The Judas Child

by Carol O'Connell

  Was this what David Shore felt like when Mr. Beckerman stroked his face or ruffled his hair in class? She thought of the teacher’s fat spider fingers touching her classmate. Did David feel this queasiness, this unclean feeling, this desire to take a bath and then another and another? Mr. Beckerman had creepy eyes only for the boys, mostly for David, and he hardly knew the girls were alive. And so she knew this thing in the room with her was not Beckerman, yet something akin to the teacher was sitting in the chair by her bed. Perhaps in the absence of light, in the blackness, the blindness, insects were all alike.

  Her body was too tense, too rigid. She willed herself to relax each muscle, so if it touched her, it would not know she was awake and terrified.

  A hand grazed her face, fingers light in the slow crawl of the spider. It prowled in her hair, and she was filled with loathing. The fingers grazed the more sensitive area of her lips, and now she knew it was not flesh but gloves of rubber. The body of the thing was drawing closer, bending over her now, for she could feel a puffing draft of reeking breath across her face.

  A beeping sound began; the repeating tone was low but insistent. The rubbery fingers flew away from her lips, and she heard the rustle of material as the thing fumbled in its clothing and stopped the beeping noise.

  The wicker creaked again, this time with relief, as the thing was rising. And now the room had a different feel, a clamminess, and there was the stink of something odious, unclean.

  The giant insect was leaving her, stepping quickly on its hind legs and moving toward the door. Gwen kept her eyes shut tight, lest it should turn around and catch her watching.

  The door closed. Her eyes opened to the dim glow of the night-light. A gleam sparked off the metal padlock on the hamper, taunting her.

  Rouge stood near the window and looked up to the sky. The moon was hidden, but here and there, a star emerged from the lacework of dispersing clouds. The light snowfall had ended, and all the evidence of winter had already melted in a soft rain, dashing every child’s hope of a vicious snowball fight to cap off the baseball game.

  Cops and kids filled the fast-food restaurant with hollered orders for burgers and fries, chocolate shakes and Cokes. It was a night of hilarity and bragging, and a sight usually reserved for warm evenings after a ball game in the proper season. This might be the last such gathering. By the first day of spring, the baseball diamond would be covered with cement.

  David was standing near the cash register, laughing at some aside from a town boy whispering in his ear. Tonight, this quiet child seemed like any other, just another member of the team, and Rouge didn’t want that ruined. He plucked the boy from the crowded lineup at the counter and led him to a table at the other end of the room. David seemed relieved to be parting company with the town children. None of them had yet realized that he was too shy to speak, that he was not quite normal, not really one of them.

  The meal of burgers was eaten over a conversation of words from himself and nods from the boy. Rouge was heeding Mary Hofstra’s counsel not to pressure David into speech, framing every question for a nod or a shake of the head. He had just asked if the fries from St. Ursula’s cafeteria were as good as the fast-food fries.

  “They were kidnapped from the boathouse,” said David, ducking his head shyly as he sipped from his milk shake. “Gwen and Sadie.”

  “How do you know?” Oh, fool. He amended his question to ease the pressure. “Are you sure?”

  David nodded, and his face was going to a high red color. So they must be close to the hidden thing that David could not confess, not even to Mary Hofstra.

  “You saw them go into the boathouse?”

  “Yes.”

  Another word. More progress.

  “Did you see the man who took them?”

  David shook his head. “But he must have been in there the whole time I was—” Words failed David. His face was so miserable, he might be looking at the end of the world as he knew it.

  Then David began to speak again, talking faster in an unbroken stream, a torrent of words. Before the tears could amount to anything, Rouge was bundling the boy into his parka and leading him out the door.

  The ten-year-old was silent as they pulled out of the parking lot. During the drive back to St. Ursula’s, David was more talkative, in rushes and spurts, with no prompting from Rouge. The boy looked ill, possibly because he had eaten more cheeseburgers than any other child at the restaurant. Or it might have been the confession that made him sick. He had admitted to following the girls that day and spying on them. But just now, Rouge was worrying about David’s account of the barking dog in the boathouse. He was tying it to Sadie Green’s ripped jacket.

  “I thought you might think I was weird.” David looked down at his tightly clasped hands. “I am weird.”

  “The other kids didn’t think so. They know natural talent when they see it. And following girls? You’re supposed to do that, David. You’re a guy—that’s your job in life.”

  The boy was smiling at this tossed-off revelation that he might not be a freak of nature, that an interest in girls was more common than he had supposed.

  “So, David—got any ideas about that barking dog?”

  “I know it wasn’t Gwen’s poodle. Harpo didn’t come with her. He never does, not to the boathouse. And it wasn’t Sadie’s dog. Mrs. Green won’t let her have one.”

  “Sadie told you that?”

  The boy turned his face away to stare out the windshield at the sudden lights of an onrushing vehicle. The other car passed by them, its taillights disappearing around the curve in the road. Safe in the dark again, he said, “I heard her tell it to Gwen—when I was listening at the boathouse window. But that was another time.”

  Rouge pulled into the school’s driveway and traveled on to the parking lot at the back of the building. “So it was a regular meeting place for the girls?”

  “Yeah. When Gwen’s father wouldn’t let them play together, she’d sneak out and meet Sadie at the boathouse.” David left the car and joined Rouge at the edge of the great lawn and its sprawling view of the lake. “It was like probation—just Saturdays. So I figured Mr. Hubble was mad at Sadie again.”

  They descended the slope, casting two shadows by moonlight, heading for the darkened boathouse. A stand of young pine trees hid all but the roof and part of the wharf. When they had passed through the trees and the entire building was visible, David hung back, suddenly regressing to baby steps. Rouge waited for him to catch up and wondered at the look of dread on the boy’s face.

  The century-old building was forbidding at this hour. Its only window was shuttered like a closed eye. In silhouette, the lines were not quite true and straight. There was almost an attitude in the lean of the walls and the decrepit slope in the spine of the roof. But he thought there might be more to David’s new anxiety, which increased with every step.

  Rouge looked out over the lake. If David was right, then the kidnapper might be in one of those houses near the water. Anyone with field glasses might note the coming and going of two little girls. But all the lakefront houses had been searched by troopers and town cops.

  He turned back to what he could see of St. Ursula’s main building above the stand of young pines. Beckerman might not be the only pedophile on the faculty. Schools were magnets for freaks.

  David touched his sleeve as they stepped onto the wooden planks of the wharf. “I think they left in one of the canoes. There was no other way to get past me.” He pointed to a cluster of boulders down along the shoreline. “The rocks would’ve hidden the canoe if it came from the boat-slip door on the lakeside.”

  “We’ll check it out.” Rouge opened the narrower wharf-side door. “They always keep this place unlocked?”

  “No, sir, never. There was a padlock on the door. Somebody broke it. I found the lock and the hasp right there—next to a rock.” He pointed to the smooth boards near the threshold. “Sadie knew how to open it. She sucked up to the groundskeeper—followed the
old man around for days until she got the combination. That’s how I know someone else broke the lock.”

  Rouge turned his flashlight on the door frame. It had been recently painted over with splashes of a brighter white. He could make out the ridges of wood putty filling in long deep splinters of breakage. Someone had cleaned up the debris, but no one from the school had reported a break-in.

  He walked into the building and found the light switch high on the wall, wisely placed beyond the reach of a child. He noted the sailboat and canoes on wooden cradles, all accounted for. David hung back, feet firmly planted on the wharf. The place frightened him, even with the light on.

  “When I saw the bike at the bus stop, I thought they were just trying to lose me.” The boy’s hands dove into the pockets of his parka as he studied his shoes. “Nothing made sense that day. It wasn’t real till I saw it on television. You know what I mean? That’s when I told Mrs. Hofstra about Sadie’s bike.”

  Rouge understood. Most people put more faith in television than their own eyes. And David had also needed to see events played out like a story before he could make sense of the witnessed bits and pieces.

  The boy hovered on the doorsill now, still unwilling to enter the boathouse. “At first, I thought they must’ve run away—because of the bike at the bus stop. But why would Sadie double back to move her bike from a good hiding place? Why would she leave it out in the open? You see? It doesn’t work. And the dog always bothered me. Then the police came out and searched the school—the boathouse too. So I didn’t think they needed me to tell them about it. But I guess they did. I’m really sorry.”

  Rouge moved along the wharf to the far edge of the building. Now he was looking at the boat-slip doors that would open onto the lake. “So you figure he took them away in a canoe when it was getting dark? No noise, no one to see. Later, he must’ve gone back and moved the bike to the bus stop.”

  David was beside him, nodding. “When I finally figured it out—” His hands plunged deeper into the pockets of his coat, and his face turned away from Rouge. “I was here the whole time it was happening to them.” The boy sank down to the wooden boards, shaking his head from side to side. “I’m so sorry.”

  And now Rouge understood the real shame of David Shore—as if the boy could have known what the man was doing to Sadie and Gwen, as if he could have stopped it. David was sick with guilt.

  So they had more in common than baseball.

  Susan, lying facedown in the snow, so cold. His sister had died alone; that had been the worst of it for Rouge. If only he had been with his twin on that day, to die for her or with her. Back then, he had wanted nothing more than to lie down to sleep, to death, an end of pain, never awakening to another day of remorse for the sin of being alive. Susan, my Susan.

  He had been David’s age then.

  Now he knelt down beside the boy whom Mrs. Green had once described as Sadie’s shadow. David’s arms wrapped tightly around Rouge’s neck, and they consoled one another in the dark, both rocking gently in the ancient way of small children seeking solace.

  Gwen tried Sadie’s birth date again, thinking she might have misdialed the numbers, but the combination still didn’t work.

  Oddly, she was relieved, not certain anymore that she wanted to see inside the hamper. She abandoned the problem to explore the crack of space between the armoire and the wall. Slowly, she reached one hand into the blackness. Suddenly, she pulled it back with strands of spiderweb on her fingers. A bit of the spider’s supper was still kicking its legs. She wiped her hand on one leg of her blue jeans.

  The last time she had done this, she must have been too groggy to be put off by the debris of bugs. Gwen plunged her hand back into the opening and touched the wood frame. Then her blind fingers worked downward and found the lower lip of the windowsill.

  The child put her shoulder to the armoire, but it would not budge. She returned to the cot and pulled away the sheets to expose the canvas sling stretched across a wooden frame. She flipped it over, viewing the underside with a critical eye to the narrow slats threaded into the canvas hem. With one foot braced on a long board, she tugged at a short slat at the end of the frame. The wood was old and the nails gave with ease. She slipped it out of the canvas and carried it to the armoire, sliding it into the crack between the wall and the wardrobe. When she pulled on her lever, it broke in two. She sat down on the floor and stared at the jagged shard of wood in her hand, genuinely perplexed that such a good idea would not work out in real life with solid materials.

  Next, she pulled the cot’s remaining frame bars apart and freed them from the loops of canvas. She put the two longest slats together as a single pry bar and fitted them into the crevice. This time, the heavy piece of furniture moved a bit when she pulled on the slats.

  “Oh, stupid, Gwen,” she whispered. Pushing was easier than pulling. She braced her back against the wall and pushed on the wooden lever. The armoire moved a few inches. Now she put her whole weight into the effort, but this time it would not move at all.

  Well, that was not logical, not right. Someone had changed the rules that governed physical objects. Exhausted, she stopped for a moment, and her gaze was pulled back to the hamper again. She averted her eyes and put all her energy into the slats. Nothing happened. Gwen sat down on the floor to rest before the next attempt. Though she never looked at the hamper, it was all but calling her name, daring her to work out another problem of logic: Why lock a hamper? Instead, she turned back to the problem of the immovable object, and then she solved it.

  The child was staring down at cracked tiles and the lakes and rivers in the corroded grout between them. The wooden legs had settled into wide gaps where pieces of tiles were missing. She put the pry bar slats underneath the armoire and used all of her weight to leverage it back just far enough to kick the small rug under the front legs. One shoulder ached, and she wondered if she had pulled a muscle. Only the suggestion of a possible pulled muscle had caused her father to keep her from gymnastics for a month. But she had been content to sit on the floor of the gymnasium, watching Sadie going through routines on the parallel bars.

  Sadie, where are you?

  Resting again and taking deep breaths, she avoided looking at the hamper. She knew the answer to the puzzle was in her head. Of course it was Sadie’s lock. If the window gave her a way out, could she leave without knowing what was inside that thing? What if she was leaving her best friend behind?

  Gwen let these grim questions alone and went back to work. The armoire now sat at a wide angle to the wall, and there was room to stand between its wooden backing and the window. She pressed her face to the cool glass pane. There were trees everywhere, the lines of bare-limbed oaks and birches were silvered by moonlight, and the pines had roundness of form. But there were no electric lights and not a rooftop or a chimney in sight—no one to hear her if she screamed—as if she dared to make any noise.

  The ground was a long way down, judging by the scale of the driveway. Her next project was automatic, the stuff of bad movie plots. And her father always said that movies would rot her mind. If only he could see her now.

  He’d have a heart attack.

  But Sadie would be proud.

  What’s in the hamper?

  Gwen shook her head, saying no to this dark idea. She picked up one of the sheets and tried to tear it down the center to fashion a longer rope. But she was still weak, and now she was frustrated because it would not rip. She dragged it over a nail sticking out of the remaining cot slat until she made a hole in the material. Then she easily tore it down the middle. When all the lengths of two torn sheets were tied together, she anchored them to a back leg of the armoire with a double knot.

  Gwen opened the window, and she was foiled again by real life intruding on her scheme to escape by a bedsheet rope. The air was cold—shocking. Shivering, she pushed the mass of sheets over the sill and put her head out the window to watch them unravel along the sideboards of the house. The white material dr
opped past two dark windows. From the end of the rope to the yard below was how far? One window?

  She leaned her upper body over the sill and looked straight down at the ground, focusing on the moonlit shapes of a trash can and a birdbath. The objects telescoped downward, growing smaller and farther away. The yard was spinning; the floor beneath her feet tilted; and her stomach lurched upward in a wave of nausea. She was not breathing—sudden fear had stopped her lungs. Shutting her eyes, she pulled back inside and slammed the window.

  Gwen took great gulps of air and flattened her body against the solid, unmoving plaster wall. Her eyeballs rolled back in their sockets, and her breathing quickened while she weighed the fear of going against the fear of staying. Even if she could make herself climb over that windowsill, suppose she lost her grip on the bedsheet? What if the material ripped? She would fall and break her bones in a hundred pieces on the hard ground. Even if she could hold on until she reached the end of the sheets, she might still break her legs in the long drop to the yard. She could not bear pain in any measure. And then there was the cold to deal with. Barefooted she would not get far. How she hated the cold.

  Every muscle of her body was pressing up against the wall, limbs and fingers spread across its surface as a second skin to the painted plaster. With effort, she slowly turned her face to the window, the only way out. The night wouldn’t last forever. The sky would lighten to gray. Soon the giant insect would come back to her with a tray of orange juice and an egg. His rubber fingers would crawl in her hair, on her face, and this time she would be hideously awake. In her mind, she was already screaming in anticipation of the thing.

  There was only one exit.