The drive into
Bledson
Hills was real easy: three miles straight on State Road 35, with one quick stop to check out the main park entrance where the sheriff’s son said he picked up the suspicious man. Behind the open gate sat a small white car, the front bumper dented in a bit. Kevin ran out, gave it a once-over and nodded to Leonard and Porter.
“Son of a gun...we must’ve just missed him coming down,” Porter said. “That car wasn’t here two hours ago, although we did notice some tire tracks going in. Didn’t think that unusual ‘cause some of the cabins are rented.”
When Kevin returned he said, “It’s Pamela Bergin’s car.”
“Who’s she?” Porter asked.
“More than likely the ‘hot’ woman your son spoke of.”
“A suspected accomplice too,” Kevin added.
They continued on, passing a few small houses, crossed a bridge over a river of mud into town, forgoing the one stop light that flashed red.
Bledson
Hills was one of the
quieter communities Leonard had ever passed through, especially now at night. Not a soul walked Main Street, not a car filled a curbside spot. ‘The Hills’ appeared quite comfortable and content with itself, surrounded by mountains whose pine trees even now in the fall boasted a truly perfect green. Now, even at night, they seemed to glow beneath the moon’s radiance.
After the mostly quiet ride--Sheriff Porter kept mumbling under his breath along the way--they arrived at the station and exited the car. Reese pulled in right behind them. They were immediately greeted at the door by a tall man with thinning gray hair and glasses. He wore the typical
Bledson
Hills garb: flannel shirt and Wrangler jeans and nodded expressionlessly at their approach. “Howdy Officers. Port, Earl’s inside sipping coffee. He’s all bugged out. Says a woman snatched his gun, held it against his head.”
They entered the station.
So this is Earl
, Leonard thought. The portly young fellow was rather comical looking, fat, freckles, your typical picked-on kid in high school.
Like father, like son.
He sat behind a desk with a happy face mug in front of him, dark circles under his eyes, looking like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.
Sheriff Porter approached the uniformed boy--one of the only few in town, it seemed, not in jeans--but his son gazed as far away as possible. “I’ll deal with you later, Earl. Now these here are police from Fairview. They’d like to ask you a few questions. I expect you to answer them truthfully.” Seemed the sheriff’s edgy demeanor carried over into his personal life too.
Earl gave his father no reaction. He gazed up at Leonard, who sat in the chair opposite him. Leonard offered a weak smile, then, surrounded by Kevin and Reese, began a conversation.
“Having a helluva night, eh?”
No response.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Sheriff tells me you took a man in tonight, caught him near the woods.”
“Yep,” he answered, gaze downcast.
“Description?”
“I don’t know...late thirties, dark hair and eyes, black pants and shirt.”
“Wearing all black?”
“Yep...but they was all dirty. He was injured. Looked like he’d been in a fight.”
“Injured in what way?”
“Had some cuts and bruises on his face and arms. Limped a bit.”
“So what happened?”
“I took him here, locked him up. I was suspicious because Daddy said they’d found a body up in the woods. Oh, and I found a gun on him too.”
A gun? Leonard thought it interesting that the killer was carrying a gun, if Earl’s man was indeed the killer, since none of the earlier murder scenes showed any evidence of gunfire. Perhaps
Sparke
had committed the knifings earlier, with the third person then using the gun on
Sparke
? But then Leonard thought of something else: Jake Hammer had reported gun
shots
. Which meant multiple firings. Which eliminated the possibility of
Sparke
committing suicide, because if he had, then there would have only been one shot. So there must have been a gunfight in which
Sparke
was murdered by the third person. The gun Earl found on the killer was probably
Sparke’s
, used in self-defense and later snatched by the third person in lieu of the cumbersome Winchester. “Where’s the gun now?”
“I left it in the car.”
Porter nodded to Tommy who stepped outside, presumably to retrieve the gun.
“What happened next?”
“A woman came in.”
“What’d she look like?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Earl...” Sheriff Porter interrupted, his tone demanding.
Leonard held up his hand toward the sheriff. “Earl, please. It’s important we know what she looked like.”
“Real good-looking. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Kinda tan.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Jeans, a plaid shirt. Had it tied at the waist.”
Leonard looked up at Kevin, who was adding a few notes. “Pam.” Redirecting himself towards Earl, he asked, “What happened next?”
Fidgeting, Earl explained how she seduced him and snatched his gun then locked him in the cell.
Tommy walked back in, his face flushed. “Earl, your car is gone.”
Earl put his hands against his face. “They must’ve taken the cruiser. Shit...I left the keys in it when I brought the guy inside.”
Leonard stood and grabbed the seething Sheriff by the bicep, pulled him aside before he was able to lunge at his son. “Listen to me. I need your full cooperation here. Put an all-alerts out on the cruiser. They can’t be too far from here.” Red-faced, the sheriff nodded to Tommy. The cop took himself behind a desk with a radio. In minutes, he was relaying information to neighboring communities.
“I think it’s best if we stay here in
Bledson
Hills until we can get some information back from forensics. In the meantime we can keep in touch with you in case anything arises on Pamela Bergin and the man.”
The sheriff nodded, eyeing his son with disdain.
Reese said, “It appears I’m not heading back to Fairview anytime soon. I better call to see if anything’s popped up there.”
“Our next step is finding a motel. Anything nearby?” he asked Porter.
“Two towns down. In
Jamesway
.”
“We’ll check into the motel there, then call you with our room number.”
The sheriff nodded, still staring angrily at Earl, who gazed blindly into his mug.
Kid’s had a tough experience, leave him alone
, Leonard thought.
If it weren’t for the boy, we’d have no additional lead right now.
Leonard took down the number of the
Bledson
Hills Police Station and exited along with Kevin and Reese. The three stopped in the parking lot, looked at each other for a few moments before Kevin finally said, “Strange, but if I hadn’t seen
Sparke
dead a hour ago, I’d think that the man Earl just described was him.”
Leonard and Reese both nodded in silent agreement.
They got in the cruiser, headed north on State Road 35, the headlights cutting into the night like lasers. As Leonard looked for the presence of ghosts in the road, his mind contemplated one thing over and over again:
twin nemesis
.
Richard’s dreams were bathed in an all-encompassing pitch blackness. He found himself battling a storm of distant booming and torrential downpours, sheets of lightning igniting the infinite skies above him, yet keeping the shapeless environment dark around him. Again he was lost, this time in a place where nothing solid existed, only strange shapeless forms that reached out to grab him, pull him in, swallow him. They had no faces, these creatures of torment, entities who had--yet had never--come for him so many times in the past. He was back in Hell, in a personal yet not so familiar place that shifted and mutated into hungry forms eager for his body.
Welcome to your new and improved Hell,
Sparke
...
He awoke, sobbing, full of terror, sweating, shivering.
All was quiet. The middle of the night. Beside him, on the bed, a sleeping form lay curled beneath the sheets. Through a gap in a nearby curtain, a sliver of moonlight raced across the splayed hair of Pamela Bergin, the edge of the sheets kissing her shuttered eyes as they maneuvered beneath their lids, lost in dreams. As he tried to move, Richard’s body ached, burned, as if flames undulated beneath his damp skin, the hard mattress barely moving under his shifting weight. For a moment he wondered if it had all been a figment of his mind, the entire spectacle just another crazy dream. If so, then where did reality end, where did fantasy start? Was there any space in between? He shifted his weight to the side, the pain in his shoulder an
attestment
to the reality of the memories in his mind. He ran his right hand up across his arm; it had been attended to, fully bandaged. He peeled the sheets away from his body, cool stale air drying the clammy dampness on his chest. His clothes, they’d been stripped, his skin cleansed, a pair of plain cotton boxers the only article of clothing he wore. He managed to prop himself up on his elbows, look down across his chest, his legs, at the gauze wrapped around his arm, his calf, his thighs.
Confusion toyed with his expended mind. He looked up through fluttering eyes, took in the room as best he could. Bland, lightless, not much brighter than his most recent dream. A picture, its subject matter incognito in the darkness, hanging askew on the wall above a beaten television. A push-button phone on the end-table beside the bed. The room retained a musty odor, like an old coat. Ahead and to the left, an empty box of donuts sat atop a fold-up luggage rack. On the floor, beneath the rack, lay a large knapsack.
Richard gazed over at Pam’s sleeping form, the gently-moving sheets resting upon her chest, each rise and fall reassuring, for now, that he was safe.
In his half-awake state, he pulled his legs over the edge of the bed. Pain shot through his body like blasts of thunder, and instead of jarring him awake, sent him further back towards the universe of his dreams where everything seemed bathed in a translucent aural sheath. He squeezed his eyes; even the darkness stung them, the milky film riding his corneas refusing to come away. Standing, holding the edge of the bed, he took a step sideways. All his perceptions were dulled, his bare footsteps upon the coarse carpeting still dream-muffled. He could hear nothing, not even his own breathing, and he wondered if someone, anyone--his mother, Debra perhaps--would emerge from the
dreamworld
, from the blue light that seemed as far away at the moment as his very own bedroom did, wherever it may exist.
Now at the edge of the bed, he kneeled on the floor, too weak, too tired to keep himself up. The bag below the luggage rack, Pam’s knapsack, lay on its side like a sleeping cat, the loosened strap emulating a tail wrapped about its bulk. Beside it were Pam’s clothes, but not the jeans and plaid shirt she wore to the police station. Here were a more faded pair of jeans, a knit top, and black panties.
He crawled over and touched the soft fabric of the shirt, the coarse denim jeans, the smooth silk underwear. He could smell a soft scent rising from her clothes, perfume, jasmine perhaps. He shook away the rising thoughts of sex in his head...
You’re half asleep, Richard, perhaps fully asleep or maybe half dead, and you gather such intimate thoughts. It would be prudent to find out where you are first, to finally secure the answers you’ve been waiting for all this time.
The knapsack
. This time, a different voice inside his head. Loud, clear. Demanding.
He reached for it. Touched the burlap-like material. The loose strap. The large zipper across top.
Pulled it.
Blue light.
It escaped the small one-inch opening in the bag much like the beam of moonlight entering the room through the curtain. But it traveled brighter and farther, all the way into the mirror above the sink at the other side of the room, reflecting to the ceiling where it formed a ball-shape, oscillating as if diffused by water. He pinned his eyes upon it, instantly mesmerized. It took hold of him, body, mind, and soul,
talked
to him. Richard reached up to it, the pain in his arm a distraction from the hypnotic state he’d begun to fall into. He shook his head, tossing aside the reverie, then looked back at the bag. He reached forward, suddenly anxious, grabbing the zipper.
He yanked it all the way open.
At once the room was filled with blue light.
The
blue light. The walls, ceiling, floor, everything, bathed in a shimmering ocean of cobalt luminescence that appeared to go on forever. He could only stare in awe, in utter fascination, as it enveloped him, seemed to work its way beneath his skin, into his veins. Its brilliant concentration was centered at the bag, its source, which he could no longer see, then surged to reach all corners of the room. A high-pitched whistling noise ensued, low at first but soon gaining in volume. He staggered back against the footing of the bed, still in great pain but much more awake, so he felt...
...this could be a dream...