by Ninie Hammon
Liam. Poor Liam. He’d wanted nothing in the world except to man up to the uniform he wore. He wanted to protect and to serve. And Viola Tackett had killed him.
What was it she’d threatened? “I’ll shoot you down soon’s I would a lame horse.” She had done just that, shot him down in cold blood. Not so much as a blink.
And what were she and Sam supposed to do with that, about that?
Should they, could they tell Malachi? Malachi, whose no-show had left Charlie and Sam to carry all the water — in a bucket that had a hole big enough to put a fist through. If he’d been there, people would have listened — because he was a Tackett, sure, but also because he was a returning soldier. Everybody knew that he had gone off to some war somewhere and had returned damaged by it. But he had, by golly, gone, he’d taken up arms and done his duty. Folks respected him for that.
But if Malachi had been there, what would he have done that she and Sam hadn’t? What would …?
A sudden, horrifying thought hit Charlie so hard it stole her breath. Whose side was Malachi Tackett on? Was that the reason he hadn’t shown up at the meeting — because he knew what his mother was going to do and he was in league with her and his brothers?
Charlie couldn’t believe that, wouldn’t believe that. Malachi was on their side, hers and Sam’s. He was the one who was leading the charge to do battle with the Jabberwock in an effort to save E.J.’s life. He wouldn’t turn on them. Would he?
Actions speak louder than words, Charlie girl, her mother would have said. Point of actual fact, Malachi’d said he’d be at the meeting, would stand up there and tell everybody what the Breakfast Club had figured out. Would warn them, make sure everybody understood that the Jabberwock wasn’t some random circumstance to be endured but an enemy to defeat, a monster to kill before it killed you. But Malachi hadn’t delivered the message. Charlie had done the best she could as a stand-in but it wasn’t the same. Bottom line: Malachi Tackett had bailed.
Where had he been? What could he possibly be doing that was more important than coming to that meeting and speaking his piece? Would he really have stood up to his mother when she started her little power grab? His brothers? And what would Viola Tackett have done if her own son refused to dance to the tune she was playing?
Where was Malachi?
She and Sam had only briefly mentioned him. Charlie could see Sam didn’t want to talk about it so she had let the subject drop. Sam was even more upset by Malachi’s no-show than Charlie was. And it was possible she and Sam were yet again on the same wavelength, not wanting to say out loud the fear that had crept into both their hearts. Maybe Malachi had failed to show up because he had … vanished. Maybe he was just gone, like Abner Riley, Harry Tungate, Reece Tibbits and who knew how many others.
Maybe he had been … taken, snatched up into the jaws of the Jabberwock.
That’s the way she thought about it now, like a creature with jaws.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son, with jaws that bite and claws that catch.
She had written eleven children’s books about three little kids who did battle with dragons, using swords with magical powers to slay the beasts. She had made each of the dragons unique. Balderdash had been a huge red dragon with yellow cat eyes. Millicent had been a female dragon, smaller, black, with spikes on her tail and claws as sharp as knives. Constantine had been pure white, with red eyes that glowed like coals when he breathed fire.
Those images were metaphors in her mind for the Jabberwock, and eventually she would try to puzzle out in her mind the connection between her books about dragons and the real dragon they all faced. But not now, her mind was too fried to process any higher-order thinking.
She pulled into the driveway of her mother’s house, her headlights sweeping over the huge fallen limb that had been torn off the tree by the storm. The one in the driveway that Merrie tripped over. Charlie had dragged it out into the yard and just left it there and thought every time she saw it that she needed to get a chainsaw, cut it up and …
She got out, went around the car and opened the back door, unhooked Merrie from her seatbelt and lifted her up into her arms. The child was out cold, that deep sleep that had made it possible for—
Slam!
She banged the door shut on those thoughts. Not tonight!
Carrying the sleeping child up the sidewalk to the front door, she didn’t even question anymore why that was, why she no longer went into the backyard through the gate and in the kitchen door. That’s what kitchen doors were for. Front doors were for guests; back doors were for family, that’s what her mother’d always said. Flipping on the light switch in the front foyer, she crossed the living room into the hallway and down the hallway to her bedroom, where Merrie slept on a day bed at the foot of her bed. She recoiled from the images that filled her mind, of another night when she had laid a sleeping child down on the bed, took her shoes off and …
Not now, she pleaded with the rogue thoughts. Please, not now!
Slipping the child’s shoes and socks off, she planted a kiss on her forehead and pulled the blanket folded on the end of the bed up over her. It was a light blanket, but it was all she’d need. It would not get down below sixty degrees tonight.
The realization that that was true made her nauseous. She no longer looked up into the night sky. At the random, unblinking lights that weren’t stars. She didn’t want to see. Stepping out of her own shoes, she slipped out of her clothes and into her light summer pajamas.
Her mind was so exhausted she couldn’t think, yet thoughts spun around and around in it so fast they were in danger of catching her hair on fire. Both at the same time. Impossible? You betcha. Mutually exclusive processes operating together — piece of cake in the Jabberwock world.
Face washed, teeth brushed, she went into the kitchen. Too fried even to boil water for tea, she got a Diet Pepsi from the cupboard. The last can.
She turned to leave the room when her eyes fell on the chalkboard — where her mother had written the last item on her We’re Not in Kansas Anymore TO-DO list — buy bird seed.
She thought of this morning, when she’d imagined she saw Stuart’s handwriting there, had written some stupid message of her own in response.
Stuart.
She actually groaned out loud. She couldn’t turn anywhere in her mind anymore without running into pain, like her whole brain was full of razor blades. With a little burp of sardonic laughter, she stepped to the chalkboard, picked up the piece of chalk from the tray and wrote, “I want to go home!”
She put the chalk back in the tray and looked at the words. Shaking her head, she reached for the eraser. And froze.
Her heart began to bang around in her chest like a sperm whale in a fish tank.
Words were forming on the blackboard below what she had written.
She wanted to run out of the room, but her body had staged a revolt, had mutinied and refused to obey her commands. Unable to move at all, Charlie just stared spellbound as … someone? Something? wrote beneath her plea.
The handwriting wasn’t Stuart’s. The letters were formed with big, bold strokes, as if the chalk used to write them had pressed down hard on the blackboard. Angry strokes, she thought. Not cursive, all caps, printed.
The words formed slowly, but were perfectly formed, distinct and legible.
Beneath where Charlie had written “I want to go home” were the words:
No! Stay here and play with me.
THE END
A Note from the Author
Thank you for reading Trapped.
If you enjoyed this book, you please consider writing a review on your favorite bookselling site so other readers might enjoy it too. Just a couple of sentences would mean a lot to me.
Thank you!
Ninie Hammon
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Ninie Hammon (rhymes with shiny, not skinny) grew up in Muleshoe, Texas, got a BA in English and theatre from Texas Tech University and snagged a job as a newspaper reporter. She didn't know a thing about journalism, but her editor said if she could write he could teach her the rest of it and if she couldn't write the rest of it didn't matter. She hung in there for a 25-year career as a journalist. As soon as she figured out that making up the facts was a whole lot more fun than reporting them, she turned to fiction and never looked back.
Ninie now writes suspense--every flavor except pistachio: psychological suspense, inspirational suspense, suspense thrillers, paranormal suspense, suspense mysteries.
In every book she keeps this promise to her Loyal Reader: "I will tell you a story in a distinctive voice you'll always recognize, about people as ordinary as you are--people who have been slammed by something they didn’t sign on for, and now they must fight for their lives. Then smack in the middle of their everyday worlds, those people encounter the unexplainable--and it's always the game-changer."
Also By Ninie Hammon
Nowhere, USA
The Jabberwock
Mad Dog
Trapped
Through The Canvas Series
Black Water
Red Web
Gold Promise
Blue Tears
The Unexplainable Collection
Five Days in May
Black Sunshine
The Based on True Stories Collection
Home Grown
Sudan
When Butterflies Cry
The Knowing Series
The Knowing
The Deceiving
The Reckoning
The Fault
Stand-alone Psychological Thrillers
The Memory Closet
The Last Safe Place
Nonfiction/Memoir
Typin’ ‘Bout My Generation
