by Ninie Hammon
The woman turned on Sam with the speed of a striking snake.
“My Dougie is not fat! He’s just a little boy, not heavy at all! Rusty was too lazy to pick him up and carry him so he pushed my poor little baby into the Jabberwock! Why …”
And then the light of reason blinked out in her eyes. Insanity fired there in its place, as bright as a road flare.
“That’s what’s wrong with my Dougie. Not some little snake bite. People get bit by snakes all the time, it’s nothing. It’s the Jabberwock! Why Abby Clayton exploded when she—” She’d have lunged at Rusty if Sam hadn’t been in her way. “And you! You pushed him into the Jabberwock. You killed my precious baby!”
And then Claire McFarland began to howl.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It seemed like an eternity before Duncan Norman was able to catch Sam Sheridan’s eye. She was standing with a small group of people watching the pickup truck bearing the lifeless body of Douglas Taylor away. He thought maybe it was Pete Rutherford’s truck, but he hadn’t been paying that close attention. They had forced some kind of pills down Claire whatever-her-last-name-was-now and she’d finally stopped shrieking and zoned out enough for her husband to get her into the car and take her home.
As soon as Duncan got Sam’s attention, her emotional withdrawal informed him instantly that she knew why he was here and that he wasn’t going to like what she told him.
He approached her and asked softly, “May I please have a moment, Miss Sheridan?”
She said nothing, just nodded and led him away from the crowd to a quiet spot beneath the awning that stretched out over the front of the veterinary clinic.
No sense mincing words.
“Do you know if … was my daughter … was Hayley pregnant?” The last word came out in a strangled sob, tangled with such horror it was barely able to escape from his throat at all.
“Yes.” She just looked at him then, like she was deciding how much more she should say.
“Please,” and he heard the naked need in the word, the anguish he had only heard in the voices of others but had never expressed himself. “Don’t hold back … tell me … the rest of it.”
“On J-Day, she had been on her way to Lexington to … get an abortion.”
He felt an involuntary spasm in his belly and was so suddenly nauseous he could only barely control it.
“Abortion.” Even saying the word out loud refused to make it real.
“On Saturday afternoon, she asked me if I would do the procedure and I told her no.”
A sob escaped then, a small one, like a sound a child would make.
“So she had no other choice …” He spoke the words as he thought them. “She saw no way out. When you wouldn’t … she took her own life.”
He stood, trying to absorb the meaning in his own words, almost missed what Sam said next.
“No, actually, she didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Hayley didn’t commit suicide.”
“What are you saying? How could she … what, it was an accident? She … what, she tripped and fell to her death?”
“No, sir.” He could tell she absolutely did not want to tell him any more, and he could feel the pressure of it. The horror of the unsaid. The monster evil growing bigger and bigger with every second of silence. “The fall off Scott’s Ridge didn’t kill her. She was already dead.”
“Already dead?” That didn’t make any sense.
“Reverend Norman, I don’t know how to say this, but … Hayley’s death wasn’t a suicide and it wasn’t an accident. Hayley was murdered.”
He thought she said murdered.
“What?”
“I’m no forensic pathologist, but … there were wounds on the back of her head and on the front of her head. Wounds you don’t get falling off a cliff.”
“Wounds?” He was trying to track, but the meaning of her words seemed to be lagging behind the sound of them in his ears.
“Someone beat your daughter to death and then threw her body off the Scott’s Ridge Overlook.” The words came from behind him and he turned to see the woman — he couldn’t think of her name — who had come with Sam earlier to deliver the news. She hadn’t been here before. He didn’t know when she’d arrived, but she was here now, standing beside a man, Viola’s Tackett’s son, Malachi.
“If Liam were here, he would have … but he isn’t,” she said. Her name. He couldn’t think of her name. “There’s no one to conduct a … murder investigation, but that’s what it is. Hayley was murdered.”
“But who—?” Then he knew, of course. There was only one explanation. The rapist who ravished his virginal daughter and planted his devil’s seed in her womb had killed her to keep her silent.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said the man, Malachi. “If there’s anything I can do …” His voice trailed off.
Duncan looked at him then, really looked at him for the first time.
Malachi Tackett.
Malachi. Tackett.
Sam Sheridan was speaking but Duncan couldn’t hear her. There was a great roaring sound in his ears, the sound of all the engines in hell revving up like the tractors at the starting line at a tractor pull. The sound was deafening.
He was surprised he was able to speak, but found the words coming unbidden out past his lips. Looking the man full in the eye, Duncan said, “Actually, I could use your help. Clearly, my daughter drove out to the overlook, took our only car. Would you mind giving me a lift to go get it?”
His words had sounded as devoid of emotion as an automated attendant, as that voice in the airport that directs you to the right luggage carousel in baggage claim.
Everyone was surprised, of course. It was a totally off-the-wall request. Why ask someone you hardly knew to do a thing like that when there were a dozen people — church members and such — who’d jump at the chance to help out?
“I could ask … Scott’s Ridge is where Hayley died. I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold it together when I go there and I’d rather not fall apart in front of … someone from my church.”
It wasn’t a particularly good lie, but Duncan was mildly amused at how easily it had formed in his head. If he put his mind to it, he might be able to come up with a really good one. Effective lying likely took practice.
Then Duncan merely stood, looking at Malachi.
“Actually, I don’t have a car myself …”
When Duncan didn’t allow the explanation to get him off the hook, Malachi turned toward the woman — Charlie, her name was Charlie — and she took the non-verbal handoff.
“You’re welcome to borrow mine.”
“Thanks,” he told her. Then he turned back to Duncan. “So when …?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Duncan heard himself say. “I have … things to attend to before … but I’ll be free by nine o’clock. Could you pick me up at my house?”
“Sure,” Malachi said.
A handshake was called for now and Duncan should have initiated it, should have said thank you as he … but he couldn’t extend his hand. You could’ve put a gun to Duncan Norman’s temple, cocked it, demanded that he shake Malachi Tackett’s hand or you’d blow his brains out, and he’d have died right there on the spot.
He would not, he could not touch the man.
So Duncan merely turned on his heel and walked away. Had to walk away quickly, had to get away or he would …
The words Hayley had poured out into her diary spoke now in his head with her voice.
… tall and dark with a rugged face, unruly black hair and piercing blue eyes.
Malachi Tackett.
There was not another man in all of Nowhere County who fit that description so perfectly.
Malachi Tackett had raped and murdered his little girl. And Duncan Norman would assume the role of an avenging God, administering justice and retribution.
Tomorrow morning would give him enough time to lay his hands on a gun.
Chapter Twent
y-Eight
Rusty felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. He’d dozed off reading a comic book.
When he opened his eyes, it wasn’t his mother standing in the room. It was Douglas Taylor’s mother, Claire MacFarland.
“Get up,” she told him. “You’re coming with me.”
“Huh?” He had to be dreaming. And it wasn’t surprising that he was having a nightmare about Mrs. McFarland. He had never seen anything like the look in her eyes when she had screamed at him this afternoon. It was like … looking into the eyes of a mad dog. There was no reason there. He’d asked his mother later if the woman was insane and she’d said no but he didn’t think she was right. He thought Mrs. McFarland had lost her mind.
The woman who was looking down at him now definitely looked crazy.
“Where’s my mom?” he asked.
He knew where she was. She was not home. She was at the veterinary clinic in the Middle of Nowhere.
“You get up out of that bed, young man, or I will drag you out of it by your ear,” Mrs. McFarland said. “Now!”
She had gone from zero to sixty in the yelling department in an instant.
“I … I got to get dressed.”
“You think I ain’t never seen a boy in his underwear. My Dougie …” She stopped, looked momentarily confused. Rusty was seized by the urge to shove her out of the way and bolt out of the room. He was sure he could outrun her. But stopping to consider it was a beat longer than he had and the window of opportunity slammed shut. “Dougie sleeps in pajamas, not in his underwear. I bought them for him. They have fire trucks on them. He loves fire trucks.”
No, he didn’t. Douglas didn’t give a rip about fire trucks but his mother thought they were cute so she’d bought him fire truck toys and hats and put pictures on the walls. Douglas just rolled his eyes when he told Rusty about it, said—
Douglas was dead.
The reality of that slammed into Rusty’s chest like a wrecking ball. He’d been bitten by a rattlesnake and he had died. Rusty had been so sick when he got to the Middle of Nowhere he’d been able to do nothing but vomit, barely aware of his surroundings. But he’d known when Douglas’s mother showed up. And he’d been sufficiently recovered when she started screaming that he’d murdered her son to understand what she was saying.
Suddenly, Rusty felt an iron grip of fingers around his upper arm, fingernails digging into his flesh. Mrs. McFarland yanked him up out of the bed and shoved him toward the doorway.
“Come on!”
He stumbled on purpose and went down on one knee so he could snatch up his jeans off the floor. He got back to his feet with her still holding onto him and danced on one foot while he stuck the other down his pants leg. She let him pull his pants on, but then shoved him toward the door of his room without letting him get a shirt or shoes.
As soon as she let go of him and pushed, he leapt through the doorway … and kept running, dashed down the hall to the kitchen and the back door.
He was a step away from it when the gunshot exploded like a bomb in the small room and a hole appeared in the wall a couple of feet from where he was standing.
“Stop right there or I will put a bullet between your shoulder blades.”
Where had she gotten a gun? She hadn’t had a gun when … or did she? She only grabbed him with one hand. In her pocket …?
He skidded to a stop in bare feet and turned toward where she stood, leveling a small pistol at him. She held it in a two-hand “cop’s grip” but she was doing it wrong, had her fingers in the wrong place. She had one on the trigger, though, and that was all that mattered.
“You’re coming with me. Out the door, walk slow to my car.”
Rusty’d thought that the sound of that rattlesnake and Douglas’s screams was scary. He’d believed at the time that nothing in life would ever be more scary than that. But he’d been wrong. He was so frightened now at the sight of the gun that he came very close to losing control over his bladder and peeing himself.
He put his hands up. She didn’t tell him to, but he did. She gestured with the gun barrel and he stepped up to the back door and opened it and then the screen. Her car was parked in his empty driveway with the lid of the trunk standing open.
“Get in the trunk.”
He looked at her as if to say, “Seriously?” and knew instantly she was … dead serious.
He crossed the yard, angling toward the back of the car across the lawn. He could feel the long grass with his bare feet. He needed to mow it. His mom had been telling him for days—
Then he screamed. Or made some kind of sound, a wail or a grunt … something.
He had drawn even with the car and could see in through the driver’s window. Could see what was in the front seat.
It was Douglas. Douglas’s dead body.
His mother had strapped him in with the seatbelt.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cotton Jackson pulled into the driveway of the house he’d lived in for twenty-five years, furnished now with only the basics of camping equipment and yard sale furniture, the house from which all his belongings, and his precious wife Thelma, had vanished two weeks ago.
The van with the television-show logo for If You’ve Got It, Haunt It was parked on the other side of the driveway in front of the two-car garage.
Cotton had run a couple of errands after his conversation with Rose Topple in the nursing home and had hit a wall of exhaustion, wanted to curl up and go to sleep in the Kroger parking lot after he’d gotten the necessary few groceries, and an assortment of over-the-counter medications to keep the three of them awake.
“I’m too old for this,” he moaned to himself as he got behind the wheel, and in truth he felt older than a mere sixty-four years of living would explain. Old and tired. He rolled the windows down to focus cool air into his face and turned the radio up as high as it would go. It was a lost cause, though. Once on the road, he quickly got so drowsy he didn’t trust himself to make it all the way back to Nowhere County, was forced to pull over into the parking lot of a Carlisle strip mall to take a quick nap. He didn’t think he’d sleep but a few minutes — and would likely wake up screaming, but he was wrong on both counts. He slept soundly for several hours and might have slept even longer if the rumble of thunder hadn’t awakened him. To his surprise, he woke up refreshed. And it wasn’t hard to figure out why. The oppression he’d felt every minute in Nowhere County had lifted as soon as he crossed into Beaufort County. The tension had drained away like the air out of a balloon and he’d slept soundly until he awakened with a start to a leaden sky boiling with storm clouds. It was the middle of the afternoon.
“We were about to send out the sled dogs and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Jolene said when she looked up and saw him in the kitchen doorway.
“Figured the old lady was holding you captive … for what possible reason we couldn’t fathom,” Stuart said, then seriously, “or you fell asleep at the wheel and ran off the road and down the side of a mountain.”
“Close, but no cigar,” Cotton said, and fit a smile on his face that hung as limp as a wet sheet on a clothesline. He thought maybe he better keep his mouth shut and not tell Jolene and Stuart anything — the two of them looked awful, somewhere on the other side of exhausted. They looked like they’d aged ten years.
It was clear without even asking that their mission to retrieve Jolene’s ghost-busting equipment from Reece Tibbits’s house had not gone well.
Cotton’s brief respite had refreshed him more than could be explained by a couple hours of sleep. It was more about being able to breathe without feeling like an elephant was sitting on his chest. Jolene and Stuart needed a break like that, too. Jolene could take one, but Stuart couldn’t … or he’d forget what he’d come here to do.
“Well?” Jolene said, and the two of them looked at him expectantly. “Do we have to insert a quarter to get the jukebox to start playing a song?”
“I think I have an address: Jab
berwock, Fearsome Hollow, Nowhere County, Kentucky.”
“That’s what she said, the old lady — that the thing that made everybody vanish, lives there?” Stuart asked.
“Rose Topple told me that the town of Gideon and everybody in it vanished overnight. Just like she told Thelma. And I’m convinced it’s not some concocted story. It’s the truth. The town really did go poof in a puff of smoke. She said the ‘Jabberwock’ took it.”
“Seriously?” Stuart’s face lost some of its exhausted look as his interest animated it. “She used that word — called it the same thing Shep Clayton called it?”
Cotton nodded.
“If this Jabberwock thing made Gideon vanish, it made the rest of Nowhere County vanish, too,” Jolene said.
“And after the town vanished, the Jabberwock was still there. It talked to Lily, told her things.”
“What things?” Stuart asked.
“She shut down before we got to that part, but the point is, if it remained in Fearsome Hollow after it gobbled up Gideon, it’s a safe bet it’s still there.”
They looked from one to the other and it was clear nobody disagreed.
“So did you guys get the equipment back from Reece’s?” Cotton asked. “Meet any interesting people in the process?”
The air seemed to drain out of both of them and they looked as tired and disheartened as they had when he came in.
“I take back the question,” Cotton said. “I don’t want to have to jam anything else into my head right now. Not another word until we eat.” Cotton reached into the sack he’d brought into the house and looked at Jolene. “There’s white meat and dark meat, but you are not restricted to eating the meat that corresponds to your ethnicity.”
“Is that another white-person joke?”
“I got Colonel Poc-Poc on my way out of Carlisle,” Cotton told Stuart.
“Colonel Poc-Poc?”
“What mountain people call Kentucky Fried Chicken. Colonel, as in Colonel Sanders.”
“And poc-poc as in the sound a chicken makes.” Jolene then did a reasonably good imitation of one. “Poc, poc, poc-poc-pooooc.”
