The Last Child

by John Hart

  “I found her …”

  Above them, the big engine idled. The injured man rolled his eyes up, his fear obvious. He pulled Johnny so close that he smelled blood and crushed organs. The man’s eyes crinkled at the edges, and Johnny heard a single word. A whisper.

  “Run …”

  “What?”

  The man’s grip tightened. Johnny heard how the big engine rumbled and spat, then something like steel on concrete. The man’s hand clenched so hard that nails cut Johnny’s skin.

  “For God’s sake—”

  The body seized again, spine locked tight, broken arm twisting.

  “Run …”

  Johnny looked down, saw a boot heel push dirt, and something clicked in his mind.

  This was not an accident.

  Johnny looked at the bridge and saw a hump of movement: a head and a shoulder, a man moving around the front of the car. It was a shadow man, a cutout. Johnny felt the blood on his hands, sticky wet and going cold.

  Not an accident.

  The man’s body seized, head slamming dirt, boot heel drumming. Johnny tried to pull his hand free, had to jerk with all he had. Noise on the bridge. Movement. Fear was a knife that went in low and touched some deep place in him. Johnny had never been so scared in all of his life, not the day he woke up to find his father gone, not the times his mom winked out and Ken got that gleam in his eye.

  Johnny was terrified.

  Frozen.

  Then he turned and ran, along the river, down the trail. He ran until his throat closed, until his heart tried to claw free from his chest. He ran fast and he ran afraid. He ran until the giant black monster stepped from the shadows and grabbed him up.

  Then Johnny screamed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Levi Freemantle carried a precious thing on his shoulder. It was a heavy box, wrapped twice in black plastic and closed up with silver tape. Few men could carry it as far as Levi had, but Levi was not like other men. He ignored the hurt of it, the sense of it. He kept his feet on the path and moved his lips when words rose up in his mind. He listened to God’s voice in his head and followed the river like his momma taught him when he was a boy. The river was the river, never-changing, and Levi had walked the river trail a hundred times, maybe. Not that he counted that good.

  But a hundred was a lot.

  He’d walked it a lot.

  Levi saw the white boy before he heard him. He was coming straight at him, tearing down the trail like the devil was at his heels and hungry for white boys. His head rode low on skinny shoulders, face gone purple red, feet skipping over rocks and holes as branches snapped at his face and missed. The boy never looked back, not once, and it was like watching a hunted animal run.

  Levi wanted to let the boy pass, but there was no way to hide. There was river and there was trees, but Levi stood six foot five and weighed three hundred pounds. People with guns were looking for him. Cops with bright metal on their belts, guards with clubs and nasty smiles. So Levi asked God what to do, and God told him to grab the boy up. Don’t hurt him, God said. Just pick him up.

  “Truly?” Levi whispered, but God did not answer; so Levi shrugged, then stepped from behind the tree and grabbed the boy up with one thick arm. The boy screamed, but Levi held him, gentle as he could. He was surprised, when God told him what to tell the boy.

  “God says—,” he began.

  But Levi did not speak fast enough. The boy got one of Levi’s fingers in his mouth and clamped down until the skin popped like a grape. His teeth went all the way to the bone, and blood pumped hard. It hurt, really hurt, and Levi flung the boy down into the dirt. He felt bad when he did it, like maybe he’d let God down.

  But it hurt.

  The boy rolled to his feet and took off like a rabbit, but Levi didn’t think once about chasing him. He couldn’t run with the heavy box on his shoulder, and he couldn’t leave the box, not even for a minute. So he held his bloody finger and wished it would stop hurting like it did. The pain made him think of his wife, and that was a worse kind of hurt, so he kept one hand around the bloody finger and listened for the voice of God. When he finally spoke to Levi, he said it might be nice to know what the boy was running from.

  Levi shrugged his giant shoulders.

  “God talks and Levi walks.”

  That was a funny.

  It took twenty minutes to get to the bridge. The blood on the rocks looked black and wrong, and Levi listened hard before laying his package on the ground and stepping out from under the willow tree. He wanted somebody to tell him what to do, but God had gone still. A finger of hot wind laid itself across his cheek and lightning flashed off in the west. The air was heavy with a dry, powdery smell that rose from the dust under the bridge and felt charged with static.

  Levi thought he heard a voice in the river. He tilted his head, and listened for a full minute before deciding it was only water moving. Or a snake in the grass. Or a carp in the reeds at the river’s edge.

  But not God.

  When God spoke, Levi felt cool air pile up above him; he felt peaceful, even when he remembered the bad he’d done.

  So this wasn’t God.

  He stood over the body and his head wasn’t working right. It wasn’t that he was scared—although he did feel small, sharp nails on the back of his neck—Levi felt sad for the crooked man. Busted up and leaking red was wrong. So was the stillness, the open, flat-looking eyes.

  Levi rocked from one foot to the other. He rubbed at the scars on his face, the right side where the skin looked melted. He didn’t know what to do, so he sat down to wait for God to tell him.

  God would know.

  God was good like that.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Johnny came onto his own street just as the sun set and the light faded to purple. Night sounds rose in the woods. He limped, in pain, but his mind was flush with hope. It burned with it.

  I found her.

  You found who?

  The girl that was taken.

  Johnny replayed the words over and over, looking for some reason to doubt the emotion that pushed him through the pain that radiated up from his feet. Eight miles, most of it running, all of it without shoes. His feet were torn and cut, but his right foot was the worst, gashed by a broken bottle two miles after the hobgoblin with the black box grabbed him. Johnny could still taste the man’s blood, the dirt on his skin. He tried not to think about it too much. Instead, he thought about his sister, his mother.

  Johnny crested the second-to-last hill and a damp wind pressed against him. He saw lights strung out on the roadside. Windows. Houses. They looked small under the purple sky, crowded where the dark forest pushed them against the thin black road. Another mile, he told himself. One more hill.

  His mother needed to hear what he’d heard.

  He started down, and did not hear the car that rose on the crest behind him. He imagined what the news might do for his mother. Get her out of bed. Get her off the pills. It could be a whole new beginning. The two of them, and then Alyssa.

  His father would come back.

  They could get their old house.

  The headlights found him and Johnny moved off the road. His shadow flowed left, then flickered out when the car pulled even and stopped. Johnny felt a spike of fear, then recognized Ken’s car. It was a Cadillac, big and white, with sharp edges and gold letters that said, Escalade. Ken’s window came down. His skin was almost tan enough to hide the bags under his eyes. “Where the hell have you been?” Johnny shook his head, winded. “Get in the car, Johnny. Right now.”

  Johnny bent at the waist. “I don’t—” He shoved a fist into his side.

  Ken jammed the transmission into park and threw open his door. “Don’t talk back to me, kid. Just get in the car. Your mother’s falling apart over this. The whole town is in an uproar.” Ken climbed out. He was tall and heavy, shapeless in the way that Johnny thought only middle-aged men could be. He had a gold watch, thin hair, and laugh lines that made no sense to Joh
nny.

  Johnny’s words came with difficulty. “Falling apart over what?”

  Ken gestured with a thick hand. “In. Now.”

  Johnny climbed in and slid across the smooth leather seat. Ken put the car in gear, and Johnny thought of the dead man.

  I found her.

  —

  The house was lit up like Christmas: inside lights, outside lights, cop cars that angled in the drive and painted the yard with slashes of blue. Uniformed cops stood under the darkening sky, and Johnny saw guns and radios and slick, black clubs that hung from metal rings.

  “What’s going on?”

  Ken opened his door and dropped a hand on Johnny’s neck. Fingers dug into the thin straps of muscle and Johnny rolled his shoulders.

  “That hurts.”

  “Not as much as it should.” Ken dragged him across the seat and out of the car. His hand came away and he offered the cops a perfect smile. “Found him,” he announced, and they stopped in the drive as Johnny’s mother stepped onto the porch. She wore blue jeans and a brown shirt faded to the color of chocolate milk. Uncle Steve stepped out beside her. Johnny took another step, and his mother flew down the stairs, hair gone wild, eyes wet and crazy. She threw her arms around him, and her words blurred: “Oh my God. Where have you been?”

  Johnny didn’t understand. He’d come home after dark many times. Most days, she didn’t know if he was in bed or not. Over his mother’s shoulder, Johnny saw one of the cops lift his radio. “Dispatch. Twenty-seven. Please inform Detective Hunt that we’ve located Johnny Merrimon. He’s at home.”

  A static-filled voice acknowledged what the cop had said. Then, some seconds later, the radio hissed again. “Twenty-seven, be advised. Detective Hunt is en route to your location.”

  “Ten-four, dispatch.”

  Johnny felt his mother’s arms loosen. She pushed him back, and suddenly she was shaking him, screaming: “Don’t you ever do that again! Not ever! Do you hear me? Do you? Say you do! Say it!” Then she grabbed him up again. “God, Johnny. I was so worried.”

  Johnny was shaken and squeezed, rattled so hard he could barely speak. The cops moved down the stairs, and Johnny saw his Uncle Steve, who begged with his eyes. Then Johnny understood. “The school called?”

  His mother nodded against his neck. “They went into lockdown right after lunch. They called here and said they couldn’t find you, so I called your Uncle Steve; but he said he dropped you off. He swore it. And then you didn’t come home, and I thought …”

  Johnny pulled out of her grasp. “Lockdown for what?”

  His mother caressed one side of his face. “Oh, Johnny.” Her fingers felt shaky and warm. “It’s happened again.”

  “What has?”

  His mother broke. “Another girl’s been taken. Right off the school grounds, they think. A seventh-grader. Tiffany Shore.”

  Johnny blinked. His words came, automatic. “I know Tiffany.”

  “Me, too.”

  Her voice trailed off, but Johnny knew what she was thinking. Tiffany Shore was in the seventh grade. Same as Alyssa had been when she vanished. Johnny shook his head. He thought of the dead man’s words. When he’d said, I found her, he was talking about Johnny’s sister, about Alyssa. Not Tiffany. Not some other girl. “That can’t be right,” Johnny said; but his mother nodded, crying, and Johnny felt the hope go cold. He felt it crumble to ash. “That can’t be right,” he said again.

  She rocked back on her heels, looking for the right words; but one of the cops stepped forward before she could find them. “Son,” he said, and Johnny looked up, “is that blood on your shirt?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Levi waited with the broken body as the sun sank. The flies bothered him and his finger hurt so bad he wondered if God was testing him. He’d been to church and knew that God did that kind of thing; but Levi was nothing special. He swept floors to make money. The world confused him. But God’s voice had been with Levi for seven days. It came like a whisper and was a comfort when the world seemed dark and tilted left. A week of whisper left a huge hole in a man’s head when the whisper stopped, and Levi had to wonder why God was silent now. He was an escaped convict sitting in the dirt ten feet from a dead man. He’d been wandering loose for seven days.

  I made the world in seven days.

  The voice gushed into Levi like a flood, but it sounded different. It flickered in, faded out, and the thought felt unfinished. Levi held his breath, turned his head, but the voice didn’t come again. Levi knew that he was not smart—his wife had told him that—but he wasn’t stupid, either. Convicts and dead bodies looked bad together. The road was just above his head. So Levi decided that God would have to wait.

  Just this once.

  He knelt by the dead man and went through his pockets. He found a wallet and took the cash because he was hungry. He asked God to forgive him, then dropped the wallet in the dirt and straightened the man’s body. He pulled the broken arm from behind his back and crossed his hands on his chest. He dipped a finger in the tacky blood and made a cross on the pale, smooth forehead, then he closed the open eyes. He prayed to God to take the dead man’s soul.

  Take it.

  Care for it.

  He saw the flash of white when he stood.

  It was in the dead man’s hand, a scrap of fabric that poked between two fingers. It came out easily when Levi pulled. Pale and ragged, it looked like a piece of shirt that had been cut free or torn. It was as long as a baby’s shoe, faded and dirty, with a name tag sewn into it. Levi couldn’t read, so the letters meant nothing, but the fabric was kind of white and just the right size. He twisted it around his bleeding finger and used his teeth to tie it off, pull it tight.

  In the shade of the willow, he stopped beside the heavy package wrapped in plastic. He ran one of his massive hands along the top of it, then hoisted it onto his shoulder. To any other man, it would have felt heavy, and the thought of it might have oppressed. But that’s not how it was for Levi. He was strong, he had a purpose; and when the plastic rustled against his ear, he heard the voice of God. It told Levi he’d done good, and it told him to walk on.

  He was fifty minutes gone when the cops showed up.

  —

  Detective Hunt’s car rolled to a stop on the bridge. This far out, there were no street lamps, no houses. The sky above was black, with a deep purple line on the horizon to the west. Above them, storm clouds pressed low, and a hard, dry light thumped twice before the thunder came. A line of marked cars, lights flashing, pulled in behind Detective Hunt’s car. Spotlights clicked on and lit the bridge. Hunt turned to Johnny, who sat in the backseat with his mother. Their faces were blacked out, and he saw strands of hair that stood out against the bright light from the cars behind them. “Are you okay?” he asked. No answer. Johnny’s mother pulled him tight. “This the place, Johnny?”

  Johnny swallowed. “This is it.” He pointed. “That side of the bridge. Straight down.”

  “Tell me one more time what he said. Word for word.”

  Johnny’s voice sounded dead. “I found her. The girl that was taken.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “He told me to run. He was talking about the guy in the car.”

  Hunt nodded. They’d been through it six or seven times. Everything that had happened. “Nothing else to make you think he was talking about your sister? He didn’t mention her name or description or anything like that?”

  “He was talking about Alyssa.”

  “Johnny—”

  “He was!”

  Johnny’s head tipped in the harsh glare, and Hunt wanted to touch the boy on the shoulder, tell him that it would be okay; but it was not his place to fix every broken thing, no matter how badly he might want to. He glanced at Katherine Merrimon. She sat, small and immobile, and he wanted to touch her, too; but those feelings were complicated. She was beautiful and gentle and damaged, but she was a victim, and there were rules about that. So Hunt stayed focused on the case, and
his voice was hard when he spoke. “The odds are against it, Johnny. You should prepare for that. It’s been a year. He was probably talking about Tiffany Shore.”

  Johnny shook his head, but remained silent. When his mother spoke, she sounded like a child herself. “I know Tiffany,” she said.

  She’d said that twice already, but no one mentioned it. Johnny blinked and saw an image of the missing girl. Tiffany was small and blond, with green eyes, a scar on her left hand, and a stupid joke she’d tell to anyone that would listen. Something about three monkeys, an elephant, and a cork. She was a nice girl. Always had been.

  “The man on the bridge,” Hunt began. “Do you remember anything else? Could you identify him?”

  “He was just a shape. A sense of movement. I didn’t see his face.”

  “What about the car?”

  “No. Like I said.”

  Hunt peered through the windows as other cops began to exit cars and throw shadows against the stark concrete wall of the bridge. He was unhappy. “Stay here,” he said. “Do not get out of this car.”

  He climbed out, shut the door behind him, and absorbed the scene. Heavy, damp air carried the scent of the river. Darkness welled up from beneath the bridge, and Hunt glanced north as if he could see the great swath of rough country that pushed down on Raven County: the stony woods and, at the foot of those hills, the twenty-mile stretch of swamp that vomited out the river. A drop of cold rain touched his cheek, and he gestured at the nearest cop. “Put a light over the side,” he said. “Down there.” He moved to the abutment as the cop pulled a light from the cruiser and shot a spear of light out into the night. It cut ragged patterns as the officer walked to the edge of the bridge, and when he put the light on the riverbank, it pinned the body on the dirt.

  Johnny Merrimon’s bicycle lay on the ground five feet away from it.

  Jesus.

  The kid was right.

  Hunt felt his people move around him. He had four uniformed cops and Crime Scene on standby. He heard a staccato burst on the windshield, felt more drops spatter on the top of his head. The rain was coming, and it was coming hard. He gestured with an arm. “Get a tarp over that body. Move. I also want tarps over the railing, right here.” He was thinking of paint scrapings, and of the glass shards that winked on the blacktop. “Somewhere around here, there should be a motorcycle. Find it. And somebody call for a tent.” Thunder crashed and he looked up at the sky. “This is going to get ugly.”