Into Hell
James Roy Daley
INTO HELL
What do you do when the dead open their eyes?
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This book is a work of fiction. All characters, events, dialog and situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2010 by James Roy Daley
Book Design by James Roy Daley
Cover Design by Cynthia Gould
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
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INTO HELL
CHAPTER ONE:
Questions & Answers
1
“Tell me what happened!” Officer Lynch barked with his teeth mashed together, the lines in his weathered face growing deeper, and the veins in his neck bulging beneath his skin like he was changing into some obscure form of reptile.
“Or what?” Stephenie screamed, looking helpless and drained. “You going to hit me again?”
In an attempt to defuse the situation, Officer Quill––standing at 5’ 7” and weighing 159 pounds on a heavy day––opened his mouth and placed a hand on his partner’s shoulder. It didn’t last. Lynch pushed him away and Quill snapped his jaws shut; his words became locked in his throat.
Between the two men, Lynch was the dominant one. Always had been, probably always would be. Still, the interview couldn’t go on like this.
Quill stepped away from the table; his glasses slid down his nose.
Lynch made a couple noises that sounded like car backfiring. Then his eyes expanded and his nostrils flared. He squeezed his massive hands into fists that looked like a pair of sledgehammers and shouted, “I never touched you!”
“What?” Stephenie whined, holding back a handful of tears. “How can you say you never touched me? Look at my eye! You hit me! Not once, but twice! You fucking prick cop, you hit me right in the face!”
“Your face was like that when we brought you in! Look at you!”
“No it wasn’t! My face wasn’t like this! What kind of bastard are you? Now that there’s another pig in the room you deny slapping me around? YOU HIT ME TWICE! You know it and I know it!”
“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!”
“FUCK YOU!”
“Stephenie,” Quill said meekly, trying to weather the storm of the two opposing standpoints. “If you can just––”
“GET HIM OUT OF HERE!” Stephenie screamed, pointing a finger directly at Lynch. Tears erupted and rolled down her face. “I’LL TELL YOU WHATEVER YOU WANT, JUST GET THIS SQUARE-HEAD ASSHOLE AWAY FROM ME!”
Lynch, brimming with anger now, pushed Stephenie’s hand away forcefully. He regretted doing it immediately after and wished he could take it back. He didn’t want to make contact with her. Not again, not in front of Quill.
“That’s what I get for uncuffing you?” He said, with his voice lowered distastefully. “An accusing finger rammed in my face?”
“You didn’t uncuff me,” Stephenie said defiantly. “Your partner did.”
Lynch poked himself in the chest, raised his shoulders and stuck his chin out. “But I okayed it!”
Stephenie stiffened, but didn’t respond.
The tension decompressed as silence infiltrated the interrogation cell.
Lynch walked away from the suspect, rubbed a hand across the back of his tree-trunk neck and cursed. He had little drops of sweat on his brow, beneath his arms, down his back. Looking at his right hand, he could see that his knuckles were red from the pair of jabs he’d given her. In his mind, he pretended the assault didn’t happen. But of course, it did. And it wasn’t the first time he got physical with a suspect. Probably wouldn’t be the last either. Sometimes his hands had a mind of their own. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but it was something he learned to live with.
“Officer Lynch,” Quill said, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Would you mind standing in the corner for a moment. I’d like a word with the suspect.”
Lynch opened his mouth, hesitated, and said nothing.
He didn’t like being told what to do, especially by a little runt like Quill. He would have to straighten the man out, maybe not now. But later. Right now he just wanted that fucking psycho-witch to confess to the murders. Not that she had much of a leg to stand on. She didn’t. Her goose was cooked and he knew it. Still, a confession would be the icing on the cake.
Lynch moved away from the table. He pulled a chair from the wall, spun it around and sat with its backside in front of him.
Quill reached into his pocket and pulled out a small recording device. He placed it on the table in front of Stephenie and tapped it with his finger.
Sitting down, he said, “Right now you have the luxury of talking to us small town boys, but soon the F.B.I. will be here and I can promise you this: things will deteriorate quickly later if you’re not helpful now. Those F.B.I. boys do things with the combined compassion of a scavenging hyena in a chicken coop. And if we tell ‘em you were nothing but trouble, things will get worse from there. I guarantee it. So do yourself a favor. Open your mouth, start talking, and don’t leave anything out.”
Stephenie’s face contorted into a mask of revulsion. Her teeth made a brief appearance before she said, “When the F.B.I. arrives I’ll be pressing charges against Sgt. Rock, your tough-guy square-head partner that likes beating on women.”
Quill didn’t want to smile but almost did. Sgt. Rock––that was a good one. How a woman like Stephenie Paige knew about Sgt. Rock was a mystery but nevertheless her description hit the bull’s eye. Lynch had a haircut you could set an egg timer to and a face like a frying pan. And yes, now that he thought about it, Lynch did look like Sgt. Rock. All he needed was the army uniform, a machine gun, and a battlefield full of Nazis.
Quill swallowed his smirk and said, “It’s absolutely within your civil liberties to press charges, if that’s what you wish to do. You can lay charges here and now, in this precinct. There’s no need to wait for the F.B.I. but you do need to tell us what happened first. Can you do that?”
Stephenie nodded. “I suppose.”
“Great. We can’t do anything for you until you tell us your side of the story.”
From the corner of the room, Lynch mumbled something under his breath. His eyebrows morphed into checkmarks. He didn’t like playing good cop/bad cop. If it were up to him he would slide his gun into the woman’s mouth and be done with it. But of course, there were rules. There were always rules. Every creep from here to hell and back again walked the streets with a bag of crack in one pocket and an Uzi in the other. And why? The answer was simple: the system was flawed. It made Lynch furious. Sometimes he thought about going cowboy and wiping the streets clean of the filth. Sometimes he though
t about it a lot.
Quill turned towards his partner, narrowing his eyes.
Lynch knew those eyes. Those eyes said: Don’t fuck up, Lynch. You’ve caused enough trouble; understand?
And Lynch understood, all right. If they could get the bitch to make a full confession before the lawyers arrived it would be a major accomplishment, even if the confession wouldn’t hold up in a courtroom. In a ‘worst case scenario’ a recorded confession led to added details, a better understanding of what really happened, and a knot of confusion within the suspect’s mind. Simply put, a recorded confession was gold.
Lynch mumbled again but kept his thoughts to himself.
He’d play ball… for now.
“Okay,” Quill said. “Tell us what happened. From the beginning.”
“From the beginning?” Stephenie asked, as if trying to identify the actual moment things began.
“Yes. Just tell us in the best way you can. We’re only trying to help.” He turned the recorder on.
Stephenie glanced at the recorder. Then her eyes turned mean and she looked at Lynch. There were a lot of things she could say about that ‘trying to help’ statement. Square-head wasn’t trying to help. He was trying to intimidate, with his fists.
Quill waved a hand in front of Stephenie, blocking her view of Lynch. “Please Mrs. Paige. Don’t worry about him.”
Stephenie bit back her anger. “Okay,” she said. “From the beginning.”
Quill nodded. “Yes. That would be fine.”
2
“It didn’t start today,” Stephenie said. “Although I’m sure you both think that it did. It started months ago. I was in bed, alone. I thought I was asleep but now… now I don’t know. I’ve been telling myself it was just a dream, nothing more. And until today I was doing an okay job convincing myself it was a dream. I’m not well, you see. I’ve been going to the doctor. I’ve been taking prescriptions.”
Officer Lynch sat back in his chair. He expelled a large mouthful of air, looked at the ceiling and opened his hands as if he was expecting rain. He didn’t like where this bullshit story was going. If that bitch was going to plead insanity he was going have to kill her himself. And although his thoughts had traveled this road before, he had never acted upon them. Not yet. But this bitch… this bitch was different. There was no way she was going to escape her crimes unpunished. Not this time. Not a fucking chance. If he had to become the vigilante he would. Because he had seen it, seen it with his own two eyes. He knew what she did––the sick fuck. And more than that, she knew what she did too.
Insanity? Screw that, lady. Not this time.
“What prescriptions?” Quill asked, ignoring the one-man sideshow playing out behind him.
Stephenie exhaled a deep breath. “You name it, I’ve probably taken it: Lorazepam, Lithizine, Mesoridazine, Oxazepam, Thorazine… I don’t know. There are a few others. Perphenazine, that’s one of them. Check with my doctors. They’ll tell you what they’ve prescribed.”
Quill said, “I have a cousin with a schizoaffective disorder. I’m pretty sure he takes Lorazepam.”
“Probably.”
Quill nodded.
Lynch shifted in his chair again, squeezing his hands together. This was such a corpulent load of crap he figured he’d need a pitchfork to dig his way through it.
Stephenie wiped a tear from her eye and sniffed. Then she shifted her stare towards the table and pursed her lips together. She didn’t want to look at the officers, especially Square-head. He was ready to blow a gasket and she had no desire to witness it.
In time, she said, “It was late. My daughter and I live alone. She was asleep already so I was pretty much on my own. I was getting ready for bed… going to the bathroom, that sort of thing. I heard something in my bedroom, so I walked across the hall. I still had a toothbrush in my hand––”
Although Quill had been trained to stay quiet while a suspect was talking, he asked, “What’s your daughter’s name?”
Stephenie looked up. “Huh?”
“Your daughter? What’s her name?”
“Oh. Carrie. Her name is Carrie Paige. You know that.”
Quill nodded his head again. Yes, he certainly did know that. Carrie had presented enough details to give him nightmares for a year and create a hole in his heart that might never go away. But he wanted to hear her say it. He wanted to find out if Stephenie even knew her daughter’s name at this point. After the things Carrie had said, and the things he had seen, he wondered how psychotic this woman might really be. “Go on.”
“There was somebody at the window.”
“Which window?”
“The one in my bedroom. But you have to understand something: my bedroom is on the second floor. Our house isn’t the biggest one on the block, far from it. But it has two floors and it’s almost impossible for someone to be at my window. Still, there was someone there all the same.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. It was a woman, I guess. She was naked and pale, clinging to the window like some type of insect. Her hair was dark. Her eyes were large. She put a finger to the glass and tapped it. ‘Let me in,’ she said. And her voice sounded like she had been dead for a year or more. She smiled a terrible smile, with her eyes shining like dirty silver coins. She wanted me to open the window so I did just that. I walked across the room and I opened the window as wide as it would go. I don’t know why I did it, but I did it. My heart sank as she came in. She crawled through the opening, down the wall and onto the floor. Her bones cracked; sounded like pencils snapping. After she scurried around on the floor she stood up… crept up, actually, with her body bending in ways no human body should bend. She looked at me and I thought I might faint. I didn’t. Somehow I didn’t. I could see her long teeth hiding behind her thin white lips. She had the teeth of a vampire, you know? I could see the bloodless veins in her arms and the dark stomach beneath her translucent skin. I could see the little tuft of hair between her legs and I could smell her. Oh God, I could smell her. She smelled the same as she sounded: like she had been dead for ages. Like she had no business being alive in the first place. She smelled like dirt, like earth. Like rot. And like fire. Yes, she smelled like a fire that burned for days and days and days.
“The dead woman reached out to me with her bony hand, touched my chest with her cold, lifeless fingers and said: ‘You… you’re the one. The dead will rise for you. It will be the beginning of the end, the beginning of the apocalypse. No one will hear you scream. No one will hear your voice! They won’t believe your words no matter how much you try to convince them. They will discredit you and your actions. They will call you names behind your back and say you’re the one at fault; you’re the one responsible, never once thinking you might be their savior, you might be the one they should fall upon their knees and praise!’ And as she said these things to me––these terrible and confounded things––I knew she spoke the truth. Not the Lord’s truth, no. But it was the truth all the same. It was the devil’s truth! THE DEVIL’S CONCUBINE WAS INSIDE MY ROOM THAT NIGHT! IT WAS THE DEVIL––”
“SHUT UP!” Lynch screamed. “HOLY SHIT CRAZY WOMAN! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Quill spun around, lifting a hand to silence his partner. Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it was wrong. He didn’t know, but he had to do something. The last thing he needed was for those two to be at each other’s throats again.
Stephenie grabbed her hair and pulled on it like she was trying to rip apart her own skull. “EVEN NOW YOU DISCREDIT ME! EVEN NOW YOU TRY––”
Lynch snapped. “WELL YOU’RE MAKING IT PRETTY EASY, DON’T YOU THINK, BITCH?! A DEAD WOMAN CAME TO VISIT YOU? A VAMPIRE?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? IS THAT WHY YOU KILLED ALL THOSE INNOCENT PEOPLE? BECAUSE A DEAD WOMAN CRAWLED THROUGH YOUR WINDOW LIKE A FUCKING INSECT A FEW MONTHS BACK?! PLEASE LADY! WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE, A GODDAMN IDIOT?”
“Officer Lynch,” Quill said, thinking only now that it was a mistake to un-cuff the woman. But he did un-cuff her.
He did. Oh man, oh man… he un-cuffed her even though it was against the rules and he knew he shouldn’t be doing it. What was he thinking? If he didn’t get the suspect back into cuffs before the F.B.I. arrived he’d be in the doghouse for sure. “Officer Lynch! Please keep your voice down. This is not helping.”
“She’s trying to get off on an insanity angle! Don’t you see it? Can’t you tell? This is bullshit! Complete bullshit!”
“Officer Lynch! ENOUGH! She can’t get off on anything! This isn’t a courtroom!”
Lynch slammed a sledgehammer fist against his knee and his top lip lifted up like it was attached to a string. When they were through with this little interview he was going to have a nice long talk with his halfwit partner Quill. How dare he speak with a condescending tone in front of a suspect! Who did that midget think he was? He was nothing. He was just a stupid city boy that got lost in the country, nothing more. And if he couldn’t see that this fucking bitch was taking them for a long drive off a short dock, he didn’t know shit from shat.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Paige,” Quill said. He took his glasses from his face, pulled a small cloth from his pocket and cleaned the lens. “Please, go on.”
“It’s not Mrs. Paige. Not now. Just Miss, so please stop calling me Mrs.”
“Very well. Please continue.”
“Quill,” Lynch said, trying desperately to control his rage. “Get her to talk about today. The crazy shit she dreamt about six months ago isn’t fucking relevant, okay? Get her to talk about today!”
Quill closed his eyes and put a hand to his face feeling like he was caught in the middle of a hurricane. Lynch made everything so hard, so extreme. Some days the guy seemed more like a character from Wrestlemania than a real live policeman; he acted like he was putting on a show for the whole world to see. But he was right, of course. So far the woman had given them nothing. All she did was reinforce the argument that she was mentally unstable. And who knows. Maybe she was unstable. Quill wasn’t a shrink. He wasn’t even sure about his own sanity half the time.
