Sandman

by William W. Johnstone

  “They’re fools. All right, Mike. Thanks. How is Mark Kelly?”

  “Last report is that he’s not good. Mentally or physically. The doctors don’t think he’s going to make it. And they don’t know why. His cuts were not that serious, neither were the bumps on his head.”

  Gomez briefly, and in low tones, explained what had happened to him and Leo.

  Shocked silence on the other end. Gomez could sense the man was having a tough time getting a mental picture of it all.

  Finally, with a grunt, Mike said, “You should have let the inspector shoot him.”

  “That wouldn’t have been countenanced, Mike.” The priest stretched the telephone cord to its full length, and moved away from the young people. “Mike, you do understand that this is all a game, don’t you?”

  Again, a long silence. “A game, Father? What are you talking about?”

  “Dark humor from the Dark One. Satan is just having fun. This is all a joke to him. A long-running, ageless joke. But I think that old abomination has a very definite plan in mind.”

  Mike waited.

  “I think he wants Janis,” Gomez whispered.

  * * *

  After Father Gomez left, heading for the hospital, Janis looked at Leo and Stanford.

  “You don’t have to stay. I’m not afraid.”

  “Speak for yourself!” Melissa said, her eyes wide.

  She glanced at the gang, back to the men. “No. Think about it. Too much has already happened in and around this house. I’m low on Paul’s list now. And I have a funny feeling that he’s changed his mind. I don’t think he’s going to kill me. I don’t know how I know that; I just do. I think something. . . well, bad is going to happen to me. But when—or if—it does, it won’t be in this house. I think it’ll be out there.” She jerked her thumb toward the outside.

  Stanford felt he knew what Paul had in mind for his sister. But he kept quiet about it. They were, after all, brother and sister.

  He cautioned himself not to forget that.

  “Perhaps,” Stanford replied. “But, Janis, you must keep in mind that you are in constant danger.” He looked at the group of young people. “Are you all going to stay here with her?”

  They were. All day. And that was a promise.

  Stanford met Leo’s eyes. The New York City man shrugged. Then both men walked to the door. There, they paused to look back at the girls and boys. Both wanted to say something, anything that might help. But they couldn’t find the words.

  Paul had remained silent, in his room. In that passageway to Hell.

  Both men wondered what the little demon was plotting in his evil brain.

  With a parting nod, they left the house, closing the door behind them.

  The kids seemed to relax after the adults had gone. Stanford and Leo were OK people. But they were adults. And you had to be careful what you said around adults.

  Bing sniffed the air. “I could swear somebody fired off a gun in here.”

  Janis explained.

  The kids, as if operating under the control of one brain, all turned and looked up the hallway, as if expecting to see the yawning gates of Hell open before them, the fiery entrance to be filled with howling demons, writhing in a frenzied mass of teeth and tails, and mouthing threats of burning in pits forever.

  It didn’t make any of them feel better when Paul stepped out of his room and walked up the hall, toward the group in the den.

  Bing and Roy touched the stag handles of their sheathed hunting knives. They’d stuck the knives in their socks before leaving home, to conceal them from their parents, and had slipped the leather loops through their belts after they’d gotten out of their houses.

  But Paul did not step down into the sunken den. He stood for a moment at the railing, looking at the gathering below him, and smiling. His eyes flicked over the hunting knives, and he laughed.

  “Mighty warriors all, hey?” Paul sneered at the boys. “We’ll see.” He glanced at his sister. “I’ll be out for a time. Perhaps all day. Goodbye, sis!”

  The boy walked out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

  After a soft expulsion of breath that signaled her relief, Carol said, “Maybe we’ll all get lucky and he won’t come back.”

  “I wish,” Janis agreed. Then she remembered the inspector standing up and taking out his gun. The way he’d looked at her. Sad. Father Gomez standing up, stopping the inspector from . . .

  The phone rang.

  All the young people jumped at the sudden jangling. Then they grinned and looked around, embarrassed.

  Janis turned to the coffee table. But the coffee table was gone and so was the phone, thanks to Daddy and his axe.

  She ran up the steps to the kitchen, and stilled the ringing.

  Connie.

  “Is everything all right, Janis?”

  “Everything is ... just fine, Mother.” Why didn’t she go ahead and tell her mother about Paul? Easy answer to that one. Her mother wouldn’t believe it. “How’s Daddy?”

  “Not . . . very good, honey. But let’s all be brave about it. Where is your brother?”

  “He’s outside. Playing.”

  That was as good a reply as any, Janis supposed.

  “I’ve decided to stay with your father, Janis. At the hospital. They’ve provided me with a room next to his. I’ll be here several days, probably. I’m going to call Linda and see if she can stay at the house with you while I’m gone. I’ll call now, then come over at about five or so to get some clothes. So I’ll see you later on this afternoon. Is that agreeable with you, Janis?”

  “Fine, Mother. See you later.”

  Janis hung up and then turned to the gang. She gave them a rundown on the conversation, and grinned along with them.

  Linda was OK people, a decent babysitter.

  And she had the greatest collection of horror videotapes and books in the whole world. She was really into the supernatural and all that stuff. She probably knew more about ghosts and creatures and vampires and werewolves than anybody in the county.

  Maybe the whole state.

  Yeah. With Linda coming over, things were definitely looking up.

  Sort of.

  * * *

  The woman opened her red-rimmed eyes. The room was shrouded in darkness. The curtains drawn. Something had awakened her. But what?

  She lay on the bed and listened for some sound. She heard nothing.

  Mentally, Mary felt she was standing on the ragged edge and was about to topple over into some dark abyss.

  First her husband, Andy, had been killed answering a trouble call. Then his body mysteriously disappeared from the funeral home.

  And nobody from the department would tell her anything, except that some kids probably took the body.

  She didn’t believe that. Not at all.

  What next?

  She turned her face toward the pillow and tried to cry. But she was finally all cried out. Her eyes felt sore and tired. No tears came.

  She froze, prone in bed, as a bumping sound came from the hall. It was sort of a stumbling footfall kind of noise. Staggering.

  Then she realized that it was probably their lone ranchhand—her lone ranchhand—if that was what one could call Old Jake.

  It was even stretching it to call this place a ranch.

  Most wouldn’t.

  A few cows, a few horses, stuck out in the country.

  That bumping sound again.

  Mary sat up in the bed, clutching the covers to her. She was naked under her thin housecoat, and something about the odd sounds made her anxious and caused her flesh to creep.

  Bump.

  “Jake, is that you?”

  Stumble.

  “Jake!”

  Lurch.

  “Jake, come on now! If you’re drunk again, you can just get on out of this house.”

  A grunting sound. Animal-like. But not any animal Mary had ever heard.

  Bump.

  Suddenly, Mary felt—knew�
��that it wasn’t Old Jake in the hall.

  But she didn’t know what it was.

  She fumbled in the nightstand for her pistol. Andy had insisted she keep it there, living like they did, way out in the country.

  Bump. Grunt.

  * * *

  Out in the shack that was laughingly called a bunkhouse, Old Jake had just finished polishing off a half-pint of rye whiskey.

  He raised up and peered out the extremely dirty window just above his bunk. Must have been his imagination playing tricks on him, he thought. But he could have sworn he’d seen someone . . . or something . . . stagger across the yard just a few minutes ago.

  Guess not.

  He lay back on the bunk and reached down into the paper sack on the floor. Broke the seal on another bottle of rye and took a slug.

  After he stopped coughing and hacking, he sputtered, “Goddamn, but that’s good!”

  Then his thoughts turned maudlin.

  “What a way for a real cowboy to spend his last days,” Jake muttered. “A goddamn handyman on a rawhide outfit that’s owned by a missing dead man.”

  Old Jake was partly correct in that. Dead, but not missing.

  Not anymore.

  Jake took another slug and wondered what had really happened to Andy’s body?

  Bunch of kids probably stole the stiff. Goddamn kids nowadays didn’t have no respect for nothing.

  Jake lay back and took another slug.

  Thought of better days....

  * * *

  Mary’s heart began to hammer as the bumping and staggering, the lurching and stumbling sounds stopped.

  Right outside her bedroom door.

  She jacked back the hammer on the single-action. 45.

  Shaking, she watched the doorknob slowly turn.

  “I’ll shoot you!” Mary yelled. “Go away. I’ll kill you. I mean it.”

  The door was inching open.

  Mary leveled the .45 as best she could. Taking a two-handed grip like Andy had taught her.

  The door swung open.

  Andy stood there, grinning at her.

  Mary screamed, her eyes rolling back in her head. Then darkness took her. She slumped back on the bed, unconscious, the cocked .45 landing beside her.

  Andy moved closer.

  In the bunkhouse, Old Jake snored on.

  * * *

  “Put him in jail,” Sheriff Sandry suggested. “Trump up some charge until we can talk some sense into him, beg him to lay off this foolishness.” He sighed and waved his hand. “Aw! Forget I said that. That would really tip off the press people that we’re trying to cover up something.”

  Once again, they had converged at the hospital, in the conference room.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Peter suggested. “But I’d hate to do it to Dr. Slater. He’s always been an all-right guy.”

  “Let’s extol his virtues at some other date,” Dr. Clineman said. “Tell us what you’ve got on your mind, Deputy.”

  “We go clean, one hundred percent. No one around to back up Slater’s story.”

  “Fine, Peter,” Sandry said. “But how?”

  “First of all, for it to work, Jenny’s going to have to be moved. And I mean away from this area. To a private sanitarium.”

  “That’s easy,” Belline said. “We can arrange that in twenty minutes. Go on.”

  “And Jenny’s father is going to have to be taken out of town, kept out of sight for a few days. Along with his attorney.”

  “There’s no problem with Ralph,” Mike said. “He’s drunk most of the time anyway. We’ll just get him drunker and carry him off. He’ll never know the difference.”

  “Getting the lawyer out is not going to be as easy,” Sandry told them. “But I know he’s got a client over in Tucson facing a murder-one charge. We could get word to him that his client wants to see him. Like right now. He’d have to go. It’s weak, but it might work.”

  “Agreed,” Mike said. “That’d get him out of town for this evening anyway.”

  “Then what?” Mary Beth asked Pete.

  “We plant people in the audience, to start laughing Dick down as soon as he starts talking about creatures and ghosts and demons. Laughter is infectious. It might work.”

  Belline nodded his head. “I hate to make Dick look like a fool, but we’ve got to do something. All right. Let’s do it.”

  “I’m for it,” Carleson said, looking around the table. “Unless anybody has a better suggestion.”

  No one did.

  Belline pushed back his chair. “I’ll make arrangements for the Cauldman girl to be moved. That private hospital up near the border would be best, I think. That agreeable with you all?”

  It was.

  Belline left the room.

  Sheriff Sandry looked at Peter. “Get a couple of folks to ease Mr. Cauldman out of town. Take him to the safe house we use on the Aravaipa. I’ll be out later to talk to him. And get somebody working on getting the lawyer out of town.”

  Pete nodded and left the room.

  “Are we forgetting anything?” Mary Beth asked.

  “I’m sure we are,” Mike said. “It’ll come back to haunt us. No play on words intended.” He grimaced. “Well, the S.O. and the P.D. will keep their mouths shut. I’ll have someone file a report about the theft of Andy’s body, and let the press take a look at it if any reporters ask to see it.”

  “We’re forgetting Glen Holland,” Dr. Thomas reminded them.

  “Right. But he wasn’t from this area,” Clineman answered. “I’ll do a report stating we shipped his body back home. He was from Chicago. It’d take anyone weeks to wade through the red tape.”

  “Anybody got anything else to add?” Mike asked.

  No one did.

  Mike stood up. “All right. We’ll all wander into the civic center, separately. Interested citizens and all that. See you all there.”

  * * *

  Mary came out of the darkness to a familiar sensation. Very pleasant. The feeling of Andy’s body next to hers.

  But his flesh was so cold.

  Then Mary remembered that Andy was dead.

  She opened her mouth to scream.

  A hand, also cold to the touch, quickly covered her mouth.

  She struggled to maintain her sanity. That couldn’t have been Andy standing in the doorway. Impossible. She was being molested by some drifter.

  She managed to twist her head and get a one-eyed look at her assailant.

  Andy.

  His cold hand covered her mouth, preventing her from squalling out.

  He continued his assault.

  Something broke in Mary’s mind. A part of her drifted off into marshmallow land.

  In the dim light of the bedroom, the only illumination filtering through the partially open door, Mary could see that the makeup had come off of Andy’s throat, exposing a horrible gash.

  The stitches that had held his lips together had come loose. They were hanging down over his lower lip like tiny wriggling black worms.

  Andy removed his cold hand from Mary’s mouth, and bent his head to kiss her.

  In the grip of terror and disgust, of near madness, Mary twisted her head, pressed her face against the rumpled sheets, to avoid the kiss from that dry, dead, cold, wormy-looking mouth.

  “Mary.” Andy’s voice was dull and deep. It echoed around the bedroom, making Mary’s tortured mind see a spirit rising from the grave, out of a dark mist, twisting and entwining amid dew-wet tombstones that seemed starkly real.

  She vainly fought to keep some part of her lucid by telling herself that none of this was real.

  It was not happening. It could not be happening.

  “Mary.” That voice. Dead. Grave-deep and hollow, it nudged at what was left of her sanity.

  But she could not deny his presence.

  Andy bent over her and she felt a sharpness, a pricking sensation on her neck.

  Then a cold tongue began to lick it.

  A warm stickiness oozed
down the side of her throat.

  She experienced no pain as Andy began to suck and slurp at the trickle of blood.

  Her head felt very light.

  Another bit of lucidity left her.

  Andy’s mouth began working at the other side of her neck. That very slight pricking sensation. That warm sticky ooze flowing down the side of her throat. Andy’s tongue, not so cold now, licking and sucking the flow.

  “No!” she yelled, her fingers, clawed now, digging into the sheets.

  He laughed.

  Profanity rolled in waves from her mouth.

  She cursed God. Jesus. Mary. Joseph.

  In her mind, Andy had turned into a creature from Hell, clawed and scaled and hideous.

  Yet suddenly he was beautiful.

  He was speaking in some language that, at first, was alien to her.

  Then she began to understand the ancient words.

  She agreed with them. Agreed to follow the rules. Agreed to everything.

  Yes. Yes. Yes!

  Lost her soul. Gave it up willingly. Mentally watched it rip from her and flap away, carried in the great beak of some dark reptilian-appearing creature with wings of darkness that completely obscured her mind. The creature soared out of sight.

  She was lost.

  His mouth sought her throat.

  Mary willingly, on command from a new master of evil and darkness and pain and perversion, moved her head, allowing Andy access to it.

  He bit into her throat. And blood flowed into his mouth and up and through his long, sharp, hollow teeth.

  Another darkness took her.

  She made no effort to fight the fall.

  Together, the twin undead tumbled into a pleasant fire, the flames touching them, but producing no pain. Skeletal hands reached from the smoke and ash and fire to touch them as they fell.

  The fires of evil licked their flesh, searing and bubbling and marking them.

  * * *

  Jake opened his eyes. He could have sworn he’d heard someone screaming. But it wasn’t no squall of fear or terror or nothin’ like that.

  It had sounded to Jake like some woman in the throes of ecstasy.

  He must have been dreaming about sex. That must have been it.

  Unless Mary had some man in bed with her.

  But Jake doubted that.

  He lay back in his bunk, unscrewed the cap from his bottle of rye, and took a good pull. Moments later he fell asleep.