Hallowed (34 page)

Tyrrell Park Memorial hospital was about fifteen miles away, and we didn’t waste time getting there.  When we arrived, Claudia told the front desk that she was Tatum’s niece and that she had called earlier about visiting her.  The receptionist, a droopy eyed blond in her late twenties, gave us a suspicious appraisal and said that she would call a nurse to help us out.  The nurse, a bright-eyed woman in her forties, shook our hands and said that Tatum had indeed been expecting us for a few days now and that we should follow her.

I gave Claudia a look of surprise.  Her only response was a casual shrug.

We followed the nurse to a private room that smelled strongly of cigarette smoke.  It consisted only of one bed, a closet, and a nightstand.

Tracy Tatum sat casually clothed in a chair facing a window that looked onto a large grassy courtyard.  The sun was out and several elderly women were being escorted beneath shade trees by a nurse.

“Tracy, dear, your niece and nephew are here to see you,” the nurse announced after a gentle rap at the door.

Tracy turned and stared brightly at us, her eyes glistening almost as if tearing up at our presence.  “I’m so glad you could make it.  Come in, come in!”

The nurse wrinkled her nose.  She then stepped over to the nightstand, opened the top drawer and removed a cereal bowl overflowing with butts and ash from within.

Tracy gave her contrite smile and lowered her eyes.  I realized that her hands were uncovered and from the other side of the room, I could see they were terribly scarred.

The nurse sighed and gave Tracy a look that seemed quite familiar between the two of them.  “Would you like to take your visit
outside
,” the nurse asked her, thrusting open the window and letting a brisk October breeze inside.  “It’s such a lovely day.”

“No, thank you.”  Tracy actually shuddered.  “I’d prefer to be inside.”

Tucking the cereal bowl to her side with a barely hidden curl of distaste, the nurse gave a final nod and disappeared, closing the door behind her.

For a moment, Claudia and Tracy Tatum just sort of stared at each other like zoologists analyzing a new species of animal.  Claudia stared openly at the smooth reddened skin of Tracy’s hands.

“Would you like to sit?” Tatum asked, rising from her chair and waving Claudia toward it.  Only after Tatum took a seat on top of the made bed, did she take the chair.  I remained standing.

Her attention fully on Claudia, Tatum leaned forward and almost seemed ready to offer her hands in greeting, but stopped just short of it.  When I had gotten past the scars, I noticed that she was holding something in her right hand.  I could just make out what looked like a small leather cord dangled loosely from between two tightly clenched fingers.

“I heard about your mother and I’m so very sorry.”  Tatum lowered her head and blinked so rapidly I thought she would cry.

Claudia just stared at her with a blank expression.

“I found out too late to warn you,” Tatum admitted, staring down at the leather cord in her hands.  “When I knew for sure, I remember collapsing in the church aisle and the next thing I know, I’m in a hospital room.  Father Graves told me what had happened, but I think he knew as well as I did.  He’s got a strong feeling for it.  I sensed that the first time we met.”

“Knew what?” I asked.

Tatum turned and peered at me with surprise, almost as if recognizing for the first time that I had entered the room with Claudia.

“That she had been murdered,” the woman responded as if it were common knowledge.

I moved closer.  “She was in a car accident.”

Tatum turned and looked at me with an expression of confusion.  “That was no accident, Paul.”  She turned and looked at Claudia.  “Oh my God, you really don’t know, do you?”  Her hand reached out and touched Claudia’s hand experimentally then retreated.  “I’m so sorry that I have to be the one to tell you, but your mother’s death was no simple accident.  She was murdered.”

“How did you come to this conclusion?  From where did you derive your facts?” Claudia challenged.

“I’ve been sitting here the last two days with nothing to do but think and meditate,” Tatum replied, seemingly oblivious to the posed question, yet staring solely at Claudia.  “Whoever killed your mother is also responsible for the other four murders.”

“I don’t understand.  Why her?  It doesn’t fit the profile.”

“No, it doesn’t, but evil is a creature of opportunity.”

There was that phrase again--the third time since this thing had begun.

“The killer knows your family.  He knows your father is investigating the killings. He knows about you and Claudia.”  Here she looked up at me.  “Yes, your uncle told me about the letter.”

“The killer knows that we’ve also been doing our own investigation every day at lunch,” Claudia stated.

In that moment, a sick feeling came over me.  In my heart I knew.  Until that moment, the impact of what had happened less than an hour before hadn’t registered with me.  I had traded pleasantries with him.  Only nights before I had touched him in the October Country and left a mark on his neck, but like the mark on Cain himself, I couldn’t touch him in this world.  I knew but I couldn’t prove anything.

Nathan Graham would continue to walk free.

Claudia looked at me then, almost as if reading my guilt-ridden mind, and I turned my eyes elsewhere.  “So, I led him straight to Mom.  It was me,” Claudia admitted in the hushed tone of a conspirator.

“No, this didn’t begin with you,” she told her.  “It was your father who involved himself along with Paul’s father and uncle.”  Tracy Tatum reached out and took Claudia firmly by the shoulders.  In doing so, the object that she had been holding dangled from her hand behind Claudia’s back.  I saw now that it was a small leather bag no bigger than the palm that had been holding it.

Claudia shook her head.  “That happened thirty-five years ago, before I was born.  That has nothing to do with the Samhain murders.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that limited in scope,” Tatum replied almost apologetically.  “The murders committed here in this world in the last few months may have begun in the heart and mind of a single man, but there is more to it than that.”

“I don’t understand,” Claudia admitted.  “If one man committed the murders, of course he would be the one responsible.  Do you think there’s more than one person involved?”

“No,” Tatum stated with clarity.  “There’s only one killer, but the Evil he tapped into already existed, simply waiting for the opportunity for someone like him to listen.”

Evil is a creature of opportunity.

“It existed in 1969 when I was five and kidnapped by a man named Dr. Wenton Joyner just as it exists in the person of your Samhain killer.  It existed in 1983 when me and your father went back there and tried in vain to destroy it entirely.”

“Wait, he went back?” I cried.  “Dad went back to that house?”

Tracy Tatum turned back to me, fixing me with eyes filled with judgment.  “No, not
your
father.”  She looked over at Claudia with compassion.  “Ronnie Wicke and I went alone.  No one else would come.”

I was utterly bewildered.  How could this be?  “My father would never…”

“He did once,” Tracy Tatum snapped.

Claudia lifted her eyes to me, and I found myself looking away in shame.

I started toward the door, retrieving my cell phone to check for missed messages.   “C’mon, Claudia.  We have to get back.”

She turned to Tatum and asked, “What was he like?  My father?”

Although the corners of the woman’s mouth moved only slightly, her eyes shined radiantly.  “I felt safe when I was with him.”  She reached out and squeezed Claudia’s shoulder.  “Your father was a good man, Claudia.”

Claudia’s eyes glistened, but she held the tears back through sheer will.  “Why are you doing this?”

“These visions, they give me no choice,” she chuckled helplessly.  “I’ve been trying to outrun this since I was five, and I finally decided that I’m done with that.  I’d rather die fighting then go on living my life in fear.”

Then she said something that I will never forget, something that put everything else in perspective: “And all that aside, I owe both your fathers a debt.  They gave me the gift of life, one that should have been cut short at the age of five.”  She suddenly smiled and gave a chuckle.  “In that way, you’re both my siblings.”

Tears were in her eyes.  She started to turn away.  Claudia stood, went to her and held her face against her chest.  Tatum sobbed quietly a few moments until finally pushing her away.  “You have to go now.  You’re too vulnerable here.”

“I’m going to ask my father to get some extra security here.”  I grabbed Claudia by the arm and started to lead her to the door.

She stopped short and gasped.  Tatum and I followed her eye line to the crucifix hanging on the wall above the doorway.  “God, I remember now.”  She grasped me by the hands, her eyes wide with astonishment.  “It was the same one in those crime scene photos I saw that night at the camp.  One of those big wooden gothic numbers, like the ones you used to see in those old Hammer Dracula pictures.”  I gave her a look of utter confusion.  “The day we went to Eerie’s, the Halloween store, he was there looking at a crucifix.  I remember now because he caught me watching him and turned his back to me and only a few minutes later I saw him leaving the store without making a purchase, but I remember the crucifix.”

“Who?”  It was a rhetorical question, because I already knew what she would say.

“Nathan Graham.”

Tracy Tatum looked from Claudia to me.  “You know him?”

I looked over at Claudia, who was staring off into space with a confused expression.  “He goes to our school,” I told Tatum.  “He’s in band with me.”  Yeah, we go
way
back, I thought with dread.

On the way to the SUV, I called Dad and told him what we knew—not exactly evidence to build a case on, but Dad said that it would be enough for Sheriff Brannigan.  Less than thirty minutes later they had a search warrant from the judge and started searching the Graham house.

Claudia didn’t say a word for almost five minutes.  We were about ten miles down the highway before she turned to me and with a hard expression on her tear-stained face she asked, “How long have you known?”

When I didn’t answer right away, she swore under her breath.  “Pull over!  Now!”

From her tone, I knew there was little choice in the matter.

“No wonder you didn’t seem surprised.  You knew?”

“I didn’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“There was this convoluted dream, where I couldn’t see his face… and I talked to him at the wake.”

Claudia sat sullenly silent.  I could feel the heat of her anger slowly rising.  It was like sitting next to a boiler. When I offered nothing more, she punched me on the arm as hard as she could.  It was the sweetest pain I could ever remember feeling, because I knew that she had just forgiven me… in her own bizarre way.

“Hey! Maybe I didn’t tell you everything, but you keep things from me too.”

“When?”

“Graham whispered something to you earlier,” I flatly stated.  “I saw him.”

Claudia blinked and glanced away for a moment.  “Yeah, well, it didn’t make sense to me.”

“Oh, and my dreams
do
?  Just tell me!”

“He said, ‘It must end where it began,’” she stated flatly, then looked up at me and in a louder voice, “Your turn!  Prid, Pro, and Quo it up!”

I sighed heavily.  “Fine! I had this dream that I scratched his neck,” I said, hoping it would end there, but she just kept watching me and waiting for more.  “At the wake, I believe that he deliberately showed me a scratch on his neck.”

Claudia’s eyes widened in awe.  She gave an involuntary shudder.  “Wow,” she simply said.

“All circumstantial.  The only thing it proves is that I’m dreaming about some guy from my school,” I continued defensively.

“Since when did that matter?  We’ve been trading theories for almost a month now and suddenly you need proof before you tell me something?”

“A month ago you weren’t in the hospital for poisoning and your mother wasn’t…”