Feast of Fear Read online

  Al leaned against a rusty fender watching him in silence. The old man produced a hand-rolled cigarette, lit it and took a huge drag. Thick columns of gray smoke wafted from his thin nose and deflated mouth.

  Mitch straightened up, scrutinizing Al through wet eyes. “What were you doing in the house, Al?”

  Al managed to look both embarrassed and hurt. “Just gathering up a few of her things, Mitch, you know, in case she might need them at the hospital. I came by this morning and . . . found her like that . . .” Al looked away, his eyes cloudy with emotion.

  Mitch nodded, still watching Al thoughtfully. “You loved her, didn’t you, Al?”

  Al gave a nervous cough. His brown, leathery complexion turned suddenly pale.

  “I know, Al.” Mitch said. “No need to be embarrassed about it.”

  Al dropped his cigarette and crushed it angrily beneath a worn leather shoe. “What do you know, Mitch?” Al’s voice had turned hard and he leaned in toward Mitch looking curiously like a vulture sizing up meat. His strange green eyes bulged madly from their sockets. “How much do you really know, boy?” Al’s voice rose. “Tell me what you think you know and maybe I’ll tell you some things you don’t!”

  “Hold on,” Mitch said, backing away, holding his hands up defensively. “I only meant that I’ve suspected for a long time, since I was a kid, that you and Ma . . . well.”

  “Yeah, I loved her. Still do. So what? I helped her through some hard times. When she got pregnant and had nobody to turn to I was the one she called. No one else gave a damn. Everyone was afraid of her. Can you believe that? A beautiful woman like her. The women all hated her, yeah, including my wife, because she was so beautiful, and the men all wanted her. She wouldn’t spit in any of their faces, so they made up stories about her. Said she was a whore, and a witch, because she used to read peoples fortunes and some of her predictions didn’t turn out so good.”

  “You mean she was wrong?”

  “No! Jesus, no! She was right! Don’t you see? She could see right through these pathetic fools in this pathetic town and they couldn’t stand it. And she saw other things, too . . . the murders and all, you remember the murders, don’t you, Mitch, when you were a kid? All the talk around that she was the one causing ’em, and some even wanted to burn her at the stake. But she wasn’t to blame. Christ, she only saw things, she didn’t do ’em. So help me, if anyone had ever laid a hand on Elizabeth Redlon I would have killed the bastards! Help me God, I would have. Even though I grew up here and knew these people, I would have killed anyone that touched her.” Al stopped. His face was vivid with rage and he was puffing asthmatically through noisy airways.

  “Why didn’t you take her in after your wife died, Al?”

  Al flapped a contemptuous hand. “I would have in a minute, Mitch, but she didn’t love me. Christ, I’m a junk man, and she was a goddess. After she fell down the cellar stairs and lost the use of her legs, I came by every day, though, just like this morning, and did things for her, stuff she couldn’t do for herself. And I did love her, and I know she knew it, even though neither of us ever spoke of it. For me it was just enough to be around her. But you can’t understand that, can you, Mitch. When you got old enough you bailed out leaving her to fend for herself.” Al was staring accusingly at Mitch.

  “God damn it, Al, my childhood was one long fucking nightmare. I had to leave. You know that.” Mitch turned, facing the ramshackle house that had once been his home. “What happened to me in that house, Al? If anybody knows, you do. I could never get Ma to talk to me rationally about it. About the nightmares and the things I saw. The murders you were just talking about. I saw them all, Al. And they were real. How is that possible, Al? How is it possible that a little kid saw such terrible things in his nightmares?” Mitch suddenly yanked the hem of his shirt out of his trousers, lifting it, showing Al the ugly scar that ran the entire length of his right torso. “This has something to do with it, Al. What is it? Do you know? If you do, for God sakes tell me. It’s been there for as long as I can remember and nobody has ever explained to me where it came from!”

  Al’s entire body seemed to deflate inward all at once. His face went ashen. He turned and began walking away from Mitch, shaking his head. Mitch went after him, grabbing his arm and pulling him around. “You do know, don’t you?”

  “Your mom was no ordinary woman, Mitch. She was exotic and beautiful, and she had this kind of magnetism. When she first came to Eden, everybody felt it, and most were drawn to her and this place. Some became her friends, and some used her. They came every day in the beginning; two and three at a time, like followers of some . . . cult, to get their fortunes read and hear about their futures. But when they started to realize it wasn’t a game, that your mom could actually read the future, and some of the things she read came true and weren’t very pleasant, that’s when they turned against her. You see, people don’t really want to know the truth about themselves. They only want to hear the good stuff, never the truth.”

  “Al, I know all that. For Christ’s sake I had to live with her. What I don’t know is what it all has to do with this.” Mitch pointed again at his right side. “And what about the murders? “Who did them? You know, don’t you?”

  Al stood like a statue staring at Mitch without answering.

  “And who’s my father, Al? Is it you?”

  Al gave his head a rueful shake. “I wish I was, Mitch. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that. But I’m not, and I’m afraid only your mom can answer your questions.”

  “But you know, don’t you?”

  “Years ago I made Liz a promise, Mitch and I intend to keep it. I’m afraid you’ll have to get your answers from her.”

  Mitch, unable to control his emotions, lunged at Al, grabbing him by his shirt lapels and pushing him against the cab of the pickup. Al was thin and frail and the air rushed from his lungs in a retching gasp. The green eyes swam in his head. “I want the truth, you old bastard!” Mitch screamed directly into Al’s face, pulling him forward and then forcing him back hard into the pickup’s cab. “God damn it, man, tell me!

  Too late, Mitch realized that Al was in distress. He let go of him and backed away. Al’s face had turned purple, like a livid bruise, and he was gasping for air. His right hand rose and gripped his left shoulder, massaging it. His bulging eyes swam with panic as his legs buckled and he slid to his knees.

  “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 y
ou’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?”