PRECINCT 20: DEAD STRANGE
(Web serial, 2002 - ) - stories by A.R.Yngve
<--Previous
- - -
Next-->
THE NAME IN THE CAVE
By A.R.Yngve
"I don't understand it," the father said for the fifth or tenth time since he had entered the Precinct 20 police station. "My son was not a maniac. He'd never touch drugs, I swear. He was a good boy with a bright future."
Lieutenant Detective Innis Garris at the Homicide Squad of the 20th Precinct listened to the shocked parent, one Morgan Boxner.
Boxner seemed like a well-adjusted, middle-aged, noticeably face-lifted WASP businessman - though at the moment also in a state of shock, and his chin had not been shaved for at least a day.
Behind Boxner sat his lawyer, a thin woman with a face so Botoxed it seemed painted on her head.
Garris vaguely recalled that he'd seen this man in a news program on a local TV channel, where Boxner had accused illegal immigrants of "bleeding the country dry." Since Boxner was now suspected of manslaughter, possibly murder, Garris had dug up all files he could find on Boxner.
He found that Boxner made a fortune on hiring Mexican migrant workers for sweatshops near the southern border.
"I don't understand it," Boxner repeated.
Between them on Garris's desk lay fresh photos of the crime scene: the man's son, about twenty years old, lying dead on the floor among shards of broken porcelain, still holding a sharpened and bloody spear in his hand.
"What I don't understand," said Garris, "is this." He put one thick index finger on the close-up of the dead son's face.
The young man had grown a beard, though that was not unusual. But the face itself seemed aged before its time, as if he had lived a lifetime already. His beard had a gray streak.
The father stared fearfully at the picture, then at the cop. "What was he on?" Boxner asked in a tone that suggested he might add: ... this time? The lawyer cleared her throat and tugged at Boxner's arm.
Ah, thought Garris.
"You should tell me as much as you know, so I can tell the judge at the preliminary hearing that you were not trying to hide something. And I have some more specific questions concerning the investigation."
Boxner went red in the face. "Do you think I'm just another citizen?" His lawyer tugged at him more urgently, but he shrugged her off.
Garris felt the burn of a new ulcer flare up below. "The suspicion of guilt lies mainly on you, as your son's provider. He might have used the allowance you gave him to buy illicit drugs, which might have induced his violent psychosis."
Boxner went from shocked to offended to horrified in the space of a few seconds. He wiped his brow and asked Garris to remove the photos.
"Lemmy was always an easygoing boy," he said. "But when he came back from his trip to Europe, he'd changed. Everyone saw it. And then he just got stranger..."
***
Lemmy Boxner had never been to Scandinavia or Europe before.
He had heard about the hot Swedish blonde women, though, and that was reason enough to choose Sweden for his first trip abroad in the summer before his first semester.
When he and his buddies Henry DuMarque III and Mel Hapsburg stepped off the plane from the States, he had told them about his great plan. They must each score with a Swedish woman, or the trip would be a bust.
His girlfriend Trisha back home would never know, anyhow, and he had promised Henry and Mel to kick their asses if they squealed. Trisha's dad was an important figure and a friend of Lemmy's dad, and might help Lemmy's future career.
After they had checked in on their pre-ordered five-star hotelroom, they raided the liquor cabinet and laid out the tourist map to plan their attack.
Mel had been to Norway last year, and it was almost the same as Sweden anyway, so he assured the others: "Don't go for urban hangouts, those chicks are uppity or skanks. You might just as well find hot, fresh country chicks out in the small coastal towns."
Lemmy and Henry suspected that Mel might be lying about having scored in some Norwegian coastal village, but they had no proof so they took his for word for it.
There were several nearby small islands on the map, with several bridges connecting them to the mainland.
Lemmy pointed at the two biggest islands and asked Mel: "You figure we'll find some sex-starved Swedish blondes there?"
"Looks like a good place," said Mel. "I saw a hot X-rated movie once that was shot on a Swedish island, just like that one."
They decided on a trip to the nearest island next morning, and spent the rest of the evening drinking and watching cable.
***
Late the next morning when they all had sobered up, Lemmy led the way down to the taxi parking. He flashed his credit card to the cab driver and told him to drive them to "Tjorn Island."
The driver warned them that this would cost them quite a lot, but Lemmy dismissed him with a scoff. "Dad's paying! Me customer, you driver. And step on it."
The driver stepped on the gas and visibly ignored the three loud, laughing young Americans in his backseat. As the taxicab drove out of the city and onto the highway, the weather quickly shifted from sunny to cloudy.
***
About an hour later, the driver dropped them off in the harbor of Tjorn Island. Lemmy, Mel and Henry went on a walk along the many piers, and settled for the first open-air bar where canned beer was being served.
The view was quite nice and the weather pleasant. Henry complained loudly that the Swedes refused to sell Budweiser. They debated whether they should hop on a ferry to the smaller islands, when Lemmy froze and pointed to the street.
"Paydirt," he said with a gratified leer. A small open cabriolet had just parked nearby the bar, with three blond young women inside.
"Thank you, God," said Mel. "Lemmy, will you let me do the introduction -"
"F*** no," Lemmy cut him off. "None of your c***blocking." He knew that Mel would start talking about finding parties and booze, and he'd scare the girls. But Lemmy knew better. You had to play it classy. He got up from his chair and walked swiftly over to the car to greet the three women.
Lemmy flashed his widest disarming smile and focused his attention on the least attractive woman in the group - an old trick he had learned in college. He concentrated on thinking about how rich his family was, as he knew this should make him radiate confidence.
"Hi," he said, "I'm an American tourist, this is the first time I'm here with my friends, and we're sightseeing. Could you please tell us where we can find a museum or exhibit?"
The routine worked. Soon he had the girls seated in the bar next to Mel and Henry, who tried their best to play along with Lemmy's feigned interest in dusty museums and boring ancient history.
The three Swedish women, who were named Hilda, Britt and Lotta, told Lemmy that they were archaeology students. They were going to hike around the island's hills and cliffs to photograph Bronze Age and Stone Age ruins and burial sites.
On the spot, Lemmy made up a story that he and his friends shared an avid interest in such things, and would like to tag along with the girls as guides. He had to elbow Mel every now and then to keep him from adding something horny and stupid. The girls agreed to let the three young men come along.
Hilda, the oldest and tallest of the girls, told Lemmy: "Meet us here in an hour. You should bring food and water for yourselves, and good walking shoes. We're going up some steep hills. I hope you have climbing experience."
Was she ribbing them? The boys didn't notice.
***
Three hours later, as the boys were trying to keep pace with the girls, Mel had already torn his shirt on a twig and Henry was wheezing like an old man. The hills were not tall and climbing them was hardly a challenge for a healthy adult, but Lemmy, Mel and Henry had not climbed anything since gym class in high school.
Lemmy was determined not to show weakness or complain. He had managed to sneak a few pep pills through customs. He popped one, felt a rush of adrenalin and climbed faster.
Soon he had caught up with Hilda, and grinned at her. Breathing heavily as he climbed from one cliff to another and through the thickets, he asked her: "Are we there yet?"
He intended to sound suave and ironic; she only seemed mildly annoyed, if anything. "Not far now. See that cliff wall over there, behind the trees?"
Lemmy's wildlife experience so far had consisted of visiting the zoo. He was completely disoriented, but he wasn't going to let the girls know. "Sure. Over there."
"There's an old burial site there, with an entrance to a small crypt. It could be up to six thousand years old. No one has found any remains there, but the site has probably been plundered by grave robbers many times."
"Was there a treasure? Gold, silver?"
"Bronze, probably. " Hilda looked at the darkening sky, then checked her watch. "We'll have rain soon. Let's go have a look at the tomb now."
"You're not scared of waking up the mummies?" Lemmy said jokingly. Hilda and the other two girls gave him blank looks and moved on.
Wheezing and coughing, Mel and Henry finally caught up with the others at the tomb entrance.
The two boys sat on some nearby rocks to rest, while the three Swedish girls were not even breathing hard. Britt and Lotta took out their cameras and started taking pictures of the entrance.
Lemmy regarded the crude site. It was constructed from oblong boulders which had been stacked against the natural cave mouth to form a doorway of sorts. The interior had to be quite small.
And Lemmy thought: This is lame. Not worth climbing up here for. Should I make my first move now? Nah, too soon. Let's play along for a while, we can get them drunk and in the mood later. He had a few roofies on him and could lace the girls' drinks at a more convenient location. Roofies had worked before.
Then came an enormous ear-piercing thunderclap; the sky went nearly black above their heads. Within a few seconds the rain was pouring down. Without a word, everyone sought shelter inside the tomb.
It was cramped inside; the six people had to sit and stand close together, and no one could stand straight. Outside, the torrent fell hard on the landscape and swept the view in a dull gray mist.
Lemmy tried to stretch his back but kept pushing his head against the sloped rock ceiling. His head ached now and it had to be a hangover from last night.
Hilda took off her backpack, studied the gloomy interior and said: "I think they used this place to bury important people who lived on the Island in Neolithic times. Like, say, a great hunter or chief. He would be buried here as a guardian of the coast. You see, when the last Ice Age ended, the sea level was much higher..."
Mel and Henry looked uncertainly at Lemmy, then at each other, and he knew what they were trying to ask: Do we make our move on the chicks now?
He shook his head at them; it was the wrong timing, he was just too bored, too tired and bummed out by the hangover. And when he was bored, his mind wandered to mischief-making. It had gotten him into trouble occasionally, but Dad had always bailed him out before.
Lemmy took out a silver-color marker pen from his pocket, and wrote on the smoothest upper part of the rock wall:
LEMMY WAS HERE
Suddenly Hilda was up and tugging violently at his arm. "What are you doing?" she cried. "Are you crazy?"
Her fit actually amused him. "You're sexy when you get mad," he said and smiled at her.
She glared at him, smiling with cold rage. "Oh, I see. That's what it was all about, was it? Well, f*** you and your friends!"
Before Lemmy could try to calm her down, Hilda had picked up her backpack and stormed out of the cave, closely followed by the other two girls. The three young men stood at the mouth of the tomb and hesitated. Within moments, they had lost sight of the girls.
"Great plan, Mel," said Lemmy.
"My plan? I..."
"Forget it," said Henry. "Let's just wait out the rain and go back."
Lemmy became furious at Hilda. He'd show her! He picked up the marker pen again and prepared to write something really obscene on the wall. Then all of a sudden his vision dimmed; he rubbed his eyes.
Why was it getting so dark?
He felt his hand move without seeing it, and he dozed off where he stood. He came to when Mel and Henry shook his shoulders.
"Hey, Lemmy, are you all right?"
"Yeah, what's that you wrote?"
"Huh?" Lemmy looked ahead of him, at the glittering silver letters in his own handwriting. LEMMY WAS HERE had been scratched over with irregular lines, and the new lettering underneath it read:
LAMMINKEIN
Lemmy scoffed. It had to be a joke. "Did you guys do this?"
The others swore that they had seen him write it. All three were too baffled to even make a joke about the unfamiliar word. A few minutes later the rain ended. Three disappointed young men exited the ancient tomb and made their way back down the hill.
***
A few days later, after they had returned to the city and decided to party all night for the rest of their stay, they forgot about the tomb.
Mel met a Swedish blonde who was willing to take him home. Henry tried to chat up girls, but he drank too much and made a fool of himself.
Lemmy made half-hearted attempts to flirt, but with each night out he found it harder and harder to concentrate.
He could stand in front of an attractive young woman who seemed interested in him, he would start talking to her, and then he felt his focus slipping...
...and when he snapped back to attention, the girl had run out of patience and walked away.
His friends asked him if he was doing any drugs, and asked him to share. He popped his last pep pill, but it didn't help much.
By the end of their week in Sweden, Lemmy had a five-day stubble on his face and stayed on his hotelroom all day, watching TV while Mel and Henry went out.
When they finally had boarded the plane to the States and waited for it to take off, Mel and Henry had stopped talking to Lemmy. The other two were talking about what they were going to tell people back home, how to get their stories to match.
Lemmy looked at the passenger in front of him, and could not think of anything. The jet engines began to rumble.
Mel said: "About time."
Lemmy tried to bolt into an upright position. The seatbelt held him back. He fumbled with the belt as if he had never seen one before, and the jet engines sounded to him like the roar of a lion or tiger.
Mel shouted at him: "Easy, dude! You've got to sit down when the plane starts!" He handed Lemmy a barf bag.
But Lemmy wasn't airsick - he was scared sick of the plane itself.
He simply could not figure out the seatbelt lock, so he had to remain seated, soaked in cold sweat, as the Airbus gained speed and flew off the runway. The flight across the Atlantic were the longest hours in Lemmy Boxner's life. He would have jumped off, if only he could understand how to get out.
***
Once the flight had landed and Lemmy had calmed down somewhat, he could call his parents on the phone and tell them he was home. His friends left the airport in a hurry while he was talking.
His older sister Janice came to pick him up in her car, and asked him what was wrong.
"I got..." Lemmy blinked a few times. "Something in the Swedish food, I guess."
"Too much pickled herring, huh?" Janice laughed. "Oh, and Trisha has been calling the whole family to reach you. Did you stop answering her calls for the past four days? Have you two broken up?"
"What?" It occurred to Lemmy only now, that for a period of time he had forgotten how to use the phone, and had just let it ring. "No. I've... been feeling strange lately."
"You do look weird. Like you've been away for much longer than a week. So, how was Sweden? I hear it's boring and expensive."
Lemmy let out a strange laugh. "Expensive, yeah. Boring..." His voice trailed off as he watched the road.
Then the panic hit him like a sneak attack. The shiny box-like things with the burning eyes were coming at him!
Janice looked at him. "Lemmy? What's wrong?"
"The... the..." He pointed at the shiny alien things and suddenly realized that they were cars. His heart was still pounding too fast and he could smell his own sweat, reeking with fear.
"The..." With a mental effort he found the word. "The cars," he said after a pause. "There's... so many of them. They... they are bigger than us. How did we tame them?"
"You need to see a doctor," said his sister. "I'll talk to Dad."
***
When Dad had read the physician's report, he took Lemmy into his study for a talk.
"The doctor found nothing wrong with you, physically speaking. But he says you must be having a serious depression. Give it to me straight, son. Did something bad happen to you in Europe? Whatever it is, you can say it to me. I won't tell anyone. "
Lemmy struggled quietly to find the words. He could feel what was happening inside but not think about it in words.
"Dad... have you ever heard, like, voices in your head? And not just voices. Feelings. I look at things around me and they scare me cos' I can't tell what they are anymore. I watch people around me and I can't figure out why they dress that way or act this way. Everything's becoming strange. "
Morgan Boxner went ashen-faced. He looked at his son with different eyes, as if Lemmy had turned into a threatening stranger.
"These voices. What do they say? Can you write them down, sort of as they happen?"
"Okay. "
Lemmy sat down at Dad's desk, took a writing pad and pen, and hesitated. "I don't know the spelling."
Dad urged him to try anyway. Lemmy wrote with painstaking slowness, and his father watched the words take form on the paper:
LAMMINKEIN NOUEMI AUR
VOKTIR VAR SHORN
FOREMMEDI AUR DITTI LAND
AUR DI TOROLLI ODOR MANNIN?
Dad took the paper. "I'd better show this to a shrink." He made to leave, when Lemmy grabbed the sleeve of his suit.
"Please Dad, don't rat me out to a shrink. I'm scared. Don't... don't look at me like that. You wouldn't send me to the loony bin, would you?"
"We'll talk about this later," said Morgan Boxner tersely, and pulled his arm free as if he feared Lemmy's touch.
***
"That lousy shrink couldn't explain the words," Morgan Boxner told Garris. "So I passed them on to a language expert at Antonioni University, a..."
"A linguist?" suggested Garris.
"And you know what he said? Lemmy had written in something that was either a dead or made-up language. And if it wasn't made up, it may have existed in Stone Age Scandinavia. He translated it roughly into something like, 'Lamminkein is my name, guardian of Shorn; alien is your land; are you troll or man?'"
Garris sat to attention in his chair. "What's 'Shorn'?"
"He couldn't say. Could mean anything."
"And you told your son about all this?"
Boxner excused himself for a minute to talk with his lawyer. They came back to Garris, sat down and Boxner said: "I didn't want to put any crazy ideas in his head, or enourage some... you know, passing phase in his development. It sounded like a stupid joke. I'm not a moron, officer. Young people get caught up in their own pranks, they get obsessed with some dumb idea, but they don't get spirit voices in their heads. Not in my world. "
Garris wasn't too sure about that. He had had some very strange experiences in his own city. "Did Lemmy get any professional psychiatric treatment? Any help at all?"
"What would people say?" said Boxner, and again Garris had to suppress his anger at the man. "I figured Lemmy should start seeing normal people his own age, get back to the normal world and then he'd get better faster."
Ah, thought Garris, the normal world. How comforting that sounded.
"And when did he become violent?"
***
The teacher stopped talking and looked at Lemmy. So did all the other students.
"Is anything the matter, Lemuel?" he asked in a rather condescending tone. "Would you mind telling the class what's puzzling you about trickle-down theory?"
"Are you stoned?" whispered Mel, who sat next to Lemmy.
"What is that on the wall?" asked Lemmy, pointing at the chalkboard behind the economics teacher. He sounded confused and frightened.
"What do you mean? The theory?"
"The signs. The pictures. What are those?"
Now the teacher became concerned. "Please leave the class, Lemmy. You're not well."
"No!" shouted Lemmy. "Explain this sorcery and what it's doing to the people here! You have put them under some evil spell!"
Concern turned into barely repressed wrath. "Get out, Boxner. Get out now."
Lemmy ran straight for the chalkboard and then smashed his chair against it. Four other male students grabbed his arms and legs, and restrained him until the security guards had arrived.
***
"And then he was expelled?"
Morgan Boxner nodded. "I pulled all the strings I could, but you know how powerful the teachers' unions are. That's when I finally made the hard decision to have Lemmy committed."
"So why wasn't he taken care of the same day?"
Boxner clenched his fists over the desk and made to stand up. "I had to find a proper private facility for my son... not some public-sector socialist hellhole!" His voice broke. "I knew the right place that would let Lemmy in, but it didn't have any spare rooms for the whole week!"
"So you let him stay in your home without proper supervision." Garris would add this to his final report and place the blame squarely on the father. Boxner's voice was reduced to almost a whisper.
"When I told Lemmy he had to go next week, he retreated to his room and refused to come out. Well, of course then he became afraid of the house too..."
***
Every now and then another object in the house became incomprehensible and magical to him, and this kept happening faster and faster.
Things which just an hour ago he had barely noticed, turned frightening and absurd. They made noises which could not come from men or animals, they smelled like nothing he could remember, and they had tiny glowing eyes like monsters from some dark forest.
He had to get rid of the things that made the least sense to him. He gathered the hard devices which made squeaking noises, with their little lights and the black ropes attached to them, opened the window facing the garden, and threw them out.
When the alien objects crashed to the ground, a young woman stood nearby the pile of them and shouted up at him.
"Lemmy, baby! Why haven't you returned my calls? You're not even Twittering anymore! Is it my fault? Can I come in and talk?"
He recognized Trisha, even as the voice in his head cried out that she was a stranger.
"Yes... Trisha. Come in."
The girl picked up a small ladder and climbed up to the window on the first floor. He helped her get over the windowsill and she came down on slim legs.
"Why did you throw out your computer and the other gear?" she asked, had a second look at him and smiled. "Did you get that beard in Sweden? It's nice!" Trisha threw her arms around his neck and kissed him feverishly. "Lemmy, baby! I heard what happened in class! What's going on? You're not using crank, are you?"
"What's...?" He shook his head and feebly returned the embrace. "No, it's not that. I think I've been cursed."
The young woman ceased her embrace, took a step away from him and frowned. "You're kidding, right? Nobody gets, like, cursed. Nobody who is anybody, anyhow. Only Blacks or Gypsies believe in that."
"I think I made a mistake when I went into that tomb. I... woke up something... someone. Some dude who lived in the time of the Flintstones. He crawled inside my head and now he won't leave. I can feel him pushing into my mind, bit by bit..." He clutched his head and wept. "I'm dying, Trisha. He's squeezing me out!"
The girl took his trembling hand and led him to his bed, where they both sat down. She talked soothingly, and his affection felt real. It helped. His heartbeat slowed and he could stop crying.
"There, there, honey, I've got the right medicine for you." Trisha opened her handbag and took out a small transparent pouch and a lighter. "Have a joint, relax." She took out one of the small rolls of leaves, and lit up a flame on her lighter.
At the sight of the small flame, he gasped. He shouted in uncontrollable rage and terror: "You make a flame without cinders! Witch!"
He slapped the lighter out of her hand and shoved her violently off the bed. He started to bellow hoarsely at her in a language utterly unlike English: "DI NOUJDI OUNDI!! SVINNFOR LAND MITTI!! OUDI DREPIR DI EUR VILL!!"
Trisha ran screaming for the door and escaped. That was the last he ever saw of her.
***
"One morning, our dog reacted to Lemmy as if he were a stranger. She wouldn't recognize him any longer. And he didn't recognize her. He called her a wolf. The dog tried to bite him, and.... and..." Boxner's voice broke. "He beat her to death with a broomstick, so hard that the brush broke off. And then he dragged the dog into his room. As if it were a catch."
"Was this the same broomstick as in the photo of his corpse?"
Boxner sighed and nodded. "After he dragged the dog into his room, he only came out to use the bathroom and to find food. And after that he was carrying that broomstick on him all the time. I saw that he had sharpened one end... made himself a spear. And he smelled awful, like he hadn't taken a bath in days."
Garris made notes on paper. He had already decided to make his report explain the incident as a psychotic breakdown on the part of Lemmy Boxner. A part of him worried that there might be more to the case, but he suppressed his worries. Let someone else figure out what had snapped in that pampered brat's mind.
"Tell me about the last day."
Boxner turned his head briefly to give the lawyer a pleading look; she merely shrugged and said out loud: "Just say what happened."
"It was in the morning, around four or five. I slept alone, my wife was off on a vacation in Aspen with my daughter, I had to stay at home and watch Lemmy. I heard noises from his room and I got out of bed to have a look. I opened my locked box next to the bed and took out my gun, just in case. I have a license for it.
"I'm about to open my bedroom door, gun in hand, when Lemmy bursts inside, with that spear, and knocks me down. He pins me down with a chokehold, his spear laid against my throat, and babbles like a raving maniac. I drop the gun but he doesn't care about it. Then he picks up this marker pen, he tears open my pajama shirt, and... he starts to draw or write on my chest and belly.
"I ask him to stop, begs him to stop choking me... I panicked. I feared for my life. I got hold of the gun. He saw the gun in my hand and he just laughed like a maniac. Only later did I notice what he was wearing... a loincloth made from the hide of our dog. "
Garris listened with intense attention. "Did he say anything you could understand?"
"Just nonsense, half of it English, the other... I don't know. "Boxner made a strained face. "Wait... he kept repeating one word in all the nonsense. 'Lamminkein'. Then he lifted the spear off my throat and stood up... and... I had to shoot in self-defense."
Garris looked directly into Boxner's blue eyes. They were like the eyes of a snake: cold, pitiless. He checked the crime scene data on his screen. "Two bullets to the chest, one to the head. Sounds like an execution."
He could have pressed on, but... Garris felt a deep unease. Boxner's face was very pale and the fatigue seeped through the layers of surgery, revealing his true age.
Garris discussed with Boxner's lawyer the legal formalities of the coming official hearing, and told Boxner that he could leave the station but should not leave town until his hearing.
Boxner did not try to shake hands with Garris. While he was on his way to the office exit, walking past the other desks of the Homicide Squad, Garris caught up with him.
"I forgot," said Garris. "What did he write or draw on your skin?"
Morgan Boxner shook his head. "Strange signs without meaning. I washed it off. Who knows what went on in..."
His voice trailed off. He looked out the window, at the sky. Raw unfiltered terror filled his face.
"What's that? That thing!"
Boxner pointed at the sky itself. Garris looked out through the dirty high windows. He noticed a small propeller airplane passing in the distance, an advertising banner trailing behind it:
TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY - PALIN IN 2012
"You mean the plane?"
Boxner blinked and appeared to come to his senses - but when he smiled, it looked false. "The... the... Right. Never mind. Goodbye, officer."
Boxner left in a hurry. Garris forced himself to forget about Lemmy Boxner and focus on his other unfinished work.
<--Previous
- - -
Next-->