"So where does mommy dearest work?"
"She's a waitress at the truck stop. That's where she meets a lot of her boyfriends. She kicks me out when she has company."
"Next time that happens, you come over to my house," Paul said. "My mom won't mind. Back home she let my friends come over and hang out, and some of them came over because they had troubles at home. You'll like my mom. She's way cool."
"Thanks, Paul."
The trail became steeper and more winding. Trees to either side became thicker, more dense; towering giant pillars forming solid walls that disappeared to meet overhead, blocking out most of the moonlight. The path grew narrow. Jared used his flashlight until the trail widened again, then he switched the beam off. Paul could hardly see the end of his arm. He followed Jared more by the sounds of his labored breathing, their footsteps muted by the carpet of accumulated dead leaves. Paul's breathing remained normal. He was obviously in much better shape than Jared, though he did clench his teeth to stop them from chattering—it was cold even with the jacket.
He started thinking that maybe he shouldn't have left his warm bed to go out into the night like this. But he would not turn back now. He did wish that he hadn't told his mother what Jared had told him about the murder and suicide in their house all those years ago. It had upset her. He wished he'd kept it to himself. At least he hadn't told her everything. He hadn't told her what Jared had said about the soldier placing the double-barreled shotgun into his mouth after killing his wife. Jared said that after trying to scrub the bloodstains away many times, the ceiling had finally been painted over. The stains were probably still up there, soaked deep into the wood even after who knew how many coats of paint had been applied over the years. Paul hadn't told his mother about how they'd had to use a needle-nosed pliers to pick out the chips of the man's skull that were imbedded in the ceiling from the force of the shotgun blast.
A few feet before the crest of a hill, Paul detected the faint mumble of voices. Jared heard it too. He crouched down, motioning for Paul to do the same.
"They're here again, right on schedule," Jared whispered in Paul's ear. "This is where we have to be real quiet." They advanced the final distance to the crest of the hill. "Take a look," Jared said. "But be real careful. And be ready to run."
Pressing themselves to the cold ground, they peered together, side by side, over the crest at the scene below.
Three people sat on a single fallen log around a campfire in a clearing. Paul saw them clearly in the golden, flickering firelight, and a jolt of fear unnerved him when he recognized the two men, or boys: slobby Bobby Caldwell and his little bro," Tobe. The Caldwell brothers sat on a log, with a woman perched between them. The woman was skinny to the point of being emaciated, her oily blonde hair long and unkempt. She wore blue jean short-shorts and a halter-top, and a tattoo of barbed wire coiled around one wrist.
"See," Jared whispered. There was a strange undercurrent of anticipation in his voice. "Watch."
Paul didn't reply.
The people sitting on the log were passing what looked like a bottle of whiskey back and forth between them. The ground around the campfire was littered with aluminum beer cans. Paul heard the gravelly voices of the men, but he could not distinguish their words. The woman's drunken giggling laughter rose over the male voices. They all sounded drunk.
Jared whispered conspiratorially into Paul's ear, "Last night I watched them like this for almost an hour. Want to know what happened?"
"What?"
"The two guys . . . they, uh, they did it to the girl. Uh, you know what I mean?"
"I. . . ." Paul's words faltered in his throat. "I guess so. . . ."
"They were all doing it at the same time, and she didn't even mind. She liked it! It was way cool."
Now that he knew what Jared had brought him here to see, now that he knew what might happen down there in the clearing below, now that he was again in this close proximity to Bobby and Tobe, Paul found himself definitely wishing that he wasn't here. This was nothing he wanted to see. He was as fascinated by and curious about sex as any boy his age. He'd seen some dirty videos and seen—and, yes, used—magazines like Penthouse and Playboy. But this . . . this was different. He felt embarrassed and repulsed, and frightened. He started to say this, started to tell Jared that he wanted to leave, that he was going to leave. He was going home. But before he could, things began happening in the clearing by the campfire.
Bobby and Tobe started shouting angrily at each other. The woman had fallen off the log. She was laying on her back upon the ground, whiskey from the bottle splashing across her, glistening on her bared, pale flesh. The Caldwells had temporarily forgotten about her.
"Uh-oh," Jared said under his breath.
Tobe must have said something that made Bobby angry. It happened so fast, Paul could barely believe what he was seeing. Without warning, snarling with rage, each brother threw himself at the other and the struggling Caldwells toppled to the ground, kneeing and slugging each other. Paul clearly heard the impact of fists slamming into flesh, sounds punctuated by grunts of rage and pain.
The woman barely stirred. She stared up at the night sky and began laughing hysterically, a brittle, manic cackling that continued as the Caldwell brothers went on pummeling each other.
Chapter Twelve
Robin knew she was dreaming but somehow this did nothing to make the dream less real, did nothing to stop the dream from unfolding with color and sound and the sensations of waking reality. . . .
She awoke to sounds of whispering. That is, she thought it was whispering. She sat up in bed. Moonlight made the window shade across her bedroom a luminescent rectangle. The whispering was not a voice but the shuffle of slippered feet from upstairs.
Upstairs?
There was no upstairs. . . .
The shuffling stopped. Then came a faint clatter and a sharp cry.
She swung her feet to the floor. She listened.
Thunder rumbled. Rain beat a tattoo upon the roof and the window. The wind whistled and moaned around the house. A branch scraped against glass.
She sat there on the edge of her bed for a minute or so, breathing shallowly. Silence enveloped the house except for the raging elements outside. She rose and belted her house robe. She stepped into the hallway outside her bedroom door.
And there was the stairway.
She hadn't noticed it before. It was a lovely piece of work, wide and curving, the stairs and banister of polished mahogany, leading up into impenetrable shadows. The sounds had come from up there. She told herself not to go up those stairs. Something terrible, something evil, waited for her up there. But her mind had no control over her body. She glided forward. The shuffling of her feet across the cold floor was like the whispering noise that had awakened her. She ascended the stairs slowly, one hand following the banister, the other drawing the collar of the robe to her throat. Walking up those stairs seemed to take forever. The darkness at the top of the stairs was a magnetic black void drawing her onward, deeper into the dark. She reached the top stair.
There was no landing or hallway. She was standing in a stark, high-ceilinged room of murky wood-paneled walls, barren of any furnishings. The hammering rain was extremely loud up here.
Then she saw it, and the back of her hand flew to her opened mouth to stifle a gasp of shock.
Against a single window was silhouetted a slowly rotating human body hanging at the end of a length of heavy rope suspended from above, one end of the rope secured to a rafter, the other looped around the dead woman's throat. A chair lay overturned beneath her bare, dangling feet. The rafter protested, creaking against the weight.
Robin stood there, rooted to the spot. She could not make out the face of the hanging corpse. Run, her mind screamed. Run! But she could not move.
A blinding bolt of lightning.
A deafening thunderclap shook the house, rattling the windows, piercing her eardrums. And in the flare of lightning that filled the room like a s
trobe light, she saw the face at the end of the rope. She saw her own face: the face of a corpse with dead eyes that were distended orbs, the flesh rendered ghostly pale in the lightning. The dead flesh was beaded with moisture like raindrops on marble. The corpse's mouth was frozen open in an eternal silent scream.
Robin screamed, and it was not silent. Her scream was louder than the thunderclap in her dream and it woke her for real.
She sat up in her bed. Moonlight filled the room. She was drenched in sweat. Her flesh looked pale in the moonlight, the beads of perspiration like moisture pearled on cold marble. Then she saw a human figure, silhouetted by the moonlight, glide past outside the window shade across from her bed!
She wanted to scream then but she managed to stifle it. She remained motionless, listening intently. She held her breath. She heard nothing. No movement inside or outside the house. Maybe there was no figure, she told herself. Maybe it was a part of her nightmare lingering as she'd awoke; tentacles of the subconscious that had clung from deep sleep into her first waking awareness? Or if there had been someone outside, a prowler, then the prowler must have heard her scream that had ended the nightmare.
She switched on the bedside lamp. She was alone in her bedroom. She thought of Paul. She told herself not to panic.
Throwing on her robe—just like in the dream, she realized—Robin stepped into the moon-splashed hallway outside her bedroom. This time it was the same house she had rented from Mrs. Lufkin, with no exquisitely constructed stairway leading up to a second level that did not exist. She crossed to Paul's door and cracked it open enough to peer in, hopefully without disturbing him. She clearly discerned a shape concealed beneath the covers. With a sigh of relief, she closed the door and returned to her bedroom where she turned off the bedside lamp and stood still for the time necessary to allow her eyes to readjust to the faint illumination of the moonlight.
Moving as lightly as possible, she crossed to the window where she thought she'd glimpsed someone's silhouette outside beyond the drawn shade. Standing with her back to the wall, she used an index finger to part the shade only enough for her to place an eye against the window and look out.
There was no sign of anyone outside. It was not raining. There was no thunder and lightning.
Robin remained like that for some time, her free hand clutching the robe around her throat to ward off the chill within her. What was nightmare, she wondered, and what was real?
Sometime during the time she had been asleep, the light she'd noticed earlier in Mike Landware's house had been turned off. Was he asleep? Or was her neighbor outside her house, stalking in the moonlight?
The ringing of her telephone, this one on her bedside table, again scared her half out of her skin. She again grabbed it with both hands on the first ring, knowing who it would be.
Before she could say hello, Jeff's snigger slithered across the connection. "Hello, sweetheart. Enjoying your new life?"
She had managed to talk herself into thinking that he would not call again. That his previous behavior had been too stupid even for him to stomach. Now she was just angry.
"Jeff, you bastard, leave us alone."
"And why should I? What favors have you done me? A man in my position is supposed to be an upstanding family man. You lived comfy enough on that notion for a long time. Do you have any idea how my income has been affected by what you put us through?"
"What I put us though?" She could barely believe what she was hearing. "Why you arrogant, self-centered son of a—" A sudden, new notion made her stop as she tried to put a figure, a build, to the shadow that had glided across her window shade. "Wait a minute. There are laws against stalking, Jeffrey." She shivered as if a cold draft had run through the house. "Where are you? Where are you calling from? Are you in Chicago or—" Her throat muscles constricted as if crushed by icy fingers.
Jeff sniggered. "Have you been thinking about it like I told you to, Robin? About how I can reach out to wherever you are and mess up your life anytime I feel like it? I hope you've been thinking about that, sweetheart. Because it's going to happen."
"You bastard."
But she was talking to the droning hum of a dial tone.
Chapter Thirteen
Paul climbed back in through his bedroom window, the raising and lowering of the sash again sounding incredibly loud as he entered and replaced the screen. The interior of the house felt toasty after the cool night air but the sweat coating his face and body was icy and clammy. He wanted to go into the bathroom to wash up, but that would wake Mom. He'd wait until morning.
He'd run all the way home from that ridge overlooking the clearing where Bobby and Tobe Caldwell had fought. He hadn't waited to see what happened next. He'd heard Jared's grunt of disgust at his reaction, but the other boy had left with him, following Paul on the trail that led down the side of the hill, through the ravine and to the road.
Paul couldn't help himself. He didn't care what Jared thought. He wasn't sure himself why he ran away. It wasn't just that the sudden eruption of violence between the two men had surprised him. It was something more. He knew only that he had to get away from there, had to escape. It was one thing when violence occurred in books and movies. That was different. It wasn't real, only pretending to be. But what he'd seen tonight was something different altogether. That was real. Too real. He had to get away and that's what he did.
Pudgy, hard-breathing Jared managed to keep pace with him. After fleeing down the trail, when they finally did reach the road and Paul's house was in sight, they were both out of breath.
Jared said, in between gulps for air, "I sure didn't think you'd turn chicken." Even in the moonlight, his flushed face was almost the same color as his bright red hair. "I know it's not nice to spy on people like that, but those weren't nice people, dude. Everyone knows what creeps the Caldwell brothers are. Jesus! You didn't have to go crazy and run away like that. What if they'd heard us?"
"I didn't go crazy. I just didn't want to be there." Paul had started to turn away, toward his house.
"You're not going to tell anyone, are you?" Jared asked. His breathing had almost returned to normal.
"I won't tell anyone," Paul promised. "I'll see you at school tomorrow."
He'd left Jared then, crossing the road, and returning to his property. He heard Jared call after him, as if he'd thought of something else to say. Paul pretended he didn't hear the whispered entreaties for him to wait and come back. Then Jared's voice faded behind him altogether, swallowed up by the chirping of insects and the songs of the night birds. Paul had not slowed or looked back.
In his bedroom, he removed the pillow and the bunched-up clothes that he'd placed beneath his bedcovers. He climbed back into bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling. It felt good to be back in the safety of his own home.
Chapter Fourteen
Chief of Police Ben Saunders hadn't heard an M-1 rifle in years but he instantly recognized the angry chatter of its semi-automatic fire shredding the tranquility of this weekday morning.
The source of the gunfire was very close, coming without warning, startling him, making him spill his first cup of morning coffee across the reports on his desk.
Ben was on the far side of fifty. He had something of a spare tire around his middle and a receding hairline. Widowed the previous month after thirty years of marriage, he had one child, grown now and married, living in El Paso. He and Val were close, but not that close. She had her own family, and since the funeral he'd been pretty much left to deal with his grief on his own. Which was how he preferred it. Devil Creek had a small police force; six officers, two cars and only one of them fit to be on the highway. There wasn't much crime to speak of except for the occasional domestic spat, speeders, or break-ins at summer cabins up on Missionary Ridge, or maybe some rowdy farm kids raising a little sand after a Saturday night of drinking down in Cruces. It was, however, enough of a job to keep him busy and occupied. It didn't ease the ache of missing Helen, but it was how he dealt w
ith the gaping hole in his life that he knew could never be filled. He generally put in sixty hours per week, sometimes more if one of his men was out sick or wanted vacation time.
In a lot of ways, this little town of his was a microcosm of American society, much as any small town was no matter the region. Ben thought of Devil Creek as "his" town not because he was the law here, but because he'd been born and raised and would probably die here. He knew this town and the people who resided here as only a lawman that had been a lifelong resident could know them.
Ben sprinted from his chair and unlocked the rack of pump shotguns, grabbing one as a second burst of fire sounded from the street. Methodically feeding ammunition into the shotgun, he charged into the corridor outside his office. He reached the outside glass door through which two of his deputies, Perks and Chavez, had exited moments earlier to begin their morning patrol. He moved quickly through the doorway, staying low, chambering a round, holding the shotgun up and ready.
The rifle fire had ceased. The sickening, overly-sweet stench of violent death and the sharp smell of gunsmoke reached him an instant before he rounded the shrubbery that grew alongside the building, bordering the parking lot.
"Oh, no," he heard himself say when he saw their bodies. "Oh God, no."
Perks and Chavez had fallen near each other, sprawled on the blacktop in the morning sunshine, each dead officer with a gaping wound in his back. Someone had come up behind them, or been driven by, and opened fire without either of them suspecting a thing until it was too late and they were cut down in those first bursts of gunfire.
Ben's eyes and the muzzle of his shotgun scanned the street in every direction. Less than twenty seconds had elapsed since the second burst of gunfire. The doorways and windows along the street were overflowing with curious, frightened faces. He saw no sign of anyone with a rifle. Then gunfire resumed from somewhere not far away, from inside a building. He heard screams. Shouts. He pinpointed the source. Merle's Hardware, this side of the street, halfway up the block. He stormed in that direction.
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