Nowhere USA: The Complete Series: A Psychological Thriller series (Nowhere, USA)

by Ninie Hammon

  “I didn’t want to wake her up and her start pitchin’ a fit.” She paused and the menace in her voice was chilling. “She’d a woke up … it’d a got ugly. But that carpet was soft as a bed and you’s right, that littlun sleeps like the dead. Which is what she’s gonna be if you don’t get her out of there ‘fore she breathes up all the air.”

  All the air.

  How much was there?

  How much breathable air was in the kiln? Charlie had no idea. It was a big kiln, but it wasn’t empty. Her mother had used it for storage after she closed up her pottery shop, put all her art supplies in it. And there was other stuff in it, too, seemed like. It’d been years since Charlie’d been inside, but she knew there were boxes, big boxes sitting everywhere. Shoot, the Christmas tree decorations were even stored in it.

  “I’m thinking an hour — no, more like an hour and a half. Hard to know because that kiln was jammed full of all kind of stuff. Wasn’t hardly no place to lay her down, but she ain’t big as a miner, so she wouldn’t use up as much air. Outside’d probably be two hours, but I surely would not count on that.”

  This was a coal mining community. Everybody knew the “math of life,” the formula that determined what happened after a mine cave-in — whether there was enough air in the tunnel to last until rescue came.

  Abby recited it: “One cubic yard of air will last one miner one hour. That’s the onliest reason my daddy learned the multiplication tables.” Height, width and length multiplied together and divided by twenty-seven. “The ‘divided by twenty-seven’ part’s the hardest, so you change it to thirty and you’s close enough. Take the zeroes off the end of it and the other number and you’s just dividin’ by three. Ain’t hard. Anybody can do that.”

  Charlie finally found her voice.

  “You can’t possibly be serious, you’d leave a little girl closed up in—”

  “Would and did. She ain’t been in there more than five minutes. You still got lotsa time.”

  Charlie looked at her watch. It was 2:51 a.m. Abby had locked Merrie in the kiln at 2:45, then. In an hour, it would be 3:45. In an hour and a half, it would be 4:15 a.m. In two hours, it would be 4:45.

  “It don’t take but what? Twenty minutes to get from here to the county line? Round trip’s forty minutes and you got sixty — maybe ninety. You take me, use that Vorpal Sword on the monster and make him let us go—”

  “I will not leave my baby—”

  “I left my baby. Left him up there in the hospital waiting for his mama to come nurse him. But I’m comin’ now. Half an hour from now I’m gonna be on my way to Lexington to get him.”

  On her way how? Was she planning to walk? In her condition? Hitch a ride? Wasn’t a whole lot of traffic in the middle of the night on a desolate mountain road. Then Charlie knew. Abby planned to kill her and take her car.

  “Ever second you spend standin’ here jawin’ your girl’s usin’ up air in that kiln. We need to git.”

  Charlie surrendered. A clock was ticking. She’d think of something.

  “Okay.”

  “Keys is in your mama’s car. I done checked. I checked everything. Climbin’ that mountain, I had lotsa time to plan what I’s gonna do.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Malachi was impressed that Sam could keep the old car on the road. But she obviously knew the car like a best friend and the road just as well. She anticipated the curves, watched for lights around bends, slowed just a bit before the whoop-de-dos so that flying up into the air and banging back down didn’t send them off into a ditch.

  As the day’d worn on, he’d been more and more surprised at his own reaction to the insanity, the craziness that he might just wake up tomorrow morning in some Veteran’s Hospital somewhere to discover was all an allergic response to some drug.

  He’d felt calm and centered and understood that was because the situation put him back into his element, the emotional space where he felt most comfortable. He functioned well “doing the necessary” and there’d been a lot of that today. And he’d felt the coiled spring inside him begin to uncoil, not all the way, but enough to allow him more rational thought than he’d had since he got home at Christmas. He was enormously grateful for that, because it was with a clear head that he’d decided he would very likely have to kill Abby Clayton. He hated that, but it would be “doing the necessary.” He wouldn’t have left that decision up to Liam, even if Liam’d been there to come with them. But it’d be nice to be packing the deputy’s sidearm.

  The spring began to recoil itself as they turned off Danville Pike onto Barber’s Mill Road and headed down it to the home of Sylvia Ryan, Charlie’s mother. As soon as Sam squealed into the driveway, he grabbed her forearm and squeezed, probably so tight it hurt but that was okay.

  “We agreed. You stay here.”

  “I didn’t agree to anything. But it doesn’t matter. She’s not here. Sam’s mother’s car was parked in the driveway when I brought her home. Now it’s gone.”

  “I said, stay here.”

  She didn’t argue with him, but neither did she make any move to get out of the vehicle.

  “Kill the lights.”

  She killed the lights.

  He got out of the car, careful not to close the door with a sound that could be heard. Then he Groucho-walked to the side of the house next to the front door and flattened himself up against it. Exposing as little of his body as possible, he peeked carefully around the frame of the window, but the interior of the room was dark and he could see nothing but shapes and shadows.

  His plan, such as it was, was to jump Abby the moment he saw her. Take advantage of surprise and the fact that she couldn’t move fast. Crash down on her instantly before she had time to shoot. But if she saw him coming, if he couldn’t surprise her, Plan B was to trick her, somehow, to get that one moment of inattention, and dive for the rifle.

  It was surprisingly hard to deliver a lethal wound to a moving target with any weapon, no matter how NYPD Blue made it appear. She’d be firing a .22. It was for hunting squirrels and it’d be hard to kill a man with a single shot from a .22. Could be done, if you hit a vital organ, but he’d be moving fast and the odds were on his side that even if she shot him, he’d survive the wound — at least long enough to take her out.

  He went around the house to the back, ducking under the windows so he couldn’t be seen. The gate to the backyard fence was standing ajar. The back door was unlocked. He was tempted to call out for Charlie, but there went his element of surprise, so he eased the screen open just enough to squeeze through. The spring on every screen door on the planet squeaked when you opened it all the way, even if you slathered it in WD-40. He crossed the dark kitchen and ventured into the hallway. He smelled flowers, some kind of flowered perfume, soap or bubble bath maybe. He checked the rooms systematically, cleared them one by one, and found what he was looking for but hoping not to find in the room on the front of the house. The window was up and there was blood on the window sill. Instead of a little girl in the bed, there was a doll — with blood on it. Blood on the floor, too, drips that lead out the front door. He followed the drips out the door and ran to the car.

  “They’re gone. There was a bloody doll lying in the little girl’s bed.”

  “Merrie!” Sam sucked in a gasp. “Abby thinks Charlie can kill the Jabberwock. What’s she going to do to Charlie and Merrie when she finds out different?”

  “Let’s hope we get there before she does.”

  Instead of putting the car in reverse, Sam opened her door and leapt out of the car, flinging “Wait!” over her shoulder as she raced into the house. She returned in seconds, carrying a bundle that she tossed into the front seat.

  “What’s—?”

  “A bluff.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It was all Charlie could do to keep from screaming. She wanted to leap across the car and grab the madwoman by the throat, choke her, force her to tell what she’d done with the key.

  Merrie was
locked in the kiln.

  The kiln!

  She would die if Charlie couldn’t get her out before the air ran out.

  Somewhere inside she did scream, she shrieked, though she made no audible sound. She wailed in terror and impotent rage, wailed at the top of her psychic lungs. But she remained silent.

  And when she finished screaming she grabbed hold of her emotions and grasped them in an iron-claw grip. If she panicked, Merrie would die. If this woman killed Charlie, Merrie would die.

  She had to think of something, some way to get this crazy monster to tell her what she had done with the key.

  But how?

  The tatters of her mind blew in circles, like the black flanks of starlings that cavorted over the trees, thousands of them, turning in unison, diving and soaring back and forth across the invisible Beaufort County border. Her thoughts were those starlings. They were dark, thousands and thousands of them, too many to pick out any one of them to think.

  What could she do? Once they got to the county line and Abby realized Charlie had no magical sword to use on the Jabberwock, what would Abby do?

  No, more important, what would Charlie do? She would have no choice but to jump Abby, wrest the rifle out of her hands and then …

  Then what?

  Threaten to shoot her if she didn’t tell where the key was? Abby would know that was a bluff. What else could she do? How could she make Abby give her the key to the kiln?

  The airless kiln where her baby lay in the darkness.

  The scream on hairy black legs tried to crawl up the back of her throat and threatened to leap out of her mouth but she fought it back.

  She prayed Merrie was still asleep. That she hadn’t awakened and found herself in the dark, the absolute darkness of a cave or a coal mine. Alone and in the dark, oh please no! Not her little Merrie.

  She sucked in a sob at the thought.

  “Makes you sad, don’t it — thinking ‘bout your baby a hurtin’.”

  “Abby, you’re hurt, can’t you see that? The Jabberwock made you sick and—”

  “I ain’t too sick to go get my boy. He needs his mama.”

  She had the rifle pointed at Charlie. It would be a simple thing to slam it aside, dive for Abby, or turn the car sharply. Or …

  Whatever Charlie did, she couldn’t injure Abby or Charlie would never find the key.

  It wasn’t a very big key. She had noticed the keyring hanging on the nail in the garage yesterday when she had gone there looking for duct tape to seal up a box. There was also a house key on the chain, both keys attached to a dirty old rabbit’s foot. Abby could have done anything with them. What if she’d just locked the door and then flung the keys as hard as she could out into the darkness? How would they ever find them in time? The clock was ticking.

  Tick. Tick.

  Merrie was in there in the dark.

  Stop it!

  Think.

  The nearest place where the county line crossed the road was on Route 17 North. Barber’s Mill Road connected to 17 about halfway between the county line and the Middle of Nowhere. As she recalled, there was not a Welcome to Nowhere County sign, just a simple state sign that said Entering Beaufort County. She had to be sure not to blow past that sign, so she slowed down.

  The road curved to the left about fifty feet after the sign, where the Rolling Fork River snuggled up beside it on the right, rushing dark water flowing north back into Beaufort County. Every time the river flooded, which had been every spring of Charlie’s life, traffic bound for Beaufort County was diverted to Route 17 North because the river banks were steep here, the river flowing by twenty or thirty feet below the level of the road.

  She began to slow the car. She couldn’t take a chance on blowing past the sign and wind up with Abby in the Dollar General Store parking lot, violently sick. The shape Abby was in, another trip through might kill her and then how would they ever find the key?

  “Up there,” Abby said, gesturing with her chin toward the Beaufort County sign, its iridescent lettering glowing in the headlights. “Stop there.”

  Charlie pulled off the road stopped and put the car in park.

  Now that they were no longer moving, the headlights caught the shimmer of something in the road about fifty feet ahead, the shiny mirage, the face of the Jabberwock.

  “Abby …”

  “Get out.”

  “You can’t shoot me. How will you get out if you kill me?”

  “Ain’t gonna kill you outright, just shoot your knees out, one at a time, then … This here’s a .22. If I’m careful, I can shoot you a dozen times without killing you. That’ll take a while, though, and yore little girl ain’t got that kind of time.”

  Abby had it all figured out. She gestured with the gun barrel and Charlie opened the door and stepped out. She noticed the blood on the car seat where Abby had been sitting. It wasn’t a whole lot of blood, but she’d been bleeding a small amount for a very long time. Her nose wasn’t bleeding now, but red tears streamed down her cheeks. How long would it be before she passed out from the loss of blood?

  “Go on now.”

  The river flowed by in the darkness off to the right. Charlie could hear it bubbling.

  “You go on up there to that thing and do … do whatever it is you gotta do. Pull out that invisible sword you got, and cut off its head.”

  Charlie walked slowly toward the Jabberwock, trying to decide what to do. How to convince, or trick, or overpower or …

  It occurred to Charlie then, for the first time, that she would die here, that she was living the last few minutes of her life. Abby would be furious when Charlie didn’t, couldn’t, make the monster go away. She might shoot her dead right here in the middle of the road. And if she did, Merrie would die, too.

  No, Charlie had to think of … something.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sam’s heart leapt into her throat when they rounded the final bend and her headlights illuminated a car pulled off on the shoulder of the road on the river side and two figures standing in front of it in the spill of the headlights. Only two.

  “Where’s Merrie?” Sam wondered aloud.

  “In the car, I guess. Asleep in the backseat or something. Look, are sure you want to do this?” Malachi asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Okay, then, just remember to stay out of my way. Approach her slowly and I’ll do the same on the other side, so she can’t keep the gun on both of us at the same time. But she’ll try. She’ll swing it back and forth. I’ll catch her when she swings.”

  Sam nodded, her heart hammering in her ears so loud she hoped she’d heard all he said to her. She pulled her Taurus to a stop behind the Honda Legend belonging to Sam’s mother. Charlie was standing in the middle of the road dressed in a terrycloth bathrobe, and a bloody, ragged Abby stood just off the asphalt in the dirt. Though she appeared barely able to stand, her grip on Malachi’s rifle seemed firm and she had it pointed at Charlie.

  Sam got out on the driver’s side, hanging back. Stood there in the darkness, ridiculously aware of the chirping crickets, the honk of tree frogs and the damp smell of the reeds around the river. Malachi got out on the passenger side and walked directly toward the two figures in the road.

  “What’re you doin’ here?” Abby cried. “You go on along and leave us be.”

  “She put Merrie in the kiln, locked her in there,” Charlie cried, but that couldn’t be right. Sam had misunderstood, hadn’t heard right. Charlie couldn’t possibly mean—

  “That littlun’s gonna stay there till she dies ‘less you all go away. Leave now!”

  Sam hadn’t misunderstood! Oh, dear god …

  “Abby, we just want to talk—

  Abby leveled the rifle full at Malachi.

  “I will shoot you down like a mad dog if you take one more step.”

  The level of rage, malice and total insanity was horrifying. Malachi stopped.

  Showtime.

  Sam called out to Abby fro
m where she stood. Sam’d turned off the headlights of her car, so she was in shadow standing beside the driver’s door.

  “Abby, she doesn’t have to kill the Jabberwock. You don’t have to go to Lexington to get Cody. He’s here.”

  She took another couple of steps to bring herself even with Charlie’s car, but she was careful not to step out into the spill of the headlights.

  Abby gasped, the gun faltered.

  “What’re you sayin’ ‘bout my Cody?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Sam saw Malachi move toward Abby, but Abby quickly recovered, leveled the rifle at his chest.

  “I guess you’re tired of living, cause I’m gonna put a bullet—”

  “Shep brought him,” Sam interrupted. “Took him to your house but you weren’t there. He asked me to take care of the baby while he looked for you. He’s out right now, searching for you.”

  “Shep?”

  Sam stepped up then, not into the spill of the lights but out from the shadows to beside the left front tire.

  “Abby, don’t you want to hold your baby?”

  Sam cradled a baby-sized bundle in her arms, wrapped in the ratty afghan she always carried in her backseat. She nuzzled her face into the blanket and kissed the concealed face of the doll wrapped inside.

  “Cody?”

  The longing in Abby’s voice would have broken Sam’s heart if she weren’t standing there about to shoot Malachi.

  “The kiln’s full of stuff — there’s only a little air and Abby hid the key,” Charlie cried. “Don’t give her the baby until she tells me where the key is.”

  Even when Charlie spoke, Abby kept the gun pointed at Malachi. If she kept it trained on him, Sam would have to be the one to jump her. She could do it. Abby was a little bitty thing. Sam had six inches and thirty pounds on her.

  “You bring me my boy!” Abby said.

  “Don’t!” Charlie said. “Not until she—”

  “You shut up, witch,” Abby cried. Her attention was focused on Charlie but the rifle was still aimed at Malachi. “All of this is your fault.” To Sam, she said, “I want my Cody, you bring him on—”