Sandman

by William W. Johnstone

  Janis unlocked the door to her room and slipped out. In the hall, she got a broom from the closet and walked through the house to the front door.

  “There she is now!” Bing Shelton called, pointing at Janis.

  Grim-faced and angry, Janis walked up to her brother and swung the broom. The flat, tightly bound straw caught Paul smack in the face, sending him sprawling on his back in the foyer.

  Janis then turned and kicked Frank Emerson right in the balls. When he screamed and bent over, Bing gave him a knee on the nose and Frank was out of the game for a time, his nose dripping blood.

  Carla and Melissa jumped on Lisa, and rode the bigger girl to the floor, pinning her there and holding her arms down so she could not grab the knife they all knew she carried.

  Bing, having wrestled Rex to the floor, was sitting on him.

  Jean and Carol and Janis had cornered Lane. Janis was beating him with the broom.

  “All right, all right!” Lane hollered. “Lemme alone!”

  “Now that we got ’em,” Roy panted, “what are we gonna do with ’em?”

  Paul was sitting on the floor, his back to a wall. Janis looked at him and the light in his eyes chilled her to her very soul.

  “I don’t know,” she said, brushing back hair from her face. “I just know I’m not gonna go on living where trash like this are welcome.”

  Paul opened his mouth to speak. He closed it as a familiar shadowy mist formed in a far corner.

  “You trying to do too much too soon, mon,” Mantine’s silent words formed in the boy’s head. “Jus’ let tings take dey own course. Don’ draw de cops to you, OK?”

  “Yes,” Paul said. “You’re right. Thank you for reminding me.”

  Janis and her friends all wondered who he was talking to.

  Paul remained on the floor, but he looked at his sister. “Janis, I apologize for the actions of my friends. This will not happen again. Let them up and they will all leave peacefully.”

  Janis hesitated, then nodded her head. “OK, Paul.”

  Paul’s friends were released.

  At a nod from him, they left, but not before giving Janis and her friends looks that promised this was not over. Not by a long shot.

  Janis noticed with grim satisfaction that Lane was limping.

  Paul rose to his feet and, without another word or glance, walked up the hall to his bedroom. Once inside, he closed the door and locked it.

  “Will somebody please tell me what’s goin’ on?” Bing asked.

  Janis peeked out the side window by the door. Lisa and her thugs were pedaling away on their bikes.

  “Let’s get some Cokes and chips.” She led them toward the kitchen. “We’ll sit in the den and I’ll explain.”

  * * *

  Gomez grabbed up a rotting two by four and ran up to the lurching, howling, laughing blaze. He hit the devil’s fire in the chest, knocking it to the ground. Then he hammered at the form, yelling, “Get some boards and brush; anything that will burn. Throw it on him.”

  The men and Mary Beth began to grab whatever would burn. Peter even jerked boards loose from the old building. Soon, the sheer weight of the things tossed on him prevented the creature that was once Glen Holland from rising. The howling and laughing and struggling became weaker, then stopped altogether.

  All were sweaty and sooty and scared.

  Even Slater.

  Especially Slater.

  The doctor walked away from the group and the blazing pyre, and sat down in the sand. He stared numbly at nothing for a moment. Then he put his hands to his face and began to weep uncontrollably.

  Mary Beth dropped the stick she held in her hand and walked toward him. Gomez’s voice stopped her.

  She turned to the priest.

  “Let him alone. This is something he’s got to work out by himself . . . for a time. He’s full of doubts. After a while, he’ll have a hundred questions to ask. But let him come to us.”

  They stood for a time, watching the fire burn down.

  The only reminders of Glen Holland were a few scraps of cooked meat and bones. A charred skeletal hand protruded out of the dying fire.

  Dr. Belline stared at it. “What I just saw was impossible. Yet . . . I witnessed it. I can’t deny what I saw.”

  Mary Beth remembered Mark Kelly and told the others what she feared.

  “I’ll get on the horn,” Peter said, “alert the hospital.”

  But it was too late.

  “They released him about twenty minutes ago,” Peter informed the group. “He left with his wife. All of a sudden his temperature and BP leveled out, and he felt fine. Said there was no reason to keep him any longer. And his shoulder was healing nicely.”

  The doctors looked at one another. Clineman broke the silence.

  “Now what?”

  “We pray that his miraculous recovery wasn’t the work of a darker power,” Gomez said.

  “But—”

  The priest interrupted Mike. “Don’t count on it,” he said shortly.

  * * *

  Roy and Bing, both twelve years old, had listened to Janis’s story. They now sat on a sectional in the den, and stared at the girls.

  Bing tried a smile.

  It faded before the serious faces of the girls.

  Roy sipped his Coke and looked at the picture in the book Melissa had brought over with her. No doubt about it; that was the mark on Paul’s arm.

  Roy always had thought Paul was somewhere on the south side of squirrely.

  Bing rose and looked up the hall toward the bedrooms. Paul’s door was still closed.

  He sat down. “We’re in trouble, gang.”

  “No kidding!” Roy looked at him, his sarcasm evident. “My, what a surprise. You got anymore monumental statements to make?”

  “How’d you like a fat lip?” his friend asked.

  “Knock it off!” Janis told them, putting an end to the bickering. “If we start fighting among ourselves, Paul will like that.”

  “Speaking of Paul,” Bing said, “why don’t we just go beat the hell out of him?”

  “I don’t think that would be allowed,” Janis told him.

  Roy looked at her. “Who around here would stop us?”

  “I don’t think he’s from around here, Roy.”

  Roy got it on the second try. He opened his mouth to speak. Several times. Nothing came out. His face became a little paler.

  Carol looked around. “Here comes Paul.”

  The boy appeared, walking in a stately manner toward the kitchen. He stopped abruptly when he saw the book lying open on the coffee table.

  Even from a distance, he could clearly see the picture.

  He looked at his sister. Spoke in that deep hollow-sounding voice. “Don’t go away. I feel it’s time that we talked.”

  His sister nodded her head.

  Paul went into the kitchen, but returned in a few moments, carrying a huge sandwich and a glass of milk. He sat down on the sectional, keeping his distance from the others, staying to one end.

  “All growing children should have their milk.” Jean stuck the needle to him.

  “Screw you,” Paul told her with a smile. “But then, you’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Jean half rose. “I’ll slap your dirty mouth,” she retorted.

  Paul took a bite of his sandwich and chewed contentedly for a few seconds. “No, you won’t. Because all I have to do is tell Lisa and Rex and Lane and Frank what I want done, and they’ll do it. And I have a very vivid imagination.”

  The silence pulsed.

  “What do you want, Paul?” Janis broke the almost tangible muteness.

  Paul looked at his sister. He put down his sandwich and reached over, tickling her under the chin.

  When she slapped his hand away, he laughed at her and retrieved his sandwich.

  “I really haven’t made up my mind yet, sister. But I do think I can truthfully say that it’s going to get very interesting around here, very soo
n. Oh, my, yes. We’re going to have a lot of fun.” He laughed. “At least, I will.”

  “The inspector from the islands is here, Paul,” Janis said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “How do you know!” She practically shouted the question. “I didn’t see him myself until this morning.”

  “I have friends you cannot see, sister dearest.” He grinned. “Yet.”

  “Devil-friends, Paul?”

  “But of course!” His reply was given cheerfully, boastfully.

  “How come you’re telling us all this, Paul?” Melissa asked.

  “Why not? What can you do? Go to the police with some totally preposterous story about me being in league with the devil? Go ahead, I wish you would. Then the cops will mark you all down as a bunch of kooks and they’ll never believe anything else you say.” He pointed to the phone. “Go ahead. Call them.”

  No one made a move.

  He’s right, Janis thought.

  Paul took a big bite of his sandwich and a big gulp of milk. “Fucking makes me hungry.”

  The girls blushed and the boys looked very uncomfortable.

  Paul cut his eyes to Bing. “Would you like to have Lisa, Bing?”

  Bing blinked. “Ah ... no!”

  “Liar. Of course, you would. Well, if not Lisa, who would you like to have? Just tell me. I can easily arrange it.”

  Janis tossed cold water on that, knowing it would make her brother mad. “Of course, all he’ll have to do is give up his soul, right, Paul?”

  Paul’s eyes turned mean. “Why don’t you just butt out, bigmouth?”

  Janis pointed a finger at him. “You listen to me,” she yelled. “By now, all the doctors at the hospital know about you. The chief of police knows. And several of the cops and deputies—”

  “You lie!” her brother screamed. “No one knows about me. They wouldn’t believe it.”

  “I’m not lying, Paul. Inspector Willingston and I had a long talk at the hospital. They know a lot more than you think they do. So you’d better back off and think about what you’re doing.”

  Paul rose from the couch to stand over his sister and glare down at her. Then he threw the contents of his glass into her face.

  He left her sputtering on the couch, milk dripping off her face and onto her blouse, and walked up the hall to his room. At his door, he turned and shouted, “You’re all dead. Damned! And worse! All of you!”

  Paul stormed into his room and slammed the door.

  Janis wiped her face, then went to change her blouse. When she rejoined her friends in the den, Bing said, “I think he means what he says.” He didn’t look too happy.

  “I think we’d all better start being real careful from now on,” Carol put in.

  Janis looked up the hallway. It was empty. “Problem is, we don’t know what he’s going to do next. Or when.”

  Their talk was cut short when a car pulled into the garage that was connected to the house. They could hear Connie and Mark talking as they entered the kitchen.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Carla said. “At least you and your mother won’t have to be alone with that creep.”

  “Yeah,” Janis agreed. “He can’t work Dad the way he works Mother.”

  * * *

  In his room, standing over a wastebasket, Paul spat on a picture of his father.

  * * *

  “And Mark just got better, all of a sudden?” Dr. Thomas asked a resident.

  “Everything was normal, Doctor. His appetite had returned. The swelling and redness in his shoulder had vanished. His BP was normal. There was no reason to keep him any longer.”

  Mark had not been admitted as anybody’s special patient, so the resident had had the authority to discharge him.

  “I’m not criticizing, Dave.” Jack Thomas smiled. “Just curious, that’s all.”

  The young doctor walked away, puzzled, but glad he hadn’t gotten chewed out. Something very big was happening in this hospital, and he was just a little annoyed that he hadn’t been included in whatever it was.

  Just been told to be on the lookout for strange red bite marks.

  “Fastest recovery in medical history,” Mary Beth said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Let’s go see about Larry.”

  Larry was much better. Most of his faculties had returned to him, but he couldn’t remember anything about his brief journey into never-never land.

  He recalled leaving his lab after feeling that somebody or something was watching him. After that, nothing.

  Clineman brought him up-to-date, and despite all the horrors around them, Larry could not help but smile as he did so. The two men, friends since their college days, delighted in sticking verbal needles into one another.

  But it wasn’t much fun this time.

  “I did what?” Larry asked.

  Clineman told him.

  “Sweet Jesus Christ!” the ME muttered. “Where are my clothes? I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Not yet.” Clineman pushed him back onto the bed. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Then he told him about Glen Holland.

  The ME closed his eyes, and said a short prayer. “My people also had access to that sand, remember?”

  “Relax. They’ve been checked. They’re clean. And we’ve closed the hospital except for emergency cases. You in agreement with that move, Larry?”

  “God, yes! Have you set aside a special wing for anyone who comes in with suspicious-looking bite marks?”

  “Good thought. No, we haven’t.”

  “I’ll take care of that right now.” Jack left the room.

  Mary Beth smiled and patted Larry on the shoulder. “Welcome back,” she said.

  * * *

  “Are there any Doubting Thomases left?” Stanford questioned, his gaze touching on all present.

  Mike’s top people had been brought in and briefed, and they had agreed to keep a lid on the story for as long as possible. Once it leaked, the press would jump on it like a hungry hound on Alpo and blow it up to gargantuan proportions; then the department would have armed citizens shooting at everything that moved.

  “But the people do have a right to know,” Stanford countered, playing devil’s advocate with a smile.

  “Better a half-dozen die than half a hundred,” Leo said coldly.

  “Or more,” Mike added.

  Mike was dressed in honor-guard blues. He and a contingent from the department were to attend Andy’s funeral at four that afternoon.

  “Anything else?” Mike looked around the table.

  The door to the room opened, and a uniformed cop, a worried look on his tanned face, entered. “Sorry, Chief, but we got a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “Andy’s body, Chief. It’s gone!”

  Mike jumped out of his seat. Sat back down, his mouth open. “Gone? What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”

  “Hell, Chief, I don’t know. The funeral home just called and said they can’t find the body. It was in the viewing room about an hour ago, they said. And Mary is about to go bananas.”

  Andy’s wife.

  “It will reappear,” Gomez said, after looking at and receiving a slight nod from Willingston. “I was curious as to whether Mantine would pull something like this. He’s having a devil’s-own laugh at this.”

  Mike thought about that, and a look of horror came to his eyes and face. “Oh, no!”

  Gomez nodded.

  “You’re not serious!” Mike almost yelled.

  “Very,” Willingston said.

  The cop who delivered the message said, “Ah, Chief? I’m missing something here. Somebody want to tell me what is going on?”

  “Get it from the assistant chief, Bobby. He’s going to brief you all later on this afternoon.”

  “Ah ... yes, sir.”

  The cop backed out of the room and closed the door. He wished somebody would tell him what was happening.

  Mike stared at the priest. “All right, Dan, level wi
th me. Where’s the body?”

  “I have no idea, Mike. My guess would be it’s hiding in some darkened building, waiting for night.”

  “You’re not following me, Dan. How did the body get out of the funeral home!” he yelled.

  “Walked out,” Willingston said calmly.

  “Walked out!” Mike shouted. “You mean . . . I mean . . . like some . . . ?” He just could not say the word zombie.

  “Precisely, Chief,” the inspector said. “And calm down, man. Watch your blood pressure. This type of work is stressful enough without overreacting.”

  “Calm down!” Mike retorted. “I’ve got spooks and haunts and sand-creatures to contend with, and now a dead officer who’s a zombie . . . and you want me to calm down! What’s going to show up next? Werewolves, maybe?”

  “That is certainly possible, Mike,” Gomez told him. “You must bear this in mind: we are dealing with the Devil here. Anything can happen.”

  Mike put his arms on the table and laid his head on them. He closed his eyes for a moment. Lack of sleep and being wound up like an eight-day clock for hours was taking its toll on him. With a sigh of resignation, he opened his eyes and raised his head, his gaze briefly touching on each man seated around the table.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. “I’m at a total loss and I don’t like the feeling.”

  “It will get worse,” Gomez warned him.

  Mike blinked. Sighed. “Thank you, Dan. That was exactly what I didn’t need to hear at this time.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The door opened, and the uniformed cop who’d just left stuck his head inside.

  “Inspector Willingston? Phone call for you on line four.”

  “Thank you.” Stanford lifted the receiver and punched the line open.

  “Inspector?”

  “Here, Janis. What’s the matter, dear?”

  Briefly, and quite succinctly for a child, she told him what had happened at her house that afternoon.

  “Thank you,” Stanford said. “Now listen to me: Can you have one of your little friends stay over for a few days?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Do that, dear.” He thought for a moment. “Hold on, Janis.” He looked at Mike and quickly recapped the other end of the conversation. “Can you spare a walkie-talkie for her? I think she’s a very responsible young lady, and won’t use it unless there’s a real emergency.”