Sacrifice

by James, Russell

  “Bullshit premonitions,” he said to himself. He got into his car and prayed he wasn’t channeling his mother’s superstitions.

  It was all about to hit the fan. In hours Ken would know if this big plan would work.

  He did not understand how he’d been elevated to a leadership role. The Half Dozen had always been a group of equals. But since the Woodsman’s return, Ken had been front and center.

  Certainly the premonitions had something to do with it, given him hints on the direction they needed to take. But there was more to it. In the crisis, the rest looked to him to make the final call on what they all did next. How did that happen?

  Seriously, what did he know at seventeen? He’d embraced the plan from a fortuneteller. Jesus, that’s like a plot from a bad movie. He was about to march his friends into Bad Mojo Central armed with feathers and seashells.

  Speaking of which… He rummaged through the bottom drawer of his dresser, the catchall for items that had no place but he could not throw out. He found it under a torn T-shirt from a Kansas concert.

  The rose-colored conch shell was a souvenir from a Florida vacation seven years ago. It fit in the palm of his hand. “Greetings from Ft. Lauderdale” was painted across its polished surface. Ken hadn’t seen a conch shell, or any shell for that matter, along the city’s sterile white beach. But he’d saved a few allowance dollars for souvenirs, and the conch had looked the part and made the cut.

  An elementary school shell and a prayer from a dead saint. Hell of a plan, Ken. All he had to do was pull it off without his friends getting killed.

  Paul had his contribution—holy water from St. Michael’s—at the ready. He’d siphoned the holy water from the church entrance. All he could find that would accomplish the task was a squeeze mustard container he’d taken from the refrigerator and emptied. So the sacred water of the Lord sloshed within a squat yellow container of brown spicy. It wasn’t reverent, but Paul hoped God understood the immediacy of the need.

  Killing time at home, he couldn’t sit still. It was like waiting for a football game to start, but ten times worse. There was the same level of anticipation, but tinged with a sense of dread. This time the worst that could happen wasn’t a loss to some rival school. The worst that would happen was… He didn’t even want to consider it.

  He wondered if his dad had felt this way before some of the big busts he’d made as a cop. Did his palms sweat and his heart race and his mind get filled with the thousand things that could go wrong? Paul doubted it. His dad was tough as nails in every situation, ready for the worst and able to handle it. His dad would be embarrassed to see how rattled all this made Paul, how alone it made him feel.

  Then Paul realized it was like football. He wasn’t alone. When he faced an opposing monster on the line of scrimmage, he wasn’t afraid because he knew his team had him covered. He had guys at his sides ready to help block and tackle. Tonight he had the Dirty Half Dozen as his team going into the mill, and this team was tighter. The guys on the football team were great, but at the end of the last quarter, they were all individuals again. The Half Dozen were more than that. They were family.

  Paul looked over at the picture of his dad, smiling that big grin and leaning against his police cruiser. He’d approve of the plan. People were at risk, so the plan was worth the risk.

  Paul flashed back to an argument he heard from his bedroom years ago. His father and mother were in the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning. He couldn’t hear it all as he cowered under the covers to try and make it go away. But he heard clear as a bell when his father shouted, “I’m a cop. Every fight is my fight.”

  This fight was definitely Paul’s fight.

  Dave opened the door to the parakeet’s cage. The bird cheeped and fluttered to one of the upper perches. He reached in and pulled two yellow feathers from the cage floor. He thought of a chicken.

  Was he chicken? Hell, yeah. Unlike the rest of the Half Dozen, he was making this trip on faith. When the others saw the Woodsman, the whole supernatural thing turned solid as stone. All Dave had was their word on it that Marc had seen the Woodsman stalking some kid, that Paul had chased something other than a mermaid out into Long Island Sound. It was a hell of a leap to trust guys stupid enough to paint a water tower in a thunderstorm.

  The whole situation wasn’t his problem. His family wasn’t threatened. He wasn’t one of the ones “gifted” to see the Woodsman. His life wasn’t any different than it was a few weeks ago when he didn’t know any of this existed. He could probably drive over to Katy’s in a tux and take the poor spurned girl to the prom. He could still be part of the normal world.

  But that was not an option. He had five friends about to risk it all. It didn’t matter whether he could see the Woodsman or not. They could, and if they had a problem, he had a problem.

  He slipped out the front door and into the night. The Vista was parked at the curb for a quiet getaway. The paint shone in the glow of the streetlights, and the polished roof rack hovered like a halo over the car’s tail. Dave gave the hood a pat as he crossed the nose.

  “You got us off that tower in one piece,” Dave said. “One more wild night and I promise to keep you out of harm’s way.”

  “Whatcha doing, Marc?”

  Danny’s voice in the darkness startled Marc. He nearly dropped the scissors in his hand. Danny stood feet away from him in the dim hallway. He wore cowboy pajamas.

  “Why are you awake, Danny?”

  “I’m not sleepy,” Danny said, voice just a hair above full volume.

  “Sh, sh, sh,” Marc said. He put his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “You can’t wake Mom and Dad.”

  “Oh, no,” Danny whispered. “That would be bad.”

  “You gotta go to sleep, Danny.”

  “I looked. Albert’s not in his room.”

  Thank God, Mark thought.

  “He went to see Grandma,” Marc said. “Remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” Danny said, face alight with insight. “I remember.”

  Marc spun him around. “Now back to bed.” Danny waddled off to his room.

  When he heard the door shut, Marc stepped into the closet under the stairs and closed the door. He flicked on the light. He slid coats away on both sides of the bar so that his mother’s white mink coat hung alone.

  He doubted that his mother was going to sanction the sacrifice she was about to make. The mink had been her twentieth wedding anniversary present last year. She wore it into New York for dinner at the Ritz Carlton. She hadn’t worn it since. With any luck, Marc would be away at college when she wore it again.

  He looked all over for a way to cut it with the least noticeable damage but the effort was futile. He flipped it around and cut a pizza slice-sized wedge from the back. Maybe she’d think moths ate it. Maybe.

  He flicked off the light, left the closet and headed for the back door. He realized that he was not afraid, like he had been before when he thought he’d confront the Woodsman. He’d done it alone before, and the first time as an infant. This time he was with his friends. This time he had a plan. The Woodsman wasn’t hunting him, he was hunting the Woodsman. It was time to even the score. The skinny kid with the violin was going to kick some ass.

  He was so relieved that Albert was out of harm’s way. That would have been his Achilles’ heel, leaving his little brother alone. With Albert safe, and the Half Dozen at his side, Marc knew when he encountered the Woodsman this time, he would be fearless.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Ken walked out of the front door of his house as soon as Jeff’s Pinto pulled into his driveway. One hundred watts of Queen singing “We Will Rock You” announced his arrival. He noticed a different car parked at the far end of the street, a dark, four-door sedan. The same car had been there last night, though he’d never seen it in the neighborhood before that. It was parked in front of the Leonards’, a retired couple who had fewer visitors than a pedophile prison inmate. The second trunk antenna could have been
for a CB, but it had the professional, stubby profile of a cop’s antenna.

  He tried to assuage his paranoia by remembering that the village constable budget could not afford an unmarked and a marked vehicle. But the visit from Constable Pickney still burned bright enough to keep the idea of surveillance in the light. If the duck pond sign ruse didn’t hold up, the constable could very well be watching him. It wasn’t like there were law enforcement duties he had to perform.

  Ken plopped down in the Pinto’s passenger seat. He rolled the radio volume down. He gave Jeff’s Mets hat an incredulous look.

  “You’re really going to wear that tonight?”

  “Got me through a lightning strike,” Jeff said with a shrug.

  Ken gave the sedan a glance over his shoulder. “Turn left out of here. I want to check out that car.”

  When they rolled by it, the driver was reading a newspaper, just what everyone parked on his subdivision street did each evening. In the dark. But Ken caught a good enough glimpse of the driver to ID Constable Pickney in civilian clothes. The boys turned left off Ken’s street and Pickney followed a moment later.

  “Damn it,” Ken said. “Figures that guy would own a cop car. We have trouble. That’s Constable Pickney behind us.”

  “I’m guessing he isn’t dropping by to return the duck pond sign.”

  “He’s out of his tiny jurisdiction and out of uniform,” Ken said, “so I trust him even less. The guy’s a Neanderthal. We sure as hell can’t lead him to the mill tonight.”

  “Well,” Jeff said, “I’m not going to lose him driving this four-cylinder monster.”

  They drove past the Shady Grove Shopping Plaza, an L-shaped strip mall big enough for a home improvement store and a grocery store at each end. A mini-multiplex was in the middle.

  “Pull in here and drop me at the theater,” Ken said.

  Jeff stopped in front of the box office. Pickney followed them and pulled into a parking spot a few rows back with a view of the theater entrance.

  “Okay,” Ken said. “Pull around back and I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

  Jeff smiled as he understood the plan. “Got it.”

  Ken went straight for the ticket booth. The woman inside looked up from her paperback and eyed him across the top of her reading glasses. Ken checked the schedule behind her in the wall.

  “One for Empire Strikes Back.”

  “It already started,” she said in a monotone.

  “That’s cool,” Ken said. “Ice planet, abominable snowman, Imperial walkers. I’ll catch up.” He shoved a five through the hole in the glass.

  She was already back into her book when she passed back his change and a ticket. Ken went inside and stopped a few feet behind the glass doors. He waited a few moments to make sure Pickney wasn’t going to pop in, flash a badge and ask for the redheaded kid who just entered. Instead he saw the window of the sedan roll down and a stream of cigarette smoke blow out. He sighed in relief.

  Ken entered Theater Six to the scream of snow speeders crossing the planet Hoth. The white background lit the theater like a floodlight. It was almost full, a typical Friday night. This was going to get messy.

  He sprinted across the front of the theater. Han Solo’s voice boomed in his ear. Ken dashed under the red glowing exit sign and hit the emergency exit door handle at a run.

  The door flew open, and an alarm bell pealed loud enough to drown out the film. The crowd shouted a few choice epithets, but Ken was already out into the humid night air. The door crept closed behind him, gradually muffling the alarm bell. Ken prayed that some jackass trying to impress his date didn’t follow him out here.

  Jeff waited at the curb, the Pinto’s passenger door wide open. Ken jumped in just as the theater door shut and silenced the alarm. Jeff peeled out and the Pinto’s door swung closed on its own.

  “Pickney?” Jeff said.

  “Settled in out front for a two-hour nap.”

  “And we’re off to see the Wizard,” Jeff said. He drove out the lot’s rear entrance and back around to a side road.

  Ken prayed this was an omen for how well the rest of the night would play out.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  They arrived in three cars. Dave parked the Vista Cruiser behind the shops on the village green. Bob parked the Duster between two cars in the dockside lot, just another resident spending the night on his boat. Jeff’s Pinto found a cozy spot on the far side of the pond behind a row of hydrangeas. If the shit hit the fan, there were three safe directions to run.

  After midnight the roads were dead. The residents along Main Street had long gone off to bed. Cicadas sang their buzzing song. The low, full moon cast long shadows that sent sections of the streets into impenetrable darkness. In pairs, the boys picked their way through town on routes that favored those black recesses.

  Marc and Dave approached the mill first. They carried two shovels liberated from Dave’s garage. They came up the road in front of the mill. The old building loomed in the dim light, uninviting. Water lapped over the closed spillway and splashed over the still paddlewheel. The scent of decomposing algae and goose crap was fogbank thick.

  They tossed the shovels over the picket fence, and then Dave vaulted it like a piece of gym equipment. Marc followed with a more tenuous climb up and over. On the other side they went into a low crouch and scurried to the rear of the building. They tucked themselves into the building’s shadow.

  They hadn’t shared a dozen words on the way over, both lost in their own thoughts and fears.

  “Your brother’s safe?” Dave said.

  “Hundreds of miles away upstate,” Marc said.

  “That sounds pretty good about now.”

  “We’re going to kick the crap out of this thing,” Marc said.

  “Pretty confident for a violin player,” Dave said.

  “You have to be confident to be a violin player.”

  “You know,” Dave said, one eyebrow raised, “you do at that.”

  Bob and Paul slipped over the retaining wall at the harbor’s edge when they got out of the Duster. They picked their way south along the rocky beach to where the harbor narrowed into the creek that flowed from the millpond. The rocks gave way to soggy earth and a throng of waist-high cattails. Paul had taken lead and sank ankle deep in the mud. They were still well short of the back of the mill.

  “Damn it,” Paul said.

  “This route was your idea,” Bob said.

  “It looked solid from the road. We could double back.”

  Light flared behind him. He spun to see Bob torching the end of a cigarette. In the flicker of the match, Bob looked calm, nearly nonchalant. The flame died and the renewed darkness left only the orange glow at the cigarette’s tip. Bob exhaled a cloud of smoke.

  “Ah, fuck it,” he said. “We’re already here.”

  Bob pulled his cigarettes from his pocket and rolled them up in his T-shirt sleeve. Then he waded into the stream. He slipped and wobbled across the slimy stones on the creek bottom and extended both arms for balance. When it was thigh deep, he headed upstream to the mill.

  Paul followed. As the water swirled around his legs he flashed back to being alone in the open water, drowning to save a non-existent girl. His heart pounded hard and his pulse raced. He made two fists and held his breath. He slowly exhaled and his heartbeat slowed. He told himself there was nothing to be afraid of. The water was slow and shallow. He’d waded in here dozens of times as a kid. There was nothing to fear in the stream.

  He glanced upstream at the mill.

  The mill might be another matter.

  Jeff and Ken closed the doors of the Pinto like they were tucking a child into bed, afraid to make a noise that might attract attention from one of the houses across the street. They met at the rear of the car.

  “Looks like we got in unnoticed,” Ken said

  “And even if Pickney figures out you ditched him at the theater,” Jeff said, “he won’t see the car if he cruises the area.�
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  The two followed a path around the edge of the pond. Halfway there Ken remembered the dream he had that first night after the lightning strike, where the squid rose out of the water and devoured the children along the pond’s banks. It had been too damn close to the truth. He got a shiver though the night was quite warm.

  “Hurry up,” he said. Jeff broke into a jog.

  “Listen!” Marc whispered.

  Something splashed through the stream below the spillway.

  “You hear that?” Marc said.

  “Yeah,” Dave said. He squinted into the darkness.

  “Crap,” Marc said. “That means it’s real.”

  Cattails parted and Paul and Bob emerged. They were soaked to the waist. Each step squeezed water from their sneakers like a pair of sponges.

  “Throwing off your scent for the bloodhounds?” Dave said.

  “Three words,” Bob said. “Bite—“

  Ken and Jeff came around the building’s corner. All six crouched at the door to the cellar.

  “Let’s send this thing to hell,” Marc said. He stood and examined the hasp lock that secured the door.

  “Step aside, Junior,” Paul said. He reared back and drove his shoulder into the antique door. The area around the hasp splintered and the door swung open.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The windowless basement was black. The moldy scent of decay hung in the air, a warning that nothing living lay within. Jeff clicked on a flashlight and played the beam around the room. Patches of fungus grew on the dirt floor. Mortar, rough and unfinished, extruded between the stones in the walls. A set of open steps rose from the center of the room to a trap door in the first floor.

  The Half Dozen entered and closed the door behind them. A few other flashlights snapped on. On the wall opposite the stairs a faded, five-pointed star was etched into one of the stones. A cross was superimposed over it.