by Ninie Hammon
Then Daniel listed a phone number to call if anyone had any information. The phone number was Theresa’s.
Jack read the post through twice, then called Daniel.
“You don’t suppose Billy Ray’s on Facebook?” Daniel asked, suddenly horrified.
Jack had considered that—when they’d visited him in prison, Bill Ray had Googled them before they got there—but decided it was an acceptable level of risk.
“Billy Ray Hawkins strike you as the kind of man who frequents social media? Who even has internet service back in that hollow where he lives?”
Daniel was silent.
“Do you think these people will do it, that they’ll help?” Jack asked.
“Oh, they’ll help. Trust me, they’ll help.” Then he was silent. “I only hope it’s enough.”
******
When Andi woke up on the pile of blankets on the floor, she could still taste pizza from last night. She needed to brush her teeth, but didn’t dare ask any of the men for a toothbrush. She doubted that kidnappers gave the little kids they kidnapped toothbrushes.
Her eyes felt puffy and like they had sand in them. That was from crying. When she’d cried all the time after her mother died, they’d felt like that. And she’d cried herself to sleep last night. For some reason, seeing the room in the daylight calmed her, made her feel better. God knew this room was in her future, and he’d shown it to her, and maybe that was so she wouldn’t be scared. So she tried not to be.
Now, she was going to have to get somebody to let her out to go to the bathroom. She hoped Dreadlock Man or Speedy Gonzales answered her knock. She was afraid of all of them, but Tattoo Man scared her most of all. She’d never seen him, had only heard his voice, gruff and scratchy and mean-sounding.
She finally couldn’t wait any longer, went to the door and knocked. But before anybody had a chance to answer her knock, the door vanished, went away like it had been turned to glass, and she could see through it to what was on the other side. And what was on the other side was a jumble of images, each one more horrific than the last. There was a mighty rumble, like somebody had gathered up the thunder from a thousand storms and set it loose all at once. There was red-orange fire everywhere. Unrecognizable things—and people!—were flying through thick smoke. And not just whole people. Arms and legs and— a bloody piece of a person, but she couldn’t tell what piece, hit something with a horrible splat sound and slid, leaving a bloody snail trail in its wake. Everything was burning, flames were eating up the world. Melted, mangled pieces of—she didn’t know what it was—were tangled up with bloody people in black smoke that smelled awful, like——
Andi heard a voice calling and felt someone shake her shoulder.
“Hey, little girl. Something wrong with you?”
She heard the voice call out to somebody else.
“She got epilepsy or something? She’s just standing here, staring like she’s blind.”
“Her name ees Meeranda,” said Speedy Gonzales. “Meeranda, wake up. What’s the matter wi’ choo?”
The world of solid things you could touch and feel returned so suddenly it was jarring. Andi was staring at carnage, and then she was here in the doorway of the room where she’d slept on the floor last night. She focused her eyes. Speedy Gonzales was staring at her; Dreadlock Man was shaking her by the arm.
“I…I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“See, ees nothing wrong with her,” Speedy Gonzales said and turned away while Dreadlock Man shoved her down the hallway to the bathroom. It was gross, like bathrooms in gas stations where her mother told her not to touch anything. Dreadlock Man was waiting outside the door. He held a paper plate with two stale doughnuts on it and a can of Coke and gave them to her, then pointed to the open door of her “prison room” at the other end of the hall.
She’d only gone a step or two toward it when the front door of the house opened and in stepped Tattoo Man. He took one look at her and went postal.
“What’s she doing out of that room?” he roared.
“She had to pee,” said Dreadlock Man.
Andi could tell that Tattoo Man scared him, too.
Tattoo Man let fly a string of expletives—words she had never heard in her whole life, then yelled. “Get her back in there and don’t let her out again, you hear me.”
Dreadlock Man shoved her into the room and locked the door behind her.
She looked down and saw that the plate with the doughnuts was shaking because her hands were trembling. She whimpered, the images from the vision still as fresh as wet brush strokes on a painting. She stumbled to the corner of the room, set the Coke and doughnuts down on the floor beside her and sat with her back to both walls. She drew her knees up in front of her, wrapped her arms around them, closed her eyes and tried to summon Princess Buttercup. After all, she’d had a vision and the lady had always come when she had a vision. But she’d tried before to summon the woman made out of light, and it never worked. She wasn’t a genie in a bottle. She came when she wanted to talk to Andi, not when Andi wanted to talk to her.
Andi rested her forehead on her knees and started to cry again.
******
1985
Friday morning dawned as crisp and clear as the day before had been gloomy. Thin pewter clouds scuttled by high overhead, sharp as sabers slicing open the sky. No one could remember a fog like the one Thursday that had shrouded the county in mist until almost sundown. The fog had granted yesterday’s events an otherworldly, horror-movie quality, but it had also kept the worst of the rubberneckers and lookie-lous away from the cemetery. It wasn’t until the fog cleared right before dusk that anybody spotted the message spray-painted in red that dripped like blood down the front of the Halverson family crypt—the largest in the cemetery: The rest of the dead will rise tomorrow.
The day’s bright sunshine brought out the immediate world to gape at the carnage. Though the state police set up roadblocks on the road leading to the cemetery, it did no good. They couldn’t have kept away distraught families with a twenty-foot electric fence and razor wire. People parked their cars beside the road and walked past the roadblocks. No, ran. They surged into the cemetery and joined a growing crowd of people deranged with horror. You could hear them everywhere, shrieks as thin as paper cuts. When family members discovered the remains of their loved ones, their bones or decaying bodies scattered, they screamed—wailed—wept, fell to the ground or simply stood gaping, too dumbfounded and shocked to do anything at all.
The sunshine brought the press, too. Two huge satellite news trucks drove past Daniel, Becca and Jack as they rode through town early Saturday morning—their lunch stowed in the picka-nick basket strapped to the back of Jack’s bike and Daniel riding behind Becca because this time it was Daniel’s bike that had a flat tire. One of the trucks was from the CBS affiliate in Louisville and another from the ABC station in Bowling Green. These trucks were the big dogs, could broadcast events live, as they happened. The three stopped at the courthouse to get a closer look at the big, white WCOH Action News First truck with the gigantic satellite dish on top, in Bradford’s Ridge to cover the “strange happenings” that had so far claimed eleven lives and left fifteen people hospitalized. And, of course, to cover—live— the spectacle of the dead of Bradford’s Ridge rising out of their graves. Michael Rutherford was at the courthouse and joined them. Jack was actually glad to see him this time. His non-stop babble was, if nothing else, distracting.
Even Jack’s father had been shaken. He’d come home early from the bar last night almost sober with the tale of rattlesnakes and disemboweled graves he’d heard there. Becca was so upset she appeared close to tears, and Jack heard her mumble something under her breath about pulling the wings off a fly. Daniel noticed, too, of course, and suggested they go explore the labyrinth of antiques in the second floor of the furniture store to take her mind off what had happened. Maybe this afternoon they'd go skating. The old Arista Theater building had been transformed
into a skating rink, with a revolving light ball in the center of the ceiling that sprinkled colored sparkles on the walls, and a sound system that blasted music. Madonna, mostly--"Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl." All the boys looked forward to "Crazy for You" because on a slow song you got to hold hands with your girlfriend. He, Daniel and Becca always sat that one out and went for a Coke--that tasted disgusting ever since they changed the flavor a couple of months ago.
Old Mr. Walker was glad to let the kids poke around. He pulled down a rickety ladder that extended through a trapdoor like the entrance to most attics. Then he shut and latched the door behind them so they wouldn’t accidentally fall through it and told them to holler for him when they were ready to leave.
The attic ran the whole length of the building, a dusty museum of strange-looking lamps, hat racks, vases, clocks and pictures of ugly, unsmiling people in big gilt frames. There were floor-to-ceiling windows on the front of the building overlooking Commerce Street and on the back overlooking the back side of the Eastern Orthodox Church about half a block away. But the windows didn’t open, so there was not a hint of a breeze, and their movement disturbed ancient dust that hung in the air like yesterday’s fog.
Daniel was examining an elephant-foot stool, and Mikey was looking through a silver kaleidoscope when Becca suddenly cried out. She was standing at one of the back windows and when all the boys rushed to her, she pointed to the church across the alley. Five-year-old Joey Roberts was making his way along the narrow ledge that ran around the edge of the round roof of the church toward a soccer ball that lay in the gutter. In the side yard of the church thirty feet below him were the six Bad Kids.
Jack raced to the trapdoor and banged on it, hollering for Mr. Walker to come and let them out. But the old man never came, either he didn’t hear or was busy. The four of them were trapped in the attic, forced to watch helplessly while the Bad Kids threw rocks at the little boy on the church roof.
“They’re trying to knock him off there,” Jack whispered.
“That’s why they got him to go up there in the first place,” Becca said.
“I don’t think so,” said Mikey. “If they wanted to hit him, they could. I think they’re trying to scare him so he’ll cry.”
“Why would they want—?” Daniel began. The Bad Kids suddenly dropped their rocks and ran around to the other side of the building out of sight. Beatrice Cunningham, the pharmacist’s wife, was coming down Baxter Street along the side of the furniture store toward the church.
She heard Joey, looked up, and her scream rattled the windows. After that, it didn’t take long for a huge crowd to gather.
As the wail of a distant siren grew louder, they heard the catch on the trapdoor open, and they thundered past a bewildered Mr. Walker and out the side door of the store. The six Bad Kids were sauntering toward them. Jack put out his hand, motioning the others to stop there, out of sight in an alcove between the furniture store and the dry cleaners next door. They could hear the Bad Kids’ voices as they approached, but the boys never even glanced in their direction—their eyes were glued to the developing emergency on the other side of the alley.
“…should keep them busy for a while,” Cole said. “Get your bikes and meet me at Allsup’s Station in five minutes.”
Then they heard an odd sound, like laughter—but with a harsh, vulgar ring, an ugly parody of amusement.
“We’re gonna make ’em squeal.” That was a voice none of them recognized. Not a human voice. The Bad Kids walked on down the alley, rounded the corner and disappeared.
Becca spoke softly after the awful sound died away.
“The demons are so excited they’re hopping up and down, jumping around like the monkeys in that cage at the zoo.”
Michel stared at her, uncomprehending.
“This is some kind of distraction to get everybody’s attention, focus it here so they can get away with something else that’s even worse. We have to do something,” she said.
“We don’t have time to go find Bishop,” Jack said. “Whatever they’re planning, it’s now. We can follow them and—” He stopped as a new thought struck him. “They might even be going…you know—there, where it is, to its…lair.”
“Lair?” Daniel was incredulous. “Jack, this isn’t an episode of Wild Kingdom. There’s a monster demon out there!”
Jack saw Mikey look from one to the other of them in growing fright.
“They’re up to something awful.” Urgency made Jack’s already-a-man’s voice gruff. “But nobody will believe that! If we don’t stop them, who will?”
There it was then, the end of all things, the edge of ancient maps where it said “beyond this point be dragons.” If they stood by, didn’t at least try to stop them, the Bad Kids would do something horrible…and people would die. They hadn’t even been able to talk about that part yet. The unthinkable had finally happened. The snakes the Bad Kids had put in that little boy’s casket yesterday had killed people.
“Don’t act like you’re going alone,” Daniel said.
“The bike’d be too slow with both of us on it. We’d lose them. You and Becca and Mikey go get Bishop.”
Then Jack leapt on his bike and tore out down the street in the direction the Bad Kids had gone.
******
2011
Jeff Kendrick’s secretary tapped timidly on his door. It was still “personal time,” the fifteen minutes before the switchboard went on and the law firm of Taylor, Murray and Kendrick was open for business. Personal time had been Jeff’s idea, and it’d been a good one. Productivity was up, morale was high, and he’d come to be seen as “the guy on their side” by the staff—the secretaries, the paralegals, the file clerks, the receptionist and housekeeping. That was worth its weight in billable hours. In a crunch, sometime when Jeff really needed it, they’d march down the barrel of a cannon for him.
Not a bad return on investment for the half hour it took him to convince the senior partners that the staff was doing it anyway—no way to police a thing like that. He argued for granting fifteen minutes in the morning and an extra fifteen minutes at lunch during which they could Tweet or Pin, watch a YouTube video or check their Facebook page——in exchange for their pledge not to use social media any other time.
Appeared to be working better than buying expensive software to limit their access to the Internet.
Which was why Jeff was surprised that his secretary wanted to talk to him.
She had brought her iPad with her.
“I thought you might want to see this, sir. Isn’t he one of your clients? This seems a little bit…odd.”
Jeff read Daniel’s Facebook post from the night before.
“Odd” was a gross understatement. Jeff thanked her for her diligence—and was calling Daniel’s cell before the door closed behind her.
The call went directly to voice mail.
The phone number listed in the bizarre Facebook post was Theresa Washington’s. She was in on it—whatever “it” was. He called but got her voice mail. Her phone wasn’t turned off; the line was busy. So he waited to call again, trying to figure out as he did what in the world Daniel Burke was thinking.
The perception of Daniel mattered in his case. He needed to look, act—even smell like “a minister.” He needed to appear trustworthy and dignified. Posting something as bizarre as this on Facebook would not contribute to that image in the minds of prospective jurors.
Why would he unleash a twenty-five-thousand-member congregation on a grocery store chain and a pizza parlor?
He tried Daniel’s office and discovered that he wasn’t even in town. He was in Washington.
Chapman Whitworth.
Jeff had ping-ponged back and forth on what he believed about the Supreme Court candidate—and, in consequence, what he believed about the honesty/sanity of his own clients. He’d arranged for Daniel and his police officer friend to see Senator LaHayne because he was absolutely certain nobody could con the senator! And if there wa
s any possibility that the Supreme Court candidate really was involved in murder and extortion…
Did this strange Facebook post have something to do with Whitworth?
Jeff tried Theresa Washington again. Still busy. He instructed his secretary to try the number every ten minutes. If he couldn’t get through to her by lunchtime, he’d go to Theresa Washington’s house and ask her in person what in the Sam Hill was going on.
CHAPTER 34
2011
“No, ma’am, the man with dreadlocks don’t have red hair,” Theresa said.
The phone had rung nonstop. Oh, there hadn’t been any sightings of the kidnappers, but it was human nature, she supposed, for folks to want you to know they’d tried to help.
She punched the off button on her iPhone and watched it die. A woman had to deal with calls of nature, phone or no phone. Besides, her poor old back had been aching fiercely ever since she set her feet on the floor this morning, and she was gonna have to put on that brace else she couldn’t sit here and answer the phone. When she come back down the stairs, she noticed the smell of cinnamon and vanilla. There was a time when they would have been the smells of real cinnamon and vanilla from her baking, not the artificial scents from air fresheners with little bottles that stuck into outlets and had an underlying aroma of some petroleum product. The minute she turned the phone back on, it rang in her hand.
“Jack, honey,” she said, “I can’t believe you got through. Phone’s been ringing off the hook all morning.” As she said it, she realized that was another one of them phrases that didn’t mean nothing anymore. Wasn’t no hook to hang a phone on these days. In fact, even “hang up” didn’t make no sense. “I told you I’d call you soon’s I heard anything that was even a tiny bit helpful, but the folks I’m talkin’ to want to give me a description of everybody they talked to and what they said. I’m getting calls from far away as Louisville and Lexington.”
