by Ninie Hammon
“You have no idea what the six of us could do to you.”
Bishop knew, all right. Demons didn’t have no super powers of they own, but the humans they was possessing did. You seen it on the news from time to time—a story ’bout somebody who’d picked up a car off’n a child and the like. Release enough adrenaline into a person and they could do just about anything. And the demons didn’t feel no pain. Superhuman strength and no pain was a powerful combination.
“Oh, I know full well what you can do to me, but you’d best be givin’ some thought right now to what I can do to you.”
Cole just stared at him.
“You think I’m gone stand aside and just let you boys kidnap a twelve-year-old child?”
“It’s not kidnapping if she wants to go!” Cole snapped, triumph in his voice. Apparently, he’d been working it out in his head.
“Riiiight,” Bishop said. “Try that on Judge Carter and see how well it works out for you. You need to remember, you’s just a bunch of kids. I’m a grownup. People gone listen to me and b’lieve what I tell ’em. You beat me half to death and then run off with this little girl, won’t be no rock anywhere in this county you can hide under.”
“Kill him like we did—” began the slug demon, but Stuart’s dragon quieted him with a casual whip of his tail that knocked the creature off the boy he was riding and left him dangling from the tentacle he’d sunk deep into the boy’s chest.
“That ain’t a bad idea, come to think of it,” Bishop said. “Go on ahead. Kill me. You ain’t gone get her past me less’n you do, anyway. I ain’t gone go down ’thout a fight, though, and it’s gone be messy. So you’re gone have to kill them, too.” He pointed to the family enjoying a picnic at the other end of the parking lot. It was the absolute providence of God that they’d shown up when they had. “The mama, the papa, three little children and a dog. And if somebody else was to pull up while you’s massacring that family, you gone have to kill them, too.” He paused. “You so stupid you think you can leave a trail of dead bodies all over the county like that and ain’t nobody gone notice?”
Then Bishop took a shot in the dark. An idea that had begun to form, lost in the shock and horror of seeing six demons at once surfaced now, elbowed its way to the front of Bishop’s brain and demanded attention. Why was these demons all together? Demons hated everybody and everything in all creation, including—especially—each other. They’d never stay together, work cooperatively like this—not willingly.
“I ’spect your boss ain’t gone be too happy when they haul you all off to jail.”
His words silenced the demons, who’d been jumpin’ around and chatterin’. They all looked to the dragon. Bishop struck while the iron was hot. Stepping toward them, he avoided the eyes of the demons and spoke directly to the boy holding on to Becca. “I ain’t gone say it again. Let her go.”
Jacob didn’t look to the dragon for leadership, just opened the hand on her arm, where giant pink indentations remained that’d be purple bruises by tomorrow. Becca exploded out of the group of boys and crashed into Bishop, flinging her arms around him and holding on fiercely.
“You haven’t seen the last of us,” Cole said, not menacing but matter-of-fact.
“I’m sure I ain’t,” Bishop said, striving for the same pass-the-salt tone and hoping he’d at least got close. “You do remember baseball practice gone start next Wednesday, noon at the ball field.” He paused, stood up to his full six feet seven inches that dwarfed even the biggest of the twelve-year-old boys. “Better not be late, or you gone have to run laps ’round the field.”
There was no response. Cole and the other boys wordlessly pulled their bicycles out of the brush. Bishop’s legs finally collapsed out from under him, but he managed to make it look like he’d just gotten down on one knee so he could hug Becca, who threw her arms around his neck, choking him. He glanced only once at the demons. He’d have sworn there was no way in the world they could be uglier or that he could be more frightened than he already was. But he was wrong. The looks of rage and loathing changed their ugly faces into hideous masks of evil so horrifying he instantly looked away and busied himself patting Becca on the back as if she was crying, which she wasn’t.
Cole only spoke once.
“Whatever she tells you…remember, it’s her word against six of us.” Then the boys mounted their bikes and rode silently away.
Only then did the little basset hound stop barking. But that’s when another dog began. Dougal Dog burst out of the undergrowth near where Bishop had exited the woods, barking wildly as he ran toward Becca. She didn’t bend to pet him, though, refused to release her grip on Bishop. Jack and Daniel came out of the woods right behind him.
“Don’t you boys never do what you’s told?” Bishop said. Now the quaver he’d feared would be in his voice put in an appearance and he shut up. They wasn’t listenin’ to him anyway. They didn’t see nothin’ but Becca, they eyes gobbling her up like she was peppermint ice cream.
“Are you ok?” Daniel asked her.
But she wouldn’t look at him, just buried her face deeper in her arms around Bishop’s neck.
“Becca?” Jack said.
Bishop caught the two boys’ attention, then looked down meaningfully at the little girl attached to his neck. “I need you boys to do somethin’ for me,” he said. “I need you to go to the house of a friend of mine, lives a couple of miles from here.”
“Isn’t there some place closer we could go to call the sheriff?” Jack asked.
“The sheriff? And report what?” Bishop said.
“That those guys kidnapped Becca!”
Bishop shook his head. “No, son, that’s not the way it went down,” he said. “What happened here was some kids got into a fight in the woods, and the winners took one of the losers ‘captive’ for a little while—you know, like playin’ army—and when the game was over, they let her go.” Bishop looked from Jack to Daniel. “You all is twelve years old. The sheriff ain’t gone see no crime was committed.”
“But—” Jack began.
“I need you to go to my friend’s house and ask him can he run us back to the truck and help me fix it. It won’t start.”
“But—” Daniel began, but Jack elbowed him and cut his eyes toward Becca, and Daniel said no more.
Bishop described a farmhouse a couple of miles down the road where they’d find a middle-aged man named Bernard Tackett.
“Ask Bernie real polite if’n he’ll come, and tell him I need for him to bring his jumper cables and his tool box—you got that?” The boys nodded. “Go on now. I got to get that truck fixed so’s I can get you children home.”
When the boys were out of sight, he sat back in the dirt and pulled Becca into his lap. “They won’t be back for a while. Bernie don’t do nothing fast. Whenever you ready, sugar, we can talk.”
But she just clung to him, mute, and continued to shake.
CHAPTER 14
2011
“Who’s Becca?” Andi asked her father as he finished putting the ribbons on the ends of her braids. She’d get Miss Theresa to redo them in the car.
“She’s an old friend of mine and Jack’s. We all went to elementary school together. Becca and Jack and I were the Three Musketeers.”
“You had swords? I didn’t know they still had swords when you were a little kid.”
Her father grinned. “People called us that because we were three friends like the Three Musketeers.”
“Oh.” Andi was disappointed. She still didn’t understand why she was going to have to miss the wedding—Andi loved weddings, even if she didn’t know the bride or groom—to go with Uncle Jack and Miss Theresa to meet this “Becca” person, but she’d have liked the whole idea a lot better if Becca’d had a sword.
Becca.
Andi suddenly felt cold all over.
“Daddy, is this Becca…is she who the demons were looking for?”
She tried never to think about that time, about what she s
aw through the crack in the storage room door that day in school—the monster of wasps that stuck a claw in the bad man’s head and made him shoot Miss Lund. He had asked, “Where’s Becca?” before he killed Mr. Bishop. So had the demon who killed Mommy.
Andi is clinging to her mother, holding on as tight as she can. Mommy turned her head away so she wasn’t looking at the fat man with the gun, but Andi can see what Mommy can’t—a monster stuck to the man with tentacles in his cheek and neck—and even with her eyes squeezed tight shut, the image won’t go away. She sees the lizard face with slanted red eyes that don’t have a black spot in the middle and no eyelids at all—no nose, either—and a mouth full of teeth that look like knives. She can smell the monster, too, the greenish-brown goo running down the bad man’s back that stinks worse than a baby’s diaper. And she can feel the cold, like standing in front of the open freezer door.
“And you know where Becca is, could lead me right to her?” the fat man says to Daddy on the phone, but he doesn’t believe what Daddy tells him. “You’re the worst liar I ever heard. I ain’t gonna get it out of you that easy. But just ’cause you’re being so cooperative, I’m gonna give you a choice. You get to decide who I kill.”
Mommy tells the man that if he touches Andi, she will rip his throat out with her fingernails. “You will kill me and let my little girl go,” she says.
Then Mommy takes her hand and leads her to the choir robe closet. When Mommy kneels down, Andi grabs her around the neck and bursts into the tears she’s been wanting to cry since she saw the fat man with the monster on his back in the fellowship hall. Mommy pulls her arms away and takes her face into her hands. She kisses her on the forehead and whispers in her ear, “When I close this door, you run. And you hide. Find some place he’ll never find you.” She looks into Andi’s eyes for just a moment. “I love you,” she says. Then she opens the door and shoves Andi inside.
Andi stands in the dark in the closet, wishing she’d told Mommy that she loved her, too.
“Yes, honey,” Daddy said. “She’s the Becca they……were looking for.” He had let go of the ribbon he was tying into a bow on her right braid and it hung loose, dangling.
“What did they want her for?”
Daddy took a deep breath, and Andi knew he didn’t want to tell her, but he did.
“For the same reason they wanted your Uncle Jack and me. They wanted to kill her.”
But they hadn’t killed Daddy or Uncle Jack—or Miss Theresa, either. They got away. They beat those demons and got away! Andi was suddenly glad that Becca—whoever she was—got away, too.
Daddy finished tying the ribbon on the end of her braid. She could tell he didn’t want to talk about that bad stuff anymore, and neither did she.
“Well, how’d I do?” he asked. He stepped back and looked at both braids, proud they were the same length. “What do you think?”
“They look great, Daddy.” Maybe she could get Miss Theresa to teach her how to braid her own hair so she wouldn’t have to keep lying to Daddy.
“Get your raincoat, pumpkin. It’s supposed to rain today. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
Andi started for the coat closet.
“I hung it in your closet upstairs.”
She started to say something, then didn’t. Just went up the stairs to her room. Her raincoat was supposed to be in the coat closet! Mommy said not to put it in her closet when she came in out of the rain because it would get all her clean clothes wet and drip on her good shoes. But Daddy didn’t know that. Mommy would have told her to get her rain boots, too. There were so many things Daddy didn’t know.
She gathered up her coat and boots and heard a car door slam in the driveway below her window. She went to the window to see if Uncle Jack was in his police car. Daddy said he wouldn’t be, but maybe. A ride in a police car would be better even than a sword.
She pulled back the curtain to look out, but she didn’t see a police car. She didn’t see a rainy day, either. In the blink of an eye she wasn’t in her room at all. She was in the room with bare walls and blankets in a pile on the floor, looking out through a tiny slit between the boards nailed over a window.
She could hear the clickety-clack sound of a train getting softer and softer, and in the quiet she could hear the voices of the men outside the window who were unloading stuff, groceries in BetterBuy bags.
“Not my fault I get carsick,” said the man with dreadlocks. “If I’d stayed in the backseat on these winding roads, I’d have chucked up my whole supper. You want to smell recycled Tony Baronni pizza?”
Another voice spoke then, one of the men on the driver’s side of the car. He walked behind the car’s open trunk and began unloading groceries. She could only see part of the man, his arm and shoulder, as he handed Dreadlock Man a six-pack of beer. She couldn’t read the name on the label, but there were two black Xs on it, and she could see little beads of sparkling condensation on the sides of the cans. He was white and had a big tattoo on his arm of a dragon or maybe some kind of sea serpent, red and black and green. The spiky tail came down to his hand and the head covered his lumpy round shoulder muscles.
“If you ever threw up in my car, it’d be the last food you ever ate,” Tattoo Man said. “Had a girlfriend once got drunk and threw up in the heater vent. Had to wait til summer and then sold the car to some poor smuck who didn’t find out until it got cold that every time you turned on the heat—”
“I tole you we should have had Mi Madre’s Tacos,” said a voice that sounded like Speedy Gonzales from the other side of the car. Andi knew “mi madre” meant “my mother.” She had started taking Spanish in second grade.
The trunk of the car slammed shut, and Dreadlock Man came around the passenger side carrying groceries—she could see chocolate ice cream in one bag—and the six-pack.
“I want to watch the game,” he said as he passed the window. “You sure the reception’s good on the south side of the river?”
“It is if the dish is working,” said Tattoo Man.
After a moment, she heard a door slam. Then it was quiet again.
“Andi,” a voice spoke her name, and she turned around to see who else was in the room. But she wasn’t in the room with bare wood walls anymore. She was in her own bedroom, where a sprinkle of rain was now tapping on the window.
She wasn’t alone in her bedroom, though. Ossy hopped down off the windowsill and rubbed up against her leg and began to purr softly. He always purred when he saw the lady made out of light.
******
When Jack picked up Theresa at her house for the trip to Indiana Saturday morning, she’d just returned from the visitation for Gerald and Minnie Cohen at Warfield’s Funeral Home.
“Them folks musta knowed about the will,” she said. “I tried to tell that snotty daughter of theirs who lives down in Florida what her parents would have wanted—we’d talked about songs and such—and she let me know wasn’t none of my business what she done, thank you very much. She’s in a hurry to get back down to Florida to work on her tan.”
“Ever wonder why white people always want to be darker, and black people always want to be lighter?”
She gave Jack a look, and he shut up and let her vent.
“And they wanted they graves to be under a tree somewhere so the leaves could fall on them in the fall, and they could lay side by side forever. But she’s gonna have them cremated, maybe set they ashes on her mantle or—” Theresa stopped short. “Biscuit!”
She responded to Jack’s unasked question. “A shaggy mutt they took in, called him Biscuit—Miss Minnie said ’cause that was the color of his fur, and Mr. Gerald said it was ’cause he was so flaky. What’s that awful woman gonna do with the dog?”
They didn’t talk about it anymore after they picked up Andi. Nobody had to worry about holding up their end of the conversation after that.
“Here’s how you play the Alphabet Game,” Andi said, her grin stapling twin dimples in her cheeks. “You pick a side
of the road—let Miss Theresa have the right side because she doesn’t see too good. And then you look for letters of the alphabet—in signs and stuff.”
After the Alphabet Game came Twenty Questions, the Theme Song game and the Restaurant Game. Jack earned the first five points by spotting Burger King when they pulled off to get gas. He was grateful for the distraction of the games. He suffered from raging claustrophobia. He’d learned to control it during Ranger training, but he was never comfortable in a confined space and long car rides were punishing.
A gray drizzle still fell from a sullen mass of clouds that bruised the sky, harried by a cold wind, briefly veined every now and then with lightning. Jack and Theresa waited in the car for Andi, who had gone into the convenience store to use the bathroom.
Andi suddenly rushed out to the car, yanked open the door, leapt into the back seat and slammed the door shut behind her.
“What’s wrong, child?” Theresa asked. But before Andi had a chance to answer, Theresa wrinkled up her nose and frowned, shook her head like there was something she was trying to shake out of it.
“Who?” she asked Andi.
“Him.” Andi pointed to a young man who’d just stepped out of the store. He was muscular and athletic, looked like he was probably a high school football player.
The young man looked toward their car, just looked. Jack started the engine and pulled away, shaken.
Of course, he knew Andi could…but it hadn’t occurred to him that meant everywhere. He wanted to stop the car and take the kid in his arms and tell her he wouldn’t let any of those horrible monsters get anywhere near her. Instead, he said, “I have a game; it’s called Rooty Fruity.”
“How do you play?” Theresa asked with just a bit too much enthusiasm.
Jack had no idea. He was making up the rules as he went along.
“Well…you name a fruit and…the first person who spots a car that color gets five points.”
Andi’s voice from the back seat was soft and a little tremulous, but determined.
