“You said you found this out after he died?” she asked.
“Yes.” Although I had promised Donald and Rick I’d keep the subject of the tape between us, I felt at that point I had no choice but to trust Claudia with the information. If I had any chance of gaining her trust in return, I’d have to put all my cards on the table and risk it. I calmly explained about the tape being sent to Rick, how we had all listened to it together, and the specifics of what had been on it. I then explained how Donald had researched crimes in New York City during that time and how he had found two unsolved homicides that were strikingly similar to the murders in Potter’s Cove.
She gave no reaction until I’d finished. “So you know he was a liar and a sick little boy who liked to torture and rape and who knows what else.”
“Yes.”
“And you think he killed these women?”
“I know he did.”
“Then what more do you need? Isn’t that enough?”
“It would’ve been,” I said, “if it hadn’t been for the dreams.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Donald, Rick and I all had an identical recurring nightmare. We’re still having it.” I described the dream for her in detail. “And then I started to experience worse things. Hallucinations—or visions or whatever the hell they are—of this woman and her child. Horrible visions. They started subtly, but they were so real, and eventually I had them while I was on a job. This woman in the vision, she lured me to an old condemned factory down in the south end and I saw… I saw some things down there. If there is a Hell, these things she showed me came straight out of it.”
“If,” Claudia scoffed quietly.
“I saw other things I can’t explain or even fully remember down there. I don’t know for sure if I want to remember them. It’s the same when I think back to when Bernard and all of us were kids. The memories are scattered, you know? But there are huge pieces I can’t remember that come back to me now in scraps and blurs. Maybe it’s the same thing and I don’t want to remember them more clearly either. Maybe if I do it’ll unlock something else, something worse.” Everything I was saying sounded absurd to me, like I was completely out of my goddamn mind. “And besides the visions, sometimes I hear things—whispers or—or I just feel something.” I explained the experiences with the woman and child in as much detail as I could. “It’s like all of this is stalking me somehow, together with my memories and nightmares of Bernard. I lost my job, my wife… maybe my mind. And it still won’t stop. I need it to.” A rush of emotion suddenly welled in the base of my throat. “I need it to stop.”
Claudia finished her cigarette with a succession of repetitive drags then tossed the butt into the sink with the dishes and the ants. It rolled behind a plate, disappearing into the clutter, and I heard a soft hiss as ember hit water. “My childhood lasted about ten minutes,” she said through a sigh. “Kids like me grow up quick, you know? But one time, when I was still a kid, before the world got a hold of me, I was talking to this priest. My grandma used to take me to church, dress me up in little dresses and hats, gloves—the whole bit. She died when I was twelve, but before that she was this all-star Catholic, used to go to the rectory and help out the priest with dishes and cleaning and shit like that after mass. One day I was at the rectory waiting for my grandma to finish, and I started talking to the priest. Father Naslette was his name. Old bastard, looked like a bald eagle with glasses. My grandma used to have National Geographic magazines at her house, and one time I saw these natives in like New Guinea or some shit, and I started wondering, you know, the way little kids do? Anyway, Father Naslette used to tell me that if you didn’t believe in God and obey His laws, you’d go to Hell. So I asked him what about the natives in National Geographic? They didn’t even know what a Catholic church was, so how come they were going to Hell?” She scowled like she’d suddenly tasted something bitter. “And you know what he told me? He told me that only people who had the knowledge were responsible for it. He said that if you didn’t know about God then it was OK and wouldn’t nobody blame you for that. Those natives, they didn’t know, they were innocent so they wouldn’t be punished. Hell was only for those who knew and fucked up or didn’t obey. So sometimes it’s better to not know, because whether you believe in that shit or not, once you have knowledge, you’re responsible for it. Well I got news for you. God ain’t the only one who works that angle.”
The only emotion I felt now was growing anger. “Look, the woman I told you about, the one Bernard attacked when they were teenagers, she acted the same way you do. Like there’s some big fucking secret everyone knows except me, and I’m sick and tired of it. I want to know what’s happening. I want to know what all this means. And I don’t give a shit what kind of strings are attached to it, you understand me?”
“Oh, I understand,” she said. “You just better hope you do.”
Claudia lingered near the counter and folded her arms across her chest, crushing her breasts together in a swell that revealed a considerable amount of cleavage and created the illusion that she was bustier than she was. The pose, and its result, were executed in a wholly blasé manner and had not been intended as a means of affecting me. She clearly could not have cared less if I took notice or not.
“That’s the problem with people like you,” she said in her throaty voice. “You want and think everything’s out in the open—explained and seen and safe. Things are only like that on the surface. The real world is the one underneath. The one I moved in for years. The one Bernard moved in. That world’s different. It’s shadows.”
I nodded. “Then show me the shadows, Claudia.”
She grimaced but quickly masked it, as if specters of what lived in those shadows had suddenly flashed before her. “I got into drugs real early in life, had a lot of problems,” she said. “I lived with my grandma, she always took care of me. She was the only one who ever gave a shit about me. When she died I was only twelve, and I pretty much been on my own ever since. Met my mom a few times when I was a kid, but never really knew her. Wouldn’t know my father if I fell over him. My mom died when I was nine. Somebody strangled her and threw her in a dumpster in Fall River. I found out later she was a drug addict and a hooker, my mom. Apple don’t fall far from the tree, right? I had nothing, no family, only the system, and when you’re a kid going through that—foster homes, shelters and halfway houses—all that bullshit—you can just slip away and let the world take you. And nobody cares. See, unless you kill somebody, try to kill yourself or do something real bad, the system can’t be bothered. It’s not about helping people, only punishing them, so until you do something the system thinks needs punishing, they got nothing for you. Thing is, there’s so many runaways, lost and fucked up kids, and so many real crimes and shit that the cops can’t cover it all. Half the time they don’t even go through the motions, and kids like me just fade away. We either die or we survive. Period. Either way, it ain’t pretty.
“So I’m my mother’s daughter, right?” she continued a moment later. “It don’t take long. The streets love girls like me, swallow them right up. One fucking gulp and you’re gone. And it’s like a maze, you know? You go a little ways before you get stuck, only there’s always somebody there to take you by the hand… or the hair or the throat… to take you to that next level. And on and on. ‘Cause they never tell you the only way out of that maze is death or fucking insanity, and that’s only if you get real lucky, because the deeper you get, the meaner and darker those shadows get. And the Devil, he gets closer. So close you can feel him. It’s his game, his maze. That’s how he works. Devil don’t want you to fear him until it’s too late to get out from under him. Like a trap, you know? No cheese, no motherfucking mouse.” She looked at me with a hard stare. “It’s tough to understand if you’re a mark. No offense, but—”