by Ray Garton
“Are you serious? You really want to do this with me?”
“Sure, why not? You’ve got me all interested now. And it seems like two of us will be less likely to get taken, you know what I mean? No offense, Jenna, but I’ve got a feeling I’ll be a little less trusting than you.”
Jenna nodded. “David says that, too. He says I look like I’d give a handout to Bill Gates. That’s why homeless people approach me twice as often as they do everyone else I know. But really, I’m not all that trusting. Sometimes I actually feel guilty because I distrust people so much. But I keep it to myself, you know. It seems so... antisocial.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Kimberly said. “Except I have a hard time keeping it to myself. But you’ve got some pretty emotional stuff wrapped up in this, Jenna. Some of these people are pretty good at what they do, and what most of them do is separate people from their money by manipulating their emotions. I can be an extra set of eyes. They might be able to catch you off guard, but it won’t work with me.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. That’s a good idea.”
“Here’s another one. Why don’t you and David stay for lunch? I was gonna make a chicken salad. We can have sandwiches, and I think I’ve got some chips in the cupboard. We’ll crack open some beers.”
Jenna smiled. “Sounds good.”
“Let’s go back to the kitchen and I’ll get to work on that chicken salad.”
After Mom and Dad left, Miles had gone up to his room to finish some homework that was due Monday. But as he sat at his desk, he could not get his mind off the area of floor immediately behind him and to his left, where he had seen the man rising up in the dark. His awareness of it made the skin between his shoulder blades tingle until he could take it no longer and looked over his shoulder. He checked every few minutes after that, just to be sure. There was never anything there, but that did not ease his fears or calm his tension. Finally, unable to concentrate, he left his bedroom and went downstairs to the kitchen.
Grandma sat hunched over an open tabloid in the breakfast nook with a cup of something hot on the table. Big-band music played on her radio. Miles sat opposite her and waited for her to look up.
When Grandma spoke, she whispered. There was no particular reason for it, yet it always seemed perfectly natural to Miles whenever Grandma whispered, which she did now and then. “What’s keeping you awake, Miles?” she said.
Miles did not have to say the same things to Grandma that he would normally say to his parents to keep peace. She made him feel, when it was just the two of them, that he could tell her anything, that he did not have to pretend about anything, and she always kept his secrets.
“Mom and Dad say I had a nightmare,” he whispered back.
She looked at him without lifting her head from the open tabloid. “That’s not what I asked you.”
“I saw a man coming up out of the floor. A big fat man.”
Outside, the wind blew and the swing’s chains rattled and squeaked.
Grandma said, “How do you know it wasn’t a nightmare?”
“Because I never woke up from it. I saw the man, and then I started screaming because I was so afraid, and Mom and Dad came in and turned the light on. He was gone, but I was still awake. It wasn’t a nightmare because I didn’t wake up from it.”
Grandma nodded once and turned a page. She looked at him again. “You know, sometimes we see things in those first few seconds after we wake up from a nightmare.” She did not sound convinced by her own words.
He said, “I wasn’t having a nightmare. I woke up all of a sudden, like I heard something, but I didn’t know what. I listened for a while. And then I heard his voice. He called me a puppy. He said, ‘You gonna be a good puppy?’ Something like that. And then I saw him. Coming up through the floor in the dark. It looked like he was wearing some kind of hat, but I’m not sure because he was in the dark.”
She nodded again and looked back down at the paper, but she did not turn another page. Miles watched her as she stared at the paper, sucked her lips between her teeth for a moment, and he decided she was thinking. Finally, she lifted her head and said, “Well, I don’t sleep so well, either. I been getting up pretty early lately and haven’t been able to go back to sleep. So next time you come downstairs, you check in here for me. Maybe we can play a game of checkers. That’ll put you to sleep. Okay?”
He smiled. “Okay.”
That evening, David got a phone call. The manager of one of the garages in Eureka where he had applied needed a part-time mechanic sooner than expected. He asked if David would be able to come in the next morning. Trying not to sound needy, he said sure, he’d be there.
“You did one job today, and then you got another,” Jenna said as they got into bed that night, shortly after eleven. “At this rate, you’ll be working full-time by Wednesday.”
David laughed. “Harry Gimble’s Dodge Durango wasn’t exactly a job. It was just a disconnected vacuum tube—I fixed it in two minutes. I didn’t even charge him. I bet he gets taken by crooked mechanics a lot. He doesn’t know a thing about cars.”
She cuddled up to him, thrilled that he’d finally gotten some work. She had already noticed a difference in his behavior since the phone call. His arm was more relaxed as he put it around her shoulders. “Do you like Harry?” she asked.
“He’s okay. A little wrapped up in his work.”
“He does talk shop a lot, doesn’t he?”
“You seem to get along well with Kimberly,” he said.
“Yeah, I do. I like her.”
“That’s good—I’m glad you’re making friends. What were you guys doing on the computer?”
Jenna had hoped it would not come up, but now that it had, she found herself with nothing to say. She knew that telling him the truth was out of the question. His reaction in the basement had been angrier than she’d anticipated—if he knew she was shopping for mediums, he would probably blow his stack.
David did not get angry often, but when he did, it was ugly. He had never directed it at Jenna—he had always gotten angry about things outside his control, like his inability to get a job as a mechanic, or Josh’s death. Jenna was afraid this would make him angry at her, and she did not want that.
She realized she was taking much too long to respond and said the first thing that popped into her head. “Shopping. We were shopping.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just... thinking. You know, Miles was bugging me about getting a dog again tonight. Now that you’ve got a job.”
“It’ll have to wait till I’m working full-time. He wants a big dog, and big dogs have big appetites.”
“I explained that to him. He understands. He just wants a dog.”
Neither of them said anything for a while. Jenna wondered if she and David were thinking about the same thing—about the fact that they had planned to pick up a golden retriever puppy the week Josh died. After that, the idea had faded away until Miles brought it up again.
David said, “Well, let’s see where this job is going to go before we start—” He pulled his arm from under her and sat up in bed, back stiff. He cocked his head toward the large rectangular window above their headboard. The window looked out over the backyard. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.
“Hear what? I didn’t—”
“Shh!”
Jenna sat up and listened. It was a still night. She heard the screech of the chains on the swing set outside. But there was no wind. And something else—a delicate sound that seemed to move around in the night outside: a child’s laughter.
“That’s coming from outside,” David said as he got out of bed. He went to the closet and put on a pair of sweatpants. After slipping into a sweatshirt, he put on an old pair of running shoes and headed out of the room.
“Where are you going?” Jenna asked.
“Out to the backyard.”
For a moment, she wondered if David had finally heard Josh. She was cert
ain she’d heard, for just an instant, the laughter of a child, and apparently, so had David.
After he was gone, Jenna listened closely again. She heard nothing. She got on her knees facing the window over the bed. As she stared out the black rectangle of night, she made a mental note to find some curtains and start putting them up in the windows that had none, like this one. Naked, she leaned over the headboard and tried to look through her reflection, down at the backyard.
Several seconds later, the bulb over the back porch came on and light oozed through the fog. Five small figures stood by the swing set and slide. Jenna could tell instinctively, by the way they stood, that they were all boys. They were little more than shadows in the mist, but it appeared that each boy stood with his head tilted back, looking up, directly at Jenna.
She gasped and pulled away from the window. She scrambled off the bed, grabbed David’s gray robe, and put it on as she hurried barefoot down the hall.
Downstairs, David hurried past the living room, through the dining room to the kitchen, turning on lights as he went—he did not yet feel familiar enough with the house to rush through it in the dark.
There was a window in the top half of the back door with old, threadbare curtains on it, white with blue trim. David tugged a curtain aside with one hand as he flipped on the outside light with the other. He saw them standing there in the fog. Just standing there. None of them could have been any bigger than Miles. They stood motionless beyond the porch light’s glow. Goose-flesh passed over the back of his neck. He bent down, grabbed the flashlight, and opened the door.
The light over the back porch went out with a pop and a hail of sparks. David ducked reflexively and heard something from the fog—the whispers of terrified boys.
“He’s coming.”
“Go! Run!”
“He’s coming!”
“I saw them!” Jenna hissed as she hurried into the kitchen behind him.
David quickly turned on the flashlight and went out on the concrete porch. It had old wooden railings on two sides, and four steps leading down to the left of the back door. He skipped the porch steps and hit the ground running. The flashlight beam softened to an amorphous glow in the fog, crept over the weeds that whispered under his feet. David stopped suddenly and swept the yard with the light, listened for the sound of the boys running. Five boys that age could not possibly run away silently. But he did not hear a sound, and they were not in the backyard.
Running along the side of the house, David listened beyond the sound of his own footfalls. He heard nothing. He passed the light all around but saw no sign of them. The front gate was closed, and he had not heard it open. He went to the fence and aimed the light out toward the woods that surrounded their house.
Although he had not heard them, the boys had somehow gotten out of the yard, which meant they were out there somewhere. There was a house a couple miles south of them on Starfish, although David and Jenna did not know the residents. He considered driving down there now and waking them up to ask if they had any kids. But he quickly rejected that idea for another.
He turned and hurried back along the side of the house to the back door and into the kitchen. He picked up the telephone.
“Who are you calling?” Jenna asked.
“The police. Your mother wasn’t seeing things.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Monday, 1:41 A.M.
Rosalind Hooper and Michael Caruso, deputies of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department, showed up forty-five minutes after David called. They were both tall with dark hair, and looked almost as if they could be brother and sister.
Deputy Hooper said, “We would’ve gotten here sooner, but there have been a lot of traffic accidents tonight. The fog is pretty thick.”
Deputy Caruso said, “It’s thicker than—”
Deputy Hooper jabbed her elbow into his ribs while stifling a laugh. “Don’t start now, okay? Just... not now.” She turned to David and Jenna again and said, “You called about some kids in your yard?”
Jenna listened while David told them what he had seen. She interrupted him to describe the figures she’d seen through the window.
“They heard me coming and ran off,” David said. “I heard them talking. You know, saying, ‘Run, let’s get outta here, he’s coming,’ that kind of thing. They were fast. I mean, they were just gone, they left the yard. Which means they’re out there in the woods somewhere. They looked, at most, between five and maybe ten years old.”
“And this is the second time they’ve been out here,” Jenna said. “My mother saw them a few days ago.”
“Are you positive they were the same kids?” Deputy Hooper said.
“No, not positive. But you could talk to her,” Jenna said.
“Is that necessary right now?” David said. “I think the important thing is to find those kids.”
Deputy Caruso said, “Did you recognize them? Were they neighbor kids?”
“No,” David said. “We haven’t met our neighbors yet.”
“Did you see which direction they went?” Deputy Hooper asked.
“No, they were gone before I could catch up with them.”
“So they could’ve just walked down to the road, right?” Deputy Hooper said.
Jenna could tell by the expression on David’s face as he glanced at her that he hadn’t considered that. “That’s possible, yes.”
“We didn’t see them on the way in, but it took us a while to get over here, and we don’t know which direction they went.”
“Or if they took the road,” David said. “They could be out in those woods.”
“Don’t worry,” Deputy Caruso said, “we’ll take a look around before we go. Tell me, you don’t grow any corn around here, do you?”
David squinted at him. “What? Corn? No, why?”
“Ever see any of them Children of the Corn movies?”
Laughter exploded from Deputy Hooper, and she bent over a moment, then slapped Deputy Caruso on the shoulder. “Stop it,” she said. “Not now.”
Deputy Caruso shrugged his large shoulders and said, “Cornfields just give me the creeps, that’s all I’m saying.”
Deputy Hooper forced herself to stop laughing and said, “My partner here does some stand-up down at the Sand Bar.”
Jenna and David looked at each other, then back at the deputies.
Deputy Hooper said, “You know, the place in Old Town? The comedy club?”
“We just moved here,” Jenna said. “We barely know our way around yet.”
“Anyway,” Deputy Hooper said, “he tries his new material out on me. He’s had me in stitches all night.”
Deputy Caruso took his wallet from a back pocket and opened it. He removed two tickets and handed them to David. “Those’re guest tickets. No cover charge and your first two drinks are on the house. Come on a Wednesday night—that’s my night. It’s just, you know, something to do with my days off.”
“Thank you,” David said. He put the tickets in the pocket of his sweatpants. “I appreciate that. But these kids—”
“Did they take anything?” Deputy Hooper asked. “Do any damage?”
David said, “I think they threw something at the back-porch light and knocked out the bulb.”
She said, “Can we take a look?”
David nodded. “Sure, come on back.”
Jenna walked beside David as they led the deputies past the stairs and down the short hall. They were entering the kitchen when a high, shrill scream sliced through the house.
Deputies Hooper and Caruso froze and tensed.
“It’s our son,” Jenna said as she made her way back toward the stairs. “He’s been having nightmares.”
She hurried up the stairs and found Miles standing in the hallway. He was pressed against the wall across from the bedroom door. He looked terrified.
“It’s okay, Miles, I’m here,” she said.
He wasn’t crying, but his lower lip was unsteady. “I heard voices. What’s g
oing on down there?”
She hugged him, then gently led him back into his bedroom, where the overhead light was already on, as well as the lamp on the desk. “There were some kids in the yard, and we called the police. It’s nothing—Dad was just worried about the kids because they were pretty young.”
“I saw that man again. He was coming up through the floor like before, wearing some kind of hat. He talked to me again. He keeps calling me a puppy.”
“Him again, huh?” She sat on the bed and pulled him down beside her. “That’s just a nightmare, you know.”
Miles sighed quietly but said nothing.
“Okay, you can leave the overhead light on if you just stay up here for now,” Jenna said. “When we’re finished down there, Dad and I will go back to bed, and if you’re still awake, you can sleep on the couch in front of the TV if you want. How does that sound?”
“But I can leave the light on now?”
She nodded. “For now, yes.”
“Okay.”
Jenna tucked him back into bed and kissed him. She left the bedroom door wide open and both lights on when she went back downstairs.
David and the deputies were coming out of the kitchen and back down the hall by the time Jenna rejoined them.
David looked at her with a puzzled frown. “The bulb in the back-porch light wasn’t damaged,” he said. “It just blew out, is all.”
“Another one?” Jenna said. “I’m calling an electrician tomorrow.”
“Yeah, that’s what my ex-wife said,” Deputy Caruso said. “First it was the electrician, then the cable guy, then the—”
Laughing again, Deputy Hooper elbowed him in the ribs a second time. She looked at Jenna and shook her head. “He just won’t stop.”
Jenna did not find it funny and did not smile. Neither did David.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Deputy Hooper said. “We’ll take a look around, see if we can find these kids. But since no crime was committed and you can’t describe them, there’s not a lot we can do.”
“I just want you to find them and make sure they’re okay,” David said. “They shouldn’t be out there by themselves.”
