Feral (13 page)

“You've been spending too much time with me, I think,” Gordon replied, hating what he was about to say next.
 
“It's not like you to screw up.”

Charles' brown cheeks darkened, his mouth pulled into a frown.
 
“Look, friend, I said I was sorry.
 
We should have followed her.”

“Don't be sorry,” Gordon said.
 
“Do me a favor and it's forgotten.”
 
He handed the book over.

Charles looked uneasy as he accepted it.
 
He read the cover, then looked back at Gordon.
 
“Still haven't got that bug out of your butt?”

“Just indulge me,” Gordon said.
 
“Please, I promise to shut up about it.”

“Sure,” Charles said, shaking his head.
 
“What do you want me to do?”

“See if you can find the author for me, I'd like to talk to her.”
 
Gordon braved Charles' disbelieving stare and continued. “And I'd like you to read some of the passages.
 
I've marked the pages for you.
 
I know you think I'm losing touch, but I think you'll be surprised.”

“If I do this and I'm still not convinced, you'll leave me alone, right?”

“Swear,” Gordon said.

“Fine,” Charles replied and dialed his secretary back east.
 
“I
have
been around you too long.
 
I can't believe I'm doing this.”
 
He cradled the receiver between his shoulder and chin, opening the cover with obvious distaste.
 
“Dee's going to think I've lost it.”

Gordon waited silently.

“Dee, it's Charles,” he said, bracing himself against her wrath.
  
Why haven't you called, and you need to let me know what's going on, etc.
 
“Yeah . . . I know, Dee.” He rolled his eyes.
 
Gordon knew she was an asset to Charles, but sometimes she acted like his keeper.
 
“I know, I'm sorry.
 
Listen Dee, I need you to do something for me.”
 
He paused, rolled his eyes again, and said, “Okay.
  
Please
, could you do me a favor?”

There was another pause, and then he grinned and shook his head again.
 
“Yes, I know . . . and yes, you are.”

Gordon couldn't sit any longer.
 
As foolish as it all seemed, it felt very important to him.

Charles watched him pace for a second and looked back at the book.
 
“I need you to locate someone. Jeannine Carter, a writer, she wrote a book called
Legend Of The Bogey Man: The Truth Told In Centuries
.”
 
More silence, then he frowned.
 
“Yeah, I know,” he said, giving Gordon an annoyed look.
 
“She may know something.”

Gordon paced, feeling more foolish as Charles told Dee to make it top priority, told her to call his cell phone the second she located Jeannine Carter.

Charles said his good-byes, promising to keep in touch, then hung up.
 
“She's on it, my friend,” he said.
 
He threw the book onto his bed.
 
“I'll read later.
 
It's time to get moving.”

T
hey took Charles' Caddy and left town with the windows down.
 
The gathering clouds had cooled the day, and the rush of wind felt good.
 
Charles turned the radio up, listening for news of the latest murders.
 
Listening for Shannon's name, hoping he wouldn't hear it.
 
The police probably wouldn't release it for fear of spooking her if she heard it mentioned on the local news, but it was hard to know what these yokel cops might tell the press.

Charles saw the girl standing at the side of the road, half hidden in the willows on the river side of the highway.
 
Her face was a dirty oval; her hair long, brown and sticking up like a wild nimbus around her head.
 
She was dressed like a boy, wearing small boots, a blue T-shirt, and stained overalls.
 
She smiled at them as they approached, then tilted back and threw something large and mangled into the air.
 
A second later it hit the windshield with a loud gunshot crack.
 
It spread across Gordon's side with an explosion of blood and fur and a large blossoming spider web of cracked safety glass.

“Son of a bitch!” Charles yelled, struggling to regain control.
 
The Caddy weaved, tires squealing, and he brought it to a sliding halt at the side of the road.

Gordon watched in silent shock as a mutilated cat slid toward the hood, leaving a sticky smear of blood, fur, and innards behind it.
 
One of its eyes had popped from a socket.
 
It lay against the windshield wiper, watching him sightlessly.
 
Maggots squirmed from the cat's demolished head, more wiggled in the half-congealed blood on the windshield.
 
The matted corpse looked and smelled as if it had been dead a few days.
 
He fumbled his door open and puked in the ditch beside the car.

“Damn it!” Charles shouted, and pushed his door open.
 
He stepped toward the highway where the girl half hid, giggling in the trees, but jumped back as a speeding semi shot past blowing its air horn.
 
“Son of a bitch!”
 
Charles slammed a fist on his hood.

Gordon stumbled to his side as the truck passed.
 
“Who the hell did that?”

“That way!” Charles shouted when the semi was past them, and led Gordon to the other side.

“Who did it?” Gordon asked again, following Charles through the bushes.

“Her,” Charles said, pointing at the girl as she spun and giggled through the tall grass toward a large, dilapidated playground.
 
“Hey you, stop!” he yelled at her.

She only laughed louder.
 
“Na-
na
na-na
na-na
, the old fat man can't catch me.”

“Damn, kid,” Charles growled, and pushed himself faster.

Gordon struggled to keep up, his stomach tied in knots and his legs growing weaker with each step.

Then, like nothing had happened, the girl stopped and sat at a bench near the playground.
 
She didn't look back at her pursuers, just stared straight ahead toward the playground's arched entryway.

Charles stopped several yards behind the bench and waited for Gordon.
 
Together they approached the girl.
 
She sobbed quietly, her small shoulders quaking.
 
Gordon took the left side, Charles the right.
 
Then they stepped around the bench in front of her.
 
Charles opened his mouth, preparing to scold, and stopped.

Her face was a mess of bruises and running cuts, her eyes swollen to narrow, red slits.
 
She screamed at them, a bubbling, frothy shriek.
 
Her bottom jaw was gone; her tongue lay like a giant, blood-slimed slug against her throat.
 
Blood pumped from the gaping maw and ran down the front of her bare chest.
 
She sat naked, hands folded across her lap, covering herself.

The girl's gurgling scream tapered off, her eyes closed, and she fell forward, a bloody lump, into the grass.
 
Then she was gone.
 
Her screams still echoed in their heads, but of the girl there was not a trace.
 
Even the blood that had pooled on the bench where she sat was gone.
 
Aside from the dust and white polka dots of bird shit, it was clean.

There was a book in the grass where her body had landed.
 
A children's book, its cover familiar to Gordon.
 
It had been a favorite of his.

Where The Wild Things Are
, by Maurice
Sendak
.

Reluctantly, Gordon knelt and picked it up.
 
Charles stood away, clutching his chest with a meaty hand.
 
It looked as though he expected the girl to reappear at any moment to claim it.

Slowly, as if fearing the same, Gordon opened the book.
 
Property of Jenny Heyworth
was written inside the front cover in large, childish handwriting.
 
He thumbed through it, noting half a dozen other such notes.
 
On one page, drawn beside a circle of dancing monsters, was a child's rendering of a sign identical to one by the playground.
 
It said ‘Feral Park.'
 
A note on the last page read
Leave Charity alone . . . she's one of us now
!

D
irty Dave watched from a safe distance, hidden from sight.
 
He shook his head and frowned.

“Miss Jenny,” he said.
 
“Why do you have to torment them?
 
They aren't the cause of your misery.”

He walked toward the playground again, more bags of throwaway food hanging from his clenched fists.
 
“I know you like to play, girl, but sometimes you play too rough.”
 
He laughed, a
phlegmy
chortle, as he left his offering.
 
His penance for letting the little girl, Jenny, die all those years ago.

T
he truck stop was quiet; a few people pumped gas outside.
 
Shannon didn't recognize any of them.
 
Inside, an old trucker sat alone at a table drinking coffee and studying a map.
 
A pimply teenage boy thumbed through a rack of CDs, casting the occasional paranoid glance around or behind.

Don't even try it, kid
, Shannon thought.
 
You're too obvious
.
 
If the kid was caught shoplifting, she knew Simon wouldn't hesitate to prosecute him.
 
She recognized Billy Pitcher, Simon's idiot nephew, browsing the beer cooler.
 
Crazy Ernie's son—orphaned as a child and fostered in Simon's house with Thomas.
 
Now that Thomas was dead, she supposed the business would go to Billy.

Keeping her face pointed away from him, she walked to the cooler and picked out four sandwiches and two small cartons of milk, one chocolate.
 
On her way to the checkout counter she passed the automotive aisle.
 
She saw a rack of flashlights.
 
She grabbed two of them and a large pack of D-cell batteries.
 
The cashier didn't recognize her.
 
She paid quickly and made it as far as the door before Billy saw her.

“Hi, sis!” he shouted, and came up behind her, a case of Milwaukee's Best hanging from each hand.

Asshole
, she thought, and turned to greet him with a false smile.
 
She wasn't surprised when his eyes failed to meet hers.
 
The man was scum.
 
He always called her ‘sis,' a thing that annoyed her to no end, and he never could keep his eyes off her tits.

“Hi, Billy-boy,” she said.
 
She knew he hated that nickname, and used it every time she spoke to him.
 
“Shouldn't you be at work?”
 
Billy worked part-time at his uncle's mill as Operations Manager and spent the rest of his time as Simon's all-purpose errand boy.

“
Naw
,” he said.
 
“I took a sick day.
 
I'm going fishing today.
 
Want to come with?”
 
His eyes, moving spastically between her face and chest, seemed to glow at the prospect.
 
Now that Thomas was gone, Shannon knew he considered her fair game, just another piece of family property to inherit.

He probably thinks this is foreplay
.

“You know, Billy-boy, I can't today.
 
I'm sorry, I'm just really busy.”

“C'mon,” he said.
 
“I miss you.
 
Just because we're not family any more doesn't mean we can't stay close.”
 
His eyes shifted again, this time below the belt line of her jeans.
 
She wanted to scream.

“Maybe later,” she said, inching toward the door.

She saw the paranoid teen walking toward them, one hand tucked conspicuously inside a denim jacket that the muggy day didn't warrant.

“Hey, you, stop!” the cashier shouted, and the boy bolted for the door.

Billy saw the boy, and pushed past Shannon to stop him.
 
The kid dropped his CD and tried to shove Billy aside.
 
Billy stood several inches taller than the kid and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds.
 
He had the kid pinned to the tile floor within seconds.