Bad Things

Raising his hand to knock on the door, Ricky realized that Robin might also hear, so instead, he clutched the doorknob and slowly turned it. As the door swung silently inward, he heard the steady whirring of the ceiling fans within the room.

“Mom?” he whispered. “Dad?”

They didn't wake up, so he stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

“Mom?” he called. Then again, a little louder. “Mom?”

He approached the bed, his heart thundering against his rib cage. Although the windows were open and the cool northerly breeze had picked up, his parents' bedroom, hot and close, was foul with a heavy, hot smell that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up.

He stepped closer to the bed, thinking that it was strange that his parents were under their quilt on such a hot night. He reached out and tapped the quilt, about where his mother's shoulder should be.

She didn't wake up.

“Mom?” he asked, poking at the quilt a little harder.

The material felt funny, sticky-damp.

“Dad!” Leaning across her, he shook his father. “Dad!”

Suddenly he lost his tiptoed balance and fell on them, landing facedown, mouth open, on the quilt. Abruptly he became aware that the sticky dampness was everywhere, and as he breathed in its rusty metal smell, he realized it was in his mouth, and he recognized the flavor of blood....

HAUNTED

 

MOONFALL

 

ETERNITY

 

CANDLE BAY

 

BAD THINGS

 

THE FORGOTTEN

 

THUNDER ROAD

 

THE SORORITY

 

 

ZEBRA BOOKS

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

First, thank you to Lawrence Morris, O.D., for sharing his knowledge and invaluable speculations on the nature of vision. Also, thank you, Kevin Shrock, M.D., for patiently answering all my bizarre medical questions.

Grateful appreciation goes to Kay McCauley and the Pimlico Agency and to my terrific editors, John Scognamiglio and Dana Isaacson.

Special thanks go to Nigel and Dave, experts on feline psychology, and to Robert, Quinn, and Doug for all that good stuff—you guys are the best!

 

Wrapped in panic, smothered in fear, Ricky Piper trembled on the threshold of the shadowy hallway and steeled himself for the long journey to the living room. He would have preferred to remain with his mother and their housekeeper, Carmen, in the bright, yellow kitchen, but she'd given him permission to watch cartoons. If he didn't do it, she'd know he was afraid again. That was the last thing he wanted.

Swallowing hard, telling himself to walk slowly, he stepped onto the forest green carpeting. His resolve lasted all of two seconds before his screaming nerves made him sprint down the hall. First he passed the dark, silent dining room, then the wall of linen closets, and finally he bolted beneath the stern disapproval of a collection of Piper ancestors, framed and watching him from the corridor walls.

Ricky arrived in the front room, heart thumping, head dizzy from holding his breath. Exhaling, he wished that his mom and dad weren't so nuts about wasting electricity. Though he knew there was nothing scary
in
the house, he just couldn't stop expecting that something was going to jump out of the dark and grab him.

The air in the living room seemed thick and murky. The last dregs of afternoon sunlight seeped in between the ragged shadows cast by the towering oak outside the picture window. Not wanting to look out the window, Ricky walked backward toward the chair and reading lamp by the front door. With the sureness of long habit, he reached under the lampshade and turned the switch, holding his breath again until the friendly golden light relieved the gray gloom. Then, still without looking, he reached behind the chair and felt for the drapery cords. Finding the right one, he tugged, listening to the soothing whisper of fabric and metal until the gentle snick told him the drapes had closed on the outside world.

If it were his house, Ricky told himself as he crossed to the television cabinet and turned the set on, the curtains would stay closed
all
the time.

Felix the Cat slowly came into focus. He was using his bag of tricks to foil the Professor and Rockbottom. Ricky didn't like Felix's voice, but he sure wished he had his bag of tricks. If he did, he'd use it to get rid of the greenjacks: the little ones
and
the big one, all of them. It wasn't really the dark he was afraid of, but the jacks, who only came out at night. If he had a magic bag of tricks, he'd make it always daytime and he'd make all the grass and bushes and trees—especially the old oak—disappear too, so there would be nowhere for the greenjacks to hide. If he could do that, he wouldn't have to be scared anymore. He and his brother would be safe.

Robin, who was outside right now with Grandfather Piper, wasn't afraid of the greenjacks, but he didn't have the sight and was unaware of the danger. Ricky worried a lot about Robin because he'd just giggle when he warned him to be careful outside, even on Halloween, the worst night of the year. That was when Big Jack came out. Not only could anyone see him if he wanted them to, but he could actually snatch anybody he wanted, snatch them and take them away. But Robin wouldn't believe it. He thought Grandfather's stories were fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Recently Robin had started teasing Ricky by making believe that he could see the jacks and even talk to them. He did all the things he knew scared Ricky, too, like climbing in the oak tree.

Because of his brother, and because he knew his parents were starting to worry about his “overactive imagination,” as they called it, Ricky had started making believe too. He pretended, even to his twin, that he'd never seen a greenjack, but had been playing a game of pretend all along. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his entire seven years.

Like fingers, oak twigs tapped on the window glass. Shivering, Ricky hunched into a ball in the safe glow of the television set and lost himself in the cartoons.

“Richard Piper, you're going to get x-rayed to death sitting that close to that damnable machine; that is, if you don't go blind and kill all your brain cells first!”

“Grandfather!” Startled, Ricky twisted around and saw the old man, who must have come in through the kitchen door. He stood in the hall doorway, frowning disapproval. Robin, snug in the crook of his arm, grinned and extricated his abbreviated body from the old man's arms, swinging like a monkey, slipping down his grandfather's legs as if they were tree trunks. He twisted just before he reached the dark green carpet and dropped nimbly onto his hands.

“Watch this!” he commanded. He tested his balance, then began to walk on his hands, then run, toward his brother, his little legless body held straight up in the air over his head.

Reaching Ricky, he flipped himself over and came to a rest on his buttocks. “I bet you can't do that.”

Ricky didn't think he could. He was almost four feet tall, a perfect boy from his head to his toes, and Robin was his identical twin except that he'd been born without legs, which made him about two feet shorter. He had a bottom and a weenie, just like Ricky, but then he just ended, in smooth curves of white skin.

“Try it!” Robin goaded.

Ricky planted his hands on the carpet and began to lower his head.

Grandfather asked, “Why is that set on, Richard?”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, turning it off. His grandfather hated the television, and Ricky was just glad that the old man lived in the little cottage in the citrus orchard behind the big house. If he were here all the time, he'd never let anyone turn the TV on.

The old man's gaze was stern under his bushy white eyebrows. “Did your mother tell you you could watch that thing?”

He hesitated, knowing that if he told the truth, Grandfather would lecture his mom. “No, sir.”

“You turned it on without asking permission?”

Robin grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Yes, sir,” Ricky replied, braver because of his brother's silent support.

For a moment the old man stared holes through him, and Ricky tried to shrink into the carpet, his stomach doing flip-flops as he wondered what his grandfather was going to say next.

But suddenly Grandfather Piper's face broke into a rare smile. “Well, you've got a little spunk hidden in there somewhere after all! Good for you, boy. Maybe you're finally growing some balls!”

Ricky, amazed and confused, smiled tentatively. Why would he want to grow balls? You bought them at the toy store.

Robin giggled.

“But I still don't want that cursed thing on when I'm in this house. You're seven years old, you have to exercise your brains
and
your body. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damn house feels like a cave,” the old man said, then, to Ricky's horror, he opened the drapes. Dusk had gathered outside, and Ricky looked away quickly. “That's better,” Grandfather said, looking from boy to boy with false sternness. “Do you two want to hear a story?”

“Please!” Robin cried happily.

“Please!” Ricky echoed, nearly as enthusiastic. Though the stories frightened him, he always wanted to hear them because he'd decided that the more he knew about the greenjacks, the safer he would be.

“Alrighty, boys. I'll tell you about
my
great-grandfather. That would be your great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas McEnery Piper. He was blessed with the sight, as the men of the Piper clan sometimes are . . .” Grandfather's midnight blue eyes sparkled as he looked from boy to boy. “Or perhaps he was cursed. I don't know, because I don't have the sight. What about you, Robin? You see the greenjacks, don't you, boy?”

“Sure!” Robin cried. The word bubbled through his delighted laughter.

“Well, what do you say, boy? Is the sight a blessing or a curse?”

“A blessing!”

Grandfather turned to Ricky. “And what do you say, Richard? A blessing or a curse?”

Ricky looked at his Keds and shrugged. “I dunno. I don't see them.”

Robin made a silly face. “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

“Robin,” Grandfather admonished sternly. He turned back to Ricky, his voice getting that gentle sound that adults often took with him, as if they were afraid he might break. “If you could see them, Rick, what would it be?”

He looked up and stared the old man right in the eye. “A curse, Grandfather. It would be a curse.”

Grandfather Piper's eyes bored into his for a long time, then he shook his head slowly. “I swear, boy, sometimes you're enough to make me think there's truth in those old stories. Sometimes I think
you
really do have the sight.”

“No, sir.” Ricky wanted to cry as he told the lie. “I just pretend.”

“I see.” The old man paused, giving Ricky one last long look before clearing his throat. “Well then, boys, let's get on with it. Thomas Piper had the sight, for better or worse, and tonight I believe I'll tell you about the first time the greenjacks almost nabbed him. He wasn't much older than the two of you. Have I told you boys this story before?”

“No,” they lied in unison. It was Grandfather's most-told tale and Ricky's favorite.

“Come on, then, let's sit.” The old man turned and walked slowly toward his favorite recliner, which sat next to the huge fireplace, directly across the room from the picture window. Robin hurried ahead, showing off his new handstand trick. When he reached the chair, he bunched his powerful biceps and propelled himself up onto the chair arm in the blink of an eye. Then, grinning at Ricky, he did his spider imitation, bugging his eyes and flexing his elbows so that he moved up and down, like a spider on its web. The sight made Ricky snicker. Robin could always crack him up.

Grandfather eased into the recliner and waited while Robin situated his small body in the crook of his arm. Then Ricky climbed onto his knee.

“Ready?” Grandfather asked.

“Ready!” the boys chorused.

“Thomas McEnery Piper lived in the family home in Glenkerrie, a village in the Scottish Highlands, west of Inverness. Just like here in Santo Verde, Glenkerrie was renowned for the way the trees and flowers and crops grew. Do you know why?”

“Greenjacks!” Robin cried.

Despite himself, Ricky glanced up at the picture window. The wind plucked one faded leaf, then another, from the old oak tree. It was still almost a month until Halloween, but most of the leaves still clung to the twigs and branches. His mom had told him yesterday that it would probably be November before the tree was only a skeleton again. He wished it were over with—a month, especially this month, took forever to go by.

“That's right, the jacks,” Grandfather said. “And do you know
why
they lived there?”

“Because we did!”

“That's right, Robin. They chose that place because it was the Piper ancestral home. Greenjacks and Pipers have lived there for centuries. All over the world there are bits of land where trees and grass grow far better than they should, and these are the places of the jacks—and of people who, like some of the Pipers, see them.”

Grandfather rambled on. Every story began with the same introduction, and you had to wait through it to get to the good stuff. Recently the old man had added something new that Ricky thought was really interesting: science. Grandfather said it was probably a gene that made you see the jacks and that about a fourth of all the male Pipers had that gene. When Ricky had asked his father about it, though, he'd just snorted and said that he'd believe it when he read it in
Scientific American.

Grandfather was up to the part about greenjacks and trolls being second cousins once removed when Ricky saw a jack approach the window. At twilight it was barely visible, a small, smooth creature made of a vague glow that grew brighter as night took the sky. It reached the window, and he saw the suggestion of a gleefully cruel face peering through the glass. Ricky squirmed nervously, and Grandfather gave him a stern glance without losing the rhythm of his story.

Greenjacks, Ricky knew, were small, never more than two feet tall unless they melted together. If they did that, they lost their shifting, semihuman form, but this one looked normal, so Ricky wondered how it could be tall enough to peek in a window two and a half feet from the ground. (Ricky had measured it.) Shivering, he looked away.

“Greenjacks attach themselves to families like us because there's always a chance that they can trick someone possessing the sight into giving up his body. Sometimes a sighted man will even agree to trade bodies with one of them. The jacks' bodies aren't physical like ours are, and that means they can't taste or smell or feel anything in the material world, any more than a scientist can enter the world of the amoebae he studies under his microscope.” Grandfather's smile made a million little wrinkles around his eyes. “Just like people, greenjacks always want what they don't have, and so they crave physical sensation very, very much.” He paused dramatically. “They lust for it and will do anything to get it—make promises, lie, even try to scare you to death. And on Halloween . . . on Halloween they get together to make Big Jack out of tree limbs and plants. On that one night their power is so great that they can enter Big Jack and bring him to life. And that night, because Big Jack is physically real, they can use him to—” Grandpa snapped his fingers—“snatch little boys like you! Just. Like. That!”

Robin giggled again, and Ricky stole another peek at the window. A second face had appeared, human yet not, liquid and solid and air all at once, ever-changing, ever-shifting. Once, Ricky had tried to draw a picture of one. It came out looking smooth and gray-green, with huge glittery black eyes and a small mouth.