PART V: CATHERINE

At this point, there’s little I can do to find out exactly where he is except continue to track him via the images projected onto the surface of my pond. It’s time to employ real-world technology. I own a laptop, but I rarely use it. It’s late, but there are still places open with an internet connection. As much as I hate to patronize the competition, the Barnes and Noble bookstore downtown is open until ten o’clock and they have free internet. I needn’t pack the laptop as it’s already in a bag that it rarely leaves.

I check the bus schedule and find that the city transportation has stopped running an hour ago. Damn! If there’s a way I can check the newspaper headlines for the towns surrounding Peakskill, perhaps I can deduce if Max has been responsible for any malicious occurrences around there as of late, and maybe I’ll uncover a clue as to when he was last there and where he could be headed.

I hear a sound in the backyard. I walk downstairs and turn on the outside light in time to see a black octopus tentacle reaching over the pond’s fence, struggling to unlatch the door.

“Why, you sneaky thing!” I exclaim.

I wait and watch through the window of the backdoor to see if Octavia can unlatch the fence. I’m there for what feels like an extraordinarily long time, just standing at the door, watching a single octopus arm fiddle with the latch. I have to imagine this is the first time she’s ever tried something like this. Just as she gets the latch up and pushes the door open, I step outside and march across the backyard to greet my mischievous pet.

I stand with my arms crossed over my chest, drumming my fingers on my bicep, looking into Octavia’s rectangular eyes to see if there’s any sign of guilt.

“And just where do you think you’re going, young lady?” I ask the giant black cephalopod who lives in my pond. Octavia’s arms flap around the grass as if to express her frustration. “If you’re hungry because you’ve eaten everything in the pond, you’ll just have to wait until I can restock it. You certainly won’t find anything to your liking in my backyard, and you can forget about eating any of our neighbors’ pets.” Octavia’s eyes blink and her tentacles continue to flop around on the grass. “Now, turn yourself around and get back into that pond. I’ll take care of your dietary needs tomorrow.” I watch as Octavia slowly turns and guiltily slides herself back through the door, closing it behind. “I’m definitely going to have to get a lock for that fence,” I say as I walk back into the house.

***

The next morning, I walk to the pond and kneel at its edge to see if I can find Max. Again, it’s easy. I believe the fact that he’s touched the book that I left with him has given us a psychic connection. Because we’ve both come into contact with the same physical object, I’m now able to more easily trace his whereabouts. I see him take another victim outside of a car. This is a different car than the one I saw him get into in the last vision. If I could find some way to determine which day the vision I’m watching is occurring, I could perhaps be able to tell how long he’s been hitchhiking and maybe figure out approximately how many days he’s been on the road. Maybe at that point I’d be able to estimate how many people he’s killed since being reawakened.

In the pond’s reflection, I watch the murder. I see Max replace the body of the driver in the car. I can’t make out the license plate. Even the color of the car is hard to distinguish. I watch my brother walk away. As he does, I spy tall buildings across the skyline of a major metropolis. I watch him enter an empty laundromat and, after stealing some bedsheets from the dryers, I see him lay down and go to sleep in a storage closet.

I need to figure out where he is and try to stop him before he murders again.

***

The next day, during my lunch break at the bookstore, I call my seafood supplier and ask him to restock the pond. This entails him driving over with live crabs and fish in buckets loaded onto the back of a pickup. One by one, he’ll roll the barrels off his truck and into my backyard before dumping them into the pond, letting loose hundreds of freshwater fish and crabs. I call the supplier about every other month. I don’t know where he gets the fish and crabs, and he never asks why I need such a small body of water stocked so frequently.

I’ve brought my laptop with me to work. After closing for the night, I take a bus to the library downtown. It’s a few city blocks away. Most of the librarians know me. They often reach out when they have a request for an out of print book that one of their regulars is looking for. I appreciate them sending me the business, and in return I provide them with additional copies of hard to find books they may be missing on their shelves or ones that have been stolen. It’s a good relationship we have, and I’ve been fortunate to keep it for decades after dozens of turnovers in library employees over the years due to time.

I arrive with my laptop bag and make my way to the circulation area. My librarian friend, Tina, is standing at the desk. She notices the bag.

“A laptop?” Tina asks, surprised, pulling her glasses to the tip of her nose and looking at me over them. Though she’s never told me how old she is, I figure Tina is roughly the same age as I appear to be, early sixties. She and I quickly established a good rapport the first day I came in and introduced myself. Tina has white hair that she wears parted down the middle. She’s thin and is usually wearing a silk scarf over a long-sleeve blouse. I’ve never seen her wear a dress, always slacks with heels. Anyone could tell she was a beauty when she was younger. “How do you do it, Catherine?” Tina asks, shaking her head.

“Do what?”

“Stay so youthful. I feel like in the time I’ve known you, I’ve aged five years to your one.”

“I attribute it to genetics and healthy living,” I say.

“If I could go back in time, I never would have started smoking cigarettes. Dumbest thing I ever did. It’s a purely social habit. That’s all there is to it. It’s a way to meet people. Stupid. It’s been years since I quit, but the damage is done,” Tina says, shaking her head as she looks down at the desk with her hands on her hips. “And for what? All I have to show for it are these wrinkles,” she says, motioning toward the corners of her eyes.

“Tina,” I say. “You’re crazy if you don’t think you’re beautiful.”

“I don’t ever remember seeing you with a laptop before. I thought you were strictly analog,” the librarian says, changing the subject back to me.

“Well,” I say with a sigh. “I do like to keep things simple, and unless something breaks down, I rarely update my equipment. But I do keep this modern convenience around for the occasions when I need to research information that hasn’t yet made it to the history books or the local paper. Anyway, I need your help, Tina. I have to get on the internet, and I think I’ve only ever done this three other times in my life.”

I take the computer out of the bag gently as if it’s a delicate stone tablet from ancient Egypt. Tina takes the power cord and plugs it in. She helps me log onto the library’s Wi-Fi network, and I thank her and take the laptop to a cubicle in the back of the building.

I start by scouring Peakskill, Virginia’s local news website. As I go through the headlines, I find one titled ‘Restaurant Employee Found Dead of Mysterious Bite’. I click on the article. The piece details the demise of Paul Dieter, an employee of Gino’s Pizzeria. The article says he was only twenty-two-years-old and appeared to have been bit on the neck by something. The article is an anomaly among the feel-good news items in the tiny publication dedicated to the mountain valley community. That suspicion of foul play isn’t even mentioned just goes to show how uncommon for the area this sort of unusual fatality is. Paul Dieter must be the man I saw Max attack. I consider the amount of time and location of the incident. Max was hitchhiking north when he was picked up. If that took place immediately after this attack, and if he was traveling up the east coast, intending to head toward Rhode Island, there’s a very real chance that he has reached New York City. I search news sites for the five boroughs, but the homicide incidents are overwhelming. I close the laptop and think for a moment, steepling my fingers. Max may be only a few hours’ drive from where I sit.