FEAST OF THE FEAR (3 page)

“
Oh my God, Al,” Mitch said, rushing to the man’s aid. “I didn’t mean to—”

“—
Go!” Al said through a gasp of agony.

“
What?”

“
Your mother! You’ve got to talk to her before it’s too late. Before he kills her.”

“
Before who kills her, Al? Jesus Christ you’re not making sense!”

“
Him! It! So . . . terrible. It’s getting stronger. It wants to kill us both for what we did. We should have told you long ago. Go, she needs you.”

“
Al, are you all right?”

“
No, I’m not all right, you stupid asshole! Can’t you see I’m dying?”

“
Come on,” Mitch said, trying to lift Al to his feet. “I’m taking you to the hospital.” “Leave me alone,” Al said, slapping Mitch’s hands away. “Let an old man die in peace, for Christ’s sake.” But Mitch could see that Al was breathing again and the color had returned to his face.

“
Are you sure—?”

“
Yes! Go!”

“
But she won’t talk to me, Al. She’s never talked to me about any of this.”

“
I think she will, now, Mitch. After what happened last night, yeah, I think she will.”

Eden Hospital was a rambling three-story building of brick and mortar that spread across several landscaped acres. Mitch parked his dilapidated pickup in the visitor lot and made his way inside.

His mother’s room was on the second floor. As Mitch was entering, the day nurse was leaving. “How is she?” He whispered.

The nurse gave Mitch a suspicious frown.

“
I’m her son,” Mitch explained.

The nurse nodded. “Ah, yes. Well, she has a lot of shallow cuts on her body. The doctor sewed up the ones that needed stitches. Most didn’t, but those kinds of wounds—the ones that don’t go very deep—are the most painful. She’s been given a mild sedative. She’s resting peacefully now.”

“
Can I go in?”

“
Mr. Redlon?” Mitch looked down the corridor toward the source of the inquiry. Two men approached him, both wearing work suits. They looked to Mitch like cops. As they drew closer he recognized one of them. “Mr. Redlon?” The lead man inquired again. “Mitchell Redlon?”

“
Yes.”

“
My name is Maxim. Detective Lou Maxim from the Eden police.” He held out his hand. Mitch took it tentatively. “And this is Detective Willis.”

Mitch eyed Willis warily. “Yeah, Detective Willis and I have met. What can I do for you?”

“
We’d like to ask you a few questions concerning your mother, Elizabeth Redlon.”

“
Yeah? What do you want to know?”

“
Would you step over here, sir, into the visitor area?” The two men lead Mitch to a small waiting area at the end of the corridor. There were half a dozen chairs and several tables stacked with magazines. Except for them the alcove was unoccupied.

“
Have a seat, Mr. Redlon.” Mitch sat down, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. “We’ve been trying to contact you since this morning,” Maxim informed him. “We tried calling but there was no phone service. So we drove out to your place and had a look around.” Mitch stared at the man, waiting for him to go on, wishing he would hurry up and get to the point.

“
Have you had a chance to speak to your mother, Mr. Redlon?”

Mitch shook his head. “No. I just got here.”

“
Good. We wanted to talk to you first.”

“
What about?”

“
Of course you know that your mother was attacked last night.”

“
Yes, Al McKinney told me.”

“
Al McKinney,” the detective repeated. “How well do you know the man?”

“
Quite well. He’s been a family friend for more than twenty years. Why? What’s this about?”

“
We’ll ask the questions,” the detective named Willis said. He was a large man with a puffy florid face and droopy eyes. There was anger in him. And animosity. Mitch knew him from years ago. He’d been one of the cops who’d investigated the rash of murders back then. He’d questioned his mother, and Mitch sensed that he’d been interested in her. But so were all the men. She wouldn’t have pissed in his face if his hair had been on fire, and she’d pretty much told him so. Afterward he’d unsuccessfully tried to link her to the murders. He was an asshole, and Mitch did not like him.

“
All right,” Mitch said, settling back in his chair. “Ask away.”

“
Where were you last night, Mr. Redlon?”

“
At home.”

“
So, you didn’t go out at all?”

“
No.”

“
How long has it been since you last saw your mother?”

“
I don’t know, a couple of months, maybe.”

“
But you went to see her this morning.”

“
Yeah. So?”

“
So why this morning?” Willis asked.

Mitch shrugged. “I stop by every so often. It’s not against the law is it?”

“
Don’t be a wise ass, Redlon,” Willis said.

Maxim held up his hand. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this situation, Mr. Redlon,” he said in a reasonable voice. “Of course it’s not against the law for you to see your mother. We just think it’s odd that you haven’t been there in two months and the morning after she’s attacked you do.”

“
I can’t explain it,” Mitch said. “Just coincidence I guess.”

“
Coincidence, my ass,” Willis exploded. “I know your mother and I know you.” He sat forward in his seat and pointed an accusatory finger at Mitch. “She had something to do with all those murders back in the eighties and nineties. We could never prove it but that don’t make it not so!”

“
Why?” Mitch asked. “Because she predicted some of them? She’s a psychic.”

“
I don’t believe in hocus pocus, Redlon. She knew about them because she knew who was doing them. Plain and simple. There can be no other explanation.”

Mitch stood up. “I don’t have to listen to this,” he said. “If you guys want to charge me with something do it now, because I’m not answering any more of your questions.”

“
That’s all right, Mr. Redlon,” Maxim said. “You don’t have to answer now, but I must tell you that we are in the process of obtaining a warrant to search your home.”

Mitch glared at the cops, turned and made his way toward the room that contained his injured mother.

Mitch was totally unprepared for the sight that greeted him as he approached his mother’s bed. Elizabeth Redlon’s once beautiful face was now a relief map of shallow lacerations. Her identity had literally been snatched from her by the blade of some razor-sharp instrument. She was asleep, so Mitch sat in a chair near her bed waiting for her to awaken. As the afternoon wore on and she didn’t stir, Mitch became restless so he got up and began to pace the room. The scar itched so badly that Mitch began to dig at it, at one point drawing blood. “God damn it!” he hissed, looking down on his sleeping mother. “Wake up!”

With those words Elizabeth Redlon opened her eyes. “Mitchell, is that you?”

“
Yes, Ma,” Mitch said, going to her side. “How do you feel?”

“
Now you ask.”

“
Ma, we don’t have time for games. I need to know who did this to you.”

“
I . . . can’t tell you, son.”

“
God damn it, Ma! Your life is in danger. Al McKinney said he made you a promise. I need to know what it was, and I need to know now!”

“
It wasn’t Al’s fault, Mitchell.”

“
I don’t care about blame, Ma. Listen, last night I had one of my dreams. I woke up covered in blood, and the scar on my side was pulsing like it was alive.”

Elizabeth Redlon stared at her son for a long moment and Mitch saw terror swell in her eyes. “When I got pregnant with you, Al was the one who helped me,” she said. “That’s all. He just helped me. No one else would. By that time most of the town had turned against me.”

“
Why, Mother? What was the real reason they turned against you?”

“
I saw inside them, son. I saw the things some of them had done, and the things some of them would do in the future. Such terrible secrets hide inside people, you know. My only mistake was being honest with them. I should have lied. I should have made up nice little stories about them so that they could go on believing their own myths.”

“
You saw the murders, didn’t you, Ma? Just like I did.”

Elizabeth Redlon shook her head. “Not like you, son. Nobody saw them like you did. But I knew, and I was powerless to do anything about them.”

“
Al said that it was something he and you did. Some terrible thing that never should have been done. But he wouldn’t explain.”

“
What else did Al tell you?”

“
He said that
it
wanted to kill you both for what you did. That it was getting stronger. What is
it,
Ma? Tell me,
what
wants to kill you?”

Elizabeth Redlon’s eyes filled with tears. “A monster,” she said.

Mitch wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “What?”

“
A monster, Mitch. We did it for you. So that you could have a life. I’m so sorry now.”

“
Ma, you’re not making sense. What do you mean, a monster? What kind of monster? Does it have something to do with
The Fear,
with all the shit that happened back when I was a kid?”

Elizabeth nodded. “It began when you were around six. That’s when he started coming back.”

“
Who started coming back?”

“
You began waking up in the night screaming. I’d go to you and you’d be covered in blood. Your bed, your pajamas, your body . . . everything . . . covered in blood. At first I thought you’d somehow injured yourself while you slept. But I’d examine your body and find nothing except your scar, Mitch. On those nights your scar would be livid and pulsing, like it was alive or something, like a freshly healed wound. You’d be screaming and irrational and scratching at the scar, telling me about
The Fear.
I was so scared, Mitch. I didn’t know what to do. Night after night it would happen. The blood, and the screaming, oh, God, the awful screaming.”

“
I don’t remember the blood, Ma. Last night was the first time, and there
was
blood. A lot of it.”

Elizabeth gave a quick shake of her head. “There was always blood, Mitch. I would clean you up and change your bedclothes. If you want the truth, I think it was so horrible that you blocked that part of it out. And I’m so thankful.

“
About a week after your first episode I picked up the paper and saw that Mrs. Lansky, a friend of mine, had been found dead in her bedroom. Her body was partly decomposed. She’d been dead about a week. She’d been brutally murdered, slashed to ribbons. And two weeks later you had another episode and then they found Arlene Trott the same way. And then there were more of them, all the same. All butchered in their beds. The town began to panic. They needed to find a killer but the evidence just didn’t add up.”

“
What evidence? I thought there wasn’t any evidence.”

“
Oh, there was evidence, all right, but it was too crazy, too unbelievable for anyone to accept.”

“
Who’s the killer, Ma? Tell me!”

“
A child, Mitch. At all the crime scenes, smeared in the blood, they found the handprints and footprints of a very young child.”

Mitch felt panic clawing at his insides, and suddenly he could not breathe. He stood up and backed away from his mother, gasping for air, his eyes wide open and staring. “How old, Ma?” Mitch croaked. “How old was the child?”

“
Your age.”

Mitch fell to his knees beside the bed, his mouth dry, his head thrumming in agony. “Was it me, Ma?” Dear God, was
I
the killer?”

“
No, son.”

The relief Mitch felt was astounding, washing over him like warm tidal waters, making him dizzy. “But . . . how do you know?”

“
Because on the nights of the murders you were home, in my arms, screaming in panic, delirious with the visions that you were somehow being forced to witness. You saw everything, Mitch.”

“
What about the blood, Ma? Where was the blood coming from?”

“
Your scar.”

“
What?” Mitch shook his head confusedly. He wasn’t sure he understood.

“
Your scar. On the nights of the murders your scar would open up like a fountain, and I swear, you would bleed out half your body’s supply before the scar would suddenly begin to heal again. By morning it would be healed, but red and irritated and it would pulse like it had its own heart.”

“
Oh my God, that’s what happened to me last night.”

Elizabeth leaned forward toward her son, her pale blue eyes filled with terror. “Who, Mitch?” she asked. “Who did you see in your dream?”

Mitch shook his head.

“
Come on, Mitch, I need to know.”

“
Why?”

“
Because when you were a child, every time you had one of your attacks someone would die. And you always . . . knew.”