Phoenix in My Fortune (A Monster Haven Story Book 6) (8 page)

“We’ve got to find those kids,” I said. “Before he does something worse than leaving them in a hole.”

Chapter Eight

We already knew the area around the house, including the woods, was clear. My friends hadn’t found Shadow Man, but they hadn’t found any wayward kids, either. Therefore, we’d have to go farther out in our search.

We split into teams as we had before. Mom stayed home with Maurice and Sara, poring over maps of the area, scouring the Internet for possible clues and keeping an eye on the news for any new information. Darius and Kam took the same ground/sky formation they’d used on the beach, careful to keep Darius out of sight. Riley and I went out together, ostensibly as a couple in love going for an after-dinner walk.

My thought was the neighbors—also having been presented with pictures of the missing kids—would likely be outside gossiping. Sometimes gossip was more valuable than facts.

Kam and Darius went out the back door to wait for sunset and Darius’s mothman change, and Riley and I went out the front. As I’d suspected, the street was lined with my neighbors, gossiping in clusters by mailboxes. We waved and walked past them. They were all likely to have the same information we already had.

New information awaited a few streets over where the kids actually lived. I was sure of it. Anything on my street would be too watered down from getting passed person-to-person. I needed first-hand anecdotes.

As we reached Brenner Road, the amount of milling neighbors increased, as did the amount of police cars lining the street. We crossed to avoid walking directly in front of the Perkins and Montgomery houses, which were crawling with reporters and detectives.

Had this happened a few weeks ago, the police probably would have sent a single officer over to check it out. In light of the recent kidnapping, everyone was going apeshit.

An older couple stood in the yard next to us, watching the chaos.

I gave them a polite smile, making sure it wasn’t too chipper for the circumstances. “Any news?”

The husband scratched his head. “Nothing yet. Probably a lot of fuss for nothing.”

The wife folded her arms and stared across the street with cold eyes. “Those two are always up to something. Too curious by half, if you ask me. I bet they’ll find them stuck up a tree or in a ditch somewhere, snooping around after Blackbeard’s treasure.”

The husband gave a vigorous nod of agreement, his jowls jiggling with the motion. “They dug up my marigolds last year looking for a dead body. Those kids read too damn much.”

I glanced at Riley from the corner of my eye. Would we grow old and grumpy together? I wanted to believe that if two kids appeared in my yard, digging for a dead body, I’d get a shovel and help. Unless, of course, I thought there really was a dead body there. Then I’d direct them to another part of the yard. The way my life was going, I couldn’t rule out bodies buried in the garden.

No. We would never end up like these two. For one thing, they were the type to think an emergency was finding a gopher hole in their pristine lawn. Riley and I knew what really lay beneath the grass. We knew what dark things lurked in the corners of the gardening shed. And we knew those kids weren’t stuck up a tree somewhere unless something terrifying and so much worse than a gopher had put them there.

“Kids these days,” Riley said. “Why can’t they just smoke cigarettes and steal their parents’ beer like we did?”

The sarcasm seemed to be lost on the older couple. If I hadn’t been so worried about the kids, I might have made plans to ask Bruce and Simone to breathe on a few marigolds.

“Next thing you know, they’re reading
Treasure Island
and getting
ideas
.” I flung my arm in the air for emphasis. “Whatever are they teaching in school?”

We walked off, arm in arm, extolling the virtues of staying inside and playing video games until we were out of earshot.

“Well, that was uncomfortable,” Riley said. “Some people just don’t like kids, I guess.”

“Some people don’t like people.” I hadn’t completely dismissed the idea of dragonfire taking out their flowerbed once this was all over.

We found ourselves on a quieter end of the street, fewer people milling around and more parked, empty cars. Down the street, people continued to come and go from Miles’s and Ashley’s houses.

I wanted to barge into the kids’ homes and ask the parents questions. What books were they reading? Were they obsessed with a particular game or television show? Where did they usually go after school?

I had a feeling that what the old couple had said was important. These were adventurous kids. They’d been walking home from school together when they’d disappeared. If they were the kind of kids always looking for an adventure, it might help to know what their current adventure of choice was. I had no proof, of course, but my gut told me it was the key.

But I wasn’t a detective, so they’d likely take me in as a suspect if I started conducting interviews of the family.

I grinned at Riley. “I’ve got an idea.” I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Maurice.

1501 and 1503 Brenner Ave. Can you sneak into each of the kids’ rooms and look around? Books. Movies. Games. Find out what they love. Careful of police.

I hit send and had an immediate response.

On it.

We stayed where we were while we waited. If Maurice got caught, we’d know it from the number of police who would likely swarm into the house.

But they didn’t make any sudden moves outside, and Maurice got back to me within a few minutes.

Miles: Huge LEGO collection, Pixar movies, fish. Ashley: Dinosaurs, Hello Kitty, Nickelodeon shows. Both have a pile of
Goosebumps
books by their beds. Does any of that help?

It didn’t help, really. But at least we found out what they’d been reading. Scary stories. I’d read
Goosebumps
when I was a kid. Good to know kids were still reading them.

I texted him back.

Not sure what it means yet, but it might help. Thanks. Be home when we can.

I slipped the phone in my pocket and eyed the houses. Nothing new was happening.

“Walk with me.” I took Riley’s hand, and we meandered up the street, away from the commotion.

“You look like you have an idea.”

“Only a vague one.” I led us in the direction of the bus stop where the kids were last seen. “Let’s try to look at things from their perspective.”

Riley reached up and yanked on my hair. “You have cooties.”

I pinched him. “I’m serious.”

He made a contrite face. “Sorry.”

I winked.

We walked another block, and the warmth of our exchange leaked away with each step, leaving me twitchy and with what felt like a rock in my stomach. Every minute that went by potentially put the kids in more danger.

When we got to the bus stop, I glanced around for clues. “Okay. We know they got off the bus.” I checked the time on my phone. “It’s a seven-minute walk at the most. What happened in that short amount of time?”

Riley cocked his head to the side. “Maybe somebody called to them.”

“Miles and Ashley weren’t the only kids who got off the bus, though. Nobody else said they heard anything, and our kids were spotted walking toward home.”

“Okay. I see where you’re going with this. He couldn’t have nabbed them right off the bus.”

“Right. And he probably couldn’t have taken them from the street. Somebody could’ve seen it through their window.”

“So, you’re thinking they stopped off somewhere on the way.”

“Somewhere scary. Because that’s what they’re currently into.”

We turned back the way we came to retrace our steps, casting left and right for anything that might appeal to a couple of pint-sized ghost chasers. We were nearly to where we’d started when it struck me.

I’d grown up there. I knew the area. I knew the stories.

“There’s an old house in the woods north of here.” I turned on my heel and took off into the brush. “It’s supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of a hundred convicts or mental patients, depending on which story you hear.” I hopped over a bush, picking up speed.

“Zoey, slow down, you’re going to break an ankle.” Riley followed behind me, dodging the branches I brushed past so they didn’t whap him in the crotch.

“They say a lady jumped to her death when her baby died of the pox.” I picked up my pace, sure I was right about where the kids were. “A sea captain bled to death from a bear trap. The house burned down and was rebuilt three times.” I was getting out of breath, but I kept moving. The deeper into the woods we traveled, the darker it grew, and the already cool temperature dropped.

“How can all that be true?” Riley’s voice came from right behind me. He kept up fine.

“That’s just it. None of it is true. We all made up stories to add to it. It’s a tradition around here. Kind of like Shadow Man himself.”

We came to a halt in a clearing not too far into the woods. Pine needles crunched underfoot, and a neglected three-story house stared at us through its broken windows. One side of the house was black from some past fire. The front door was completely obstructed by a dead tree that had been struck by lightning and fallen over. The porch sagged, and a shingle dropped to the ground as if on cue.

I shuddered, remembering how terrifying the place had been when I was a kid. And that was when the worst thing that could happen was getting tetanus from an ancient soup can or a cut from a broken window. Now there were far more dangerous and frightening things that might be lurking behind a tree or watching through the slats of a boarded-up window. I tried not to think about it. If Shadow Man was here, I’d deal with him. He wasn’t going to kill any kids on my watch.

Riley whistled. “
That
is a safety hazard, my friends.”

I held out my hand with a flourish. “May I present to you, the Old Corning House.”

Riley shook his head so hard he looked like a bobblehead. “You are
not
going in there.”

“I have to. I know how to get in. You don’t.”

“You can just tell me.” He squinted in the dusk. “I can go in through one of the windows. They’re already broken anyway.”

I snorted. “Rookie mistake. The windows are all blockaded.” I grabbed his hand and dragged him around to the back of the house. A smallish hole at the bottom of the back door spewed darkness out at us. I pointed at it. “You get in that way.”

“I can’t fit in there.”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

If Riley didn’t stop shaking his head so hard, it was going to break off at the neck and launch into space. “Oh, hell no. You’re not going in by yourself. Shadow Man aside, I can’t let you climb into an abandoned house that’s about to collapse. Especially since we have no proof that the kids are even in there. And it’s nearly dark.”

“Call for backup.” I tried to sound nonchalant, like standing there waiting for Kam and Darius to show wouldn’t make me a twitchy, nervous mess.

Riley tapped his phone display to place a call. “Kam.” He turned his back for a moment while he spoke to her, and I took advantage of his lapse of attention.

I tapped my phone to activate the flashlight—something I’d learned from Kam some time ago—and ducked into the hole leading into the house. I heard Riley call my name once before the house swallowed me up.

What I hadn’t told Riley was that I could feel the kids in here. I felt their fear and it was ripping me apart. The poor things were terrified. That terror seeped through the walls of the house like blood and pooled at my feet. I broke out in a sweat. I couldn’t tell if they’d gotten lost in the dark, winding hallways or if Shadow Man had locked them in here. Either way, I knew they were in trouble.

One of them was hurt, too. I felt the kid’s pain, and whichever one of them was injured was getting weaker every second.

I hadn’t told Riley this because he wouldn’t have taken his eyes off me even for a second. He’d know I wouldn’t be able to wait.

I hadn’t been in the Old Corning House in over twenty years. And I’d never been brave enough to be there at night. I shone my light around the empty kitchen. Empty beer bottles littered the floor, and broken furniture lay piled in the corner. Wax drippings from old candles pooled on the cracked counters.

The whole place smelled of mildew, charred wood and pee.

I picked my way through the debris, then climbed a precarious stack of old chairs that blocked my exit from the kitchen into the next room—a living room, maybe, or a parlor.

I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms. The house was chilly and damp, but the atmosphere probably had as much to do with the bumps on my skin. Every step I took caused the warped wooden floors to creak. My flashlight app was a poor match for the thick darkness.

At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped and reached out to feel for the children. There was no mistaking the fear pouring down the steps. They were up there. But I had to hurry, because the emotions of one of them were getting almost too weak for me to sense.

Something moved to my left, and I spun around to flash the light at it. A creature with red eyes stared back at me, chittered, then scurried away. I swallowed the scream in my throat and followed the raccoon’s progress until it disappeared through a hole in the wall.

The stairs didn’t look sturdy. I touched the bannister and felt how loose it was. My hand came away sticky with cobwebs and dust. I wiped my hand on my jeans and moved to the inside of the staircase.

I considered calling up to the kids, but shouting seemed ill advised. If Shadow Man was around somewhere lying in wait for me, he probably already knew I was here. But there might also be animals other than the lone raccoon. Shouting would probably upset them and cause a stampede or an attack.

Riley never would have fit through the entrance to the house. That much was true. But alone in the dark of the dilapidated and possibly deadly house, I regretted not waiting to see if we could find another way. I’d let emotion direct me instead of good sense. It wasn’t the first time I’d made a dumbass move like this.

Understanding this on an intellectual level wasn’t enough to make me turn around and go back for help. The emotional cries of two kids pulled me far harder than good sense or self-preservation. I had to keep going forward.