Donald rolled his eyes. “Notify the networks.”
I laughed lightly without really thinking about it. Odd, how laughter could defy the darkness of nearly any situation. But it was out of place here, and dissipated quickly. “Are you sure we never suspected what Bernard was doing?” I let the words hang between us for a few seconds. “Or did we just ignore it, not pay particular attention? Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe there’s so much in the past we can’t remember or don’t want to remember that what really terrifies us is what we might find out about ourselves.”
Rick stabbed a finger at me. “Listen, when you had your problem with the shit you were seeing, who was there to help you out? When you were outside my apartment all freaked out and in the middle of a total fucking breakdown, who was there to get you home?”
“You were, and I appreciate it. What’s your point?”
“Yes, Bernard wasn’t who we thought he was. Yes, bad shit happened and people died. But there’s a limit to how much of this heebie-jeebies bullshit I can deal with. That’s my fucking point, OK?”
“You said yourself something more was happening here,” I reminded him. “Didn’t you have the nightmares too? Didn’t you have the dark thoughts, the fear, just like Donald and I had? That is what you said, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Oh, so now that a body shows up and all this becomes something real, all bets are off? Time to go hide under the bed, is that it?”
“What the fuck are you trying to prove, Alan? That shit goes bump in the night? That maybe there’s stuff at work here that we never asked to know about and don’t want any part of anyway?” He looked to Donald for support but got none. “Remember on the tape when Bernard talked about waking up in the middle of the night and hearing something, a sound that’s not supposed to be there? Remember how he said we usually just roll back over and go to sleep? Well, I say that’s the smart move here, OK? I say we just roll over, go back to sleep and wait for morning.”
“You do what you want,” I said again. “But I’m telling you that whatever it is out there in the dark making those noises isn’t going to just go away, Rick. Bernard was connected to it, and we were connected to Bernard. Bernard’s gone, but it’s still here.”
Donald tilted his glass, slid some ice cubes into his mouth and crunched them. “And what would ‘It’ be, precisely?”
“I don’t know yet,” I answered. “But I’m going to find out.”
“Could be a Pandora’s Box.”
“This goes back years,” I told them. “Things happened in the neighborhood, in that house, and later, when we were all adults. Dark things. And somehow they all tie together.”
Rick leaned back against the booth, pulled his money clip from his pocket and fired some bills onto the table. “Tell you what, you decide to start making some fucking sense, you let me know.”
“Evil.”
The word froze him. “What?”
“You heard me.”
He swallowed so hard I saw his throat bob. “What about evil?”
“I think Bernard conjured it. I think he was responsible for it.”
“Yeah, real magical bastard, Bernard,” he snorted. “I wish you could sit over here so you could hear yourself saying this shit. You sound like a fucking mental case.”
“Stop it, Rick,” Donald said suddenly.
“Well, for Christ’s sake—”
“Just stop it.” Donald rubbed his eyes. “Don’t do that to him.”
Rick waved his hands, dismissing us. “Whatever.”
“I’m hearing those noises in the night and I’m going to go see what they are,” I said. “Now are you coming with me or are you going back to sleep? We’re either in this together or we’re not. In or out, Rick? What’s it going to be?”
Anger, maybe something more, simmered in his eyes. “I’m in. OK, you fuck? I’m in.”
I looked to Donald. He answered with a slow nod.
“I’ll be in touch.” With the solemn faces of the dead still congregated in my mind, I slid from the booth and crossed the bar.
CHAPTER 13
The days were becoming longer, the nights shorter. In winter, night fell prior to six p.m., but with spring came a more gradual darkness that allowed daylight to linger. With my newfound anxiety, I welcomed the change, and had spent the early evening in the bedroom, sitting on a stool in the closet doorway rummaging through a storage box filled with old stories I’d written years before. It was only when reading became more difficult that I glanced at a window and realized the sun had finally gone down. Still, I continued to paw through the stacks of stories, there in the near dark, and although silly and often juvenile both technically and in content, the old tales seemed irrefutable evidence of whom I had once been, and that a dream had existed within me, a dream that in many ways had defined me. Or maybe still did.
The feeling that I had been joined by someone else in the room crept along my spine as Bernard’s taped voice played back in my mind. Do you ever go through your old stories? Shit, do you even still have them? Do you ever think about what might have been?
My eyes searched the room. Nothing.
The slam of a door nearly sent my heart out through my mouth, and I sprang from the stool so quickly I lost my balance. After staggering about I regained my footing and looked to the bedroom doorway. Toni stood there with a baffled expression.
“Are you all right?” It was all she ever asked anymore, and I couldn’t blame her.
I nodded, drew a deep breath and struck a casual pose.
“Did you get the message I left on the answering machine?”
“Yeah.” I glanced at my watch. “I didn’t realize you’d be so late.”
“Hadn’t planned to be, I was just going to work late for a bit, but then Martha called and asked if I wanted to get a bite to eat. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks so I figured, why not? Didn’t think you’d mind.”
Martha had always been exclusively Toni’s friend, not mine. We hadn’t gotten along since high school and probably never would, so we kept our distance. When Toni felt the need to socialize with her, she did so alone. “How is Martha?”
Apparently assuming it to be a rhetorical question, Toni offered no reply. I moved to the nightstand and turned on a lamp, but she remained in the doorway, just beyond its reach, a small purse dangling from one hand and the other at her side. Her skirt suit looked somewhat disheveled but I told myself that was normal since she’d been wearing it all day. “So you had to work late, huh?”
“I figured a little OT couldn’t hurt. I was behind this week anyway, had tons of paperwork to do, and Gene didn’t mind, so—”
“No, I bet he didn’t.”
I expected her to defend herself, or maybe to fight back. Instead, she said, “I saw the news earlier. Do they know anything else yet?”
“They’ve identified the woman, that’s all. Single mother from New Bedford.”
“Awful,” she said. “Just awful.”
“That it is.”
She made eye contact with me for the first time since she’d appeared in the doorway. “Do you really think Bernard had something to do with this?”
“Yes.” I sat at the foot of the bed. “And I don’t think it’s going to end here.”
“Then you have to go to the police. You have to tell them what you know.”
“I don’t have any proof. Not yet, anyway.”
She shook her head, placed a hand above her eyes. “This is beyond belief.”
I allowed a slight smile. “Tell me about it.”
“What about the tape he sent to Rick? Did it—”