The Nine Lives of Felicia Miller (22 page)

Felicia finally relaxed. Wanting and willing to believe him. After all, her sweet old self might have been inclined to visit Oogie as well, without any dark ulterior motives.
Nelson’s just being the sweetheart that he is.

She stepped past Nelson and looked at Oogie lying in his bed.

The sight was revolting yet fascinating. His face was a mass of puffy red scars. His eyes were hidden behind gauze bandages stained with a sickly yellow pinkish ooze. But it was easy to imagine the empty sockets underneath.

Felicia thought of the old saying:
The eyes are the windows of the soul.

She stroked Oogie’s hair softly, causing him to flinch from her touch.

And now your windows are shuttered.

Forever.

217

“It was really nice of you to visit the kid,” Nelson said to Felicia, straining to see the road ahead as a torrent of dime-sized snowflakes bombarded the Audi’s foggy windshield. But her visit puzzled him and caused him to wonder about its possible implications.

Does she know Oogie was involved in her attack?
Maybe she doesn’t. Why would she visit him if she did?

But then what was up with that drawing on the cake? A cat with giant fangs? Kinda creepy no matter how you slice it, no pun intended.

Oh well… I guess if he dies from poison after eating the cake, I’ll know that she knew.

But if she knows about him does that mean she also knows about me? Did some fucking snitch rat us out?

Fuck. I knew I shouldn’t have gone to visit him. Of all the days to show up. If she does suspect Oogie, now she must suspect me as well.

He glanced over at Felicia and for a fleeting instant thought about driving her straight out to a remote corner of the woods and strangling her.

But he realized that would be suicide. The duty nurse saw them leave together. He caught a glimpse of her newsy eyes following them out the door. And he’d signed his real name on the sign on sheet.
Fuck.

“It was nothing,” Felicia replied nonchalantly.
Nothing like I wanted it to be.

With Nelson hovering beside her at Oogie’s bedside, there was no way she could implement her sadistic plan.

No way I could mention the beautiful snow outside, transforming our little hamlet into a Christmas card wonderland.

No mention of the kids off from school, sledding and skating and frolicking in the clean white snow.

No talk of the recent girls’ swim meet, of the dripping female bodies in skintight swimsuits.

Not a word about the hot new shows on MTV filled with skanky teen flesh and sexuality.

Instead she’d simply set the cake down on Oogie’s nightstand and asked if he wanted a piece. He declined, in a voice that told more through its decimated tone than it did through the words he spoke. He was clearly a shattered shell. A breathing corpse, his life drained to minimal subsistence.

“Hey, guess what?” Nelson ran his fingers up under Felicia’s hair, raking her silky locks and massaging her scalp. “My folks are heading out of town this weekend. I’ll have the whole house to myself.”

Felicia didn’t answer. She was torn between his tempting proposition and a lingering suspicion that maybe there was more to his hospital visit than he’d let on.

“Oh,” she finally said, in a noncommittal tone that masked her suspicion. “My mom’s been really weird about letting me go out lately. She’s afraid some drunken hunter is going to shoot me by mistake. I guess she thinks I look like some kind of wildcat.”

She watched Nelson’s eyes for some immediate reaction to her choice of words, but there was none. He remained focused on the road ahead.

“Well I guess in that coat you do,” he finally said. “Ever hear of goretex?”

“I like my fake fur coat. I think it suits me.”

“Well I don’t blame your mom for being worried. She cares about you. Like I do.” He stroked her scalp gently.

Felicia melted under his touch, like a kitten getting its ear scratched. “It was all I could do to convince her to let me visit Oogie. I had to promise I’d come straight home.”

“Well tell her to stop worrying. The big hunt is over. And nobody shot anything. With all those hunters out there morning noon and night, if something was prowling around, somebody would have seen something.”

“You think so?”

“No doubt. Everybody and their fucking grandmother was out there trying to score that bounty. If a big cat had been out there, its hide would be gracing Mandee Madisson’s bedroom floor right now and its head would be mounted on her wall.”

“But something attacked Oogie.”

“Boy, did it ever,” he shivered, thinking of Oogie’s horrible remnant of a face. “Did you get a good look at his face? Or rather what’s left of it. Not to be cruel but I’ve seen better looking Halloween masks. But whatever attacked him’s long gone by now. Those big cats roam far and wide.”

“Really?”

“Sure. If it wasn’t already gone when that hunt got started, all those drunks out there blasting away probably scared it away. In fact, I’ll bet it ran off spooked the day that Floyd and his buds tried to kill it at Devils Point. That was the last time anybody saw it, and they said it was running for its life.”

“What makes you think it’s the same cat? Sparrow claims he saw a mountain lion.”

“Sparrow was on fucking angel dust,” Nelson snapped. Then realizing his slip he glanced in the rearview and caught a flash of renewed suspicion in Felicia’s eyes. Without missing a beat he smoothly segued, “I heard him talking about it in the locker room after gym. Him and his boy Wally Sutter were laughing their asses off about it. I can’t stand either of those creeps. Douchebags deluxe.”

He sensed Felicia relax.

Good save. She bought it.
After years of talking his way into girls’ panties he could spin lies on a dime.

“Here you are, kitten. Home safe and sound.” He pulled into her driveway and stopped to let her out. “Go in there and get warmed up. I wish I could come in and cuddle with you before a nice cozy fire.”

Felicia gazed at him sweetly, and gave him a sexy kiss. “I don’t think my mom would like that. I’ll see you this weekend,” she purred. Confident that her suspicions were just silly delusions.

Nelson watched her cross the lawn to her house, and waited gallantly until she waved bye at the door and slipped inside.

“Yeah. I’ll see you this weekend… you stupid bitch. And you better be DTF.”

Chuckling to himself he backed out of the driveway, barely avoiding a collision as Marcella’s beat-up Plymouth zoomed past without its headlights on.

“Fucking stupid welfare cunt!”

Cursing the blinding storm he used his sleeve to clear the windshield. This was no weather to be driving in. He wanted to head right home.

But duty called. Wally was waiting for a ride. Out to the boonies to score a few grams of meth.

Gotta stock up on candy for my date this weekend.

217

The week dragged slowly by. Felicia’s mother finally relaxed her restrictions once it was clear that the hunters were no longer out on the prowl. But Felicia was still pretty much housebound, due to an extended winter storm that filled the streets with banks of snow and patches of slippery ice.

To her credit, Laurie Miller made good on her promise and made several calls trying to get someone interested in Granny Dola’s disappearance. But like her daughter she grew frustrated and disillusioned with the official agencies. The automated phone systems were a time-wasting blockade seemingly designed to impede communications rather than enhance them, and the faceless bureaucrats she finally reached were experts at postponing any real action.

The Greenville school system shut down for a few days until the storm finally moved on, but conditions weren’t much better after it did. The town was experiencing record low temperatures. The streets were thick and slick with snow and ice.

Bill Miller drove his daughter to school on his way to work. It was rare that Felicia didn’t walk. It was only a mile and she enjoyed the exercise. But the slippery streets gave her dad an excuse to reconnect with his independent-minded daughter. Or at least try to.

Bill stole a look at Felicia as she lay back in her seat, eyes closed, listening to tunes on her ipod. He was amazed at how different she seemed since the last time he drove her anywhere.

God, has it been a whole year? It seems like only yesterday I was driving her everywhere. Now she treats Laurie and me like interlopers.

He thought of the little girl she used to be, not so long ago. Dressed in her soccer gear, coltish legs pocked with bruises, bandaids on her knees. And soon she was a budding adolescent. Pestering him constantly to drive her to the mall to meet her friends. Nowadays she was more often looking for excuses
not
to be driven around, by either him or her mother. Like they suddenly had cooties.

I guess that’s to be expected. She’s in a hurry to grow up, like all girls her age.

But that didn’t completely explain the difference he sensed in his daughter. Although she was his only child and he’d never had any experience watching another one mature to adulthood, he knew that the changes he’d been noticing were not your normal growing pains.

Laurie sensed it too. It wasn’t any one thing they could pinpoint concretely.

Physically there was the tactile fluidity in Felicia’s posture and movements that transcended the rudimentary grace she’d started cultivating in her tween years.

Mentally there was her newly exhibited aura of self-confidence, so strong it bordered on defiance.

And then there was the radical change in her diet. No longer craving her once favorite chocolates and abhorring the citric fruits she once loved, she now favored meat and fish above all else.

“Okay, punkin,” he said as he pulled up to the school walkway. “Your majesty has arrived.”

He was about to poke Felicia, not sure she heard him over the music in her earphones, but she suddenly sat forward and opened her eyes. “Thanks, dad.” She gave him an obligatory peck on the cheek then hopped out of the car.

“Be careful out there, kitten. Watch out for black ice.”

Ignoring his warning she strode briskly up the concrete walkway, which wound up a gentle incline towards the school. There was no chance Felicia would lose her footing. She moved like a nimble animal, at one with the winter environment. She stepped over patches of ice with precisely placed footfalls and perfect balance.

Students were trudging in from all directions, shuffling with the robotic gait of rubber boots on icy pavement.

Felicia swept the scene with her eyes. Taking quick note of faces and bodies and trajectories. Subconsciously tabulating the odds that one of the clumsy shufflers would slip and fall.

She smirked triumphantly as her first guess proved correct and Helen Blanton took a tumble, cracking a puddle of ice with her beer barrel bottom.

By the time Felicia reached the halfway mark on the path she was intoxicated with oxygen. Each breath of fresh cold air increased her alertness. Her awareness of everything around her intensified with every step. Overwhelmed with stimulation, her human mind took a back seat and her animal instincts took control, her senses sharply focused yet strangely muddled. She could see, smell and hear a multitude of minute details, but they merged into a fuzzy swirl of impressions.

She trudged forward in a happy daze, at one with nature. Almost in a trance.

As she neared the doors of the school she was suddenly distracted by a flurry of movement overhead—and looking up saw a coal black shape settle on a snowy windowsill.

A raven.

“Granny!” she cried out loud, her rational mind too befogged to check her emotional reaction. She ran forward waving her arms, attempting to signal the bird, and clumsily lost her footing on the icy walkway. With a shriek of surprise she slid off-balance and landed hard on her hip.

The raven took flight, without so much as a chirp to acknowledge her.

As if waking from a dream, Felicia gathered her senses and looked around.

Dozens of students stared down at her in wonder and amusement.

Shit.

She slowly regained her feet, watching the students hurry inside, already whispering and laughing about what they had just witnessed.

Eager to spread the word about Felicia’s crazy outburst.

***

“Hey Granny!” someone chirped in a comical voice.

“Koo-koo… koo-koo…”

Felicia whipped around to see Wally and Sparrow mocking her. Rather than reacting in shame she shot them a devious smile that said,
Don’t worry, boys. You’ll get yours. I have something very special coming your way.