Silas: A Supernatural Thriller (2 page)

When the young man finishes his tasks he nods to Ken and starts to leave the room. Ken stops him with a wave of his hand.

“Please, don’t go,” he says.

The young man considers him with a cockeyed glance and steps away from the door. “What is it?” he asks. “Is there anything I can get you?”

Ken slides his legs over and pats the empty spot on the bed. “Can you sit with me for a minute? I’d appreciate some company.”

The young man complies, strolling over and sitting down. His stare is intense and yet sympathetic, and Ken notices the man’s eyes are odd. They are bright blue, like the
Caribbean Sea
. It is such a strange and wonderful appearance, contrasting against his dark skin like a pair of sapphires in the middle of a jet block.

“What would you like to talk about?” he asks.

“First off, you know my name, but what’s yours?”

He laughs. “John. But most folks around here call me JT.”

Ken reaches over and slaps the man’s knee, still amazed he can do so with little difficulty. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, JT.”

“And you as well, Mr. Lowery.”

“Please, call me Ken.”

“Okay.”

They sit in silence for a moment after that. Ken can’t stop staring at JT’s eyes. They seem to draw him in, to mesmerize him. There is sadness in them, a world-weariness a man his age shouldn’t have.

“How much time do you have?” Ken asks finally.

“This was my last room to check. I guess I have a while, unless someone buzzes me.”

“Do you want to hear a story?”

JT grins. “What kind of story?”

Ken points across the room. “Could you do me a favor? There’s a suitcase in the closet over there. Inside the suitcase is a box. Would you bring it to me?”

“Sure.”

JT does as he’s been asked, returning with a large, heavy carton. He puts it down on the bed and Ken places his hand on top of it. The cardboard sucks the moisture from his fingers, making them dry. Tears drip down his cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” the kind young man asks.

“See this box?” says Ken. “This is my life…at least the part of my life that allowed me to be right here, right now. Inside is a manuscript, the likes of which none have read before. It describes the most fantastic thing that ever happened to me. I started writing it years ago. Thought it’d make a good memoir one of these days…if anyone believed a word of it, that is. I’ve never spoken to anyone about the events it portrays, not even my wife. It’s been burning a hole in me for years.”

“Do you want me to read some of it to you?” JT asks.

Ken shakes his head. “No, son. It needs to be me who tells it.”

“Okay. But why me? Why now?”

“Don’t know,” Ken says with a shrug. “I feel well, I feel strong. For the first time in months I feel like
me.
But I don’t know how long this will last. Aren’t there a lot of cases where dying people have a moment of lucidity before passing on?”

JT nods.

“I thought so. If this really is my last shot at coming to peace with my past, it’s better late than never.” He looks at JT with pleading eyes. “Please say you’ll listen, at least for a little while.”

JT rests his hand over Ken’s and says quietly, “I’ll give you as much time as I can.”

Ken leans back. He doesn’t open the box’s lid. He doesn’t have to. He remembers every event as if it were yesterday, as if it’s been burnt into his brain. He closes his eyes and speaks.

“This is the greatest story I have to tell, and it all began with three distinct sounds, the first of which was a song…”

2

It was a tune by a forgotten, one-hit-wonder from the sixties that suddenly got hot again because one of those pop-metal bands that were all the rage at the start of the twenty-first century decided to cover one of his songs and ride it to stardom. I was thirty-two at the time, old enough to have been immersed in that earlier era by my parents and young enough to stay up-to-date and appreciative of modern music.

This particular song was called
Blood Red Morning
. A guy named Art Lonnigan had performed it originally, and it was his version that played on the radio as I drove home from work that day in early April.
Five, seven, two, one, in a land once said
, he sang in his Jim Croce-
esque
voice.
And through fields of green, I see the dead.
I quickly turned down the volume. I remembered my father listening to that song on the eight-track player in our old station wagon when I was a kid. Its irritating syrupiness and oddly dark lyrics had stuck with me all through my early years. The last thing I wanted was a repeat performance.

The second sound was that of a newscaster’s voice. I happened upon it when I changed the station, searching for traffic updates due to the highway being more congested than usual. The voice went from talking about the start of the new baseball season to a report of a missing girl in nearby
Stafford
. Her name was Tina Andrews, he told all who listened, a seven-year-old with long black hair and a stunning smile. She was last seen playing in her front yard, a mile from the local racetrack. She’d been missing for three days.
If anyone has any clues as to her whereabouts
, he said,
please contact the
Connecticut
State
Police, who are performing the search.

Instead of changing the channel I lit a cigarette and opted to pop in a CD. The last thing I needed was a reminder of how horrible and unfair the world could be, traffic updates be damned. I had enough problems with my place in life – from my choice of career to the fact I’d stayed in
Connecticut
rather than move to
California
like I’d always thought I would. I figured listening to some old
Iron Maiden
would be better than taking a chance on anything the squawk box had to offer. At least I’d know what I was getting. At least then I could head-bang my troubles away.

By the time I entered Mercy Hills, my hometown, I had virtually forgotten about long-lost sixties tunes, missing girls, and the bitter disappointment of my life. The sun was setting and an early spring gust of cold air blew in through my open window. I tossed out my cigarette, rolled up the window, and pulled into my driveway just as
Two Minutes to Midnight
ended. I felt downright nostalgic, despite the fact the crowded highway made my ride home take fifteen minutes longer than usual. All I wanted to do was walk in the house, eat some dinner, try my best to ignore the look of disgust my wife was sure to give me for getting home so late, and sit down in front of the tube to watch the first pitch of the Red Sox game.

That’s when the third, and most important, sound of that day caught my ears.

It was a strange noise, a high-pitched, needy whine that rang out the minute I opened the front door. I took off my shoes and hung up my jacket, thinking it was all in my head. Then it happened again.

“Wendy?” I called out. “What’s going on?”

“We’re in the living room,” she replied. I could swear she giggled, which was not like her.

We?

My feet thumped over the carpet as I stormed down the hall and rounded the corner. There was Wendy, sitting in front of the couch with her legs crossed. Her auburn hair bobbed just above her shoulders and her hands were in constant motion, fiddling with some small, dark object that squirmed in her lap. She laughed and yelled, “Ouch!” in a surprisingly cheerful tone of voice.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

Wendy turned to me, beaming. “Hey, Honey,” she said. “I’d like you to meet our new addition.”

She grabbed the thing in her lap, lifted it, and turned. The source of the whining had short black hair all over its body, paws that were proportionately much too large, and a pair of huge green eyes that bulged from either side of a thick muzzle. The thing poked out its tongue and panted, even as it hung from my wife’s hands.

“This is Silas,” Wendy said with a grin.

I rolled my eyes, turned around, and walked into the kitchen. A puppy. “Great,” I muttered.

My distain for pets had been ingrained in me since childhood. My parents weren’t animal lovers. My mother was allergic to cats, my father to the effort involved in caring for anything other than his house and kids. But that was only part of it – my dad, loyal as he was, feared attachment. During many of our Sunday afternoon drives through the surrounding suburbs he’d see folks walking their dogs and scoff at them. “
Lynn
,” he said to my sister once, when she asked if we could get one, “take a look at those folks. That’s a whole lot of effort wasted on nothing. They pour so much love into those beasts only to get their hearts broken. Dogs only live about ten years. To care for them would be masochistic. I refuse to let one into my house…or my heart.”

I never questioned him, and neither did
Lynn
. To us, Dad’s word was gospel.

I took a glass from the cabinet above the sink and a bottle of Budweiser from the fridge. The stupid dog in the other room cried out again. It was going to ruin
everything
, and all because Wendy was an impulse shopper.
In that moment I hated her.

She appeared in the doorway. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Sure there is. You can’t lie to me. I see right through you.”

I slammed down my beer. “Fine. I’m pissed you went out and got that…
thing
…without talking to me about it first. This is supposed to be a
partnership
, remember?”

“You mean the kind of partnership where you work twelve hours a day and then don’t even talk to me when you get home? Or is it the partnership where you disappear with your buddies on the weekends and leave me home alone? Which one is it, exactly?”

“Don’t come at me with that,” I growled. “You have friends, too.”

Wendy crossed her arms and scowled. “Not the point, Ken.”

“Then what
is
the point?”

“I’m lonely. I need something to take care of, something to keep me company.”

“What, I’m not good enough?”

“Right now? No. We don’t talk. We fight all the time.” She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. “That little fur ball in there will give me something to focus on.”

I laughed. It was cruel of me, but I did it anyway. “If you’re so miserable, why’d you marry me?” I scoffed.

Tears formed in her eyes. I knew I should’ve felt bad for the way I was treating her, but I didn’t. I was miserable and I guess I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

“I married you,” she finally said, “because you asked.”

The dog appeared in the doorway. It shuffled across the linoleum floor as if walking on ice. Both Wendy and I stopped looking at each other and stared at the thing. It then stopped, tucked its hind legs beneath its butt, and panted. Its wide green eyes zipped from Wendy to me and back to her again.

“It wants you,” I said. “Why don’t you go take care of it?”

“You’re an asshole,” Wendy murmured, fighting back tears. She bent over, picked the dog up, and stormed away. “And he’s not an ‘it’!” she screamed as she pounded up the stairs. “His name’s Silas!”