Ghostwriter (22 page)
“Do you know that when people die, there’s no magical thing they say, no special way they die. The one thing is always this.”
Do it, do it now, man. Do it.
Cillian started to put a hand in his pocket. “What’s that?”
And then something ripped in his side. And he looked down to see Bob’s hand plunged against his gut.
“It’s surprise,” Bob said, pressing the blade so far into his gut that Cillian wondered if it was sticking out his back.
He couldn’t say anything, couldn’t breathe.
“Surprise at how stupid they are. Surprise at knowing they only have seconds to live.”
Cillian coughed and choked and spit up blood. The blade started to slowly cut up his chest. He could smell Bob’s breath and
feel his warm skin.
“Hey—Bob—what—”
He couldn’t talk, was too surprised, too horrified.
Stupid. You’re stupid to have ever gotten involved with this guy. He’s the real deal, and you’re just an amateur. You’re just
a poser and now…
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it shocks, does it?”
“Bob, man, what are you doing?”
“I’m doing something you couldn’t do and would never be able to do. I’m showing you. This…is…how…you…do…it.”
At each word, the blade worked itself up and around Cillian’s open cavity of a chest.
But Cillian still watched and listened and comprehended.
And Bob started to twitch and laugh and grin.
All while he kept thrusting the knife in, deep, deep, deeper.
“What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?” he asked Cillian again, all while Cillian tried to pull the knife out and push
Bob away, even as he knew he was about to die, that he only had a few seconds left.
His voice came out shaky, distorted, gargled. “You…”
Bob didn’t respond to his answer. He just looked at him with a blank stare.
I can see his face. Even in the darkness I can see it. What’s happening? What is this? No, this can’t. No, dear God. No, please.
No, it can’t, I can’t, it cannot be.
Just as Cillian started to scream, the big guy put a hand over his mouth.
“There is no fear left. Not anymore.”
The hand clamped over his mouth and another hand worked the blade around. Cillian finally saw blackness cover him and realized
the horror was not over and everything he had imagined and believed in and hoped for was just the start of the horror that
awaited him.
The house’s heartbeat awakens him. Steady, pulsing, tapping against his eardrums, against his mind. Dennis sits up in a large
bed with pillows and blankets intertwined over him. He turns on the lamp and wipes a forehead full of sweat. Either he has
a raging fever or something he ate at Ward’s didn’t agree with him or he finally realizes what’s going on and it’s terrifying
him.
But he stands and opens a window and forbids it to be the latter.
He looks at the small bookshelf with special printings of some of his books. There they are: there’s his little ghost story
that could, Breathe, in its original hardcover printing, before the movie and the madness and the second better-looking hardcover
came out. There’s the last book he actually wrote, The Thin Ice, that caused Publishers Weekly to write, “Dennis Shore, even
while on autopilot, can still scare with the best of them.” What did they know? There’s Sorrow, a serial-killer story that
gave him an ulcer.
They’re just made up, Dennis, stories in your head, and this is one of them. This is a made-up story. This isn’t really happening.
You’re going to wake up and find that Cillian isn’t there and everything was just a big dream.
He hears cries from outside.
Dennis looks through the window but sees only thick darkness.
“Dad!”
He recognizes the voice.
“Dad, help me!”
And without thinking or hesitating Dennis sprints down the stairs and tears through the kitchen to the back deck and the back
lawn, which is wet and cool against his bare feet.
The voice is louder.
“Dad, over here! Daddy!”
She hasn’t called him daddy in a long time.
His feet take him down to the edge of the water. And then he sees her in the smoky, shadowy waters of the Fox River. Her curls,
her long pigtails.
“Daddy, help me!”
Audrey is desperately trying to swim toward him but is being pulled away.
A flashlight beams over the water, and Dennis sees where it’s coming from. It’s a small boat, the figure inside leering at
him with white teeth and dead eyes and long stringy hair.
It’s Samantha.
“She’s dead just like I am, just like Lucy, just like we all will be, so join us, Dennis. Join us. Take a step and don’t come
back. It’s better down here with the dead, with the disbelieving. Join us, won’t you?”
Dennis.
Suddenly the light and the loud chanting voice and the figure in the water all dissolve.
Dennis, wake up.
And he does and finds himself in his bed in the darkness, the comforter and blankets on his side messy, the other side neat.
He sits on the edge of the bed, wiping his forehead.
He opens the window, hearing nothing but the slight spill of rain.
He remembers the voice that urged him awake, and he wants to hear it again.
It was Lucy’s voice, and it felt like it came from right next to him.
He would do anything to hear that voice talk to him again. Just once. That’s all.
In the morning Dennis felt like someone had grabbed him feet first out of bed and swung him around a dozen or more times before
leaving him resting on a cold hard rock.
All morning long he examined the pictures from Ryan. He debated calling the deputy, unsure what he would tell him. He’d lie,
of course. Ryan would think he’d lost his mind if he told him the truth.
And what exactly is the truth, Den?
He couldn’t shrug this off, couldn’t bury this in that stone psyche of his. He couldn’t outrun this or outwork this or out-think
this.
Something nagged at him, and he found himself sorting through his office, something he usually avoided. He wanted to find
something, anything, that might have the name Cillian Reed attached to it.
When they had first moved into this house, Dennis had arranged the office exactly the way he always wanted an office to look.
There were framed record covers hanging on the wall, a closet full of his books, a wall of shelves with his CD collection
organized in ways only he could fully understand. There were pictures of Lucy and Audrey and reminders of his career achievements
scattered throughout the office. Over time, even though they had been stored in his closet and out of mind, the piles of clutter
had grown, and since Lucy’s death, they had become immovable fixtures in his life. The three boxes of fan letters and e-mails,
the stack of marketing information, the folders filled with contracts and royalty reports. Audrey had been on him for some
time to hire an assistant, but Dennis kept avoiding it.
Lucy was always my helper. Nobody can ever replace her.
Perhaps it was stupid to refuse clerical help. He needed assistance with the small things, things that usually didn’t get
done. Answering reader mail, for instance. He had long since neglected it, especially after Lucy passed.
Now he found himself on the floor with the closet doors open, going through the boxes, ruffling through letters and printed
pages, trying to find anything with Cillian’s name on it.
And after two hours, much of it spent reading author mail for the first time, he spotted an envelope with crisp black writing
on it. It was open, the letter inside folded neatly. The return address was from Mr. Cillian Reed.
Mr.
It was just like him to call himself a mister.
Dennis quickly took out the one-page letter and read it. He couldn’t remember reading this before.
Dear Mr. Shore:
I’ve been a big fan of yours since I came across a copy of
Breathe
years ago. I’ve read all your books and written to you several times. I even sent you a copy of my novel Reptile in hopes
you’d read at least some of it and give me your honest input. Having not heard from you, and having been let down by your
last few novels, I felt I needed to write you one last time to share some of my frustrations. Whether or not you answer this
letter—whether or not you even read this letter—is something I can’t think about. All I can do is share my thoughts and feelings
and let the rest go.
I believe that something happened to you somewhere along the great yellow brick road of writing stories. I can’t say which
book it started with, but I have an idea. I’m thinking
Marooned
was where it began, and
Fearless
was where it finally blossomed and remained. Your first two novels were exceptional, but since then… well… the well went
dry, the inspiration evaporated, the storytelling went on autopilot.
You let us down, Mr. Shore.
I wish you could know what it’s like to be a fan of someone, to have high hopes, to await the next book with anticipation,
and to finish that work and be so disappointed. It’s not one book. No. It’s a career. A wasted career. A wasted talent. A
waste of time.
My time.
Furthermore, it’s been disappointing to write and never hear back. Time and time again.
I will continue reading, not because I think your inspiration might come back. No. I need to read things that make me laugh
out loud, even if that’s not the author’s intention.
Keep cashing those checks.
Keep selling out.
Sincerely,
Cillian Reed
The letter felt heavy in his hands. The postmark said November 2005, six months after the publication of Fearless. Could he
really have overlooked this?
There were other things going on in my life back then.
He tore the letter up.
For a moment Dennis looked around the office. Surrounding him on the carpeted floor were hundreds of handwritten letters and
printed pages. A wealth of praises and thank-yous. But somehow he had found the needle in the haystack.
Maybe if he continued looking he would find more.
But he was tired.
He hadn’t felt this tired in a long time.
He needed to get out of the house and breathe and sort this out.
Stepping outside to a chilly day, a statement sounded over and over in his head.
“You let us down, Mr. Shore.”
But if Cillian had been so utterly disappointed, then why bother Dennis now?
Especially if he was dead?
He drove in silence. A thousand thoughts filled his mind.
This can’t be happening. Somehow all of this is my imagination.
The dead don’t speak. The dead don’t bleed.
I spoke with Cillian. I saw him. I still have scabs on my knuckles from beating him.
What if this is someone else posing as Cillian?
I saw the photos—it’s him—the same guy who wrote to me, the same guy I angered by ignoring, the same guy I somehow let down,
the same guy I stole from, the same guy haunting me.
But you don’t believe in ghosts, do you? So now what?
“I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon…”
The skies were cloudy. As he drove home, the stereo in his car turned on.
His hands were on the steering wheel.
Pink Floyd blared through the speakers, hurting his ears. The song was “Empty Spaces” from
The Wall.
Then he heard static, then voices. He heard the last conversation between Cillian and himself, as though it had been recorded
in a tunnel, with strange, eerie echoes following their voices. Floyd continued playing in the background, softer, so Dennis
could hear Cillian’s taunt.
“Look at you. Look at your face. You’re scared to death, aren’t you? You’re scared of what you’ve done, but more than that
you’re scared because of what you can’t or won’t do, right?
“You’re scared to death.
“Scared to death.
“Scared.
“Death.”
It sounded like there were a dozen Cillians, all talking while Floyd grew louder and louder.
And then the phone rang. And the voices and the music stopped.
Dennis didn’t want to answer it. But if he was losing his mind, the phone would be talking to him soon enough. He opened it
and didn’t say a word. He could hear the laughter on the other end.
“So now you know.”
“What do you want?”
“What do I want, Dennis? What do I want? How dare you ask that question?”
“I’m finished with you.”
“No you’re not,” Cillian said.
“Yeah I am. I don’t care who or what you are—I’m done with you.”
More laughter. “You know exactly who and what this is so don’t give me that. This is your worst nightmare coming true.”
“My worst nightmare already happened. You don’t scare me.”
“I’ve barely even tried scaring you, Dennis. Just because your wife died and you convinced yourself you let her go and got
through that doesn’t mean a damned thing to me because you don’t know the meaning of pain and suffering. But—and hear me out,
Dennis—
you will.”
“You’re just a sad little nerdy boy who lost his comics somewhere.”
“You don’t know me. You don’t get me. You can’t even begin to understand me. You’ve read some of my work and obviously think
it’s good enough to steal, but DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHERE THAT COMES FROM? DO YOU?”
The voice howled on the line, and Dennis didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
“You don’t know fear, and you don’t know pain. But that’s all gonna change.”
“I’m done. I’m done with your calls and your e-mails and your threats.”
“You stole something from me, so I’m stealing something right back. And it’s far more valuable than some story from a twenty-year-old
who thought he knew it all.”