Chapter 14

 

 

At 8 a.m. the phone rang.

My mom said, “Hello?” and then stood silently listening for nearly two minutes.

I watched her put her palm on her forehead and slowly drag it down her face. She looked tired.

“Okay,” she said. “Yeah, I’ll be there in 45 minutes.”

I was standing at the entrance to her office.

She said, “I have to go in, Mark. I can’t believe this. Grab a book or something and you can come in with me.”

“Mom, I don’t want to spend all day at the hospital.”

“Mark, come on. Don’t argue with me, okay? I have to go.”

“Then I’ll wait here.”

“No way. I don’t feel comfortable with that.”

“Mom, I’ll be fine. I’ll make myself some nachos and watch Thundarr the Barbarian all day.”

She paused a moment.

“I don’t know.”

“Mom, come on. I’ll be fine.”

She stood there, looking at me. Then I saw her check her watch and I knew I had convinced her.

“Okay,” she finally said. “You be good.”

“I will.”

She kissed my forehead and left.

I went around the empty house, looking out the windows, and the daylight on my face perked me up a little. I thought about the night before, about watching the hairy man jump from the roof right outside my window, and about how small and helpless I felt while trying to sleep in the recliner in my parents’ bedroom, and I started to get angry at myself for the fear I’d shown.

Maybe angry wasn’t the right word.

Maybe embarrassed was a better word. Because that was really how I felt. Embarrassed. I looked up to my dad. We fought, we argued, we never really saw eye to eye on anything, especially as I started high school, and yet I never let go of that image of him in uniform, Max at his side, running down the bad guys. He was, always, the hero.

My hero.

And what had I seemed to him?

Nothing but a weakling. A cowering, sniveling, weakling. A child.

He had allowed me a glimpse of the crime scene on the shrimp boat the morning after the storm, and I had paled and been left speechless by that horror. The hairy man overcame me, and only Max’s devotion and the police training he had received from my dad had saved me. The hairy man had even tracked me to my home, to my very room, and all I could think to do was to ask my dad about the nature of fear.

I was disgusted with myself.

So I went to his study and I opened the desk drawer where he kept the case file and the Playboy. The Playboy was gone, but the case file was there. And something more. A new series of pages roughly stuffed on top.

I pulled out the case file and opened it on my dad’s desk.

The top page was a grainy looking fax from the Louisiana State Police, addressed to my dad. And below that, in a handwritten scrawl, was a question: Think this could be your guy?

A knot formed in my throat as I turned the page.

I saw a black-and-white picture of a young man, in his late twenties, his sandy brown hair a tousled mess. There was dried blood and bruises all over his face. I stared into his eyes and tried to see the deranged, feral intensity I’d seen in the hairy man’s eyes, but it wasn’t there. The eyes of the man in the picture looked sleepy, like he was exhausted and worn down.

I turned the page and found a typed police report from May 3, 1978.

According to the report, the man had attacked a group of shrimpers in Delacroix, Louisiana. The shrimpers said he tried to bite them, and two of the men were severely injured in the attack before the others could beat him into unconscious submission with a boat hook.

Explains the bruises on his face, I thought.

What I was really looking for was on the last of the new pages.

The hairy man had a name.

James Edward Conlon.

I flipped back to the black-and-white image of the man with the bruised face and tried to picture him as the hairy man. Was it him? Was it really? At first I wasn’t sure. But the more I looked, the more certain I became. That was the hairy man. That was as a younger man, perhaps a little more sane, but not by much.

Either way, my devil had a name. And with a name, I had confidence. Finally, I had something I could wrap my mind around.

I thought of what my dad had said. “You can’t let your fear rule you.”

I wasn’t going to let it rule me. I was sick of bullies, and I was sick of cowering in fear. I knew there was one more full moon for the month, and I knew the hairy man, James Edward Conlon, knew where I lived.

He would come back, and he’d be looking for me.

It was the waiting that bred fear. If I was going to take control of my fear, I’d have to take control away from the hairy man.

That meant taking the fight to the hairy man.

That meant going to his house.

 

*  *  *

 

After the incident with my dad’s gun he’d hidden the key to his gun cabinet in a different place.

I hadn’t bothered to go looking for it.

The anger I’d felt coming off him as he checked the weapon and secured it back in the safe left me quaking in my shoes. The disappointment and betrayal he’d felt, and that he had expressed in his own tacit ways several times thereafter, pushed all desire to shoot the gun ever again straight out of my head.

But things had changed.

Now, I needed that key.

My dad was many things, a great many good things. I dare even to say that he was a great man. But he was not especially hard to figure out.

I figured he would never have the key very far from him, for he knew that a gun locked in a safe was the same thing as not having a gun at all if you couldn’t get to it. And he had gotten to his shotgun almost instantly the night before when the hairy man jumped off our roof.

That meant the key was by his side of the bed.

I went into my parents’ bedroom and searched my dad’s bedside table. Nothing but a few magazines and two Joseph Wambaugh books.

Then I remembered a little secret he told me. A lot of police officers tape a handcuff key to the inside of their gun belt, right at the small of their back, just in case they get locked up in their own handcuffs. So I opened the drawer on the bedside table and felt along the underside of the top of the drawer until I found the key.

Then I took it to my dad’s closet, opened the safe, and removed his service pistol and a box of ammo.

“Okay, James Edward Conlon,” I said. “You want a fight? You’re gonna get a fight. Here I come, mother fucker.”

 

*  *  *

 

I didn’t think about what I was doing until I was on the trail and about to enter the bone yard that surrounded the old abandoned farmhouse. Had it occurred to me before then, I might very well have turned around and headed home with my tail ducked between my legs.

 

As I cleared the trees and saw the house and the sunlight shining on the many, many bones that littered the yard, I realized that I’d crossed my own private Rubicon.

Shooting at that alligator–god, it felt like an eternity ago–the Smith & Wesson had felt cool and comfortable in my hands, a familiar and trusted tool. I felt like I knew the weapon, like it was part of my hand. Though now, as I walked into the bone yard, the gun felt impossibly huge, like more than I could handle.

 

I wasn’t ready for this.

This was a terrible idea.

It was a stupid idea. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But I was committed. So I held the impossibly huge gun out before me and turned a full three hundred sixty degrees, again and again, never stopping, expecting the hairy man to pop out of the house or the surrounding scrub brush and come charging at me.

Nothing moved. The sun was directly overhead, bearing down on me, and as I put up a hand to shield my eyes it occurred to me that it had taken longer to get here than I thought it would. I would have to hurry.

A breeze lifted clouds of dust in the air and carried the fetid stench of decomposing animals my way.

I didn’t gag, though.

I was too scared for that.

I wandered up to the porch and looked through the open doorway. There were more bones inside, and what sounded like a man lightly snoring. My hands were sweating and I adjusted my grip on the gun. My face and neck felt hot, my hands cold and numb. I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and went inside.  The house was empty.  No furniture, no pictures on the decaying walls, just trash and bits of the ceiling that had crumbled to the floor.  But I could hear the hairy man snoring, and I followed the sound through the empty house, testing every step before I put my weight down just in case the floorboards creaked, taking every breath through my mouth, just like my dad had taught me.

I found him in a corner of one of the back rooms, near the back door. He was sleeping, one arm curled under his head like a pillow.

James Edward Conlon, I thought. My own private devil.

I raised the gun and centered the front sight on his chest. I thought of the gun safety tip my dad repeated every time we went out shooting. Never point your weapon at something you’re not willing to destroy. That’s exactly what I want to do, I thought. This is the moment I take control of my fear. The hairy man doesn’t own it.

I do.

I cocked the hammer back and started to squeeze the trigger, but in the same instant that the hammer cocked, the hairy man’s eyes flew open and he scrambled to his feet, faster than I could have imagined. His speed startled me and when the gun went off the shot was wide and blasted a chunk of wood out of the door frame behind him.

The hairy man was out the back door the next instant and I was left holding the gun, staring at an empty doorway, the sound of him running on the packed dirt outside already fading.

“Crap,” I said, and stepped out the back door.

He wasn’t there.

“Oh no. No, no, no.”

I could feel the blood pounding in my ears and I was really starting to sweat. I had to move, I knew that. To stand still would get me killed. So I stepped away from the house and scanned all around me. If he was going to charge me my best chance was to be out in the open, where I’d have time to react.

But he didn’t make an appearance.

“Move,” I told myself. “Do something.”

I stepped around the side of the house and moved to the front.

He wasn’t there either.

I continued around, careful to step away from the corners of the house so that I could hopefully see him before he saw me, but he had vanished. I stopped near the front corner of the house where the roof was sagging, held up only by a rotted timber, and forced my breathing to slow. I had to think this through clearly. I needed a plan.

 

 

Something snapped behind me and I wheeled around, fumbling to get the gun in front of me.

But there was nothing there.

“Where are you?”

I heard a savage snarl behind me as the hairy man tackled me into the rotting support that held up the roof. The two of us tumbled through it, breaking the rotted wood and crashing onto the deck.

I landed on my back and the hairy man scrambled to get on top of me, his fingernails digging at my throat. I still held the gun, though I couldn’t do anything but slap at his arms with it. And still he snarled and raved at me, his eyes full of a feral insanity that turned my blood to ice water.

 

It was then that the roof collapsed.

I was desperately trying to get his hands from my throat when the roof above us cracked, swayed, and then dropped down on top of us.

The hairy man took most of it on his back and head. He rolled sideways, toward the yard, in a jumble of shattered wood and tarpaper shingles. I hustled to my feet, jumped through the collapsed wall, and ran through the house. Behind me, I heard the hairy man ripping his way through the debris. Then he let out a howl and came charging through the house.

I went out the back door and ran towards the trail, but didn’t make it very far. He was on me in no time, knocking me to the ground again. He went for my throat, his fingernails digging into my skin, his grip squeezing tighter and tighter.

I was so terrified, so totally overwhelmed by his snarls and growls, that I only dimly registered the sound of a shot.

Suddenly his hands were gone from my throat and he was rolling off me with a roar of pain.

The next instant I heard a growl and saw Max charging the hairy man. They crashed together in a fury of barks and growls.

Then my dad rushed into the fight, his AR raised high like a club. He brought it down, butt first, meaning to smash in the hairy man’s face, but Conlon was quicker. He twisted to one side and the rifle missed its mark. Before my dad could retract the rifle Conlon grabbed it and lashed out with a kick that swept my dad’s legs from under him. Conlon swung the rifle around and caught Max in the jaw. I saw blood jet into the air as I rolled over and got to my feet.

 

The hairy man was standing over my dad, the rifle held high. I saw my dad’s hands come up, and the rifle come down with a savage crunch. Max was on his side, tongue hanging loose, his face and flanks spattered with blood. His eyes were closed. The hairy man stood over my dad with the rifle raised high, and as I watched, he brought it down again and again.

I had to act. I had to do something. I ran back toward the house where I’d dropped my dad’s pistol. The hairy man must have heard me for he turned and walked toward me, his eyes full of hate. I reached the jumbled mass of wood and tarpaper shingles and looked all around for the gun.

The collapsed roof had formed a sort of shell over it. I tried to reach through the broken timbers but it was just out of reach.

Behind me, the hairy man snarled.

I chanced a look back over my shoulder and he smiled with a sick, depraved look in his eyes.

I jammed my hand back into the hole of wood and shingles, desperately trying to reach the gun.

It was still out reach.

“God damn it!” I screamed, and threw my shoulder into the pile of debris.

It collapsed beneath me and the next instant the pistol was right in front of my face. I picked it up, turned, and pointed it at the hairy man.

He stopped, and for just a moment, just one horrible moment, I thought I saw the veil of madness lift from his face.

Then he snarled and lunged for me.

I fired a shot.

The hairy man stopped. There was a fresh wound in his chest, a spreading teardrop of blood oozing from the hole. He looked at me, and I thought I saw fear in his eyes. And, maybe, a trace of human understanding of the end of all flesh, a realization that he’d just been dealt a mortal blow.

But it was gone so fast I’ll never truly know, for the next instant his eyes narrowed and he leaned forward in a crouch and sprang toward me.

I fired three more times before he dropped face down in the dirt.

I stood there for a long moment, the gun held level at empty air. I was stunned by what I’d just done. I felt no triumph, no remorse, only a cold numbness spreading outward from my chest.

I didn’t move until my father groaned.

I dropped the weapon and I went to him. His face was battered. His lips had burst. His nose was flattened and almost black with blood. But his eyes were still strong. He stared up at me for a long moment, as though questioning if this was real, and then he threw his arms around me.

With a lot of effort, I helped him to his feet.

He went to the hairy man’s side and put his fingers on the man’s neck to check for a pulse. “He’s dead,” he said. He looked at me. “You got him. It’s over.”

I nodded. It was over. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say.

He scooped up his service revolver and his AR and we went over to check on Max. He was hurt and whimpering, and he had some bleeding bite marks on his face, but it didn’t look like anything was broken.

“Come on, boy,” my dad said. “Up!”

Max climbed to his feet, in pain, but still moving.

I said, “How did you know I’d be here?”

“Your mom came home and you weren’t there. When I got home I checked for the key to the gun cabinet and it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. You left it in the lock. As soon as I saw that the rest wasn’t hard to put together. She’s scared out of her mind for you, by the way.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

We walked toward the trail, back toward home. He was limping.

“You mind if I ask you why?” he said.

I stopped and stared at him. “Because of you.”

“Me? What in the world made you think I wanted you to do this?”

“Because of what you said about fear. You said I can’t let my fear control me. So I didn’t. I took control of my fear, just like you said.”

He looked thoroughly confused. “Mark,” he said with a heavy sigh.  “I do believe you are gonna be the death of me.”