Dreams The Ragman (2 page)

THREE

I barreled along the highway in silence, old memories gnawing at me. Traffic towards Boston was heavier than I’d expected but moving at a good clip, so I listened to the demons chasing close behind, pretended I had a choice, and let them lead me back.

When I think about that night, it’s the wind that stands out. A strange wind, hot and slow, it blew in off the ocean, a precursor to the coming storm. Like many summer tempests, the one that hit later that night was quick and violent, more buildup than payoff. And it was the buildup I remembered most, the threat of what was skulking across the open ocean, slowly rolling in, closing on land. I could feel the energy preceding it, an electrical current crackling in the night air as I ran hard as I could in an attempt to keep up with Caleb, who was a good distance ahead of me and sprinting like a gazelle. After lots of liquor, two joints and a few lines of coke, I was lightheaded and sick to my stomach, in no shape to be upright much less sprinting, but I followed him anyway, pushing myself even when I was certain I’d vomit or pass out.

Where does The Ragman go? Between the murders and the time he hops the next train and escapes, where does he go? Where is he then?

The moon wasn’t full that night, but it was close, dangling there in the black sky, illuminating the area just enough for us to see where we were. Everything else was shadow and silhouette, sound, smell and feel. Touch.

I figured it out, Derrick.

We crossed a parking lot, jumped a low fence of wooden slats precariously held together by thin wire that acted as a divider between pavement and beach, then ran along the sandy pathways trampled into the tall grass of the dunes by the feet of countless tourists and locals alike, everything around us moving with that hot breeze, swaying, alive and oddly graceful, like an impromptu dance set to the chorus of an eerily hissing wind and the whispers of nearby waves lapping shore.

I know where the Ragman hides.

A man in a pickup cut me off, and my thoughts returned to the road. But in time, they drifted; lured back by The Ragman’s beckoning hands, reaching from the shadows, fingers gnarled and dirty and horrifying as his diseased mind.

Earlier that night so many years ago...at Caleb’s house…I stood waiting near the door in the kitchen, feeling awkward, as I always did in his house. Caleb’s father, a man of few words, greeted me with a brusque nod while sitting at the kitchen table reading a newspaper, the aroma from their recent dinner still lingering in the air. Never entirely certain what he did for a living, I knew it had something to do with the construction business, but he looked more like a policeman from some old French film. An impeccably dressed, trim little fellow with beady eyes, a pencil-thin mustache and ashen skin, hair dyed black and combed away from his forehead, he seemed perpetually suspicious and disapproving of me.

Caleb’s mother was more overtly intimidating, perhaps due to her unusual height, general size and booming voice. A woman many might describe as ‘big-boned,’ I never saw her in anything but formal dresses, heels and jewelry, which she wore about the house like a wife from some 1950s TV show. On that night she’d been busying herself filling the dishwasher. Per usual, she was more talkative and outwardly sociable than her husband, but our exchange felt more like an interrogation than a conversation.

Caleb’s parents were an odd couple to be sure, but I knew from some of the stories Caleb had told me that his home life with them was anything but comical.

“You’re lucky,” he used to tell me. “Your mother and grandparents are cool. I can’t breathe without making sure it meets my parents’ approval, which, of course, it never does.”

It was true that Caleb and I came from very different backgrounds, but he’d always mistakenly considered mine to be some sort of single-parent paradise existence. I was an only child. Caleb had an older brother and two older sisters. My mother, a teacher employed by the local school system, was a good communicator and generally demonstrative. Caleb’s parents were cold and often harsh. I was given tremendous amounts of freedom as a teenager. Caleb had to steal any freedom he had. On the surface, it looked (particularly to other kids my age) like mine was a charmed life. But it wasn’t, because while I knew and never questioned that my mother loved me, she was a busy woman with a busy life. When she made time for me it was genuine but limited, and it wasn’t until years later, as a grown man in the throes of anger management classes and appointments with my psychologist, that I came to accept that in many ways, I’d been neglected. For me the problem had always been reconciling love with neglect. So while Caleb spent time wishing his parents would leave him the hell alone, I’d spent just as much wishing my mother would step in and notice me.

Like me, Caleb was more or less a loner in high school. Caleb was quick-witted, had a razor sharp tongue and usually waged verbal warfare against his adversaries, while I tended more toward the physical. What I respected most about him back then was his uncanny ability to shrug things off, to rise above it all like a bird drifting among the clouds, gazing at the world below with sad but vigilant eyes. I was infantry, a foot soldier right in the shit, never missing an opportunity at conflict or what I was so sure then was righteous indignation. Even then I’d been angry. I’d struggled with it for most of my life. There were times it helped and times it cost me dearly, but regardless, I was good at physical conflict. I was never a bully, but I didn’t stand down for anyone or anything. Even when I was in over my head, a beating was preferable to running. And just as I dished out quite a few beatings, I was on the other end of them numerous times as well, and even into adulthood, bore scars and marks from those days, including a crooked nose and a section of the little finger on my left hand that no longer had any feeling. But the thing most people never understood was that I hated that aspect of my personality even more than those around me did. Just because I was skilled at confrontation, and therefore comfortable with it if need be, didn’t mean I enjoyed it.

On the other hand, I’d never once seen Caleb in a physical confrontation with anyone. It was just another area where we were vastly different, and led people to wonder how (and why) we’d even become friends. The answer could be found in what we had in common, the most profound of which was a kindred sense of melancholy and hopelessness that weakened only in each other’s company.

We were both lost, Caleb and I, but at least in those days we could be lost together, and our friendship quickly became a safe haven we came to rely on.

As traffic slowed through the Callahan Tunnel and darkness closed in around me, the light of day replaced with a more meager artificial version beneath the city, I returned to my memories of that night.

As always, I heard Caleb before I saw him. He left his bedroom and quickly descended the stairs then glided into the room with an air of nonchalance no one bought, least of all me. Built like a swimmer, or perhaps a runner, Caleb was tall and lanky, with long spindly arms and legs, a small waist, narrow chest and small shoulders that gave him something of a feminine though sinewy physique. One could’ve easily seen him in those old musicals from the 1930s and 40s, sporting a tuxedo with a cane and top hat, but on that night he wore a simple striped shirt with the sleeves neatly rolled up to the elbow, jeans and a pair of loafers. His hair, worn short and parted on the side, was neatly combed into place and still damp from a recent shower.

Whenever he was running late and I had to wait for him to appear, it always felt like I was waiting on a date, and no one seemed to revel in this more than Caleb. I knew one of the main reasons his parents disliked me so was because they suspected there was more between us than friendship, as even then, it was obvious to anyone who took a moment to get to know Caleb that he was gay. Although I didn’t have a steady girlfriend at the time, I was straight, had dated a few girls by then and had lost my virginity more than a year before. But all his parents saw was a young guy waiting for their son, and their son smitten with the entire thing. I couldn’t blame the suspicions, I suppose, but their intolerance, bigotry, and general lack of understanding of their own child left me as cold to them as they were to me.

“So what are your plans for this evening?” Caleb’s mother asked from her position at the sink, a freshly-rinsed plate in hand and ready for the dishwasher.

Before I could answer, Caleb grabbed my arm and dragged me out the door. “Dinner and dancing! ‘Night!”

By the time we’d hit the steps and staggered into the driveway, Caleb was laughing hysterically and I was doing my best not to. “They think you’re my boyfriend! Don’t you just love it?”

Once in the car, I looked at him, his dark eyes and angular features ghostlike in the dull dashboard light. He was rarely so happy.

“What?” he asked.

I felt myself smile. “Nothing,” I sighed, dropping the car into reverse. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“I need to show you something tonight.” Caleb’s smile faded and he went quiet. I knew then he was being serious. “Something important.”

“What?”

“I figured it out. I know where The Ragman hides.”

I emerged from the tunnel and skirted the city, heading north toward New Hampshire. The memories of Caleb faded, replaced with those more current. He’d lost much of his luster over the years, just as I had, but the changes in him had been more severe. While he remained eel thin and gangly, gone was the short neat haircut, replaced instead with stringy hair just past his shoulders. His arms were covered in tattoo sleeves, and his former immaculate fashion was replaced with grungy jeans, scuffed boots and T-shirts, which gave him the look of a burned-out rock star, his once bright eyes dull and saddled with dark circles, and the spark of life he’d once possessed that had drawn me to him so, long since snuffed out. Having not seen him in nearly five years, I had no idea what he looked like these days, but given the way he lived, he’d surely deteriorated to even greater depths in that time, and I needed to be prepared for that. Still, I wasn’t worried about who I’d find when I got there, I was worried about
what
I’d find. Was there anything left of him? There was barely anything left of me, what chance did Caleb have?

And The Ragman, he’d be there too…watching…waiting…savior and slayer, nightmare and reality all rolled into one.

I know where The Ragman hides.

“Yeah,” I sighed, changing lanes and pressing hard on the gas, “so do I.”

FOUR

By the time I crossed the border into New Hampshire a light rain had kicked up. Ten minutes later the skies turned dark and it began to pour. Less than half an hour into the state I found myself at Sheppard Beach, cruising slowly along the main drag.

Sheppard Beach was part of a nearby township and had a long and storied history that began back in the 1920s, when a pair of entrepreneurs purchased the beachfront property and built a facility that housed a hotel, casino, ballroom, theater and restaurant. Unusual for the time, it began drawing tourists from all over the country to come and spend their summers gambling, enjoying the topflight entertainment offered, frolicking on the beautiful adjacent beach and swimming in the ocean. Although it had changed and been re-imagined several times throughout the decades, it remained a popular tourist spot until the late 1990s, when the area began to have financial difficulties. The area slowly began catering to less of a family-oriented crowd and assumed more of a carnival-like atmosphere. The casino was long gone, and the old luxurious hotel had been lost in a fire in the late ’80s. On the lone, narrow strip overlooking the beach, arcades were built, along with some bars and adult clubs that catered to a rougher clientele, and the old ballroom and theater venues, that had for decades hosted some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, sat closed and rotting on the side of a hill above the strip, constant reminders of what Sheppard Beach had once been, and all that had been lost. These days, even during the summer months, it was known predominantly as a biker hangout, and had, for the most part, developed a reputation as a dead resort area where transients came to get palm readings, go to adult clubs and hit the bars that lined what remained of the strip.

As my car crept along the drag, I was struck by how narrow the road was, and how the establishments on either side of me caused something of a claustrophobic vibe. Perhaps a mile long, the strip had all the charm of an abandoned amusement park. With the summer months over, whatever tourist trade they still had was only a memory, and the area had hunkered down for winter, a few places still open but most closed and boarded up for the offseason. As I reached the end of the strip and pulled into an otherwise empty parking lot, the pavement cracked and overrun by weeds, I wondered exactly how many people could still be here. And as for those few who did remain, I could only assume they had nowhere else to go.

As I stepped from the car and walked around to the trunk to get my suitcase, I looked back at the strip. It seemed oddly out of place there, this seedy commercial avenue perched along the side of a hill overlooking sand and Atlantic Ocean, like at any moment a huge wave could easily come along and wash it all away.

Suitcase in tow, I walked through the rain toward the strip, purposely ignoring the train tracks on the far side of the parking lot behind me in the hopes that I’d be able to shake the sudden feeling of being watched. Visions of The Ragman climbing up over the dunes flooded my mind’s eye. Concentrating instead on the rain and steady rumble of suitcase wheels on pavement, I quickened my pace and closed on the strip.

A few buildings in, I came upon a bar with a sign in the window that read:
ROOMS
. An old two-story wood building, the first floor housed the bar, the windows largely blocked with cheap curtains and blinking neon signs advertising various brands of beer. I looked up. The second floor was dark and just as old and decomposed as the rest of the place. I hesitated, squinted through the rain and looked farther down the street. The rest of the strip looked dead, and the rain wouldn’t be letting up anytime soon, so I shouldered open the door and slipped inside.

Until then I’d never been in a barroom that literally had sawdust on the floor. The bar itself was large and took up nearly the entire back wall, and several tables were scattered throughout the rest of the area. Several circular wooden light fixtures were suspended from the ceiling by chains and outfitted with little flame-shaped light bulbs. A modest stage was kitty-cornered to my right and a jukebox sat to my left. A staircase between the end of the bar and the start of the stage wound up to the second floor, scarred and worn as the rest of the place.

Save for the bartender, a short brunette about my age watching a soap opera on a small television suspended in the corner, the bar was empty. The entire place reeked of cigarette smoke, cheap booze and perspiration. I crossed to the bar but the barkeep never looked away from the TV or in any way acknowledged me, so I waited a moment then leaned closer and said, “Excuse me.”

Her heavily-made-up eyes shifted to mine. “Yeah?” she asked, chomping furiously on a wad of bubblegum.

“Do you have any rooms available?”

She stared at me like she was trying to figure out exactly what the hell I was, false eyelashes blinking in mock surprise. “It’s almost November, hon. They’re all available.”

“I take it there’s nowhere else to stay around here?”

She scratched her neck. She wore cheap rings on each of her stubby fingers, the nails chewed to the quick. “Few motels up the road, but we’re the only ones with rooms on the strip.”

“Can I take a look?”

She grabbed a key and sauntered out from behind the bar. Even in boots with a considerable heel she wasn’t much over five-feet. Motioning for me to follow, she led me toward the stairs, heels clacking the floor with each step. She was braless, and her breasts, a bit large for her otherwise petite frame, bounced beneath a dull camisole that left nothing to the imagination. She had a lot of mileage on her, but was in good shape for a woman her age, and despite her diminutive size, looked tough as nails.

We took the stairs to a dimly lit hallway. The woman stopped at the first door on the right, pushed the key in the lock and swung the door open.

The room was small, with a lone window that faced the beach, a bed, a cheap bureau and a rickety-ass chair in the corner. The floors and walls were bare.

“There’s only one bathroom on the floor,” she said, jerking her thumb toward the shadows at the far end of the hall. “It’s got a shower, toilet and a sink. The room is just that, a place to flop. No TV, no radio, no alarm clock, no phone, no room service. Sheets are fresh. You stain them up, that’s your problem. Long as you don’t damage nothing or give me a hard time, you’ll do fine. Act a fool in here and you’ll wind up in the street with a mouthful of teeth and blood in your piss, got it?”

I nodded. “Got it.”

She dangled the key. “Forty a night.”

“I’ll need it for two nights, at least for now.”

“I’m no math wizard, but I’m pretty sure that’d be eighty bucks then.” She caught me glancing at her chest and gave a wry smile. “Cash only, nonrefundable and paid up front. No extra charge for staring at my tits.”

Face flushed, I dug four twenties from my wallet and exchanged them for the room key. “Do you serve food here?”

“Not offseason, no.” She quickly counted the bills then slipped them into her back pocket and started back down the hallway. “There’s a restaurant couple doors down, might be open, hard to say.”

I rolled my suitcase into the room then closed the door, locked it and followed her back downstairs. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Maggie,” she said, stopping halfway down the staircase and looking back at me.

“I’m Derrick, Derrick Ricci. But I was going to ask if—”

“Yeah, I got a boyfriend. He’s doing time in Cali. Be back around next summer.”

“Actually, I’m looking for a friend of mine I think might be here, guy by the name of Caleb. Tall, skinny, lots of tattoos, long hair. Seen anyone like that around?”

“Ain’t seen nobody. I never do.” She turned and continued down the stairs. “Haven’t even seen you.”

* * * *

After having a beer and spending some quality time with the effervescent social butterfly that was Maggie, I left the bar in search of something to eat. The rain was still coming down in buckets, so I stayed close to the buildings and hurried along until I came upon the restaurant Maggie had told me about. Sandwiched between a liquor store and a novelty shop, it was a lunchroom-style joint that looked as if it had been transported there directly from the 1950s. Unfortunately it was dark and locked up tight. I peered through the rain, trying to take in as much of the strip as I could. In bright sunshine the area would’ve looked dreary enough, but in heavy rain and premature darkness it took on the bleak feel of a post apocalyptic ghost town.

I could only imagine what was hiding in the shadows here, behind those boarded up doors and dark windows.

Caleb’s here
, I thought.
I’d bet my life on it...if I haven’t already.

A gust of wind off the nearby ocean carried with it the unmistakable aroma of greasy food. I tracked the smell to a food concession stand built directly into the face of a nearby building. A row of fixed stools lined the counter, and beyond, a grill and kitchen area was visible. A squat, barrel-chested man in a stained apron and paper hat stood behind the counter watching me with small dark eyes, hands on his hips.

I crossed the street and took refuge at the counter. A large awning extended over the counter area, providing sufficient shelter from the rain. Upon closer inspection, the proprietor appeared to be in his fifties, with olive skin and a bushy mustache. He looked like Super Mario. He smiled revealing big square teeth. “Hello, Mister Man!”

I returned the smile and sat at the counter. Something I couldn’t quite make out was sizzling on the large grill behind him. “Quite a rain you’ve got going here.”

The man nodded, glanced to the sky. “Is
bool-shit
. Supposed to rain for days. No good.”

I tried to place his accent. He sounded like a cross between an Arab and a Russian. “Can I get a coffee?”

“Yes, my friend!” He grabbed a pot from a counter behind him, poured some into a plastic mug and slid it over to me. “You eat too, yes?” He pointed to a menu board suspended behind him and laughed. His stomach jiggled. “You like the sausage? OK! I make you sausage with peppers and onions! Is already cooking long time so you have quick. You get fries too. All one price.”

I nodded wearily. “Yeah, that’s fine, whatever. I’ll take that.”

A low rumble separated and rose above the sound of the rain. I leaned back and looked toward the far end of the strip to see a police cruiser slowly riding past.

“Cops,” the man grumbled. “I live in Sheppard Beach fifteen years, run my business, OK? Even in summer only time cops is around is if trouble. Now peoples get killed and they give shits.
Bool-
shit cops.”

I watched until the cruiser rounded the corner and vanished from sight then I turned back to the man, who had begun shuffling several fat sausages and piles of peppers and onions about the grill with a metal spatula. The food sizzled and popped, the smells wafting up toward me. I found it interesting that although I was clearly an outsider and one of only a handful of people here during a time when there was virtually no reason for me to be, neither Maggie nor this man had asked me why I had come to town. Apparently in places like Sheppard Beach people didn’t ask those kinds of questions, even when there was a murderer in their midst. Surely the locals were used to dealing with the underbelly of society, and while in reality they probably rarely missed anything, as Maggie had made abundantly clear, like some unspoken code, they acted as if they never saw or heard a thing. And they asked no questions.

“Yeah, I heard about those murders on the news,” I told him, “terrible thing.”

The man dropped a bucket of fries into a waiting bin of hot oil. “Man killed was my friend,” he said sullenly. “Good man, an old man. Never did nothing to nobody. Eighty-years-old. Here since early days. Was maître d’ at hotel back in old days. He eat here all the time, we sit and have coffee and eggs and talk. He walk on beach every morning, go back to cottage and some son-of-bitch kill him. I like to find cocksucker who did this. I strangle piece of shit.”

Not sure of what else to do, I raised my mug as a show of support. “The other victim was local too, right?”

“Woman from town.” He scooped peppers and onions into a hot dog roll. “Her I don’t know. She come from town to make paintings of beach. They find her dead on sand, ripped to pieces. Young woman with family. When
she
die cops care. News talk like it big-time story, OK? Cops all over place, and even FBI comes maybe.”

I watched as he loaded a plump and blackened sausage atop the peppers and onions then slid the entire thing onto a paper plate and put it before me.

“They’ve got no idea who did it or why?”

The man shook his head. “I think killer comes here and he hides, and then he kills these peoples and he run away like coward he is.” He pulled the basket from the fryer, shook the excess grease off and poured a pile of crinkle-cut fries onto my plate. “Five fifty.”

I threw him a twenty and took a bite of the sandwich. It wasn’t half bad.

“Vern,” the man said, pushing my change back across the counter, “he was good man. He was my friend. He don’t deserve to die like that, gutted in his house like pig, OK? Vern never hurt nobody, he was gentle man. And the woman, now her husband has no wife and children have no mother. Is wrong, my friend, is wrong.” He seemed to think about what he’d said a moment, then pointed a thick finger at me. “Whoever do this, he pay price before God. Don’t nobody escape God. Not even Devil can do this.”