Dreams The Ragman (9 page)

I moved closer, and was heading for the front steps when Caleb motioned to the rear of the cottage. He struggled through the wet sand until he was alongside me. Winded, he took a moment to catch his breath then said, “Around back.”

As we approached the backdoor, I was met with a profound sense of dread. I could only suspect that the unthinkable carnage that had taken place here had left some sort of stain in its wake. Maybe that’s all ghosts were, residue left behind by the past rather than literal entities. Here, that past was bathed in blood and horror, and though I wanted desperately for whatever haunted this place to be a figment of my imagination, I knew that was no longer possible.

Caleb stumbled back a step or two, as if he’d changed his mind and no longer wanted to get too close to the cottage. “The Ragman,” he muttered, “he—”

“He was an old man who scared my grandfather a hundred years ago.”

“Give him whatever name you’d like. But he’s real. And he’s here.”

I watched him through the rain and quickly dying scraps of light, swaying in the wind in time with the tall grass along the dunes. “There’s no one here but us, Caleb.”

“He has many names,” he said as if he hadn’t heard me. “He’s moving, he…he’s always moving…like a shark…if he stops he dies. He moves all over the world, and has forever. He’s older than time itself. He’s Death. Do you understand? He’s
Death
.”

“And who are you, Caleb?”

His face twisted in pain. “I’m no one.”

“We’re the only ghosts here.” I ducked under the police tape then swung the flashlight around and onto the back entrance. I tried the knob but the door was locked.

“There are chosen ones,” Caleb said from somewhere behind me.

I reared back and kicked the door in. It broke free far more easily than I’d imagined it would.

“The chosen ones help him.”

With the pool of light leading the way I stepped over the threshold and into a small, musty smelling kitchen.

“The chosen ones
procure
for him.”

Blood…everywhere…my God, I’d never seen so much of it…smeared along the walls, the floor, the appliances, even the ceiling. Painted into the same symbols and glyphs I’d seen all those years ago on the cave walls. It didn’t seem possible one body could contain so much blood, that it could be so bright and dark and awful, running through an old man’s veins one moment and spattered about a room the next.

And Caleb, he’d been here. My oldest friend had been here while that poor old man was slaughtered alive.

“They give him what he needs, what he has to have a steady supply of.”

What in God’s name had I expected to find? Had I still believed somewhere deep inside that this was all just a fantasy I could escape from whenever I wanted to?

“Victims...”

I staggered back toward the door, my head reeling. The blood made it real.

Caleb was still outside, just feet from the house. As I aimed the light at him he stumbled a second time, as if to avoid it, a vampire shunning the light for fear of what it might expose and destroy in him. Somehow, he managed to stay upright, and drew a hand across his face, wiping away rain, tears, or both. “Blood,” he said. “Human blood, human
souls
.”

I stepped back into the rain, hoping it might cleanse me, wash away what I’d seen, or maybe just burn me to bone and ash like acid and end this once and for all. “And you,” I said above the wind, “
you’re
one of the chosen?”

“Not me, Derrick.” His sad eyes pierced the mounting darkness. “You.”

Something cold gripped my spine.

I never wanted this for you, son.

“The bloodlines go back centuries and exist all over the world. He follows them, uses them. Your family’s bloodline is one.”

It should’ve been me.

“Your grandfather served him, as his father did before him and his before him.”

Grandpa would never hurt me.

“As your father would have if he hadn’t died and as you would have if…”

No, he wouldn’t. But there were others, son…

“If what?” I closed on him, grabbed his shirt with my free hand and shook him like a child. “If what!”

Caleb’s my friend.

“You were next in line.”

Yes, he is. More than you know. He saved you.

“He’d come to collect what belongs to him.”

From what?

“You.”

Destiny.

“But I gave him me instead. That night in the cave back home, I gave myself in exchange for you.” He went limp in my grasp, hung there like a ragdoll. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you’re so angry? Where it comes from, why you’ve had to fight so long to control it your whole life? Your grandfather had the rage. Your father had the rage. It’s in your blood, Derrick. It’s part of who you are. It’s who you’re meant and destined to be. I tried, I—I held it off as long as I could, I—I told you to run but it’s too late. He wants what’s his. He lied to me, and now,” his eyes found me, glistening and filled with all the Hell they’d seen, “he’s got us both.”

I screamed and pushed him away. He collapsed to the sand and lay there.

“At least set me free,” he pleaded. “Set us both free.”

I stumbled, the flashlight beam flailing about, and dropped to my knees. “How?”

His hand took mine. It was cold. “We can run away. We couldn’t all those years ago, but now we can. We can run away if only you won’t be so afraid of the water. Can you do that? Can you not be so afraid of the water for just a little while?”

“Caleb…”

“Can’t you see? We’ll run, and take us both away from him.”

The rain pounded down, pummeling us deeper into the sand, drenching us to the bone as I cupped the back of his neck and pulled him up into a sitting position. “There is no
him
Caleb, except in us.”

The flashlight was pointed up, between us, illuminating our faces from below like kids telling ghost stories around a campfire. He barely looked human. “You can’t deny him. Not anymore. Even now, you feel him watching…reaching for you…”

Hard as I fought not to, I felt myself nod.

“Hurry,” he said. “He’s coming.”

I helped him to his feet but he fell against me, no longer able to stand on his own. Propping him up as best I could, together we stumbled down the dunes to the beach.

I did not look back. Not at the cottage, not at whoever or whatever else may have been behind us, moving around out there and stalking us in the dark. Even as Caleb, watching over my shoulder, whimpered at what he’d seen, his eyes wide with horror and his body tense with fear, I did not look back. Not once.

ELEVEN

It’s not the same in the nightmare as it is in the dream. I keep telling myself there’s no difference between the two, but I know that’s a lie. Thing is, if you tell a lie long enough, even to yourself, you start to believe it, and eventually it becomes something close enough to get you through.

I came awake like I did most nights, frantically, violently, springing up into a sitting position with a startled groan, chest heaving and my body soaked in sweat. Sometimes I’d wonder if what I fought so hard each night to break free of was even sleep at all. Who knows for sure what happens when we close our eyes?

In the dream, it’s as it really was, me coming up out of the surf as if born from it, stumbling onto the sand, shivering from the embrace of the impossibly cold Atlantic and dropping to the ground exhausted, devastated and dripping wet in the dark, wailing like a child and unleashing my rage as best I could, the only way I knew how, by smashing my fists again and again into the soft wet sand until I could no longer raise my arms and collapsed in a heap. I lay in the dark, the waves slowly rolling over me, and imagined The Ragman watching from the dunes, his blood-soaked cleaver in hand and demonic eyes cutting the night. I waited, hoping he’d appear and finish me off, but he never did. He was a coward, as all evil is, relegated to shadows and hiding in the night, wrapped in the fears and horrible dreams of the weak, the damaged and the vulnerable.

When I finally had the strength, I rolled over and looked back out through the sheets of rain at the choppy ocean. I knew this time Caleb wasn’t coming back either. He’d finally escaped to a place where no one could ever find him again. Not even me.

I remembered swimming to shore, rain pelting the ocean around me like bullets, and how only moments before I’d carried him to the waterline and together we’d drifted into the sea, letting the waves carry us.

For a time, I let him think I really was going with him. And maybe I was, but I’m sure he knew all along that just like years before, destiny would never let that happen. Through the darkness and rain I could barely see him, but thought at one point he smiled at me. I’ll never know for sure, but that’s how I choose to remember it.

We drifted out until land was no longer in sight and the fear in me began to rise as it always had. I held Caleb’s frail body with one arm and treaded water. “If you don’t come with me,” he said; his voice weak and shivering, barely audible above the rain, “then all I’ve done is put off the inevitable.”

Maybe that’s all any of us can ever do.

“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” he said. “I never wanted to hurt at all.”

I removed his hands from my neck and let him glide away a bit. He lurched back and clung to me in a panic, as if the reality of what was about to happen had hit him for the first time. I was fearful he might pull us both under, so I kicked faster to stay afloat then gently removed his hands from my neck a second time. “It’s all right now,” I told him. “It’s all right.”

This time he offered no resistance as I laid him down on the surface of the ocean. Floating face-up, his arms drifted out to his sides and his gaze turned to the night sky. His eyes blinked away the steady assault of raindrops and his mouth fell open, his tongue protruding as if to catch them like snowflakes.

I took his face in my hands, leaned close to his ear and whispered, “If God exists it’s out here as Poseidon.”

He reached up with one hand and clasped my wrist.

I let go. A few seconds later, he did too.

Quietly, Caleb slipped away into the darkness beneath the waves.

Alone, I headed back for shore.

Sitting up in bed, it took me a minute to realize where I was and what was happening, as it did most nights. The bedroom came into focus and I zeroed in on a window on the far wall. A gentle snow was falling just beyond the pane; moonlight illuminating and causing the flakes to sparkle like diamonds. Somewhere far away I heard the grumble of snowplows but otherwise the night was quiet. I wiped perspiration from my eyes with the back of a shaking hand then swung my feet around to the floor and sat there a moment.

Louie was curled up at the foot of the bed. He glanced over at me with a dirty look for having awakened him then sighed and snuggled deeper into the comforter.

Behind me, in bed and asleep on her stomach lay Jill, her back subtly rising and falling with each breath. A restless sleeper, she’d kicked the sheets and blankets off her side at some point in the night, as she often did, even in winter. She wore a red flannel nightgown I’d gotten her for Christmas the year before. I adjusted my position on the edge of the bed, reached over and put a hand on the small of her back.

She moaned softly but didn’t stir, so I left it there a while. For such a small woman she gave off a tremendous amount of heat.

Louie and I had moved back in a few months ago. After a series of long talks and weeks of what would undoubtedly be ongoing marriage counseling, Jill and I decided to give it one more try. It wasn’t the same as it had been and I wasn’t sure it ever could be, but it was working. One thing it proved to both of us was just how much we still loved each other. I needed to work harder at controlling my anger and getting to the real truth behind what was causing it, something my psychologist continued to help me with. My temper tantrums scared Jill, upset her, and shut her down emotionally. After years of dealing with them they had taken a toll on her, and I needed to recognize and understand that. For her part, she needed to work on communicating with me more effectively, letting me know how she really felt and how things were impacting her in the moment, rather than suppressing them and letting them build and manifest later in inappropriate ways, which led to things like throwing me out and claiming she was no longer in love with me.

While more truth in our relationship was what was called for, there were still many things I couldn’t be entirely honest about. I hadn’t told her the truth about what had taken place in Sheppard Beach, and wasn’t sure I ever would. Even if I wanted to, what in God’s name could I say? That I’d gone to see a dead old man’s blood sprayed all over the walls of the house he used to live in, and then helped Caleb commit suicide because, among other things, he may very well may have been exactly what she feared and suspected him to be? No, instead I was vague and aloof about any details and simply told her I’d talked him into going into rehab at a nice place out West somewhere in the desert, and that once he’d completed his stay and gotten better he’d more than likely return to New York and contact me at that time. The concept that someone as unreliable as Caleb might simply vanish from that point forward was not only believable, but likely, so when the time came, I’d use that and claim I hadn’t heard from him after all and had no idea where he was or if I ever would. The real truths were between Caleb and me, and that’s where they needed to stay.

I caught myself wondering if Caleb’s body would ever be found. I’d expected to hear news that it had washed up on shore somewhere, but so far, nothing.

Still, his words echoed in my mind as if he’d spoken them only yesterday.

You don’t believe her, do you? Don’t, Derrick, don’t believe her, it—it isn’t true.

Thankfully, I didn’t. And he was right, it wasn’t true. Jill did still love me.

I guess everyone just tried their best to be happy, to survive and make it through the night however they could without losing their minds. If only we could learn to do that without hurting each other quite so much it might actually be worth it.

For now that’s all either of us could do: try.

Don’t let Jill go. That love keeps it at bay, understand? It’s the only thing that gives you a fighting chance, and even then…

And that was the real question. Was the love enough? Was it strong enough? Was it real enough? Had enough of it truly survived?

My hand moved lower onto Jill’s ass. I cupped, squeezed it.

She stirred, turned her face toward me without raising her head and opened a sleepy eye. “What time is it?”

I shrugged in the moonlight. “Late. Or early, I guess.”

“Are you all right?”

Rather than answer, I gently patted her ass.

“I’m here,” she said dreamily, as if I had doubted her existence somehow. She dropped her closest hand into my lap, fingers searching and prodding at my boxers until they found what they’d gone looking for. Her eyes rolled shut but she kept working me, and with her free hand she blindly reached for the nightstand next to the bed, opened the drawer, found a small tube of lubricant and held it out for me.

As I reached for it something along the walls distracted me. I tensed, almost bolted, thinking it was blood spattered about like I’d seen in that cottage. But it was only shadows slinking slowly through the bedroom. Jill sensed the tension and her grip on me loosened, but after a few seconds her hand began moving again. Without a word she pulled one of her pillows out from under her head and slid it beneath her pelvis, arched her back and raised her buttocks in the air.

I slid her nightgown up over her hips, squeezed lube onto my fingers and rubbed it on and into her, listening as her breath quickened and she let out a quiet moan.

I stripped off my boxers and moved in behind her.

Later, when it was over and Jill had slipped away to the bathroom to shower, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. The digital clock read 4:45. It was still pitch-black out, might as well have been the middle of the night. A whistle howled in the distance.

Trash train
, c
oming fast
;
racing through the snowstorm, screeching in the night.

The murders in Sheppard Beach had not been solved, and just like the ones here, I knew they never would be. The mystery of who—or what—had been behind them, would never be known. Years before, had the murderer been my own grandfather? In Sheppard Beach, and other places where similar murders took place, had Caleb been to blame? Or was one simply a senile old man and the other a delusional junkie with dreams of martyrdom, neither of whom had anything to do with the murders? And if they were involved, had they simply procured the victims as Caleb claimed? Was the Ragman myth or real, back from the dead and calling out to the chosen from desolate, fog-covered streets just as he had all those years ago in my grandfather’s old stories?

I sat up and listened a moment. The shower was still running. I watched the window and the snowfall beyond for several minutes, and then just as the shower stopped and the pipes in the wall seized with a loud thump, I rolled out of bed, forced myself to the window, and slowly pulled back the drape.

There was something crawling around out there in the snow, just visible beneath the streetlights…something dressed in filthy rags, its body jerking about, its movements insanely fast and awkward, its limbs bent at impossible angles, kicking the snow up around it in a crimson mist, its feral eyes burning the darkness.

For Caleb, the nightmare was over. For me, there was still the dream.

I looked away, as if that might save me.

As I staggered back toward bed with memories of earlier dreams flooding my mind, I felt the rage and terror grow stronger in me. While I’d dreamed, The Ragman had been dreaming too, of bloody carnage and the one destined to set it before him like the sacrifice it was.

Maybe The Ragman wasn’t Caleb’s nightmare or even my own.

Maybe we were
his
dream.

After all, I’d dreamed of Caleb, of Jill, and what might have been.

And The Ragman, he dreamed of me.

Just then, somewhere not so very far beyond my bedroom window, echoing along the snow-covered streets, I was sure I heard the sound of a small bell, old and rusty, ringing in the night.