly. Toni snuggled closer but said nothing. I knew she still didn’t believe me, but then, I’m not sure anyone did.

Until winter melted away, became spring, and the first body was found.