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NINE

Wheeler Residence
Bangor, Maine
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
7:35 PM

Ramona Wheeler really needed some time alone. After the incident in the break room involving Riley Storp, Ramona had no idea how much more she could take. She had seen her share of blood and guts, sure, but that was considered normal growing up in a family of big game hunters. She had seen the intestines of every animal known to the wild, including a mountain lion her father had shot during a camping trip near Rough Creek Lodge. She had also cut her hand on a few of her uncle's bowie knives and been sent to the emergency room around half a dozen times. But none of that compared to the gore she had walked in on earlier that day. Bits of Riley had been… everywhere.

Getting out of there as fast as she could after talking to those FBI agents, Ramona had swiped one of the movies off the counter and taken it home with her. She knew that was against company policy, but she didn't give a damn today. All she wanted was to push the sight out of her mind and focus on something that would put her in another place and time—hopefully one without fake blood and guts to add to the real ones she had seen today.

Glancing at the side of the box to secure the thought that she had grabbed something kosher, Ramona grinned sadly to herself before putting it down. She had been seventeen when The Breakfast Club had come out, so a blast to her high school past was probably what she needed at the moment. Anything else simply wouldn't do.

Turning around from the bar in her kitchen, she pivoted toward the popcorn popper sitting on top of the drainer, dispensing a cup of kernels into the machine before adding an equal amount of oil. Plugging it in, she listened to the thing simmer before heading down the hallway and toward her bedroom. In the fading light of twilight, her apartment felt strangely empty. Ever since the divorce with her husband, Kyle, and the judge ruling him for sole custody—it was only because he made more money, she had to remind herself—she had lived alone on Union Street in a small complex of four apartments. The three units surrounding her were empty, seeing as the building was out of the way from anything in town, but the owner assured her that the spaces would be filled soon. The idea of living alone near an abandoned stretch of road sometimes kept Ramona up at night.

Pushing open the door, she began to pull off the Blockbuster shirt she hadn't changed out of since closing the store early and made a beeline for the dresser. Pulling out a pair of pajamas she hadn't worn since last Christmas, she quickly tugged them on as the popper began to ring with stray kernels bouncing off the metal sides. Heading for the kitchen, she listened to the machine grow with intensity before stopping on its own, the process finally complete. Opening the lid, smoke billowed out of the popper and toward the ceiling as she grabbed blindly for the bowl she was planning to pour her snack into. Finding it with the tips of her fingers, she nearly dropped the purple plastic on the ground and swore at herself before dumping the popcorn into it.

I am so off my game today.

Taking a deep breath, she set the bowl on the cleared-off island behind her and reached into the fridge for a can of Coke. Right as she placed her hand on the handle, a flash of the scene from earlier took over her senses. Most of Riley's blood had pooled in three places: one under the television set, one beside the sink, and one smeared all over the façade of the old, white refrigerator the company hadn't replaced since 1990. In her mind's eye, she could see the scarlet handprints and the girl's clear fight for her life on the aged cooler, causing a shiver to run down Ramona's spine. Shaking her head to clear it, she blinked twice to see the image gone, with nothing on the door to her refrigerator except for a drawing her son Michael had done a year ago. At the time, she hadn't known whether or not the thing was supposed to be a giraffe, but after he explained that it was a dog, she found it cute enough to tack onto the thing with a magnet.

Biting her lip, Ramona retrieved a Coke Zero from the fridge and placed it on the counter. Leaning against it, she sighed deeply and drummed her fingers on the countertop. She missed her sons, Michael and Zack, who were six and eight now. She hadn't seen either of them since their last weekend together a month ago, and that was only because she had been working every one after that. The boys were growing up fast, playing T-ball and going camping with their dad whenever they could. She knew she was missing a big part of their lives as she tried to climb the Blockbuster corporate ladder in order to make more money than Kyle and regain custody of her kids, but she had a feeling it would all be worth it in the end—as long as some murderer on the highway didn't come along to end it for her.

The scariest part of being divorced, in her opinion, wasn't the idea of being without a man or the idea that she would never see her kids again—because she knew she would as soon as she stopped picking up extra shifts—but the fact that she felt unprotected. Living in an abandoned apartment complex always aroused the classic single female suspicions: rape, murder, home invasion. For a brief moment after moving in, she had considered getting a roommate, but realized that she wasn't twenty and in college anymore. She was thirty-eight, going on thirty-nine, and having someone live with her that she wasn't related to was a bit immature for her taste. Instead, she stuck it out and locked her doors and windows at night. She knew it was a false sense of security—if someone wanted in, they were going to find a way—but it helped her sleep through the night.

Unfortunately, every bump or creak caused her to jolt awake at three in the morning, anyway, especially after the nightmares she had been having for the past month.

It was always the same: a knock on the door and a man with a gun. However, the face of the person changed from dream to dream. One night it would be her ex-husband, then her former boss at the Big Gerson's she had waitressed at after leaving Brown University a semester before graduating, and sometimes even Lennie Brisco from Law & Order. No matter who it was that held the weapon, though, the end result was played out with her being shot in the heart and the very final fear of never seeing her kids again, right before she woke up sweating and panting. She hated the nightmares and tried her best to keep them at bay, even going to the length of buying a second lock for the front door, but they just kept coming. Eventually she had talked to her doctor about the possibility of night terrors, but he waved it off as stress and prescribed her a heavy dose of Lunesta. Ultimately, she didn't take it in anticipation of sleeping through a break-in.

Then there was the attack on Riley in the break room and her walking in on it. Ramona had a feeling she was about to have a whole new wave of nightmares to fight back, ones much more vivid and real than before.

I can't think about that now, Ramona reminded herself. I need to focus elsewhere.

Picking up the bowl of popcorn and can of Coke, she rounded the island and headed for the loveseat posited before the TV in the middle of her small living room. The sofa was under-stuffed and bought secondhand, but it was all she could afford at the time. When Kyle had left her, denouncing her as a cheater, she had nothing to her name except for the few thousand dollars she had had in the bank. It was enough to buy a small couch and some bedroom furniture; the TV had come from her cousin in Portland. Thankfully, the apartment had been stocked with the essentials—an oven, a fridge, and a microwave—saving her both money and effort. She didn't want to hop from Salvation Army to Salvation Army trying to find something within her price range that still worked.

Reaching for the slim case on the counter, she pried it open and popped out the disc inside, noticing that it didn't have the normal label on it, as well as the tacky Blockbuster sticker. Shrugging it off and reminding herself to fix that when she returned to work on Monday, Ramona reached forward to hit the button on the built-in DVD player. As the tray popped out, she dropped the disc in and waited for it to retreat and load. Sitting back on the couch and balancing the bowl of popcorn in her lap, she watched as the FBI screen passed before brightening into a plain white light. As she shielded her eyes against it, the popcorn nearly tipped toward the floor. Catching it just in time, she placed it on the empty seat beside her before furrowing her brows at the frozen frame in front of her.

Of course this happens, Ramona groaned, getting up to mess with the buttons on the set. The television hadn't come with a remote, meaning that everything she did to it was manual and forcing her out of her comfortable spot. As she slapped the side of the TV and hit the stop button, nothing happened. It was just stark white, like the disc was stuck in place and refusing to move.

Suddenly, a sharp knock on the door caused Ramona to sit up rigidly. In her nightmares, it always started with a knock, abrupt enough to barely be heard if a sound was being made. Taking a deep breath, she scrubbed her face with her hands before tucking her hair behind her ears.

"Ms. Wheeler?" a deep voice asked from the other side.

Swallowing hard, Ramona legs felt like jell-o beneath her as she made her way to the door. With shaky hands, she reached for the knob when, all of a sudden, the door exploded inward. Screaming in surprise, she ducked beneath her arms and crouched low. This was exactly like her nightmare in every detail, the only difference was that she should be feeling the cold metal of a gun against her neck by now. Chancing a glance at her invaders, she saw shadowed silhouettes in the light of her bright television—two of them.

"Dude!" a second voice chided.

"I didn't expect her to be standing there!"

Peering up at the figures in the doorway, Ramona could make out the shapes of two men, one taller than the other. Deciding that she had enough adrenaline in her to reach for the light by the door, Ramona pushed herself up and flicked the switch. A dim yellow glow cascaded over them from the fluorescents that needed to be replaced, but the illumination was enough. Dressed now in normal clothes were the two FBI agents she had talked to at work, both standing with guns in their hands. Seeming to notice her frightened expression, the taller one, Agent Cates, stowed his weapon behind him and reached forward to steady her.

"What are you—" his partner went to protest, but instead froze, his eyes falling on the television screen behind them. Whipping around, Ramona saw that the DVD was now playing, but not starting out with the opening scene she had been hoping for. Instead of the Universal logo with Simple Minds in the background, something much more foreboding played out on screen.

A moment after turning around, the starkness turned from white to gray, with two figures standing in the center. In one long, drawn-out move, one of the shapes removed a gun from its belt and pointed it at the chest of the second figure, who clutched their breastbone protectively. In the blink of an eye, the two silhouettes changed from plain black to color, though too bright and slightly out of focus. As she looked closely at the screen, Ramona noticed something—her—standing opposite the shape of someone she didn't recognize. She looked between the two agents flanking her, quickly realizing that it was neither of them, before focusing back on the television set.

"Sam…" Agent Hammond warned, glancing at his partner over the top of her head.

"What?"

"Shut it off."

Hurdling over the couch, Agent Cates, who she supposed had the first name of Sam, dove for the power button and quickly pushed it. Unfortunately, doing so did nothing to turn off the set, which continued to play out something Ramona had only seen in her nightmares. Reaching for the plug, Sam pulled it from the wall, causing the cord to spark at him as it fell to the ground. Still, the movie continued to play.

"Don't look," Agent Hammond said, placing his calloused hand over Ramona's eyes.

Ducking away from the television set, Ramona could hear the sound of glass breaking followed by a final crash. Releasing her from his grip, Agent Hammond dropped his hands and allowed Ramona to see what his partner had done. On the floor lay her secondhand television, face first against the carpet. Gasping, she furrowed her brows, gazing up from the heap of electronic mess to Sam standing awkwardly over it.

"Well, I think we can mark this one off the suspect list," Agent Hammond said, rounding the couch and heading toward the television.

"Definitely."

"Yeah, except now what?"

Sam shrugged before turning to Ramona. Seeming to catch onto his stare, Agent Hammond did the same before nodding pointedly toward the sofa. Taking a seat obediently, Ramona crossed her legs and hugged her arms around her chest. "We need to know what happened."

"You… you saw what happened," Ramona said, swallowing hard.

"I mean, this, what we saw: what was it? Was it a nightmare? A past experience? What?" Agent Hammond asked, his voice becoming gruffer by the minute.

Taking a deep breath, Ramona nodded. "It was, uh, a nightmare. One I kept having."

Glaring fixedly at his partner, Agent Hammond bit his lip and said nothing else. Instead, he reached for the DVD box to read the side before passing it onto Sam. "Check this out. Teen angst and a free homicide. Seems to be this thing's M.O."

"No kidding," Sam nodded. "The original tape was disguised as this same movie."

"Okay, but we still don't know who it is that's handing out the show."

Ramona shook her head, unable to make sense of what the two were saying. After a long moment of listening to them discuss Dallas, for some-odd reason she couldn't place, she waited for them to turn to her once again. When they finally did, Ramona braced herself for the harsh questioning she had had to endure at the Blockbuster—not from them, but from Detective Cohen. He had asked incredibly probing questions that Ramona wasn't sure she would be able to handle a second round of, especially now.

"Ms. Wheeler," Sam said gently, crouching down in front of her, "when you lived in Texas, did you know anyone that followed you here? Anyone you might work with? Or maybe a neighbor?"

"No, not that I…" Ramona frowned. "Not that I know of. There are a couple of people from Dallas or Fort Worth that also work at the store, but they've lived in Maine longer than they lived there. Why?"

"In 1985, there were attacks," Sam sighed. "Three girls were killed, then—"

"I remember," Ramona interjected. "Oh, I remember." Pausing a minute, Ramona rubbed at the back of her neck and took in the expectant expressions of the FBI agents. Knowing that look as one mirrored by her own sons, Ramona nodded and continued. "I had started working there during my senior year of high school. Right when the deaths started, no one could put the pieces together, but some of the employees had theories. As the attacks escalated, the police department started interviewing everyone who worked there. Eventually, we all got hit up by the FBI, who asked even more disturbing questions than the detectives. I never found out who the person behind it was, though, because we moved before that. My dad had gotten a new job up here to work with his cousin on the docks and we were strapped for cash, so we went. At the time, I really wanted to know, because those girls that had died had gone to my school, but without the Internet back then, I was left hanging."

"And you can think of no one in town now who might have been a neighbor back then?" Agent Hammond asked, a frown deepening into his face.

"Dallas is a big city," Ramona sighed. "Ninth largest in the U.S."

Letting out a deep breath, Agent Hammond turned to Sam, who was eyeing the television set as if looking for a way to lift it. Seeming to notice his partner's expression, Hammond pivoted back toward Ramona. "We're going to need to take this as evidence."

Biting her lip, Ramona nodded. "Why not? You already broke it."

"My thoughts exactly," Agent Hammond said, bending down to help Sam lift the hulking mass and backing out the front door. Thankfully, Ramona lived on the bottom floor, meaning that the two didn't have to carry it far, but she still didn't understand why they had smashed it in the first place. Back in eighty-five, she had heard rumors about a tape that could kill people, but hadn't taken it seriously. Whoever was behind those attacks then was a person, same as it was now. The television, she doubted, was going to hurt her.

However, there was still the fact that she had seen herself on tape, being cornered by a silhouette, playing out exactly what she had seen in her dreams night after night. If the thing she had been watching had something to do with the rash of attacks across town and back in Dallas twenty-one years ago, then they could have her crappy TV. She wasn't going to need it anymore.

Just as Agents Hammond and Cates dropped her old set into the backseat of their car—which was not the standard-issue FBI Crown Victoria, she noted—she nodded to them and locked the door. Turning around, she bypassed the broken glass near where the television once sat and went straight to bed.

She was going to have to take some Lunesta… for the first time in her life.