Primal Fear (12 page)

She tried to stand, and it was at that moment that her feelings were confirmed.  An unseen hand seemed to close around her throat, cutting her breath to little more than a series of shallow gasps.  It forced her back into the chair and she reached out for the desk, hoping to push herself backwards, to maybe throw this intruder off balance.

Her hands found the computer’s keyboard and suddenly began to spasm, her fingers splayed, blindly pounding out an insane rhythm across the keys.  She tried to raise her hands to her throat, but couldn’t.  Her fingers danced over the keys, filling the screen with line after line of nonsense, deleting everything she had already entered. 

And all the while the grip on her throat only tightened, squeezing off her supply of air.  Flashes of light flickered before her eyes, darkness infringing at the edges of her vision.  She was only vaguely aware now that the computer’s printer had come to life, spitting out page after page onto the desk.

She struggled against whatever it was that was holding her down; she knew if she couldn’t break away, and if she didn’t do it soon, she was sure to lose consciousness.  After that, she didn’t stand a chance.

She reached out and shoved the computer’s keyboard off of the desk.  Her fingers drummed across the blotter, their movements slackening now that the keyboard was no longer in reach.  The pressure around her throat seemed to subside as well, but whether it was a result of her action, she had no idea.

She twisted in her chair, shrugging out of the stranglehold, its grasp barely registering now.  And just as quickly as they had seized her, the unseen hands left off their work and released her.

The coldness lingered for another moment and then it, too, began to subside.  She had the unmistakable sensation that something was moving away from her, something was stepping slowly across the room to leave her alone, and it was taking the coldness away with it.

She sat there shaking, staring suspiciously into every corner of the room.

Laurie rose slowly to her feet, bending to retrieve the fallen keyboard.  She laid it carefully back on the desk, rubbing her throat, wincing at its tenderness.  Her eyes flicked to the shuffle of papers beside the printer and she froze, the fear she’d felt a moment ago returning in a sudden flare of realization.

Any attempt at reasoning out what had happened to her was swept away now by what she saw in the closely printed sheets upon the desk.  The words were nonsense to her, as impossible to unravel as the most complex genetic formula.  And yet she knew for certain that they were actual words, that they were not comprised of random gibberish.

There was a language there, among the strange jumble of lines and phrases, but none that she’d ever seen before.  The spacing between the words was too precise, too carefully measured to be accidental.  That, and the way specific words—sometimes only certain roots of letters—could be spotted several times throughout the text.

Taking a deep breath, Laurie bent and picked up the pages.  There were five of them in all, each of them different from the last, but all composed in that unknown, foreign tongue.

She swung her gaze towards the monitor.  Her text was still intact there, black letters against a dead white background, not a single word altered or deleted, as far as she could tell.  Worse still, a quick glance at the printer confirmed another suspicion: it had never even been switched on.  Even now, its display lights remained dark.

Laurie lowered herself back into the chair, trying to put her thoughts in order, trying to understand what had just happened.  There seemed to be no logic to it, no rational explanation she could readily apply.  But the evidence was right there, five pages of words she couldn’t interpret, words she hadn’t consciously typed.

And in the center of the third page, standing out now in her confused stare, she spotted a single word of English, one she couldn’t recall seeing just a moment before.

. . . coming . . .

She shuddered, cold all over now, wondering how such a simple, common word could fill her with such sudden fear.

By the time the plane touched down at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachsetts, John had managed to reconstruct a bit more of the short communication he’d uttered in the vision, some of it with the help of the woman in the seat beside him, but most of it from the depths of his own memory.

Of course, he hadn’t confessed to her the true meaning of the words he’d spoken in his native tongue.  He’d told her Atae was his grandfather’s name and he must have been dreaming of his childhood.  He couldn’t imagine what she might have thought if he’d been completely honest with her.

Now, shouldering his way through the crowded terminal towards the rental car booths, he mulled over the true meaning of what he’d said in his sleep.

One string of words in particular preyed on his thoughts, one that had come back to him just before the plane had touched down.  “Jhuk katta iti hittut.”  Roughly translated, the words meant “It begins with death,” a cryptic omen John was trying his best to interpret.

As if that wasn’t unsettling enough in itself, he was still unclear on whether the grim warning was intended for him or for the police officer he’d seen in the vision.

Either way, the words were cause for concern, and he would not take them lightly.  It was rare these days for John to speak in the language of his people.  The last opportunity to do so had been at the old man’s bedside; before that he couldn’t honestly recall.  Anything he’d said in the grip of the dream would have to be viewed not only as very important but—possibly—prophetic as well.

In many ways he still felt foolish, placing his faith in the messages he’d culled from what might have been nothing more than a simple dream.  But if his years of study had taught him anything, it was that one was best served by keeping an open mind, no matter how unlikely the circumstances.  Until something could be reliably disproved, he believed, it should at least be considered a possibility.

John stepped up to a rental counter, pushing his thoughts away, at least for the moment.  He would have plenty of time to think on the road, without the distraction of the shuffling crowd around him.  He rented a mid-sized car, and after completing the insurance form, he held up the map he’d found in Mahuk’s bag.  He’d folded it in upon itself to expose the tiny words that read Glen Forest, the town that had obviously become his destination.

“Tell me something,” he said as the clerk counted out his change, “what’s the fastest way to—” 

Once again, he consulted the map.  “—Route 93 North?”

Chapter Ten

Harry returned home at just past seven that evening, stepping into his house with a long, slow sigh of relief.  He’d made one final stop at the crime scene next door, pleased to see the State Police had posted a pair of officers to watch over things for the night.  After a short exchange, he’d left them to their work and trudged through the cold evening breeze to his house.

Laurie was seated at the far end of the couch, wrapped in a blanket and shuffling through a small pile of paper.  An empty wineglass stood on the table beside the couch.  Her expression was troubled, and something about her body language bothered him immediately.  She wasn’t one to scare easily, or to let small matters get under her skin.  He couldn’t imagine that what had happened at Slater’s house that morning—as disturbing as it had been—wouldn’t still be affecting her quite so seriously, so many hours later.

“Everything all right?”

She shrugged.  “Wish I could say.”

“What do you mean?  What happened?”

She continued to stare down at the pages in her lap, and it occurred to him then that she hadn’t looked up once since he’d come in.

“Laurie, what’s wrong?  Talk to me.”  Harry bent to look at the pages, but couldn’t make out anything.  “What have you got there?” 

“Today I was up in the . . . I was using the computer, and it got so cold . . .”

There was a childlike quality to her voice that Harry didn’t like at all.  He’d heard that same tone before, when interviewing a victim of a violent crime, or speaking with an injured driver of a car accident.  It was the way someone spoke when they were in shock.

He sat down beside her on the couch and reached under her chin.  Her skin felt cold to the touch, and he turned her face toward him.  Her eyes were red and puffy; it was clear she’d been crying.  “Laurie, what’s going on?  What happened to you?”

She offered a strange snort of laughter and her bottom lip shivered.  “I had a little printer trouble this afternoon,” she said, a little too casually.  She tried to smile but failed miserably, and then all at once she started to talk. 

She began to tell him how she’d been working on the computer upstairs and how she’d felt an icy touch at the back of her neck and the stifling hand at her throat. 

He listened to her in silence, remembering how he’d felt under Slater’s dead stare, how he’d felt so cold afterwards.

Finally, she handed him the printed sheets and told him how the printer had produced them without even being switched on.

“I know how crazy that sounds, but it’s the truth.  It really happened.”

Harry went over the pages carefully, shaking his head.  “It’s . . . I think maybe you . . .” 

He broke off, unsure about how he should continue.  Should he tell her what had happened to him in Del’s office?  Would it be better to hold the story back, until some of the shock she was feeling had worn off?  After all, she’d obviously been through enough for one day.

And besides, how could he even put what had happened into words?  How could he make her believe that Slater had risen from the autopsy table and attacked him, when he could barely get his head around it?

Finally, unable to answer his own endless questions, Harry simply reached out and placed a hand on his wife’s leg.  Sometimes just touching her could make him feel better.  He stared at her, seeing the fear in her eyes, the confusion on her face, and he knew he couldn’t lie to her.  He had to tell her what he’d seen.

“There’s something . . .”   He pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing this could be easier.  “Something really strange is going on here.”

“With Marty Slater?  With what he did this morning?”

“No, it’s more than that.  It’s . . . something happened, hon, out at Del’s office today that . . . if anybody else told me about it, I’d say they were crazy, but . . . I
saw
it.  I saw it happen.”    

“What was it?”

He hesitated once more, debating just how much he could reveal to her.  He wondered what she would think of him later, how she would look at him while the story unfolded.  In the end, though, he saw the worry in her eyes, the concern in her features, and finally he took a deep breath and forged ahead.

And he told her everything.  He told her how Slater had climbed off of his slab in the morgue and made his way down the hall to attack him.  He described the feeling of the dead man’s stiff fingers as they’d closed around his throat, and he struggled to find the words to describe the rage that had burned in Slater’s single, darkened eye.  Finally, when the tale had been completed, he sat back down beside her and rubbed his face.

“God, it feels so good to tell someone.”  He’d seen fear in her eyes while he’d told the story, and once or twice she’d looked as though she was going to start crying again.  But never once did he see an expression of doubt cross her face, and for that he was grateful.  The tale itself may have seemed impossible, but she apparently still believed in the man who’d told it. 

“Harry, how could it have happened?” she asked.  “It’s just so . . . impossible.”

He held up the pages from the printer.  “Just like this.  Everything that happened to you today . . . it’s all impossible too.  But it must be connected in some way.  It’s got to be.  How else could something like this happen to both of us in the same day?” 

“There has to be some kind of . . . rational explanation, right?  I mean, isn’t there some way to explain all this?”

“I don’t know.  I wish there was.  Hell, I wish I could explain it myself.  But I just don’t know what to think.” 

He lapsed into an exhausted silence, staring at the pages Laurie had given him, at the single word in English that stood out from everything else.

. . . coming . . .

What the hell did that mean?  Was it some kind of warning?  Was someone coming to Glen Forest who meant to harm them?

It felt as though everything he’d known and believed about the world and its reality had been turned inside-out for him.  And he felt filthy, as if the day’s events had permanently marked him, staining him deep beneath the surface of his skin, where no amount of bathing would ever be able to clean. 

He closed his eyes and thought of Slater’s face as the body had attacked, of the dry croak of his voice as he’d tried to speak.  And he considered the impossibility of the entire event, the pure absurdity of what he’d seen. 

“What about Del?” Laurie asked.  “What did he have to say about it?”

Harry forced a grin, but it was weak and didn’t last long.  “Del just about shit his pants.  His hands are probably still shaking.  But he examined the body afterwards, and confirmed that Marty was still dead, and so he couldn’t explain what happened any better than I could.  He said there was no medical explanation to support what we saw happen.” 

Harry paused.  “He’s not going to report it.”

“What?”

“He says he doesn’t know how to.  And until he figures out what happened, and
how
it happened, he says we’re going to keep our mouths shut.”

“That doesn’t sound like him.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it?  But nothing like this has ever happened to him before, either.”

“What about . . . what did he do with the body?”

Harry chewed his lip.  “He locked it in cold storage,” he told her.  “And he said that’s where it’s going to stay until we can figure out what the hell happened there today.”

Much later, with Laurie curled warmly against him and breathing softly, Harry lay awake in their bed and listened to the wind howling past the eaves.  His mind refused to shut down, the mysteries of the day taking on a more mythical edge in the grip of his fatigue.  Now, finally on the edge of sleep, he saw once more the shambling body of Marty Slater as it made its way closer to him, its hands outstretched and pointing.

In accusation?  In recognition?  What?

But his dozing mind buried the question of Slater’s reanimation, pushing the impossibility of the event aside as though it was no more uncommon than the trick of any parlor magician.  His thoughts focused instead on the strange words that had spilled from Slater’s twisted mouth.  Only half-remembered in daylight, now they echoed clearly in his head, as if only the strength of impending slumber could summon them.  The words tumbled over each other in his memory, growing more distinct, still meaningless to him, but gaining more familiarity with every repetition.

He rolled onto his side, sleep finally overtaking him completely.  His eyes began to move beneath their lids, from left to right and then back again, faster and faster.  In his mind’s eye, the dreams began, nightmarish visions of the day’s events, the images painted grotesquely in the over-exaggerated detail of the sleeping mind.

By dawn he would remember none of it.  Only the words he’d heard would stick in his mind, like debris in the trail of some natural and terrible disaster.

And only the words would matter.

They floated up from the depths of his mind, like desperate cries shouted from the bottom of a well.

“. . . Atae . . . Atae . . . Atae . . .”

At the same time Harry was finally drifting off to sleep in Glen Forest, John Artaqua was checking into the Pine Bluff Motel, seventy miles south in Randolf, New Hampshire.  He’d pulled off the interstate half an hour earlier, too tired to go on, realizing it would be more practical to get some sleep before tackling the rest of the long drive north.

Besides, even if he did manage to reach Glen Forest tonight, it would be well past midnight by the time he pulled into town.  Who would he find to help him at that hour?  Better to get a good night’s rest, he reasoned, and then make the last leg of the journey at daybreak.  It made more sense to travel by daylight anyway, especially across unfamiliar country.

Barring any unforeseen difficulties, he could reach his destination by ten AM, quite a reasonable hour to find the local police station and—with a great deal of luck—track down the man he’d seen in the vision.  The name of the town had been real, he thought.  So why not the man?

He yawned and unlocked the door to his room, stepping out of the cold night and dropping his duffel bag on the bed.  There wasn’t much to the room; a double bed, a writing desk and chair, and a battered television that probably wouldn’t work anyway.  At least there was a shower, he thought.  At least he would be able to wash away some of the fatigue the flight and the drive from the airport had worn into his bones.

After that, all he wanted to do was get some sleep.

Tomorrow would be a day for discovery, and for revelations.  It would be wise to be in peak form, without the added burden of an exhausted mind to dull his intuition and weaken his senses.  If the old man was right, there wasn’t much time to prepare.

And if he didn’t have a chance to prepare, if the rituals he’d studied could not be performed in time, what then?  He could carry out the proper rites, driven only by his familiarity with them from his years of study.  But it wasn’t like there was any real magic in him other than the strength of his knowledge.

Would that knowledge be sufficient to see him through if he was required to act on his feet?  Because if the ritual he’d memorized failed, then clearly there would be no opportunity to run back to his text books to look up another one.

And in that case, John knew of no other card that he could play.