FIFTY-SEVEN
Steve didn’t show up to Cory’s house until after ten, his BB gun in his right hand, Frisbee at his heels. We were inside the tent testing and retesting the flashlight, talking in hushed tones when he flipped the flap to the entrance, scaring the crap out of all of us.
“Geez,” Cory said. “What took you?”
Steve, leaving Frisbee to lie on the grass just outside the entrance said, “Mom got home a little late tonight. After I asked if I could stay over she had a long talk with me about staying inside and away from anything tall that would attract lightning. She said it’s supposed to be one hell of an electrical storm tonight.” And as if to prove this point, the tent lit up as if God had taken our picture from Heaven above. Seconds later the sound of thunder rocked the earth. It was closer now and we felt the reverberation in our chests. We cringed from the noise as Steve continued. “Of course I promised her that we would all be sleeping inside your house, Cory, and would be there all night.” He paused a moment and looked down. “I hate lying to her.”
“What about Jackie?” I asked. The Sesame Street Killer would be coming for her tonight and Steve had told us that he would talk to her about sleeping somewhere besides her own bedroom, just in case.
“I told her to sleep with my mom tonight,” Steve said as he began loading BB after BB into his rifle. “It worked out well enough too because she’s kind of scared of thunder. After mom talked to me about the storm I made up some crap about how big and loud it would be and that she should stay in my mom’s room. I told her all serious so she wouldn’t want to sleep alone. I’m pretty sure she’ll do what I’ve asked her.”
And so everything was set. All we needed to do now was play the waiting game. Part of our plan was to have one of us stand watch for an hour or so and then come get someone else to relieve them. We had no idea what time exactly the killer would show so we would place a man at the fence between Cory’s and Steve’s house to be a lookout. Jason took the first shift.
Once he was out of the tent it made room for Frisbee to join us. He sat next to me, his head in my lap. I scratched behind his ears and he stared at me with his golden eyes, easing my mind. We were nearing the zero hour now and he was the only thing keeping me from bolting home and crawling under my covers and forgetting about everything we had planned. But it was him that had set our plan into motion in the first place. Not just from the night before when Donald had led me to him and he had showed me the shadowy figure at Steve’s gate but from the moment we had found him at the Tree. I don’t believe that was an accident; us finding that dog, or him finding us. That was certainly meant to be.
The red bandana still hung around his neck as if he were a retired cowboy, though it was becoming a bit dirty and there was a tear near the end of the triangle at his breast. Steve would need to wash it when we were done with this whole crazy ordeal, if we could do everything right and get out of it with our lives, if fate decided not to be a cruel bitch to us that night.
Another flash of lightening. Another rumble of thunder.
Jason came back to the tent at around eleven thirty. He said that his ass was starting to hurt sitting on the concrete by the gate. From that vantage point he was able to see all of Steve’s front yard, though the only place that wasn’t visible was the gate on the other side of Steve’s house, the spot where I had seen the killer the night before. But Steve had thought about this and had set up a metal trashcan just inside the gate. If it were to be opened anymore than six inches-which it would have to be to gain access to his backyard-then the can would fall over and make just enough noise for the person standing watch to hear.
Steve was next at the post and took his BB gun along with him. Jason and Cory began to talk about school and who they thought might be in their classes when they went back in September. Their talked died down when Jason realized that Amber probably wouldn’t be returning in the fall. And like a good friend, Cory began talking about baseball to get his mind off of her. Jason was doing a little better now, since seeing the flyer with her picture on it the day before at the Plunge. I don’t think it’s ever a matter of ‘just not caring’ with kids when something tragic happens to someone they know, but they can kind of fold in on themselves and block that pain out, as if they contain some kind of trauma blocking gene that tells them, ‘Hey, you’re still just a kid. Get through this and life will go on. You’ve got plenty of years left in you.’
I wished that gene were saying something like that to me just then, keeping me calm instead of anxious.
But I guess that was what Frisbee was there for. Because even though every few minutes there was a burst of lightening and crack of thunder, as I sat petting him, he would give off one of those sighs that only dogs can do; the kind that come from deep in their lungs when their about to fall asleep. Such a soothing sound, those sighs.
And sooth me it did for the next hour or so until Steve came back and told Cory that it was his turn to keep watch. Of course Cory bitched about it a bit and wanted to know why it was his turn instead of mine. But in the end, Steve’s argument won out and Cory left the tent and sat by the fence, by himself, on the other side of the yard, listening.
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. Steve had taken a longer shift than Jason had for two reasons. The first was because he was older and he could tolerate sitting there longer. The second-though he never suggested it, I kind of just figured-was because I think he wanted to be the one to catch the Sesame Street Killer in the act. It was his house that was being violated, his sister that was being stalked and so I believed that he wanted to be the one that led us to battle.
But it wasn’t him, it was Cory.
At almost three o’clock on the nose Frisbee lifted his head out of my lap and turned to face in the direction of Steve’s house, ears pricked. He couldn’t see through the tent’s canvas lining, but he stared in that general direction.
Seconds later we heard Cory running across the grass. He made a sound once like he may have fallen or slipped; a dull thud that sounded almost as loud as the thunder above. His teeth clapped together when he went down. In the next moment he ripped back the flap of the tent, his eyes were wide and untamed like a horse that has broken its leg. His body was racked with shakes.
“Fuck,” he said, his voice sounding different, broken like he would cry soon. His legs gave out and he sat down hard on his rear. “Someone,” he tried and failed and then tried again, began to ramble. “Someone’s out there. Someone just went to your house Steve. Fuck, I thought Ricky was bullshiting, making the whole thing up, acting like-like-like a baby to get some attention. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Shit they just parked an old white car by Jason and Ricky’s hill across from your house, got out and strolled over to your side yard like nothing, like it was nothing, like they lived there instead of you. I wasn’t sure at first if they were just going to the Burdick’s next door to you, maybe they lived there or they were going to visit someone there but then I thought who goes to visit someone at three in the morning and why wouldn’t they just pull up to the curb in front of the house and then it just didn’t make any sense at all and then I heard the trashcan fall and-”
“Cory!” Steve said, sternly.
Cory’s mouth continued to move though no words came out. It was as if someone had hit his mute button.
We were all on our knees now, Frisbee on all fours. I had never had my stomach feel the way it did at that moment. Not even when Ben had chased us out of Dead Grove. I wanted to vomit but knew I couldn’t, knew we didn’t have time for it.
“Cory,” Steve said again. “What did they look like?”
He stared back at Steve, a muddled look on his face as if someone had asked him what the currency exchange was in Brazil. Cory only shook his head.
“What did you see? Clothes. What kind of clothes? Tall? Short? Fat? Skinny? What?” Steve demanded in a tone that was too fast and sounded nothing like his own.
Cory thought, stared, his eyes big like fried eggs. F
inally he shrugged, shook his head and said, “Dark.”
When he spoke that word it instantly sent a chill up my spine and made my arms prickle in gooseflesh. I thought of my dreams-my Dark Dreams-and the bubbles and the voices.
“What do you mean dark?” Steve said aggressively through clenched teeth. “What does that mean?” Steve was becoming more and more agitated as we lost precious seconds.
Cory was shaking his head back and forth, trying not to upset Steve, if that were possible. “I don’t know, just dark. It was like a sweatshirt, a black one. Like what Ricky said he saw last night. With the hood pulled up.” He then looked at me. “I’m sorry, Ricky. I didn’t know.”
Then Steve did something way out of character. Something he wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. He grabbed Cory by the front of his shirt and pulled him close.
“Dayborne, you tell me right now. Was there a weapon? Anything? A knife? A bat? Did you see?
If Cory was scared before, he was beyond frightened now. He couldn’t pull his gaze from Steve. His mouth hung open as if staring at an alien bug. Shaking his head from side to side in slow motion, Cory finally said, “No. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.”
Steve released Cory and let him fall on his back. We all stared at Steve in wonder. We knew he was upset about the fact that someone had it in for his little sister but we never realized he would start losing it the way he was.
After a moment Cory sat back up and regained a bit of his composure and through his labored breathing said, “Steve, why are you acting like such a grouch?”
It took a moment for Steve to hear it and it was almost comical, the name he had been called. But in light of the situation it did nothing to deter his mood.
I looked between them toward Jason. He sat on his knees and now a look like none I had ever seen before and wouldn’t ever see again dissolved across his face. It was a look of disbelief and of final comprehension. His hand crept to his mouth.
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” he mumbled over and over, his face ashen.
Steve said, “What did you call me, Dayborne? A grouch? Your damn right I’m grouchy. It’s my little sister over there that’s in trouble and if you think for one minute-“
But I cut him off with a hush and turned to my brother. “Jason,” I said. “What is it? Why are you saying that?”
But now he had stopped mumbling and tears were welling in his eyes. He looked up at us. “I think I know. Oh, God, I think I know.”
Steve shook his head and now turned on Jason. “Know what, Sinfield? Start making sense. What is it?”
“The other day at the Tree,” he said. “Remember? When you read that newspaper article about that little girl, Melissa. The one they found in the trash can with the Oscar the Grouch mask on her.”
“What about her?” Steve asked.
It took a moment but Jason got it all out. “Something rang a bell the other day when you read that. I didn’t know exactly what it was at the time but I think I know now. I couldn’t grasp it then, couldn’t remember. Oh, shit.”
“What, Jason,” Cory whispered. “What about it?”
“Oscar the Grouch,” he said, “came to our door. On Halloween. Last year.”
Steve seemed to be at the end of his rope. “What the hell are you talking about?” he badgered.
“Jamie Manning. She was Oscar the Grouch for Halloween last year. Her dad brought her to our door for candy. She was wearing that damn mask. I remember because she had to wear those big thick glasses on the outside of it.”
Another flash of lightening. Another rumble of thunder.
Of course anybody could have picked up one of those masks at any pharmacy last October. It didn’t mean that one of the neighbors down the street had planted it on a girl after they had committed a murder. There could have been a hundred kids dressed as that Sesame Street character out trick-or-treating last year, but it sounded all too real, all too true. The girl with Down’s syndrome loved Sesame Street. She had different shirts with varying characters on them that she wore from time to time. There were days you’d think she’d joined a cult that worshipped Big Bird.
Steve snapped his head in the direction of his house and said, “You think that’s George Manning over there? You think that’s who’s been killing those girls?”
Jason finally turned to look at him and said, “I don’t know. But if it is then maybe I could have saved her. Amber I mean. If I’d thought about it soon enough.”
Now Steve grabbed Jason by the shirt, lighter than he had Cory though, and said, “Don’t think about that shit right now, Jason. There’s nothing you could have done. You didn’t know. But right now, we know that someone is over at my house and trying to get in to get my sister. We need to get moving. You guys remember what you’re supposed to do?”
We all nodded that we did.
“Then we need to go now,” Steve continued, loading a BB into the chamber of his rifle and pumped six times. “Jason and Cory, get your asses up to that house. Ricky, come with me. I hope you’re ready for this.”
I hoped I was too. My head was starting to spin and I wasn’t sure if I could even stand but after a few breaths I found my feet and we all exited the tent. We headed for the side gate-not the one where the guys had stood watch but on the other side of the yard by the playhouse. From there we could see across to my house but not to Steve’s. An old white Crown Victoria sat at the curb by our hill like a beached whale. It was the same Crown Victoria that we had seen up on a jack stand in the Manning’s garage the day before on our way to the Plunge.
“Son of a bitch, it is him,” Steve said. “That’s his car. “Alright guys, hope to see you up at the house.”
Steve hoped, I prayed.
Jason and Cory went and hopped the gate at the alley that ran along side the Maherrin’s house and disappeared into Dead Grove. Steve and I crossed Cory’s front lawn and crept along his driveway until we came to Steve’s yard. Frisbee made no sound, only plodded along beside us as if on a secret mission, which is exactly what it was. At Steve’s house we snuck past the front door and made our way to his drive and then poked our heads around the side. The gate was half open and a scraping noise came from the other side of the wood. Steve’s plan had always been to bring that BB gun along, shoot first and yell later if necessary.
Along the side of his house, he, Jason and Cory had leaned a three-foot piece of plywood up against the stucco wall of the garage. Nineteen nails had been driven through it at different varying points. The tips of the nails touching the wall made it look like one of those beds of nails you see the Arabs lying on in the Bugs Bunny cartoons; only hastily put together.
Steve put a finger to his lips and pointed to the flashlight in my hand as if to say, Stay quiet and get ready to turn that on.
Slowly we moved forward until we came to the gate. My heart pounded as Steve inched it the rest of the way open with the barrel of his gun. And there, back by Jackie’s bedroom window, standing in the muddy condensation puddle, wearing work boots was a dark shadowy figure that looked a lot like the thing with the dreadlocks from the corner of my room, trying to pry the screen off with a screw driver.
The figure didn’t notice us as Steve raised the barrel of the rifle and took aim. “Hey, Manning, you still gonna beat seven shades of piss out of me?”
I switched the flashlight on and brought it up to the hood on the sweatshirt to get a better look at George Manning’s face; to catch his surprise.
But George Manning wasn’t the one surprised. We were. Because it wasn’t George Manning under that black hood, it was his wife, Emily.
Another flash of lightening. Another rumble of thunder.
Frisbee Page 65
