Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (2 page)

“Then you’ll have to talk that over with Mr.
Tanner,” Mrs. Tanner said. “Now, into bed, all of you.”

Tommy listened as the three boys got into
bed.

“Back to sleep, children.” Mrs. Tanner turned
off the lights. “God watch over you.”

“Hey, Mrs. Tanner?”

“Yes, Isaiah?”

“Do we gotta say our prayers again?” Isaiah
asked.

“No, just go to sleep.”

“Mrs. Tanner?” Isaiah asked. “How come you
always call your husband ‘Mr. Tanner?’ Don’t you know his first
name?”

“I’ve always called him Mister Tanner,” she
said. “Ever since I was his foster daughter. There was a different
Mrs. Tanner then, but she’s gone now.”

“What happened to her?” Isaiah asked.

“Stop trying to put off your bedtime,
Isaiah.”

“But I don’t want to sleep in the same room
with Tommy. He’s scary.”

“There are scarier things in the world than
him.” Mrs. Tanner closed the door.

The room was silent and dark for a
minute.

“You know what I think happened?” Jeb
whispered. “I think Tommy gave him nightmares. Until he died.”

“But the doctor said heart attack,” Isaiah
whispered. “Right?”

“That’s what a heart attack means, stupid,”
Luke said. “It’s when something scares you so much you die.”

“Yeah, stupid,” Jeb echoed.

“Ohhhhh,” Isaiah said. He was quiet for a
second. “Do you think Tommy can do that to us?”

“Maybe,” Luke said.

“Or maybe just you, Isaiah,” Jeb said. “Cause
you’re a little kid and a scaredy-cat.”

“Why would he kill me?” Isaiah squeaked.

“Because you won’t shut up and go to sleep,”
Luke said.

“You wouldn’t let him kill me, would you,
Luke?” Isaiah whispered.

“I would,” Luke said. “I’d watch him do it,
and I’d laugh.”

Jeb laughed.

“Shut up, Jeb,” Luke said. “Everybody shut
up.”

Tommy couldn’t sleep, so he crept out of the
house long before dawn and got started on his chores. That way, he
wouldn’t have to face anybody at breakfast.

He started by stacking up the firewood Luke
and Mr. Tanner had chopped the day before. Mr. Tanner wanted it in
a very precise hash pattern.

Later, he let the horses out and mucked the
stables. He couldn’t get too close to the horses themselves,
because he spooked them. The horses hated him, but he had to shovel
their manure anyway.

He managed to avoid people for most of the
day, but he was starving by late afternoon. Mrs. Tanner wouldn’t
want him in the kitchen unless he’d washed up.

Tommy scraped his muddy shoes outside the
back door, then took them off and carried them into the house. Mr.
Tanner and the other boys were still out doing chores. Tommy heard
banging sounds and Mrs. Tanner’s voice, swearing up a storm.

Upstairs, he found Mrs. Tanner in Pap-pap’s
room, which smelled like stale sheets and Ben-Gay. It sort of
looked like Mrs. Tanner was packing up his things, because she was
taking clothes out of drawers, shaking them, and then flinging them
into cardboard boxes. At the same time, it sort of looked like she
was searching the room, because she was leaving the drawers hanging
open, and she had pushed the mattress off the bed.

She sensed him watching her and turned to
him, a deep frown on her face.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Tommy said. “Can I help?”

She looked at him for a second, catching her
breath. Then she nodded.

“Okay, Tommy,” she said. “Help me find
Pap-pap’s money.”

“Money?”

“He’s got a bunch of cash in here somewhere,”
Mrs. Tanner said. “Now we need it.”

“Where do I look?”

“Anywhere. Start anywhere. Don’t worry about
making a mess.”

“Okay.” Tommy looked around the old man’s
room. Where might he hide money?

Tommy looked under the bed first. There was a
tackle box and a tool box, and the implements inside each were old
and rusty. He found a photo album and flipped through it, thinking
that it might be a good idea to hide money behind the pictures. He
didn’t find any, just a bunch of faded photographs of Pap-pap when
he was younger, with people Tommy didn’t recognize.

Mrs. Tanner moved on to the closet, checking
the pockets of Pap-pap’s coats and shirts.

The rattling sound of Mr. Tanner’s truck
approached the house, and Mrs. Tanner straightened up. She raced
back to the dresser and slammed each of the drawers.

“Get out of here!” she growled at Tommy. “Go
on and get washed up.”

Tommy ran down the hall to the bathroom. He
didn’t know what was coming, but for sure Mr. Tanner had a
punishment in mind by now. He scrubbed his face, hands and arms. He
looked at the splintery handmade cross over the sink, and he prayed
for protection against Mr. Tanner.

“Where is that boy?” Mr. Tanner shouted from
the front door. “I’m ready for him now. The Lord has spoken to
me.”

“He’s up here,” Mrs. Tanner called.

Tommy crept out of the bathroom. Mrs. Tanner
was hastily folding the clothes she’d flung into the cardboard
boxes. As Mr. Tanner clomped up the stairs, Mrs. Tanner heaved the
mattress back onto Pap-pap’s bed and slid it into place.

Mr. Tanner paused at the front of the
upstairs hall, his boots and jeans spattered in mud, his cowboy hat
tipped back to reveal his angry face. His boots thudded on the
boards as he approached. He glared at Tommy, who cringed by the
door to Pap-pap’s room, and then at Mrs. Tanner kneeling on the
bedroom floor, folding clothes.

“What are you doing alone with him,
Courtney?” Mr. Tanner asked. “What were you two getting up to?”

“Nothing, Mr. Tanner,” Mrs. Tanner said.

“Why are you in Pap-pap’s room?”

“I was just neatening up. Getting things
squared away.”

“And who told you to do that?”

“You always want me to do things without you
telling me,” Mrs. Tanner.

“This ain’t one of them,” Mr. Tanner said.
“Put it back just like it was.”

“But— ” Mrs. Tanner said.

“
Like it was!”
Mr. Tanner grabbed
Tommy by the sleeve and pulled him down the hall towards the
stairs. Tommy stumbled along and fought to keep his balance. “And
you got to come to church with me. You got to pray.”

Tommy didn’t want to go to church, but he
didn’t say anything. He didn’t want a whupping.

Mr. Tanner took him downstairs and out the
back door of the house, past the stables, and out past the goat
pen.

“They say it was just a heart attack,” Mr.
Tanner said. “Well, the Devil covers his cloven tracks, don’t he? I
said don’t he, boy?”

“I guess so.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Tommy said.

“I knew something was wrong with you,” Mr.
Tanner said. “From the day you got here. Right from your baptism. I
told my wife, that one’s been touched by Satan himself.”

Tommy didn’t say anything.

Mr. Tanner had left the local church after
getting into a dispute with the pastor. In fact, he’d gotten into
disputes with every pastor and preacher in the county, often by
standing up in the middle of a Sunday sermon and shouting fiery
criticism about the church, its leadership, and its interpretation
of the Bible. Mr. Tanner had his own peculiar religious ideas,
which nobody else seemed to care about, at least not when he was
screaming them in the middle of their church.

Since he couldn’t find a church to his
liking, he’d cleaned out the ancient gray barn near the back of the
property. Beyond it were the corpses of even older buildings that
had collapsed long ago, blown over by the prairie winds and left to
rot, their wood gone dry and brittle like bones in the sun. The
gray barn itself was too decrepit for any working use, but Mr.
Tanner had nailed a cross on top of it and held service for his
wife and foster children there each Sunday. Sometimes other days,
too, as the mood struck him.

Mr. Tanner pulled open the creaky barn door
and waited for Tommy to step inside.

The inside of the barn church was already lit
by a few candles. The rough, handmade benches faced towards the
front of the church, where a big cross of nailed-together willow
limbs hung on the wall.

Under the cross was the wooden platform Mr.
Tanner had built from two-by-fours. Beside that was another
platform, which held the baptismal pool, which was really just a
dirty old bathtub.

Like each of Mr. Tanner’s foster children,
Tommy had to be baptized within a day or two after he arrived. This
involved the whole family coming out to the church, and some
prayers by Mr. Tanner. Then you had to take off all your clothes
and get in that cold water while Mr. Tanner dunked you again and
again, saying he was casting out your devils and putting God inside
you.

Tonight, Luke, Jeb and Isaiah were already
here, dirty from working in the pasture. Luke held a length of rope
and smiled at Tommy, while the two other boys glared. Tommy
wondered if he had to be baptized over again. But Mrs. Tanner
wasn’t here, and she never missed anything at church.

“Luke, the rope,” Mr. Tanner said.

Luke nodded. He threaded the rope through an
iron eyehole mounted in the wall above the willow cross. Then he
grimaced as he bound Tommy’s hands together.

“What’s going on?” Tommy whispered, but
nobody answered him.

Luke pulled the rope taut, raising Tommy’s
hands in front of him.

“Jeb,” Mr. Tanner said.

Jeb stepped up to Tommy and unbuckled his
belt. He pushed Tommy’s pants down, leaving Tommy shaking in his
underwear in front of everybody, embarrassed and terrified.

“Kneel,” Mr. Tanner said. “Kneel before God.
And beg for His mercy.”

Tommy knelt on the dirt floor of the church.
It was hard because his bound hands were stretched in front of him.
Luke pulled on the rope, raising Tommy’s hands even higher above
his head, and then he tied the rope to one of the wooden posts
holding up the barn roof.

Behind him, he heard Mr. Tanner unbuckle his
belt.

“Say you’re sorry,” Mr. Tanner said.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy whispered. The leather
belt cracked across his backside, and Tommy yelped in pain. “I’m
sorry! I’m sorry!”

Mr. Tanner kept whipping him. Tommy cried and
repeated how sorry he was.

“Now stay there and pray,” Mr. Tanner said.
“Pray for the Devil to get out of you. Or I’ll have to exorcise him
myself.”

Mr. Tanner and the boys left.

Tommy knelt in the dirt and cried, his arms
stretched taut above his head. They were already starting to
ache.

They left Tommy alone in the church all
night, shivering with cold and pain.

Pap-pap’s body came back the next day. Tommy,
who had been untied so he could attempt to do his morning chores
with his weak and aching arms, watched Mr. Tanner, Luke, and Jeb
unload the cheap pine casket from the back of Mr. Tanner’s truck.
They carried it into the gray barn-church. Mr. Tanner was going to
conduct the funeral the next day, and then they would bury Pap-pap
in the yard next to the church.

Tommy went to bed before supper. He hadn’t
gotten much work done, either, but nobody harassed him about it.
They all acted like Tommy didn’t exist.

After going to bed so early, Tommy woke just
after midnight, when he heard a floorboard squeak in the hall. Then
another one. Someone was trying to sneak down the hall. Tommy could
tell because he’d done it so many times, trying to go to the
bathroom without waking anyone. Tommy loved the deep hours of the
night, when he was the only one awake.

He looked at the other bed. In the moonlight,
he could see all three boys were there. And Mr. Tanner wouldn’t be
tiptoeing around, he’d be clomping and banging as always. So it had
to be Mrs. Tanner. Or a burglar. Or a monster.

Tommy lay very still and listened. He heard
the squeak on the third stair, then the seventh stair. It was
someone leaving, not someone coming. It had to be Mrs. Tanner.

He slipped out of bed and walked to the
room’s one small window, which looked out on the weed-and-dirt
front yard. He watched Mrs. Tanner step down off the front porch
and pull on a pair of boots.

A station wagon trundled up the front drive.
Mrs. Tanner raced toward it, waving her arms. She leaned in at the
driver’s side, and the driver immediately turned out the
headlights.

Mrs. Tanner climbed into the back seat of the
station wagon.

Tommy watched it drive along the rutted dirt
track, towards the stables and barns, then around the corner of the
house and out of sight.

Tommy pulled on a shirt and picked up his
shoes. He followed after Mrs. Tanner, avoiding the squeaky spots in
the hall, and the third and seventh step. She’d left the front door
slightly ajar, so he did, too.

Tommy walked in the direction they’d gone,
keeping himself to the shadows of the farm buildings as much as he
could. The moon was bright overhead, leaving too little
darkness.

The station wagon was parked next to the
stable, with nobody inside. A crucifix hung from the rearview
mirror. Tommy tracked them up to the church, where the barn door
stood half open. Tommy circled around the barn, picked one of the
knotholes on the side, and looked through.

Mrs. Tanner stood next to the pine casket,
which was elevated on a pair of sawhorses. There were two other
people with her. One was a very heavyset Mexican-looking woman in a
loud dress, with bright scarves nested around her throat. She was
shaking her head while Mrs. Tanner talked in a low voice.

The other person was the most beautiful girl
Tommy had ever seen. She had deep, rich brown eyes and braided
black hair, with skin that reminded him of butterscotch. She was
about a year or two older than Tommy, dressed in jeans and a black
T-shirt with a glittering butterfly on the front. She was chewing a
giant pink wad of bubble gum.