Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero Read online

  Stop being paranoid.

  Still, he found himself walking faster, his eyes scanning the crowd with uncertainty. The feeling didn’t seem to alleviate until he was within sight of home.

  He entered through the side door of the garage. The larger car door was down now as Jenny still laid in pieces on the cement floor, surrounded by the tools that he and Collin hadn’t had time to put away. The four of them didn’t use the place for anything but Collin’s bike and the garage stayed fairly empty. Hayden was the only one who had a car, but he tended to park it in the driveway. Jonathan stepped up the small set of stairs leading to the door that connected the garage with the house.

  He crossed the living room and hung his coat in the closet at the foot of the stairs. Jonathan and Paige’s rooms were on the second floor, while Hayden and Collin’s were off of the living room on the main floor. In the kitchen, he poured a glass of water out of the pitcher they kept in the refrigerator, setting it onto the counter. While he did so he popped a few precautionary Ibuprofen, painkillers and water being a ritual he’d developed for whenever his roommates got him out for the evening.

  For a moment he wondered if his mother had done the same when she’d been in college. It was hard to imagine that this was an innovation to college drinking that his generation could claim. He’d have to ask her someday. He smiled to himself as it occurred to him that it would have to wait until after he graduated, or she’d start worrying that he would party himself out of school when she inevitably read too much into the question. Evelyn was like that, always overly worried about college in particular. It amused Jonathan. College was a struggle at times, but he didn’t have any doubts he’d graduate. He’d always been more worried about what came after, when real life began and the pressures of the world outside the shield of higher education started making their demands on him.

  Thoughts like this should have made him more tranquil, at least those of his mother. They were comfortable after all, endearing. Instead, he felt uneasy again. It stopped him mid swallow as he looked over the empty living room. His eyes surveyed the house looking for something lurking in the shadows. Perhaps it was just too quiet, he thought. The absence of people was unusual here. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been the only one home, and somehow even that thought disturbed him. He stood there for a moment, listening to the silence, annoyed again that the paranoia made no rational sense.

  This wasn’t even a particularly ominous evening. There was no thunder or lighting, it was Seattle and it wasn’t even raining.

  Nothing.

  “Be brave, Tibbs,” he said out loud, finishing off his water.

  He frowned as he noticed that apparently he called himself Tibbs when he wasn’t taking himself seriously. Leaving the pitcher out for Collin and Hayden, he started to climb the stairs to his bedroom. On the second step, he heard a noise and froze. It was so slight he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it, like a dresser drawer being gently pushed shut. It hadn’t been a creak of a floor board or some sound that older houses made. Hesitant, he was already wondering if his inebriated mind was playing a trick on him. It wasn’t out of the question, given how jumpy he’d been since leaving the bar.

  Standing there, it occurred to him that there weren’t a lot of realistic options in these moments. It wasn’t the first time he thought he’d heard something strange when he was in a house alone. It wasn’t as if he could call out and hope that if there was an intruder, a real one and not a figment of is imagination, he would politely reveal himself. He couldn’t call the police because he thought he’d heard “something” and felt frightened.

  No, Jonathan was going to deal with this the same way most everyone did when these moments came up.

  He kept his eyes looking upstairs as he backed down one step. Without needing to look, he reached around the corner and opened the closet door where he’d hung his coat moments ago. Gently feeling around the corner between the door frame and the closet wall he found the house’s low budget security system, the handle of an aluminum baseball bat. He gripped the bat with both hands at chest level, reassured himself that he was being paranoid, and proceeded forth to clear the house.

  He crept up each step and reached the landing where it T-ed; on the left was Paige’s room, on the right was his own. Straight ahead was a bathroom, but the door hung open and he could see from the staircase that it was empty. He thought the sound had come from his room, so he headed that way, attempting to move slowly, creeping forward.

  This is ridiculous, he thought. No one is up here.

  His door was open just an inch. Had he left it that way? He could have. He had pretty much just run in and changed his clothes when Paige had asked them to get moving earlier. He usually shut it though. His hand reached for the door knob, then he thought better of it and pulled his hand back.

  Tibbs, he thought. Just get this over with.

  He narrowed his eyes and used the end of the bat to push the door open slowly.

  The room was dark, but nothing stood out as abnormal. His bed and nightstand were against the left wall. His two bookcases stood against the back wall next to his closet. The closet door hung open, and all there was to see inside was shadow. On the right was his desk, sitting under a large corner window, beside his dresser. His laptop sat on the desk. Other than that, the desk was empty except for a small cigar box.

  He kept the room spartan, clean, as empty as possible, everything with a function and everything in its place. Even his bed was made, as his mother had drilled the habit into him growing up. The only light coming into the room was the moonlight from the window. At ease, Jonathan stood in his doorway and let the bat come to rest next to his leg.

  “Your book collection is somewhat of a mystery for a man your age,” said a calm voice from the darkness.

  Jonathan jumped, startled. Even coming up here looking for an intruder he’d never actually expected to discover one, and the voice had spoken the moment he’d dropped his guard. The bat shot back up into its ready position so suddenly he’d almost hit himself with it. The jump back was no less graceful and he nearly lost his footing. Luckily his free hand had instinctively reached for the wall behind him to keep him from falling.

  Leaning against the wall, Jonathan frantically searched the dark shadows of the room for the source of the voice. He saw now why he’d initially missed the figure. He was standing beside one of his bookcases, framed by the blackness of the closet. As the man turned his head to face Jonathan his movement gave him away. His pale skin and blond hair standing out in contrast to the dark, no longer hidden by the black fedora.

  The blond man from the bar stood looking back at him, studying him.

  “I did not mean to startle you, Jonathan,” he said.

  The man’s face looked sorry, genuinely apologetic. Jonathan found it unnerving to have such an expression under the circumstances. The man turned with a snake-like smoothness, as though his body was gracefully transitioning to look in the direction that his eyes were already facing.

  Jonathan felt rigid and still, failing to think of words to speak and unable to move his mouth to form them. His mind raced to sort out the situation, and with alarm he realized the man had used his name.

  The stranger began to come closer, walking toward him with slow calculated steps. Jonathan fought to retreat, to will himself to move against the adrenaline locking him in place.

  “Textbooks, non-fiction, true crime, yet all the novels you own were printed fifty years before you were born. Aren’t you odd?” the stranger asked, seeming to look at Jonathan as though he were the question.

  As the intruder drew closer, Jonathan finally found control of his legs and began to back away, keeping an unchanging distance between them. When the man stood before him in the doorway he paused.

  “I’m sorry I’m here, waiting in the dark like this, Jonathan. I had to be sure I could slip away if you were not alone. Of course, I doubt a statement like that would put anyone at ease,” he said. �
�I often get curious about people, I find bookcases revealing, usually. Though, yours somehow makes you cloudier.”

  His eyes darted up and down the man. The stranger stood a foot taller than him, and Jonathan was a solid six feet himself. He seemed to still be waiting for Jonathan to answer, and grew thoughtful when he didn’t.

  “You aren’t a talkative one,” the man observed. “Also curious, also different. I’d have expected rage, an instinctual territorialism, yet you hardly seem to want to use that weapon.”

  Jonathan didn’t want to use the club. He wanted the man to be afraid of it and not escalate the situation. His eyes took a quick glance at the staircase. Soon he’d be able to make a break for it, get outside, get to a neighbor’s house, call the police and get this crazy stalker arrested. As though he could read Jonathan’s mind the stranger spoke again.

  “Don’t, Jonathan,” he said. “You would only prolong this.”

  The man began to move toward him. His face grew heavier with the weight of what he was doing as his hand reached into the front breast pocket of his coat. An urgency surfaced in Jonathan as the stranger reached for that pocket. He knew he had to turn the tables now, psychologically. He had to become the threat giver and not the threatened. If he didn’t make a show of strength, the intruder would only be encouraged by his weakness.

  Finally, he managed to remove the look of fear on his face, to contort his features into anger as he retreated back. He raised the bat and spoke.

  “Don’t.”

  To Jonathan’s credit, it actually sounded like he meant to strike should the man keep moving forward.

  The intruder took notice of the change in Jonathan’s attitude, but didn’t stop. The distance between them began to close. Jonathan cranked the bat back like he was cocking a gun, the last warning to the man that he would defend himself, but the stranger only kept the regretful look on his face and moved closer, finally pulling his hand from the coat pocket, holding something small that Jonathan couldn’t make out in the dark hallway.

  When Jonathan made the decision, every cell in his adrenaline drenched body committed. Swinging hard, the man discreetly brought his arm up, careful to make sure the bat didn’t hit what he had pulled out of his pocket, but would only land on his forearm. It should have shattered the stranger’s arm, but when the bat connected, there was a dull thud, and Jonathan retracted in shock. The vibration ran violently through his hand and wrist. It was as though he had swung full force at a bronze statue. The pain, so sharp and unexpected, made him lose his grip on the bat. He yelled out in surprise, dropping down onto his knees, and clutching his hand protectively as the bat clattered to the floor.

  The man’s free hand reached down and pulled Jonathan up with impossible strength. Moving slowly, he handled Jonathan like he was restraining a toddler, trying not to hurt him though he couldn’t allow him to thrash about. He struggled, but kicking and hitting the intruder was useless. The man held Jonathan up with one arm, gripping his shoulder and neck above his collar bone. Jonathan found himself pinned, feet dangling a foot from the floor, with his back pushed against the wall. Realizing that he was hurting himself more than his attacker, he reached for the hand holding him off the ground. He may as well have had him in a vise for how little Jonathan’s struggle affected the intruder’s grip.

  So close to the man, Jonathan saw the stranger’s distinct face. Even in the darkness of the hallway, his eyes were wrong, seeming to glow, as though they were back lit. They were blue, but an inhuman blue; an unnatural indigo, made all the more eerie by their strange incandescence.

  “Jonathan, try to calm yourself. I mean you no harm. Nevertheless, this is going to be unpleasant, I can’t help that,” the man said. As he spoke, his free hand revealed the small item that he'd pulled from his coat pocket.

  Jonathan had known no dread like seeing a syringe brought to his neck, no panic like struggling against a person he couldn’t push away, to feel like a rabbit trying to hold open the jaws of a bear. As he watched the needle move closer the moment seemed to stretch into an eternity. His muscles shook with the futile effort of trying to resist but were unable to even slow the needle as it plunged toward his throat.

  At the moment he lost hope, when fear and powerlessness were a storm in Jonathan’s thoughts, a single need made itself known. It surfaced in him like a prisoner escaping, tearing off the door to his cage, and brought with it a tranquilizing rage. One question became more important than everything happening around him.

  “How do I know you?” asked a steady voice.

  Jonathan was surprised to recognize the sound of his own anger in the question. The syringe stopped. The stranger tilted his head to look Jonathan in the eyes. In the light cast from the man’s iris, Jonathan saw the slightest curve of a smile break the man’s lip. Gone as quickly as it had come, the stranger's face became heavy again.

  “You should not,” the man replied.

  The force behind the syringe began again, and though he never stopped struggling, Jonathan felt the needle pierce his skin, the foreign liquid pump into his vein. The hands that had been taut with the effort of resistance began to feel feeble. His body went slack, his feet going limp as they hung above the floor. His vision blurred, then went black as he lost the strength to keep his lids from shutting.

  From within the darkness overtaking him he heard the stranger speak.

  “I’m sorry, Jonathan. This was never how I planned us meeting. You aren’t prepared, but you must bear this.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SATURDAY | JUNE 18, 2005 | 05:45 AM

  THEY sat silently in the hospital waiting room. Collin, still wide eyed, stared at the plain white wall across from them. Beside him, Hayden sat with his head bobbing above his knees as he studied the blood on his shoes. He’d been stroking the hair on his lip since they’d sat down twenty minutes ago.

  Losing the staring contest with the wall, Collin returned to reality and slapped Hayden’s hand to remind him to stop fidgeting with his beard.

  “I can’t get it out of my head,” Hayden said.

  They hadn’t spoken about it, not since sitting down. Both had felt so useless in the house. They had managed to call 911, but only after a considerably long delay. The police and ambulance had shown up and taken Jonathan immediately to the hospital.

  Hayden had wrapped him in a towel. Jonathan had been a distant stammering mess before he’d gone damn near catatonic, and all they’d been able to think to do for him was put him in a towel. Collin still shivered at the look Jonathan had had in his eyes, like his friend had been trapped in some infinite loop as he desperately sought to work something out in his head, but was so traumatized he couldn’t make sense of anything. When they had tried to ask him what happened, he could hardly speak.

  “I don’t, don’t know. Hospital. Gotta take me now,” Jonathan had mumbled, without really looking at them, his eyes darting around the room like a cornered animal.

  Playing it back now, hearing Jonathan’s confused and frightened voice in his head, Collin’s skin went cold. The image, the way his roommate clutched at his chest, unable to stop shaking, to get control, Collin wanted the whole disturbing memory wiped from his mind.

  They had taken Hayden’s car and followed the ambulance to the hospital. The scene at the house had sobered them, though they likely shouldn’t have been driving. The ride was short and they had hardly spoken in the car. Their communication had been limited to the exchange of worried glances as Hayden tried to call Paige on his cell phone. She hadn’t picked up.

  “Should we try her again?” Hayden asked.

  “No, she probably won’t see her thirty missed calls till her and the Meathead wake up,” Collin said.

  “Should we call his mom or something?” Hayden said.

  Collin had thought about it for a moment and then responded “I don’t have the number, do you?”

  Some more time passed before Collin asked the question they were both thinking.

  “
What the hell could have happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Hayden said. “There was so much blood. I didn’t think a person could lose that much blood.”

  “He must have been in shock right?” Collin asked.

  Hayden shrugged.

  “Without knowing what happened, he could have been like that for two minutes or twenty before we got home.”

  The police had questioned both of them for a statement, but they knew so little. When they had returned home they hadn’t entered immediately. Since leaving the bar they could speak of nothing other than rebooting the New Testament. They’d sat on the porch brainstorming about it for five minutes before even going inside.

  The floor had been slick. Collin had nearly slipped in the dark the moment they entered. When Hayden flipped on the light in the kitchen they saw that the pitcher of water from the refrigerator was lying on its side on the linoleum. Then they had noticed that the water was more pink than clear. Finally they had seen Jonathan’s foot from around the corner of the kitchen’s center island.

  Collin remembered thinking that he must have underestimated how much Jonathan had drank if he’d dropped a pitcher full of Kool-Aid, neglected to clean it up, and then fell asleep on the kitchen floor. They had both been giggling at the sight until they had turned the corner and found that they had grossly misjudged the situation.

  The reality had been like taking a crowbar to the face.

  Jonathan laid face up on the linoleum. His pants and shoes were still on, but his shirt had been torn off the front of him. The remnants of the shirt sleeves were still attached to him. His entire chest was red with blood, his jeans saturated with it. He was in a puddle that had spread so far it had mixed with the water from the pitcher. His face looked like someone had taken a can of red spray paint across it.