by Ninie Hammon
The story Grandpa Slappy had told Ty haunted him. It was like a movie where he was inserted into the action. Sometimes he was Skeet, dangling there above the river. Sometimes he was Grandpa Slappy, watching in horror from the woods. But usually he was the fat kid, the one with tears on his cheeks who paused in his escape to stare into Grandpa Slappy’s eyes. The kid who hadn’t meant any harm and ended up killing someone, and who had to live with the guilt of what he’d done for the rest of his life. Ty hadn’t meant to hurt anybody either, but he’d gotten his own father killed.
They’re fighting. Again. They’re always fighting. No matter what his mother says or does, his father yells at her for it. The coffee’s too hot. The music’s too loud or too soft or not what he wants to hear.
And Ty is terrified. That’s nothing new, either. He’s always frightened when they fight, so scared he goes into his room and closes the door and puts the pillow over his head so he can’t hear it. But tonight the yelling wakes him up. It’s so loud he can’t go back to sleep, even with the pillow over his head. There’s an edge to Daddy’s voice he hasn’t heard before. Mommy’s voice is different, too. More scared than usual. So he gets out of bed and sneaks down the stairs. His parents are fighting in the family room; they can’t see him watching from the shadows of the bottom step.
Daddy has just gotten home. He still has his jacket on. And he’s drunk. He usually is when they fight. But tonight he is so drunk he can barely stand up. He’s sort of swaying, has to hold onto the back of a chair for balance. His words are so slurred Ty can’t make out what he’s saying. It is something about the book Mommy wrote.
Daddy says he knows why the book’s so good, because it’s a—then he uses a big word Ty doesn’t understand. Sounds like “auto buggy.” Daddy shouts that she’s a witch, a demon.
He has a jar in his hand and he holds it out toward her and she backs up from it like it’s a snake. But there’s a wall behind her so she can’t get away. Daddy says he’s going to make the outside of her match the inside.
And then he lets go of the chair and—
P.D. began to growl. The dog was standing up, his body rigid, his teeth barred, making a sound that Ty had only heard one time before. That time in the airport when …
Ty followed Puppy Dog’s gaze and saw a jeep materialize out of the mist, inching along the winding trail through the last of the grove of aspen trees. He couldn’t see the face of the man who was driving it, but he didn’t have to.
It was the Boogie Man. He had found them and had come to take Ty away to hurt him really bad, maybe even … kill him.
Ty’s mouth was instantly so dry he couldn’t swallow. How could it get dry like that so fast? His heart banged in his chest so hard he could see the front of his shirt move with every beat.
Hide!
He dived out of the chair, spilling the sketch pad and pencils on the floor, then hunkered down below the level of the railing so the man couldn’t see when he got closer.
“Hush!” he commanded P.D. in a whisper just as the dog was about to bark.
Ty peeked through the slats of the railing. The jeep was coming slowly, sneaking up on the cabin. Ty had to warn—
No, wait. Think!
The man had threatened Mom and Grandpa Slappy—even hurt Mom!—the last time he came looking for Ty. He’d do the same now. They’d try to protect Ty and end up getting hurt.
Ty had to run, get away. As long as Ty wasn’t around, the man would leave Mom and Grandpa Slappy alone. There wasn’t any reason to hurt them when it was Ty he wanted.
The boy turned and crawled back into his room, made a hand motion and P.D. followed. Then he grabbed his jacket off the bedpost, slid his arms into it and sneaked a look out the deck door. The jeep had cleared the aspen grove and was silently approaching the cabin.
“I gotta run away, boy,” he told P.D. His voice quavered but he managed not to cry. “And you gotta stay here.” A plan had formed in Ty’s mind, and where he was going, P.D. couldn’t go with him.
“Down,” he said. P.D. dropped to the floor. “Stay.”
Then Ty crept out onto the deck below the railing and crossed to the steps on the far side that led down to the porch. He peered through the slats and as soon as the jeep was close enough that the cabin blocked it from view, Ty raced down the steps. To stay out of the jeep’s sight line, Ty cut directly across the meadow on the south side of the cabin to the creek and the trees. Then he crossed the creek and plunged into the woods. Once in the trees, he turned and started running toward the mountain.
Back in Ty’s room, P.D. lay on the floor, his hackles raised, his teeth barred, growling quietly. But he didn’t bark because he’d been instructed not to. He didn’t move, either. Placed on “down stay,” he wouldn’t budge from that spot until somebody summoned him.
CHAPTER 17
THEO WAS SITTING ON THE FOOT OF THE BED PUTTING ON HIS shoes after his nap when movement outside his window caught his attention. It was Ty running dead out toward the woods south of the cabin. Several things about that stuck Theo as odd and he watched the boy until he disappeared into the trees.
Why had Ty decided to go outside right now? Any fool could see the storm wasn’t finished with them yet. If his mama knew he was out there, she’d likely wring the boy’s neck, nervous as she got about lightning. And as on-edge as she was today, she’d grab that boy and snatch him bald-headed. Couldn’t blame her for being jumpy, though. Today was it. The full moon. That madman’s last shot at her. She probably didn’t even close her eyes to blink last night and hadn’t been able to sit still all morning. Didn’t help that it was storming.
Which brought his mind full circle to Ty. What was that boy doing out there in a storm? When he crossed the creek into the trees on the other side, he’d been looking back over his shoulder as he ran, then he turned and headed upstream. That didn’t make a lick of sense. Why had the boy run straight toward the woods like a bat out of hell when the place he always played was Notmuchuva Waterfall, in the back left corner of the bowlshaped valley? To get there, you cut diagonally across the meadow behind the cabin.
Last but by no means least in Theo’s list of confusions was the dog, or rather the absence of the beast. It was never more than a step behind Ty no matter where he went—even to the bathroom. Where was P.D.?
Theo slid his foot into his other shoe, tied it, picked up his coffee cup and saucer from the bedside table as he passed and headed into the family room. He noticed that the pile of kindling had been scattered on the floor and a brick was missing from the hearth.
He found Gabriella in the kitchen washing something in the sink. He had to speak up so she could hear him over the water running, or maybe he needed to talk louder so he could hear himself.
“Ty and that dog is just about joined at the hip, but that walking fur machine’s not with him now—and he’s playing outside in the rain.”
GABRIELLA SHUT OFF the water in the sink under the window and turned to face Theo, who was complaining about something P.D. had done.
“Theo, look at this!” She held out the dripping geode. “I found it—” Then she heard a sound the running water had masked. The sound of tires crunching on the gravel beside the cabin.
Theo’s eyes got huge. The coffee cup and saucer he was holding clattered to the floor and shattered, the sound gobbled up by the sudden hammering of her heart in her ears. She turned slowly, agonizingly slowly to see what Theo could see out the window over her shoulder. But she knew. Before she saw the black jeep and the man stepping quickly out of it, she knew. Yesheb had found her. She’d always known he would.
Which meant he had gotten the gate key from Pedro. A sob started in her throat but died there from lack of air. Pedro wouldn’t have given the key up willingly. What had Yesheb done to him to get it? The thought of Pedro hurt, maybe even … dead … no! Oh, please, no! Her protests melted away then like fog on a warm morning and she faced how much Pedro meant to her. Not that it mattered anymore.
> The gun! It was upstairs on the bedside table. Maybe she could get to it before … but she couldn’t move. Her legs wouldn’t obey her command to run and she stood rooted to the spot. Her fingers turned numb and the geode tumbled out of them and turned over and over in slow motion as it fell.
A part of her mind registered a random impression before panic exploded in it, obliterating all thought.
Yesheb’s hair … it’s white!
THEO UNDERSTOOD NOW why Ty had run away, looking over his shoulder like the devil himself was chasing him. He was! A devil who intended to—No! Not Ty, not that precious little boy! But what could Theo do about it? Wasn’t a way in the world a useless old man could help the boy, or Gabriella either.
Lord, please! Tell me what to do!
And it came to him instantly. He wasn’t useless. In fact, if he played his cards right, he might be able to give Ty a gift that would save his life—time. Time to hide real good in the woods where that fruit loop would never find him.
Gabriella was frozen, a marble statue, but he could hear her gasping, drawing in great gulps of air like she was drowning. She must have felt like she was, having to face down a madman, must be scared out of her wits. Theo wasn’t scared, though. He thought the same thing he did the first night they ran away from the Looney Tune through the streets of Pittsburgh: Scared would wear you out, and right now Theo didn’t have a speck of energy to spare.
In much less time than it should have taken him to get from the jeep to the house, Yesheb materialized in the doorway leading to the mudroom.
What’s wrong with you people? Don’t never lock yo cars or yo houses! Might as well hang up a neon sign, flashing “Here I is; mess me over.”
Must have been some trick of his screwed-up senses, but Theo could have sworn a wash of cold air preceded the man into the room, like what hits you when you open the freezer door on a hot day. And it wasn’t no breeze from outside; he’d closed the outside door behind him.
Yesheb had obviously been out in the rain without an umbrella. His clothes were soaked, his hair—it was white!—was wild, must have partially dried in the wind as he drove. He didn’t have a weapon, at least not one you could see, but Theo knew the man was too smart to come here unarmed. He had a gun or a knife on him somewhere. And Theo was likely to make the close personal acquaintance of one or both of them in the next few minutes. But he would put off that introduction as long as he possibly could.
“I was wondering when you was gone turn up,” Theo said, looked the man right in the eyes. They were a blue as pale as ice on a bird bath. “It being a full moon and stormy, we been expecting you.”
“Stay out of my way, old man,” Yesheb said and took a step toward Gabriella.
“Not planning on getting in your way, wouldn’t think of doing a thing like that. Ole Slappy got better sense than to mess with a man like yourself, strong and powerful as you is.”
A little flattery goes a long way with some people.
“But I do got a question for you. You being a smart fellow—maybe you know the answer. Tell me … if you was to try to fail and you succeeded, which did you do?”
Yesheb stared at him, dumbfounded, like he was the lunatic. And that was fine. Theo didn’t care if the fool thought he was a cross-eyed aardvark. There was a clock going tick, tick, tick, and every second that passed Ty was getting farther and farther away from the cabin.
“Leave us alone, you crazy old fool,” Yesheb said. “I have no quarrel with you. Don’t make me hurt you. My business is with … Zara.”
He pronounced the name with a thousand shades of aching and longing.
“Nobody named Zara here,” Theo said. “Your GPS must have brought you to the wrong house. Happens up here all the time. We get folks who took a wrong turn in Poughkeepsie and boom, they’re on our doorstep.” Theo cocked his head to the side. “Shhhh. Listen.” He paused. “You hear it? That little shrunk-up Englishwoman out there in your jeep is hollering, ‘recalculating … recalculating … re—’”
“Shut up! Stop your prattling. Sit down at the table and don’t make another sound. I won’t tell you again.”
“You think I’m afraid of you?”
“You should be afraid.”
“What for? What’s the worst thing you can do—kill me? And that would be a bad thing because …?”
Yesheb shoved him toward the table but Theo was so unsteady on his feet, he went down in a heap on the floor, banging his knee painfully. Gabriella gasped, took a step toward him but he held up his hand. He looked at Yesheb and smiled. “Don’t get your feelings hurt that you don’t scare me. Don’t nothing else scare me, neither. I got me a brain tumor that should have planted ole Slappy under the daisies a long time ago.” He heard a stifled sob from Gabriella and was touched by it. Oh, how he’d hate it if something bad happened to her. “So you see, if you want to send me over the River Jordan right now, I’m good with that. The Archangel Gabriel probably gone put me in time-out for being late at the Pearly Gates as it is.”
Yesheb reached down and grabbed Theo’s collar, pulled it so tight around his neck he couldn’t get his breath. With one arm, he yanked Theo up off the floor to a kneeling position and ground out words into his face. “I am holding my temper for Zara’s sake. I want to be gentle with her, not upset her. But you will leave me no choice—”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet, won’t say another word.” Theo made a little-kid zipper motion across his mouth.
Yesheb let go of his collar and he slumped back onto his heels. Then the white-haired man turned to Gabriella. “My dear Z—”
“Just … one more itty bitty question, and this is the last one, I promise.”
“I’m warning you …”
“If a turtle loses his shell, is he naked … or homeless?”
With the speed of a striking rattlesnake, Yesheb slipped his hand into his jacket, withdrew a pistol from his shoulder holster and slammed the gun into Theo’s face. He felt no pain, only pressure—like what you feel when the dentist pulls a tooth and your gums is so numb you got spit drooling down your chin. He could hear the bones breaking, though, and teeth shattering. He could also hear Gabriella’s high, wailing, “Nooooo!” but it came from a great distance, from some place on a high peak where the wind whistled and wailed with the voices of lost children.
Then Theodosius X. Carmichael’s lights went out.
GABRIELLA’S THOUGHTS WERE bats, diving at her in a darkened room where they could see and she couldn’t, water spiders racing across the surface of a pond without puncturing the delicate tension of the water.
Yesheb was in the room and she had no memory of him coming here. And no memory of any time that he wasn’t here—the forever now of her horror obliterated the past and the future alike.
She heard Theo talking to him in a normal tone of voice, like he was discussing the Dow Jones Industrial Average or bowling balls or crop circles. There was no fear in Theo. He was fighting with what little he had, waving a red flag in front of the bull.
The old man’s bravery splashed cold water into Gabriella’s face, slapped her into reality so abruptly her head actually snapped back. Yesheb shoved Theo toward the table and the old man stumbled and fell. She moved to help him but he waved her away.
“… got me a brain tumor that should have planted ole Slappy under the daisies a long time ago.”
A sob hitched out of her throat. He was sick. He was going to die.
Earth to Gabriella: So are you and Ty!
Ty! The boy was upstairs painting a picture like the one that hung now on the refrigerator with the watercolors still wet. A little-kid drawing of the view from the front porch—at least that’s what he’d said it was. But the proportions were all wrong so the valley looked like it was taller than the mountain range on the other side of it. There was something unrecognizable in the foreground—a squirrel or a bear, maybe. Perhaps just a rock. The colors were nice, though. Ty probably didn’t even know yet there was any
danger. That a man in his mom’s kitchen intended to plunge a dagger into his heart to offer his blood as a sacrifice to seal an unholy union.
No!
She had to do something. Think!
Nothing. Her mind was as blank as an empty plate.
Wait a minute ... Yesheb planned to sacrifice Ty as a part of their wedding ceremony, right? But there’d be no need for a sacrifice if there was no wedding, no union to dedicate. There’d be no reason to kill Ty if she refused to marry Yesheb!
Was it possible that she could save her son’s life with a single word—no? Better question, could she actually stand up to this monster in a human being suit? She’d have to defy him, refuse to allow the all-consuming terror he ignited in her soul to control her.
That maddeningly rational voice in her brain spoke up then, like it always did when she least wanted to hear from it: If you refuse to do what this man wants, he’ll kill you. He has no reason to keep you alive if you won’t marry him and fulfill his monstrous delusion.
I die, Ty lives.
She took a deep, shaky breath.
Okay … I die, Ty lives.
The rational Gabriella stuck its nose into her business one final time: Reality check. What makes you think he’ll let Ty live, let any of you live, if you defy him?
That was reality, alright. It wasn’t likely any of them were going to get out of this alive. But she had to try. She had to face down the evil she had created out of the depths of her own despair. The Beast of Babylon’s story had to end here, now. Today.
She heard Theo say something about a turtle’s shell and Yesheb reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a gun. With savage brutality, he slammed the pistol into Theo’s face and the old man collapsed in a bloody heap in the floor.
“Nooo!” Gabriella cried.
