FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Read online

  April Campbell Jones

  Bruce Elliot Jones

  PROLOGUE

  …she was almost to the distant lights, not more than a block or two away it seemed. She could hear the music more clearly now and found an edge of comfort in it. Soon she would be there, touching bottom, sloughing her way through waist-deep water, climbing the dark, distant bank. The lights and music and people would come crowding around her. She’d be back. Back to civilization.

  She’d been lucky and she knew it, very lucky to have escaped them; she’d always had luck on her side, her only true friend.

  But it deserted her abruptly as the swamp bottom disappeared and she went under. A strong swimmer, she surfaced quickly, remembered not to panic, to hold her chin up and breathe normally. But now she had a choice and, this close to the lights and music, it seemed an unfair choice: either she began swimming now for real, or she turned back--and she could not turn back, not with them still behind her, still searching for her…

  She pushed off with her toes, grateful to be free of the icky mud, and stroked the warm, black water evenly in unhurried, measured pulls. She thought of the scows and dinghies at the rental dock but the squeaky oar locks would only make more noise to attract them and she didn’t need a boat anyway, didn’t think she did.

  But her arms grew tired faster than she’d have thought and she had to stop a moment and tread water. She felt the pulse of something big pass near her dangling legs, maybe a gator but probably a big carp and it didn’t matter anyway, she’d chosen her course and whatever wanted to take her under could take her now; besides, the lights and music seemed nearer. It was going to be okay, she’d beaten them--she was free. She imagined the surprised faces of the party people as she trudged ashore, their concerned voices, reaching hands, the warmth of a terrycloth towel…

  But her mind didn’t perceive her fatigue. There a strange buzzing in her head. It took a moment to realize she wasn’t moving, just treading water again. This won’t do, don’t flake out on me now! She pushed off again with a will.

  The swamp seemed less truculent against her, like soothing bath water. She mistook the growing lassitude for renewed strength, felt her arms rowing effortlessly, pushing her for miles. She thought she recognized the distant tune now and closed her eyes to hear it better. Keep your head up! I am, I am--relax, huh, I’m just a kid!

  She was dreaming she was swimming now, sleek as a tireless muskrat…until she gagged water and the night rushed painfully back. She coughed and rubbed at her eyes and saw through a stinging blur the lights still so far away. This can’t be right. She was free and in only a few more seconds she’d complete the freedom and beat them, beat the bastards for good, and boy would she have tales to tell!

  But she kept slipping under…

  …slipping under and thinking again how nice a boat would be…

  …how relaxing...

  ….if only she could really sleep…

  …for just a moment…

  ONE

  Janet sat in her robe in profile at the motel writing desk, left arm propping up her pretty blonde head, right hand scribbling in a notebook with a stub of pencil.

  It had been a long day and a longer night. She was tired and it showed in her lovely, even movie star face. She wanted to go to bed. But she was nothing if not methodical –the reason Mr. Lowery had hired her at the bank in first place—and it was important now to be more methodical than ever.

  Janet had her bank book open now, a small ledger atop it, trying to deduct $700.00 from the $40,000 that was just about all she owned. But her eyes blurred; she needed that hot shower, the soft bed. Maybe tomorrow…

  She pushed back from the writing desk, hesitated, and ripped the scribbled page from the small ledger, tore the small page into smaller pieces, held it in her fist and turned to the motel wastebasket beside her. She paused, juggled the fisted scraps a thoughtful moment, finally kept hold of them, stood and headed for the bathroom.

  In the end, she dumped the scraps into the toilet, realizing what she was doing had probably never been done before, flushed the handle, gazed at the swirling water a moment, and peeled back the plastic shower curtain. She slipped from her robe and stepped in, pulling the curtain closed behind her. She twisted the faucets on the bright shower tiles and grinned up at the warm spray from the circular shower head. She unwrapped the bar of soap and began scrubbing thoroughly; face, neck, arms. Short blonde hair plastered now, she worked the soap luxuriously into her shoulders in a nearly gloried baptism, ridding herself of the grimy day, the grimier memories.

  The shower curtain yanked open behind her.

  Janet turned and screamed.

  The butcher knife plunged.

  Spraying the bright shower tiles a rich, colorless chocolate.

  * * *

  I flipped the projector switch and the room went dark.

  I flipped the wall switch and the room went too quickly bright, eliciting student squints.

  “So! What have we seen? How do we feel?”

  I folded my arms, sat back against the front edge of my scarred wooden desk and appraised the youthful faces, now unusually rapt and focused.

  “Revolted,” one of the girls—prim Miss Pensley—noted. “I just saw a woman stabbed to death in a shower.”

  I nodded. “Revolting indeed. As I think it was meant to be.” I craned around. “Anyone else?” I nodded, “Yes--Mr. Niles?”

  “I felt surprised.”

  “Oh? How so, Mr. Niles?”

  “Janet Leigh was a major star back then, right? Hitchcock killed her off less than a third of the way through the film.”

  I smiled. “Very good, Mr. Niles, and why do you suppose he did that?” I looked over the tops of heads. “Mr. Thomas?”

  Mr. Thomas, class anarchist and not liking being caught off-guard, slumped from the back of the class. “The plot?”

  Some laughter. But I quelled it with a smile and raised palm. “Mr. Thomas’s observation may not be as obvious as it seems. Yes, Hitchcock killed off his biggest star hardly after the film’s begun, and yes, it was in the script. But rather than pursue why, let’s come at it from another angle. How did it make you feel? Miss Sanders?”

  Miss Sanders, nearly as pretty as Janet Leigh herself in her blonde bangs, set her wheels to turning. Which is why I picked her; her answer would be visceral and unfettered. “Confused, I guess…”

  “Good. What else?”

  Miss Sanders chewed her lip. “I don’t know…kinda lost.”

  I nodded. “Understandable. Anything else?”

  “Unbalanced,” from Mr. Landers across the room.

  “But then you always were,” from someone near the back, and the class rippled with snickers.

  I let them finish, realizing part of it was letting off steam from the film; all these years of slasher films later, and Psycho’s shower scene still engaged, still unsettled.

  “Unbalanced is a very honest answer,” I told them, “and a very good word. A bad director would, so early in his film, have just made a list of unpardonable mistakes. But Hitchcock was clearly not a bad director, not if he could elicit so many emotions at once so deftly: ‘revolted’, ‘surprised’, ‘confused’,’ lost’, ‘unbalanced’. Again, rather than ask why we felt these deeply visceral things, let’s ask what their purpose might have been.” And, before Mr. Thomas could open his mouth again, I added: “Aside from advancing the plot. Any ideas? Anyone? Don’t be afraid to take a wild stab…you should excuse the expression.”

  A current of laughter. But mixed with real inte
rest, real thought; today I had them in the palm of my hand. Good old Hitch.

  “To throw us off?” from Mr. Jennings in the middle row.

  “Ah!” I held up a finger. “Perhaps! But a good director always throws us off somewhere! Up to now, Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane is the only person with whom we’ve come to identify—and identify pretty strongly. We know quite a bit about her in her brief time on screen. She’s involved in an illicit affair with John Gavin, whose expensive divorce from another woman and his late father’s debts keeps their relationship going nowhere. In desperation, she steals forty thousand dollars from the bank she works for to get them both out of the small towns they’re trapped in. Yes she’s riddled with guilt, as we can see when she attempts to flush all incrimination down the toilet, tries to remove her shame by scrubbing it from herself in the shower. And yet she dies…murdered, apparently, by the homicidal Mrs. Bates when at her most naked--figuratively and literally. She’s gone! Even if our mind doesn’t want to accept it—no one could survive such an attack. She’s the main character and she’s ‘thrown off,’ torn from the narrative. And we, the audience are left with only one person to cling to, identify with.”

  “Norman Bates,” from Miss Sanders.

  “Exactly, the psychotic Norman Bates. And left feeling as unbalanced and ill-at-ease as he is through the rest of the picture! Oh, the famous shower sequence may seem tame by today’s standards, but it’s the relatively banal scenes preceding it and the terror following it that make the shower scene resonate with audiences even today. And that can only be accomplished by a director who understood the rules of film before breaking them, the step-by-step, carefully planned and executed methods of all great filmmakers! Hitchcock followed his storyboards to the letter—but only after he’d endlessly revised and approved them. A movie begins, class, with forethought, before a single frame is committed to film. Remember this if you remember nothing else and you’ll earn an A in my class: planning is everything!”

  And as if to underscore my last remark, the end of period bell sounded stridently.

  “Any final questions?” I asked sheathing the syllabus, “summary?”

  “I have a question,” from anarchist Philip Thomas in the back row. “This is the digital age, i-Pads and phones, wide-screen monitors. Why do you use an antiquated film projector to show a scratchy 16mm print of a period movie?”

  Good question.

  It must have been; the rest of the class was waiting for the answer.

  “The print is mine,” I answered, not without pride, “I used to collect 16mm film—way back when the Earth was still cooling.”

  “And the projector?”

  I began to take down the reels, fold up the antiquated spindles. “In the old days—quite before your time, Mr. Thomas, all theaters used film to project their movies.”

  “So?”

  I studied the hulking gray-metal anachronism before me a moment before lifting off the pick-up reel.

  “I like the clickity-clack sound of the film gate. Soothingly reassuring. Like train wheels.”

  * * *

  Outside the classroom door, blonde-and-curvy Miss Saunders and three other coeds were waiting like lithesome young jackals for me. Each held a copy of my book.

  “Really, girls,” I warned with a stern smile, “I’ve told you about school hour signings.”

  “Please!” from a desperate Miss Langtry, holding up her trophy. “I spent my last penny on it!”

  Or your parents’ pennies, I thought, whipped out my pen and whipped out a signature below title page: Write Now! The Craft of the Screenwriter by Elliot Bledsoe.

  Miss Langtry blew softly on my scribble to dry it, saving any possible stains to the facing page. “Thank you, Mr. Bledsoe, I’ll really treasure this! And Trenches was on TV this week! I saw it!”

  “So you’re the one,” I said.

  The girls giggled.

  “It’s sooo underrated,” from a winsome Miss Reibstein.

  And it played in theaters before you were born, I thought, selling about as many tickets as copies of this book. I signed her copy.

  Miss Cartwright thrust her own Craft of up to me. “I’ve already read it three times, Mr. Bledsoe! The pages are beginning to dog ear! Why didn’t they publish it in hardcover?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled irony, “wondered about that myself.” Along with the meager advance. But the way things were headed, with bookstores closing right and left, we’d all be on one of Mr. Thomas’ iPad’s soon anyway.

  Miss Sanders shook back soft blonde curls, gave me big doe eyes and carefully proffered my book as if it were a rare treasure. “Could you put ‘To Kim’?”

  “Surely.” I scribbled.

  “Is it true that title artist Saul Bass is the one really responsible for directing the shower scene, Mr. Bledsoe?”

  “Hollywood legend,” I smiled, handing back the book. “Mr. Bass only did only the storyboards and main titles. It’s a Hitchcock film top to bottom. I really must get to lunch now, girls.”

  Miss Sanders blocked my way just long enough to let me know she too was available for lunch, then turned a round-jeaned bottom to follow the others down the ringing university hallway.

  My real mistress, my little Blackbird, was waiting brightly for me in the university parking lot.

  My luscious black beauty, with more curves and seeping lines than even Miss Sanders would ever boast, waiting there patiently in the Austin sun before my name-stenciled skid block. A near-cherry, 1957 black Ford Thunderbird ragtop, sweet and gleaming as Christmas candy. They say only two sports cars can be considered true fifties classics: the ’53 Corvette and the graceful, over-polished, glistening chariot before me.

  I allowed not the tiniest bird dropping or maple stain on her windshield. I allowed only a privileged few to ride in the two-seater bucket beside me. I especially allowed no one to lean against the chassis.

  The girl leaning against the chassis looked up as I approached; she’d been studying the picture on the back of my book. I didn’t recognize her as part of my class.

  “S’cuse me,” I noted curtly, “I’m in a bit of a rush.”

  She studied me with sloe, gray eyes, thin but handsome mouth, durable chin, all framed by a casually arranged tangle of russet curls. Then she went back to studying my picture on the back of the book.

  “You’re not as good-looking in person,” she noted.

  “Thanks. Neither are you.”

  She looked up, genuinely startled. “Have we met?”

  “No. I’d remember. Do you mind?”

  “Mind? Depends. On what?”

  “You’re leaning against my car. Specifically the driver’s side door.”

  She pushed off with her rump, static electricity making her red dress stick and fan a moment in her wake. I unlocked the door (the old-fashioned way with key in lock) and slid in.

  I fired-up the V-8 and rolled down the window by hand a crack, squinting up at her. “Sorry. Maybe some other time.”

  She was still looking at my picture with not quite trusting gray eyes. “For what?”

  I nodded at the book in her hands.

  She just stared at me.

  I slid the Blackbird into gear.

  She tapped the book with a clear nail. “This is you, right? Elliot Bledsoe?”

  “That’s what the tire block stencil says. Excuse me.”

  And left her in the fragrance of leaded, non-catalytic converter fumes.

  * * *

  I was—strangely, I thought—thinking of the young woman’s gray eyes when my cellphone went off, thinking too again for no reason that it might be her calling. Thinking also that she was not as young, perhaps, as she’d appeared…maybe closer to my own mid-30’s…maybe not a student at all. Someone who’d tracked me down here in Austin to my place of employment just to have her book signed, not punch-up her grade point average? Maybe I should have been more polite.

  I glanced at the name on my cellular screen: Rita. Grinne
d. “Hello, my darling fiancée.”

  “If you’re having lunch at the student union with a big bosomed co-ed I don’t want to know about it.”

  “Average bosom, really.”

  “In that case I don’t feel so bad about asking you to stop by the condo this afternoon…”

  Wait for it.

  “…and feed the cat.”

  My hand jerked, turning left on Alvarado instead of right. “I hate the fucking cat. More importantly, he hates me.”

  “That’s why I don’t feel so bad.”

  “Really, Rita, this is cruel and unusual.”

  “Maybe if you did it more often it wouldn’t seem so unusual.”

  “Only cruel.”

  “I am sorry, sweetie, I’m just so slammed today. I know the cat upsets you.”

  “No, the cat terrifies me.”

  “Try and think of it as the perfect opportunity to face your phobia.”

  “Is that what you do with phobias? Where’s his crap?”

  “Hopefully in his sand box.”

  “His food, Rita, where do you keep the awful stuff?”

  “Cupboard over the kitchen sink. Half a can No more or he may get sick.”

  “Not sick enough.”

  “Be kind.”

  “Then he might think I liked him. And try to get close to me. And steal my soul.”

  “You’re a pet to do this, Elliot.”

  “Let keep the fiancés separated from the pets, huh, and I’m skipping lunch to do this, I’ll have you know.”

  “And what else do you remember, dearest?”

  “Else--?”

  “The Dean’s party tonight.”

  I groaned. “Is that tonight? Jesus. Cats and the Dean in one day. This is worse than a Paulie Shore flick. No, this is a Paulie Shore flick. What’s become of my life?”

  “The Dean’s not so bad.”

  “And the bombastic Mrs. Dean?”

  Pause.

  “Rita—?”

  “You’re right. Paulie Shore flick.”

  * * *