The Devil Next Door

23

After Ray Hansel and Paul Mackabee of the State Police CSI left Greenlawn High School and Principal Bejamin Shore and the crime scene in general, they drove through the town, trying to get a feel for it. And what amazed them most was that they couldn’t.

The town felt… what?

Hansel wasn’t sure exactly, but almost blank, empty, deserted. The way a ghost town would feel, the sense that it was unoccupied. That you were the only thing in it. And that didn’t make much sense because he saw people out in the streets walking, washing their cars, shopping, women pushing baby strollers and men leaning on the backs of pickup trucks, chatting, as men will do. There was life, there were people, but why could he not feel them? Although it made absolutely no sense on the surface, Greenlawn was like a town peopled by mannequins, dummies. Things that looked like people, pretended to be people, but were not people.

You be careful with that, Hansel told himself, you be real careful. There’s something wrong here and you know it. If all goes to hell as you are suspecting it will, there’s going to be need of a few clear, clean heads that can do some thinking.

“Don’t know about you, Ray,” Mackabee said, “but I’m getting a chill right up my spine.”

“Me, too.”

They listened silently to the squawk coming over the radio and it did not allay their fears much. There were a couple of old houses burning on Water Street on the north side. A couple kids had drowned in the Green. Lots of domestic disturbances. A couple of assaults. A child had gone missing after school. And there had been no less than three reported suicides within the hour. All this in Greenlawn. Whatever this was, it was building, gaining momentum.

Maybe if it had just been here and not the rest of the country they might have felt a little relieved. But it was everywhere and that scared the shit out of both men.

Hansel thought: Nowhere to run. No matter how bad it gets here, there’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. No safe harbor. One town will be just as insane as the next.

Jesus.

He drove downtown and pulled up before the police station, a tall and narrow slab of pale brick. He stood there on the sidewalk, sensing things that he did not like.

An old man walked past and his eyes were filled with murder.

A woman walked by holding a little girl’s hand and there was something almost synthetic about the expressions on their faces.

“I’m gonna go grab a cup of coffee across the street,” Mackabee said and from the way he said it, the idea of that disturbed him.

Hansel nodded. “Keep your eyes open. Watch yourself. I’m gonna go see Bobby. See what he has to say.”

Sighing, Hansel went directly upstairs to Bobby Moreland’s office. Moreland was the chief of the city police. He was a fat, funny man who seemed to know just about everyone in town on sight. Some said he would advance soon into politics.

Hansel found him sitting behind his desk, sipping coffee. He was still large, but there was no humor in those eyes and certainly no laughter wanting to come out of that dour mouth.

“Ray” he said.

Hansel sat down. “What’s going on?”

Moreland was staring at the screen of his laptop. “Things are going mad over in England. There’s a group of hundreds that are currently laying waste to central London… they’re murdering, raping, pillaging. Unbelievable. They’re practicing a scorched earth policy, Ray. Burning and destroying everything. They’re even killing the animals in the stockyards. Slaughtering them. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Hansel shrugged, considered it. “Sure. It’s going on in Washington and New York right now. The army is fighting a house-to-house guerilla war in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Baltimore is burning. So is St. Louis. Cleveland is a war zone. Dallas and New Orleans are so bad that they sent in the Marines. Except, from what I’m hearing, discipline has broken down and scattered bands of Marines are raiding at will. And did I mention that the governor of California ordered an airstrike on East LA?” Hansel just shook his head. “Civilization is crashing, Bobby. But to be honest, I don’t really give a shit about those other places. I’m mostly concerned with this state, this county, and Greenlawn in particular at the moment.”

“Well, we have a little bit of everything, as you well know.” Moreland picked up his Styrofoam coffee cup, realized it was empty and set it back down. “I can’t keep a handle on it all. Between my boys, yours, and the county boys, we got our hands full. I keep hoping this is going to die down… but it’s not dying down, Ray. Can you tell me why that is?”

But Hansel just shook his head. “I don’t know. Something has this town, this country, this whole goddamn world, and it squeezing the guts out of it.”

Moreland looked defeated. “My wife… she’s a little soft on religion and all… she thinks… she thinks it’s the Devil. Devil come down to Earth. Armageddon, the Rapture, all that happy horseshit.”

Hansel did not laugh as he might have a week ago. “Well, Bobby, if it was the Devil, then at least we’d have an enemy to fight. Something to go after. But this… shit, there’s no rhyme nor reason. It’s coming down everywhere and there’s no fucking reason for it.”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna hear something funny?”

“Sure, I could use a laugh.”

“Oh, you won’t laugh, trust me.” Hansel got up and went to the window, peered through the Venetian blinds to the streets below. “I see people out there, going about their business, but I don’t feel ‘em. Does that make sense? They’re there, but it’s like they’re not there at all.”

Moreland just nodded. “Town feels empty, don’t it? Things going on, more things than we can ever handle and a lot more we won’t know about for days and days, yet it’s quiet out there. You know? Just quiet.”

“People you see don’t smile, Bobby. They don’t even talk. They just walk around like they’re lost, like they’re trying to find their bearings.”

“Maybe they are.”

Hansel thought so, too. All of them out there were feeling it. Some had been affected by it, many in very devastating ways. But the majority were just confused, trying to make sense. Trying to understand why reality had been unplugged and they were about to fall headlong down a steep incline. One without a bottom.

“I got units that aren’t reporting in,” Moreland said. “That scares me the worse. But what can I do? Call the governor and say that this town needs psychiatric help? How would that sound?”

“Like you were cracking up,” Hansel told him.

“I am.”

“No, not yet you aren’t.”

Moreland studied his hands for a long time and when he spoke, he did not look up and meet the other man’s eyes. “You want to hear a confession, Ray? One that won’t sound so good at all.”

“Sure.”

“I’m scared,” Moreland admitted. “I’m scared like I’ve never been scared in my life. I’m scared for the world. But more than that, I’m scared for Greenlawn.”

But Hansel understood. For he was scared himself. He licked his dry lips, said, “Sad thing is, by the time this is over, Bobby, I’m afraid there won’t be anything left of civilization. Now how’s that for drama? People going crazy, people acting like animals. Six months from now we might be living the way our ancestors did. A world lit only by fire…”