1 The Bank of the River (8 page)

“Try over
here,” Roy said, prying the baseboard off the opposite wall himself.

Steven ran
the flashlight into the corner again, looking for the board Roy described. He
found one near the middle of the hallway. “Here!” he said, and began to pry it
using the screwdriver. It popped up with a little effort, along with a couple
of attached pieces of the hardwood floor. There was nothing directly underneath
it, but shining the flashlight into the hole Steven could see that there was a
space that bent to the left. Steven turned to Roy. “Ben showed you this?”

“Yes,” Roy
replied. “in a way. He felt it was part of the solution, and part of the
problem.”

“What did he
mean by that?” Steven asked, suddenly not sure he wanted to find what lay
below.

“No idea,”
said Roy. “But we need it if we’re going to figure this out.”

Steven sat
thinking. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to reach his hand into the space and
search for whatever might be lurking there.

“Oh for
fuck’s sake,” Roy said. “Get out of the way, I’ll do it.”

-

“This is all
just crazy lunatic rambling,” Steven said as he flipped through the book they
had found under the hallway floorboards. “Debra mentioned this to me. Ben went
off his rocker, completely paranoid. This reads like a stream of consciousness
from a sick mind.”

“Ben might
have been paranoid,” Roy said, “but he had every right to be. And he wasn’t
unbalanced, I’m sure of that.”

“Then you’ll
have to explain this to me,” Steven said, abandoning it, tossing it to his
father on the other side of the kitchen table. “It seems like the crazy shit
you see on the walls in a serial killer’s lair in a movie. It’s useless.”

Roy took the
book and began reading through it. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he sighed,
turning the pages. “I can’t think straight right now anyway. Let’s get some
shuteye and approach this fresh in the morning.” Roy closed the book and stood,
but his legs gave out under him, and he fell to the floor.

“Damn it,
goddamn it,” Roy exclaimed. Steven rushed over and grabbed Roy’s arm,
attempting to lift him. “What happened?”

“I’m fine,
I’m fine,” Roy said, attempting to get to his feet. “I just need to…” and he
slumped into Steven’s arms.

“Dad? Can
you hear me?” Steven asked, carrying his father back to the kitchen chair and
setting him into it as carefully as he could. Roy fell forward onto the kitchen
table and stayed there. Steven checked Roy’s breathing and heartbeat, both of
which seemed fine. Maybe Roy was just exhausted and needed rest, but he wasn’t
taking chances. With everything he had seen his father go through the past few
days he was surprised it hadn’t happened earlier. Roy was a tough old man, but
he
was
old, and he had his limits.

As much as
Roy would be against it, Steven picked up the phone and dialed 911.

“Here, I brought
you something,” Steven said, tossing Ben’s book from the floorboards into Roy’s
lap on the hospital bed.

“Unhook me
and take me home, goddamnit,” Roy said.

“Not a
chance. Not until they tell me you’re OK,” Steven said.

“I’m telling
you I’m perfectly fine. They wouldn’t know anyway,” Roy replied.

“Well, humor
me. The doctor is supposed to come around in a few minutes. In the meantime,”
Steven said, pulling up a chair, “I wish to retract some of what I said about
this book last night.”

“What was
that?” Roy asked.

“Turns out
there is something useful in it. After I left here last night, I went home and
tried to sleep, but couldn’t. So I started going through it, more carefully,
page by page. These pages in the middle, the ones that look like scrapbooks,
where he taped in newspaper articles?” Steven said, turning the book to the
pages to show Roy, and pointing to one in particular. “That’s what I found.”

Roy took the
book and read what Steven had pointed out. It was a
Seattle Times
article taped to the pages of the journal.
Suspect Released in Abduction
Case,
the title read. “Hand me my glasses,” Roy said, pointing to the stand
by the bed. Steven grabbed them and handed them over to Roy, who put them on
and began to read, sometimes muttering the words, other times stopping to shoot
a glace up at Steven, who stood by the bed watching Roy’s reaction.

Roy finished
the article, and turned back a page. Here was another article, this one about
cancer radiation from power lines. Before it was an article on contaminated
baby food from China. “OK, what does it mean?” Roy asked. “I don’t see any
connection.”

“That
article on the abduction suspect is the Rosetta Stone to the rest of the book.
Not the stuff that comes before it, but everything after. I’ve marked some
other sections with post it notes. I want you to read them, but read them with
the abduction article in mind. Everything before it is Ben trying to find an
answer, rambling, lost. He found what he was looking for when he found that
article.”

Roy turned
to the first bookmark Steven had inserted into the book, and read some of that
page. The penmanship was very small. Ben had managed to cram thousands of words
on a single page, filling every available space. The overall effect of the page
was lunacy, but the content, read as Steven instructed, became more lucid with
each word.

Roy stopped
and flipped to the next bookmark. Same reaction. As Roy continued to work his
way through the sections Steven had prepared, he watched the color drain from
Roy’s face. When he reached the last one, Roy glanced up at Steven and said, “You
gotta get me outta here. I insist. Right now.”

“Wait,
there’s more,” said Steven, smiling, pleased that his father seemed to pick up
on what he had discovered in the book.

“More?”
asked Roy, clearly intrigued.

At that
moment the doctor walked into the room, and Roy handed the book back to Steven.
Steven guessed Roy preferring to not be discovered with something so lunatic by
a doctor who would be giving him a prognosis.

They chatted
for a few moments, with the doctor saying all tests were negative and giving
Roy a clean bill of health. Steven asked about the cause of Roy’s collapse.

“Well, Roy
tells me he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in several days,” said the doctor. “I’d
say it was due to exhaustion. Nothing else appears wrong. You can go, but I’m
prescribing sleep – lots of it.”

Roy sat
upright in bed, looking between the doctor and Steven, with a grin on his face.
“Great, let’s go,” Roy said. “Where’s my clothes?”

The doctor
held his hand up to stop Roy. “I’ll need you to wait here until a nurse comes
around and removes the IV. Then you’ll find your clothes in the drawer of the
cabinet by the door. But please don’t leave the room until a nurse brings the
paperwork by for you to sign.” The doctor turned to Steven. “You’ll make sure
he gets out of here OK?”

“Yeah, I’m
driving him home,” said Steven.

“Great. If
this should happen again in the next 72 hours bring him back in. Thank you
both, have a nice day,” the doctor said, and left the room.

“If this is
right,” Roy said as soon as the door had shut, “Ben found who killed his son.”

“Little
Tony,” Steven offered, “and others. Who knows how many more.”

“I’m going
to guess four,” Roy said.

Steven
looked at him, knowing he was right. “Yeah, four.”

They paused.
Roy cleared his throat. “OK, let me start this again, see if we’re thinking the
same thing. Ben is searching for what happened to his son. He tried several
wild ideas, but they’re all just stabs in the dark. But then he settles on this
abduction story, decided that this suspect they released was the man who
abducted Little Tony. Then what?”

“He stalks
the guy,” Steven offered. “I know I would. Ben had all the time in the world on
his hands, remember, he’d been combing through parks and fields and abandoned
properties. He switches his focus to this guy, to see if his theory is
correct.”

“Because,”
Roy interjected, “if it is, he might be able to save Little Tony.”

“So,” Steven
continued, “he stalks the guy, until something confirms to him that he’s the
guilty one. He discovers that Little Tony is gone, all the children are gone;
this guy has killed them. In his anger, he kills the guy, and he disposes of
the body. He feels a sense of justice, that he’s avenged the death of his son,
and he’s taken a killer off the streets, saved countless others.”

“But that’s
not the end of it.”

“No, it’s
not. Because whatever he killed came back to haunt him. All of Ben’s journal,
following that article, is about the stalking and the haunting. He conveniently
left the killing out.”

“I would
have left it in,” Roy said with indignation. “Any father would have been
justified. I’da helped him pull the trigger.”

“I know,” Steven
acknowledged, “but this guy’s no John Wayne and there’s no happy ending. He
kills the guy, he disposes of the body, it comes back to haunt him, and, in the
end, it haunts him to death.”

“That
means,” Roy said, “that Ben’s reason for haunting you has been to alert you to
this fellow. We’ve been thinking the haunting was because Ben killed himself in
the house, but that’s only part of it. The haunting is because Ben wants you to
know who he killed, and why he killed him, because the job isn’t finished –
it’s still alive, in some form, still preying on people.”

“All of the
occurrences I experienced, with the exception of the shadow, those came from
Ben?” Steven asked.

“I believe
so,” Roy replied. “The shadow was a different matter altogether.”

“But if the
shadow was after Ben, and it succeeded in killing him by getting him to cut his
own throat, why continue haunting the house? He’s achieved his goal at that
point, right?”

Roy thought
about this. “It could be,” he said, “that we stirred it back up.”

A nurse
appeared at the door, asking to remove the IV in Roy’s arm, which he eagerly
presented to her to facilitate the task. In another twenty minutes they were in
Steven’s car and headed back to Roy’s house.

“What did
you mean when you said we ‘stirred it up’?” Steven asked.

“Before I
came over that first night,” Roy replied, “what you’d seen was limited to
things Ben wanted you to see. All of the manifestations – the knocking, the
faces, the head over the bathtub – that was all Ben, things that referenced
him, his knowledge of events. I show up two nights later, and
bam!
” Roy
clapped his hands together for dramatic effect, “the shadow appears, and has
ever since. I think it was stirred up by me, by my involvement.”

 “By you? How?”
Steven asked.

“I think my
involvement was what both Ben and the shadow wanted all along. I think they
used you to get me involved. The reason why the shadow attacks me, why it never
even showed up until I arrived at your place, is because it needs, it eats,
what I have. It attacks me and not you because I’m stronger, I’ve got the gift.
And it sucks it out of me – that’s what it’s doing when it attacks, it’s
draining me. It’s why you put me in the hospital.”

“But why?”
Steven asked. “I understand it attacking Ben, but why you? Because you’re able
to communicate to Ben?”

Roy sighed.
“I don’t know. Nothing’s surfaced that explains why. I still need to figure
that out. What is our next step?”

“No more
trances,” Steven said. “I mean it. If you’re right, they only give the thing
what it wants, more access to you.”

“Fine,” Roy
shot back, “but I intend to go through Ben’s journal with a fine tooth comb.”

“I think
that’s a great idea, so long as you stay awake.” Steven pulled into Roy’s
driveway, but left the car running.

“You’re not
coming in?” Roy asked.

“Nope. You
get to work on that journal, see if anything pops out. I’m going to do some
research on that news article and the abduction suspect.”

“You be
careful,” Roy warned, getting out of the car. “We don’t know everything we’re
dealing with here, so don’t take risks.”

“Look who’s
talking,” Steven shot back, and put the car in reverse.

Steven
returned home from the library a little after 5 p.m. The house was trashed –
the hallway was still torn up, the kitchen hadn’t been dealt with in days.
Steven ignored it all and called Roy.

“Get in your
car and meet me at Bent’s in ten minutes,” Steven said.

“I’m not
hungry,” Roy replied. “Besides, I think I dug up something you should know.”

“Well, I am
hungry.” He checked his watch. “Meet me there at quarter of six. And I have
something for you, too.”

“Fine,
goddamn it…” Roy said, hanging up. Steven grabbed a couple of flashlights, then
rummaged in a closet for a pair of binoculars that normally only came out for
concerts. He stuffed them into a duffel bag and went back downstairs and out
the basement door.

Within a few
minutes he was at Bent’s. Roy wasn’t there yet, so he ordered and sat in a
booth that seemed to offer the most privacy. He was three bites into his burger
when Roy arrived and sat at the table.

“You having
anything?” Steven asked.

“I told you
I wasn’t hungry,” Roy replied.

“You gotta
keep your strength up. You’re an old man and I wouldn’t want to have to put you
back into the hospital just because you hadn’t been eating.”

“I’m not
hungry because I already ate. And you need to show more respect for your elders.”

Steven
brushed it off. “You said you found something?”

“Yes, I
have,” said Roy. “The sections you marked in Ben’s journal aren’t the half of
it. Yes, Ben hunted him down and yes, he was terrorized by the guy’s ghost. But
I think Ben must have talked to the guy at some point, confronted him, had some
kind of conversation with him. He knows things about him, or claims to, and he
uses some terms to describe him that I had to reference in my book.”

“Your secret
book? His name was Lukas Johansen, by the way,” Steven added.

“Sounds like
you made some progress, too,” Roy said. “Well, for starters, Ben didn’t think
he was human. Not that he was inhuman because he killed people, I think Ben
thought he was another species altogether. We saw what he really looks like the
other night, in the trance. Definitely not human. Ben keeps referring to him as
a pupa, something in development. What he was changing into was some kind of
being that would live forever. Ben thought this guy was trying to become
immortal.”

“What, like
a vampire?” Steven asked incredulously.

“No, not
like that. Although there are some disturbing similarities as far as blood is
concerned. Our friend Lukas was completing some kind of process or recipe that
he needed. And here’s the horrible part, and it probably made the guy very easy
for Ben to kill: it called for the bodies of children.”

Steven
stopped chewing his hamburger and stared at Roy, unsure if he should swallow.

“I know,”
said Roy, “disgusting.”

“Are you
sure?” Steven mouthed around his food.

“No, I don’t
know any of this for sure, but Ben believed it. Ben had decided this Lukas guy
had abducted his son, killed him, drained him of his blood, and ingested it.
And that he had done it to others, and would continue to do it, until he
achieved his goal.”

“Immortality?”
Steven asked.

“That’s what
Ben thought, it’s what he’s written here. But Ben cut the guy’s plans short.
Ben describes it as smashing the moth in the cocoon.”

Steven
considered this. “Sounds like he managed to eke out some immortality – he’s
still terrorizing people from the grave.”

“This guy is
like a battery running with a very low charge. He needs an occasional recharge
to keep going, he can’t do it on his own. When he finds someone like me, hell,
I’m a fucking three course banquet to him.”

“Can we put
a stop to it?” Steven asked.

“Don’t
know,” Roy said. “Ben killed him. I don’t know how, but it obviously wasn’t
enough to end things. I’m not sure how you deal with something like this.”

“Well, I
know what we’re going to do next,” Steven said, finishing his burger. “Lukas
Johansen used to live two blocks from here – a house on 34th.”

“We’re going
to check it out?” Roy asked with some excitement.

“That’s what
I’m thinking.” They left the booth and headed to Steven’s car.

-

“That’s it
straight ahead,” Steven said, pointing to a house further down the block from
where they were parked.

“How can you
be sure, you can’t see the numbers from here,” Roy replied.

Steven
pulled out his cell phone and showed Roy the house on Google. “You can see
every house online. Street view.”

“Well,
that’s amazing,” Roy said.

“You’d know
that if you’d get a computer,” Steven said.

“I don’t
need every house in my phone,” Roy said.

Steven
dropped it. His father was never going to own a computer or a smartphone, and
they both knew it.

“So, what
are you thinking?” Roy asked. “Stake it out? See who comes and goes?”

Steven was
using the binoculars, mindful of how he must look to any neighbors along the
street who might be checking out the parked car in front of their houses.
“Well,” he said, “yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. Of course, Lukas is dead, so
we won’t be seeing him. At least I don’t think we will.”

Steven
scanned the front of the house. It was a turn of the century classic Victorian,
but it was in need of repair and a new paint job. All of the curtains were
closed except for one upstairs bedroom, and there were cracks in the glass of
several of the windows. The trees and plants in front of the house were in need
of pruning and weeds were abundant. The small lawn in front was a month from
its last mowing. There was no garage, and from this angle they couldn’t see
anything in the backyard.

Over the
course of the next hour, Steven and Roy watched as several kids came and went
from the house. They were all in their early twenties and dressed in black from
head to toe.

“I’ve never
seen such a thing,” said Roy.

“What?”
asked Steven.

“All the
black clothes. Is it a cult?”

“No, they’re
goth kids, Dad. It’s a style. Although from the goth kids I knew, wearing black
was almost like a religion to them.”

“I don’t get
it,” Roy answered. “It’s dark enough here without running around completely in
black. So they’re just kids?”

“Yup,”
Steven answered.

“I’m gonna
go talk to them,” Roy said, opening the car door.

“Wait!”
Steven cried, but Roy was already marching up the road. Steven jumped out and
ran up to his dad.

“What are
you doing?” he asked Roy.

“I’m going
to talk to them,” Roy said, walking briskly towards the house. “We’re not
learning anything just sitting in the car.”

“I was
thinking we’d watch the place from a distance, see who comes and goes, see if
there’s any threats we should know about, that kind of thing, before we storm
in.”

Roy was
undeterred. “Well, that’s one way to approach it I suppose. This is my way.”
Now they were on the sidewalk in front of the house. Steven followed Roy as he
walked up to the door and knocked.

“Why don’t
you let me do the talking,” Steven said.

“I’ll be
fine,” Roy insisted.

There were
some rumblings inside the house before they heard footsteps approaching the
door from the other side. It opened to a tall, lanky man who looked hardly more
than a teenager. He was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. There were piercings in
his nose. He stared blankly at them. “Yeah?”

Roy spoke
right up. “I’m Roger Yates and this is,” he pointed to Steven, “Henny Youngman.
We’re from Yates Bonding, and we’re looking for an adult male, 24 years old,
named Sonny Taft.”

“No one here
named that,” the kid replied.

“He’s wanted
on serious charges, and this is the address we have for him. We’re entitled, by
law, to remand him to the court. We’re not leaving without him,” Roy said.
Steven was impressed with Roy’s performance. He didn’t know how much of it the
kid would buy, but it sounded pretty real.

“Look, I’d
like to help you, but I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“How many
people live here?” Roy asked.

“Seven,” the
kid replied.

“Do you know
them all? Personally?” Roy asked.

“Well, yeah,
kinda. Rachel is new, but the rest I know.”

“Do you own
this house?”

“Rent.”

“Who owns
it?”

“I don’t
know the guy’s name. We just make rent payments to Billy, and he handles paying
the landlord.”

“Look,” Roy
said, “You tell me Sonny isn’t here, OK, I believe you. But I’m gonna need the
names and ages of everyone who does live here,” Roy said, pulling a small
notepad from his pocket.
Amazing
, Steven thought.

The kid
didn’t seem to like this idea. “Why do you need that?” he asked.

“So I can
document for the office that we came here,” Roy said, “and Sonny wasn’t one of
the current occupants or visitors. Look, I don’t want to hassle you with a
warrant, going through everything in the house. I’d hate to put you through
that if he isn’t here.”

That flipped
a switch in the kid. He rattled off the names of the residents, and Roy
dutifully noted each name in the pad.

“OK,” Roy
told him. “If Sonny should show up, I urge you to have him contact me. It will
go much easier for him if he works with us.”

“Uh, OK,”
the kid stammered. “You got a card or something?”

“Fresh out,”
Roy told him, putting the pad away. “Yates Bonding. We’re in the book.”

The book?
Steven winced, but
coming from an old man the kid might believe it.

“Now before
we go,” Roy told the kid, “we’re going to just do a quick walk around the
outside of the house and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Uh, sure.
OK.”

Roy turned
to leave the front porch, Steven following him. He waved a “bye” to the kid,
who closed the door.

As they
rounded the corner of the house, Steven said, “I gotta hand it to you, that was
masterful.”

“Thank you,”
Roy said. “Your old man knows how to do a thing or two.”

“Henny
Youngman?”

“It was the
first thing that came to mind,” Roy said. “That cell phone of yours take
pictures?”

Steven
wrestled it from his pocket and started snapping photos as they moved around
the house. In back was an overgrown yard and rusted iron lawn furniture. The
small lawn was mossy. There were cement steps leading up to a screen door, and
a wooden basement access door with a padlock and chain through the handles.
They continued around to the other side of the house, but were stopped by a
wooden fence overgrown with ivy, so they backtracked to leave the yard the way
they came in, Steven leading.

As they were
approaching the front yard, Steven heard Roy call his name, and he turned to
see Roy down on one knee, his hands out to his sides to brace himself if he
fell further.
Shit,
Steven thought,
I shouldn’t have brought him. He
doesn’t have the strength. This isn’t fair to him.
“Steven,” Roy called
again.

Steven
rushed to Roy’s side. “Are you all right?” he asked, grabbing Roy’s shoulder,
steadying him.

“Just dizzy,
that’s all,” Roy replied.

“Can I
help?” said a man who kneeled down by Roy’s other side, grabbing his shoulder.
It seemed to Steven the man had come out of thin air. He was about Steven’s
size, with dark hair and a full beard. “Do you need to lie down? Maybe some
water?”

“No, no, I’m
fine, just need to get my bearings,” Roy said, not yet attempting to stand, but
with enough of his wits to refuse help.

The man
looked at Steven and could see Steven’s concern, both for his father and for who
this stranger was. “I live next door,” he told Steven. “I saw your father
fall.”

Steven
didn’t like him – it was an immediate visceral reaction, but for the moment he
was helping and his attention returned to Roy. “Can you walk, Dad? Should I
call for help?”

“No, I don’t
need help,” Roy said, struggling to his feet. “Help me up, will you?”

“Let’s get
you to the car,” Steven said, holding Roy’s arm as they took a step.

“Please come
over,” the man said. “Just a few steps this way, you can sit down and have some
water. Regain your strength.”

While Steven
was considering the offer, the man pulled Roy’s arm and Roy took a step in the
direction of the neighbor’s house. Steven decided to go along. The car was half
a block away, and having his father sit for a few minutes before they walked to
it might be a good idea. The ground was flat and easy to navigate, and after a
few steps they emerged into the neighbor’s back yard. They sat Roy down on a
bench by the house.