The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK ®. C.J. Henderson

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СКАЧАТЬ whispered word hung in the living room air accusingly. Franklin Nardi was a good detective. He had been a good cop. He did not leave a job unfinished. All stones on his beat were turned over. His tongue pressed against his teeth, face a tight mask of skin and tension, he threw his jacket off himself and got up out of his chair.

      “All right, house,” he said, getting down on his knees. “You want something juicy, I got juicy for you.”

      Renee had done this kind of thing a hundred times. A thousand. Maybe that was where the problem was. Maybe whatever her readings had picked up wanted more than a few bites out of a pro who could reject their spectral advances. Maybe she had found something lurking in a corner that wanted to taste real fear.

      Fine, he sneered within his head. Com’on, I gotta bellyful of it for you.

      So saying, Nardi closed his eyes and began pulling off his clothing. A man who never went to the office without a tie and jacket, who did not like the beach, who showered strictly by himself, the detective peeled away his layers of protection and sat naked on the floor. Then, slowly, he began to peel away those mental walls he had built over the decades as well.

      It was hard work for Nardi, mainly because like most people, he did not know where to begin, where the boundary lines were drawn. As he fumbled, the back of his mind whispered:

      It’s like George Carlin said, everyone driving slower than you is a moron, and anyone driving faster is an asshole.

      The detective knew what he was trying to tell himself. With the courage he had used to knock in the door of a known gun dealer, that he had used when he had charged straight into a hail of gunfire thrown at him by both sides of a gang war, he looked into his soul and tried to figure out why he had never had a serious relationship.

      What was it about women that he dreaded so? He had watched his father and others all his young years. So there were fights? So what? People fight. So families split up. His hadn’t. Some women cheated, but so did some men. His mother and father had been faithful. Everyone in his family had been as far as he knew. There were plenty of ugly rumors about who stole what from who, and who didn’t bathe, and who drank too much, his one uncle—the one who stayed a confirmed bachelor until he died, left all his money to the church, all those video tapes they found, Lassie, Wonder Years, The Andy Griffith Show, anything with a young boy in the cast—he had heard it all, knew it all.

      So what’s your problem, Nardi?

      The detective could feel the sweat flowing from his body. He thought of women he could have made a life with, remembered their faces, their bodies, the way they smelled in spring, the sound of their laughs, and he shuddered as one by one he remembered shoving them away from himself. Until it became easy. Until it became routine.

      He thought of women with whom he had slept, those he had used as rough fun, for sex and satisfaction and nothing more. And he thought of others. His mind brought him pictures of dozens of girls, some he had slept with, others he had played around with, those he had merely kissed, and even women he had simply dreamed about.

      And then he remembered Anna.

      Anna, with her perfect hair. Anna, with the shoulders so straight, body so taut, legs so long, whose lips tasted of happiness and whose eyes could see into his lungs, could watch the oxygen in them reach his blood stream and rocket to his brain. Anna, who had laid beside him the night he got his acceptance papers to the Academy, who had surrendered herself to him, allowing him his ultimate conquest on his day of triumph, when he was a king who could not be denied.

      Anna, who had been so shocked when he had rejected her when she told him she was pregnant. Anna, who he had sent to have an abortion. Anna, who he had ordered to murder his son, and then had blamed her for his death.

      Anna, who had spit on his shadow and told him to rot in Hell, and who had found herself another.

      Nardi sank to the floor and sputtered, tears pouring from his eyes, spittle bubbling on the carpeting. Afraid to face responsibility, afraid to be father to a thing like himself, he had instead poisoned his own life and then spent twenty years trying to throw it away. His gentle sobs turned into wails of despair, so violent a noise that he never even noticed when Madame Renee rose from the couch and covered him with her blanket.

      * * * *

      The next morning Nardi and Renee spoke at length. He explained what he had tried to do, and what the results had been. At first he thought he would be embarrassed, but he was too empty, too drained of anger and shame to care. For the first time in over a quarter of a century, he felt like a whole person and did not mind talking about it.

      “So,” he asked, shoveling in a large spoon of corn flakes, “where does this leave us?”

      “I think it comes down to what you said last night. We went through the entire place this morning—not a tripped wire, not a bit of powder out of place…” when the detective corrected her, Renee laughed, “all right, so we have to tell the blushing bride her pantry has mice—and small mice at that. But that’s it. I’ll offer to come back and do another reading after they move in, but that’s it. This place is clean.”

      Madame Renee stared at the detective and marveled at what he had done. To throw himself open to such psychic damage, to be able to face his deepest fears, unaided, unprotected—this was a man, she told herself. A Hell of a man.

      “It has to be clean,” she added.

      And so, the two packed their machines and clothing and bits and pieces and piled them into their vehicles. Making certain he had both reactivated the security system and locked the front door, Nardi took one last look at the old house, then said:

      “Well, no one can say the Nardi Security Team doesn’t earn it’s pay.”

      Renee made a surprisingly graceful bow of acknowledgement to his statement, then headed for her car. Nardi turned back to the house, tipped his baseball cap to its weathered roof, and then headed for his own.

      And, inside the house, the foul presence which had spent the entire time of Nardi and Renee’s visit suffering in exquisite anguish, allowed itself to burst forth once more from its thousand different hiding places. It was an elder, jaundiced thing, and its hate bounded from the walls as it unfolded itself.

      The fat cow, she had been so easy to resist it was a thing of amusement to the cursed soul, a humor so gay it crippled the violent spirit. But the man, all that marvelous, seething, ever-so-fresh pain…

      That had been hard to ignore. Agonizingly hard. Oh, for just a tiny tongueful of his snivelling grief, the merest pin prick of his pain…

      But that would have alerted the pair of interlopers, set them upon it, forced it to fight back, wasted time, lost it the prize.

      No, it purred, remembering the bride soon to be thrust into the bowels of its domain, the smell of her innocence, the drooling wonderfulness of her softness, the flesh to be touched, the love to be poisoned…

      What did they think it was, some inconsequential? Some mere nothing of mere human memory? Fools.

      The thing which pulsed with the old house exploded with laughter. It had been sorely tempted, but it had won its prize. It had been afraid for a moment, the detective had almost snared it with the delicious aroma of his fear.

      Almost.

      But it knew a thing or two СКАЧАТЬ