2:15

                                                    2:15
         
    It was our first place.  I had thought when I first moved in with a girl, the two of us would be so happy with stars in our eyes at the thought of our love.  But that is never the case.  The time comes and your mind feels like it is on fire.  The next step after this point—the M word—is just a migraine of fire.  Next are kids, then grandkids, retirement, death, the sum of my whole life.  Is this it?  That is what goes through your mind, is this it?  The pieces of my life were now falling into place when years ago it all seemed like a universe away.  I was turning the corner of growing up to grown up.  And this was what I worried about if everything went right.  How I wish that was what had happened.
    Nothing went right.  Our relationship ended, but not our love.  The end came from, of course, nothing I expected.
    It started the night I heard that hysterical, soulless scream.
                                                          *******

    We rented an apartment that was not the most expensive of means.  It had a pool, and that sold us over the other choice; which was a one bedroom apartment, attached to a house, owned by some old lady.  In her kitchen—along with a light switch wallplate with the switch being a flasher’s penis—was an old rifle from God knew which war hanging over her sink.  Also next to the ashtray on the table, was a two inch glass marijuana bowl, with some resin inside.  In hindsight this was the better living choice.
    Instead though, we took a place close to the beach, but not within walking distance of the coast.  The place was shaped like it could have been a motel in another life.  It had three floors to it and was shaped like a square with four; equal length halls with at each corner a staircase and elevator.  In the middle--to go along with the motel motif--was an inground pool.  The doors to the apartments were all on the outside.  There was no inner hallway for the place, which may seem cool to some, but in the winter, in New England, you wanted to get indoors as soon as possible.  I had a feeling that would be a problem, but we never even made it to November.  Luckily, we moved in during the summer, at the end of July, but of course our place was on the third floor—apartment 319.  We fought as we moved our stuff in, and argued over how to furnish the place, but once the sun went down and we got a second to take in the whole idea our own place—the two of us on our own—we lost all our worries. We made love right then on the purple, carpeted floor.
    Within two weeks we got into a groove of our new life.  My girlfriend, Jocelyn, was a middle school teacher and still had three more weeks off.  She had spent her time decorating the place, giving it a touch of herself.  She also was a good chef, and I came home from the dealership almost every night to a cooked meal.  Over every meal she would have at least one recommendation of what we needed to buy for the place.  As long as the A.C. worked I felt we had all we needed.  Now on our own and I with a job that paid by commission, I was a little more conservative about our money.  I saw the bills coming in relentlessly, showing no mercy; along with the struggle over money we wanted to spend on things we wanted to do and shit that happened.  I knew better than to stretch ourselves too thin, like the people I saw at work, buying cars far outside their budget, but they had to have it.  On the topic that night though, Jocelyn was right—we did need a coffee table.  The next night after picking it up at IKEA, I heard that scream.
    There wasn’t much to it that first time.  I was sleeping, naked—not a habit, but Jocelyn really liked the coffee table.  We made love on it like it was an ancient ceremonial sex altar. 
    The table itself was a black Klubbo coffee table.  It centered our living room.  If north was the television, then to the south was our couch, off to the west was a picture window and the front door, and to the east a kitchen with a partition in the middle.  Past the white kitchen was the bare minimum of what can be described as a hall.  Two doors: to the right the bathroom, to the left the bedroom.  After the raw, hard, offering to each other on the love stone/coffee table, I did not have much in the legs.  I made it to the bed, fell on my face and snoozed away.
    I slept like a Roman Patrician after a good orgy and too much wine.  I dreamt well.  I remembered green plains and a yellow sky that felt like the background in a school play.  Not much more I remembered.  I forgot the rest of it after I heard that scream.  It curled my skin and my first instinct was to grab for Jocelyn.  I told myself it was to protect her, and see if she was alright, but the truth was I touched her out of fear. 
    She was there sleeping, undisturbed.  I looked at my clock—2:15—fuck, I had to be in work in five hours.  I got up to go the bathroom—something I should have done before bed—and expected to hear something else to follow that scream: sirens, yelling, a loud crash, another scream.  My experience in the bathroom was longer than casual, but still nothing followed.  I was not too sure what I had heard.  It sounded like a long no, but I wasn’t sure.  I was sure that it sounded like it came from a female. 
    Maybe that explained why I heard nothing more.  Did I just hear a death scream?  Did someone die, and within hearing distance?  I walked to the living room.  I had to do something.  I felt it was my duty as a man to see if it was safe for my woman, who slept innocently in our bed.  I tiptoed—like I was a prowler in my own home—across to the front door.  Goosebumps rose on my arms, and I licked off hot sweat that came down my cheek.  I waited to hear something more, but the only sound was my heart beating against the inside of my sternum.  I got to the front door.  It was locked.  Good, we were safe.  I had filled the need in my head that said I had to do something.  The door was locked, now run.  I didn’t hesitate to make my way into the bed, got under the covers like I had just seen the boogey man, and waited—but I heard nothing.  I fell back under the spell of sleep a little after three, but did not return to my green and yellow reverie.
                                                      *******
   
    I didn’t say anything to Jocelyn the next morning.  I knew she hadn’t heard it, and telling her about it would only distress her.  That day I picked up the newspaper and kept an ear out to for if anything had happened in the area, but this was not the type of area you heard anything about when anything happened. 
    I left around eight-thirty to start selling Toyotas by nine.  Jocelyn slept in, it was the summer, and she had no problem rubbing in the big kickback for teaching, summers off.  It certainly wasn’t the pay.  As I left that morning I closed the door a little harder than normal.  I was distraught; my mind was busy trying to forget what I heard the night before.  As the door slammed the screw in the number 9 on our door came loose.  The weight of the loop on the top end swung the number clockwise on the screw, so it became a 6.  If six was nine…I don’t mind.  I had to tighten that later, but right then I didn’t care too much about it.  I was too busy looking for any crime scene tape at the complex.  I found none.
    I also didn’t get a chance to fix the number that night.  It was Wednesday, poker night, and I also had a big Tundra sale that would pay me good in commission but the family couldn’t make it until four and kept me past normal closing hours to around eight-thirty.  So after work I went straight to my buddy’s, getting there before nine.  They waited for me to start a one table, No Limit Hold ‘Em tournament.  I came in second when my pair of Kings lost to a pair of sixes that had tripped up on the turn.  Afterwards a few of us played cash games into the wee hours.  I didn’t work Thursdays, and these friends of mine were bartenders and waiters who didn’t give a shit either.  We mixed up the games and I won my money back plus a little more from my seven-card stud skills and one crazy game of follow the queen. 
    I got home that night after one-thirty.  I expected my girlfriend to be sleeping.  She was.  I loved her for that.  Not because she was sleeping, but that she was not the kind of girl that we had to spend all of our free time together, and always had to wait up for me.  She knew I played cards on Wednesday night, she knew sometimes I got kept at work late, and that it meant nothing more.  She didn’t break them on me, and I appreciated her for it.  It was why we worked so well.  Something so good like this was hard to believe it would last.
    I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich when I got home, microwaved it for thirty seconds and quenched the hunger the homemade wine from the card game created in me.  As I ate, I watched a little bit of Sportscenter.  It was August, so there were not many highlights really, except for baseball.  I viewed some highlights, finished my sandwich, turned everything off, and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and take out my contacts.  I almost blinded myself when I heard that scream again.
    “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO-aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh,” was what it had said.  I was able to hear all of it this time, being conscious for it.  It was a woman’s voice, the voice of a woman in great pain, but also something more.  It sounded like her heart was being broken.  It sounded so loud, so real, like the bulb lights around my mirror were speakers of a surround sound system blasting it toward me.  My body was still, like those covered by the ashes of Mount Vesuvius.  The contact balanced on my index fingertip, my eyes looked at the image of the person in the mirror, a shocked open mouthed face asking me, Did you hear that?  I wanted to move fast, to get out of there and be next to Jocelyn.  The door was closed.  Suddenly a fear of an old withered woman, balding with long strands of white hair, waiting to scream at me like a banshee, standing behind the door, came to mind.  My left hand rested on the door knob.  I was able to catch the face of my watch.  The little hand was on the two, the big on the three—2:15.
    The next morning I told Jocelyn about it.
    “The voice said no?” she asked over our Dunkin Donut breakfast we ate at the kitchen table.  Two everything bagels with cream cheese, an iced coffee for her, a cappuccino for me, but I needed no help feeling wired. 
    “Yeah, and nothing else.”
    “Maybe our place in haunted?” she said with enthusiasm.
    “That’s really not something to be excited about.” I finished my drink and slammed my cup down.  The hollow thud resonated.
    “Well, it’s probably nothing,” she said a little frightened, but for a different reason.
    “What does that mean?  If it’s not a supernatural explanation then some woman screamed no last night, like her life depended on it.  Does that sound comforting to you?”
    For the first time in the conversation she got serious.
    “We should stay up tonight and listen for it,” she proposed.
    “I have to work early tomorrow.”
    “I don’t, I’ll do it.  If it happens do you want me to wake you?”
    “If it happens, I’ll be up.”
    I fell asleep that night before twelve.  I tried to stay up for it, but it had gotten too late.  At the time, Jocelyn was working on a chai tea and watching VH1.  I lost consciousness feeling there was a good chance she would be awake for it.  I woke up to my alarm at seven-thirty.  Jocelyn slept next to me.  I woke her up, but I knew the answer.  At first she wore a face of confusion at being woken up.
    “Did you hear it?”
    Her face relaxed in understanding, nodded no, and then fell back on the pillow.  I went to work with a bit of hope that I would never experience that scream again.  It was Friday and Sunday was my next day off.  I enjoyed most of the weekend and tried not to think about it, but Saturday night after the dinner, the movie, the sex, the cuddling, I laid awake in bed waiting for it. 
    I planned to stay awake until dawn or I lost consciousness, whichever came first.  I kept my eyes on the red-digital alarm clock and conked out some time past four.  I thought I was safe.
                                                  *******

    When I awoke around one in the afternoon Sunday, I was able to stop worrying.  Some one in the building liked to be fucked funny, I figured, and it was no business of mine.  It had altogether escaped my mind until a week later. 
    This time I had come home from a Yankees game.  The White Sox were victorious, 7-4.  I was a White Sox fan, even though I was born and bred in the Northeast with the Yanks, Red Sox and Mets to choose from.  Most of my friends were Yankee fans.  I went with three of them to a stadium full of them.  I was out of my element and kept my mouth quiet until the car ride home when I broke them off on my entourage.  Both of our teams led their division with a good shot at them meeting in the playoffs.  It would be an exciting year.
    I got home at one-thirty, to find Jocelyn asleep and Die Hard coming on HBO in a little while.  I set a reminder on my digital cable box to turn to the channel when it started—2:15.  I did not recognize the significance of the time.  I made a microwavable pizza, poured a Coke, devoured them both and still felt a little buzzed from the beer at the game.  The reminded flashed up, and I jumped to HBO.  The nerve-jarring shriek of NOOOOOOOOO-aaaahhhhhhhhh filled the room as the opening 20th Century Fox logo started.
    I had to check outside.  I stayed inside twice before, but the third time’s the charm.  I ran out to the catwalk, looked around the complex at the other three wings around the perimeter of the pool.  Five lights were on in random apartments.  Good, now what?  Go to each of these places and see if anyone was getting killed?  What was I expecting to find out here anyway, an answer? 
    Suddenly being outside and alone, I felt vulnerable.  I got back in and locked the door, but I did not go to bed.  I stayed awake on the couch waiting to hear anything else.  Hoping to hear anything else.  I didn’t.  I fell asleep in the living room sometime after Hans, the villain, in Die Hard performed his proficient American accent.
    I had the next day off and Jocelyn woke me up on the couch, curious as to why I didn’t sleep in the bed.
    “Really drunk last night?” she asked.
    “Not when I got home.  I heard that scream again.” 
    “Was it the same voice?”
    “Same voice, saying the same thing, at the same time.  2:15.  Does that time have any relevance?”
    She sat next to me on the couch to think about it.  She didn’t doubt me.  She could tell when I kidded her, and when I was lying.  I had the look of neither in my eyes.
    Jocelyn rambled off her thoughts.  “Two plus fifteen is seventeen, two plus one plus five is eight.  Eight is the number for God, with seven being perfection.  The Devil of course is six, which stands for one less than perfection.”  Jocelyn taught math in the middle school, and was raised Catholic, so she was familiar with some of the number myths found in the Bible.
    “Three is the number of man, right.  That’s why the 666 is for the Anti-Christ?” I asked.
    “Not really, the three sixes are supposedly more of an insult to the holy trinity.  The unholy trinity of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet.  Another blasphemy aimed at the holy trinity is that three a.m. is supposedly the witching hour.”
    “But this happens during the second hour.”
    “Yeah, religion doesn’t answer it.” 
    “Religion doesn’t answer many things.”
    She got up to walk to the kitchen, choosing to ignore that last comment.
    “I’m jealous, I want to hear it,” she said as she scooped some coffee into the coffee maker.
    “No, you don’t.”  That scream chilled my blood.  If I loved her, and wanted to protect her, I would not allow her to hear it.  But part of me did, to know that I was not going insane.
    “Are you working again tomorrow?” she asked
    “Yeah, and also Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.”
    “Damn, I wish this banshee screamed at a normal hour.  Two is too late.”
    I became red.  “You didn’t stay up that night I asked you to, did you?”
    “Yes I did,” she defended herself as she got a cup from the cupboard.  “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
    She was right. 
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    “But let’s be clear.  You didn’t say anything about 2:15 before.  You just said the scream happened late at night.  I stayed up for you, but I went to sleep around one-thirty.  That was the latest I could do.”
    “You think you can stay up to 2:15 tonight to hear it?”
    “I’ll do you one better.  I’ll stay up, and I’ll set up the camera.  It’s got a new memory card.  I’ll let it run all night, incase there is any visual with the sound.  If anything does happen we will also know what time it happened.”
    Math teacher, so logical.
    “Wow, so you really do believe me?”
    “I believe you’re not lying.  I have to find this out.  My ex said a man would have to be crazy to live with me.  I hope he’s not right.”
                                                  *******

    The next night Jocelyn stayed up late.  Real late, well past the witching hour until sometime after four.  She heard nothing, but she promised to watch the tape to see if she missed anything.  Nothing.  She didn’t stay up late the next few nights.  She wanted to go to sleep next to me and I understood, but she still taped over the memory card and ran the camera each night and checked it the day after.  Nothing.  Monday at work she called me around three and told me.  Still nothing.  I believed there was nothing on any of those tapes, but I could not believe there was nothing.
    The first time I was sleeping and could have heard anything, but twice since then I heard the same scream at the same time.  Jocelyn never heard it, and the camera never picked it up, but maybe something was reaching out to me—only me.  I had tomorrow off.  I had tonight to kill.  I would stay up until 2:15 alone and wait for it.  If I heard it again, whoever, or whatever was trying to speak to me I would try to listen and find out whatever it was they wanted me to know.
    Jocelyn went to sleep before midnight and wished me luck.  I told her I would be in bed by 2:16 if nothing happened.  The next two hours were fine, but once two o’clock hit I felt the sweat start on my skin.  By 2:05 my stomach was upset, but 2:10 I was shaking.  2:13, I thought about making a run for it.  2:14 I started to count down from sixty.  2:15—NOOOOOOOOOO-aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh
                                                      *******

    That morning I knew something was trying to tell me something.  Jocelyn went to the beach and then to the mall with her friends.  I spent the day researching what it could be, where this voice could have come from.  I logged onto my laptop and Googled the name of the apartment complex Deer Court along with the town Deerfield and Connecticut.  Around forty-thousands searches came up.  The first few searches were ads for available apartments in the complex.  The next forty were about either other apartment complexes named Deer Court, or other items pertaining to Deerfield, each one more random than the next.  I Googled again but this time added Murder to Deer Court, Deerfield, Connecticut. My second search down I found something juicy.  It was a link to the newspaper for the local area, The New Haven Register. It was an article from their archive section, dated 1991, sixteen years ago:

Never Go Home Again
Tim Randall, Register Staff
6/3/1991

DEERFIELD—Most soldiers do not know what the war they are sent off to fight in will do to them when they get back.  Private Eddie Katz might have feared some repercussions, but what occurred last night no one could have foreseen.  Katz was hit in the head by shrapnel from a tank in Operation Desert Storm on February 28th of this year.  His helmet saved his life, but some brain damage occurred and delayed his return to the United States.  The diagnosed effects were memory loss, spells of flashbacks from the combat of the war, and violent rages.  He was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but still after ninety days of observation, he appeared not an immediate threat and was released.  Unfortunately, for his mother Gretchen Katz, he was not observed ninety-nine days. 
    A little less than a week after being home, last night Gretchen sent her son out to get milk confident he was capable for the task.  This was confirmed by a friend of Gretchen’s who spoke to her while Eddie was out.  When he returned home at apartment 316, at Deer Court in Deerfield, without the milk, the police assume Gretchen naturally asked what happened.  He may have either not answered or answered incoherently because something had prompted her to call Dr. Arlo Osmond, who treated Eddie and told Gretchen previously, to call the minute he has any of his spells.  When she finished dialing, Eddie went for her.  He rang her neck, choking her almost to death. 
    Neighbors in the complex heard a man screaming, “What did you do to my mother?” precluding the sound of broken glass, and immediately called the police.  When police arrived to the scene at 9:45 p.m., they found inside the apartment Gretchen Katz murdered lying in a pool of her own blood, with a shard from a mirror stabbed in her jugular, and Eddie busy making a Peanut Butter sandwich.


    “Well she couldn’t have died at 2:15,” Jocelyn said when she got home from her friends and saw what I had found.  She sounded unnerved, but still paced in the living room with a look of fear in her.  I sat on the couch.
    “Yes and it also wasn’t the same apartment, but someone was violently murdered close to here and I keep hearing this ghostly scream of a woman saying no.  It’s hard to find the two not related.”
    “Yeah, so what do you want to do?  What do we do?”
    “Well this isn’t a case of a soul whose death went unpunished.  I read on.  Her son was sent to a mental hospital for life.”
    “But not all ghosts are just seeking revenge.  John Wilkes Booth got his, but supposedly Lincoln still haunts the White house.  Some ghosts are supposed to be just trapped between this world and the next.  She had died a violent death; I think that’s enough to be a ghost.”
    “But there have been no images of her like a ghost.  I can’t explain it, but I think there is more to it than what we have here.  I want to get some inside info.  Your brother is a cop in town.  Give him a call.  See if he might have any information about this crime?”
    Jocelyn dialed, spoke briefly and then hung up.  “He couldn’t talk.  He was in the middle of chasing a fugitive.  The only reason he even answered was to make sure I wasn't in trouble.  He said he’ll call me back later.”
    “Oh the rough criminals of Deerfield,” I said sarcastically
    “Rough enough to kill their mothers, you big baby.  Look, whoever he’s after, it’s more important than this.  Don’t be scared,” she said resolutely to me.
    “I’m not scared.”
    “Good, then let’s get a movie.”
                                                  *******

    We rented some action flick.  It wasn’t that good.  A thunderstorm started outside as we watched.  The sound of the rain made us both feel tired and we went to bed before the movie ended, sometime around eleven.  Next thing I heard was the sound of glass breaking. 
    Jocelyn and I both woke up.  I told her to stay in bed and I went to the living room to check it out.  Lightning crashed outside illuminating the apartment.  From the kitchen I saw a piece of the picture window near the door broken and a hand retreating out of it.  For the first time in my life, I feared for my life. 
    The door kicked open.  “What did you do to my mother?” a raspy voice came from the figure in the doorway.  The figure looked almost forty, bald, pale, deathly, with an all white jumpsuit on.  The front door swung inside the room.  When lightning struck again I could see the numbers on the door—316—with the upside down nine.  If six was nine, Jimi, and I do mind.  This was Eddie Katz.  The escaped fugitive her brother was hunting down.  I had no time to think anymore about it, or even time to turn on the light.  He came after me, with the shard of glass in his hand.
    The pain was instant and massive.  The shard pierced right into the center of my body.  I felt the blade against my heart, even though I knew there were no nerve endings there.  I wrapped my arms around my attacker.  The adrenaline pumping kept me alive. All I thought about was Jocelyn’s life, not mine.  She was still in the bedroom, and if I didn’t stop this guy how would she? 
    He fell over on top of me pushing the blade farther in and I could feel my lungs pierce and fill with blood.  I was losing the ability to breath.  I held on tighter wondering how I could stop this man.  I knew I couldn’t let go.  He fought to break free, and almost made it.  I used whatever strength I had left to wrap my elbow around the back of his neck and pulled him closer to the shard of glass in my chest.  Suddenly his struggling stopped.  His jugular was impaled with the opposite end of the shard.  He died like his mother.  I let him go, and then let everything go.  I couldn’t move anything.  I heard the sound of footsteps behind me—Jocelyn.  I saw her upside down, frozen in shock, as she looked down at me.
    “NOOOOOOOOOOO-aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh,” she screamed at the sight of me dying on our living room floor.  Eddie Katz was dead too, inches away from me.  My head lopped to the left, my eyes rolled and I saw the missing piece to the puzzle before my lights went out forever.  My eyes focused on the clock on the microwave.
    2:15