Sandman

by William W. Johnstone

  Stanford muttered something very profane and highly uncomplimentary to Americans. “Then we have no choice but to go to the police. Good Lord! Can’t an adult talk to a child here?”

  “A stranger can’t. Forget it, Stanford. Now stop cursing Americans and let’s get on with it. What kids did you have in mind? As if I couldn’t guess.”

  “Janis Kelly, for one.”

  “Good choice. But how do you know she would agree to spy on her brother?”

  Stanford smiled. “Because he despises her and she is afraid of him.”

  Leo glanced at the inspector. “You came up with that after only a couple of visits?”

  “Actually, no. I visited the Kellys several times, but I had a female operative on the beach. You’d be surprised what she learned in a short time.”

  Leo again glanced at the inspector, a smile on his lips and respect in his eyes. “You’re a sneaky bastard, Stanford.”

  “Yes, I am. Thank you, Leo. It goes with the territory.” He opened his briefcase and took out a folder. “Now listen. This is interesting reading.”

  * * *

  “Nothing,” Mark said. “I just can’t believe it. The doctors found nothing wrong with Paul.”

  Paul was in his room, as usual, the door closed and locked from the inside. Janis was at a friend’s house; she was sleeping over, with several other girls. Mark and Connie were enjoying martinis before dinner. Paul had already eaten.

  The steaks were on the grill, the potatoes in the oven, the salad made.

  “Honey, we’ve been over and over this. Let’s put it aside, please? You’ll have to admit, Paul has been much better since his little ... episode. He’s even taking baths now.”

  “I noticed he wasn’t quite so odious. Episode? Yeah. That little episode cost us a thousand bucks in repair bills. And thank God for hospitalization. But what’s going on with Jenny Cauldman? She’s in isolation, under guard. Her father is suing the hospital, and ranting and raving—during his more lucid moments and when he’s sober. He was at the club this afternoon, getting slopped.”

  “Poor man. I feel sorry for him. God, Mark! He’s lost his entire family. I shouldn’t say that; I don’t know what’s wrong with Jenny.”

  “The doctors do, and so does Chief Bambridge. But they’re not talking; they’re keeping mum and maintaining a very low profile. And Ralph is not talking on his lawyer’s advice. All he’ll say is that it’s horrible, hideous, awful. Then he starts crying. Nobody wants to be around him anymore.”

  “That’s terrible, Mark. And no suspects in the rapes?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  * * *

  “You think Paul raped the girl and her mother?” Leo’s expression was very doubtful. “But he’s only eight years old.”

  “Almost nine. And I didn’t say Paul did it. I said his other being did.”

  “Which I do not understand. Not at all.”

  “Understand this, Leo: If I’m right, which I think I am, the boy isn’t, and never has been, one of us. He’s not human. And if he is a devil-child, which I believe, he has an alter shape, a form. From his homeland—”

  “Homeland? What homeland?”

  “Hell. Don’t interrupt. The boy is—”

  “Hell!”

  “Yes, Leo. Like in Hades. There is no hope for him. He’s beyond redemption. He must be destroyed, as distasteful as that might seem to you.”

  Leo stared at the inspector. “You plan to kill an eight-year-old boy!”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Confine him, for Christ’s sake! Kill an eight-year-old? Stanford, we don’t kill children in the United States. No matter what they’ve done, we don’t kill kids. Not legally anyway.”

  Stanford shrugged. “The boy is not like us, Leo. Why can’t you see that? His father is Satan and he is evil. You say confine him? How?”

  Leo rose and paced the motel room. Occasionally he paused and glanced at Inspector Willingston and then shook his head. “Books and movie stuff, Stanford. Even if I believed you, which I don’t, do you have any idea what this Eagle-Scout chief of police is going to say about this plan of yours?”

  “I don’t intend to march willy-nilly into his office and announce my intentions. I don’t wish to end up in the loony bin.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  “For the moment, nothing. We’ll nose around a bit, perhaps ask a few questions, behave like tourists. Perhaps Paul will strike again.”

  “Strike again.” Leo sighed heavily. “While we sit here doing nothing.”

  “But we can’t go to the chief with what we think.”

  Leo sat down, looked at Willingston. “All right, Stanford, level with me. Everything. Don’t leave anything out. If we’re going to work together, we’ve got to be straight with each other. I know you didn’t come stateside out of the goodness of your heart, so let’s have it.”

  Stanford picked up the phone and punched the button for room service. He ordered drinks and sandwiches, then said, “Put your feet up, Leo. Take your shoes off. Relax. It’s a long story.”

  * * *

  As is the rule nearly everywhere in the world, the kids knew more about Jenny Cauldman’s condition than the adults did. Little pitchers have big ears and all that.

  “She’s about a thousand years old,” Carla Weaver said. “All wrinkled and old and gray.”

  Jean Polk grimaced. “And from what I hear, she went crazy, too.”

  “They’ve got her strapped down in the nut ward.” Carol Hovey fitted yet another piece into the puzzle. “Something scared her so bad she went bonkers.”

  “And she slobbers and hollers a lot,” Melissa Patterson said; her mother was a nurse at the hospital. “Mom didn’t know I was listening when she and another nurse were talking on the phone. She’s scared. I heard her tell her boyfriend she was scared. But she didn’t say anything to him about Jenny. She’s real close-mouthed about things like that.”

  “Her boyfriend?” Janis whispered, looking around her.

  “Yeah. Daddy finally left us. A couple of weeks ago. I didn’t say anything about it. It’s been coming for a long time. They thought I didn’t know. He used to come home drunk and beat Mom up. It was pretty bad. I’m glad he’s gone. I was afraid he was going to beat up on me, too.” Melissa shrugged.

  “Who’s her boyfriend?” Carol asked.

  “Mr. Harrison. One of the counselors over at the high school. I like him. She doesn’t know I know about him, though.” Melissa grinned. “I think he’s a hunk.”

  The girls agreed that Mr. Harrison was, indeed, a hunk.

  “Sorry to hear about your brother, Janis.” Carla felt one of them had to say it, though she didn’t mean it.

  Janis made a terrible face in reply.

  “He still a nerd?”

  “Worse than that. That hospital bit was an act. He’s trying to make people think he’s off his rocker. I can’t figure out why.”

  “That’s kinda dumb,” Carla agreed. “And I didn’t like the way he looked at me when I was at your house this morning. And his voice. What happened to his voice? It sounds like he’s talking from the bottom of a big ol’ bucket, or a well or something.”

  All the girls agreed on that.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with his voice. It’s been that way since the last two or three days we spent on the island. Mother thinks it’s just changing early, but I don’t believe that.”

  “What do you believe?” Jean asked.

  Janis knew exactly what she believed, and very strongly. But, though these girls were her closest friends, she just wasn’t ready to admit her darkest thoughts to them. Not yet. For there was a chance she might be wrong.

  But not much of one, she admitted to herself.

  The girls sat very quietly, aware of the silence, watching Janis carefully.

  With a sigh, Melissa went to her overnight bag and took out a book. She looked at it for a moment, then turned to Janis. “About six mon
ths ago, I went with my mother to a yard sale. It was supposed to be a big one over in Phoenix. A real old house. But there was just a lot of old junk that Mother bought too much of. That’s where I found this book. It’s real old. I didn’t have anything else to do while my mother poked around, so I started reading it. Most of it is real boring, but when I came to a certain picture, I just about died. I bought the book and began to study it. You can’t read it; you’ve got to study it.

  “I wasn’t ever going to tell you about it, or show it to you, Janis. But now, well, so many weird things are going on, and Paul is acting so gross . . . let me read you something.”

  She opened the book to a marked page and began to read: “There exists in the world today a little known but very real, although small, cult of devil worshippers. This cult is named after its founder, Louis Mantine. Mantine was killed, for the first time, around 1875 in the Bahamas, then again near the turn of the century, after twenty-five years of voodoo horrors. On his second death, his wife, Nicole, a voodoo priestess, was hanged with Mantine. A violent storm, perhaps a hurricane, prevented the villagers from burning the bodies. They hastily buried them, and fled to escape the storm. When they returned, Mantine and Nicole were gone from the earth.

  “The pair still return occasionally, to search for a devil’s child. The child, so it is rumored, must not yet be ten years of age, and must be marked by the Prince of Darkness himself. If such a child is ever found, and established on Earth, Mantine and Nicole will then be freed from their search, and will forever reign on Earth as a reward from Satan.”

  The girls sat, stunned, for a moment. Not one of them thought she was talking about anyone other than Janis’s brother, Paul.

  “What is the mark?” Janis asked.

  “But there is a lot more!” Melissa protested, holding up the book.

  “Later. What is the mark?”

  “It’s always on the left arm, high up, near the point of the shoulder.” She turned the page and handed the book to Janis.

  Janis looked at the illustration, then closed the book. No one protested; the girls knew what the mark would look like. They had all seen it before.

  On Paul.

  “I feel like I’ve got to throw up,” Janis finally said. She suddenly felt queasy and uneasy. “But I’m not going to,” she added. Once more, she opened the book and stared at the picture. It was very detailed. She handed the book to the other girls so they could look at the drawing of the mark.

  They did. Then Jean said, “But is this real? I mean, do any of us actually believe in this stuff?”

  All were silent for a time. Finally, Carol spoke. “We all know there’s a God and a Satan and a Heaven and a Hell. The Bible tells us that. And we know God rules the Heavens and the Devil tries to rule the Earth—right?”

  The girls nodded solemnly, and Carol went on.

  “And we know there’s good and evil. I believe what’s in that book. But what are we supposed to do about it? Our parents all tell us that stuff”—she pointed to the book—“is baloney. But I’ll bet people said the same thing about anyone ever going to the moon.”

  The girls agreed with that.

  “It goes back to what she said.” Jean looked at Carol. “What are we supposed to do about it?”

  “Yeah.” Carla tried for a grin and just about made it. “Can you just see us going up to a cop and saying, ’Hey, mister, we know where there’s a devil-child.’ I can just see us doing that.”

  “Maybe that’s it!” Janis snapped her fingers. “Yeah, that is it!”

  “What’s it? Us going to the cops?” Melissa shook her head. “No way.”

  “Are you crazy, Janis?” Jean asked.

  “No, no. Not us going to the cops. Us becoming cops.”

  “You been into someone’s stash, Janis?” Jean asked. “You want us to join the force?”

  “Of course not. But we can investigate, snoop and follow Paul. Why not? We’ve got all summer.”

  “Now wait a minute.” Melissa held up one hand. It was slightly darkened by chocolate from the ice cream bar she’d been eating. “Let’s talk this through. Janis, do you think Paul was responsible for what happened to Jenny and her mother?”

  Janis answered without hesitation. “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  Janis exhaled slowly, then made up her mind. Might as well level with them, she thought. I got to tell somebody, and I can’t tell my parents; they wouldn’t believe me.

  “Because Paul can do weird things. And he prowls at night. He has ever since he was very little, maybe . . . oh, three years old. Is that natural?” She answered her own question. “No, it isn’t. Sometimes he prowls all night. He captures and kills little animals. It’s like what we’ve seen in the movies—some sort of blood sacrifice. I watched him do it once. I got sick. He smeared blood all over him and danced around and looked up at the moon and howled. I haven’t ever told anybody this before—not anybody.

  “Remember I told you about Daddy’s hand getting cut by his belt buckle and about all that blood on the floor? Paul said he’d clean it up. He thought I was in my room, but I wasn’t. I’d slipped outside and was watching him through a crack in the drapes. He took sand out of his suitcase, where he’d hidden it, and poured it on the blood. Some little figures formed. I couldn’t tell what they were.”

  The girls sat transfixed, listening.

  “And I mean Paul didn’t shape the sand. The figures just formed. After they soaked up the blood, they disappeared, and there wasn’t anything but a pile of sand on the clean floor. I watched as Paul put the sand back in his suitcase; then I beat it back to my room. But I didn’t make it. Paul caught me in the hall. I don’t think he suspected anything, though.

  “And there’s more. You all know how Paul always liked to be clean. Well, for about ten days, right up until he went to the hospital, he wouldn’t bathe. You all smelled him, right?”

  The girls wrinkled their noses and grimaced, nodding their heads.

  “You told the cops on the island about this, didn’t you?” Jean asked.

  “Are you crazy? Who’d believe a story like that?”

  The girls looked at each other. Then Melissa spoke for them all. “We do.”

  Janis nodded her head. “Thanks. But I didn’t do you a favor by telling you all this.”

  “What do you mean?” Carol asked.

  “Think about it. If Paul finds out that you know . . .” She let that thought taper off into deadly silence.

  “You’re right!” Melissa exclaimed. “Now we don’t have any choice. We’ve got to stick together.”

  Outside, the wind picked up, flinging little bits of sand against the windows of the bedroom, sighing around the house. These were not friendly sounds.

  It was . . .

  “Evil,” Jean said softly.

  “Come on!” Carol urged. “Knock it off, or we’re all gonna be scared silly. It’s just the wind, that’s all.”

  “There was sand on the walls of that cottage,” Janis said, her voice low. “Where that couple was killed. It was all mixed up with the blood and guts and stuff.”

  The wind moaned, then seemed to speak in a dull voice.

  The girls moved closer to each other.

  “I heard the cops found sand and snake scales in Jenny’s bed and in Mrs. Cauldman’s hair,” Melissa said.

  “Snake scales!” Carol was horrified. “Yuk!”

  They all shivered at just thinking about a snake being in bed with them.

  Janis pointed to the TV. The sound was turned down. An old movie was just starting.

  “Do you believe that title?” Carla’s voice was barely audible over the whispering of the wind.

  Blood on the Sand.

  FIVE

  “So Paul’s sister has suspected something’s wrong with her brother?”

  “Apparently,” Stanford said, laying aside the folder. “And according to the girl, her parents suspect something as well, but, being parents, they prefer not t
o think the worst of their son.”

  “Do you believe the thought of anything supernatural has crossed their minds?”

  “Oh, I doubt it. But it certainly has crossed Janis’s mind. The operatives she spoke with all say she’s one sharp little girl—and she’s worried.”

  “About Paul?”

  “About what she thinks Paul might do to her. She’s afraid of him.”

  “And you feel she’d cooperate with us?”

  “Oh, yes. She’d probably consider that something of an adventure.”

  “Then the problem is how to approach her.”

  “I’m working on that right now.”

  “Of course.” Leo rolled his eyes heavenward.

  Stanford smiled. “Don’t pout, Leo. It’s unbecoming in a grown man.”

  “Would you be offended if I say that I am not convinced all you’ve said is true?”

  “Not at all. You’re going to have to experience it. Then”—Stanford smiled again—“if you survive it, you’ll be a believer.”

  “Thanks a whole lot.”

  “You’re welcome, Leo.”

  * * *

  “I’m concerned about this storm, Mark. This is very strange weather.” Connie rose from the table, walked to the window, and looked out.

  Flipping on the floodlights at the back of the house, she squinted her eyes, trying to see through the swirling sand. Something was out there, moving around, but she could not make out what it was.

  She stared. There it was. Something . . . But what? She stared harder.

  Shapes moving through the wind-whirled sand.

  “Mark! There’s something out there.”

  “In this weather? God, who could it be?” He rose from the table and joined his wife at the window. Blowing sand pecked at the pane. Mark stared. “Yeah, there is something out there. I see it. But what is it?”

  “There!” She pointed. “Right there. And there’s another one.”

  “Another one, Connie? What do you mean by that?”

  “Another whatever it is, honey.” She looked up at him. “That’s all I meant.”

  As he stared out the window, trying to peer through the blowing sand, Mark felt something ancient and long forgotten touch him. The feeling seemed to spring out of his genes, where it had lain dormant for centuries.