Chapter 3: Old Time Radio

 

Kristine Tring sat in the small room that served as both living room, and den in the Mayor Maurice Arel Assisted Living Home. In spite of the arthritis in her hands, she held a pair of overly large knitting needles. She worked at a slow, careful pace. Her thoughts were not on the prayer shawl she knitted, nor were they on the people at St. Joseph’s Hospital who would be the eventual recipients of the shawls she made.

 

Instead, her mind was far away. December was only three days away, and with it would come the anniversary of her brother Kevin’s death. They had been twins, and he had died in Korea in 1951. Seventeen years old and dead.

 

Seventeen years old and he had never grown any older.

 

The plastic needles clicked in the stillness of her apartment, her hearing aids turned down, so the loud television sets of the neighbors on either side and above her were inaudible. With the death of her only niece on her deceased husband’s side the year before, Kristine had gotten rid of her telephone.

 

There was no one to call, and no one to expect calls from. The few friends she had, lived in her building, and she would see them at breakfast, or perhaps in the recreation room for coffee.

 

A flicker of light caught her eye, and her hands stopped as she looked up.

 

Across the room was the one, unnecessary heirloom she had kept when she moved into the Arel Home. A tall, Zenith floor model radio. It was in poor shape, having been battered and beaten by herself and Kevin when they were children.

 

And now the faceplate on it was lit with the old, yellow glow she remembered so well.

 

She stared at it for a moment, not understanding how the radio could be working.

 

The plug had broken a decade earlier, and before that, one of the vacuum tubes had broken.

 

It was a nonfunctioning relic, nothing more.

 

But there it was, lit as when she and her siblings would sit and listen to the Phantom.

 

Confused, Kristine turned the volume on her hearing aids back up.

 

“Good evening,” a man said through the speaker, his voice smooth and pleasant. There was an arousing, enticing quality to his voice. It made her want to listen to him, and to nothing else. “This is Hank McErney, and I’m here with you, are you here with me?”

 

Kristine stared in surprise, not sure what to do.

 

“Hello,” Hank said, chuckling, “didn’t you hear me, young lady? Yes, you with the knitting on your lap.”

 

Kristine straightened up in the chair, taken aback even as she said, “Yes. Yes, I hear you.”

 

“Oh, very good,” Hank said. “Tell me, what’s your name?”

 

“Kristine,” she replied. Her stomach tied itself into knots she hadn’t felt since she had been a teenager, and she didn’t quite know what to do.

 

“Kristine,” Hank said in a pleased voice, “a pretty name for a pretty girl. I’m curious, Kristine, why are you inside on a night like tonight? Shouldn’t you be out there cutting a rug with some dashing young man?”

 

“No one asked,” Kristine answered.

 

“That I can’t believe,” Hank said, “no one?”

 

“No,” Kristine said.

 

“Let’s take care of that, shall we, Kristine?” Hank asked.

 

The world bent and twisted, and shifted into shadow as the warmth was torn from the room. And a moment later, a man stood in front of the radio, and she knew it was Hank McErney.

 

He was tall, his black hair flipped to one side in a style that had gone out of fashion in the forties. An Errol Flynn mustache graced his upper lip, and his nose was aquiline. His chin was square cut, as were the shoulders of the suit coat he wore. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, and there was an air of calm assuredness about him that Kristine found appealing. Hank McErney was a ruggedly good-looking man, and Kristine’s heart fluttered in a way she didn’t think was possible anymore.

 

“Hello, Kristine,” Hank said, and his voice was even more powerful in person than it had been on the radio.

 

“Hello,” she replied, blushing.

 

This isn’t real, she thought. I must be having a stroke. Or a heart attack. Am I dying?

 

Chapter 6: Paranoia Runs Deep

 

Stefan felt miserable.

 

While he had never enjoyed his trips beyond his compound, they had taken on a terrible life of their own. Each time he was compelled to leave, he did so knowing full well that the man who had tried to kill him remained at large. And that was in addition to the fact that the police might connect Stefan to Jeremy Rhinehart’s murder in Fox Cat Hollow.

 

The fear reminded him of when his half-sister had hunted him, and he despised it.

 

He had spent additional funds on establishing motion sensor lights farther up the road that lead to the warehouse. Stefan had also added an extended ring of cameras to the perimeter, and when he went into the observation room shortly after having woken up, there was an alert on his home screen.

 

The monitoring software he had installed had picked up and isolated the wireless feed he had been trying to hunt down since the failed attempt on his life.

 

Stefan quickly typed in his passcode, accessed the account, and looked at the feed.

 

What he found drove a cold, hard spike of mixed hatred and fear into his stomach.

 

He was looking at not one video feed, but four. Whoever was watching him had placed a camera on each side of the building. No matter where Stefan exited his home from, the unseen watcher would know it.

 

Stefan stared at the screen for a moment longer, then, with an angry grumble, he turned the monitor off.

 

Swearing under his breath, Stefan stood up, shoving his chair back before he went stomping out of the room. He went to the kitchen, skipped his morning coffee, and reached for the vodka. Without bothering with a glass, Stefan opened the bottle, brought the mouth of it up to his lips, and took a long, bitter pull from it. He only stopped when he needed to breathe, his mouth burning, and his eyes watering from the strength of the alcohol.

 

Stefan gripped the counter with one hand to steady himself, then he took another, smaller drink.

 

He knew it had to be the man who had tried to kill him. And Stefan felt certain his father and stepsister had put the man up to it. The stranger had been skilled. Extremely so, and Stefan suspected that the man had misjudged Stefan’s own capabilities.

 

It wasn’t a mistake the stranger was apt to make twice.

 

Furious, Stefan brought the bottle back with him into the observation room. He turned on the monitor, immediately exited the feed for the enemy’s cameras, and sat down. In silence, Stefan brought up his sales and pondered over them. He tried to focus, realized that he wouldn’t be able to, and shifted his attention to the newspapers where he had shipped various items off.

 

His anger increased, rising to a steady speed until he shoved the mouse away from him and pressed his hands against his eyes. The websites were empty of any sort of information regarding the dead and the damage they could inflict.

 

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Stefan took a deep breath and reminded himself it was only a matter of time before something happened.

 

Dropping his hands from his face, Stefan took hold of the mouse and began to search his sales again, hoping to find something there to appease his anger.

 

There wasn’t.

 

Stefan snarled and threw the mouse across the room, the plastic shattering against the wall. He sat in the chair for several minutes, irate and unable to move.

 

Finally, when he had calmed down, Stefan opened his desk drawer, took out a new mouse, and went through the familiar motions of getting it ready.

Chapter 12: Adventure and Excitement

 

Victor had managed to fall asleep in his bed rather than the chair in the study, and by doing so, he had obtained a good night’s sleep. When the sun had risen, so had Victor. He had eaten breakfast alone, and he was halfway through making his travel plans when Tom walked in, yawning.

 

The boy rubbed his face with his hand, the left sleeve of his pajama top hanging loose. Tom only put on the prosthetic in the morning when he was going to work out first, and it still shocked Victor when he saw the empty sleeve.

 

“How are you doing?” he asked as Tom waved at him.

 

The boy shrugged and got himself a glass of water.

 

“Late night?” Victor asked.

 

“No,” Tom said, putting the empty cup down on the counter. “Just tired. Bad dreams. You know?”

 

Victor nodded. He knew all too well about bad dreams. The nights when he managed to get through to dawn without them were few and far between, and they were to be treasured.

 

“Any big plans for today?” Tom asked, taking a box of Fruit Loops cereal down from a cabinet and carrying it to the table.

 

“I need to go up to Concord,” Victor explained.

 

Tom’s eyes widened in surprise as he sat down. Then, fumbling with the box top, he said, “Concord, Massachusetts?”

 

“No,” Victor said, shaking his head, “Concord, New Hampshire.”

 

“You’re spending a lot of time up in the granite state,” Tom said. Victor watched the boy hold the cereal box against his chest and fish a handful of the multicolored loops out. The teen ate them dry, waiting for Victor’s response to his statement.

 

“I have to,” Victor stated. “At least right now. Seems like Korzh sent another item out.”

 

Hatred flashed through the boy’s eyes, but he regained control of himself instantly. “What happened?”

 

Victor gave him all of the information he had been able to dig up on the internet about the ring. He watched the boy’s jaw tighten, his fingers twitching.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Tom asked after a moment.

 

Victor shook his head. “I need you here, on the off chance that another item should show up in Fox Cat Hollow. It’s unlikely, I know, but there’s the possibility it could happen.”

 

“What should I do if it does?” Tom asked. “I’m not exactly a hundred percent here, even with my prosthetic on. I’m just not that skilled with it yet.”

 

“I need you to be my eyes and ears,” Victor replied. “Read the papers. The local stuff and the ones you can find online. Make sure that you use your new name, too. If anyone asks.”

 

Tom rolled his eyes and asked, “Why Jeremiah?”

 

“I don’t know,” Victor answered.

 

Tom shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

 

“You don’t have to, Tom,” Victor replied. “You just need to use it. Can you see if you can get Iris to call you Jeremiah in public, too? And, speaking of Iris, try to keep her out of anything that might pop up, okay?”

 

Tom frowned. “She won’t like that. Iris does what she wants.”

 

Victor couldn’t help but smile. “I figured that. That’s why I said try. The last I heard, Korzh is still in the area. And so is Anne Le Morte.”

 

Tom paled slightly at the name. He had faced the doll once before at the gas station, and the boy was fully aware of how dangerous the ghost could be.

 

“Are you okay with that?” Victor asked.

 

Tom nodded, the color easing back into his cheeks.

 

“Good. I should be leaving in about half an hour,” Victor said. “Unless you need something from the store.”

 

“No,” Tom said. “I should be alright. Iris will come over later. If I need anything, I’ll ask her to bring it. She’s usually okay with that.”

 

“I figured she would be.” Victor smiled. “Okay. I’m going to finish getting my stuff together. Make sure you keep your phone on and with you, even when you’re spending time with Iris.”

 

“Yeah,” Tom said, grinning. “I will.”

 

The boy stood up, still pressing the cereal box to his chest. “Have a safe trip. You’ll send me a text when you get there?”

 

“Of course,” Victor said. “I’ll talk to you soon, Tom.”

 

The boy nodded, smiled, and left the room.

 

Victor sighed and tried to focus on his trip. He didn’t like leaving Tom alone but bringing him to deal with another killer wasn’t a priority.

 

The boy would be safer in Pennsylvania than New Hampshire.