Mark Edward Hall

Chapter 9

The chopper landed right on schedule. Jennings was shown to a waiting car. He got in and sat back trying to relax. But there was no way in hell he could. All his muscles were tensed and his mind worried. Spencer seemed quite anxious to pin these deaths on McArthur? McArthur was a suspect; there was no doubt about it. But perhaps he was more than a suspect. What if the government had been watching him since—? The thought struck Jennings suddenly that perhaps they’d never taken their eyes off him. Yes, it was a definite possibility. Frankly Jennings was a little surprised they’d waited this long to make their move. He supposed that guys who could see the kinds of things McArthur could see were valuable. Sure they were. Doug’s was a rare gift and the government wanted to dissect him, to see what made him tick, and they were looking for an excuse to grab him. Jennings was suddenly and absolutely certain of it. McArthur would be a hell of a guinea pig for those CIA spooks to dissect.

But right now he couldn’t think about that. He needed to find a way to contact Doug and warn him of his suspicions. The man needed protection from his own fucking government. He knew that Doug wasn’t capable of murder. Hell, the man wouldn’t harm a bee if one was stinging him. But they would accuse him to get what they wanted, wouldn’t they?

Jennings needed a clear head and some time to think. Unfortunately that wasn’t going to happen. Everything was moving too fast, and he felt like he was caught in the middle of a nightmare. He sat forward in his seat as they approached the circus, his muscles tense like over-stressed strings on a musical instrument.

The crime scene was an average suburban home on an average street in a very average small New England town. The place had a front porch, a two car garage and a lawn with two towering oak trees growing up out of it like titanic guardians. One of the trees even had a rope swing attached to a rugged-looking horizontal branch. Right now, however, the house, as well as most of the street, was roped off, and inside the cordon there was a buzz of activity. There were at least ten parked emergency vehicles with people moving busily to and from them. Outside the barricade, Jennings noted as they passed, were several news vans and a crowd of anxious-looking spectators. As he got out of the car a crowd of reporters moved toward him in a wave.

“Can you give us any information?” A young man asked breathlessly, a cameraman at his side.

How they knew he was a cop, Jennings couldn’t say. Maybe he smelled like one. His shirt was stuck to his back and his underarms were wet. Yeah, that must be it. He smelled like a fucking pig. He tried to smile as he pushed his solid frame through the crowd but could only manage a grimace. “As you can see, I just arrived,” he said. “Don’t know any more than you do. Maybe less.” He pushed past the crowd of reporters and spectators and into the cordoned off zone.

He stepped up onto the porch and peered through the open door. The first body he saw nearly undid him. The kid just stood there like a statue, frozen in time. He looked freeze dried. Nothing about him looked real. Not even his clothes. Everything seemed calcified. His hair stood straight up like slivers of glass. The face was stretched unnaturally, elongated somehow in an almost supernatural way, the mouth wide open in a silent scream. The eyes were open and dull-white, no pupils or corneas, more like the eyes of some renaissance sculpture than those of a human being. They seemed to be staring out at some unseen horror. A team of crime scene investigators hovered around the body, photographing, carefully taking samples.

Spencer stepped out onto the porch from inside the house walking carefully lest he step on some important piece of evidence. He was of medium height but solid, as though there were flexed muscles beneath his dark-colored suit jacket. His sandy hair was short-cropped and his complexion was deeply-tanned, like he’d just stepped out of the Florida sun. To Jennings he looked like ex-military. “Rick,” Spencer said extending his hand, “glad you could make it.”

Jennings ignored the outstretched hand. He could not take his eyes off the kid. Cold shivers ran through him as if he was witnessing something extraordinarily evil. “Where are the others?” he asked.

Self-consciously Spencer dropped his hand, turned and led Jennings into the house. The mother and father sat in their chairs looking pretty much the way the kid looked, frozen in time, calcified, and like the kid on the porch the faces were stretched in an almost supernatural way, eyes dull-white and staring, mouths open in twin silent ovals that made it look like the victims had been screaming in their moment of death. They’d seen whatever had done this to them. There was no doubt about that. The terror frozen in their eyes didn’t lie.

The room was crawling with forensic people. Just to the left of the door lay a dog on its side. It looked just like the humans, freeze dried, calcified, its mouth open in an eternal howl. Even its fur seemed brittle, standing straight up like glass stalagmites.

“Jesus,” Jennings said, frowning down at the dog. “What the fuck?”

“What the fuck seems to be the operative question of the day,” said Spencer.

Jennings attention was immediately drawn to something on the wall above the television. Three symbols that looked like words in some exotic language had been drawn meticulously in what looked like heavy black ink.

He’d seen the symbols before but didn’t know what they meant, didn’t know if they meant anything, for that matter. He moved closer to the wall and stopped abruptly, staring. There was another image below the three word-symbols. Jennings had no idea what it was but it looked something like the broken off point of an ancient arrow. It seemed to have been photo flashed there by some method he’d never seen before.

Jennings studied it, cocking his head this way and that. “What does it mean?”

“Don’t know,” said Spencer.

“Looks like some sort of artifact,” Jennings said. “Old. Like maybe an arrowhead or the point of a spear.”

“That’s what it looks like to us, too,” Spencer said and shrugged.

“What about the symbols above it?” Jennings asked, more than a little curious.

“They’re Aramaic. It’s an ancient language, sort of like Hebrew only older. From the time of Christ.”

“Jesus,” Jennings said, “how the hell do you know—?”

“Nothing too complex,” Spencer interrupted. “The bureau employs experts in ancient languages.”

“That’s a surprise,” Jennings said sarcastically. “How long have you known about this?”

“Years.”

Jennings shot Spencer a look of utter disdain. “What does it say?”

“Tleeqa, which means “Lost”, Shweeqa, which means “Forsaken”, and Minshiya which means “Forgotten”, respectively.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Jennings said.

“Wouldn’t think of it, Rick.”

Jennings thought for a minute before showing Spencer his bared teeth. “So, Doug was right. He knew when he was eight years old what those symbols meant.”

“Well, for some reason he was able to translate them. I’m not sure he knew what they meant. What do you think, Rick?”

“Don’t have a clue, Spencer. But I can see that you boys have really done some homework on this one.”

“It’s our job, Rick. You didn’t really think we forgot about those other cases just because they weren’t solved, did you? Christ, they were the most exciting things to happen to the bureau in years.”

“Exciting?” Jennings said in amazement. “People died. Lives were ruined.”

“Not my fault,” Spencer replied. “My job was to find out who or what did this.”

“Yeah, well did you have any success?”

“No thanks to you.”

“Wait a minute—”

“No, you wait a minute, Rick. You were the one closest to the boy who saw all this shit happen yet you wouldn’t let us near him.”

“He was just a kid.”

“Well, he’s not a kid anymore, and we will do whatever it takes to protect the national security.”

Jennings face became hot with rage and he had to fight to keep his hands from going around Spencer’s neck. “Don’t you use the national fucking security card with me, Spencer.”

“It’s all I’ve got, Rick. And I’m free to use it at will.”

Jennings concentrated on his breathing, trying to get himself under control. “So what is this nut case trying to tell us?”

Spencer shrugged his shoulders. “Lost, Forsaken, Forgotten. Don’t have a clue, but there are theories. We have shrinks in the bureau, too, you know. Maybe he wasn’t loved the way he thought he should have been as a child. Maybe he was spurned by a lover. Who the fuck knows why these nut jobs do the things they do.”

“So you’re assuming the guy who did this is human?” Jennings said.

Spencer smiled dryly. “Aren’t you?”

“I’ve never seen a human do this.”

“So you’re willing to buy into the possibility that he’s not?”

Jennings narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m willing to buy, Spencer. This whole thing is crazy if you ask me. I thought it was over a long time ago. Christ!” He sighed in frustration. “What about that symbol beneath the words?”

“Photos have been sent to Washington.” Again Spencer shrugged. “We’re working on it. It seems to have somehow been transferred onto the wall as though it’s real and not just a drawing. If you look closely it appears to be in bas-relief and it looks like it’s made of stone.” Jennings put his hand up as if to touch the symbol. “Don’t touch it!” Spencer said and Jennings’ hand froze midway. “We’ve got a team coming in to remove that piece of wall, take it back to the lab. No one’s ever seen anything like it and we don’t want it contaminated.”

On the stand beside the TV Jennings spied a family photo. Not able to wrap his brain around the image he was seeing on the wall, he strode over and picked the photo up examining it. “This is them, right?” He said, pointing a beefy finger. “The whole family.”

Spencer nodded.

“There are four people in the picture. I only saw three bodies,” Jennings said. “Where’s the little girl?” But even as he asked the question, Jennings thought he knew.

Spencer motioned for Jennings to follow him. In the kitchen he spoke in low tones. “That’s the part I didn’t want to mention over the air. The little girl, her name is Trinity. She’s six years old. No one knows where she is.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“We’re not jumping to any conclusions yet. There’s no evidence that she was taken.”

Jennings began to breathe a little unsteadily. “Well, where the hell is she then?”

“We’re looking into it, checking with all known relatives and close friends.”

“Who found the bodies?”

“When the father didn’t show up for work and nobody would answer the phone, his employer sent someone over. The porch door was open and he saw the boy.”

“Did he go into the house?”

“No way. He went back to his car and called the police on his cell phone.”

“So he didn’t see the little girl.”

Spencer shook his head. “Nobody saw her.  Listen, Rick, this is the main reason I called you down here. It’s . . . well . . . it’s just like the last time, up in Maine. Remember?”

Jennings stared at Spencer with an expression close to contempt. “Of course I remember. I’m the one who called you, for Christ’s sake. Are you telling me . . .?”

“That’s right,” said Spencer, his expression dour. “There’s no forensic evidence in this house that proves she ever existed.”

“Jesus Christ,” was all Jennings was capable of saying and it came out as a whisper.

Spencer said, “Her clothes are in her bedroom along with her toys, pictures, even a birth certificate. She’s got relatives and all the neighbors remember her. But there’s no scientific evidence that she was ever in this house, no scientific evidence that she ever existed, for that matter. No fingerprints, no hairs, no epidermis. There’s nothing in her bed or the bathroom or the kitchen. Nothing! The house is filled with forensic evidence of all the family members. All except her. That sound familiar, Rick?”

Wiped clean, Jennings thought. Like she was never born. Impossible. Sweat poured off him. He didn’t want to think about what Spencer was trying to force him to think about. But he couldn’t help himself. He remembered a very young and a very vulnerable-looking Doug McArthur lying in a hospital bed with his face taped up trying to absorb the reality that the two young friends he had been playing with just hours before, had vanished without a trace. In his mind the boy hadn’t seen the kids disappear, but he had seen the carnage in the second floor apartment that preceded their disappearance. And there had been others. Oh yes. Like the one nine years later, when Doug had returned home on summer vacation from the University of Maine. It was early in the morning and Jennings and Doug had been trout fishing two hundred and fifty miles north of Portland in the great Maine wilderness, a place known as Sandy Bend, when the young man had gone into what Jennings first thought was some sort of seizure. Without warning Doug fell to the ground and began to twitch and moan, holding his head in agony, chanting about terrible things being done to people and of a little girl who was trapped in a very dark place.

After Doug came to, Jennings had asked him if he remembered anything.

Doug had stared at him for a long time before answering, and Jennings had never seen such agony in a person’s eyes. “It’s just like Tommy and Savannah,” he said. “I can’t quite see where she is.” He shook his head and said, “But she’s calling to me, just like they did. She’s telling me she’s trapped in a place called the House of Bones. She’s suffering, and I don’t know how to help her.”

“Did you see anything else?” Jennings had asked Doug.

After a moment Doug nodded and said, “Yeah, it was him, the thing that calls itself the Collector. It’s so evil I can’t stand to look at it. But he makes me look at him.”

“Are you sure it’s the same entity, Doug?”

Doug nodded. “A dark thing covered in leathery skin and wearing a cowl. It wants me to see. It wants me to know what it does. But there are others with him there too.”

“Others?” Jennings said puzzled.

“Yeah, in the House of Bones. They’re like him but different somehow. More human. I think they work for him, do his bidding or something. Maybe things he can’t do for himself. I think he’s the boss, the Collector, I mean; he’s the real bad ass. He’s the one that takes the kids there. Only he can do that. That’s where he took the little girl.”

“How do you know all this, Doug?”

“I don’t know. For some reason I’m tapped into him. I have been since that day Tommy Ricker punched me in the nose. I can’t explain it. Maybe he needs me to know for some reason.”

The fishing trip to Sandy Bend had been ruined by another of Doug’s visions and as a result had to be cut short. Later that night, after they had returned home from Sandy Bend, the news of the deaths and the disappearance was all over the television. It had happened at almost the exact moment Doug had seen it happen in his vision. Doug had been absolutely right, again. Upon investigating, the man and woman had looked just like the people in this house: freeze dried husks, mouths stretched open in silent screams. And there was no forensic evidence proving the little girl had ever existed. Just exactly like this case, and all the others before it, except for one thing. Although the killer had left some sort of signature at all the scenes, a signature that made no sense—LOST, FORSAKEN, FORGOTTEN—this was the first time he’d left a symbol. It was like the symbol was another piece of some larger puzzle, and the killer had left it hoping someone smart would play the game with him; perhaps he was hoping that Doug, the one person on earth who was capable of seeing these atrocities—as far as Jennings knew—would play the game with him.

Jennings had known Doug was gifted, or cursed, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it, but until that moment he’d been unaware of the extent of pain the young man’s affliction caused. For weeks following each incident Doug would awake in the night with the vanished children calling out to him in supplication. They were all in some unimaginable and torturous place, Doug explained, but he was powerless to help them. And it was killing him to know that. The voices began to fade as time passed, however, and this one was no different, so by the time Doug had gone back to college nearly a month after the incident, the child’s pleading voice had faded to just a whisper that soon would become non-existent. It was always like that, he told Jennings. Immediately following the disappearances the pleading voices of the lost children were strong, fading slightly as each day went by before eventually going totally silent. Doug also told Jennings that he was afraid of what that meant, that with each passing day the chances of saving the children became less and less until it was too late.

That next year, following graduation, Doug had married Annie De Roché. That had been more than eight years ago, and as far as Jennings knew Doug had never experienced another incident.

At least none he’d confided in Jennings about.

Until now.

But he wasn’t sure Doug had experienced another incident.

Was he kidding himself?

Why here? Why now? These deaths seemed so random. It was northern New Hampshire, almost two hours from where McArthur lived in Scarborough, Maine. Could he, in some way, be connected to them? Doug and Annie were gone; there was no doubt about that. Their house had been destroyed. They’d been chased by gunmen.

Spencer was droning on about something in the very background of Jennings’ thoughts. “Rick, are you listening to me?”

“I hear you loud and clear, Spencer,” Jennings said, even though he hadn’t heard one word the asshole had spoken. He performed an almost military about face and strode back into the living room leaving Spencer with a puzzled expression on his face. The teams were still busy with the bodies, taking samples, photographing, swabbing, examining hair and teeth. Jennings stared at them, shaking his head. “What do you make of this?” he asked a man who looked to be in charge of the forensic team.

“Supernatural,” the small bespectacled man responded, getting up from examining one of the husks.

“Rick Jennings, this is Tad Kohler,” Spencer said, coming into the room. “He’s the FBI’s lead CSI on the case.”

Jennings nodded, avoiding shaking the man’s latex-sheathed hand. “What did you mean by that?” asked Jennings.

“What, supernatural?” Kohler’s laugh was small and a little unsettling. “It was a joke.” Everybody in the room stopped what they were doing and looked over at Kohler, and Jennings thought it was because none of this was actually very funny. Kohler nervously cleared his throat. “That’s the only explanation I can come up with,” he said, his face reddening slightly. “Nothing else makes sense.”

“Give me your best shot as to what happened to these people,” Jennings said.

Kohler looked nervously around the room. All eyes were on him and all ears were tuned to what he might say. “You want logical?”

“I want what you think happened.”

Kohler nodded. “Whatever it was happened fast, okay? I can tell you that. But not so fast that the victims didn’t know what hit them. Just look at their expressions. Tell me they didn’t see their killer.”

Jennings did not respond.

“I think the killer purposely left them this way,” Kohler continued. “He wanted us to see their expressions. He wanted us to know their terror. I can’t think of anything in the real world that could accomplish something like this.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“These bodies seem to be mummified in some way. But not like other mummified bodies I’ve seen. Those were done with chemicals. These were done almost instantaneously, as if everything had been sucked out of them in an instant. These killings are like a work of art. They were done for effect, for shock value. The sole purpose was to instill terror.”

“It’s working,” said one of the female techs who kept glancing furtively around the room as though the killer might reappear at any second for another round of fun and games.

Suddenly the whole room went still, not a soul stirred. Everyone alert for what Kohler might say next and perhaps dreading it.

“We’ll have to get them back to the lab, of course,” Kohler continued, “you know, before I can draw any final conclusions, but . . .”

“But what?” Jennings said. The room was suddenly alive with electric energy. Jennings could see by the look on Spencer’s face that he was just as creeped out as the rest of them. “You have something more to tell us, Kohler?”

Kohler was now looking a little sheepish. “I don’t know.” He faltered momentarily. “It’s just a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“Yeah, you feel it too, don’t you? I can tell.”

Jennings did not answer the man. He might have to be truthful with him, and right now the truth seemed much too spooky. He felt static run in the hairs on his arms and gooseflesh erupt over his entire body. Inside the room you could have cut the dread with a knife.

“It’s like there’s something still here,” Kohler said, looking around the room as his eyes suddenly darkened with terror. “Some kind of residue or something left here by the killer. It feels like evil.” He pointed at the Aramaic words written on the wall and the symbol beneath them. “He left that for a reason. These people were more than murdered,” he said. “If I was a religious man, which I’m not, I’d say that their souls were taken. That’s what it feels like to me, anyway. Yep, I’d say somebody walked right in here last night and sucked the souls right out of them.”

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