The Long Way Home Read online

  THE LONG

  WAY HOME

  stories by Richard Chizmar

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  Baltimore, MD

  2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Richard Chizmar

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  132-B Industry Lane, Unit #7

  Forest Hill, MD 21050

  http://www.cemeterydance.com

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-58767-741-0

  Front Cover Artwork © 2019 by François Vaillancourt

  Digital Design by Dan Hocker

  “The Man Behind the Mask” copyright 2016 by Richard Chizmar, originally published on RichardChizmar.com; appears here in print for the first time.

  “The Bad Guys” copyright 2017 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; October 2017 issue.

  “The Meek Shall Inherit…” copyright 2016 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in Beasts: Genesis, edited by Keith Chawgo; Media Bitch Productions.

  “Silent Night” copyright 2017 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in Christmas Horrors: Volume Two, edited by Chris Morey; Dark Regions Press.

  “Widow’s Point” copyright 2017 by Richard Chizmar and Billy Chizmar, originally published in Fearful Fathoms, edited by Mark Parker; Scarlet Galleon Publications.

  “My Father and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine” copyright 2017 by Richard Chizmar, originally appeared in Something is Going to Happen Online.

  “The Witch” copyright 2016 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in Dark Hallows II, edited by Mark Parker; Scarlet Galleon Publications.

  “A Nightmare on Elm Lane” copyright 2017 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in Chopping Block Party, edited by Brendan Deneen; Necro Publications.

  “Dirty Coppers” copyright 1997 by Ed Gorman and Richard Chizmar, originally published by Gauntlet Press.

  “Mischief” copyright 2017 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in The Demons of King Solomon, edited by Aaron French; Journalstone Publications.

  “The Man in the Black Sweater” copyright 2017 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in Hundred Word Horror, edited by Kevin Kennedy; U.K.

  “Odd Numbers” copyright 2016 by Richard Chizmar, originally published as an original chapbook; White Noise Press.

  “The Hunch” copyright 2018 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in The Pulp Horror Book of Phobias, edited by M.J. Sydney; LVP Publications.

  “Roses and Raindrops” copyright 2016 by Richard Chizmar and Brian Keene, originally published as original chapbook, Unearthed; Apokrupha Press.

  “Stephen King at 70: A Tribute to the Gunslinger” copyright 2017 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in Entertainment Weekly Online, September 2017.

  “The Association” 2017 copyright by Richard Chizmar, originally published in F*ck the Rules, edited by David Owain Hughes and Jonathan Edward Ondrashek; Leviathan Books: U.K.

  “The Sculptor” copyright 2016 by Richard Chizmar and Ray Garton, originally published as original chapbook, Unearthed; Apokrupha Press.

  “Murder House script” copyright 2018 by Richard Chizmar and Billy Chizmar, appears here for the first time.

  “The Custer Files” copyright 2018 by Richard Chizmar, originally published in Fantastic Tales of Terror and Astonishment, edited by Eugene Wilson; Crystal Lake Publishing.

  “The Long Way Home” copyright 2018 by Richard Chizmar, appears here for the first time.

  “Story Notes” copyright 2018 by Richard Chizmar, appears here for the first time.

  For Mary Wilson and Nancy Chizmar,

  sisters and Guardian Angels

  “The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.”

  —Agatha Christie

  “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

  —Stephen King

  “Man is the cruelest animal.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  THE MAN

  BEHIND

  THE MASK

  She steers the car to the curb, fumbles her cellphone out of her purse and calls her husband.

  He answers after the first ring. “Having second thoughts?”

  “Yes…no…I don’t know.” Her hand is trembling.

  “Want me to come get you?”

  “No,” she says quickly. “I just…I just needed to hear your voice I think.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Parked down the street from her house. I’ve already driven past once.”

  “Honey, you know you don’t have to do this. You can change your mind. You can postpone.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

  “Brad?”

  “Yeah, honey?”

  “It’s been fifteen years. I have to do this.”

  Deep sigh. “I just wish you had let me come with you.”

  “And I love you for wanting that, I do, but you’ve done enough.”

  “You’ll call me the minute you’re finished?”

  “Promise.” She glances in the rearview mirror, takes some Kleenex from her purse and dabs at her eyes.

  “Okay…I love you, Jenn. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Me too, baby. Me too.”

  ****

  Jennifer Shea, thirty-five-year-old mother of two little girls, second grade teacher, and recreation league soccer coach, was The Boogeyman’s fifth victim.

  Between the years of 1999 and 2006, The Boogeyman (deemed so by both local and national press) kidnapped, tortured and killed at least sixteen young women ranging from the ages of seventeen to twenty-three.

  Jennifer was nineteen when she was taken. A sophomore journalism major at the University of Maryland, she was walking to her car alone after a night class when she was knocked unconscious from behind in the parking lot. When she regained consciousness, she was naked and shackled to a wall in a damp cellar. The cellar floor was dirt and the walls were constructed of blocks of stone. The room was lit by a single naked light bulb. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious or how far they had traveled.

  Jennifer estimated it was at least twelve hours before her captor made his first appearance in the cellar. He was tall and thick-bodied and wore jeans, a flannel shirt and black work boots. He also wore a mask. She struggled to accurately describe it to the police detectives later, but the closest comparison she could make was the Michael Myers mask from the Halloween movies. It was ghostly pale and almost shapeless, and she still had nightmares about it fifteen years later.

  The Boogeyman had brought her a glass of warm water on that first visit. He hadn’t spoken a word. Just stood there and watched her drink and took the glass from her when she was finished. As he reached for it, his fingers brushed against Jennifer’s trembling hand, and she couldn’t stop herself from crying out in revulsion. Terrified that he was going to punish her, Jennifer cowered against the rough stone wall and prepared to be beaten. But the man only continued watching her for another silent moment before walking away.

  Th
e beatings—and much worse—would come soon enough.

  Jennifer’s family and the police worked hard to keep the details of her thirteen-day captivity and eventual escape out of the press, but as is often the case, someone inside the department leaked confidential files. Probably for a nice, five-figure payday. Serial killer stories were always big sellers.

  In the weeks that followed, the entire country learned about Jennifer’s ordeal. The Baltimore Sun ran a three-part series that dominated the front page on three consecutive Sundays. People magazine put Jennifer’s student ID photo on the front cover with a blood-red headline that read: 13 DAYS OF TORTURE AND TERROR. The accompanying article went into tabloid levels of graphic detail about The Boogeyman and his preferred methods of torture: the cigarette burns, the scalpels, the nail gun, and even the hedge clippers. There was also a police photograph of Jennifer’s grime-covered right hand, badly infected and missing the pinky finger.

  Even worse, if that were possible, was the blurry—and highly illegal—scan of Jennifer’s medical report that appeared as a sidebar in the People article, which not only confirmed that she had been repeatedly raped and sodomized by The Boogeyman, but stated the doctors felt her mental state was borderline close to suffering permanent damage. In other words, they were afraid that she had been driven crazy by the ordeal.

  Jennifer’s parents threatened to sue the hospital and People and even went so far as to hire a team of lawyers, but in the days following her release, Jennifer realized that the doctors were right. The Boogeyman hadn’t merely taken her body; he had stolen her soul.

  ****

  Jennifer isn’t religious by nature. She believes in a higher power of some sort, but doesn’t read the bible or attend church, and isn’t entirely sold on Heaven or Hell. Still, she crosses herself before getting out of the car. “Here goes nothing.”

  The house is a neat two-story with a dark blue door and shutters and a tidy lawn split down the middle by a winding brick walkway leading up to a wide front porch. The veranda is lined with a bed of tulips. Jennifer notices them and thinks: Anyone with tulips has to be a nice person, right?

  She limps slightly as she makes her way up the sidewalk because of the missing toes on her right foot, but she doesn’t think anyone watching her will notice. She’s had years of practice now.

  She reaches the porch and while deciding whether to ring the bell or knock on the door, a horrible thought occurs to her: What if she doesn’t answer? What if I worked up my courage and came all this way and she changed her mind and isn’t home? Or even worse, she’s home and refuses to come to the door?

  She glances over her shoulder at her car parked at the curb. I could just leave. It’s not too late. She vigorously shakes her head, scolding herself, and squeezes her hands together. You can do this. You need to do this.

  She steadies herself and rings the doorbell—and immediately hears muffled footsteps from inside the house and the unlocking of a deadbolt.

  The door opens and she is standing there, the woman Jennifer knows from so many photographs and television news reports: Mrs. Joanne Cavanaugh.

  Jennifer thinks she might actually faint, right there on the front porch, but then Mrs. Cavanaugh smiles and it’s a warm smile that reaches all the way up to her tired green eyes—and the kindness Jennifer sees in that smile makes her want to cry.

  “Mrs. Cavanaugh,” she says, her voice not much more than a whisper.

  The older woman surprises her—no, shocks her—by opening her arms. “Jennifer, come here.”

  And Jennifer does. She steps forward and lets Mrs. Cavanaugh hug her tight, and then she’s hugging back, and it’s all she can do to choke back her sobs.

  Mrs. Cavanaugh pulls away first, breaking the long, silent embrace, her hands still on Jennifer’s shoulders. Jennifer uses the back of her hand to wipe at the tears and snot on her face. “I’m sorry, I’m a mess.”

  “Come in, come in,” the older woman says, and steps back into the house to allow Jennifer entry.

  Jennifer walks into the foyer, thinking: Everything is going to be okay now.

  But then she sees the carpeted stairway leading up to the second floor and all along the wall there are framed school pictures of Cassidy Cavanaugh. They are perfectly spaced in ascending order, the little blonde girl with the pretty smile growing a year older with each subsequent photo.

  Jennifer tries to look away, tries to recapture the good feeling she just experienced, but she can’t.

  ****

  Time was impossible to track in the cellar. There were no windows, so Jennifer never knew if it was night or day. For a while, she’d tried to keep track by estimating each hour’s passage, stacking them up inside her head, but that only served to make her thoughts more confused and jumbled. She was always hungry and thirsty and her body ached.

  The Boogeyman came to the cellar more frequently now. Sometimes he brought her a glass or a bottle of water. Other times, a cold hamburger from McDonald’s or Burger King. Once, he came with a small Coke with ice and a chicken sandwich, and Jennifer thought she had to be dreaming.

  But it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t even a nightmare.

  The Boogeyman raped her. He burned her nipples with cigarettes. He carved random patterns into her stomach and thighs with a scalpel, the blood hot and sticky on her flesh. And he did other things, unspeakable things.

  He always wore the mask and rarely talked, and when he did, it was only to make demands of her. His voice was rough and raspy, his laughter cruel. Jennifer hated him more than she had ever hated anything else in the world and prayed that she would die soon.

  Then, after what Jennifer guessed was a week of this madness—and a guess was all it really was—The Boogeyman walked down the wooden stairs to the cellar carrying another girl in his arms.

  She was naked and unconscious and had long blonde hair that covered her face. Jennifer watched as he dropped the girl roughly to the dirt floor and chained her to the opposite wall of the cellar. Jennifer had never even noticed the shackles on the other side of the room.

  When he was finished, the Boogeyman knelt down and double-checked each of the locks. Then he leaned over and pressed his face close to the woman’s neck and face. Jennifer shuddered at the sight and her own recent memories. She knew what the Boogeyman was doing: he was smelling her.

  Hours later, long after the Boogeyman had left without a word, the blonde girl regained consciousness with a groan. The moans soon turned to tears and her sobs to screams. Jennifer sat against the far wall and watched and listened to all of it.

  When the screams finally stopped, Jennifer asked quietly, “What’s your name?”

  The blonde girl flinched and looked up at her with wide crazy eyes, and Jennifer realized that the girl hadn’t noticed she wasn’t alone. “Cass…Cassidy,” she said. “How did I get here?”

  ****

  Jennifer sits on the sofa in Mrs. Cavanaugh’s living room and tries to push the memories away. The older woman has retreated to the kitchen to fix them tea and Jennifer is alone in the room.

  She looks around. Reader’s Digest condensed volumes line two tall bookshelves. A curio cabinet filled with tiny crystal figurines stands in one corner. An enormous cat-tree dominates another corner, but there are no cats anywhere in sight. An old-fashioned tube television is centered along the far wall. A large family portrait hangs above it: Mrs. Cavanaugh standing next to her late husband, with a pig-tailed, braces-wearing Cassidy in front of them.

  “Here we go,” Mrs. Cavanaugh says, walking into the room carrying a tray with matching teapot and cups and a small plate stacked with cookies.

  She places the tray on the glass coffee table in front of the sofa, pours both cups, and takes her tea with her as she sits in a well-used reading chair.

  Jennifer knows from all the articles that Mrs. Cavanaugh is about the same age as her own mother, bu
t she looks at least ten years older. There are streaks of gray in her hair and dark circles beneath her eyes.

  “Okay, first things first,” the older woman says after sipping her tea. “Now that we’ve finally met, I’m Joanne. No more Mrs. Cavanaugh.”

  Jennifer nods. “Okay…Joanne.”

  “That’s better. Next thing: no more apologies from either one of us. I know I wasn’t the kindest person back when all this happened. I was angry and bitter and a first-class bitch, but that’s all in the past. And I know we’ve had a few false starts with this meeting of ours, but that’s understandable. I always said it would happen when the time was right.”

  “That’s the same thing my counselor always said.”

  “Smart lady.” Joanne hesitates. “Your counselor is a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Makes sense that it would be.” Joanne takes another sip of tea and then a bite of a cookie, and Jennifer realizes the woman is waiting for her to start. She takes a deep breath and begins:

  “I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long. I know you’ve read the police reports and my letters, but there were some things I needed to say face-to-face.”

  Jennifer forces herself to stop fidgeting with a seam in the sofa cushion. She clasps her hands together in her lap and goes on.

  “Your daughter…Cassidy…and I were only together for a short period of time, not even a week, but we grew very close. All we had in that horrible place was each other.”

  Her voice cracks and tears begin to stream down Jennifer’s face. Joanne gets up and takes a box of tissue from a nearby end table and hands it to her.

  “Thank you,” Jennifer says, wiping her eyes.

  “Just take your time. I know this is difficult.”

  Jennifer blows her nose and continues. “We talked about everything. Growing up. School. Boyfriends. Pets. Vacations. Books and movies. Friends. Our parents. We shared what little food we were given. We watched over each other when one of us fell asleep. He…he tried to make us hurt each other, for fun, but we refused. It was the one thing we wouldn’t do, no matter how much he hit us or threatened us. We wouldn’t hurt each other.”