I could, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that to Padgett.
“We’d gone about fifty or sixty feet in when we noticed something that made us pause. We only had flashlights, and I suppose we could’ve gone into town to buy some lanterns too, give us more light. But like I said, we were just like kids finding a buried treasure, and we weren’t going to leave without exploring some more.”
Padgett hesitated. “Going back through it in my head, I’m not sure of the order. Whether we saw the way the ceiling was sagging first…or the thing with the green eyes.”
My body turned to stone.
He saw the look on my face, smiled. “So you’ve seen ‘em too, huh? I thought there was more you weren’t telling me. You and that bastard cop—”
“Wood wasn’t a bastard,” I interrupted. “He was a better man than you’ll—”
“—you guys acted like you’d seen a ghost. But what you really saw was one of them. Am I right?”
The blood pounded in my ears, my headache so bad now it was like a giant drill boring into my brain.
“I thought so,” he said. “Well, I don’t blame you, kiddo. Seeing the Children for the first time is a hell of a thing. None of us knew what to do either. Maybe that’s why Kitch got killed so quickly.”
I listened, the dread like a slowly constricting noose. It was growing harder and harder to breathe.
“That skinny white son of a bitch, it took Kitch down like he was a baby instead of the hoss he was. All Greene and I saw was a flash of green eyes, a blur of white limbs, and then that thing was taking our buddy down and burying its ugly face in the side of his neck.”
Padgett shook his head, whistled softly. “Jee-sus. You think you’ve seen it all, and then you see somethin’ like that. The blood spouting everywhere like red streamers, the sound of gurgling and screaming. And the smell of that beast. Holy Mary Mother of God, that smell is somethin’ I’ll never forget. Like a backed-up toilet. And a poorly-maintained zoo. Just ranker than you can imagine.”
But I didn’t have to imagine it. I’d smelled it earlier that day.
“If Greene and I had fled right away, we might’ve gotten out of there in time, and nothing would have changed. I mean, Kitch would’ve still been dead, but I could always find more workers. I paid well enough.”
“You didn’t try to help him,” I said.
“Wasn’t time to do anything,” Padgett said. A little defensively, I thought. “That thing was done with Kitch in a matter of seconds, and just as Greene and I took off running, that ugly son of a bitch followed us. I’ve never been so scared. Greene was terrified too, and that’s saying something. Dude was a former Marine, not the kind of guy who’d scare easy. But we were both shittin’ ourselves with terror.”
Padgett paused, thinking. “Something hit me in the shoulder, and I screamed like a little girl, thinking it was the beast. Greene yelped too, and about then I realized it was the ceiling falling down in big, muddy clumps. Not the beast.” His voice went lower. “Not yet, at least.”
“What do you—”
“We ran like crazy. I was faster, but Greene had a head start on me. Cuz of that, when the beast lunged for us, it hit us both at about the same time.”
“It killed Greene too?”
“Just shut up and listen, would you? Jesus. Your attention span always this short? It’s like you got A.B.D. or somethin’.”
I didn’t bother correcting him.
Padgett heaved a huge sigh, went on. “When it struck us, my blue jeans must’ve slowed down those talons some. I got scratched, but it was shallow. Barely noticeable, in fact. The kind of thing you don’t even need a Band-Aid for.”
I tilted my head. “But Greene…”
“Greene got slashed to the bone. The thing’s claws sank into his calf muscle like ice picks. It would’ve killed him for sure had the ceiling not fallen in.”
“It fell on both of them?”
“Almost. A whole section caved in behind us and buried the beast up to the shoulders. Greene and I scrambled away and were climbing back into the basement when the rest of the tunnel collapsed. We were damned lucky to get out of there alive.”
“I wish you hadn’t.”
Padgett crowed laughter. “That’s my boy! Love seein’ that mean streak in you.”
“Can we get back to town now?”
He placed a hand on the gun, fingered it idly, but I got the message: Keep interrupting and you’ll get shot. My bowels did another one of those sickening somersaults.
“Greene and I knew people’d never believe us about the beast. And it was easy enough to blame it on the cave-in. We said Greene’s injury was a result of climbing back inside the basement in a hurry, that he scratched it on a sharp piece of concrete.”
Padgett stared down at his lap, something new seeping into his angular features. “We thought we’d heard the end of it. But it turns out that Greene and I didn’t get away from that thing after all. Not all the way.”
I waited, the rain roaring incessantly, my headache so bad now I thought I might vomit. Even worse was my frustration at just sitting there while my mom and my sister languished in mortal danger. I eyed the gun, wondered if I could grab it before Padgett could react.
“You’re not fast enough,” he said.
I gaped at him.
He nodded, clearly relishing my shock. “The telepathy is part of it,” he said. “It’s how I stayed alive in prison, how I knew when someone was coming for me in the yard. Once, a guard was about to pistol whip me for no reason at all, but before he did I just looked at him and said, ‘You touch me with that Smith & Wesson, I’ll eat your kids when I get out of here.’”
I shook my head slowly. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“That I got something from the beast in that tunnel.” He waved that off. “Correction, I got a great many things from the beast in that tunnel.”
To my supreme relief, he snatched the gun from the dash and pocketed it. “Before I was marked by the beast, I was ornery as hell. I liked messin’ around with married women. I drank like a fish. Hell, I even fudged my business numbers so I hardly paid any taxes.” He shook his head. “But I never killed. Thought about it some…thought about it a lot, in fact. But I never did it. Never acted on those urges.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Doesn’t matter what you believe, Son. What matters is the truth. That once I got infected, I was liberated from all those fears that’d held me back.” He made a fist, tapped it on the wheel. “I got the courage to act on my desires.”
“That’s not courage. That’s—”
“But Greene?” Padgett interrupted, staring at me sidelong. “He got even more than that. In the hours between our escape from the tunnel and nightfall, he started to transform.”
I held his gaze, not comprehending.
Padgett gave me a You’re-too-stupid-to-live look. “He became one of them.”
“You’re lying,” I said.
“Wish I was. We were living in trailers outside of town, so there was no one within a half mile of us. I went next door to check on him, and when I did, I heard this terrible screaming inside his trailer. My first thought upon going in was that he’d gotten killed by the beast I saw on the floor. Then I realized—”
“—he was the beast,” I finished.
Padgett nodded. “He wasn’t all the way changed yet, but he was most of the way there. Glowing green eyes, fish-white skin. He’d grown a good foot-and-a-half, so now he was even taller than Kitch had been, though a good deal scrawnier. But when he latched onto my wrist, asking me to save him, I realized he wasn’t weak at all. Was stronger than any man had a right to be. And what was even more peculiar, when he’d begged me to help him, he hadn’t said the words aloud. He’d spoken them in my head.”
I was holding my breath, but barely conscious I was doing so. “What did you do?”
“I killed him, of course,” he said, as though the act were as pedestrian
as flushing the toilet or taking out the trash. “I could see what he was becoming, and I saw what was in his mind.”
“And that was?”
“Murder,” he said. “The same thing that was in my head.”
He turned in his seat, his eyes alight with a childlike enthusiasm. “What happened to me in that tunnel was a revelation, Will. It took away all the fear in me and replaced it with steel…with conviction.”
He licked his lips. “When I bashed Greene’s head in with that hammer, it was like all that pent-up anger that’d been in me my whole life was released. I’d never felt more peaceful.”
I stared at him. “When you were bashing your friend’s head in.”
“He wasn’t my friend anymore, Will. He’d gone over. I’m not exactly sure how it works…the biology of it. But I guess I just got a smaller dose. Had I waited any longer, I’ve no doubt he would’ve broken into my trailer and eaten me alive.”
“So you killed him,” I said. “And you got away with it.”
Again with that shrewd look, like he and I were conspirators together. It turned my stomach. “That was my first kill, and you know what they say: You never forget your first. But for me it was just a…a what do you call it? An appetizer.” He nodded. “I got rid of his body, and though the cops hassled me a little, they believed it in the end. That he’d gone away because of the guilt he felt over leaving Kitch behind during that cave-in.”
I didn’t want to hear what was next, but short of trying to kill Padgett myself, there was no way to stop his story.
He said, “I held out for about a month after that—you know, no reason to attract attention so soon after Kitch and Greene died—but then the hunger became too much for me.”
I closed my eyes. “I know the rest of it. I don’t need to hear about how you killed and ate little kids.”
He patted the steering wheel, laughing a little. “I gotta tell you, Will, I’m mighty disappointed in you. All the things you’re not asking me.”
“I’m a little distracted by the fact that my mom might be drowning as we speak. Can we please go?”
He didn’t acknowledge that. “Don’t you want to know why I broke out when I did? I mean, why now instead of five years ago?”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“You’re a poor liar, Son. And I’ll tell you anyway: I escaped because the creatures are stirring again.”
That word—creatures—sent a frigid breeze up and down my arms. “How could you—”
“Because I’m one of them, Will,” he said, his black eyes glittering. “Don’t you see that? I didn’t change over all the way, but the strength, the lust for blood. The thoughts that you’d call evil, and the desire to act on them…I’m part beast.”
I looked at him, marveling. “You actually want to make contact with those things?”
He grunted. “Wouldn’t you? Before, I was just a regular guy. Strong, smart, good-lookin’. But otherwise normal. But when I got outa that tunnel?” he said, eyebrows raised. “Carl Padgett 2.0.”
“You were depraved to begin with.”
He didn’t look annoyed. “I had thoughts in that direction, sure. Curiosities, I suppose you’d say. I might’ve messed around with girls who were younger than me, but nothin’ so horrible I would’ve gone to jail for.” He winked. “Not for long, at least.”
“You’re a sick bastard.”
“From where you’re sittin’, sure. But if you could live in this body, Will, you’d see what benefits there are to it.” He studied the rain-battered windshield. “The change.”
“Or maybe you’re just using it as an excuse to do what you wanted to all along.”
He stroked his chin analytically. “I’ve thought about that. But it don’t add up. You can explain away the acts, but what you can’t account for is the style. The execution.” He chuckled, a horrible, spine-tingling sound. “‘Execution.’ That’s funny as hell.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” I muttered, even though I did. The tale was too awful to be anything but true.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I suspect we’ll be seeing the Children again soon.” He jerked the Highlander into gear and grinned at me. “It’s about time I was around my own kind.”
My skin misted in goose pimples, but I was thinking hard now. “Are you trying to tell me you’re the reason the Children have started to go aboveground? That you’re somehow summoning them?”
“Try the other way around, kiddo. I’m a hell of a man, but I’m not that special. No, I’ve been hearing them in my head, telling me the time is coming when they’ll rise again, when they’ll rule the land the way they used to.”
“You’re completely insane,” I said, but I’m afraid my voice shook.
“You’re right to be afraid, Will. It’s real. What woke them was that damned state park they’re gonna be opening. The preliminary digging they’ve done, that’s roused them from their sleep.” He looked at me shrewdly. “Very soon this whole area’s gonna be a bloodbath.” He smiled a ghastly smile. “And I aim to be in on it.”
¨
We’d driven in silence for a minute or so when Padgett said, “Since you don’t seem to be much of a detective, how about I fill you in on the timeline?”
“Where’s Peach?” I asked.
“The irony of it is,” he went on, “you’d get some clues if you’d just listen. You ever hear of that concept? Listening?”
I glanced at him sourly, but said nothing. I wanted to snap back at him, but somewhere in my mind, in that realm where logic still resided, I knew he was right. Wasn’t that always the problem with villains? Wasn’t arrogance their weakness?
So let Padgett talk, I told myself. Maybe you really will learn something useful.
“I’m listening,” I said.
Padgett drew in a luxuriant breath, shivered. “Jee-sus, Will. Can’t tell you how good it feels to breath clean air again, to see something other than dirt and rust.”
“The jail was that dirty?”
He scowled at me. “Never you mind what the jail was like.”
I fell silent and stared out the window.
“So here’s how it shook out,” he said with a self-satisfied grin. “You went into the woods with those fake tough guys, and I watched you let them roll right over you.”
It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay quiet. But I did. For Peach.
“When you got back, it wasn’t long before your mom and little sister headed out.”
“I know that,” I muttered.
“You didn’t know I was hiding in the car.”
I stared at him, gapemouthed.
He slapped the steering wheel as if he’d just heard a hilarious joke. “I tell ya, it’s a damned good thing your mama drives a station wagon. It was the easiest thing in the world to lay down in the back seat and wait. I considered surprising them while we were still in your driveway, but then I got curious. Where was your mama going? To your sister’s friend’s house, it turned out. They were all inside the Wallaces’ when I came waltzing in. You shoulda seen everyone’s faces! It was beautiful. I told your mama it was nice to see her again. She looked at me like I was a phantom. Hah!” He pounded the wheel in glee. “Then all I had to do was lock your mama and the girls in a safe place while I dealt with Mr. and Mrs. Wallace.”
A terrible notion occurred to me. “Did Peach and Juliet see what you did to Juliet’s parents?”
He gave me a hurt look. “Now, come on, Will. Give me a little credit. I don’t want to spoil a kid’s innocence before I have to. They were locked in a closet. And when I was done, we just went out the front door, lickety-split.”
I couldn’t bear his teasing grin. Staring out my window, I said, “Then you went to my house?”
“You know better than that, Will. I had to hide the girls somewhere, didn’t I? Oh, they cried a good deal and your mama screamed a lot, but by that time it was stormin’ so loudly there was no way anyone was gonna hear them.”
Padgett nodded. “We’d just gotten inside your house when you and that pig showed up. I wasn’t surprised by that—his cruiser being in your driveway and all—but I do have to say when your mama and I first pulled up, I reckoned my time as a free man had come to an end.”
I slouched against the window, a fist supporting my chin. “There were three of them.”
“The state cops?” Padgett said, his voice sharp.
I didn’t say anything. From the corner of my eyes, I saw him watching me, interested now. “What happened to the other two?” he asked.
I considered telling him about the creature in the woods. Pete Blades and his gore-streaked back. The decapitation of Officer Hubbard. Flynn’s death.
But what was the point? I could see no advantage in telling him the truth.
And maybe, my mind whispered, Padgett not knowing about the creature might end up helping you a great deal.
Keeping my voice as natural as possible, I said, “The other two policemen went on searching for Kylie Ann.”
Padgett rolled his eyes. “Hell, kid. How dumb you think I am?”
“They’ll be wondering where their car is, don’t you think? When they find it gone, they’ll call for reinforcements.”
“We both know there was only one cop,” he said. “Otherwise, you would’ve mentioned the other ones earlier.”
I felt a rush of frustration.
Children of the Dark Page 20
