Night of Fear

by Peg Kehret

  Brody appeared not to hear or see T.J. Once he had the can of gasoline in his hand, his mind seemed to block out everything else. Slowly and methodically, he trickled gasoline around the inside of the shed.

  “You can’t do this,” T.J. said. “Not with the carousel animals still inside.”

  But even as he said the words, he knew Brody would do it. If it didn’t bother him to set fire to a building that contained a live pony, it certainly wasn’t going to bother him to burn a collection of old wooden animals.

  T.J. rushed into the shed and dragged the wooden pig out through the door. He pulled it across the ground until it was far enough from the shed that it should be safe. He started back to get another animal and then stopped just inside the door.

  Brody was on the far side of the shed now, bent over. It was too dark for T.J. to see for sure what Brody was doing but undoubtedly he was trickling the gasoline along the base of the wall. At any rate, he wasn’t paying any attention to T.J.

  T.J. hesitated for only an instant. He was tempted to keep dragging the animals out, trying to remove as many as he could. If he worked fast, he could probably remove most of them before the fire got too bad. He should try to save the unusual ones, anyway—the ostrich and the sea horse and the organ. Besides being valuable, they were beautiful.

  Instead of reaching for another animal, he backed away from Brody, stepped away from the shed and ran.

  Chapter Ten

  Dane left the TV on when Top Gun ended. The news was on next and he wanted to know if the Seattle Seahawks had decided who would start as quarterback on Sunday. Since the sports news was usually last, Dane went out to the kitchen and got a bag of peanuts. When he came back, the announcers were finishing a story about a bank robbery and murder. Dane was glad to hear the murderer was already in custody.

  He took a handful of peanuts and began to shell them. He had just popped the first peanut into his mouth when his attention was yanked back to the news broadcast.

  “An elderly Pine Ridge woman and her grandson are missing tonight,” the announcer said, “and search parties are organizing to look for them. The woman has Alzheimer’s disease and is easily confused. If anyone has information or knows the whereabouts of Ruth Windham and her grandson, T.J. Stenson, please call the sheriff’s office immediately.”

  Dane dropped the peanuts and bolted upstairs to where his parents were just getting into bed. “T.J.’s missing!” he cried. “He and his grandma are gone. They just announced it on television.”

  “Missing?” Dane’s mother asked. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Mr. Stenson called me just before you got home from the Open House, to see if I knew where T.J. was, and I said I thought he was home watching Top Gun. He wanted to know when I last talked to T.J. and what he had said. I told him, and then Mr. Stenson just said, ‘Thanks,’ and hung up. Now T.J.’s name was on the news and the police are organizing a search party and I have to go over there and help.”

  Dane’s father reached for the telephone. “What’s T.J.’s number?” he asked. Dane gave it and his father dialed. Someone answered on the first ring.

  Dane listened impatiently to his father’s end of the conversation.

  His father hung up and said, “They’re both gone, with no clue as to what happened.” He began dressing as he talked. “Ted Stenson thinks maybe the grandmother wandered away and T.J. went out looking for her. I’ll go with you, Dane.”

  Dane’s mother said, “Wait for me,” and grabbed some jeans and a sweatshirt from her closet. “I’ll wake up Susan and tell her where we’re going.”

  When Dane’s older sister heard what was happening, she said she would help, too. Ten minutes later Dane’s whole family was in their car, headed toward the Stenson home.

  “If that poor woman is lost,” Dane’s mother said, “she must be terrified. Amelia Stenson told me her mother is like a young child most of the time.”

  “T.J.’s grandmother wears an identification bracelet,” Dane said, “with her name, address, and phone number on it. T.J. told me they got it for her just in case she ever wandered away and got lost.”

  “An ID bracelet only helps if someone finds her,” his father said.

  T.J. sprinted past the truck. The sheds wouldn’t be out in the middle of nowhere. They used to be part of a chicken ranch, so there had to be a house nearby. Maybe he would get to act out the scene he had visualized, after all. Instead of doing it at a gas station, he would do it at a farmhouse.

  The ground was uneven, as if no vehicle drove regularly across it. He hoped the house, if he found one, was occupied.

  His foot hit a shallow hole and he fell to his knees, twisting his left ankle. He got up, rubbed at the ankle, and limped on.

  As he ran, he rethought his plan. Maybe he shouldn’t pretend to be sick. He was sure it would work, but if someone in the house believed he was ill, they would call for an ambulance, and medics would not be equipped to put out the fire. Ambulance attendants would have been fine if he and Brody were at a gas station, where there was no fire involved. Here, there was the fire to consider. At least three of those sheds contained valuable merchandise; probably the others did, too.

  T.J. hoped that a fire truck might arrive in time to save the carousel animals and the old car and the boat. He decided to tell the truth.

  He saw the outline of a house ahead: a two-story farmhouse, with a wide porch across the front. The house was dark but he could tell there were curtains in the windows and a bicycle leaned against the porch rail.

  He took the porch steps two at a time, and pounded on the door of the house. He tried to turn the knob, but the door was locked. A light went on in one of the upstairs windows. He pounded again.

  The outside porch light came on. The door opened a crack. T.J. saw a chain lock and, behind it, a woman’s face.

  “Call the fire department,” T.J. said. “Call the police! I need help.”

  “Who are you?”

  “There’s a man with me, an arsonist. He made me go with him. I need help. Please let me in. Please!”

  “If you need help,” the woman said, “I will call the police for you. But I can’t let you in my house.”

  “He’s setting fire to your storage sheds,” T.J. said. “He’s pouring gasoline around the one with all the carousel animals in it.”

  The woman’s face disappeared from the other side of the door. He saw the curtains open on the side of the house toward the sheds. The woman looked out.

  T.J. put his fingers through the crack in the door and tried to unhook the chain lock.

  The woman screamed, “Fire!”

  T.J. spun around and looked behind him. The shed had erupted in flames.

  T.J. could hear the woman calling for help. Her voice was frantic, giving directions, pleading with the fire fighters to hurry.

  When she hung up, she ran back to the door, undid the chain and opened the door. As she rushed past T.J., she said, “There are some buckets on the back porch. Fill them with water! Hurry!” She turned on an outside faucet on the side of the house, filled a tin watering can, and ran toward the sheds with her pink bathrobe flapping around her knees.

  The flames leaped and danced, lighting the sky. T.J. could smell the smoke already. He knew it would take far more than a watering can and a couple of buckets to put out such a blaze.

  I should go with her, T.J. thought. Maybe I could still drag those beautiful old carved animals out of the shed before they’re destroyed.

  He looked across the pasture toward the burning shed. He didn’t move. If he went back there, chances were good that Brody would try to grab him again. Even without a gun, T.J. knew Brody would not hesitate to use force, if necessary, to keep T.J. with him. Or Brody would lie again, convincing the woman that T.J. had set the fire or that T.J. was Brody’s son who had run away from home.

  If he went to help the woman, he could find himself back in the truck long before help arrived, heading down the road for more r
evenge.

  Much as he hated to think of the old merry-go-round animals going up in smoke, trying to save them wasn’t worth the risk. T.J. had been willing to jeopardize his own safety to save the frightened pony. The pony was a living creature. But the carousel horses, valuable as they might be, were merely things. Compared to his safety, they were worth nothing.

  The woman did not return for more water. The door to the house stood wide open. Feeling like a burglar, T.J. entered and closed the door behind him. He slipped the chain lock into place, making certain that Brody couldn’t follow him into the house.

  A small mirror hung beside the door. When he saw his reflection, he could see why the woman had been afraid to let him in her house. His face was streaked with soot, there were bits of ash in his hair, and his sweatshirt was filthy. He looked like he had not had a bath in a month.

  He heard no voices or any other sign that anyone was in the house with him. Surely, if someone else was here, they would have heard the woman calling for help.

  T.J. turned and looked to his left; the large living room was empty. T.J. walked to his right, through the dining area and into the kitchen. He turned on the kitchen light and glanced quickly around, hoping to see a telephone.

  He heard sirens in the distance, wailing like wolves at the full moon. He returned to the dining room. From that window, he saw the red lights of the fire engine approach. The engine slowed and turned in the driveway. The sky glowed with the white moonlight and the yellow flames and the circling red lights.

  T.J. leaned on the windowsill and watched. His bones ached and his head throbbed. He wondered how long he had been gone. It seemed like a month since he and Grandma Ruth had started across the pasture to feed the Crowleys’ animals. Remembering how cross he had been, how he had tried to hurry her by saying David was dead, T.J. felt ashamed. She can’t help being the way she is.

  He wondered how long Grandma Ruth had sat on the bale of hay in the Crowleys’ barn, singing hymns. She no longer had any sense of time. If nobody came to get her, she might sit there all night, singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Maybe she was still there.

  T.J. heard shouting outside. He watched as the fire fighters jumped off the truck, unrolled long canvas hoses, and began battling the blaze.

  Where was Brody? T.J. looked to the side of the barn, where the truck had been parked. He saw only the carousel pig that he had dragged away from the shed. The moon shone down on the empty road.

  Cautiously, he went down the hall, looked into a bedroom, and saw that no one was in it. He heard more sirens. He went in the bedroom and crossed to the window on the side of the house toward the sheds. Another fire truck arrived and two police cars.

  It would be safe to go out there now. With all those fire fighters and police on the scene, T.J. would finally get help. Even if Brody was still around, hiding and watching the fire, he wouldn’t dare try to grab T.J.

  It’s over, T.J. thought. I got away from him.

  He turned to leave the bedroom. As he did, he saw a small bedside table. On it stood a telephone.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and dialed.

  He got a recording. “You must first dial a one and the area code,” the recording said. He tried again, this time adding the one and the area code before he dialed his own number.

  His father answered on the first ring. “Where are you?” he cried, when he heard T.J.’s voice. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  Quickly, T.J. explained how he had stumbled upon a man hiding in the Crowleys’ barn and he thought it was the bank robber and the man made T.J. go with him. “You need to go over to Crowleys’ right away, Dad,” he said. “I left . . .”

  “We’ve already been there. Where are you, T.J.? Where are you calling from?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He explained about the fires. “I’m going to talk to the police now. I’ll call you back when I find out where I am.”

  “No! Don’t hang up. Look around. See if you can find something with an address on it.”

  T.J. put the phone on the bed and walked to a small desk. Inside were greeting cards, a checkbook, and a stack of bills addressed to Mrs. Jane Langley.

  He read the address to his dad, relieved that he wasn’t as far from home as he had feared.

  “Sit tight,” his dad said. “We’ve already reported that you were missing. I’ll let the police know we’ve located you and then we’ll be there to pick you up.”

  “Hurry.”

  “We will. Can you give me a phone number where you are?”

  T.J. read the number that was taped to the front of the telephone.

  “Good. In case we have trouble finding the address, I’ll know how to reach you. Meanwhile, you go talk to the fire fighters or the sheriff or whatever officials are on the scene. Tell them who you are and how you got there. Stay with them until we arrive.”

  “I will.”

  “And keep Grandma Ruth with you.”

  “What?”

  “Keep her close. We don’t want to take a chance that the arsonist would come back after you and somehow manage to take her hostage by herself. Or she could wander off and get lost in a strange area.”

  “She isn’t here.”

  “Where is she? You didn’t leave her alone with that lunatic, did you?”

  “She never went in the truck with us. I left her in the Crowleys’ barn. I told her it was a church.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Did you hear me, Dad?”

  “Hold on a minute, T.J.”

  T.J. heard his dad telling someone else that Grandma Ruth was not with T.J. Then his dad said, “I won’t be able to come after you right away. The police need my help here. We’re going to start a search for her.”

  “She’s in the Crowleys’ barn. I told Grandma Ruth that the barn was a church and she was in charge of the hymns and she should stay there until the preacher came. I thought you would have found her by now.”

  “She isn’t there,” Mr. Stenson said.

  “You’ve been to the barn?”

  “That’s the first place we looked for you. We called Dane as soon as we realized you weren’t home. When he didn’t know where you were, we called Crowleys and when no one answered we went over there. We couldn’t think where else you would go without leaving a note. No one came to the door and we saw the dogs were loose in the field so we put them back in their pen and then . . .”

  “Did you see my message?”

  “What message?”

  “I scratched a message in the dirt next to the dog pen.”

  “I didn’t see it. It was dark and just as I put the dogs in the pen, I heard your mother yelling for me. She’d gone in the barn and found Grandma Ruth’s hat on the floor.”

  “Oh.”

  “We thought Grandma Ruth was with you.”

  “No.” There was such a lump in his throat that he could barely say the word. “No, she isn’t with me. I don’t know where she is.”

  “What time did you leave her in the barn?”

  “About seven-thirty. What time is it now?”

  “Nearly eleven-thirty.”

  Eleven-thirty. It was four hours since he’d left Grandma Ruth alone in the barn. Four long hours. If she had left the barn right away, she could be anywhere by now.

  “I have to go,” Mr. Stenson said. “Your mother’s frantic and the police are asking dozens of questions. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  T.J. hung up. He looked out the window again and saw that the fire was out. He wondered if they had saved any of the carousel animals. He wondered if Brody got away or whether the police had him. Most of all, he wondered what had happened to Grandma Ruth.

  Chapter Eleven

  T.J. still heard no noise from inside the house. Apparently, the woman lived here alone.

  He opened the front door cautiously and looked out. In the distance, the red lights of the fire engines whirled around and around. There were flashing blu
e lights, too, belonging to the two police cars. The effect was circuslike, which T.J. thought was ironic since the fire had probably ruined the old carousel forever.

  He did not see Brody’s truck. He left the house and sprinted toward the flashing lights, keeping a sharp eye out in case Brody was parked behind the house or somewhere else that T.J. didn’t see him. He didn’t want the blue truck to rush at him in the dark and have Brody swoop him away, like a hawk catching a sparrow.

  Ahead, he saw the woman and a man in uniform, standing a ways off from the fire fighters. T.J. ran toward them.

  As soon as the woman saw him, she pointed her finger at him and shouted, “That’s him! That’s the boy who started the fire!”

  Immediately, two officers approached T.J.

  “I didn’t start it,” T.J. said.

  “He pounded on my door and woke me up and told me the sheds were burning. He probably robbed me while I was out here throwing water on the blaze. That’s how these people operate, you know. They trick you into unlocking your door and then when you do, they . . .”

  “Please, Mrs. Langley,” one of the officers said. “We’ll handle this, if you don’t mind.”

  “That beautiful merry-go-round is ruined,” the woman said. “All those wonderful animals.” She began to cry. “And the other units are damaged, too. I’ll lose all my renters.”

  “What’s your name?” the officer asked T.J.

  “T.J. Stenson. The arsonist is named Brody; he kidnapped me. I thought he had a gun and when he told me to go with him, I did. My parents have already reported that I’m missing.”

  “Check it out,” the first officer said and the second officer went to the patrol car.

  T.J. briefly told what had happened, starting with when he opened the Crowleys’ barn door and discovered Brody inside.

  The second officer returned. “He’s telling the truth,” he said. “His parents called the King County sheriff an hour ago.”

  At last, T.J. thought, someone believes me.