Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (144 page)

“Coffee, my sweet?” Kate asked with a smile. She had to be the most upbeat person on the planet to awaken with a smile after the night before.

“Sure. I never turn down a coffee from a pretty lady.” I yawned and stretched as I did. Then I mustered a smile for my wife, which turned into my best impression of a Clint Eastwood grin, in an attempt to charm her. I was thinking of the enormous blessing she was, and how undeserving of her I was.

“What now?” She asked as she poured coffee for me.

“I wish I knew. Maybe we should start heading back towards LA. You have any other ideas?”

“Yeah, I think we should take a cruise to Australia, only I’m afraid our veiled friends will find us, and on board a ship we’ll have nowhere to go, to get away from them,” she said, half meaning it.

“My vote would be to start heading back and see what is what with maybe camping out near Monterrey. We can hang out in Carmel while we’re there. Maybe I’ll get some inspiration from the area. It’s Steinbeck country, you know.” Just then the phone rang and when answered there was Kevin Manoso’s inquiring voice.

“You guys doing good?” He asked.

“We are,” I responded with a voice, that was somewhat relaxed.

“You have anyone staying at your place? House sitter? Anything like that?” He asked.

“No. There shouldn’t be anyone there. Umm, why are you asking?”

“Because I saw or at least I think I saw one of those veiled creatures or whatever they are standing on your front lawn. I drove by before I realized what I seen and by the time I turned around and went back, it was gone. Then I thought I saw it, or someone looking out from behind one of your downstairs windows. What do you want me to do?”

“Call the police.” I barked into the phone startling Kate and probably Kevin too, at the other end.

Kate asked, “What’s going on?”

I don’t know but someone might be in our house. That was Kevin. He said that he saw someone in our house,” I said.

“When?”

“He’s there outside, right now, calling the police.”

“He should be careful…he should be very careful. Tell him where the key is so they can get in.”

I told Kevin where to find the key and I told him the security pass code, and he said he would take it from there.

Why is he at our house in the first place, Tell?”

“Since we’re on the way to his home, I guess he just drove by to see if all was well there.” I whispered while holding the phone against my chest so that he wouldn’t overhear me and hoping he didn’t hear what Kate had said.

“Is this ever going to end?” Kate said quietly, her upset very apparent.

Keeping in mind what Mee-hawl had told me, I tried to calm her but there was something nagging at me in the back of my mind. That proverbial “inner voice” was alive and kicking in me, but try as I might the clear message was somewhere hidden and evading my efforts to locate it. There was a recollection of my days at Sacred Heart High School and the Latin assignments I so dreaded as homework, but the translation of “Caesar’s Gallic Wars,” which I actually enjoyed translating in Brother Scheible’s class, and Caesar’s boasting comments about his rival “Dumnorix, the Aeduin.” I started running the storyline through my mind. With the fact that the era addressed was some fifty years before the birth of Christ, the religions of the time in that part of the world were Roman pantheism and Gallic paganism. With Jewish influence being so far away on the other side of the world, Monotheism wasn’t mentioned with any frequency, if at all; at least to my memory. I didn’t remember much else of my Latin studies, other than when I was an altar boy assisting our parish priests as they said the Latin Mass.

I didn’t have a clear recollection of what the words were which I uttered during Mass but they were all in Latin. Could that be what this is all about, something that I had said during Mass? Maybe I mispronounced a word and it came out as the actual name of God. Then again, I seemed to remember being told that I had said the Holy Name in Brother Scheible’s class. Maybe it was during one of the many practical jokes we played on him. I was at a loss. But then the thought occurred, did the Lord God ever introduce Himself to anyone in any way by anything other than “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt place no gods before me”? Would He need a name? Yet, there have been names throughout history, but they were all coming from man to God and not vice versa. The “Ah” sound prevalent in Judah, Joshua, Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah.

Kevin called me about an hour later saying that the police found no one in our house — or any indication of break in. I thanked him for his vigilance and caring enough to do a ride by our place while we were gone.

“I wish I were doing more. This is scarier and scarier. It’s almost like I’m seeing things from another dimension.”

“Have you photographed any of them,” I asked.

‘What do you think, Tell?”

“Who’s seen what you’ve photographed?”

“I’m saving the preview for you,” he responded.

“Why are you waiting for me?”

“Who else will understand this?”

“Lucky me,” I said quietly as I ended the call.

“Okay… tell me.” Kate was braced.

I thought for a moment and said, “Well, it goes something like this.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Kate’s eyes danced back and forth searching my eyes with tears beginning to well, “What are we going to do, Tell? I know I keep asking you like you know. But I know, that you know, that I know—” At this point I interrupted her trying to calm her down.

“I think we keep going to Monterey and lay low like Mee-Hawl suggested we do. We can stay close to the rig and wait until the time passes that he cautioned us about.” But even as I said those words I knew that she was set on going home and reclaiming our house.

Kate shook her head and said. “Look, Tell, we need to go home and wait there. We need to get there as fast as we can. Okay?”

I dared not disagree with her. She had been through an awful lot and I needed to let her have a say in how these next few days would go.

We showered and dressed and after having breakfast set out on a return trip to L A, traveling the beautiful and much celebrated California Coast. It was an incredible day and I was feeling pretty good physically, despite what was happening with increasing frequency. Maybe I was acclimating to the weirdness that seemed to fill my life since I last came back from the dead, It was getting really interesting, to say the least. I pulled the RV out onto the highway heading for the coastal highway, nosing slowly toward the eastbound lanes. Kate sat in the passenger captain’s chair, and we were chatting about what we should do when we got home. I was disappointed at not getting to spend time in Monterey as I was really looking forward to some good seafood and hanging out in the quaint environment of “Steinbeck” country.

My phone rang and I handed it to Kate. “Hi. Jeremy Storyteller’s phone, this is the Missus speaking.” Her recently returned smile disappeared and was replaced by a look of concern. “Tell, it’s the police and they want to speak with us about our house.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid to ask.” But she did ask. “What is it you want to discuss?”

Her face reflected the words she was hearing. “Is our house on your patrol list?”

I was surprised to hear those words and who they were coming from. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

She held up a finger, signaling me to wait as she continued, “I don’t really understand this, Lieutenant. Can I call you right back? I want to talk with my husband about it before we make any decisions.” She listened to his response, and thanked him before folding the phone, ending the call.

“What?” I asked

“Where do I start?” She sighed as she was trying to verbalize what she just heard before saying it. “Tell, that was a Lieutenant Kusco with our city PD and he says there seems to be some kind of a vibration in our neighborhood.” She paused.

“Vibration…? And… they think it’s emanating from our house. They want permission to go in and have it checked.”

“Why
wouldn’t
we want that?” I asked quickly.

“I don’t know,” she answered with a distant look on her face, pondering something.

“What’s wrong, Honey?”

Kate seemed in a fog suddenly. “I don’t know. Something isn’t connecting here. I can’t say I know what it is, but something is wrong with this.”

“Are you sure that whoever you were speaking with is actually who he claimed to be?”

“No, I’m not. How could I be? He’s on the other end of a phone, supposedly three thousand miles away.”

“Let’s call the police there and find out if we are talking with who we think we are talking with.” I tried to sound like I was in control.

Without a response she pulled up the last call received list on the phone and called it back. No answer. She then called information and got the main number for our police department and learned that there was in fact a Lieutenant Kusco. “Oh man,” she said, looking down at the floor.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Lieutenant Kusco is no longer with us. He died four months ago.”

“What?” I looked directly at my wife, getting more confused by the second. Then I realized I wasn’t watching where I was going and had to adjust my direction quickly and as I did, I thought I saw a veiled thing standing in the field along the road. We were moving too fast for me to be sure that I had seen what I thought I had seen. I tried looking in the side mirror but saw nothing where I thought it was. I didn’t say anything to Kate for a few moments and she just sat staring straight ahead.

I continued driving and after a short while I tried making conversation, but she was not being very talkative. I didn’t want her to slip any further into the terror she was in, but I didn’t know what to do to stop that. I decided to not try to force the conversation any more. Perhaps she needed some quiet time to work through what she felt might be waiting down the road. Maybe I did, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The flight back home was a bit bumpy, but we landed safely in Chicago to change planes. As we entered the terminal at O’hare Airport, Kate said that she needed to stop at the rest room. I said I might do the same, knowing that it was more of necessity than a choice.

As I entered the nearest men’s room it was almost empty which seemed a bit strange for a busy airport. As I approached the urinal I heard a sound coming from the stall immediately behind me. There was rustling similar to what you might hear around a big flag on a breezy day. I didn’t turn around until my business was finished but upon turning I heard a weak voice say, “Ave Jeremiah. Quo Vadis?”

What more could I say in return other than a whispered, “What?”

To say this surprised me would be a huge understatement. To say that I wasn’t fast footing out of that bathroom would have been a huge lie. I was in a fight or flight mode having already made the decision to avoid the fight part of that equation. I stopped at the door to see if I was being followed but saw no one and I wasn’t going back to check to see who or what was in that stall.

I bolted from the men’s room at nearly a dead run; as I exited I saw Kate standing there watching me. “You ready?” she said as she turned and started walking toward the connecting gate. I caught up with her and took her hand and she gave me a squeeze. It felt good. My mind raced as I realized I was just greeted and asked where I was going in Latin. We were being followed by something beyond my comprehension and what was beginning to alarm me was I was becoming desensitized to this — and my wife was terrified by it. My quandary was now, what should I tell her and what should I not? I decided to wait until we were home before relating what had just happened. Kate was on edge and it made no sense to add to her uneasiness.

“Wait a minute, Kate. I think I left my glass case in the bathroom,” I lied, having made the about face decision to go back and see what or who was in that stall. As I entered the restroom I couldn’t help but think of what the reason was for naming it a rest room? It was the last place I would want to rest. Or better said, this could be my final resting place if there was something hostile in that stall. I passed a man washing his hands at one of the sinks and went right to the stall. When I pushed on the door I saw it was locked. I uttered an apology and went into the one next to it. I sat on the commode waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, I tapped on the wall of the stall. Nothing. Then I got bolder and stood on the commode and looked over into an empty stall. How could it be locked with no one inside? Then I saw lying on the side of the commode tucked behind it a veil. Facial veil; a facial veil.

I got down from the commode and went out looking for the man who was at the sink but he was gone. Now there were other men coming in, as if debarking from a flight. I caught up with my wife who asked me what took me so long. I made an excuse of having to go one more time after retrieving the glass case.

We boarded our plane an hour later and were in the air within ten minutes. I read an in-flight magazine while Kate dozed. Suddenly I was on a rainy street, standing at the front door of a familiar house, waiting for it to open. From inside I heard the voice of my child uncle Joe saying “The truth is what we all want. The only one who hates the truth is the Adversary and his minions of lost souls and helpers.”

I stayed there certain the door was about to open but then I felt myself being nudged as Kate awakened me, saying, “Tell, you were talking in your sleep.”

“I fell asleep reading,” I said groggily.

“And you were speaking another language. I think you were talking in Latin.”

“Oh, God,” I said as I sat up in the seat.

“Why would you be speaking in Latin?”

“I think I’m being played with, Kate. Something is trying to make a word come across my lips that could cause a commotion in heaven.”

“Are you awake, Hon?” Kate asked.

I realized that whoever spoke to me in the bathroom could be on the plane with us. Looking around no face in close proximity rang a bell. How could it? I only heard a voice… a man’s voice.