Abruptly, Nick forgot what he was going to say next. He saw something in the woods and heard the same shouts he had heard before, sharp, short sounds; but now they were coming from around the corner of Jackson’s house. Down the street, in the space between his house and the Smiths’ next door, he could see men, dressed in brown, step from the shadows of the forest.
“Oh, shit,” Jackson agreed. The door to the house slammed shut.
The newcomers seemed to be wearing uniforms of some sort. The brown showed on their sleeves and leggings and boots. They also wore breastplates and close-fitting helmets, but if these were made out of any metal, that metal was tarnished and dark. Once the men moved from their forest cover, they hardly made a sound. They reminded Nick of the scenes from Vietnam he saw on the news every night. Except the armor made the soldiers look a little like Spanish conquistadors.
Nick ran out into the street, toward the gathering neighbors. “Mr. Mills!” he called.
“I see them,” the schoolteacher said as he stepped beside Nick. He nodded to his right. “I thought I saw more moving farther up the street.”
“Now you’re out here!” Sayre was calling as the neighbors gathered on the street. “You took your own sweet time. Look at this. It’s an outrage, I tell you! Someone is going to pay!”
No one looked at Sayre. By now, he seemed to be the only person unaware of the approaching army.
That’s what Nick realized it was: a whole army of strange men dressed in brown, more than a hundred of them, he’d guess. He could see them now at the end of the street and in the yards between each of the houses, closing all the neighbors of Chestnut Circle inside their ranks.
“Someone is going—” Old Man Sayre shut up at last. He, too, had seen the visitors.
“If you would move forward?” a new voice spoke behind Nick and Mr. Mills. Nick started to turn his head. “Don’t turn around,” the voice continued. “Walk.”
Nick walked. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mr. Mills walk as well. In front of him, he could see the other neighbors being herded toward the central asphalt circle.
“My lawn!” Sayre called out. “Watch where you’re walking there!
I’ve spent good money on this lawn!”
Todd and his parents walked from their house toward the others. Nick saw Todd wave at the lawn man to keep quiet. About ten of the men in brown moved forward and surrounded Sayre.
But the soldiers seemed to make him even more frantic. “You can’t keep me quiet. I’ll say my piece! This was a free country, last time I looked!”
Todd took a step toward the street, as if he might physically restrain Sayre. His father stepped in his way. Todd and his father stared at each other for a minute, but neither one said a word. Todd’s hands tightened into fists, but he stayed on his own lawn.
For once, Nick thought, Todd had had a good idea. Sayre was going to get himself into real trouble. The soldiers were tightening their net. Nick didn’t see any guns, but some of them had bows, with arrows notched and ready for flight. And all but a few of them had swords hanging at their sides, in elaborate scabbards of the same dark metal as the helmets.
Sayre’s head began to twist from far left to far right and back again, as if he was trying to watch every soldier who approached him. “Who gave you permission? This is my house, and my yard. I warn you, I’ve got a gun. Another step, I’m going into my house, and when I come out—”
The soldier behind Nick shouted something to the men around Sayre. Two of the men in brown stepped forward and grabbed the lawn man’s arms. A third pulled his sword. The handle was dark, but the blade shone bright silver in the strange sunlight.
“What?” Sayre called in disbelief. “You can’t do this sort of thing on a man’s—”
But the soldier in command had barked another order. The men to either side of Sayre pulled his arms away from his body so that he couldn’t move. And the man with the sword drove the blade deep into Sayre’s stomach, moving the double-edged weapon first right, then left, before pulling it free.
The other two men let go of Sayre’s arms. Somehow Sayre was still standing. He moved his hands to his stomach, in a futile attempt to keep his insides from falling out onto the lawn.
“Yard,” Sayre managed as blood bubbled between his lips. “Shouldn’t. Oh, my. Sorry.”
He fell first to his knees, and then to his face. His body spasmed twice, and then he was still.
Everyone in the neighborhood was quiet for a moment. It was the first time Nick had ever seen someone die.
He turned around to look at the man who had given the order. The man was dressed in the same dark uniform as the others, but wore no helmet. His pale face bore an even paler scar on each cheek, positioned as if they had been put there on purpose. The scars turned upward as the man smiled.
“We generally kill one,” the leader said. “It makes the others follow orders that much more quickly.” He shouted another guttural command to the swordsman, who leaned down and wiped the blood from his sword with Sayre’s tattered polo shirt. “If you would all gather together in the circle?”
Nick turned back to see the neighbors moving toward the central asphalt. What else, he wondered, could they do?
“In this case,” the leader of the soldiers continued conversationally, “I think that you would thank me. We shall never have to hear about his property again. Not that it’s that much trouble to kill another one of you. It might be prudent to do as we say.” Nick looked from face to face of all the people from his street. Mrs. Smith was crying very quietly. The Furlongs were actually holding onto each other. He saw Mary Lou flinch as the leader shouted something else in the guttural tongue. Her brother, Jason, stared in confusion through his thick glasses, first at the soldiers, then at his sister and mother. Mary Lou grabbed his hand and led him toward the others. Todd Jackson walked backward toward the circle, his eyes half on the soldiers and half on his father, who pushed Todd’s mother on in front of him. Mr. Mills and Nick’s mother seemed to be staying close together as well.
Nick heard someone yell across the street. One of the soldiers had emerged from Sayre’s house. He was carrying a revolver as if he didn’t trust it, held away from his body, the handle pressed between thumb and forefinger, letting the gun dangle barrel-down.
He handed the gun to his leader, who placed the revolver in the palm of his hand as if he was much more familiar with this sort of weapon. The leader pulled something back on the rear of the gun, and then pointed the revolver between the shoulder blades of Sayre’s body.
He pulled the trigger. The gunshot sounded very loud in the silence. Sayre’s body jerked, but Nick guessed that was only from the force of the bullet entering the dead flesh.
One of the neighbors, Mrs. Furlong maybe, shouted. Nick couldn’t turn around to look. He was still staring at the gun.
“It is much quicker than the sword,” the leader said as he looked directly at Nick. “While it won’t work forever, it will work for now. I trust you won’t require me to use it on you.” He raised the nose of the revolver to point at Nick’s chest.
Nick realized he still stood in the middle of the street. He hurried to join the others as the leader said something to his fellow soldiers in that second language. They laughed.
“And now it is time we moved along. It is not too good, these days, to stay in one place too long, or to have too much fun. We have no desire, just yet, to wake the dragon.”
He turned to glance at the forest. “North, I think, will be the safest route. You can never be too sure, especially with the way things have been lately.” He looked back at the neighbors. “But I’m quite sure you realize that things have changed around here.”
This time it was the leader who laughed.
Around the Circle #2:
Todd at Fourteen
It was all crap, but some crap was worse than others. “Who moved my tools?”
Todd knew that tone of voice. From anyone but his father, it migh
t almost sound reasonable. He swore under his breath as he heard his father’s heavy footsteps on the stairs.
He stared across the kitchen table to where his mother stood by the stove. Her gaze left the pot she was tending. She looked first at the floor, then at the ceiling. Hunting for somewhere to escape, Todd thought. Except that there was no escape around here.
She didn’t look at Todd. Nobody in the family looked at each other when there was this kind of trouble. Todd and his mother both waited silently and did their best not to watch as his father opened the basement door and entered the kitchen.
Maybe, Todd thought, this would be the time he fought back. Something had kept him from doing it in the past. Maybe the fact the guy was his father, no matter what kind of a jerk he was. Or— and this was a better reason—the fact that if he made it bad for his father, his father would make it worse for his mother. And, no matter what happened, Mom wouldn’t leave.
“Somebody’s been using my fuckin’ hammer.” His father held the wooden handle in his hand like a club. “You know how I feel about somebody using my fuckin’ things without permission.”
Todd knew what he wanted to say: You get almost as angry as when Mom used to mention there was something broken around the house. His mother never mentioned when things were broken anymore. She didn’t mention much of anything around her husband.
His father paused for a minute, waiting for a confession. There was total silence, punctuated only by the man’s breathing—in and out, in and out.
Maybe this wouldn’t be one of the bad ones.
His mother didn’t look at him, and he didn’t look at his mother.
They both looked toward his father, without meeting his eyes.
The front step had been broken. His mother had been very upset about that loose board. She had been desperate to have it fixed. To his mother, it didn’t matter what went on inside this house, but the outside of the house had to look fine. What would the neighbors think?
Todd had fixed the step when his father was out with the boys. His father was out with the boys a lot these days. Somehow Todd had put the hammer back wrong. He hadn’t been careful enough; had hung it back wrong on its hook or disturbed the dust that covered half the workbench. Dad never really used his tools anymore. He would just go down to the basement from time to time to make sure nobody else had touched them.
“Answer me!” his father demanded as he slapped Todd’s mother full across the face. At least he hit her with the hand that didn’t hold the hammer.
His mother started to cry.
As usual, that only made things worse. “I’ll give you something to cry about.”
His mother took a step away. His father closed back within striking range.
That was it. Todd couldn’t sit here at the breakfast table and see his mother get another black eye. He’d had enough of his father’s crap. He stood up and faced the old man.
“Dad, listen—”
His father spun to confront him. Both hands held the hammer now, as if he was holding the tool back from lashing out. He smiled, an expression of fury rather than joy.
“What do you want, Toddy boy?” The words came out slowly, his voice weighed down with sarcasm. “Why are you always getting in my way? You were worthless from the day you were born.” He made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “If your mother had had enough sense not to get knocked up, I wouldn’t be in this mess today.”
“Dad,” Todd tried to explain, “the front step was broken. I had to—” Dad’s strange smile twisted deeper into his face. “So it was you, you little shit? You want to use my hammer so much? I’ll give you my hammer!”
He swung the hammer wildly at Todd’s head. This time Todd was faster. He ducked the blow as his father twisted around, carried by the hammer’s momentum.
His mother screamed and tried to grab his father’s arm. Dad pushed her to the floor and forgot about her. He turned back to Todd. He held a hammer, and his son was going to pay.
Todd took a step away, and found his back pressed against the shelves of the corner hutch where his mother kept her extra plates and cookbooks. There was nowhere else to run.
His father rushed forward, trying to tackle Todd first before delivering the killing blow. Todd’s arms flew out from his body as he tried to escape. All three shelves came crashing down behind him. There were broken plates and cookbooks everywhere.
The dramatic noise stopped his father for an instant. Todd felt a tingling from where one of the heavy volumes had caught him behind the ear.
“Shit!” Todd screamed. He slammed his open palm against the now empty wall. The pain had brought his anger out at last.
His father blinked. “You’re gonna break every fuckin’ thing in the house.” He tightened his grip on his hammer.
Todd had had enough. “You’re the one who’s broken, Dad.” His father swung at him, but the broken plates around him gave Todd some space to move. He ducked the swing easily. He found his own hand forming a fist. One more swing and he’d knock his father across the room.
But his father’s foot slipped on the broken china. He lost his balance and staggered three steps to the left.
Todd found himself laughing. “You’re so lame! You could never catch me!”
“Lame?” his father screamed, fully lost in his rage. “I’ll show you who’s lame! I’m twice the man you’ll ever be. My son the fuckup. You’re all fuckups, every one of you!”
The hammer smashed a teapot on the kitchen counter. Todd saw that his mother had never gotten off the floor. She had curled into a fetal position in the corner. Father and son circled each other warily.
The doorbell rang.
Todd froze. All the rage and fear at his father drained from him, replaced by a different sort of panic. Somebody had heard. It was a hot day. Most of the windows were open.
“The neighbors can go to hell!” his father screamed.
There was a pounding on the door. The doorbell rang for a second time.
His mother got up, doing her best to straighten her clothes as she walked to the door. His father paused, letting the arm that held the hammer fall to his side.
Todd heard his mother open the door, followed by her reassuring response to a male voice whose words were not quite audible.
“No, Officer,” she said brightly. “There must be some mistake.
There’s no problem here.” The door closed.
“Goddamned police,” Todd’s father muttered. “Who do they think they are, interfering in people’s lives!” He pointed the hammer at Todd, but made no further move to strike out. “I don’t want you talking to anyone about this, hear? Everything stays in the family!” He threw the hammer on the table and turned toward the family room. “I need to get a drink.”
He staggered from the room, his anger forgotten.
His mother appeared at the other door, the one that led to the front hall. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she whispered. “I just don’t.”
There was no way to save his mother. Todd was as full of crap as the rest of them.
And there was no way for that crap to go away, unless he could get out of here.
Three
The dozen neighbors on Chestnut Circle were surrounded and prodded toward the forest behind Nick’s house. The soldiers seemed to be very enthusiastic with their spears. The neighbors were much quieter than the night before; the Furlongs didn’t argue, Bobby and Jason kept their hands to themselves, the Dafoes huddled around their daughter, muttering how “everything’ll work out fine.” No one else wanted to end up like Old Man Sayre.
There were some words between Todd Jackson and his father. Nick couldn’t quite make out what they said. The leader of the men in brown sauntered over to the two of them and cheerfully waved his gun in their faces. Todd stared back at the soldier for a minute before looking away. His father hurried ahead. Neither said another word.
Nick’s mother waved for him to hurry along. He felt something s
harp at his back and decided he’d better follow her lead. He left the sunshine and stepped into the deep shadow of the woods.
Their forced march was brought up short by the line of trees and dense undergrowth before them. The dark ivy that had crawled into their neighborhood also curled here from tree to tree, creating such a wall of vegetation that Nick could barely see ten feet into the woods. If the soldiers had cut a path through the growth before, there was no sign of it now.
The leader shouted another of his guttural orders, and a pair of men freed axes from their belts and hacked away at the creepers. A high, shrilling sound filled the air, a noise with all the timbre and grating intensity of those early-warning sirens they had at school. Nick thought about covering his ears but didn’t. He didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than he had to.
The largest of the vines separated with a final shriek, and then the forest was quiet again. The noise, Nick realized, had come from the vines themselves, as if they were calling out in pain.
The men with the axes pushed their way into the undergrowth.
“I suggest that you move quickly now,” the leader addressed the neighbors. “These vines do like to rejoin.”
As he spoke, Nick looked down at the pieces of vine, which had been severed in half a dozen places. Every piece of soot-colored vegetation was moving, twisting about on the ground like half a dozen blind snakes, their severed ends oozing a liquid darker than blood. A couple of the larger pieces sent out deep green shoots as well, leafy creepers that sought to twirl around other fragments of the vine.
“Shall we move?” the leader reminded them in a voice that sounded like anything but a request.
Mr. Mills led the way through the opening, and the others followed.
The remaining soldiers took up the rear.
“Once in the forest,” the leader continued conversationally, “the going gets easier. These vines climb higher and spread through the branches of the trees. They quite effectively keep anything else from growing down below.”
Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) Page 3
