A Psychic Coup

Pt. II

‘Too Close to Home’

(Edit #2)

(Based on a true story. Names and certain situations have been changed to protect the innocent.)

Jim Hudson was studying the wall of TVs linked to cameras that were surveying the outside perimeter. He was trying his best to show interest in the claustrophobic survelliance room with the sterile light blue walls that were devoid of any charm. It looked like a men’s bathroom for a public pool in here. Being a security guard in an office the size of a closet might have felt like a totally meaningless job with no mobility, but Jim was the only one in the staff that was trained for this position now so it wouldn’t help anybody if he all of a sudden up and quit on his company. The security job consisted mostly of scanning the sidewalk around where the parking lot owned by the company was located for suspicious activity. The parking lot was only open during the day, but Brunswick was a small town with little to do but dream, and the kids were always fucking about in the lot, smoking reefer, and finger-banging each other on the top floor of the ramp. Jim was expected to wear a security guard outfit, with a blue suit and hat, with a hard plastic badge. The outfit seemed excessive, as he never left the survelliance room for anybody to actually view his official looking uniform. He was glad for this, because security guards weren’t as feared as police officers, in fact many teens thought they were an stupid joke and asking to be fucked with for choosing such a profession, (and sometimes proved to be right) when guards like Elroy Peterson, who was 51, and in the employ of the same company as Jim, would buy beer for the little shits when off duty, or have ’em over to pass a bong around.

Jim was praying he wouldn’t get another middle finger in the face again today from the passerby, but this was what is was like manning a camera that was not an extension of himself, but of societies increasing paranoia and totalitarianism. A man, with a black jacket, and raised collar that cast shade over his face suddenly passed into view under one of the cameras that Jim had eyes on. Remembering his work, Jim willed himself back into attention, and tried to forget his increasing hunger pangs. The man in the jacket came onto the stage, from the left with his back to the camera. Suddenly, he swung around and stared directly into his lens. The stranger’s eyes gleamed at Jim like they were made of glass. He drew up closer to the camera, almost entirely filling it with his body that was encompassing the lens. The stranger seemed to be inspecting the camera throughly, like a thief who is calculating how to steal a safe with the smallest risk.

“The fuck is this guy doing?,” Thought Jim, as he felt a chill pass through his body.

Withdrawing from his extreme close-up with the camera, the stranger pulled away, and looked at the camera with a tilted head. It was as if he was trying to see through to the other side, but there was no telling his true motives, as his face was still shaded by his collar except for the eyes that were a piercing grey. To the left of the camera, and behind the stranger, there was a long black shadow which at first glance seemed like a small door on a building, and then with further inspection, revealed itself to Jim to be a person hanging in the background like a gargoyle. Jim was almost certain that the original stranger wasn’t aware of this more recent onlooker. The first stranger thankfully gave up on investigating the camera, and went on his way into the oblivion of the night. The one that was hovering in the background continued to stare into the camera for the next hour like a terrifying owl or possum with the black eyes that go on forever. The stranger was cleverly positioned at a spot that was out of range of the company’s property, but still eerily fell under the eye of the camera. Halfway into the standoff, a kid passed in front of the stranger, and stopped to dig a prize out of his nostril. By the time the kid had made his way out of the frame, the stranger in the background was gone.

Jim glanced at the wall clock and realized that he only had twenty minutes to kill and his shift would be over. After calling his house and checking his answering machine, he heard a message from his pal Bernard who was doing a private investigating gig for some lady that was being harrassed. It looked like Bernie wanted to know where to get a good two-way radio so his client would have a way of contacting him during a break-in. Jim called Bernie back and recommended this place up on Third Street while he pulled his coat on, and offered to pick it up for him on his way back home from work if Bernie could have some beers waiting for them.

*

Danielle had been a constant on Bill’s mind since the incident, and he couldn’t help but think that the attacks would continue. Such a pretty young woman, an ex-nurse, and a good cook to boot, all these traits should have equaled the perfect roommate. Now she’d gone missing right after her attack in the dead of winter, had been gone for two days, and Michelle and him were beside themselves with worry. They had both agreed to live with Danielle after her divorce, and they thought their pleasant family life would rub off on her, and make her feel that life was worth living, but the responsibility of living with a person who was constantly under the gun seemed horrific. Bill was always looking over his shoulder, and gazing out the window, trying to be on the look-out at all times. His was a middle-aged man in his fifties and this was starting to burn him out. When he should have been reading the paper, he was found smoking cigarette after cigarette by the window, and playing his Vivaldi records too loud. The records were the only thing that came anywhere close to soothing his taxed mind.

Michelle was past being fed up with Bill’s nerves, and Danielle’s disappearance. She had plans to go and stay with her aging mother in Portland until this whole thing blew over. This was a testament as to how stressed she was because her mother was Hell to live with. She tried to talk Bill into it, but Bill seemed obssessed with being there for Danielle when she turned up. It was like he felt responsibility for her disappearance.

“Bill, honey, she’s not our damn child!”

“We told her folks that we would stay with her, and that’s what I aim to do.”

Later that night, Bill had been boiling tea in his teapot, while reading a John D. Macdonald crime novel in his study. He was following the exploits of the Terrance Mcgee detective and admiring his bravado and free-wheeling life. The Mcgee character was right in the midst of chasing down a suspect on the run, when Bill realized the teapot must have been going off for an hour or so. He ran downstairs, and saw that the pot was indeed black, and that the flame was still burning under it. He heard a crash outside and ran out to the side of the house where he found Danielle crouching by the kitchen window. It was freezing outside, and she was dressed only in a negligee. Her hands were red from the cold, bound, and there was a nylon tied tightly around her neck. There was a piece of tape on her mouth that Bill carefully removed.

“What happened to you, Danielle? Where have you been?”

Danielle took a long time to speak, but at last she finally found the words.

“I saw...white tennis shoes...I was going to get that box that Mom had given me before I moved out...and then a person hit me from behind with a block of wood...I think he had tennis shoes on ’cuz I saw them in front of me before it all went black...”

“Why were you gone for so long? Do you remember where you were?”

Danielle didn’t appear to have anything more to say, so Bill went inside to phone the police after getting Danielle something to drink. He was happy to have her home, but still very troubled. After the cops came, and took her sparse statement, they agreed to do a 24 hour 'Watch and Search' of their residence on Berkley Street. The survelliance was supposed to begin the following night. Officer Mindy and her partner Chip O'Flannery would be in charge of the case. Bill remembered Chip from grade school, and the memory didn't make him feel any more safe. Chip was perpetually the class clown and skirt chaser. Bill made himself a drink of scotch, and went upstairs to check on Danielle. He was surprised to find her on the phone in her room. Her face had lost all of it's rosy coloring around her perky cheeks. Her skin was the same color as her nightgown, and it seemed like at any moment she could just disappear forever. Looking like a mime that had just been robbed, Danielle dropped the phone, and it bounced up and down on the pink coiled string. She stared right through Bill, and Bill felt a chill shoot through his body like a ghost had just passed through him.

“Who was that on the phone, Danielle?”

“It was them. The one’s that kidnapped me. All I could hear were their whispers, but I know it was them. They were telling me all these bad things that are going to happen to me. The ways I was going to die, and the ways they were going to make sure it was clean, and that no one could help me. I think they’re trying to scare me to death.”

(To be continued...)