31

Lazarus woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t move. His room was dark, but there were even darker things within it. The darkness felt like it was alive.

He lay there, eyes open. His shirt clung to him with sweat and his peripheral vision blurred, his heart pounding so furiously he wanted to put his hands over his ears to quiet the noise.

Suddenly, Lazarus snapped his eyes open, and he was in his bed. His heart wasn’t beating fast, and he wasn’t sweating. The experience had been in his mind.

He rose and went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, but he didn’t feel like taking any of the meds he’d been prescribed. The current medications did nothing but prolong the hallucinations. When he first got government health insurance, he had seen any doctor who would get him in about sleep paralysis. It seemed as much a mystery to them as it was to him.

A doctor had once asked him to describe it, and he said, “It’s like I’m locked inside my coffin and somethin’ is in there with me.”

The description wasn’t an exaggeration. The first time sleep paralysis occurred, he was a teenager and thought he was dying. That everything his mother had said about the damnation of souls was coming true and he was being punished by God. It wasn’t until he ran from that place and found his own life that he realized it was a common, but not understood, phenomenon.

He slid on some jeans and shoes, grabbed his keys and gun, and left the apartment.

He drove along the Strip, something he didn’t normally do. The lights were stunning for the first few minutes, but slowly a nausea would build in him. A discomfort, like being trapped somewhere and knowing there was no way out.

Partially nude women were on street corners posing in photographs for cash, and they waved to him and he waved back. People sometimes felt sorry for them, but he knew how much cash they pulled down from the horny tourists and frat boys. Some of them made more than him.

He drove past several gleaming casinos and a black pyramid that shot light into the sky. There was a turnoff that led to the Old Strip, and he preferred the bars there.

The Last Chance Saloon was his favorite, not just because of Bass and not just because they ordered Midnight Porter specifically for him, but because nobody cared who anybody was there.

He sat in a booth and looked across the room and saw Manny hanging out with Bass and a couple of other men. Lazarus ordered some absinthe and told the waitress to send shots of tequila over to them. She took them the shots and pointed out who had bought them. Manny stood up and came over, then sat and lit a joint.

“It’s Bass’s birthday today. You should come party with us.”

“My partying days ended a long time ago, brother.”

He inhaled and held it a second before letting it out. He passed it to Lazarus, who took a hit.

“You find what you were lookin’ for?” Manny said, taking the joint back.

He shook his head. “No.”

“Too bad.”

“It is. Lemme ask you somethin’. You’re too old to be running around doing B and Es. What keeps you in the club when you know it’s time to get out?”

He thought a moment. “You get used to things and don’t wanna change.”

Lazarus nodded and sipped his absinthe, lost in thought. He clicked his teeth together a few times.

“You ever seen a home invasion when they were already in the house?” Lazarus said.

“Already in the house?”

He nodded.

“Nah, man. Too risky.”

“You’d need a real good reason to do it, wouldn’t you?” he said, his gaze glossing over as he stared at the green fluid in his glass. “Hiding in somebody’s house and waiting for ’em.”

Manny hit the joint again. “Sounds like you’re lookin’ for a ghost.”

After he and Manny chatted for a few minutes, Lazarus wished Bass a good birthday and then sat in his car, listening to music. What Manny had said wouldn’t leave him. It stuck to his ribs. Sounds like you’re lookin’ for a ghost.

Ghosts don’t break in. Ghosts are there.

Lazarus drove the surface streets until getting on the freeway, avoiding the neon forest of the Strip. He got to the Grace home and parked in front. He watched it a second, then got out of the car.

The Realtor had locked up the home. The alarm had been cut off, so he forced open a window and climbed in.

The house was warm and still. He took his flashlight and held it up in front of him and ran the beam around the home. He walked over to the entrance where Sophie had found her family. He ran the flashlight up and down and tried to picture what the girl saw. He pulled up photos of the scene from the LVPD server and compared it to the area he was standing in. Some of the furniture and decorations were gone, probably in preparation for the eventual sale of the home.

He looked over to the shadowy corner where Sophie said she saw her attacker.

The air was dry as Lazarus went back to the trunk of his car and opened it. He pulled on a mask he had left over from COVID and some latex gloves.

The home was a black shape against the night sky blanketed with stars.

The crawl space—a cramped area beneath the floor of the house—was barely high enough to get on hands and knees, so he had to be flat on his stomach, the dirt and dust kicking up into his face, choking him through his mask.

The flashlight illuminated the cramped space like a candle in a crypt. The light wasn’t powerful and didn’t extend far, so all the corners were in darkness.

A dusty, cobweb-covered hatch was before him. He gripped it, pulled it open, and crawled inside with his flashlight. The CSI unit had been down here on the night of the murders, conducting a hasty grid search for evidence. Cobwebs adorned the space, revealing that they hadn’t examined the entire area very closely.

He had to pause; the dusty air was stifling him. The space reeked of mildew and mold, damp and decaying. He lowered his mask and coughed. Skittering noise from somewhere in the darkness. Mice. At least he hoped it was mice.

As he pushed forward, cobwebs clung to his face and tangled in his hair. The flashlight flickered, plunging him into momentary darkness. In the confined space, the only sounds were the creaking of the house above him and his own breath.

Lazarus shook the flashlight, and the batteries clinked and light returned. Crawling into the main enclosure, he scanned it with his flashlight, but it couldn’t reach the far side.

Lazarus was already out of breath, and wondered if it was the crushing claustrophobia or actual exertion. He crawled slowly, holding the flashlight in front of him and creating a tunnel of light. He thought to himself that there was no way a random forensic tech would crawl around here when the murder victims were in the home and there was no reason to think anyone had been down here.

Scattered leaves, twigs, some pieces of insulation, and shreds of old wallpaper.

Drawing closer to the wall, he spotted a clump on the ground. A candy bar wrapper and an orange Fanta can. He doubted these were Sullivan’s: even with his powerful Mag flashlight, it was too dark down here for a kid to want to hang out in.

He shook his head as irritation grated him. “Nice job searching, guys,” he muttered under his breath.

Lazarus carefully bagged the two items and secured them in his knapsack.

After getting out from the crawl space, Lazarus removed his mask, coughed, and dusted off his clothes.

He stood outside, taking deep breaths for a while, then went back inside the home.