The Miracle Stealer

by Neil Connelly

  My goal was peculiar: I needed a substance that, perhaps in the moonlight, might resemble human blood. At the same time, it had to be something that upon closer inspection (an emergency room?) would obviously be fake. This second part was especially crucial.

  My first few attempts looked mostly like the guts of a strawberry pie, too lumpy and bright to be mistaken for blood. The second batch, heavy on the water and barbecue sauce, was far too runny. In addition, it smelled just like what it was. It wouldn’t fool anybody for two seconds. Begrudgingly, I realized that cooking up my own fake blood wouldn’t work, and I sat on the riding mower to review my other options. There was a bloodmobile that toured the area on an irregular schedule. Maybe I could sneak in there. Or St. Jude’s—I was certain they had blood on hand. But this meant stealing, and more upsetting, taking away something somebody else might need.

  My eyes fell on the veins in my forearms, and my mind turned to my own personal supply. Maybe the answer was storing my own blood until the time was right. What would I need? A syringe, one of those bags? The presence of my own blood would be a nice touch, I decided, a convincing piece of evidence in the midst of a grand hoax. But before I could pursue this course of action any further, I heard a truck door slam and knew I was alone no more.

  As I walked up the hill from the toolshed, Daniel and my mother circled the Skylark. She asked, “Did you buy this?”

  “Not yet,” I told her.

  Daniel climbed through the open window and crawled into the backseat. “It’s gigantic in here,” he shouted. “Like a cave.”

  “The car is awfully big,” my mother said.

  “Think of how safe I’ll be in a wreck.” I told her about Mr. Dettweiller and Lute Moody’s inspection and she listened carefully.

  “You know better than I do,” she said. “I’ll call Betty tomorrow and get the insurance straightened out.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I, uh, I appreciate it.”

  “I am your mother, Anderson. And I do want you to be happy.”

  Daniel was on his knees, bouncing on the springs in the backseat. He couldn’t hear what we were saying. My mother’s eyes looked sad, and I knew I’d been a topic of concerned conversation over at the Abernathys’. Or maybe she was wondering where this car could take me, my plans for leaving town. Whatever it was, she embraced me suddenly. I squeezed her back, and her chin rested on my shoulder. She whispered in my ear, “I love you, child.”

  And I said back, “I know that, I know.” I hoped this might give her some comfort with what I knew was coming our way.

  Long after midnight, I was back at my post in the Adirondack chair, waiting for my mother’s bedroom light to go out. For as long as I could remember, she went to bed around eleven, disappearing into her latest paperback romance. Typically she passed out after a half hour or so, and more often than not she left the light on. When I lived up in the main house, I’d sneak in and turn it off for her so she’d sleep better. These days it stayed on till morning. But I couldn’t be sure she was asleep now, and so I’d waited and watched and waited some more. Finally I realized that I was just stalling, and I stood up and headed for the Skylark.

  The engine was even louder in the stillness of two a.m., and as I drove down the driveway I expected to see my mother in the rearview mirror, running out of the house in her nightgown. Maybe I was hoping she’d stop me. Roosevelt Road was empty, and every house was dark, as if the whole village were a ghost town. As I passed Jeff’s house, I slowed and squinted through the forest, checking for a light or some sign of life. I remember feeling very alone. Chief Bundower was probably out there somewhere, gripped by his infamous insomnia, treeing raccoons with Pinkerton. He and I hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words since what happened at St. Jude’s, but I know he didn’t blame Daniel for his wife’s death. I had to admit my mere presence on the road at that hour was suspicious, though, and if the Chief pulled me over and felt compelled to search the vehicle, he’d find the hacksaw under the front seat.

  Turns out that the Skylark’s left headlight was cockeyed bad. As a result, I had a better view of the shoulder than the middle of the road, something that made me feel slightly off balance as I drove. The approach to the cove from the north is a long, gradual rise, something like that first hill of a huge roller coaster. At the top, the part of the ride where it seems like the people in front of you are dropping into nothing, I stopped the car and cut the engine.

  The world fell silent. Up on that summit, I’d reached the highest point in Paradise. From here I could see back to the town, south to the dam, across the lake to the open spaces of the country club’s golf course. Most important, though, was the view right ahead of me. Roosevelt Road dipped down at a fierce angle for a hundred feet, the screaming part of the roller coaster ride, then hairpinned away from the lake. Right at the curve, there are a few guardrails, installed just after Michelle Kirkpatrick’s prom-night disaster, followed by a flat grassy area where people used to park and admire the sailboats passing by the cove’s mouth. The grass leads to a token wooden fence, just a series of interlocked railroad ties to mark the edge of the cliff. After that, it’s a two-hundred-foot drop to the rocks.

  With the Skylark positioned in the middle of the road, I shifted into neutral and stepped out. I steadied the steering wheel with my right hand at twelve o’clock and propped the door open with my left. The muscles in my legs strained as I shoved, and at first I thought the emergency brake was on. The Skylark didn’t budge.

  I put my back into it then, leaning my weight toward the decline. I faced the road and shoved so hard I thought my head would pop. But back behind me, I glimpsed the rear wheel as it slowly rotated. I felt a tightening in my back and my shoulders burned. I was at the edge of what I could do, but just like the wall you hit when you’re running, if you push through it, there’s always a hidden reserve of sweet golden fuel. The car moved an inch forward, then a foot. The front wheels reached the hill and the Skylark began to roll on her own, picking up speed so quick that I had to hop in before she took off without me. I had to fight the instinct to take the wheel, but this whole expedition was a test of alignment, so I forced my hands to stay on my lap. The car bounced and rattled, and every tree on the side of the road seemed like the one we’d strike. But the Skylark stayed straight and rocketed headlong toward the guardrails and the cliff beyond.

  The wind whipped through the car and I felt a strange sense of exhilaration. My mind flashed to the terrible pressures that must have driven Michelle Kirkpatrick to suicide. For an instant, I thought of letting the car go, of riding it off into the open air, and the weightlessness I’d feel just before the plunge.

  But that wasn’t the plan for tonight, and my hands snapped up to steady the steering wheel as my foot finally stomped on the brake. The Skylark skidded and I fought with her to avoid fish-tailing. Her weight and speed were difficult to control, and the car came to rest sideways on the road in the middle of the hairpin curve, about ten feet shy of the guardrails.

  The center guardrail was battered from cars taking the curve too fast, lined with streaks of every color of paint you could imagine. The whole thing wobbled like a loose tooth. I didn’t think it would take too much for it to go, but I wanted to be sure, which is why I brought the hacksaw.

  Between the guardrails and the drop-off, there’s only about twenty feet, just enough space for couples to park their cars in the old days and look out over the lake. I drove the Skylark into that space and got out into grass grown tall as my knees. When I walked through, it shushed against my legs. I stepped over the wooden fence, crossed to the ledge, and peered down. Two hundred feet below, the lake water washed up against jagged rocks.

  McGinley’s Cove itself was empty, a fact which surprised me not at all. Nobody ever went in there. Rocks and the carcasses of smashed boats made the water impossible to navigate, plus there was no sand or even dirt along the shoreline, so what was the point? Besides, it was a well-established fact around Paradis
e that the cave at the foot of the cliff was a reliable place to encounter the ghost of Irene McGinley, or at least those of her drowned sons.

  Worried that someone might come along, I went back to the Skylark and snatched the hacksaw from under the front seat. In the light cast by the half-moon, I knelt down by one of the gray posts that secure the guardrail to the ground. To test the saw, I set its teeth on the metal and began pulling back and forth. Tiny silver shavings drifted down like sawdust, and with only a few minutes of effort I had a four-inch cut. I set the saw in the grass and did some quick calculations in my head. The night of the hoax, the whole job would take about thirty minutes for all three posts of the center rail.

  Somewhere behind me in the forest that stretches east for miles, something growled in the night. Not Pinkerton. Not a coyote. Something that sounded angry and lost.

  Figuring that I’d used up all my good luck not being found out so far, I decided to play it safe when I returned to the compound. I parked the Skylark along the side of the road, fifty feet short of the driveway, and made my way in on foot. While I was tiptoeing past the main house, I heard a rustling sound from the back, like something small kicking up leaves. I imagined an early deer visiting the salt lick and snuck around the side. As I passed beneath my Adirondack chair, I saw my bat up on the porch. I grabbed it just in case.

  After coming around the corner, I saw the clearing down below was empty. The rustling—nearby now—stopped. I wasn’t alone. I held the bat with both hands and lifted the heavy end up into the air. Standing like a baseball player waiting for a pitch, I scanned the shadows along the back porch, making out the outline of the grill, the birdbath. Next to the air conditioner, there’s an alcove where we store the garbage can. My dad and I installed a chicken wire gate years back to keep raccoons from marauding our trash. In the moonlight, I made out the glint of wire—the gate was swung back. “Crap,” I muttered, relieved that all I had to deal with was some critter out for food. I lowered the bat.

  Not wanting to corner a wild animal, I circled around so I stood off to the side, allowing it an easy escape to the forest. “Go on, git!” I said. “Ssst! Sssst!” Nothing came out. From five feet away, I peered in, but I still couldn’t penetrate the darkness of the alcove. I didn’t want to hurt whatever it was, but it was late and I was tired and a little ticked off. So I bent down and my fingers searched the ground for some projectile. They settled on a pinecone. Readying myself for something furry and small scurrying from the darkness, I sidearmed the pinecone into the alcove, maybe a little faster than I needed to.

  “Not by your kind, liar girl!” the Scarecrow cried as he stepped out. Startled, I stumbled backward, tripped over a root or something, and found myself flat on my back. I reached around in the darkness, got hold of the bat, and scrambled up to my feet. In the shadows, Scarecrow hadn’t moved. He clutched something hanging from his fingers, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  I said, “Mister, I don’t want to hurt you.”

  His free hand scratched at his shoulder. “You couldn’t bring harm to me. The Lord shields me from my enemies.”

  Raising the bat, I said, “You sure you want to try that tonight?”

  He chuckled. “I’ll come to know your brother’s heart. No matter your allegiance.” He held whatever he’d taken from the trash in both hands. It looked like a dishrag but I couldn’t see clearly in the darkness. “Even this fabric radiates with his aura, and I sense he has the gift. But I must be sure before I test him.”

  “How ’bout you just get the hell out of here and leave us alone?” I took a step closer, ready to take a swing.

  But he didn’t budge. “Your vile tongue betrays you, girl. I can smell your fear like stink. You don’t confront me the least. For now I have all that I need.”

  Then he turned and hiked up the hill, back toward Roosevelt Road. He passed through a slice of moonlight and I saw for sure that whatever he took from the garbage was cloth, something dark and dirty. I mounted the rise and watched him disappear in the woods. Just like back at St. Jude’s, I was glad to see him go. I was angry now that I hadn’t taken the bat to his head, and I hollered, “Stay away from Daniel!”

  Behind me, the front door opened, and I swung around to find my mother standing in sweatpants and a T-shirt. She snapped on the porch light and stepped out. “Annie? Who are you yelling at like that? What’s going on?”

  Keeping an eye on the forest, I moved to the porch. “That damn nutjob—the figment of my imagination—he was in our trash.” I said it loud enough so that if he was hiding nearby he’d hear me. More quietly, I said, “He took something, a souvenir, I guess.”

  My mother rubbed at her eyes. “A souvenir of what?”

  “Daniel,” I said, and the moment I spoke his name, terror flooded my heart. For all I knew, Scarecrow had been in the house as well. Still gripping the bat, I shoved my mother out of the doorway and sprinted inside, took the stairs two at a time, and stormed down the hallway, past my old room to Daniel’s. I shouldered the door but stopped dead in the dark. By the soft glow of a Superman night-light, I saw my brother’s sleeping form. He was all tangled up in the sheets, and his head was where his feet should be, but I could hear his breathing.

  My mother, who apparently had put together the threat to her son, appeared behind me. She settled a hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Thank the Lord Jesus.”

  We backed from the room slowly, and I eased the door shut. In the hallway, I turned to her and said, “First thing in the morning, we’re calling Bundower.”

  “You’re certain it wasn’t just some lost hiker? A vagrant?” she asked.

  “What’s it gonna take for you to believe me?” I asked. “I recognized the son of a bitch.”

  I asked her if the front door was locked and she nodded. Then I stepped past her and went into Daniel’s room, where I knew I’d lie on the floor awake till dawn. I kept the bat by my side.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Chief rolled into the compound about nine that Tuesday morning, an hour and change after I called him. After a thorough inspection of Daniel’s Lego spaceship, he carried the mug of black coffee my mother made him out onto the porch, where we followed while Daniel stayed inside, perfecting a weapons modification suggested by Bundower. The Chief blew over the steaming mug and looked toward his hulking car, a rounded black-and-white police cruiser that belonged in an antique car show. It was likely the only vehicle in Paradise older than my Skylark. From the backseat, his raccoon-chasing bloodhound, Pinkerton, stared at us, droopy-faced. The Chief asked me, “So you don’t know this individual?”

  I shook my head. “Not his name. But he was up at St. Jude’s last week.”

  He and my mother traded glances. “You’re absolutely certain of that?”

  “One hundred percent,” I said. “The dude is a psycho stalker.”

  “But you didn’t observe him attempting to enter the house?”

  “No,” I conceded.

  “And nothing was stolen?” he asked, looking over at my mother. She was wrapping a finger in the hair falling on her shoulder, an old nervous habit I hadn’t seen in years.

  “He took something,” I insisted. “From the trash…Isn’t that some kind of crime?”

  Bundower turned to me before replying. “Probably. But mostly it’s just plain nuts.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s the thing.”

  “Andi,” the Chief said, “if what you say about this guy is true, that he harassed you in the hospital and you had evidence that he trespassed once already, why didn’t you call me?”

  I looked down at the pine needles. “I didn’t think you’d believe me.” My mother sighed and rolled her eyes and I couldn’t resist the dig. “That seems to be going around.”

  Bundower nodded and sipped, then wiped his mustache. Since his wife died, it had turned silvery white, bushy, and overgrown. It kept getting dunked in the coffee. He and my mother wandered around the side of the house, him leading the way an
d poking at the ground with the toe of his pointed boot. I sat on the swing and stewed. I couldn’t tell if they were taking me seriously.

  They were gone for a good ten minutes, longer than they needed to gather evidence from the mess by the garbage cans, which I hadn’t disturbed. I wondered what they were talking about. In the months right after Mrs. Bundower died, my mother used to cook the Chief a meal every Monday afternoon. We always left it on his welcome mat, where the previous week’s pot or Tupperware was always waiting, scrubbed spotless.

  The two of them appeared from the other side of the house, and the Chief was tapping at every window as they passed. He set his empty coffee mug on the porch rail and considered me before speaking. “There’s no indication of anyone trying to gain entry. I doubt you were in any physical danger.”

  “I can guarantee he sure was. That joker steps on our land again, and I’m likely to—”

  “Andi, don’t you go doing anything rash. This is a police matter.”

  “I’m not making any promises.”

  Bundower glanced at his watch. “Now listen. There’s no reason to get all upset, but after you called this morning, I stopped by the park. Had a talk with some, well, campers of a sort, I guess I’d say. They’re a tad on the odd side.”

  I asked, “Odd how?”

  “Well, Anderson, just odd, that’s all. Anyway, with your call and everything, I thought I’d drop by. They seem harmless enough. The mayor’s taking it as a sign that Paradise Days will be a big success.”