The Cry Beyond the Door

  Published by M.A. Koontz

  In association with:

  BookBaby

  7905 N. Crescent Blvd.

  Pennsauken, NJ 08110

  Print ISBN: 978-1-54398-959-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-54398-960-1

  Copyright © 2019 by M.A. Koontz

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  For permission requests, please contact the publisher through the website

  www.makoontz.com.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Brent and Brittany

  The door is always open.

  “When you’re in the middle of a nightmare,

  something ordinary is the only hope.”

  Agatha Christie, Sad Cypress

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter One

  I let go of my breath as my cozy home in Reed, Indiana grew smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. Only six a.m. and I’d already made at least a dozen deals with God and the universe for some semblance of a normal day. Bargaining out of desperation. Bargaining for hope. Three blocks were behind me now. I had this.

  Within minutes, though, my chest tightened. Grasping the steering wheel with white knuckles, I made a sudden turn down a side street, away from the middle school, as Merlin whined from the back seat. I pulled over to the curb, grabbed the paper bag that I kept on the passenger seat, and thrust it over my mouth. Over and over, my agitation forced the sides of the bag out, but I drew it back in with each breath. I hated that the mere sight of any school, not just the abandoned one where I had been held captive by a psychopath, could bring on a panic attack. I had wanted today to be different, but my lungs had betrayed me once again.

  Twenty minutes later, I turned off County Line Rd. onto a gravel lane, my doubts festering inside me. I shoved them down along with the anxiety. It left only my anger. How could I have allowed the murderer who had ended Dad’s life, and nearly my own, to still exert this kind of control over me? I hated how my life resembled our Hoosier weather, apt to change with little or no warning.

  Winding between fields of corn and soy beans, I arrived at our new business, The Contented Canine. Starting the boarding kennel had been a difficult process for me, but one that had been a huge step toward creating stability in my life. The boldly printed sign at the end of the lane—The Contented Canine / Owners Darla Kelly and LaVon Hammon—pointed to a wonderful new chapter. Yet a cloud of uncertainty hovered. I tried to ignore the growing fear that the stability was merely an illusion—one that could revert to a life of turmoil and distrust with all the speed and surprise of a lightning strike. I wasn’t exactly sure when the fear had begun to seep into my life again, but it had.

  Parking my car in the lot adjacent to the kennel, I breathed in the fresh air before entering the building. Inside were two front offices for LaVon and me, and thirty kennels of various sizes in a large back room, one for each year of my life. We’d gotten as many as twenty-five canine boarders at one time, but I expected that number to increase as word of the excellent care we provided got out.

  Merlin rushed in alongside of me, stopping only when his nose reached the middle drawer beneath the counter. His dark furry tail wagged expectantly. I opened the drawer and tossed one of the bacon-flavored treats I kept there to my four-legged friend. Giving Merlin a scratch behind his ear, I knew this was one mutt I wouldn’t trade for any pure breed in the world.

  I took a sip of the coffee from Geri’s Bakery where I’d stopped five minutes after this morning’s detour. It was such a trivial action, part of a common morning routine for many. I took another sip, warming to the simple pleasure it brought, and began to relax. For others, like my friend and business partner, LaVon, normal was something to be avoided at all cost, yet I was reaching for it like it was the last source of oxygen in the room.

  Grabbing a leash, I walked into the back room. Today it housed twelve dogs. I opened Gracie’s extra-large kennel first and attached the leash to the Great Dane’s collar. Petting her smooth coat, I tightened my grip on the leash as she tugged on it in anticipation. A walk through the woods out back was just what we both needed—me, to clear my head, and Gracie, to stretch those long legs. Sleep would have helped as well, but it had eluded me once again, so caffeine and a brisk walk would have to do.

  A breeze rustled through the leaves of the oak, maple, and ash trees. The woods sat on ten of our twenty acres of land, with a path that curved among its lush foliage, perfect for walking the dogs and offering nature walks to clients for an additional fee. It was near the end of summer, and a sense of change was in the air. Gracie sniffed the new smells beneath the early fallen leaves and acorns. Soon, the trees would wear bright hues of reds, oranges, and yellows before releasing their display of leaves to tumble back to earth, bringing another scent of change with them.

  But I’d had all the change I needed for a lifetime. At least this place had been a positive one for me. I reflected on the many things that had come together to make this kennel a reality. When Dr. Shawn O’Reilly and his grandmother, Ethel Pearlman, had agreed to sell a portion of their farm land to me, I was thrilled. It was a win-win situation since Shawn had said they didn’t want to sell to a stranger. I had worried about the strain it might put on our budding relationship, but in the end, it was a ri
sk we were both willing to take.

  The setting was exactly what I had envisioned. A long lane separated the boarding kennel from the country road and the occasional traffic that traveled it. I had visited other boarding kennels in the surrounding areas to get ideas before building. After consulting LaVon about the available finances and necessary loan, I’d contacted an old friend of Dad’s, who was in construction, about the build.

  It had been a relief to know the one thing that had almost held me back from chasing my dream, the financial side, was being handled by LaVon. She had proven a great asset to the business, and there was no one I trusted more. For someone who could be so crazy at times, LaVon had excellent business and accounting skills, leaving me time to develop The Contented Canine into a safe and comfortable place for owners to board their cherished pets.

  From the kennel’s lot, the farmhouse where Shawn and his grandmother lived was clearly visible. He’d worn a path crossing the open field to make frequent visits here. It was a routine I found myself looking forward to with a growing fondness, but a lack of trust in my judgement of men prevented any emotional involvement beyond that. I had no desire to repeat past mistakes. I’d trusted a man once before, who I thought I’d loved, but he betrayed me in the worst possible way. He murdered my father and attempted to kill me. Blinded by love, I’d been unable to see the psychopath lurking beneath his façade.

  After putting Gracie back in her kennel, I filled water bowls and made sure each guest was fed. Next, I put two dogs from the same owner into the exercise area while I cleaned out their cages. Busying myself with chores felt good. It felt ordinary in a way that I needed, and each day I was rewarded with wagging tails, loving licks, and barks of hello. Once finished in the kennels, I returned to my office. I had little time left to delve into my stack of paperwork before LaVon came in to handle the accounting.

  I loved my job as well as my small group of friends. Thanks to them, I was not a total disaster, and thanks to Shawn, love was at least a possibility. It had given me hope for a normal life. But by nine forty-five, memories of my panic-stricken nights I’d successfully ignored during the day came rushing back to me, and the cloud of doubt returned.

  Chapter Two

  Detective Mike Shafer sat hunched over his desk at the Reed Police Precinct, staring at a new file on a male who had died in a recent house fire. Arson was suspected. Mike groaned. It triggered a memory of one of his first cases after becoming a detective with the Fort Wayne Police Department at the age of twenty-six.

  A well-known couple from Fort Wayne had perished in a fire at their lake cabin, about sixty miles north of the city. Both in their mid-fifties, their bodies were charred beyond recognition. Dental records were used for identification. The fire had been so intense that the cabin had been reduced to ashes. The fire chief spent a great deal of time investigating the scene after learning of the two deaths. There had been something about the lack of evidence that never sat well with Mike.

  It had been his gut-wrenching job to notify the couple’s sole daughter of her parents’ deaths. Even worse, he had asked her probing questions regarding her whereabouts at the time of their deaths and her reasons for not joining them on their brief vacation. Since there was no immediate ruling on the fire, he had to treat it as a possible homicide. His questions had proved too much for the twenty-one-year-old daughter, though. He could still see her ashen face before she’d collapsed from shock.

  Hoping to make up for his prying questions, he sought answers for what had happened, but the fire chief’s investigation remained inconclusive. Mike might have been able to shrug it off as an accident if it hadn’t been for the housekeeper’s remark.

  He had stopped by the girl’s home to share the fire chief’s report, but the news had caused the daughter to break down in tears, sobbing at the lack of closure on her parents’ deaths. Luckily the housekeeper had been there to comfort her. While consoling the grieving daughter, Mike thought he’d heard the housekeeper mumble, “This was no accident,” but it was hard to hear over the daughter’s sobs. He’d tried to speak to the housekeeper privately before leaving, but she’d clammed up. It seemed obvious that she hadn’t meant to say the words out loud. He wondered why.

  Five years later, the case remained unsolved and Mike was forced to let it go when he moved to Reed, Indiana to take a detective position there. But each time a new case crossed his desk with suspected arson, the old memory returned. After twenty-eight years, the look on the daughter’s face and that one suggestive comment by the housekeeper still haunted him.

  The sound of his phone ringing jarred him out of the memory. Answering it, he took down information on a John Doe that had been brought in to Reed Memorial Hospital. As he rushed out of the precinct to investigate, he remembered that his boss told him that the John Doe was in a coma, and he slowed his steps to a walk. He decided that he might as well take his time since the guy wasn’t likely to be going anywhere anytime soon.

  Chapter Three

  A man’s cry for help echoed in my ears. He didn’t call me Dar, like my friends, nor did I recognize his voice. Yet for some reason, my sympathetic nervous system raced to respond to the sound of it, releasing adrenaline into my bloodstream and sending me into fight mode. Flight was not an option. I readied my stance to take on the source of this man’s desperation, but there was no one to fight.

  The man pleaded again, his voice reaching out to me from the other side of a door. It loomed ten feet in front of me, contained within a room void of anything other than myself.

  I blinked hard to make sense of it all.

  “Help me!”

  There was a strange weakness to the voice, yet it pulled at something within me. With the sudden force of a magnetic field, it propelled me forward, as though I had been cast entirely from steel or iron. The tug was inescapable.

  Now in front of the door, I stretched my right arm toward it. The metal doorknob was cool to the touch as I tried to turn it, but I couldn’t get a grip. Something slippery coated the knob like grease.

  Drip . . . drip . . . drip.

  The new sound, like that of a leaky faucet, caused me to look down. Bright splotches of red dripped from my hand with a steady rhythm. Alarm coursed through my veins as I brought my hand to my face, turning my palm up. Blood oozed from a large gash across the width of my palm, its sickening sweet smell making me gag.

  Another plea for help switched my attention back to the voice. My ears picked up on it like sonar. The rasp was weaker this time, calling to me from what seemed like the depths of the ocean.

  I set my jaw, squared my shoulders, and took a deep breath. Reaching out with my left hand, I grabbed the knob firmly and twisted. My face contorted with the effort. There was no satisfying click of the bolt sliding free, so I stood sideways and slammed the weight of my body against the door. It didn’t budge.

  The adrenaline that had fueled me to fight, now fueled my panic. My heart thumped in my ears, or was it the frantic beating of my fists on the door?

  “I can’t get it open,” I screamed to the man. “Is there a key?”

  I had no sooner asked the question when I noticed for the first time that there was no keyhole to unlock or peer through. There was no way to catch a glimpse of this person who was asking for my help. There was no way to see if he was okay. I jostled the doorknob with both hands this time.

  “I can’t get it open! What can I do? Tell me!”

  When there was still no response, I kicked the door. A sense of hopelessness settled on me when the door remained unaffected. Pressing my hands against both sides of my head, I fought to shake it off, turning first in one direction, then the other, my long hair flying across my face. It clung to the sweat beading across my brow. I swiped an auburn lock clear of my eyes.

  Taking a breath, I scanned the room in search of a tool to break through the barrier. Blank walls and ceilings, along with a bare flo
or, left nothing to search. My shoulders dropped with the futile attempt.

  “Help . . .” The voice, a mere whisper, rallied me back into action.

  Grabbing the bottom of my shirt for a better grip, I twisted the doorknob back and forth. Nothing. I dropped the bloodied edge of my shirt and took several steps back. With a deep breath and a running start, I slammed hard into the door, bouncing off of it as though I were made of rubber.

  Another faint cry for help reached my ears. I screamed in desperation, pulling at my hair. My hands clenched into tight fists that made the cut on my palm bleed even more. Staggering backwards across the room, I was uncertain I had anything more to give. Then Dad’s encouraging words from my childhood flickered in my mind. “You never know until you try.” The problem was that I didn’t want to try, but his words echoed in my brain with insistence.

  I straightened myself, staring at the door for a full minute, as though willing it to open. Finally, I ran toward it at full speed, my long legs covering the distance in seconds. This time I leapt and gave the door a punch-kick with all the strength I could muster. The solid door remained like some stoic soldier defiantly guarding its prisoner on the other side.

  I bent over, taking in short, gasping breaths. Tears began to trickle down my face, and I fell against the door, sliding along its unmovable surface to the floor in a heap.

  A second voice interrupted the sound of my labored breathing. Unlike the first voice, this voice was next to me and everywhere at the same time. Lifting my head, I peered about the room, but there was no one in sight. Fear gripped me as I strained to understand the words tumbling out of the void. This voice had called me by name. How did this person know me? My body shook from adrenaline and despair. Curling myself into a ball, I tried to escape my feelings of fear, helplessness, and failure. I covered my ears with my hands, but it was useless. I could still hear the female voice calling out to me.

  “Dar, I want you to listen to the sound of my voice. I want you to know that you are safe.”