The Dead Lands Read online

  Gray stepped away from the door and waited patiently as the man threw the deadbolt lock and pushed the door open.

  “What the hell you doing, disturbing people this early in the morning?” the man said. He was unshaved, and his eyes had a dull, rheumy glow.

  Gray took his detective shield from his coat pocket and held it up for the man to see.

  “I’m here to talk to your upstairs neighbor, Mr. Collins,” Gray said. “You know if he’s home?”

  “You think I keep track?”

  “Mind if I go upstairs and see if he’s home?”

  The man sneered but didn’t answer as he stepped to one side to allow Gray to enter. Then, without another word, he turned and walked back down the hall to his apartment. Closing the door behind him, Gray watched the man go, trying not to be too judgmental. He doubted the guy knew, much less cared, that Andrew Collins had done jail time for child molestation.

  Shaking the rain off his coat, Gray made a conscious effort not to touch the handrail as he walked up the creaking flight of stairs and down the short, dimly lit hallway. The door on the right had a small, metal number 3 nailed to it, but the top nail was missing, so the number was hanging backwards, like an incomplete B.

  “Classy joint,” Gray muttered as he approached the door and, clenching his fist, knocked on it hard three times.

  He waited, and after a few seconds heard someone shuffling around inside. A second or two later, the door lock clicked, and the door opened a few inches. A pale, bloated face peered out at him through the crack. The security chain was still in place, stretched to its maximum.

  “What can I do you for?” the man asked, his voice crusty with sleep.

  “Andrew Collins?” Gray said, his voice gruff, all business.

  The man’s eyes widened, and his face went even paler, if that was possible, when Gray held up his detective’s shield.

  “Detective Gray. Cape Elizabeth Police Department. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  The expression on the face behind the door shifted into a scowl, and the man would have slammed the door in Gray’s face if he didn’t have his foot braced against the bottom of the door to keep it open.

  “Will you people please leave me the Christ alone?” Collins’ face flushed with anger. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “Did I say you had?” Gray’s voice was low and steady. “I can’t stop by for a little chat? See how you’re doing?”

  Collins already looked like he was close to cracking. If he had anything to do with Megan McGowan’s death, Gray was sure he’d know within the hour.

  “I was hoping you’d come willingly down to the station and answer a few questions,” Gray said, still all business.

  Collins eyed him through the opening of the door. Gray was positive he was debating whether or not he should try to resist, but then his shoulders dropped, and he lowered his gaze.

  “Hold on. Lemme unlock it,” he said.

  He closed the door, and after a brief rattling of the chain, it swung open again. For the first time, Gray got a good look at Andrew Collins. He didn’t like what he saw. The man was short, maybe five-four, five-five. He was wearing tattered, faded jeans with holes in the knees, and a washed-out Atlanta Falcons t-shirt. His arms were bony, and his chest sunken. His hair was long, parted in the middle, and hung in greasy strings behind his ears. His eyebrows shadowed dark, deep-set eyes that were too close together, like a pig’s. On his forehead was a narrow gash about three inches long that had drawn blood. Although it was now scabbed over, the skin around the wound was red with infection.

  “You mind tellin’ me what this is all about?” Collins asked, giving the detective a steady stare that, Gray assumed, was meant to unnerve him.

  “I’ll tell you all about it down at the station. Let’s go.”

  — 4 —

  Jim Burke was in his bedroom, sitting in front of his computer, but he wasn’t on-line or Tweeting with his friends. He was clutching the small box that contained the locket and the small key he had bought for his mother.

  Only now, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to give it to her.

  He couldn’t explain why, but he didn’t want to let go of it.

  With the tip of his finger, he brushed the lock of hair tied like a ribbon to the small key. Even the slightest touch made him feel odd.

  He wished there was someone he could talk to about this, but no one came to mind. He certainly couldn’t talk to his mother about it. She would wonder why he had bought the locket for her and then decided not to give it to her. And he was sure none of his friends—even Pete, his closest buddy since kindergarten—would understand. They would probably tease him about being gay if they knew he had a locket that—there was no other word for it—felt “special” to him.

  “Special, all right,” he whispered as he continued to stare at it.

  It’s all part of the mystery, he thought. A locket, a key, a lock of hair. Keys open locks. Locks. Lockets. Locks need keys. If you unlock something, you learn what’s inside. You solve the mystery.

  It was frustrating, maddening, but he knew he was on the verge of a mystery. If only his father were still alive. He’d be able to talk to him about it. But his dad had died six years ago when Jim was only ten. It had been especially tough because Jim really loved his father and had always felt closer to him than to his mom. Even after six years, he missed his father daily. If only he were still around.

  “But he isn’t,” Jim whispered, and, unaccountably, tears filled his eyes as he stared at the locket.

  Then something else happened.

  Jim experienced a sudden weird feeling he couldn’t begin to describe.

  It started at the base of his neck. It wasn’t just a chill. It was something more than that—a deep, penetrating shiver that originated somewhere deep within him, his heart or his soul. It spread its icy fingers up vertebrae of his spine, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. A sudden urgency filled him to get up and run, not walk, out of his room. He was convinced something threatening was right behind him, but he found it impossible to turn around and look to see if there really was something—someone—there.

  He was convinced that someone had slipped, unheard and unseen, into his room and was standing behind him, watching and waiting to see what he was going to do.

  The feelings became almost unbearable, and he was afraid if something didn’t happen soon, he was going to scream and keep screaming and never stop.

  His hand was shaking as he raised it and tried to force himself to touch the locket again. His fingers went numb, the skin as cold as a January morning. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to move them. Every joint in his knuckles ached as he flexed his hand, imaging that he was picking up the locket.

  He thought about the photograph of the girl inside the locket and wondered about the attraction he felt for her.

  “But now she’s dead,” he whispered. Even as he said it, the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. The window next to his desk was open, but just a crack because of the steady, cold rain. But the chill and the tightness inside his body weren’t because of the dreary day.

  No.

  There was more to it than that.

  Jim licked his lips and swallowed hard. He took a breath, but it felt as though his lungs were pierced with tiny pinholes, and the air didn’t go deep enough into his chest. He cleared his throat, and then, very softly, whispered, “Is someone there?”

  His voice sounded foreign to his own ears, and when he listened for a reply, knowing he was foolish to expect one, he heard a soft thump … like the quiet beating of his heart muffled by his sheets when he lay in bed at night and tried to fall asleep.

  The feeling that someone was watching him grew steadily more intense. Pressure built up inside his head, and he had the fleeting thought that maybe he was having a stroke or a heart attack. Maybe he was dying.

  “Are you … Who are you?” he whispered in a voice that s
ounded like tearing silk.

  He waited a while longer. There was no telling how long, but the silence in the room all but throbbed with expectation.

  “You’re not … Is that you, Dad?”

  There was no answer, and the coldness in the room wrapped around his heart, collapsing his chest and making it all but impossible to breathe. Pinpoints of light danced across his vision. The palms of his hands were cold and clammy.

  “Is it you? Is this yours … this locket?” Jim asked, his gaze shifting again to the locket and the hair and key. “Are you mad at me because I have it?”

  A small corner of his mind knew he was being foolish. There was no way a spirit, angry or gentle, could be attached to a piece of jewelry.

  He was letting his imagination get carried away, probably because of the crazy things his mother and Edith Peregrine talked about at the store.

  You have to get a grip, he cautioned himself.

  He couldn’t let his imagination run away like this.

  Still, his gaze fixed on the locket, and the sense that he wasn’t alone in his bedroom—even in daylight, gloomy though it was—grew stronger. He was sure, now, that if he turned his head fast enough, he would see someone. Chills racing up his back, and he was afraid that any second now, he would cry out.

  “Please. Tell me. Are you there?” he whispered, his voice so raw in his throat it hurt to speak.

  He turned his head. Not fast. Just a slow, easy turn. Vertebrae in his neck popped like a string of small firecrackers going off inside his head. But there, on the hazy fringe of his vision, he caught a glimpse of …

  Something.

  His body stiffened. The urge to call out to his mother was strong as he tried to see what was behind him, but whenever he turned, it shifted away, always hovering on the edge of sight. He rotated his body slowly in his chair so he could keep turning, but the faint glow moved, too.

  It’s a trick of the eye, he told himself. There’s nothing there, not really.

  But as he looked and listened, he heard a sound below the steady patter of rain on the roof and the hissing of tires as cars passed by on the wet road. There was something else, a low rasping sound like someone breathing.

  Jim knew it wasn’t him. He was holding his breath and had been for so long his chest ached as if it were incased in iron bands. He wished he could swallow, but his throat was closed off.

  Who are you? he thought rather than said.

  And as much as he wanted to believe he imagined it, he heard a voice answer him. The problem was, it was too far away, too faint for him to be sure what it said, but it sounded like a girl’s voice saying, “You have my locket.”

  Abby

  My mother wasn’t the only person who died in the fire that burned down our house. There was this boy, a friend of mine, who lived in the house closest to ours out at the end of a long, dirt road. His name was Jonathan, Jonathan Hilton. Everyone called him Jonathan, but to me, he was always just Jon.

  He was two years older than me, but we were in the same class at the one-room schoolhouse we went to. Mrs. Doyle was our teacher. It wasn’t that Jon wasn’t smart. Far from it. He was one of the smartest people I’d ever met. But his father made him work hard on their farm, so he didn’t get much schooling. He was a better reader and writer than me, for sure. Sometimes, we read poetry together … Shelley and Keats, mostly.

  I know what you’re thinking … We were in love, and you know what? You might be right. Not that we knew or would admit it. We certainly weren’t too young to be thinking about who we were going to marry and settle down with. Lots of people much younger than us had already gotten married, sometimes because they had to because they were going to have a baby.

  But Jon and me … I think we were both too shy to say anything about the feelings we had for each other. All I know is that I enjoyed every minute I spent with him, and I’d like to believe … I’m sure that if he and I had lived, we would have ended up happily married.

  But he died about six months before I did, and I guess you could say it was my fault.

  I told you how my father used to beat on my mother and, sometimes, me. He would boss her around and, like I said, when he was drunk. He’d come at her with his fists and, sometimes, with a stick or whatever might be at hand.

  On the day he died, there happened to be a large kitchen knife on the table near him, and he came at my mother with it.

  The problem was, he was really—what’s the word you use now? Loaded? Plastered? Whatever, he fell and cut himself real bad. He was bleeding from a cut in his neck. My mother told me this later, but she didn’t even try to staunch the flow of blood. She wanted to be rid of him, so she let him bleed to death right there on the kitchen floor. When the authorities came, she told them she’d been out back, hoeing the garden when it happened. Whether they believed her or not, they didn’t arrest her for killing him. I think most of the neighbors knew how bad he treated her and were sure she’d done it and were happy for her.

  But my mother suffered.

  She couldn’t take the shame of what had happened, so she wrote a letter to my aunt and uncle in Maine, asking if they’d take me in for a while. Right after we got an answer back, saying I could spend the summer in Maine, our house burned down. My mother died in the fire.

  So there I was. I had no choice. My Aunt Lily and Reverend Wheeler were the only family I had left in the world.

  The day of the fire, I’d gone to town to pick up some supplies for my mother. I had made plans to meet Jon later that afternoon, but my mother insisted I leave for town right then and there. I don’t know why she was so insistent about it, but she promised to tell Jon where I was when he showed up, so I left.

  By the time Jon came by the house, the fire in the kitchen had already started, and the house was ablaze. What’s worse is that Jon thought I was still in the house, so he broke into the burning house to save my mother and me. By then, though, the place was an inferno. Meanwhile, I was on my way to town with a list of things my mother said she needed from the grocery store.

  But poor Jon … poor, poor Jon.

  He was burned horribly, trying to save us. Two days later, he died. Most of the flesh had peeled off his face, hands, arms, and chest.

  I know I wasn’t really responsible for what happened to him any more than my mother was, but I just can’t help but think how different things might have been if we both had lived. It’s so sad, really…

  Chapter 7

  Funeral

  —1—

  The soft strains of organ music filled the room. Throngs of people milled about, talking in hushed tones. Although Megan and Abby couldn’t feel it, they could tell that the room was too warm. Many of the peoples’ faces were red and glistened with sweat. The few men who were wearing neckties—mostly older friends and co-workers of Megan’s father—had loosened them or taken them off. Even Mike, who spent the evening huddled in a corner, watching as people greeted and spoke with his parents, looked miserable. Megan’s mother was in tears the whole time, and no amount of consolation seemed to help.

  “I wish I could talk to him,” Megan said to Abby as she indicated her brother with a quick nod of the head.

  “If you could,” Abby said, “what would you say?”

  The question seemed to take Megan aback, and she was frowning when she turned to Abby.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Abby replied with a simple shrug. “I was just … now that you know what being dead is like, I was wondering what you’d tell him.”

  “Is there anything in particular I should tell him?”

  “No. No.”

  Megan continued to stare angrily at her for a lengthening moment; then she turned to her brother. Without a word, she passed like a vapor amongst the people as she moved closer to him. She raised her arms as if to embrace him, but Abby knew Mike would never feel anything. Even when Megan was standing next to him, her hands touching his shoulders, caressing him, he didn’t
acknowledge … unless the look of painful sadness and abject fear on his face were his reaction, on some level, to her presence.

  “How many of these people do you know?”

  Megan looked startled as she turned and saw Abby standing close by. She hadn’t seen her move.

  “There are a lot of kids your age,” Abby continued. She thought she recognized several of them from the memorial service out on the cliff last night. “Are they friends of yours from school?”

  “Some of ‘em, yeah.” Megan scanned the crowd, but her expression didn’t reveal much. “A few cousins and family friends, but yeah, quite a few of ‘em are—were in class with me. I’d only been going to that school for the last two years. Before then, I was in public schools, but my parents took me out and made me go to that private school because of some stuff that happened. I never liked it, though … the school, I mean. I never realized so many kids knew who I was.”

  Abby nodded even though she had no idea what the difference was between “private” and “public” school. The only school she had ever known had been the one-room schoolhouse in Waynesboro, with its creaking floors, tall windows, and mismatched assortment of desks and chairs. Her strongest memory was how cold the seat in the outhouse was during winter.

  “Probably most of ‘em are here because they have to be,” Megan said. “I was never all that popular at school.”

  A look of wistfulness shifted across her face like a cloud passing in front of the sun. She glanced from person to person, the emotions rising inside her obvious, at least to Abby.

  “Lots of people,” Abby said mildly, “find it surprising once they’re dead how much they meant to many people.” She was trying to reassure Megan, but her words seemed to have the opposite effect. If anything, Megan looked even sadder and tenser. Something was going on here that Abby couldn’t quite figure out, but she was determined to do so. Maybe then Megan would be able to move on.

  “You never answered my question,” Abby said.