Dreams The Ragman Read Free

of having to pretend there was anything normal or all right with any of this. “I need a favor and was hoping you could help me out.”
    “Is something wrong?”
    I bit my lip and started counting. It was a trick I’d learn in my anger management classes, and as simplistic as it was, it usually worked. Of course something was wrong. We were apart and it was killing me. “I have to go out of town for the weekend and was hoping you could feed Lou and change his litter box, maybe hang out with him a while.”
    “There’s no one else you can ask?”
    Jill knew damn well I had no family left here and only a few pseudo friends from work, people I might go out and grab a drink with now and then, but no one close. “Don’t you miss Louie either?”
    She ignored the question. “Where are you going?”
    “It’s Caleb, I—”
    “But of course.” She’d never cared for Caleb, so I readied myself for the usual onslaught of criticisms that usually spewed forth whenever his name was mentioned. Fortunately they never came. “What kind of trouble is he in now?”
    “Not sure, but he’s in New Hampshire and—”
    “What’s he doing there? He left New York?”
    “Apparently. I just want to get up there and make sure he’s OK. I assumed you missed Louie, so—”
    “I do miss him,” she said softly.
    “He misses you, too.”
    “OK,” she sighed, “I’ll watch him.”
    “Thanks. This opens the front door.” I held out a key.
    As she took it, she asked, “When will you be back?”
    “Hopefully by Monday. If it ends up being longer, I’ll call you.”
    “All right then.” She turned and started back.
    I returned to my car. “Yeah,” I muttered under my breath, “good to see you, too.”
    “Derrick?”
    I looked back, found her watching me from the office doorway. “Be careful, OK?”
    I didn’t make any promises either way.

THREE
    I barreled along the highway in silence, old memories gnawing at me. Traffic towards Boston was heavier than I’d expected but moving at a good clip, so I listened to the demons chasing close behind, pretended I had a choice, and let them lead me back.
    When I think about that night, it’s the wind that stands out. A strange wind, hot and slow, it blew in off the ocean, a precursor to the coming storm. Like many summer tempests, the one that hit later that night was quick and violent, more buildup than payoff. And it was the buildup I remembered most, the threat of what was skulking across the open ocean, slowly rolling in, closing on land. I could feel the energy preceding it, an electrical current crackling in the night air as I ran hard as I could in an attempt to keep up with Caleb, who was a good distance ahead of me and sprinting like a gazelle. After lots of liquor, two joints and a few lines of coke, I was lightheaded and sick to my stomach, in no shape to be upright much less sprinting, but I followed him anyway, pushing myself even when I was certain I’d vomit or pass out.
    Where does The Ragman go? Between the murders and the time he hops the next train and escapes, where does he go? Where is he then?
    The moon wasn’t full that night, but it was close, dangling there in the black sky, illuminating the area just enough for us to see where we were. Everything else was shadow and silhouette, sound, smell and feel. Touch.
    I figured it out, Derrick.
    We crossed a parking lot, jumped a low fence of wooden slats precariously held together by thin wire that acted as a divider between pavement and beach, then ran along the sandy pathways trampled into the tall grass of the dunes by the feet of countless tourists and locals alike, everything around us moving with that hot breeze, swaying, alive and oddly graceful, like an impromptu dance set to the chorus of an eerily hissing wind and the whispers of nearby waves lapping shore.
    I know where the Ragman hides.
    A man in a pickup cut me off, and my thoughts returned to the road. But in time, they drifted; lured back by The