Scream a novel, p.16
Scream: A Novel, page 16
There were about five people outside the store, huddled together, craning their necks for a view of what was happening inside and talking quietly to each other, shaking their heads.
Something was going on inside, and it wasn’t good. Hopefully, the paramedics had gotten there in time.
Mark joined the crowd. “What’s going on?” he said to a middle-aged man with a gray goatee, sharp nose, and small round glasses.
The man looked at Mark, then back at the building. “The clerk was choking on something. That guy over there”—he motioned toward the elderly gent in overalls—“tried to give her the Heimlich, but nothing happened. She turned blue and . . . and passed out, I guess. He tried to revive her, but she was gone. A minute later the cops showed up. They worked on her until the ambulance came.”
Mark’s body was numb. Choked on something? That was it? His mind swam in a pool of mud, unwilling to comprehend what was happening.
The man was talking again, shaking his head side to side. “—thing was, nobody in the store even called the cops. They just showed up. Like they knew they were needed.”
If the man continued talking or not, Mark didn’t know, didn’t care. The cop standing sentry suddenly jerked the glass door open, and a gurney with two paramedics on either side, one at the head, and one at the foot, rolled out of the store, clanking through the doorway. A woman—Andrea—was lying on the gurney, her shirt ripped open. One paramedic, a stocky male with a thick chest, pumped away on her sternum with two hands, his body pistoning up and down like an oil rig. Sweat glistened off his forehead and cheeks. The other, a short female, worked a bag that fed air directly into Andrea’s trachea, apparently bypassing whatever was wedged in her throat. The third paramedic, a slack-cheeked man with short-cropped graying hair, pulled the gurney from the foot, while the fourth, a pudgy baby-faced male, pushed from the head.
Mark swallowed hard. This wasn’t happening. Not again.
When they reached the ambulance, the medics at the head and foot shifted to either side. The middle-aged one started to say something when Andrea suddenly sat straight up on the gurney. Her arms flailed about wildly, and she swatted at herself as if slapping at bees. Head, torso, legs, arms.
The paramedics started barking orders at each other while the two on either side tried in vain to restrain her. The bag came loose from her throat and fell to the ground. Her shirt hung open, exposing her bare chest to the world. But Andrea didn’t seem to care. Her arms kept flailing and swatting, her legs kicking, like she was frantically fighting off some creature only she could see. Fighting for her life.
One of the medics, the baby-faced one, placed both hands on Andrea’s shoulders and shoved her back into a supine position. And that’s when Mark noticed the look on her face. Her eyes bulged and her mouth hung open in a silent scream, but there was more to it than that. There was a look of terror. That look of terror. The same one that twisted Dad’s face right before he passed. A look like she was witnessing the horrors of hell, peeking into the inferno, or maybe being suspended above it. It sent chills right through Mark’s body, head to toe, like someone had opened his skull and poured in a bucket of ice water. His skin crawled with goose bumps, his scalp tingled, hands went numb. This couldn’t be happening.
Andrea continued to claw at herself while the paramedics restrained her, fastening belts around her shoulders, waist, and legs. She wrenched and jerked about, eyes looking like they would pop right out of their sockets, tracheotomy sucking air like a hose. One of the paramedics, maybe the middle-aged one, yelled something, and they all lifted the gurney in unison, sliding it into the back of the ambulance. Within seconds, siren howling like a demon, the ambulance tore out of the parking lot and disappeared in the East Main Street morning traffic.
Mark stumbled back to his car, his mind spinning in a thousand different directions. He threw the driver’s side door open and collapsed into the bucket seat. What just happened here? Again, the screams proved to be prophetic. And again, Tim’s words echoed through the chambers of his mind:
For some reason, you’re being given a little heads-up.to save
But what was the reason? He didn’t even have time to save her! But she hadn’t died. That was the weirdest thing of all. She should have, but she didn’t. If Mark hadn’t called 911, and if the cops hadn’t been on the way when she choked, she would have. So he did save her . . . in a way. Then there was that look on her face when she came to. The look of someone who had just been to hell and back. He’d heard of people having near-death experiences, but they always talked about bright lights and soft voices and heaven, not hell. But the look on her face was definitely not that of someone who had just spent a few minutes in bliss. So maybe she had died, gone to hell, and was revived again. Was that even possible? He raked both hands through his hair and flopped his head back against the headrest. He was getting a headache.
➍
Crouching in the serviceberries, Judge pushed a branch out of his face and glanced at his watch. 8:43. She wasn’t going to show. She should have been there by now, should have been there fifteen minutes ago. He snorted, accepting defeat, and was about to stand when he heard the faint steady rhythm of footfalls on asphalt, like a ticking clock. He peered out of the shrub, looked right, and saw her coming on the opposite side of the road, about a hundred yards away. She was wearing navy blue jogging pants and a yellow loose-fitting T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. As she drew closer he could see the redness in her cheeks, the sweat on her brow, the heaving of her chest. She was going at a pretty good clip too.
He suddenly had the impulse to do it now. Why wait? It would never work anyway; she was too irregular. He’d have to come up with some other way to take her, which might take days. And he didn’t want to have to wait any longer. His impatience grew with each day. Now would be as good a time as any. He didn’t have his ether with him, but he could subdue her easily enough with just his hands, drag her back to the car, and take care of things there.
He rose out of his crouched position, straightened the tightness out of his knees, and took one step out of the serviceberries when he heard a rumble coming from the left. He stepped back and pulled a branch in front of his face. Moments later, a semi loaded down with timber rushed by, its Jake Brake groaning through the turn. By the time the truck disappeared around the bend to his right, she was past him, her ponytail swinging like a blonde pendulum as she plodded on, steady, tick-tick-tick-tick.
He pressed his molars together and cursed under his breath. Stupid. Impulsiveness never paid. That’s why he planned so carefully. But he’d have to come up with another way. This was too unpredictable, too risky. But he would take her. And soon.
Her clock was ticking, running out of time.
➎
After the excitement at Pro Auto Parts, Mark drove slowly back to his garage, his mind still saturated with questions, questions that no doubt would just have to go unanswered. He’d driven around for almost an hour wrestling with the questions, trying to sort out what had just happened, and searching, searching for anything that made even the remotest bit of sense.
Now he was sitting in his garage, in a stranger’s car, trying to do his job but finding it almost impossible to concentrate. How was he just supposed to go back to work doing the same old mundane thing when it had happened again? The scream. A death. Well, an almost death. But he had to get back to work. The ’97 Taurus behind whose wheel he was sitting was in desperate need of new brake pads. Probably needed them a thousand miles ago.
He was about to shut down the engine when a loud knock came from the back of the car, from the trunk. He spun around in the seat and saw two cops standing by the rear panel, a man and a woman, both dressed in brown shirts, beige pants, hand-guns hanging casually at their side. The woman wore her brown wide-brimmed hat sitting low on her forehead.
He killed the engine and climbed out of the car, dropping the keys in his pocket. “Hey, officers, can I help you?”
The man, middle-aged, tall, lean, and wiry, with a narrow chin and Frank Zappa thing going on with his mustache, extended his hand and shook Mark’s. “Sheriff Hickock.” He motioned toward the female cop. “This is Deputy Foreman. You Mark Stone?”
Mark looked from Hickock to the woman, a petite young gal, no more than thirty. She looked familiar, may have been the deputy that questioned him the night of Jeff’s accident. Then it dawned on him. Andrea. He’d called 911, and they were probably following up on his bizarre call. “Sure am. Is this about that woman Andrea at Pro Auto?”
Hickock hooked his thumbs in his belt and narrowed his eyes. “Andrea Kreiger. Almost died a little while ago. Did you make a 911 call from here, saying someone was gonna die at Pro Auto?”
Mark leaned back against the rear door of the Taurus and swallowed. Oh, boy, how was he going to explain this one? He nodded. “Yes, I did.”
“Mr. Stone, I’m gonna be real honest with you,” Hickock said, nailing Mark with a look that only a cop could get away with. The kind that made cocky kids and dumb criminals put on their best manners. “As you can imagine, we don’t usually get calls of that nature. And it raises a little suspicion. More than a little, actually. Would you like to explain how you knew she would have a very close encounter with death?”
Foreman was jotting notes in a small notepad.
Mark shifted his weight nervously. Any way he explained it, it was going to sound absurd. Better to just tell the truth and let them interpret it however they wished. “Well, I, uh, have been getting some phone calls interrupted with these screams, see, and...well, it’s weird, the people I’ve been talking to have all died.”
Hickock jumped in. “Screams? What kind of screams?”
“Screams. Like full-out horror movie screams. Lots of ’em. Like a bunch of people all screaming at once. It lasts maybe five seconds or so, then stops.”
Hickock glanced back at Foreman, who was standing a couple feet behind him and to the left. She nodded. She was getting it all down. Great.
“You said the people to whom you were talking when these . . . screams . . . occurred all died. How many times has it happened?” Hickock’s face showed no expression while he talked. Either he was actually taking Mark seriously, or he was one heck of a poker player.
“Three. Four, counting Andrea. First a friend of mine, Jeff Beaverson—”
Hickock glanced at Foreman, and she met his look. “The auto fatality. Coopers Hollow,” she said.
“You heard screams before Beaverson wrecked?” Hickock said.
“Yeah. He heard them too.”
Hickock looked back at Foreman again. She shrugged and shook her head. “Did you tell Deputy Foreman about these screams then? When she talked to you at the scene?”
The evening was still fuzzy, a patchwork of memories, images, sounds, smells. “I don’t know. I don’t remember much from that night. Sorry.”
Hickock waved his hand in front of him. “OK. Go on. Who else?”
Mark continued. “Then there was Jerry Detweiler. He was my parts supplier until . . . his heart attack. Then last Friday my dad died. He lived in Virginia.”
Hickock remained motionless, his face like granite. “And they all screamed on the phone right before they died.”
Mark shook his head. “No. They didn’t scream. Other people—the screams—they came from somewhere else.”
“Where?” When Hickock said where, his shoulders rose and dropped, and his eyebrows mimicked their quick movement. He then made a quick glance at Foreman again. Was that a smirk Mark noticed on his face?
“Well,” Mark said. He wasn’t going to dare tell Hickock the screams came from hell, though by now he was almost convinced they couldn’t have come from anywhere else. Especially after his experience with Dad and Andrea. “I’m not sure. I just know they’re there. And then the person dies.”
“Dies immediately?” Foreman asked, then shot Hickock a look as if seeking his blessing on her interruption.
Mark nodded. “Jeff and Jerry, yes. Sounds like Andrea would have if I hadn’t called for help. My dad was several hours later.”
Hickock exchanged another look with Foreman. The corners of his mouth curled into a slight grin, and he pulled both eyebrows up, wrinkling his brow. This time the look on his face said exactly how he felt about Mark and his story—nut job.
“Look,” Mark said. He knew he had to do some fast explaining and give them something they wanted or he’d find himself in the loony bin before the day was over. “I don’t understand it either. I never had anything like this happen before. I get three phone calls interrupted by some weird screaming, and all three people die. Now I don’t know if it was just coincidence or something else going on, but when I get another call and more screaming . . . well, what would you have done? I put two and two together.”
Hickock unhooked his thumbs and gave Mark a long hard stare as if trying to decide whether or not to slap the cuffs on him and haul him away. Thankfully, he decided on the not. “OK. Thank you for your time, Mr. Stone. I hope you understand why we had to come here and ask some questions. It does seem a little odd when someone calls 911 saying someone else seven miles away is going to die. Then it almost happens. Most likely would have happened if our guys hadn’t gotten there when they did.”
Mark shrugged it off. “I’m glad they got there in time.”
Foreman slid her notepad back into her shirt pocket and nodded at Mark. Hickock turned to leave, then stopped. A smile thinned his lips. “You’ll call us again if you get any more of your screaming phone calls, won’t you?”
“If you’d like me to.”
Hickock lost his smile. “I would.”
➏
Back at the cruiser, Wiley dipped his head as he slid behind the wheel.
Jess shut her door and sighed, holding her hat on her lap. “Well, what do you make of that?”
Wiley didn’t look at her; he was still looking at the garage, watching Stone through the open bay door. Odd fellow, that Stone. And his story, however far-fetched it seemed, was somewhat disturbing. “First tell me one thing.”
Jess hesitated, then said, “Go ahead.”
“Are you a born-againer?”
Jess sighed and rolled her eyes. “Do we have to keep landing on this topic?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Why do I feel like I’m being interrogated?”
“Answer.”
“Yes, I am.”
Wiley snorted. He couldn’t hide his disdain for the type. He’d seen enough of them in his lifetime to leave a bitter taste in his mouth for a very long time. Hypocrites, every one of them, as far as he was concerned. Jess didn’t seem like a fanatic, or a hypocrite, but maybe that was just because she did a good job of hiding it. She probably talked all high and mighty on Sunday mornings. Hello, Brother Morton, fine day the Lord’s given us, isn’t it? His mercies endure forever, don’t they? Praise be to the Lawd Almighty! Amen and amen! Now please excuse me while I go memorize Paul’s epistle to the Galatians. Yeah, he knew the type.
Jess cocked her head at an angle. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“Not if you keep it to yourself and don’t go thinking you’re better than everyone else.”
“You asked me about it, remember? And I don’t think I’m better than anyone. We all have our problems. Now can we please get back to our guy Stone here.”
Wiley ran a finger over his mustache. Jess was nibbling on a fingernail, watching Stone work. “You first,” he said.
Jess stopped nibbling long enough to say, “Me first what?” “You asked me what I think about Stone. You first.”
“In a word? Crazy.”
Wiley slowly shook his head and pressed his lips together. “No. I don’t think there’s anything crazy about him. Not yet, anyway.”
“Then what was all that about screams over the phone? You think he’s telling the truth?”
Wiley tapped the steering wheel, drumming out some unknown rhythm just to keep his hands busy. He continued watching Stone, who was busying himself with the right passenger-side tire of the Taurus, occasionally casting furtive glances at the cruiser. “Right now, I’m not assuming anything. He’s odd, I’ll give him that. And his story is even odder. Check Beaverson’s and Detweiler’s phone records. See if either of them talked to Stone right before they died.”
“And if they did?”
Wiley brought his shoulders up and let them drop. “Then there might something to his screaming stories.”
They sat in silence for several seconds until Wiley could feel Jess’s eyes boring holes into the side of his head. “What?”
“You think he had something to do with the deaths?” Jess kept her voice low, like they were talking about some top-secret case.
Finally, Wiley pulled his eyes away from Stone and fixed them on Jess. “I’m not saying that. We need to cover all the bases though.” He turned his head back to the garage and found Stone still fiddling with the front tire. “I don’t like this.”
“Like you don’t like missing person cases?”
“Exactly.”
➐
The fifth floor of Frostburg Hospital was like any other floor on the hospital—cold, sterile, gray tile floors littered with black scuff marks, gray and white walls, harsh fluorescent lighting. The air held the aroma of rubbing alcohol and body odor so common in hospitals. Mark walked down the middle of the hallway, sneakers chirping with each step, in search of Room 547, Andrea Kreiger.
At the welcome desk adjacent to the lobby the receptionist had told him to take the elevator to the fifth floor, turn right off the elevator, follow the hall to its end, and make a left. Room 547 was on the right-hand side. “Odd-numbered rooms on the right, even on the left,” she’d said, like she’d said it a million times a day.
