Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (140 page)

“Jimbo Morris?!” I exclaimed. “Your dad was a friend of mine in school. What a hoot he was. I’m so sorry to hear he isn’t with you anymore.” I’d liked her dad a lot. He was someone who could get a laugh out of a rock and he could handle himself in a fight, too. I couldn’t believe what a small world this was getting to be. Melanie’s father was no one other than the great, ‘Jimbo’ Morris. I often wondered where life had taken him after high school and now I at least got to meet some of the product of his life who strangely turned out to be a colleague on a scientific research project.

“You know that he claimed to have been visited by his old Latin teacher, who I swear he said was Brother Scheible after his near death experience? He told me that he laughed at him at first, and then he realized that there was something strange about getting a visit from a man he hadn’t seen in over thirty years — who looked
exactly
the same as he did way back when. How did he look to you?” she asked as she sipped her drink.

“Same thing. The same as he did in my high school years. Do you have any siblings, Melanie?”I wanted to know more about what life had been like for Jimbo Morris.

“Yes, I have a brother named Fred and a sister named Ricki. My brother’s two years older than me and Ricki’s two years younger. My mom is from Minnesota. She met dad in State University and it was love at first sight for both of them. They wound up getting married when they graduated and buying a house in Queens and then we started coming along.”

“What did your dad do for a living?”

“Oh, he owned several restaurants around the city. His favorite one was a Jewish deli in Coney Island. That was my favorite, too,” she said sentimentally. “You’re so right, he was such a hoot. A Catholic boy owning a Jewish deli.”

“What happened to him, Melanie?” Kate asked. “What caused his near death?”

“It was a fall from a ladder. He was putting up Christmas lights and slipped fell from the top rung. We were terrified. It took them seven minutes to revive him.”

“Were there others?” I was moving toward the edge of my chair anxiously awaiting her answer.

“Near death experiences? Just one, but it was enough. The results of the fall eventually got him,” she lamented. “You know, I always felt that he eluded that old grim reaper but he was only allowed to do that once.”

“What was it just the head injury?”

“Yes and no; just the head injury, but it led to complications that were literally mind boggling. He went fast at the end. Like a light switch being turned off.” She smiled slightly, chuckled with a bit of irony saying, “But you know my mom sometimes talks to him like he’s still there, sitting across from her. She will not accept that he’s gone.” “How did Jimbo behave right after his near death? Did you notice changes right away?” I was burning with curiosity.

“I’ll say. He started seeing people who weren’t there.”

“When did it start? Was it in the hospital or later?” I pressed.

“Tell, don’t push the poor girl,” Kate chided.

“No, no. It’s okay. I haven’t talked about him much. All this stuff. It feels alright.” She took a drink before continuing. “It was the first day, as soon as he regained consciousness, he told me that he had been visited by, of all people, his old high school Latin teacher.” She continued, “Of course, I didn’t think too much about that as I was thankful that he was awake and talking. Then the next day he complained that his high school teacher was bothering him every time he was trying to fall asleep. I asked when that had happened and he said it was the night before, right after we all left.”

“Did he say what Brother Scheible was asking him?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did he mention any one else visiting him?”

“Well he did have an imaginary doctor who he claimed he had been seeing after he was released from the hospital.” She laughed a bit.

“What was his name?” I asked tersely.

“I don’t remember that either, but he always went to his sessions with him alone, Dad insisted on driving himself. That bothered Mom — but he said that he needed to go alone. It might have been a generational thing. You know, because of the imagined stigma of going to a shrink.”

Kate had tensed a bit during Melanie’s story, but I tried to avoid eye contact with her not wanting to destroy the flow of Melanie’s recounting of this story.

I asked, “Did he talk about anyone else from his past reaching out to him?”

She thought for a moment before asking “Where’s this going, Teller?”

“Melanie, this all sounds so familiar and, it’s starting to help me make some sense of what’s going on with me. Your dad and I shared a common history, at least during our high school days and then again more recently, with near death experiences.” I thought for a moment, and then continued, “I think that
maybe
there is a grander scale here, more than just our near death experiences, a much grander scale.”

We continued talking extensively about what Jimbo’s final years were like. We eventually got back around to what was going on with Kate and myself, and how strange and oftentimes terrifying. She sat nodding her head either in understanding or agreement, or both. It seemed at times that part of what I was relating to her was exactly the same things that had happened to her father.

Kate almost came out of her chair when Mel mentioned that her father started seeing a mystic whose name was Teresa. I on the other hand was barely surprised by that; it seemed that maybe there was a common thread running through people who had near death experiences and also those who had been in comas and been revived. Teresa seemed to be just another commonality between Jimbo Morris and me.

Melanie was beginning to flag, so she thanked us for meeting her for drinks, and for what became the very heavy conversation we had. I told her that it would be nice if she would come over to our house sometime after we returned from our vacation and have dinner. We could talk more then, and maybe I could tell her about her father’s shenanigans in high school.

We walked her to her car and said goodnight. Kate spoke up as soon as Melanie drove away. “You know, Tell, I think you should start writing this as a journal and turn it into a book. We are on the verge of something that, if we aren’t hallucinating, could be historic beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. I mean, holy shit,” she said rather uncharacteristically.

I pulled her close as we walked to our car and said, “Honey Bunch, buckle your seat belt. I have a feeling that the ride is going to get even wilder than it’s been. Aren’t you glad you married me?”

“Yes, I sure am… but.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I was driving in blinding rain along the route to the project site and thinking about what Kate and I had decided to do with some vacation time. We both needed to go somewhere and relax. We had considered the Caribbean or maybe a cruise. Then we thought, why not rent a mobile home and just get lost somewhere in the country? We’d fly out to California, rent one there and then just go. The experience I had in the rig we camped out in Arizona aside, this seemed like a great idea.

Our house had become a fortress. What with the security system that would rival Fort Knox and the strengthening of the doors and windows, it was beginning to make me claustrophobic. I wanted to get out somewhere and breathe the ocean. I needed to cleanse my soul. To free my mind. To spend time with the woman I love.

We decided to fly to Los Angeles, rent a comfortable mobile home there, and just drive for two weeks. Kate was ecstatic and in her classic ‘Kate way’ put the entire expedition together in less than three hours. In a week we’d be on our way — after I put my piece on the moon/sleep study to bed and left it in the hands of Kevin and the project team leader.

The work was set for publishing in four weeks and my presence during the first month after the release was considered critical, in case there were questions from on high — otherwise known as the print media. We would get our vacation in and be back in plenty of time to accommodate the schedule.

Kevin was acting a bit out of sorts, the day before my vacation began. “Something wrong, Kevin?” I asked him.

“You know, Teller, I’m feeling that we could have both done better with this. We both have the capacity to make this project report something
extraordinary
… that is, if we take some more time with it, before it’s really complete.”

“You’re the perfectionist, Kevin. I feel that on a one to ten, we have an eight. What’s wrong with an eight?”

“It’s not a nine… or better, a ten,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Maybe it’s me but I really think this thing of ours came out amazingly well, and I can’t think of anything that I can do to meaningfully improve it. Keep burnishing the diamond and eventually there’s nothing but dust, know what I mean?” I could see he was unreceptive. “But, maybe while Kate and I are vacationing and I am literally in a different place, maybe I’ll be able to come up with something to make it more acceptable under your standards. If I don’t, then we have just got to go with what we have. I will have my Notebook with me, of course. If you think of something, you know my number. It would be great if I could help you to make this a nine or maybe the ten you want.”

He asked, “Where are you going, by the way?”

“I thought I told you, but we’re going to drive up the California coast in a motor home.”

“You didn’t have enough of a mobile rig living in Arizona?” he kidded. I was glad to see his mood lift.

“We are also going to do some hiking and camping,” I said.

“Watch out for bears and… and…”

“And what, Kevin?” I was curious about his utterance.

“Mountain lions,” he said without a missing a beat as he examined his camera.

“If that’s all we run into I won’t complain,” I said.

“You bringing a gun?” Kevin said, a bit distracted.

“Didn’t know I could.” Then I thought about what a great suggestion that was. However, transporting a gun across country by plane was a challenge. And not one I was up to.

“Check the gun laws in California. You might be able to buy one there,” he advised.

“Then, how do I get it home?”

“That’s right. Scratch that one.”

“We’ll be fine anyway. We won’t go into areas that are too wild and remote,” I assured him.

“Here, take this with you to use for night photography.” He held out a camera and case.

“What the hell would I be taking pictures of at night, Kevin?”

“Owls.”

I thought for a moment before thanking him and adding, “Taking pictures in the dark is something that never entered my head, until I saw what
you
did with a camera at night.” I put the camera and case in my man purse, thanked him and was off.

I could feel Kevin’s eyes on me as I exited the parking lot and turned onto the road heading home. I’d sensed a strange reserve on his part over the week leading up to my trip. That seemed odd but not unexpected from Kevin, and his comments about the project being only an eight actually spoke volumes about his mindset.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The California sun was indeed like the words the Beach Boys sang during my younger days. It was warm and very welcoming as we pulled out of the rental facility in what was to be our home-on-wheels for the next ten days, and followed the directions of our Garmin onto the freeway leaving Los Angeles, pointed north.

The weather was almost perfect and being on the left coast gave us a different mindset. It was hard to put into words but brought a sense of freedom we didn’t have a lot of, back east. I looked forward to some fun times traveling through the Golden State.

Kate made coffee for us and chuckled as she said she could get used to all this, especially what we once laughed at when talking about “old farts” living on the road in their mobile homes that jammed up traffic every time you saw one, and here we were clogging up the California highways without batting an eye, driving barely fifty miles per hour. She handed me a large mug of coffee before planting her lovely self in the captain’s chair across from mine. “What time you got, Honey?” I asked before trying to determine how far we should drive into our first day of vacation.

“It’s about 12:30. Now don’t push yourself. We can find a mobile park anywhere out of the cities and all it takes is getting off the highway and into one. Get it?” she asked with a wink.

“I think I’m going to, at some point.” I smiled, feeling really relaxed and happy about being where we were, but very aware of the size of the vehicle I was cautiously guiding up the highway, like the “old fart” I was becoming.

The Pacific Ocean was breathtaking as we drove the coastal highway, mesmerized by its scope and beauty. It was like being in one of the many commercials we’d seen over the years during the Super Bowl ads and such. I was enjoying the moment and just being alive was turning me on as we drove.

“How about packing it in for the night; let’s say, somewhere south of San Luis, Obispo?” Kate suggested as she peered at the map on her lap. “Like right
here
.” She pointed at the upcoming exit.

“Aye aye, Momma,” was my response.

I steered the rig off the highway and up to a traffic signal, then turned right up a slight incline and into a campground, where we asked for and were assigned a secluded site in the back of the park, well shaded by majestic and tall oak trees. It was an enthusiastic effort to hook up the water, electric and sewer lines as Kate started to whip us up some food. Coming around the front of the rig I was startled by a family of rabbits as they ran by me and scurried into the underbrush in at least four directions.

It was a relief to know that what had startled me was of this world, for a change. I reflected on the difference between being startled as opposed to being terrified and how the body seems to react. Was it not a fact that ‘startled’ usually happened during daylight and ‘terrified’ usually occurred during darkness? What was it about darkness that could so easily make a strong man weak? Was it the lack of visibility? Was it the energy of the night? I tried remembering if I was ever frightened during daylight by having the same experience that frightened me at night. Was I afraid of the dark? Was it me in fact that was drawing all this weirdness my way? Had I compromised the safety of my wife? Questions, oh so many questions.