Supernatural: Night Terror (25 page)

“A bioterrorism agent affecting the subconscious might be involved,” Dean said and hoped it sounded plausible, even though it was a bunch of bull. Sam would have had better luck selling that line. Dean cleared his throat. “How’s the coffee here?”

Phillips grinned. “An acquired taste.”

“Three parts battery acid, one part roofing tar,” Jeffries said.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Dean said. “Lead the way.”

Entering Olga Kuckarski’s house, Sam’s first impression was of musty gloom. Dark curtains and blinds obstructed most of the light that attempted to enter through the windows. Dark paneling encased the bottom half of the walls; dingy wallpaper with designs too faded to distinguish covered the top. But most of the walls were fronted with dark wooden bookshelves packed with old hardbound books steeped in dust and mildew, and bulky hutches filled with worthless bric-a-brac—collections of snow globes, ceramic fish and frogs and turtles, tiny bottles filled with multi-colored sand, oriental fans. The glass doors on the hutches kept the dust away from the interior shelves, but every other surface looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time.

Sam wasn’t surprised by the old woman’s inattention to house cleaning. She walked with difficulty, hunched over with labored breathing, her arms trembling. As she led him down a cramped hallway to the kitchen, Sam’s gaze wandered to a framed portrait of Lech Walesa. A small bronze plate bolted to the bottom of the frame listed the dates Walesa served as Poland’s president. Paired with the portrait in a matching frame was a map of Poland. A freestanding bookshelf on the opposite wall displayed books that—unlike those in the towering monuments of mildew he passed earlier—looked as if they had actually been read or perused in the last decade. These books covered a wide variety of topics, all dealing with Poland: multiple volumes on the history of the country, volumes on life during wartime, the changing face of politics, the legends and folklore, famous people, tourism, music, literature, sports, geography and demographics, even several cookbooks. The woman had access to anything she’d ever want to know about her country of origin.

In the small kitchen, which had enough floor space for a table and four chairs but not much else, she opened a cabinet above her head and reached for two glasses. When Sam saw her hands trembling, he stepped forward and said, “Allow me.”

“I’m not helpless, you know?” she responded sharply.

“I’m a guest in your house,” Sam said. “I want to help.”

“Don’t have any fancy bottled water.”

“Tap’s fine,” Sam said.

He filled two glasses and set them on opposite sides of the table. When he reached to pull back a chair for her, she smacked his hand away.

“Enough of the Boy Scout crap,” she said. “State your business, young man.”

Sam waited as she fumbled with the chair, pushing it back with the edge of a curled fist before plopping down in apparent exhaustion. When she was settled with her ragged breathing under control, he sat down and took a sip of water. The center of the table held a framed photo and a vase of flowers a few days past fresh.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Kucharski,” Sam said. “I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me about your grandson.”

“Teodor? You’re here about Teodor? Little late, aren’t you?” she said bitterly. “They let him die a year ago.”

“Who let him die?”

“Sad excuses for friends, that’s who,” she said. “Let him drive after he’d been drinking. And that girl. Chief ’s kid. Teddy was too good for her.”

“They were all in the car with him when he crashed.”

“Of course they were,” she said, her voice rising. “But only my boy died! Teodor was a good Polish boy. He deserved better.” Her hand trembled as she raised the glass to her lips, water nearly sloshing over the rim before she took a sip. “He was the only family I had left. If they were real friends, they would have kept him out of that car...”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

She was quiet for a time and Sam debated excusing himself, but just as he was about to stand, she began to speak again.

“He loved that car,” she said. “That’s all his father had to leave him. When Piotr, my son, bought that car, I thought it was a waste of money. But he rebuilt it, piece by piece. Took him years. A labor of love. And Teodor took real good care of it until...”

“It was a horrible accident.”

“Horrible for Teodor,” she said. “His so-called friends walked away from it.”

“I understand they were all injured.”

She scoffed with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Injuries? More like inconveniences. And they got off with a slap on the wrist. That girl, she has connections. Father’s the police chief. Special treatment for her. And for those boys—”

“You are aware that Steve Bullinger and Tony Lacosta are both dead?”

“What? Dead?” She frowned at him. “How should I know? I don’t read the papers and the TV news is too depressing. Why should I watch?”

“They were both killed by a hit-and-run driver.”

“Ha! Imagine that,” she said, shaking her head. “Like that old movie,
The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Maybe they should have died in the accident that killed my Teodor. What’s that they say? Living on borrowed time.”

“The same car hit both of them. Tony last night. Steve the night before.”

“What? You think I did it? I don’t drive no more. Take the bus or bum a ride.”

Sam leaned forward. “The odd thing is,” he said and watched her reaction. “The car that hit them was a ’68 Charger. Red with a white stripe down the hood.”

She looked puzzled, frowning again. “Teodor’s car?”

“Identical.”

“Impossible,” she said. “The car was wrecked. Dumped in a junkyard. Saw it with my own two eyes. I went down there, to claim it... but it was a mess. There’s no one to rebuild it anymore.”

“Can you think of anyone who would want revenge?”

“I was his only family,” she said. “And I’m in no condition to run down a bunch of teenaged hooligans.”

“Other friends?”

“He had a blind spot for those three. Wasn’t anybody else,” she said. “I’m the only one who cares that Teodor’s gone.”

“Lucy Quinn cared for him a great deal.”

“I’m sure that’s what she tells everyone,” the old woman said dismissively. “It’s all about sympathy for her.”

A coughing fit seized her, turning her pale, lined face beet red.

As Sam started to rise, she waved him off and drank some water.

Sam lowered himself in the chair. He reached for the framed photo on the table, turned it toward him and looked closer: A smiling woman with graying hair stood next to a teenaged boy in a shirt and tie in front of a church.

“Is this you with Teodor?” Sam asked, startled.

“Of course it is.”

“When was this picture taken?”

“About... eighteen months ago,” she said. “That girl took it, after she came to church with us. Kissing up, was all that was. But it’s a good picture of Teodor.”

“Yes,” Sam said slowly, setting it down. “Yes, it is...”

The woman in the photo was hardly recognizable as the person sitting across from him. Tragedy and illness and stress had a way of aging people beyond their years, but the effect in this case was extreme. In eighteen months, Olga Kucharski looked as if she’d aged twenty-five years. Something occurred to Sam, but he’d have to approach it delicately.

“How was your relationship with Teodor?”

“Fine,” she said proudly. “We were family. The only family each of us had. We took care of each other.”

“You’d make sure he went to school, did his schoolwork, got plenty of sleep.”

“Of course.”

“And he’d make sure you were taking care of yourself.”

“Naturally,” she said. “I’m sometimes forgetful. He’d remind me to take my medicine.”

“Exactly,” Sam said. “Family taking care of family.”

“That’s how it is,” she said, nodding. “You have any family?”

“A brother.”

“Then you know.”

Sam nodded. “So Teodor would make sure you had regular checkups.”

“Of course,” she said. “He would drive me wherever I needed to go.”

“But now you have to remember all that stuff on your own,” Sam said. “For instance, when was the last time you saw your doctor.”

“I stopped going to the doctor,” she said with a bitter laugh. “When I lost Teddy, it didn’t matter no more. Who cares what happens to a lonely old woman?”

“You must have friends here. Neighbors.”

“It’s not the same,” she said with another flick of her hand. “Besides, the only doctor I need, I see every night.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Heh! All right, c’mon, I’ll show you.”

As she painfully pushed herself up out of her chair, Sam rose to help her. But again she refused any assistance. Once on her feet, she paused to catch her breath and took another quick sip of water. Breathing audibly, almost with a wheeze, she walked back down the narrow hallway. Instead of heading to the door, she turned right into a dark living room with a twenty-seven inch television, a threadbare green-checked sofa behind a small coffee table, and a worn recliner with an antimacassar draped over the headrest. Beside the recliner, which was pointed toward the television set, a small table held a lamp, a remote control, and a folded newspaper TV schedule.

“I don’t sleep good,” she said. “Not since Teodor’s passing. Toss and turn in my bed, so I come down and watch television until I nod off. He’s on late at night, when I can’t sleep.”

As Olga Kucharski approached the TV, Sam’s gaze drifted across the walls and discovered more than two dozen photos of Teodor Kucharski. From baby photos through high school, it was possible to trace the growth and development of the woman’s grandson. He imagined that most of the photos had gone up on the walls after the boy’s death, making the room a shrine, each age in each photo a memory trigger for her to recall a different time in Teodor’s life. On top of the television, a more recent photo was bracketed by two glass vases filled with flowers about as fresh as the bouquet in the kitchen.

She probably brings home fresh flowers from the supermarket each week
, he thought. He was reminded of the garment factory fire memorial, a communal mourning, shared by the whole town. But here, in this house, Olga Kucharski battled her grief alone.

“Started watching him every night. A habit. Now he’s like an old friend. And he’s from Clayton Falls. Met him once, at the movie rental place over in the strip mall downtown. That’s where I got this,” she said, pointing to a spot on the wall above the television. Or, more specifically, a framed eight-byten photo. The only picture in the room not of her grandson.

Sam stepped forward to examine the subject in the glossy publicity photo: a man theatrically costumed as a mad scientist. Probably in his mid-sixties—though his zombie makeup made his true age hard to guess—the man had a shock of white hair and startled-wide eyes. He wore a long white PVC lab coat smeared with stage blood. In one hand he held an Erlenmeyer flask filled with neon-green fluid emitting tendrils of white smoke. The other hand gestured at the improbable concoction as if to announce to the world that he’d finally made his deranged breakthrough, a B-movie lunatic’s eureka moment.

“He’s Polish, too,” Mrs. Kucharski said as Sam examined the photo. “I had him sign his real name: Jozef Wieczorek. I knew it because of an article in the paper. Most people just know him by his TV name. Since Teodor died, he’s the only ‘doctor’ I need.”

Sam looked at the bottom of the photo, where the guy’s character name was preprinted in dripping blood-red script letters.

“Dr. Gruesome?” Dean asked. “Seriously?”

“Well, that’s not his real name,” Senior Officer Carleen Phillips said.

She stood next to Dean in the small break room, on the other side of the coffee station, sipping her steaming mug o’ joe as if it wasn’t also burning a hole through her stomach lining. Dean wasn’t so fortunate. The stuff was foul.

“Read it once. Hard to remember or pronounce.”

Jeffries smiled. “And Dr. Gruesome rolls off the tongue.”

“This
Nightmare Theater
is real?”

“Sure,” Jeffries said. “On the air a couple years now. Late-night horror movies. Mostly old stuff. Dr. Gruesome comments during the commercial breaks.”

“And he lives here in town?”

“Yeah, but you might not recognize him without the mad scientist getup and zombie makeup.”

Dean glanced up at the TV mounted on an adjustable metal arm in the corner of the break room.

“You have a guide for that?” he asked.

“Sure,” Phillips said. “There it is. On top of the microwave. But the show’s not on now.”

Dean grabbed the thin newsprint
TV Weekly
magazine and flipped to the listing for the previous night, then the night before, working his way back to the start of the week.

“I’ll be damned,” he whispered. He looked up at the two cops. “I need to talk to this guy.”

“You know who you should ask?” Phillips said. “Millie, our dispatcher. Dr. Gruesome’s her cousin.”

“That’s right,” Jeffries said. “She’ll have his address or phone number.”