Shorts - Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down (25 page)

“So?”

“Bennewitz was working with a talented student by the name of Tess Mitchell. I’ve been trying to locate her but last night she disappeared from her apartment and her neighbors haven’t seen her since. The Tucson police interrogated her a few hours earlier, but found no reasons to name her as a suspect in the murder. They’re searching for her now, though.”

“Do you think she left town?”

“Well…” Bill still had another piece of information in his possession. “According to border control in Nogales, a vehicle with her license plate left the U.S. and entered Mexico at around five-thirty this morning.”

Eileen’s face suddenly lit up.

“We have to find her, Bill. That girl knows something. I’ll put out a search order for her right away.”

The drive to Mexico City dragged on until well after 11:00 p.m. The vehicle’s radio, oddly enough, was unable to tune in to a single radio station, just a lot of empty static. Tess’s cell phone had lost reception as of Ciudad Obregón and none of the electronic signs on the road to Mexico City were working. Though these were clearly the symptoms of the fallout from the first proton storm, the physics student decided not to overestimate their importance.

As she approached the highway into the Mexican capital, Tess Mitchell decided that it would be more practical for her to find
a hotel somewhere near the Teotihuacán archeological complex. There, at least, she could be sure of finding a room, and she knew the area relatively well. She had spent an entire week there, visiting the ruins with a research team from the university, and Jack Bennewitz had shown her some of the best and cheapest places to stay in the vicinity. As she turned off the ignition in front of the Albergue San Juan she was overcome by a torrent of mixed emotions: her evening strolls with Jack along the Avenida de los Muertos in the heart of the pyramid complex, gazing up at the Milky Way; his explanations of the relationship between each of those monuments and the planets known in pre-Hispanic times; even his remarks about how the people who built Teotihuacán believed that they were feeding the sun with every heart they pulled from someone’s body. All these memories passed through her mind, more vivid than ever. How ironic that Jack would surrender his life to the sun, in the very same way that people did all the way back then, she thought.

“Are you Tess Mitchell?”

An indigenous-looking man nearing forty, with a thin beard and a face weathered by the sun, yanked her out of her thoughts as he stepped out of a red minivan that had just pulled up alongside her car. He wore a brightly colored poncho with geometric motifs that she could barely make out, because his headlights were still on.

“How…?”

“What? How do I know your name?” He smiled. “A good friend of yours told us. Professor Jack Bennewitz.”

As he spoke, two other men stepped out of the minivan and walked over to her. She had a difficult time seeing them because, despite the clarity shed by the first-quarter moon, the hotel lights suddenly went out, and with them all the lights in the neighborhood. Tess jumped with a start.

“You don’t have to be afraid anymore, miss,” the indigenous man said.

“Anymore? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That time has reached its end and the cosmic clock has done its job. We have just crossed the threshold from the twenty-first to the twenty-second of December.”

Then he added, “Welcome to the Fifth World, Miss Mitchell.”

Tess shook her head.

“Please don’t be afraid. Yesterday we paid a visit to your physics professor to convince him not to publish the information he had regarding the solar storm that the two of you detected. The same information that you are carrying right now in that laptop of yours.”

“You…you were the ones who killed him?” Tess was incredulous. More than reproach, what echoed in her voice was fear.

“Oh, come on! We only sped up his passage, Miss Mitchell,” the man said, without a trace of emotion. “We couldn’t risk allowing Doctor Bennewitz to reveal his findings to the scientific community because, without realizing it, he would have prevented the sky from opening up as it just did.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about….”

“I’m sure you understand the scientific jargon better than I do, miss. But what just happened, though you and many other people may not realize it, is that the planet Earth has experienced a blast of cosmic energy so powerful that it produced a dimensional leap. Our position in the universe has shifted, and just as was foretold thousands of years ago, a new world has been born.”

“That’s ridiculous!” replied Tess. “Who are you people? Where did you come from?”

“We are the survivors of the Mayan people, miss. Descendants of those few people who remained on this plane of reality when our ancestors transcended dimensions at the end of the Third World. The world that just left us—forever, in fact—was the fourth.”

“Well, I…I haven’t noticed a thing!”

“Oh, really?”

The man’s ironic smile, fixed on his face, made her wary.

“Have you tried to make a phone call? You won’t be able to,” he said, laughing as he watched Tess unsuccessfully dial the emergency number from her cell phone. “Have you heard anything at all on the radio in the past few hours? No. And from now on you won’t, not ever again. Have you tried plugging anything into an outlet? You might as well say goodbye to all that forever. In the Fifth World none of that will work anymore. The sun has altered the electrical balance in the ionosphere and, as such, in the entire planet.”

“Just like that?”

“Look!” One of the other men with them pointed upward. The night sky had transformed into something phantasmagoric, surreal. The silvery sky seemed to have morphed into a spongy substance that flowed as if dragged by the wind. It was a kind of aurora borealis, one that was nothing like anything any human had ever before seen on Earth.

“Now do you believe us?” the man asked. “Everything is mutating. Even you. You don’t realize it, but your entire molecular structure and DNA are changing at this moment.”

“Right…” she said, quivering. “So, what do you want from me?”

“We’ve come to deliver you a message—Professor Jack Bennewitz is waiting for you at the Teotihuacán ruins. He wants to explain everything.”

“Jack…?” Tess was unable to finish her sentence.

For the umpteenth time, Bill Dafoe checked, but without luck. The conventional communications grid, including the high-resolution microwave signal, was down. The order to search for Tess Mitchell hadn’t made it beyond the four walls of the embassy. Instinctively, he leaned out the window of his office on the sixth floor of the building. To his surprise, all the Christ
mas lights lining Serrano had gone dark. Not a single bus traveled down this street, one of Madrid’s main arteries, and even the many Santa Clauses that just a few hours earlier had been clogging the sidewalks of this commercial zone, had disappeared into thin air. The city seemed deserted.

“I have to check something,” he said to Eileen, and bounded down the stairs. The elevator, along with all the electricity in the building, had gone dead, as well.

When he arrived at the building’s front gate, the Marine Corps guards and the National Police in charge of watching over the embassy precinct were in a state of distress. Everything had stopped working. Even—and this was the strangest thing of all—the diesel engines of the two assault tanks that the Spanish police used to guard the surrounding streets.

“Bill! Now that’s funny!” shouted the officer responsible for allowing outsiders to gain access to the building. He knew Dafoe from their years as schoolmates back in Lexington, Kentucky. “With this damn blackout I had no way of calling up to let you know. You’ve got a visitor. In the waiting area.”

“A visitor?”

“Yeah…let’s see,” he said, automatically glancing down at the embassy’s entry and exit list. “His name is Francisco Ruiz, and he says that you and your partner have a folder of his that he’d like to pick up.”

“Francisco Ruiz?”

A solemn atmosphere pervaded the ceremonial complex of Teotihuacán. The grayish silhouette of the massive pyramids and the hulking magnificence of Cerro Gordo on the horizon shone dramatically beneath the powerful glow of the moon. Next to the smallest pyramid, in a plaza adorned with reliefs of the Quetzal, a curious cross between bird and insect, Tess just barely made out the familiar image of a man dressed in white.
It seemed as though he’d been standing there for a millennium, waiting for her.

“The best place in the world for us to find each other again, Tess!”

Jack Bennewitz’s booming voice reverberated between the empty structures. Tess Mitchell didn’t understand anything, and her face showed it. Right at that moment, she was tempted to think that everything she had been through in the past few hours had been nothing more than a bad practical joke.

“It’s me—Jack!” he said, opening his arms wide. “I don’t know what the boys told you, but this is real! At midnight the planet entered into a totally new vibrational phase. All matter, including dark matter, has begun to resonate at a frequency that was unknown up until now. Do you understand, Tess?”

“But…you’re alive!” she exclaimed.

“Alive, dead…what does it matter? Those are states of being that belong to the old world. We’re in a new dimension now.”

The young woman’s hands stroked the soft white cotton of Jack Bennewitz’s suit. It had to be an illusion.

“Come on, Tess! Okay, maybe I didn’t enter this dimension voluntarily, but the men who killed me knew that they were just speeding up my passage by a few hours. They even left you a sign so that you wouldn’t worry….”

“They didn’t leave me anything!” she protested, stepping away from him.

“Yes they did, Tess. They left you a Quetzal butterfly, like the ones on these reliefs. Don’t you recognize it? For the people that built Teotihuacán, as well as the ancestors that established the Mayan calendar, the butterfly symbolized the passage of time. The shift from one dimension to another. I just stopped being a larva before you did. But now both of us are like them….”

The young woman touched her handbag, feeling around for
the little box she had taken from Jack’s office. Jack looked at her, content.

“And the rest of the world, Jack? What’s happening to them? Are they all butterflies now, too?”

“The rest of the world, too, Tess. Little by little they’ll all begin to realize it.”

Jack Bennewitz put his arms around her shoulders before saying anything else. His touch was real. Physical. Just as it had always been.

“You know something?” he said. “It’s funny that your instinct brought you here to this place tonight, a night of such transformation.”

“Funny? What’s so funny about it?”

“Well, Tess. You should know that Teotihuacán means ‘the place where men become gods.’ And now that you and I have died, that’s precisely what we have become. How does it feel to be a god, Tess?”

Before settling in a teaching position at Northeastern University, Gary Braver worked as a soda jerk, newspaper reporter, tech writer, foundry laborer and project physicist, a job that taught him lab work wasn’t for him. But teaching and writing were, and his double-duty as both a teacher and student of the art of writing gave him exceptional insight that he uses to great effect in “Ghost Writer.”

Some thrillers tap into that part of our subconscious where the worst mistakes from our past linger, waiting for an opportunity to come back into the light. Gary’s compelling portrayal of a disillusioned author asks a question that we all must answer eventually. Are we the authors of our own destiny, or is our fate already written? Turn the page to find out.

“I
don’t ghostwrite stories. I write my own books.”

Geoffrey Dane uttered those words and felt as if he were chewing gravel. He hadn’t sold a story in five years.

“Professor Dane, please don’t be offended,” the young woman said. “But it’s really a terrific idea and I think you’re the best person to do it.”

“I’m not offended.” But he was. Offended and bitter. Bitter that he wasn’t what she had assumed—a still actively published bestselling author. Offended because if she were the fan she claimed, she’d know he was a has-been. “I just don’t write other people’s material.”

They were in the English department lounge where he had been sitting, sunk in a couch, reading student stories. Since he was part-time, he had no office of his own, rather a room he shared with other adjuncts and TAs—a space so cramped and noisy he did his paperwork in the lounge, a comfortable space usually empty. That was where this Lauren Grant had found him—this student with the scrubbed good looks, the pricey clothes and a gold Movado watch with diamond baguettes.

As she continued to plead with him, resentment rose up like acid. Here he was a forty-nine-year-old former
New York Times
list resident now teaching workshops for a pittance and entertaining some rich woman half his age offering to pay him to ghost her novel.

“I thought it might be something you could do between your own writing projects.”

Yeah, rewrite after rewrite that your agent can’t place with a fucking vanity press,
whispered a voice in his head. Either this woman had no idea about him or the publishing business, or she was patronizing him. “I’m sorry, but I’m really not interested.”

“But it’s really a terrific idea,” she insisted. “Really. And I think you’d agree. The details we could work out in your favor. But, basically, I provide the idea and you write the book.”

“With whose name on it?”

“Mine. I know I can’t pay you enough, but I’m hoping you’d accept a reasonable fee.”

No, she couldn’t pay him enough. He had spent the last four years struggling unsuccessfully to write himself back into print and was barely making ends meet. It didn’t help that Maggie, his ex-wife, kept squeezing him for alimony. Maggie. The very thought of her made his stomach grind.

“Of course, we’d work out the contractual matters with your agent.”

His agent! He hadn’t talked to his agent in over a year, when she had told him that another house had passed on his previous manuscript.

“It’s really a terrific idea.”

That was the third time she made that claim, and he could see how eager she was to share it. “I’m sure, so why don’t you write it yourself?”

“Because I don’t have the talent. I can’t even come up with a decent ending.”

“Maybe you should take a workshop.”

“I tried to enroll in yours this semester, but it was full. Same in the spring.”

“I’m scheduled to offer it again next fall.”

And the following spring and the fall after that,
he thought. In fact, that was how he regarded the remainder of his pathetic life—one continuous workshop until the day despair finally stopped his heart. Or, better, a bullet from his Smith & Wesson.

“I could take a hundred workshops and it wouldn’t be good.”

“You won’t know if you don’t try.”

“I have tried, believe me, but I don’t have the gene. I read your works and I’m in awe of how you create characters with depth and dialogue that sounds like real people talking. And the narrative thrust that keeps the pages turning—”

Blah, blah, blah,
he thought as she prattled on.

“Frankly, it’s too good an idea to be wasted on me or some hack writer. You can create the tension and sense of dread that it needs.”

Only because I have a paranoid personality, lady. Only because deep down I’m a frightened little man who writes thrillers to get bigger than the things that scare me.

“Really, you have what it takes.”

No, I used to,
he thought.
Geoffrey Dane—“Boy Genius” they called him on his first novel. “Brings class to the thriller genre.” Now: Adult wannabe. Can’t write shit.

“Plus you always have great surprises at the end. That’s what I love best. Those twists we never see coming. Really, you’re a modern O. Henry.”

He could feel himself begin to soften to the conviction that lit up her eyes. But her flattery only made his heart slump even more. Everything she said was true—but in the past. And the thought of being a ghost writer made him want to vomit. He also didn’t care to hear her idea because if it was good, he’d wish
it were his own. Furthermore, he had no interest in entering complicated contractual arrangements with a perfect stranger. Plus she couldn’t pay him enough. He glanced at his watch. “Thanks for thinking of me, but I really have to go.”

“Oh, I’m sorry you have a class. But will you think it over?”

“Think what over? You haven’t said what the idea is.”

“If I can get a commitment, I’ll be happy to tell you.”

He packed the student stories into his briefcase and got up to leave.

“So, we can talk again?”

She was wearing a black shearling coat that probably cost more than the book value of the eleven-year-old BMW he drove. “I’ll think about it.”

Her face looked like a lacquered apple. “That’s great,” she chortled. “Thank you. Thank you.”

As they walked out of the lounge and into the hall, she handed him a card. On it, embossed in gold script, was her name, cell-phone number and e-mail address. No mailing address, probably to be on the safe side, given the rise in identity thefts and sexual stalkings.

“I really appreciate this.” Her eyes were sparking with expectation. “Okay to call you next week?”

“Yeah.” Then he looked back at her. “By the way, what kind of story is it?”

“A ghost story.”

A ghost story! He didn’t write ghost stories. And he didn’t ghostwrite ghost stories. Especially for students. What a bloody insult!

The weekend passed, and he had spent it at his place—a small cape at the end of a cul-de-sac in Carleton, ten miles west of Boston. From dawn to bedtime he tapped away on his keyboard, producing little more than a page of uninspired narrative. He was
four chapters into another novel—the last two sitting in mailers on the shelf, cover letters from editors inside apologizing that the book was not right for their lists. The story was outlined, but he did not like the direction it was taking. And he could think of no decent alternatives. He had hit an impasse. He could, of course, just quit—blame the blockage on the imp of discouragement and take the self-fulfilling-prophecy route: haven’t written anything saleable in years, can’t do it again.

He really didn’t believe in writer’s block. That was nothing more than a phony excuse, a handy cop-out for laziness as if it were a legitimate pathology like viral pneumonia or hepatitis. But, Jesus, he was blocked! Nothing decent was coming—no plot-advancing ideas, no narrative thrust, no belly fire. All that kept coming were bills from Visa, Verizon, Allied Fuel, Carleton Mortgage Co. and e-mails from Maggie to pay up.

It was December and the houses on the street were decorated for Christmas. And through the woods behind his place was a path around Spy Pond. He liked its frozen bleakness, so he broke up the keyboard hours with long walks to open his mind to any inspiration that might wing by. Yet he returned with nothing but a chill.

He spent the next several days teaching his classes and reading student stories. On Thursday he received a voice message at his work number. “Hi, Professor, this is Lauren Grant. It’s been nearly a week. I’m just wondering if you’ve thought over my proposal.”

Proposal.
The word jumped out at him. Talk about paranoid, she was probably afraid he’d steal the idea, so she had refused to reveal the story line until he signed a contract. Even if he wanted to, it was ridiculous strategy since you couldn’t copyright ideas, only their execution. Instead of getting back to her, he stopped by the office of his chairman, Lloyd Harrington. “You know a student by the name of Lauren Grant?”

“Lauren Grant? Yeah. She’s a part-timer, auditing courses here and there. What about her?”

“She came to me the other day asking if I’d ghost a story for her.”

“Oh, yeah. She’s been shopping that around for weeks, asking anyone in Greater Boston who’s ever published a thriller to take her on.”

Geoff felt his stomach leak acid.
The little bitch.
She had come on to him as if he were the one author in creation born to pen her tale.

“When she came in, I suggested you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, that’s fine.” But he did mind.

“Did she say what the idea was?”

“Not really. Something about a ghost.”

“Whoopie,” Lloyd said. “If it’s something you’re interest in pursuing, that’s your business not the university’s.”

“Okay, thanks.” Geoff started out the door.

“In case you’re interested,” Lloyd added, “I think she comes from money.”

For the rest of the day, that phrase echoed and reechoed in Geoff’s brain. That evening, while sitting at his desk at home, he sent her a brief e-mail to say he was interested and wanted to hear more. The curtness implied that out of politeness he’d suffer her another meeting before outright rejection. He suggested they meet in the student center, wondering just how much money she came from.

The food hall was a large open space filled with tables and chairs and flanked with several fast-food takeouts. Because it was midmorning, the place was half-empty. He bought them each a coffee, and they took a table in a quiet corner. “Okay, but before we get to the story, I think we should discuss the ugly stuff.”

“Ugly stuff?”

“Writer’s fee.”

That caught her off guard. “Sure, of course.” Then from her
briefcase, she pulled out a manila envelope. “If you don’t mind, I contacted a literary agent and had a contract drawn up.”

“You’re way ahead of the game.”

“Because I want everything to be aboveboard.”

“Then let’s be straight—you’ve been to other writers with this, right?” He didn’t want to betray Lloyd’s confidence. “I mean, there are dozens of published thriller and horror writers in Greater Boston.”

She studied his expression for a moment, and her eye did an involuntary twitch as she rummaged for a response. “I considered others, but decided that the quality and style of your writing best fits my story idea.”

Bullshit!
he thought.
She’s saying that none of the others were interested, and she bottomed-out with you.
“Okay.”

“If you agree, you will be paid a flat fee—twenty percent up front, the balance upon acceptance.”

“Acceptance by whom?”

“By me.”

“So, there’s no stipulation that it has to be placed with a publisher first.”

“No, just to write an acceptable synopsis and then an acceptable book.”

“A synopsis?”

“Yes, I know from other students and your own Web site that you’re big on writing a synopsis—that you don’t start a novel until you’ve got a ‘slam dunk’ summary as you say. This way I’ll see how everything fits into place and how it ends. When that’s done to my liking, you’ll be paid the advance.”

He let that sink in, humiliating as it was.

“Okay, and if I write the book and it sells, what about royalties?”

“Well, actually, no royalties, just the flat fee, which I hope you’ll accept.”

“But your name on the book.”

“Yes, and the copyright under my name.”

He could hear the advice of her agent cutting through her nervousness. “And what if you don’t like it?”

“I will because I will be reading it as you go along.”

Jesus!
This was like his workshops in reverse: he writes installments and submits them to a student for approval. “And what if you like it and your agent can’t place it?”

She smiled self-consciously. “First, that won’t happen since you’re too talented for the book not to sell. Second, selling it is his problem. You will still be paid, no matter what.”

He wondered about her agent. “You’d be putting a lot of trust in me.”

“That’s right.” She nodded and smiled warmly.

He wished she’d stop that. The Geoffrey Dane she kept fawning over was all but dead. “How long a synopsis?”

“Ten pages.”

What he suggested as maximum on his Web site. “And what exactly do you have in mind for a total fee?”

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

Jesus! Where do I sign?
he thought, trying to contain his astonishment. “That’s a lot of money.” The advance alone could get him out of hock with his creditors and Maggie for months. Ten pages! He couldn’t write a decent novel anymore, but if her story line was viable, he could crank out a synopsis in a week.

“My grandparents were generous when I graduated from college.” From the envelope she removed a multipage contract with his name on it and the breakdown of payment. There was a lot of legal jargon, but the important details were there: an advance of twenty thousand dollars, payable upon the completion of an acceptable synopsis. The balance to be paid upon acceptance by her of a completed manuscript.

His heart was pounding so hard he was sure it showed—like the throat of a bullfrog.

“Seem fair enough?”

The light in her eyes said that she was enjoying this, probably because she knew how destitute he was. It also crossed his mind that it might be interesting working with her. She was good-looking and clearly passionate. In a flash he saw her naked and in bed with him between chapters.

“Okay, so what’s the story line?” He took a sip of his coffee and settled back.

“It’s quite simple,” she began. “It’s the story of a vengeful ghost returned to kill her fiancé, who abandoned her.” She paused for a moment as if to gauge his reaction.

It sounded corny, but he nodded her on. “Okay.”