The Knowing Box Set EXTENDED EDITION: Exclusive New Material

by Ninie Hammon

  “We have to go get Jack,” Becca said. Daniel stood looking at her, his face unreadable.

  “No! Don’t!” Mikey suddenly cried. Though it was easy to forget all about him, the little fat kid was making his presence known now. “Don’t go in there.” He almost grabbed Becca’s arm but stopped a moment before he touched her. “Please, don’t go in there. The Bad Kids will kill you for following them. And…there’s something horrible in there, and if you go in you’ll never come back out.”

  Becca said nothing, only smiled at him. Then she turned and followed the angel toward the base of the rockfall and began to climb. When Becca got to the top and looked back down, Mikey was nowhere to be seen. Daniel was right behind her.

  She wordlessly took the angel’s hand and the three of them passed through the crack in the rock into the dark cavern beyond.

  ******

  2011

  When Daniel felt a hand on his shoulder, he looked up into the kind eyes of the next president of the United States. Senator Thomas LaHayne smiled down at him. To most other people, the man’s demeanor hadn’t changed throughout the whole proceeding. But Daniel had seen it, little signs of tension and pressure around his mouth.

  His face bore its usual calm, marked now with what Daniel knew was a profound sense of relief.

  The senator gestured to the phone that Daniel still clutched in his hand.

  “It would appear you have had good news from the home front,” he said.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Son, the smile on your face would melt frost off a windowpane at thirty paces.”

  Daniel actually laughed. He stood and fell in beside the senator as the other man started for the door of the meeting room.

  “My secretary will set up an appointment—at your convenience, of course—with you and your police officer friend.” LaHayne fished for the name for a moment, then found it before Daniel could provide it. “Jack Carpenter.”

  “I am ready now to hear what Paul Harvey always called, ‘The Rest of the Story.’” He looked concerned for a moment. “You do know who Paul Harvey is, don’t you, because if you don’t I must be a whole lot older—”

  A journalist from CNN with a familiar, yet unplaceable face touched Senator LaHayne’s arm. “If you have a minute, sir, I only have a couple of questions—”

  “I’ll have a statement for you.” Daniel either saw or thought he saw the senator cut him a knowing look. “I’m just as surprised as you are about all this and I’ll need some time to—”

  That’s when it happened. Though what exactly “it” was would be a matter of debate and conjecture, would probably provide fodder for conspiracy theorists for the next fifty years.

  Senator LaHayne tripped. Except there was nothing there for him to trip over. Footage from stationary cameras in the room later revealed only that he appeared to stumble over his own feet. But that didn’t explain how forcefully he fell forward and that he never put his hands out to break his own fall. He’d been walking slowly beside Daniel, and then he was hurling toward the floor. There was a chair in his path, and his forehead collided with the wooden railing between the back legs of it. His momentum carried his body forward; his head was shoved backward.

  Daniel believed forever afterward that he actually heard the senator’s neck snap. He was dead before he settled in a limp heap on the floor.

  Ruthlessly shoved to the side, out of the way, Daniel found himself standing alone, an island in the middle of a sea of scurrying, frantic people. Only one other person was standing back from the crowd, observing.

  When Chapman Whitworth saw that Daniel had noticed him, he turned to face him. Whitworth’s expression was decorously solemn as would befit such a sad and tragic event, but there was malicious glee sparkling in his eyes. He touched two fingers of his left hand to his forehead and gave Daniel his snappy little salute. Then he walked out of the room.

  CHAPTER 49

  1985

  Mikey Rutherford had wet his pants. Twelve years old and he’d wet his pants! He couldn’t help it, though. When Becca and Daniel and that bright light left to go into the cave, he was suddenly so terrified, for them and for himself, that he ran mindless down the riverbank and his bladder let go. He couldn’t control it.

  When he was able to get his breath again, he took his shoes and socks off and waded out into water up to his waist. That drenched him, of course, but it looked better than having a giant wet spot on the front of his pants.

  Then he waited.

  He wished he could go get Bishop. Maybe he was home by now.

  He waited some more. He searched for flat rocks and skipped them over the surface of the water, actually got three or four that skipped instead of sinking like…well, like rocks.

  Had it been hours? It seemed like it. Mikey had no watch, but he didn’t think he had ever waited so long for anything in his whole life.

  Then he heard noise at the top of the rockfall. He looked up and froze in terror. Climbing down over the rocks were the Bad Kids—all six of them.

  Hide!

  Where?

  There was nowhere to go. Only flat riverbank. No sense trying to run, they’d be on him in a second. And they were coming fast. They weren’t merely climbing down the rockfall, they were scrambling down it. Hopping from one rock to another, slipping and sliding and falling. Victor Alexander lost his footing and went down hard on his backside. Ronnie Martin, who was right behind him, helped him to his feet and—

  Helped him?

  Cole Stuart was the first one down, and he ran right at Mikey.

  Mikey squeezed his eyes shut. One of the dozens of Woody Allen lines he’d memorized popped into his head. “I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

  Cole bumped into him when he ran past.

  “Sorry,” Cole mumbled.

  Mikey’s eyes snapped open!

  Cole had reached his bike. He yanked it out of the bushes, leapt on it and pedaled frantically away, going no faster than Mikey could have gone—well, than Jack or Daniel could have.

  Others had made it down the rockfall now and were running all-out to their bikes. One of them, Jacob Dumas, was crying. Tears streamed down his cheeks and snot ran down his lip, but he was in such a hurry, he didn’t even wipe it away.

  None of them paid the slightest attention to Mikey.

  In no time at all, they were gone. He watched them pedaling madly until they were out of sight around the curve. Then Mikey turned slowly back to the rockfall beneath the crack in the rock, shaken and confused—and there at the top was Becca! She began climbing down, with Daniel behind her. And there was Jack! They’d found Jack!

  The bright light was nowhere to be seen.

  But something was wrong. They weren’t clambering frantically down the rocks like the Bad Kids. They were slow and deliberate. They weren’t smiling or talking. They looked like robots.

  Mikey ran to the base of the rockfall, but when Becca climbed off the last rock, she walked right by him without speaking. He stood dumbfounded as Daniel did the same.

  “Jack!” Mikey cried as Jack completed his descent. “Are you all right?”

  He certainly didn’t look alright. He was beat up. His elbows, palms and knees were skinned and bleeding, maybe burned, too. It was hard to tell. His clothes were wet and dirty. The right knee on his jeans was torn out, and the bottom of both pant legs were blackened—scorched.

  Jack walked right past as if he hadn’t heard a word Mikey said.

  Mikey watched, so surprised and confused that for once in his life, he couldn’t find a thing to say.

  The three of them wordlessly went to their bikes. Daniel slid onto the rack on the back of Jack’s bike, but there was no conversation. He did it in silence.

  Mikey was finally able to blurt out, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  Nobody answered him, but Daniel appeared at least to have heard the question. He looked confused, then mumbled distractedl
y, “I don’t know.”

  Then the three rode away, leaving Mikey on the riverbank to watch until they were out of sight.

  ******

  2011

  Theresa hated to call it a celebration, hated to think about getting together all happy like when there was still a powerful demon on the prowl, roaming out there free in the world, and three little kids in Bradford’s Ridge enduring the horror of being taken over by creatures from Hell.

  And there was Jack. The Harrelton Police Department had made official what Crock’d done so’s Jack could look for Bosko—they’d suspended Jack pending the outcome of the ATF investigation. Wasn’t no way to change that until he or one of the others remembered what’d happened at Twin Oaks that day.

  Besides, she still hadn’t been able to shake the sense that somethin’ wasn’t right about all this. Daniel said Chapman Whitworth had killed Senator LaHayne. So why did Whitworth wait to do it until after he had withdrawn his name? The senator was all that stood between him and the nomination. There was somethin' out there they wasn’t seein’.

  So she hadn’t used the word “celebrate” when she’d invited them all to come over for her famed chili. Chili’d been one of Bishop’s favorites. He’d slide up behind her on cold winter nights when she was fixing it, slip his arms around her and lean over her shoulder to smell the fragrant steam rising up off the pot on the stove.

  “I do love me some of that chili, woman,” he’d say. “’Cause it reminds me of you.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “Well, it smells good, it’s brown and it’s spicy and—”

  “Now, don’t you be sayin' somethin’ that’s gone embarrass me.”

  “And it warms a man’s heart and makes him feel loved,” he concluded. But there’d been a chuckle in his deep voice that brought a flush to her cheeks anyway.

  She smiled at the memory, looked over at Bishop’s picture on the mantle, and the ache to feel his arms around her throbbed with every heartbeat. But it was a tender pain now, didn’t take her breath away no more.

  And when she thought about it, she decided it was, too, a good thing to call this a celebration. They was lots of good to celebrate. Andi was safe. They hadn’t indicted Daniel, and they’d dropped the murder charges against her—Thank you, Lord! Which put her in mind of Jeff. She’d invited him, but he’d said he couldn’t come. Made up some excuse, but she knew it was ’cause Daniel’d be there, and there was something between the two of them they wasn’t talking ’bout.

  Then Daniel and Andi showed up, and it was like the whole family coming in for Christmas, Andi squealing with delight when she spotted Biscuit, the dog running around and around in circles, barking at everything and nothing. And after that, the evening was filled with talk and laughter soft as confetti and silly good humor. It was easy to forget the awful that was still looming out there. Andi’s vision—which stopped Theresa’s heart in her chest every time she thought about it. And they was gone have to come up with some kind of plan to rid the world of a monster—permanently. They’d talk about that later, of course, all of them together. But not right now.

  The doorbell rang after everybody’d been served. When she opened the door, Jeff Kendrick was standing outside.

  “Why, you decided to come after all,” she said.

  “Don’t you ever answer your telephone? I’ve left half a dozen messages, and you never call me back.”

  “Get on in this house, son, and don’t be pesterin’ an old woman ’bout somethin’ unimportant as a telephone.”

  Truth was, Theresa had no idea where her phone was. Coulda fell off behind the dresser or maybe under the seat in the car. She hoped it wasn’t in one of her pockets ’cause she’d done a full load of laundry this morning. The phone store had replaced the one she broke, and the last thing she needed was to have to buy another one of them things and try to figure out how to use it.

  Jeff stepped inside, and she saw his eyes lock briefly with Daniel’s. Then he turned to her.

  “I didn’t come here to crash your party. I’d have told you what I had to say on the phone if I’d been able to reach you.”

  “I ain’t near as attached to my phone as some folks is,” she said, and cast an eye on Jack.

  “What she’s trying to say is that the only serious female relationship Jack has in his life is with Siri,” Crock said. “He needs therapy.”

  “You need to hear this,” Jeff said. And it was only then that it registered with her and the others that Jeff wasn’t smiling, and there was no good humor or banter in his tone. Whatever news he’d come to deliver, it wasn’t good.

  He spotted the television in the corner and said, “Better yet, you need to see it.”

  He picked up a remote off the coffee table and turned it on. Theresa had the most horrible sense of foreboding when he did. The sense of déjà vu was so strong you could almost see it, thick as fog or smoke floating in the air. She looked from Daniel to Jack and saw they’d felt it, too. So had Andi. She climbed up into her daddy’s lap and snuggled tight in his arms.

  Jeff found a news broadcast and turned the volume up, dumping too-loud words into the room in midsentence.

  “…announcement has taken even the shrewdest politicos by surprise. Until the controversy surrounding Whitworth’s Supreme Court nomination, the American public didn’t even know his name, and now Chapman Whitworth appears to be the man of the hour.”

  Theresa sat down hard on the arm of the overstuffed chair where Daniel and Andi sat.

  “He definitely has momentum, as any dark horse must to have a prayer of succeeding,” said some national news anchor she probably ought to recognize but couldn’t place. All those talking heads looked the same to her. “Senator LaHayne had the nomination all but sewn up. Now, with no apparent frontrunner to take his place, the party’s scrambling, searching for somebody who can catch the imagination of the electorate.”

  “Whitworth might just be that candidate,” said the other talking head. “Apparently, President Barker thinks so and his ringing endorsement of Whitworth goes a long way.”

  Theresa wanted to look around to see how the others were reacting, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen, the dread rising up in her throat like warm bile.

  “At this point, anything’s possible,” said the first news anchor. “He might carry the day. Let’s show that clip again of his announcement.”

  Chapman Whitworth’s face filled the screen. Somebody in the room groaned like they’d been punched in the gut, but Theresa didn’t—couldn’t—take her eyes off the screen to see who. Andi whimpered and started to cry softly.

  “A man must rise to the occasion, accept the call placed on his life by a higher destiny than he had imagined.” His sonorous tones flowed like butter off hot pancakes. “Though Senator LaHayne and I were political opponents, we were close personal friends. That is why he never once in all the time we stood on opposite sides of the Supreme Court nomination issue, criticized me, never once had a hard or disparaging word to say about me. We disagreed on issues, but we loved each other like brothers and no one in Washington feels the pain of his loss more than I.”

  His voice appeared to choke on the last words. And he had to pause before he continued.

  Jeff murmured beside her. “Close personal friends? That’s not what I heard.”

  “I am honored and humbled to take up his mantle, to lift the banner from his hand where he has fallen and to carry his vision and ideals forward in his stead. It is in his great light that I stand here today to announce that I will seek my party’s nomination for the presidency of the United States of America.”

  Becca backed out of the room, her eyes huge, and ran to the bathroom where Theresa could hear her vomiting.

  The scene shifted to the two talking heads again.

  “The man has magnetic charisma—he’s already being compared to the Kennedys. JFK’s style, Clinton’s charm and—” said the first anchor.

  “Ronald Reagan
’s gift for saying the right pithy thing at the right time,” said the second.

  “There is, of course, the thorny issue of campaign financing,” said the first anchor. “Whitworth hasn’t raised a dime, no war chest. He’s going to have to pull this off on a shoestring, and there’s something glamorous and gallant about an underdog effort. But what really can’t be stressed enough is what I said earlier. Whitworth would have passed into political obscurity if it hadn’t been for Senator LaHayne’s opposition to his Supreme Court nomination. Now, he’s got as good a shot as anybody to become the next president of the United States.”

  “Turn that thing off,” Theresa said. Her voice was shaking. Jeff punched a button on the remote still in his hand, and the screen went dark.

  “We been tricked!” she said. Her heart was hammering in her chest so hard she could see her dress move with each beat. “That sly fox done outsmarted us.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jack asked.

  “I know what she’s talking about,” Daniel said. He held his little girl tenderly on his lap and spoke softly. “He used us. He needed notoriety. He needed an excuse to take his dog-and-pony show on the road, a chance to mesmerize the public with his evil voice. And we gave it to him.”

  Jack shook his head slowly, back and forth, awed. “You’re saying you think that was his plan all along?”

  “I didn’t see it in time,” Theresa said. “Demons is smart, crafty creatures. We underestimated this ’un, played right into his hands.” She paused, and when she continued, wonder and revulsion colored her voice. “Now, he could become the most powerful man in the world.”

  The horror of that thought struck them all silent.

  “Did you ever pull the wings off a fly?”

  Becca spoke from the back of the room. Her voice was eerily flat and emotionless. It was such a non sequitur that no one knew how to respond.