Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

The tip tore through his jacket, then plunged into something soft and stayed there. Blood splattered all over the snow, and he tumbled onto the ground. In a split second he assessed the damage. He felt no pain and knew that he hadn’t been stabbed. When he looked at the man squirming beneath him, he saw the blade of the knife stuck deep into his right thigh. Maybe even all the way through. He caught the rotten teeth and heard the man cackling. Saw the madness smoldering in his eyes like coals glowing at the end of a house fire. It was him , and Teddy did a double take.

It was the face Holmes had described in his dreams.

Not a woman or a man, but a pale and lifeless ghost. Chasing him and laughing at him. Pushing his hands and face into Darlene Lewis’s body to leave fingerprints and lip prints and a trail of evidence the police could find.

Teddy threw a shaky punch, aiming at those teeth. When he missed, he threw another and hit the mark.

Trisco’s eyes lit up and he groaned. He wrenched the knife out of his leg and kicked his feet in the air. For some reason he was wearing socks over his shoes, and Teddy stared at them half a moment too long. He took a hard shot to the head, paused as he heard the barn door opening, and watched Trisco flee across the yard.

He jumped to his feet, shouting at his mother as he raced toward the house. “Get back inside and lock the door.”

Trisco vanished around the corner, heading for the driveway. Teddy ripped open the back door and bolted upstairs. His father’s shotgun was hanging on his bedroom wall. He grabbed the rifle, switched off the safety, leaped down the front stairs. As he rushed onto the front porch, he spotted Trisco legging his way down Waterloo Road.

Teddy sprinted across the driveway into the neighbor’s yard, vaulting over the fence and tearing through the bushes. He could see Trisco on the other side of the trees, hobbling toward a black BMW. He could feel his heart beating as he gripped the gun and dug in his heels. He hit the trees and burst onto the street. The driver’s side door slammed shut and the engine turned over.

Teddy raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger.

The gun rocked back into his shoulder and the muzzle flashed, waking up the dead of night with the sound of burning gunpowder. Teddy’s eyes skipped through the flash to the rear window, watching it shatter into a thousand pieces. Shards of glass sprayed through the car all over the front seat and dash, and he heard Trisco groan.

The BMW whined back at him like a wounded animal, its wheels churning up snow as it strained to pull forward and escape. Teddy fired a second blast from twenty-five yards off. He heard the sound of buckshot piercing sheet metal, but the car hurtled down the road at high speed. Trisco switched on his headlights. A quarter mile down, the lights blinked on and off in the darkness. When they blinked a second time, Teddy wondered if it wasn’t a message from Trisco that he was okay.

There wasn’t enough time to come forward and explain to the local police that he’d just been attacked by a mad-dog serial killer. He’d seen the neighbor’s windows light up as he ran back toward the house. He guessed they were calling 911.

Because the shots had come from Sanctuary Road, the cops would focus their attention on the pine forest and the last open field across the street. Deer roamed freely here. Over the past few years, the herd had become quite large. Poachers were known to hunt in state parks at night. It wasn’t too big of a stretch to think someone had taken an illegal shot at a buck and raced off. The whining sound of Trisco’s BMW stealing into the night might even help sell the story if the cops bothered to stop by and ask. Teddy didn’t think they would.

He tapped on the barn door. When it opened, he saw the look on his mother’s face and knew nothing would fly but the truth. Her eyes were roving over his body and torn jacket, instinctively checking his arms and legs and counting the number of fingers on his hands.

“I’m in trouble,” he said. “The man we’re looking for has found me.”

“Are you hurt?”

He shook his head. “But it isn’t safe here. You need to pack a bag and go over to Quint’s. I need to get downtown.”

She looked at the shotgun, but didn’t say anything. She’d heard her son fire the weapon. The smell of gunpowder lingered in the air.

“We need to hurry,” he said.

She gave him a nervous look but understood. “I’ll call Quint right away.”

He stepped back from the door to let her pass, then followed her down the path to the house. He could see her wheels turning. He could tell she was dredging up the past and trying to make sense out of what happened tonight without enough details to fill it all in. As they reached the kitchen door, he grabbed the handle and opened it for her.

“When Dad went to prison,” he said, “how did you know he didn’t do it?”

She turned back, confused. “Why would you ask that now?”

“Could you see it in his face, Mom? His eyes?”

“No,” she said in a quiet voice. “Your father couldn’t hide his emotions very well. He looked guilty because he felt guilty. That was the problem.”

“You mean the police found out how much cash the company had and assumed he did it.”

She nodded. “Your father thought he should’ve seen it coming and blamed himself for the murder.”

“If he looked guilty, then how did you know he wasn’t?”

She thought it over. “I just did ,” she said after a moment. “When he died and his accountant came forward admitting what he’d done, I wasn’t surprised. Your father and I thought it was him all along.”

“What about the prosecutor? Did you tell him?”

“He was young and wouldn’t listen. He was trying to make a name for himself. Your father was a trophy.”

Her gaze fell away and she stepped inside. When she went upstairs to pack, Teddy checked the lock on the front door, peering through the glass to the street. He didn’t see any sign of the cops, and didn’t think Trisco would be back until he could deal with his wound. Heading up to his room, he returned the shotgun to its rack and grabbed a flashlight. Then he hurried down the hall, looking in on his mother before he went downstairs. She was sitting on the bed, speaking with Quint on the phone. Thank God for Quint.

“I’ll be in the backyard,” he whispered.

She nodded. She was upset, worried about him, unable to hide it.

Teddy checked the flashlight for power as he rushed down the steps to the kitchen and grabbed a handful of plastic bags from the drawer. Once outside, he crossed the yard to the fence and panned the light across the ground. Trisco had been wearing socks over his shoes. It seemed so strange at first. But as Teddy examined the footprints in the snow, he knew why. The indentations were soft and round without any definition. There was something diabolically ingenious about it. Teddy shook his head, following the tracks toward the barn until he reached the grove of rhododendrons by the window.

He lowered the light to the ground. There wasn’t as much blood as he remembered. Trisco might be in pain right now, but wasn’t mortally wounded. The thought crossed Teddy’s mind that he was about to interfere with a crime scene. That he should return to the house and call 911 immediately, even Nash. But then the downward cycle would begin all over again, he thought. The local cops would listen to his story and have evidence to gather whether they believed him or not. Rumors would follow, history unearthed. The house would be a crime house again, irrevocably linked to murder. People would drive by and point, just as they had when his father was arrested. Some would get out of their cars and have their pictures taken in front of the house. If his mother was in the yard, they might even ask her to pose with them. It had happened before. Not to his mother, but to him just after his father’s death. A middle-aged couple had parked across the street and wanted to take a picture while he raked leaves in the front yard. They were strangers, but seemed friendly. Teddy wasn’t sure if he was supposed to know them or not. He was just a boy at the time, trying to sort his way through the confusion. They wanted a picture of him standing before the house and he agreed. When he told his mother about it, she called them ghouls and started to cry.