Читать книгу The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK ® - C.J. Henderson - Страница 15

THE IDEA OF FEAR

“We are terrified by the idea of being terrified.”

—Nietzsche

He looked the house over from the street. Dark and old and tall and musty, like every other dilapidated dump in town, he knew. They were all the same, all creaking, all spongy—alive with mosses and spores and gas leaks—all filled with a thousand crinkling noises. The man stared out the window of his car and despaired dragging himself out onto the sidewalk.

Some detective, he thought. You sure aren’t going to give Phil Marlowe a run for his money anytime soon in this town.

Franklin Nardi had left New York City after its police force had used up his strongest, bravest days. Many envied the life—work a job for a mere twenty years and retire with benefits beyond the dreams of most. With only the slightest of salaries on top of such a retirement package, it was said, a man could support a family in style.

Yeah, he thought, taking another long drag on his cigarette, and all it takes to earn those fine benefits is walking out the door with a target on your back. Every day. Every stinking, miserable day. For twenty goddamned years.

Frankie Nardi had no family. He did not lose them tragically, except in the sense that it was tragic they had never existed at all. Nardi did not by nature enjoy the company of women. He had witnessed the eternal grinding down of his father and his uncles, all men to be proud of, except when they ventured into the presence of women and their guts turned to cheese. He listened to them complain, watched them live their lives afraid to speak, afraid to contradict, afraid of what they might do to these women they loved if they ever stopped reining themselves in.

The detective was not afraid of women. He went out with them and played their games to the extent those rounds gave him what he wanted—flesh and momentary contact free from the rock-heavy drag of commitment.

“Ahhh, fuck,” he snorted. He took another long look at his assignment for the night and then crushed his smoke out on the roof of his car, adding, “no one ever said life was easy.”

Window up, bags grabbed from the back seat, car locked, up to the front door. Nardi assessed the ring of keys he had been given and with his usual skill picked the correct one on the first try. Throwing open the old door he threw his bags inside and surveyed his home for the evening. With a crunch of muscles he stretched his arms out, flexing his back and shoulders unconsciously. Even though he expected nothing more than a night’s sleep, he was still a man who did his job.

After twenty years of not blinking, of watching over his shoulder, behind his back, of sizing up each and every human being that came near him, figuring their angle, investigating their souls in the split-second before contact, moving to Arkham was supposed to have been a breeze. The town was known for importing New York’s finest. One supposed the New English hamlet would have preferred Bostonian coppers, but as the mayor of Arkham had put it to Nardi when he asked:

“This town has enough drunks with their hands out. We need real men. Manhattan is the attitude that goes over well here when people want protection.”

It was true. New Yorkers took charge. Taking charge of his life, Nardi had left the city he simply could not stand any more and turned his back on it for trees and fields and runaway dogs. His idea was to open his own detective/security agency in Arkham with three other New York cops—one that had retired a year earlier, Tony Balnco, and two others, Sammy Galtoni and Mark Berkenwald, who were right behind him on the escape track. They had all agreed instantly—the one already retired fastest of all. In three months they were the fastest growing business in the city of Arkham, Massachusetts.

And why not? People cheated on their spouses in New England same as anywhere else. They stole from their bosses, needed background checks, wanted to find lost property or people from their pasts, required security like everyone else. Nardi had seen Bloods selling crack behind the playground at Allan Halsey Memorial High School the same way he had behind the playground at Thomas Jefferson High in Brooklyn, and every other high school throughout the five boroughs. There was no “safe” America anymore. The green was going to hell in all the same ways as the concrete—just a little slower, that was all.

Which is what had made Arkham perfect for Nardi and his pals. For five years they had built their business and life was good for them. They held the security contracts for nearly three/fifths of the businesses in town. They were the first contact point on the speed dial list of four/fifths of the town’s lawyers. They had all the work they needed; which was what angered Nardi when Berkenwald took a job like the one he was stuck with that night.

“So?” he asked the house absently. “Let’s make with the spooky noises. Let’s get this over with.”

In New York Nardi had found plenty of opportunities to placate the wealthy. Those with money were always finding some new way to waste it. Years ago the slugs bleeding cash could not move into a new property without calling in a fung shui master to make certain it was properly positioned in the universe. Now, in Arkham, the chic move was to have your home desensitized by a supernatural security team.

“What a crock of shit,” muttered Nardi.

Berkenwald, getting wind of the new chump rage, had let it be known to only a few, close personal friends, mind you, that the agency had been called in to clear a few major hauntings back in New York. Hinted at terrible moments, let it be known they simply did not do that sort of work anymore. Too stressful. The hideous terrors that awaited the uninitiated…

The suckers had begun throwing money at the agency immediately. Any new bride or social matron who heard a noise she did not like, felt a draft that seemed a little too frigid, awoke in a cold sweat, et cetera, knew what to do—buy some peace of mind.

But Berkenwald had booked more work for them that week than they could cover. And thus Frankie Nardi, himself, the owner of the company, who should have been working on his model railroad set-up in his basement at that very moment, and dreaming of a date with his hammock for the next day, was instead stuck doing a point-by-point sweep of some ancient rathole for ghosts.

Ghosts, for Christ’s sake.

“Does it get any stupider than this? I don’t think I want to know if it does.”

“Don’t tell me you want the world to smarten up, Nardi,” a voice said from behind the detective. “That would lose you a lot of business.”

“I’m retired, remember?” He threw the line over his shoulder to the woman coming in the doorway. “The more business I have the less I like it.”

“I think you’re just afraid to run into the Headless Horseman or one of his pals. Something like that would be hard work,” she said with a bite in her voice as she dropped her bags heavily on the floor, “and we all know you’re afraid of that.”

“Yeah, nothin’ with tits is a feminist when there’s heavy-liftin’ to do.”

The woman was Madame Renee, her profession, medium. Born Brenda Goff, she had cultivated her over-whelmingly Middle Eastern looks until a nose too big and brows too bushy had begun to work in her favor. As her love of all things covered in, filled with, or simply made from sugar had stolen her figure, she had made her shape a badge and transformed herself once more. Dancers had a short shelf-life, she had told herself when she had traded her tights for a beaded curtain and a crystal ball. Fortune-tellers could work from a wheelchair.

“Sweet as ever, ain’t ya?”

“Oh, don’t crawl up my ass; I’ve got all the shit I can handle today, and this job is half of it.”

“You’re not a happy man, are you, Frank?”

Madame Renee reached out to touch the detective on the cheek but he ducked the contact, his glower showing open hostility. ”Look, “he told her curtly, “we’re here to de-ghost this dump, and as stupid as I feel about this nonsense, a job is still a job. Mark told me you’ve got the checklist, so, if you do, then let’s get to it. The faster we prove the Ghostly Trio isn’t hiding up the chimney, the faster we get to go home.”

With a shrug, the madame sighed and pulled out the official Nardi Security Occult Clearance Form from the large carpet bag she seemed to always keep with her. Without trying again to lighten the mood, she simply started calling off routines and posing questions while Nardi poked, prodded, and peeled back this and that part of the old house. Between them they searched every room for cold spots, listened carefully to each wall with their stethoscopes, made certain a mirror would reflect light in every room, and tested the air on every floor to make certain no unwanted chemicals, smells, gases or aromas were present.

They set up motion detectors in every passageway and sound-trigger tape recorders in every room. Powder was sprinkled around doorways and across table tops and mantlepieces to record the motion of any invisible forces. Hairs were secured across the doors of cupboards and the drawers of dressers with nothing more than a finger smear of saliva. If anything with the slightest physical presence moved within the old house outside the living room where Madame Renee and Nardi would be camped out for the night, it would be known.

The madame, of course, had her own bag of tricks to perform. She rolled her bones, did an open reading with the tarot deck she had made herself, and set herself to staring into the crystal shard she used for focus to reach out beyond herself to bind herself with the house’s aura—searching for unwanted visitors. After that, as Nardi went room by room, setting his machines and traps, she pulled back into herself, and then opened her own aura to the building and to all and any that might be within it. Reaching deep within herself, she peeled back the layers of modern life, of concern over her daughter’s college expenses, moved past the aches and pains a body some one hundred and sixty pounds past its medically approved weight-for-its-height felt constantly, dug down inward until she had found the pure essence of her inner being and revealed it completely and utterly.

By the end of the night the pair were utterly exhausted—Nardi from covering the old place attic to basement as well as every room of the three floors in between, Renee from having thrown herself open past all boundaries. She had poured her soul and heart into every bit of wire and plaster and mahogany the old home had to offer, placing herself out before it, helpless and beckoning, and had received nothing for her efforts.

This fact confused her greatly.

“What are you talkin’ about?” asked Nardi. The detective desperately wanted to fall back into the recliner he had chosen as his bed and shut his eyes, but a job was a job and so he coaxed the woman further.

“Com’on, spill it.”

Renee propped herself up on the couch with one of her massively fleshy elbows. Staring at Nardi, knowing he did not believe in anything they were doing, she struggled to find a way to voice her concern. Finally, she simply told him what was on her mind.

“Listen, I don’t want to go around and around with you on this, so I’ll just say it. I did several readings of the house before we got started—future glances, stability predictions—that kind of stuff. It’s the low end of what I do for one of these things. Then I fired off the big guns, really put myself out there, bared my soul, big irresistible hunk of ectoplasm for anything nasty in the area and…I didn’t get a bite.”

“Disappointed?”

“No, you Italian shit. If you had a soul that could be touched by anything you’d know I was more than earning my fee here. If this was a spirit shanty, I would’ve paid a price, believe me.”

“Then I don’t get it,” answered the detective honestly, stifling a yawn. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that something should have come for me.” When Nardi said nothing, she continued, explaining, “those early readings I did, they said this place is, I don’t know, that something’s going to happen here. Something…nasty, maybe, I don’t know. I couldn’t get a good sense of it. I didn’t worry about it, because I figured I’d find something later that would point the way to the truth. But, the more we checked the place out the cleaner it seemed to get.”

“And this is bad?”

“No; it’s just confusing.” Taking a tiny bit of pity on his temporary partner, and also knowing that placating her would allow him to get some sleep, he said:

“Look, we’re just here to do a job. If we don’t turn up anything more, then that’s what we tell the too-rich pair of country club snots who bought this museum. We give ’em the bad with the good, tip our hats, and we leave.”

“I know,” Renee answered. “It’s just that I met the wife. She’s young. She’s in love. She’s,” the sizable woman paused for a moment, then found the word for which she was looking.

“She’s nice. I don’t want to just take their money. Not this time. Am I making any sense to you?”

Franklin Nardi did not like to reveal much about himself, especially to women. But, he was not heartless, and he let Madame Renee know that he did indeed understand her concern. He also told her that, tired as they were, if there was anything in this house waiting to play with their minds, this was the time they would do it.

“We both came extra tired. That’s the deal. Our systems are as weakened as they can get without us bein’ sick or something. We’re as vulnerable as can be. If nothing bites our asses tonight, and we don’t find any reactions in the morning, will you be happy?”

“Heavens,” the large woman answered. “I’ve heard concern in the voice of Franklin Nardi. Why, I’m happy already.”

The detective simply reached over and turned off the lights as Madame Renee chuckled softly.

* * * *

Despite his fatigue, from a long evening on top of a long day on top of a week where he had already worked two double shifts, Frankie Nardi could not sleep. Renee’s words had stayed with him. As much as he was willing to trade quips with the woman, he respected her as a professional. To him, her tarot readings and the such were the hard evidence of her line of work. Opening herself up to her surroundings was subjective.

If her hard evidence told her one thing, and her subjective evidence told her another, he was wondering exactly what was wrong.

Did she just do a bad reading? Three different types? All wrong? Was that possible?

Nardi drummed the fingers of his left hand against the handrest of his recliner. Wide awake, he worried more and more over the problem before him. Although he did not like the de-ghosting part of his agency’s business, it was not because he did not believe in the supernatural. No NYC cop lasted twenty years without hearing about the Zarnak files, the Thorner case loads, old Tommy Malone…

“Damnit.”

The whispered word hung in the living room air accusingly. Franklin Nardi was a good detective. He had been a good cop. He did not leave a job unfinished. All stones on his beat were turned over. His tongue pressed against his teeth, face a tight mask of skin and tension, he threw his jacket off himself and got up out of his chair.

“All right, house,” he said, getting down on his knees. “You want something juicy, I got juicy for you.”

Renee had done this kind of thing a hundred times. A thousand. Maybe that was where the problem was. Maybe whatever her readings had picked up wanted more than a few bites out of a pro who could reject their spectral advances. Maybe she had found something lurking in a corner that wanted to taste real fear.

Fine, he sneered within his head. Com’on, I gotta bellyful of it for you.

So saying, Nardi closed his eyes and began pulling off his clothing. A man who never went to the office without a tie and jacket, who did not like the beach, who showered strictly by himself, the detective peeled away his layers of protection and sat naked on the floor. Then, slowly, he began to peel away those mental walls he had built over the decades as well.

It was hard work for Nardi, mainly because like most people, he did not know where to begin, where the boundary lines were drawn. As he fumbled, the back of his mind whispered:

It’s like George Carlin said, everyone driving slower than you is a moron, and anyone driving faster is an asshole.

The detective knew what he was trying to tell himself. With the courage he had used to knock in the door of a known gun dealer, that he had used when he had charged straight into a hail of gunfire thrown at him by both sides of a gang war, he looked into his soul and tried to figure out why he had never had a serious relationship.

What was it about women that he dreaded so? He had watched his father and others all his young years. So there were fights? So what? People fight. So families split up. His hadn’t. Some women cheated, but so did some men. His mother and father had been faithful. Everyone in his family had been as far as he knew. There were plenty of ugly rumors about who stole what from who, and who didn’t bathe, and who drank too much, his one uncle—the one who stayed a confirmed bachelor until he died, left all his money to the church, all those video tapes they found, Lassie, Wonder Years, The Andy Griffith Show, anything with a young boy in the cast—he had heard it all, knew it all.

So what’s your problem, Nardi?

The detective could feel the sweat flowing from his body. He thought of women he could have made a life with, remembered their faces, their bodies, the way they smelled in spring, the sound of their laughs, and he shuddered as one by one he remembered shoving them away from himself. Until it became easy. Until it became routine.

He thought of women with whom he had slept, those he had used as rough fun, for sex and satisfaction and nothing more. And he thought of others. His mind brought him pictures of dozens of girls, some he had slept with, others he had played around with, those he had merely kissed, and even women he had simply dreamed about.

And then he remembered Anna.

Anna, with her perfect hair. Anna, with the shoulders so straight, body so taut, legs so long, whose lips tasted of happiness and whose eyes could see into his lungs, could watch the oxygen in them reach his blood stream and rocket to his brain. Anna, who had laid beside him the night he got his acceptance papers to the Academy, who had surrendered herself to him, allowing him his ultimate conquest on his day of triumph, when he was a king who could not be denied.

Anna, who had been so shocked when he had rejected her when she told him she was pregnant. Anna, who he had sent to have an abortion. Anna, who he had ordered to murder his son, and then had blamed her for his death.

Anna, who had spit on his shadow and told him to rot in Hell, and who had found herself another.

Nardi sank to the floor and sputtered, tears pouring from his eyes, spittle bubbling on the carpeting. Afraid to face responsibility, afraid to be father to a thing like himself, he had instead poisoned his own life and then spent twenty years trying to throw it away. His gentle sobs turned into wails of despair, so violent a noise that he never even noticed when Madame Renee rose from the couch and covered him with her blanket.

* * * *

The next morning Nardi and Renee spoke at length. He explained what he had tried to do, and what the results had been. At first he thought he would be embarrassed, but he was too empty, too drained of anger and shame to care. For the first time in over a quarter of a century, he felt like a whole person and did not mind talking about it.

“So,” he asked, shoveling in a large spoon of corn flakes, “where does this leave us?”

“I think it comes down to what you said last night. We went through the entire place this morning—not a tripped wire, not a bit of powder out of place…” when the detective corrected her, Renee laughed, “all right, so we have to tell the blushing bride her pantry has mice—and small mice at that. But that’s it. I’ll offer to come back and do another reading after they move in, but that’s it. This place is clean.”

Madame Renee stared at the detective and marveled at what he had done. To throw himself open to such psychic damage, to be able to face his deepest fears, unaided, unprotected—this was a man, she told herself. A Hell of a man.

“It has to be clean,” she added.

And so, the two packed their machines and clothing and bits and pieces and piled them into their vehicles. Making certain he had both reactivated the security system and locked the front door, Nardi took one last look at the old house, then said:

“Well, no one can say the Nardi Security Team doesn’t earn it’s pay.”

Renee made a surprisingly graceful bow of acknowledgement to his statement, then headed for her car. Nardi turned back to the house, tipped his baseball cap to its weathered roof, and then headed for his own.

And, inside the house, the foul presence which had spent the entire time of Nardi and Renee’s visit suffering in exquisite anguish, allowed itself to burst forth once more from its thousand different hiding places. It was an elder, jaundiced thing, and its hate bounded from the walls as it unfolded itself.

The fat cow, she had been so easy to resist it was a thing of amusement to the cursed soul, a humor so gay it crippled the violent spirit. But the man, all that marvelous, seething, ever-so-fresh pain…

That had been hard to ignore. Agonizingly hard. Oh, for just a tiny tongueful of his snivelling grief, the merest pin prick of his pain…

But that would have alerted the pair of interlopers, set them upon it, forced it to fight back, wasted time, lost it the prize.

No, it purred, remembering the bride soon to be thrust into the bowels of its domain, the smell of her innocence, the drooling wonderfulness of her softness, the flesh to be touched, the love to be poisoned…

What did they think it was, some inconsequential? Some mere nothing of mere human memory? Fools.

The thing which pulsed with the old house exploded with laughter. It had been sorely tempted, but it had won its prize. It had been afraid for a moment, the detective had almost snared it with the delicious aroma of his fear.

Almost.

But it knew a thing or two itself, about the idea of fear, and it had conquered its own.

Now, it mused, bring me something else to conquer.

The house laughed, and the trees shuddered, but there was no one there to hear.

Yet.