Sleepwalker (40 page)

Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch
, he thought. There it was, like Noah’s Ark peeking out of the snow on Mt. Ararat. Earl’s cruiser. Twenty feet away and nestled against the first of many large pines flowing back for as far as he could see.
She’s a genius. What better place to hide than right under our noses?
She’d done a pretty efficient job camouflaging the vehicle. Leonard’s guess was that after checking in, Pamela came to the easy assumption that Joe-manager wouldn’t venture out beyond the safety of his cubby-hole to investigate a snapped twig or falling branch in the woods. J-M was probably too wrapped up in his own little world to really notice at all. Let the babe get away.
Fine specimen, if
ya
’ ask me. Long brown hair, pretty eyes. Might find her type on the cover of one of them ladies’ magazines.

She’d taken her time giving it the cover it needed, so it seemed. The car was fully blanketed in mud and brush, only a few small nooks of white paint showing through the purposeful mess. The earthy veil would keep it cloaked until morning, maybe even longer. Question was, then: why was she still here?

Leonard’s racing blood set his legs into motion. He tackled the waist-high growth with the bent intent of a football player recovering a fumble. His feet flicked showers of dirty water and mud across his pants, spotting him to the thighs as if he’d gone a few rounds with a saturated paint roller. The small branch of a dead tree poked his thigh and he winced. When he reached the rear of the motel, he circled back around the side, leaving wet tracks behind on the concrete pathway. He passed the dumpster. Stopped. Looked at it with the curiosity of a vagabond. The compulsion to peer inside was instant. Strong.

He walked over, stepped up on a hinge and peeked over the edge.

Sitting atop four or five fat trash bags were her clothes. Denim jeans, a plaid shirt, socks, and a pair of sneakers. They were heavily doused with mud, pine needles, and bits of rotted leaves.

Undeniable proof, right here. Sitting smack-dab in the pudding.

In seconds he was back standing before room 2.

He took a deep breath, and for a moment realized he should have called Reese and Kevin over for back-up. Just in case.

But he was too late for that.

The door to room 2 swung open. And Pamela Bergin was there.

And so was...

The cop from the condo
, Richard thought, their eyes locking for a fleeting yet dramatically intimidating moment. A million thoughts tortured his mind, like
could my timing be any worse?
and
if I’d listened to Pam like she asked we’d be two steps ahead of the cops
. But he hadn’t taken any heed to Pamela’s warning, and as a reward won the booby prize: a second-row seat to a very exclusive engagement:
Officer Leonard
Moldofsky
from the Fairview Police department, live and in person at the
Jamesway
Inn
.

He guessed that the cop had been persistent in looking for him all this time. He certainly hadn’t been floating around these naked parts having a day of trout and bass in the local stream. No. He was up here fishing for
Sparke
, and found more than he could have ever hoped for, like Richard
Sparke’s
dead body on display near the trough in
Bledson
State Park.

And in that unique moment when they subjectively secured each other’s stares, Richard saw his own face looking back at him (it wasn’t as if he were peering into the eyes of the man in black. It was the parallel exhibition of awe and amazement he saw in the cop’s face, features seized with uncontrollable astonishment, like Richard’s). And in his like expression, Richard’s own visage displayed true fear, indicating that the time had come to be taken away once and for all, locked up as a murderer, a fugitive.

The dreadful feelings were too much for his jaded body to handle. His knees turned to jelly. For balance he grabbed the top of the television--in this moment Richard had an odd vision of
Moldofsky’s
blanching face going from white back to pink, then red, and then all the way white again, a conceivable result to an over-zealous twist of the contrast knob on the television, though only in his dreams--but he was momentarily saved from kissing the carpet. The mirror image of fear on the cop, the color falling out of his face as if he’d just seen a ghost, along with the paralysis it seemingly delivered, was equally stirring as his own fear of the moment, allowing him a moment’s chance to steady his trembling body and make a move.

He’s scared
, Richard thought,
because he’s been up in the mountains, he’s seen the body of the man in black. Thought it was me. But now he’s not so sure that was really me. Because I’m here. Maybe, just maybe, his pale face tells no lie. Maybe he really thinks I’m a ghost?

Pamela slammed the door in his jaw-slackened face. She fumbled as she attached the chain-lock, then stepped away and wrestled with her knapsack until it was free from her back. She placed it on the ground and started rummaging through it, silent in her performance.

“Now what?” Richard asked. “What do we do now?”

For the first time, Richard noticed her trembling. But it didn’t seem to impede her train of thought; her confidence showed through her aggressive actions. Whatever rabbit she was pulling out of her hat, she believed it to be a more viable alternative than gunning down the cop, or tearing down camp for a smooth and easy trip into police custody. “You should have listened to me earlier,” she said after a few uneasy seconds.

The cop started banging on the door, finally, following a rather odd length of silence. His muffled voice thudded through like a boxer’s jabs. “Pamela, I just want to talk for a moment. No one’s going to jail, no one’s going to get hurt. It’s about Richard...we found his body up in the mountains. He’s dead.”
Didn’t he just see me?
Richard thought.
No, Richard. He just saw your ghost.

Pamela stopped searching her knapsack. She stared tentatively at the door like a cat might eye a spray-bottle, then peered at Richard, even grinning a touch at the mention of finding Richard’s body.

“They still don’t know. That’s good.”

“Know what?”

The cop raised his voice. “Ms, Bergin, I’ll ask you for the last time. Open this door at once.” His voice, although still broken, carried formidable threat. One pop from his gun, and he’d be inside.
He won’t do that. He’ll assume we’re armed, call for backup first. We have some time...

And it was at the instant of this thought that the whole world began to change for Richard
Sparke
, that the doorway to his answers began opening up.

Pamela unzipped the large pocket of her knapsack, the one Richard toyed with while sleepwalking last night. She reached inside and pulled out a very odd-looking contraption. Richard stared at it with the same fascination a child would setting eyes upon an elephant at the zoo, knowing that somehow this
thing
had something to do with his dreams, his sleepwalking, everything. Although the device was small, about the size of a shoebox, it possessed a grand identity. There were a hundred or more details that drew one’s immediate curiosity to it; the most obvious of these were the mercury-like orbs floating on its metallic surface like water nits, and the capillary-thin lights twisting about its viewable interior like tiny bolts of lightning on an endless race to nowhere. On and on, the list of awesome features went: wires that pulsed like veins; a small glowing sphere protruding from one end that looked eerily like a human brain. When Pam picked it up, held it, cradled it in her forearms, it appeared alive, hugging her back as if thankful to be free from the dark depths of its canvas enclosure.

Richard was awed. He opened his mouth to speak, the words surfacing with the broken stagger of a ghoul reaching out from its grave. “What--what is that?”

Suddenly the door opened up, making a loud
crack
, the chain measuring only three inches of leeway. “Pamela, undo the chain so we can speak.” Richard found himself peering through the gap in the door, seeing the cop. The cop looked back at him, his jaw hanging like a loose gear, saliva glistening on his bottom lip.

Pamela, still fidgeting with the device, yelled, “Don’t look at him, Richard!” but Richard couldn’t help but be drawn to Officer Leonard
Moldofsky
. He couldn’t put a finger on his sudden sentiment. Maybe it was because he was immediately impressed with the cop, with the drive that brought him here, his discriminating ability to eventually hunt Richard down. Or perhaps it was because Richard wanted to tell
Moldofsky
that he was just an innocent victim, and nothing else. A pawn in someone else’s sick game. There’d be no time to argue the thought.

The cop’s face fell limp. He rubbed his eyes and opened them again, seemingly nonplussed. His prior sighting was now fully reaffirmed: Richard
Sparke
was indeed here in room 2 at the
Jamesway
Inn. Alive and kicking.

“Jesus Christ...is that you,
Sparke
?”

Richard nodded, but was immediately distracted by a high-pitched whistling noise. It sounded something like an alerting tea kettle. It emanated from the device in Pam’s arms, and grew to deafening proportions. Pamela sat back, yelling through the din, “Richard! Come here, next to me!” She tugged on his leg and he hunkered down alongside her, realizing that he’d heard this noise in the past, right before the...the...

Oh my God...

“What the hell is going on?” Richard yelled.

The door made another slamming noise, open, shut, open, shut, the chain doing its damnedest to hem in the urging
Moldofsky
.

Pam held Richard tightly, peering into the device. Like a sunrise on a flat horizon, bright blue beams of light

(the blue light!)

filled the room. They spread out in segmented wave patterns that grew thicker and thicker until the beams coalesced into a singular totality. It vibrated, tossing oscillating patterns upon the walls and ceiling like glowing confetti. Soon the light brightened, buried the far wall, covering the bathroom, the mirror, the coat rack. It raced across the ceiling in a flow of aquamarine luminescence that seemed convincing enough to swim in. A smoldering metal odor filled the room, something reminiscent of the smell arising from a quick halt on a train’s brakes.

The room began to shake. Richard heard
Moldofsky
yelling, slamming the door back and forth. He saw the latch holding the chain start to loosen from the wall. His tongue was sour with the metallic reek, his eyes lost in thick blue light. He held Pamela tightly as the light engulfed them.
It’s eating me
, Richard thought, every hair on his body standing at attention. His teeth hurt, his testicles hurt, it became difficult to breathe. Finally, he yelled,
“What’s happening?!”

He heard
Moldofsky
yelling the same exact thing.

Pam looked at Richard briefly, eyes like slits. Her cheeks vibrated in the sudden storm of wind.
“We’re going to the place I told you about...”

Richard tried to speak again but the maelstrom wouldn’t let him. He could do nothing else at the moment but close his eyes and surrender himself to the mirage of his dreams.

The blue light.

The blue light flooded the room in an instant, as if someone had opened up a dam holding it back. Leonard refused to shield his eyes once the lock gave way, pinning his teary sights on the two bodies crouched on the floor in the center of the room, Pamela Bergin and, well, what appeared to be Richard
Sparke
. Of course there could only be one Richard
Sparke
, so either this individual or the person whose body was found in
Bledson
state Park was the twin-nemesis Delaney referred to in his studies. The impossible seemed to have taken the role of the probable now. Just like that.

The light’s source generated at a point near the forms of Pamela and Richard. It was hot against his skin, filling the room with a smoky-alkaline odor. He stepped forward, screaming into the whistling din. Surely the uproar had attracted Kevin and Reese, who were most likely smart enough to keep their distance, and unaware that Leonard had just walked into the center of it.

His hair blew in circles. He shielded his eyes, not from the light but from the dirt and debris flying around the room. Now he was second guessing his decision to force entry into the room. He tried to tell himself that there really hadn’t been a choice at the moment, that he’d been compelled by an inner force, a desire to discover the strange truth of the matter, and that choosing to walk away at this defining moment would make him a failure.

He pulled his hands from his eyes and gazed at the silhouettes of Pam and Richard, watching them as they faded into nothing in a mere five seconds,
five...four...three...two...one, now they’re gone
. He could feel his heart slipping away as the image before him diminished, and then looking up he could see the pulsing blue light darkening at the corners, folding into itself, leaving the stark regularity of the ceiling and walls in its wake like a flattened landscape falling away from a tornado’s furor.

Tears of pure frustration followed those of pain and irritation, and like a beggar of mercy before the pulpit, Leonard dove forward toward the spot where Pam and Richard had kneeled.