Chapter 4: The Statue Stands Tall
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Tom asked.
Victor shook his head as he pulled on his leather gloves. “No, thank you.”
“I can help,” Tom said, and there was a sulky note in the boy’s tone.
Victor paused and smiled at him. “Tom, you’re the only person in the world I trust to help me. That’s why I want you out here. If I don’t come back in fifteen minutes, then I need you to come in after me.”
Tom grinned.
“What?” Victor asked, adjusting the iron ring under the glove.
“Nothing, I guess,” Tom said. Then, laughing, the boy added, “I thought for sure you’d ask me to call Shane or someone.”
“No,” Victor said with a chuckle. “Not at all. But in all seriousness, if you do have to come in, and it looks bad, call him.”
The boy nodded. “I will.”
“Thanks.” Victor took a deep, nervous breath and said, “Okay. See you soon.”
He climbed out of the car with a heavy, lead-lined bag in his left hand and he glanced up and down the deserted street. The sun had set a short time before, and the streetlights were dim reminders of night’s advancement upon the city of Pittsburgh.
The storefront Victor focused on was dark, the store itself only recently abandoned. He had read of several deaths at the business. All involving a ball-peen hammer.
And the store had sold only the bare minimum to the few residents of a dying neighborhood.
But I had read about that hammer, Victor thought, approaching the store with growing trepidation. Moran and Moran had included it in a list of items purchased by the Korzhs. And while it should have been locked away in their collection, it had gotten out.
And how did that happen, I wonder?
Victor’s thoughts became focused on the door and the chain looped around the handle and a railing. The glass in the door was broken though, and Victor bent down and scooted in easily. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, and as they did, he took stock of the store.
Nothing remained of the merchandise or the shelves that would have held them. The walls were discolored where refrigerators and smaller shelving units had stood, giving the walls the appearance of a man with mismatched teeth.
Then his eyes saw the hammer.
The old wooden handle looked rough and abused, as did the misshapen head of the tool. It should have been thrown out decades earlier, and Victor wondered if anyone had ever tried.
He approached the hammer cautiously, eyes darting from shadow to shadow, seeking out the dead man he knew would be near.
“Hello,” a voice said in front of him. “Have you remembered your measuring tape?”
A shape stepped forth from the darkness behind the hammer, and Victor saw Claude Hamilton. He was a short, squat, powerfully built man with a barrel chest and a stomach to match. The dead man had been a shop teacher in the 1930s, until he had gone insane during class and beaten a trio of teens dead with the hammer. Waiting for his trial, Claude had killed a cellmate and paralyzed a guard.
He had died while being transported to the trial.
“No,” Victor admitted, “I don’t have it with me.”
The ghost picked up the hammer and swung it experimentally. “Do you remember what I told you the last time that you forgot your measuring tape?”
“That you were going to beat it into my head to remember?” Victor had read the witness statements.
“Yes,” Claude said sadly. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He lifted the hammer up above his head and advanced on Victor.
Victor forced himself to wait until the last moment, then he stepped aside and slammed his fist through the ghost’s large belly as the hammer passed by him.
The tool clattered to the floor and Victor scooped it up, his heart thundering as he thrust the hammer into the heavy, lead-lined bag. He closed it before the dead man could reappear and he stood in the semi-darkness, panting and trying to slow his racing heart.
When he regained his composure, Victor straightened up and headed for the door.
How many more of these has Stefan Korzh sent out into the world? he wondered, and then shook his head.
Time, he knew, would tell.
