The Nightmare Girl

by Jonathan Janz

  The windows on the east and west side of the house were larger, but they were also ornamental. Neither of them could be opened without shattering the panes, and on the east side there was nothing but concrete below.

  Joe swallowed, wishing he had something to cover the child’s mouth with. Little Stevie was coughing continuously now, the boy’s face tear-streaked and pitiful.

  Joe got up on hands and knees, glanced about desperately. Between him and Sharon, who was still standing at the top of the stairwell as though she were debating whether to chance it or not, lay the unmoving corpse of Baldy, the man who—

  Joe tensed. Yes, he thought. It would have to do. If it didn’t, it was still better than nothing.

  Handling him as tenderly as he could, Joe hefted the child and rushed over to Baldy’s prone form. He placed Stevie face down on the floor, reasoning the lower his nose and mouth were, the better chance he’d have of taking in a decent breath. Joe grabbed the tail of Baldy’s tight black T-shirt and yanked it up. In moments, he’d wrestled it off the dead man, and though there was plenty of blood on it, there was more than enough fabric to serve his needs.

  Lightning sizzled across the back of his neck.

  Hissing, he whirled and saw Sharon Waltz’s fingernails come flashing down at him again. He tried to avoid them, but the razor-sharp talons tore through the flesh at the base of his throat anyway.

  Joe stumbled back, but she came with him. He realized with astonishment that she was laughing. Sharon’s claws swept down, raked open his cheek. Blood slopped from the mangled trenches she’d dug in his face. His coughing grew uncontrollable.

  But Sharon kept up her attack. It was as though she were immune to the smoke, and what the hell, maybe she was. Joe had long since ceased being flabbergasted by the behavior of these maniacs. Joe braced himself against one of the low-angled walls, made to fend off her assault. But he saw with dread that she’d given off the attack, had turned her back on Joe.

  And was making straight for Little Stevie.

  With a bellow of rage, Joe darted forward and launched himself at Sharon. He hit her like a battering ram, his shoulder squaring up the middle of her back and snapping her head backwards. They landed in a whir of limbs. Sharon spun around to claw at him again, but this time Joe snagged her wrists, slammed his head down into hers. Pain flared in his forehead, but Sharon’s bloodcurdling squall told him he’d done the damage he’d been hoping for. She thrashed in his grip, but he hauled her to her feet, dragged her away from Stevie, whose little body juddered with coughs.

  “Let go of me!” she snarled, kicking at him.

  Joe planted, heaved her over his hip, and cast her into the blazing maw of the stairwell. Her warbling scream only lasted for a few seconds, but the sound of it echoed in his brain even after he reeled away from the jetting flames.

  The third floor was so clotted with smoke now he could scarcely make out the tiny pink figure of the naked child. But he found Little Stevie, found him and wrapped him up in Baldy’s blood-soaked shirt. It wasn’t great, but it was the best he could do. Maybe the moisture of the blood would serve as extra protection.

  Joe strode toward the eastern window, did his best to snatch one or two more decent breaths from the befouled air. To his left, in the direction of the stairwell, the floor sagged, then dropped away completely, the flames beginning to devour the attic. Through the turbid smoke, he couldn’t even see the other side of the room, but he knew where the other dormer was, where the other window was situated. It was six feet high and began a foot from the floor. The dormer faced his house, but before that there were pine trees, the thick, cushioning needles lining their boughs.

  Giving himself no more time to think about it—the very floor had begun to blister the soles of his feet—Joe started forward. It was awkward going with the boy bundled into his chest that way, but he had to get up a head of steam, had to propel himself out of the window, had to launch them both if they hoped to make it to the pines.

  Joe halved the distance, picking up speed. The floor behind them fell away with a whump. Under the shirt the boy was coughing, but the spasms of his body had mostly abated.

  Three quarters of the way there and it was an all-out sprint. A hole appeared in the floor ahead, but it wasn’t directly in Joe’s path. The window was only six feet away now, but it was still barely glimpsed, a navy blue obelisk that looked as though it would take a wrecking ball to shatter it.

  Joe took one more stride, and as he pushed off the floor with all his might, he twisted his body around so he’d strike the window with the back of his shoulder.

  For a split second, there was resistance against his shoulder, the flat chill of the glass. Then his body crashed through, sailing through dead space and continuing its revolution. He’d closed his eyes upon impact with the windowpane, but now he opened them, watched the shattered dormer as it seemed to rise into the night sky. Shards of glass glittered in the air around him, a few of them spinning like pinwheels, but the bundle against his chest and stomach had grown still, Little Stevie seeming to understand that, at the very least, they wouldn’t be burned to death.

  Joe had time to wonder if he’d leaped out far enough. If he’d fallen short of the trees, it was almost a certainty he would die of a broken neck, and there was a good chance the boy would perish from the impact too.

  Then the first pine bough slapped his back, the needles puncturing his skin like metal skewers. He smacked the second branch. By the time they’d fallen two stories, their momentum had diminished, but Joe was still too heavy for the third branch they hit, which gave way with a bone-crunching snap. The concussion of the broken bough sent Joe’s body tilting sideways. Eight feet from the ground he realized he might land on top of the boy.

  With his last ounce of strength, Joe twisted his torso, shielding the child from the earth with his right shoulder and arm. They landed, the impact considerable but not, he prayed, fatal.

  At least not for the child.

  Little Stevie wriggled against him, the boy spluttering and gasping within the swaddled shirt. Joe’s right side was totally numb, but after a good deal of effort, his left arm responded to his demands. He seized the black shirt, unwrapped the child. Joe coughed, tasted something hot and coppery on his lips, and though he knew it was a bad sign, he opted not to think too much about it now. Because the boy was coughing too, coughing violently.

  But also, Joe saw with a leap of hope, sucking in breath. Drinking in the oxygen like he’d been buried alive. Which in a way, Joe supposed, was sort of the case.

  As the shouts and, eventually, the footfalls drew nearer, Joe realized he’d closed his eyes, had perhaps even lost consciousness for a few moments. But when he opened them again he saw that the boy wasn’t coughing much anymore, and further, the kid was staring at him.

  Don’t know if I’ll be around for you, he thought but was unable to say. It was just as well, he figured. After being subjected to Sharon Waltz and the rest of the psychos, the boy probably welcomed the quiet.

  Joe and Little Stevie regarded each other in silence. The boy didn’t smile, but he didn’t look afraid. And that was something, Joe thought.

  That was something.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It took a good while for Joe to understand just what the doctors were telling him. His ears felt crammed with gauze pads, for one thing, so that the sounds he could make out were absorbed through a dense membrane of white noise. It reminded him of when he was a little kid, holding a seashell to his ear.

  Secondly, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. The medicine they were pumping into him kept him in a perpetual state of drowsiness. Sometimes Michelle was there, and once, he saw Lily peering down at him with huge eyes.

  It was more than forty-eight hours after he’d leaped out of the third story window that he was at last able to carry on a semi-intelligible conversation. But he had to do it w
ithout his voice, which didn’t want to cooperate.

  So he mimed scribbling a note and was given a pen and paper. Joe wrote, WHY CAN’T I TALK?

  The solemn-looking doctor, who spoke with the trace of an Indian accent, said, “You were intubated because you were having trouble breathing on your own. Your throat was already badly inflamed from the smoke, but the breathing tube irritated your throat tissue further. You shouldn’t try to speak.”

  Joe wrote, HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?

  The doctor was in his fifties, Joe thought. He had thinning black hair and a concerned look that seemed sincere. “You still have some airway edema, and—” Seeing Joe’s befuddled expression, he explained, “That means your trachea is still swollen. We need to make sure that doesn’t grow worse. If it doesn’t—and I have no reason to think it will deteriorate, given your good health and your medical history—you should be able to talk in a couple days.”

  WHERE IS THE BOY?

  The doctor frowned, and Joe felt his heart stutter a little. “He’s also in intensive care. In addition to the smoke inhalation, Steven suffered from dehydration and a great deal of bruising.” The doctor smiled. “Of course, his wounds were nothing compared to yours, Mr. Crawford.”

  Joe barely heard that last part. WILL STEVIE BE OKAY?

  The doctor shrugged. “He should be. It’s difficult to know for sure, but he seems to be recovering nicely. As I’ve said, Mr. Crawford, I’m more worried about you.”

  Something in the doctor’s tone broke through. Joe wrote, AM I RECOVERING NICELY?

  The doctor smiled but hastily recovered his reserve. Joe finally noticed the nametag, which proclaimed the man to be Dr. Ravi Ahsan. The doctor’s expression sobered. “I’d counsel you to be patient, Mr. Crawford. It’s surprising you lived through the ordeal, and it will take time for you to convalesce. The back of your body was badly burned and lacerated. We may have to entertain the possibility of skin grafts. There were three fractured vertebrae incurred in the fall. Your hip was fractured. Your ankle as well. The wound in your hand…there will no doubt be some nerve damage. And when you were stabbed in the side, the blade missed your colon by only a centimeter. That is good, but there was still internal bleeding, the risk of infection.” Dr. Ahsan shook his head. “Yet despite all these things, your vital signs are promising.”

  FEEL LIKE SHIT, Joe wrote.

  The doctor laughed. “I can only imagine, Mr. Crawford. We’ll get you something for the pain—” He stopped at Joe’s look.

  NOT TOO MUCH. WANT TO TALK TO WIFE.

  “I understand. And I also want you to know…” Dr. Ahsan glanced over his shoulder, perhaps to make certain the door was still closed. “I want you to know that I think you did a fine thing. A very fine thing. A boy is alive because of you.”

  Joe wrote, WILL I BE ARRESTED?

  Dr. Ahsan sighed. He seemed to consider. “There will be questions to answer, yes. But I can tell you this: Those people, they killed three police officers. They murdered the boy’s foster parents. They tried to kill you and the boy, not to mention your wife. They were bad people. I cannot believe anyone will prosecute you for what you did.”

  Joe knew he should have felt relief, or at the very least, hope at Dr. Ahsan’s words, but it wasn’t until that moment that he realized he’d been suppressing all thoughts of Darrell Copeland and his gruesome death. And then Joe was staring up at the ceiling, the tiles up there doubling because the tears were coming fast now, and he couldn’t very well hide them from the doctor.

  He heard Ahsan say, “I am sorry, Mr. Crawford. I’ll give you time to rest.”

  You do that, Joe thought. He closed his eyes. He missed Michelle and Lily badly, but at that moment he didn’t mind the solitude.

  I’m sorry, Darrell, he thought. I’m sorry you aren’t here right now. He tried to swallow but found the task too daunting. So he lay there and waited for some of the sorrow to dissipate.

  It didn’t though. Not that night, not the next morning.

  The only thing he could think about was Copeland’s basement and how it would never get finished now.

  It wasn’t until the third afternoon that Joe found his voice, but even then it was weak and raspy. His difficulty in speaking combined with the howling agony of his scorched flesh caused him to reluctantly consent to a more powerful pain medicine. And that, in turn, led to a prolonged period of sleep. So it was that seventy hours after he’d been admitted, Joe was finally able to carry on a decent conversation with his wife.

  “How’s my baby girl?” Joe whispered.

  Michelle, sitting at his bedside, cupped his hand in hers and smiled. “She’s great. My parents are home with her now.”

  Joe’s pulse quickened. “At our house?”

  “With a state trooper monitoring them,” she quickly added. “They think the fire killed all the cult members, but they’re not taking any chances.”

  “One got away,” Joe said. “I let him.”

  He thought Michelle would be appalled by this news, but she only nodded. “Shaun Peterson. The police know about him.”

  “They catch him?”

  She shook her head. “The Murphys—our neighbors across the street?”

  Joe nodded. “I owe them a beer. Or whatever their kids drink.”

  “Probably beer. Anyway, the mom, Jenny, she was watching out the basement window when Shaun exited the Baxter house. She said he went down the road a spell, got in his truck, and left.”

  “The police haven’t tracked him down?”

  “Not yet, but I’m sure they will.”

  “The Murphys see anybody else?”

  She shook her head. “Not a soul. None of our other neighbors did either. The state police are still in the process of finding and identifying all the remains and matching them to the folks staying out at the compound. When I said the police were monitoring our house, I really meant it. They’ve got the whole property next door cordoned off as a crime scene, and every hour or so, one of them checks in with us to make sure nothing suspicious is going on.”

  He relaxed, but only fractionally. “I don’t suppose they’re having much luck identifying the bodies.”

  “Some. It seems a number of the cult members had flown in from Ireland for Angela Waltz’s funeral, then decided to stick around.”

  “Wanted to be there for my barbecue.”

  She gave him a wan smile.

  Joe smiled at her, marveling at her pluck, her constancy. “So you were the one who shot the chain? The one who killed Grayman?”

  Michelle smiled. “I’ve been going to the range. You didn’t think I was just shopping all those times, did you?”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “You’re alive too.”

  Joe chuckled, then winced at the intense pain it awoke in his back.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You’ve got to rest.”

  He grimaced. “Not my specialty.”

  “No fooling around, Joe. It’s not negotiable. Your lungs were damaged and need to heal. Your throat…your back might require some surgeries.”

  “That’s what the doctor told me.”

  Her wry smile reappeared. “He’s pretty impressed with you.”

  “He’s the one with the title.”

  “And you’re the one who leaped out the third story window of a burning building in order to save a child’s life.”

  Joe shrugged, then regretted it when a freshet of pain pelted his back. “I was saving my life too.”

  Michelle sat forward, her voice breaking. “You went back inside for him. The social workers were really moved by that.”

  Joe glanced at her. “You’ve spoken to them?”

  She nodded. “There’ve been five different ones handling the case, including the original lady.”

  “Where’s Stevie gonna live?”

&n
bsp; Michelle drew in shuddering breath, regarded their interlaced fingers. “Right now it looks like it’ll be a state facility.”

  Joe felt his heart sink. He knew it had been a long shot, but still, he’d hoped…

  As if sensing his train of thought, Michelle added, “They’re not shutting the door on anything. Like I said, what you did…that counts for a lot. At least to some of them.”

  He glared out the observation window. “But not enough, apparently.”

  Michelle didn’t say anything to that.

  He turned back to her. “Hell, honey. I just realized I haven’t even asked how you’re doing. That big bastard really rang your bell.”

  She rubbed the back of her head. “Mild concussion. I’ve had a headache on and off since I woke up in the Murphys’ basement, but that’s about it.”

  “You remember saving my life?”

  “Of course I do. I also remembered your winky hanging out for everyone to see.”

  He tilted his head, winced at the pain even that small movement caused. “Do you have to call it a winky? Isn’t there something a little more flattering you could come up with?”

  “Sure, when we’re getting intimate. But when you were handcuffed to that swing it looked more like a shriveled peanut.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I love you.”

  He looked at her, swallowed. “You’re more of a hero than I am.”

  She shook her head, and this time her smile was serene. “We love each other. That’s what people do.”

  Not all people, Joe thought but didn’t say. Instead, he squeezed Michelle’s hand, let his head loll back on the bed, and closed his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was a few months later, toward the tail end of September, that Joe worked up the courage to tell Michelle the rest of it. The dreadful things they’d promised him about Lily.

  That his daughter would someday take her own life.