Night Sky (3 page)

BOOM
BOOM
BOOM!

And apparently they weren't going to stop until somebody answered.

I lunged out of my bed, tugging my oversized nightshirt down so that it covered more of my legs. I felt sick from waking up so quickly, my nerves beyond shot from the horrible nightmare.

“Sky?” My mom stumbled out of her room and met me in the hallway, her eyes a mixture of grogginess and concern. Her terrycloth bathrobe was snug against her body. She crossed her arms over her chest, as if fending off a chill. Her hands were tucked into the robe's oversized pockets.

“It's okay, Mom,” I said, and hurried down the stairs.

I could see the silhouette of a petite figure through the door's stained-glass panel.

BOOM
BOOM—

I flung the door open, even as Mom descended the stairs behind me.

It was raining in real life, and the woman standing in the doorway was absolutely drenched. It was Sasha's mother. And she was sobbing.

“Skylar!” she said. “Lord help me!”

“Carmen?” I said disbelievingly. “What's wrong?”

“Mrs. Rodriguez?” my mom asked, pushing me slightly to the side in the doorway. I felt a twinge of irritation. “What's going on?”

Carmen Rodriguez wrung her hands in the doorway, her long, dark hair sticking to the sides of her face in the rain. She wasn't wearing a jacket, and the storm had brought the normally balmy Florida temperature down quite a few degrees. I shivered, imagining how chilly she must have been.

“Have you seen her?” Carmen gasped, her voice shrill with panic. She shifted her focus to me. “Sky! Tell me you've seen Sasha! Tell me you've got my baby here, and she's safe!”

Now Mom was looking at me too, but I shook my head. I hadn't seen Sasha since I'd babysat last night. And I still didn't quite understand. “Sasha's
gone
?”

Carmen's face crumpled, and she raised her hands to the sky as if imploring God himself to bring the little girl back. I swallowed hard as images from my dream popped into my head. Sasha walking so quickly from the car…how I hadn't been able to catch up with her.

“I tucked her into be-e-ed tonight,” Carmen hiccupped, “and when I woke up to get ready to go to work, she wasn't there!”

As Carmen collapsed into my mom's arms, sobbing hysterically, I looked over my shoulder at the huge grandfather clock that stood beside the staircase in our entryway. It was four o'clock in the morning.

In a typical, allergic-to-emotion move, Mom hugged Carmen awkwardly, with only the top half of her body touching the shorter woman.

I glanced over their heads, trying to figure out where Sasha might have gone. Many of our neighbors were standing in their doorways as well, craning their necks to get a better look at the scene. Some people were wandering around in pajamas and with umbrellas. Others carried flashlights. I could smell brewed coffee. Apparently our door wasn't the first that Carmen had pounded on.

I didn't see Edmund, Sasha's dad, but then again, I wouldn't. He worked the night shift as a security guard at the fish market. Sasha and I had always laughed at the idea of fish needing a guard. Of course Mom had killed the funny by telling me—out of Sasha's earshot—that these days, in the part of town over by the fish market, people were so hungry they'd rob the place at gunpoint if the guards like Edmund weren't there, actively on patrol.

“We're going to find her,” my mom said, patting Carmen's rain-matted hair. “She can't have gone too far.”

“Who knows how long she was missing before I woke up?” Carmen sobbed. “It could have been
hours! Oh my God!
”

I felt sick. Why had I dreamed about Sasha? I
never
had nightmares. True, I'd always dreamed vividly, but never like this. So why Sasha? And why tonight?

Vaguely, I remembered a night several years ago when my friend Nicole and I called the Psychic Hotline and talked to a lady with a phony Jamaican accent who made us giggle uncontrollably. I wasn't exactly a firm believer in fortune-telling or prescience or whatever you wanted to call it.

Still, it was an awfully strange coincidence.

And it was Sasha—who was squirrelly enough at bedtime to require three night lights and a teddy bear. Why in the world would she wander out of her house in the middle of the night?

Instinctively, I knew that she hadn't wandered anywhere. She had to have been taken. But who would do such a terrible thing?

Hoping I was wrong, I dashed upstairs to throw on some sweatpants and to get a scrunchie for my unruly hair. I grabbed my phone while I was at it, intending to call Calvin so he could help with the search.

As I clattered back downstairs, the image from my dream—of Sasha walking down the highway—popped into my head. I cleared my throat and tried not to remember.

Carmen was gone, no doubt to continue searching for her daughter in the rain and the dark.

My mom had already put on her raincoat. “We're going to the Rodriguezes' house,” she informed me.

I stopped short. “Shouldn't we be searching in other places?”

Mom shook her head. “It's possible that if Sasha did wander off, she'll come home eventually. Someone should be there, in case she does. Plus, who knows? There's always the possibility that she's hiding somewhere. In the…dryer…or…”

“The
dryer
?” I said incredulously. Mom was ridiculous. Yes, Sasha was tiny, but she was a nine-year-old girl, not a cat.

“It's called
holding
down
the
fort
,” Mom replied, jingling her car keys worriedly. “Let's go.”

Just then, my phone rang and I saw that it was Calvin. “Neighborhood watch just called. Have you heard?” he asked. Neither one of us bothered to say hello.

“Yeah. We're heading over to Sasha's house now,” I told him.

He was excited. “Did they find her?”

“They totally didn't,” I said, “but according to my mother, Carmen might not have looked hard enough, and we just might find Sasha hiding in an empty appliance.”

“I see,” Calvin said, and I laughed despite my ever-growing anxiety.

“You know Mom. Just humor her.”

“Meet you there,” Cal told me.

—

The Rodriguez family lived down the street, about halfway between my house and Calvin's, in a little one-story ranch, painted red with dark green shutters. Even though it was by far the least fancy-schmancy house on the block, it was the one with the most character.

Sasha's dad, Edmund, was a freelance artist by day and a security guard by night, and most of his daytime projects had made their way onto the Rodriguezes' front lawn. Sculptures in the shapes of eggs, cars, and giant quirky animals stood outside on the grass. A few of the neighbors had made a fuss about it, as it didn't give the house traditional Coconut Key curb appeal. But Calvin and I had always thought it was pretty cool.

Tonight, in the predawn drizzle, the sculptures looked ominous. Neighbors I'd never seen before hovered across the street, staring at the house as if the small building would somehow offer answers.

“Man,” Calvin said, still on the phone with me as I sat in the passenger seat of my mom's white SUV. We'd driven over instead of walking, “just in case” we needed the car, but really because Mom never walked anywhere. “There's, like, a Ken and a Marge on every corner with flashlights, looking in the ditches and even up in the damn trees!” “A Ken” is Calvin's name for a really old guy. “A Marge” is the female equivalent.

He pulled his car into the narrow driveway, right behind us, and we both hung up.

“You and Calvin stay close, you hear?” Mom said, cutting the engine.

I willed myself to refrain from a smart-ass comment. With every Ken and Marge in the entire neighborhood keeping an eye on us, I seriously doubted I'd be raped, murdered, mugged, or kidnapped.

Still, I nodded and got out of the passenger side.

Calvin's wheelchair ramp made a low droning sound as he slid out of his car and onto the driveway. His fro-hawk was tousled into tight curls from sleep, and sheet wrinkles marked his face. I looked down at his outfit. He was wearing a white sneaker on his left foot, and a green and black one on his right.

“You look nice,” I noted.

“You're a dick,” Calvin replied sweetly.

“Let's not dillydally,” Mom said urgently, and I socked Calvin in the arm, deliberately not making eye contact with him because if I did, I'd start laughing inappropriately. His smirk was challenging.

Calvin was always on me about my mom using words like “dillydally” and “knickers” and—Cal's favorite—“bosom.” He claimed my mom had a gangsta rating of negative five thousand.

Mom shuttled by, oblivious to the fact that we were both pretty much making fun of her. “You guys go ahead to Sasha's room. I'm going to search the rest of the house to see if maybe she's hiding somewhere.”

“Don't forget to check the microwave,” Calvin called after her, and I punched him again.

As we walked through the front door, I smelled it.

Again.

That terrible, awful, fart-of-doom, backed-up-sewage odor. Was that Sasha again? Was she here?

But the house was empty.

“Ugh,” I said and covered the bottom of my face with my pink sweatshirt sleeve.

“What's up?” Calvin said alongside me.

“You don't
smell
that?” I exclaimed.

“Smell
what
?”

I looked at Calvin. “Seriously, the fact that you can't smell it is kind of disturbing.”

But he shrugged. “All I smell is my own sexiness,” Calvin said.

“Well, I'm sorry to report that your sexiness smells like crap. Literally.”

I could hear my mom bustling around in the kitchen, and Calvin tapped me on the arm, smirking. He mouthed the word “mic-ro-wave,” and I rolled my eyes.

“Guys, Sasha's room is the second one on the right,” Mom called.

“I know, Ma,” I replied in a singsong voice, my impatience cutting through. I had only been in Sasha's house about a
billion
times before.

As we walked past Carmen and Edmund's bedroom door and down the hallway toward Sasha's room, the sewage stink became stronger. I kept my sweatshirt sleeve up to my mouth and nose, swallowing hard to keep from gagging.

Calvin looked at me quizzically. I turned the knob to Sasha's room.

Instantly, the foul odor was stronger. I coughed violently into my sleeve, my eyes watering desperately.

“Are you okay?” Calvin asked. “Hey, where's her bedroom light? I can't see a thing.”

I used the hand that wasn't covering my face and found the switch on the wall.

The room filled with light.

There was a flash of movement, and I quickly turned to the window, where I saw some kind of creature, barely more than a shadow. Long, gray, gnarled limbs, one leg hanging over the open windowsill… One grossly oversized arm clutching a teddy bear…

“Calvin, oh my God!” I squeaked, and covered my face instinctively, as if shielding my eyes would somehow keep me safe.

“What is it?” Calvin barked, visibly spooked. “Skylar, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“You didn't see that?” When I took my hands away from my face, the ghoulish figure was gone.

“See what?” Calvin's expression was ten percent concern—and ninety percent irritation. “Are you
trying
to scare the hell out of me?”

I shook my head, pointing an insistent finger at the open window. Sasha's lilac chiffon curtains fluttered dreamily in the wind.

Someone had
been
there!

“I saw some…thing,” I said.

“Like Sasha?” Calvin asked, and anxiously moved himself forward to peer out over the sill.

I couldn't bring myself to get as close to that window as Calvin did. Something in my very core told me that whatever I had seen was dangerous.

Evil.

It sounded dramatic, but there was no other word to describe it.

“Definitely
not
Sasha,” I said, shuddering, and took a few steps closer to Calvin…and the window. “But it was holding her teddy bear, whatever it was.”

“It?” Calvin shook his head. “There's no one out there, Sky. You sure you didn't just see a shadow and get freaked?”

I was sure. Wasn't I? But the screen was in place. I frowned. “Well, I'm definitely freaked, Cal. I know that much.”

I could hear Mom in the other room, still moving things around in her search for Sasha.

Calvin nodded. “It's freaking me out too,” he admitted, his tone grave. “All of this is.”

I finally mustered enough confidence to walk toward the open window. Peering outside through the screen, I saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Hibiscus bushes lined the outside of the house, the red flowers dripping with rain. An old rope swing that Edmund had hung for Sasha a year ago creaked languidly in the breeze. The backyard was otherwise empty except for a few older sculptures that Edmund had decided didn't make the cut for the front lawn.

I shrugged, suddenly exhausted. “I'm seeing things, I guess.” But I didn't believe that. I'd seen…something.

“You're not covering your nose anymore,” Calvin noticed. “Did it finally stop smelling like dooky in here?”

I sniffed. He was right. The terrible smell of sewage
was
gone… It didn't make sense.

Nothing about this made sense.

“You guys doing okay back there?” my mom called from down the hall.

“Just fine,” I called back.

“So the
it
you thought you saw was holding a teddy bear?” Calvin continued, glancing around the bedroom.