The Jabberwock

by Ninie Hammon

  Merrie was sitting in her mother’s lap, which Malachi would bet wasn’t where she normally sat for breakfast. She dropped a dollop of grape jelly on her plate from the spoon where she was gleefully digging it out of the jar. He was reasonably certain her mother didn’t allow the child to do something that messy and sticky, either, and Merrie seemed to be aware that she was in a no-harm, no-foul zone for the moment and she best make hay while she had the chance.

  Merrie picked up the glob with her fingers and stuffed it into her sticky mouth. Nobody cared.

  “Stop dawdling over the toast,” Sam told him. “You promised to let me take you to E.J.’s and disinfect those holes in your belly. Do you think if you put it off long enough I’ll forget? Putting it off isn’t going to make it hurt any less.”

  And it did hurt! Oh, my yes it did, not that Malachi let on. He’d been shot before — had the scars to prove it — and as bullet wounds went, this one was unspectacular. But it still hurt! He’d lost a lot of blood, too, felt weak and lightheaded. Get shot in a war and medical care was only a chopper ride away. Here, not so much. He likely needed a transfusion and that wasn’t going to happen.

  They were all doing a pretty convincing dance around the gigantic elephant in the middle of the room, the reality of their lives and the bizarre occurrences of the past twenty-four hours. There was, after all, always the possibility that the world had righted itself during the night, that sanity and order and the normal functioning of the universe had returned to Nowhere County. That driving down Route 17 through the county line would be of no more consequence than it had been any one of the hundreds, thousands of times Malachi had done it before.

  He didn’t think so, but he suspected he was alone in that assessment. The women wanted to believe normal had blown back in on the heels of the storm he didn’t believe had blown abnormal into their lives in the first place. They wanted to think the Middle of Nowhere would sink back into obscurity today and folks passing it would recall the bizarre happenings there one June in 1995 and comment about how so many people had been bamboozled by some cosmic practical joke, or had been victims of a mass group hallucination.

  Folks would drive past the bus shelter and pay it no mind. Just drive away from the Middle of Nowhere and out into the rest of the world.

  Oh, how he hoped that was so, how he wished it would be true. But he didn’t for a New York minute believe it.

  Charlie had insisted on going back to the Middle of Nowhere with Sam and Malachi. She had her reasons, he supposed, but he didn’t know what they were and wouldn’t likely have understood them if he had. If he were Charlie McClintock, he couldn’t have been dragged to that half acre of the planet by a team of Clydesdales and the Budweiser Beer wagon.

  Or maybe he would. He was aware of, and would bet the others were feeling the same thing, that they were involved in something “other.” Something “outside.” And a thing like that wasn’t a thing you just ignored, turned your back on and walked away.

  It wasn’t until they were in Sam’s car on their way to the Dollar General Store that the elephant in the room lifted its trunk and blared out a tremendous honk.

  “What do you think happened with Abby?” Sam asked Malachi.

  Sam was driving. Malachi was in the front seat and Charlie and Merrie were behind. The people at the bus shelter knew what had happened at the county line — about Abby and the key. If Abby had shown up there, E.J. or Liam or Pete would have come dashing to Charlie’s house with it even though it was too late. Nobody’d come. When Sam called E.J.’s office to give the others the news about Merrie half an hour ago, Abby still hadn’t shown up.

  “With Abby or to Abby?” Charlie wanted to know.

  “You mean, why didn’t she actually put Merrie in the kiln?” Malachi asked. “I’d like to think the whole thing was a bluff, that she was too decent a human being to lock a little girl up in a kiln.” Malachi had picked up on the edge in Charlie’s voice and he didn’t begrudge her a single hard feeling. “But it’s equally possible Abby couldn’t do it. There are a lot of ways it could have played out.”

  He’d thought about it. They all had. Maybe Abby had planned to put the child in the kiln but thought it was empty. When she saw how full it was, she knew the child wouldn’t have enough air. Or maybe she didn’t care how full it was, but when she picked the child up, she realized she wouldn’t have the strength to carry her all that way — out of the bedroom, down the hall, across the kitchen, the porch and the backyard. So she’d settled for sliding her under the bed. Behind the poufy ballerina bed skirt, the child was invisible.

  “The ‘too decent a human being’ description begs the question: how’d she turn on Malachi and just shoot him?” Sam asked.

  “She was crazy, had a stroke, wasn’t in her right mind, wasn’t responsible for her behavior …” Charlie ticked off the phrases. “Any or all of that is supposed to buy her out of everything.” Charlie paused, and her voice was full of the emotion she was concealing from the little girl beside her. “I’m working on that, but I am here to testify that I am not there yet.”

  “Malachi’s lucky her aim was off,” Sam said.

  “It wasn’t off.”

  Both women looked at him.

  “The sight’s not zeroed. It’s off, low and to the right. You have to aim high left to hit center. She was aiming at my heart and if the bullet had gone where she intended it to go … she’d have killed me.”

  They let that settle before Sam picked up the ball and began dribbling down the court again.

  “Then what happened to her?”

  “I think she’s dead … somewhere,” Charlie said.

  “Where?” Sam asked.

  Malachi said nothing, just looked out the window.

  Sam ran with it. “Okay, the possibilities are: She drowned and her body washed downstream. Or she swam upstream and got out of the river and … went somewhere. For some reason.”

  “Or she went into the Jabberwock and never came out.”

  The silence that followed Malachi’s words was as heavy as a down comforter.

  “You think somebody could just stay …?” Sam asked.

  “Sam’s the only one we know for sure,” Charlie said. “We know exactly when she went in and know she popped right out the other side. Like instantly.”

  “I was too busy throwing up to time it, but … yeah, pretty much instantly.”

  “The rest of us, though … how long were we … in there?” Malachi said.

  “Remember now, we decided we’re going to think positively,” Sam chirped, relentlessly cheery. “Life’s back to normal. I can pick up my dry cleaning in Carlisle. You can catch that plane back to …”

  Maybe she didn’t finish because she didn’t know where. But it was more likely that it had occurred to her, as it had to Malachi, that they weren’t going to leave here the same people they’d been. Back out there in the normal world … they’d be different. They’d changed. They’d made connections to each other. No, they’d made re-connections to each other. Involuntary or not, those connections were real. And strong.

  “You guys do realize, don’t you, that this is the first time all three of us have been in Nower County at the same time since the night of graduation,” Charlie said.

  Malachi did realize that. Did indeed. Had been thinking about it. Turning it over and over in his mind. Considering what possible significance there could be to … Maybe the others had, too, because nobody said anything after that. They rode the last mile to the parking lot in silence.

  When Sam pulled to a stop in front of the Dollar General Store, what they saw dashed their hopes for normal and ordinary. Thelma Jackson and Rodney Sentry had gone home, Pete Rutherford had returned and the Tungate brothers and Abner Riley had never left. Liam and Hank Bayless were loading a body into the back of Hank’s pickup truck.

  “We lost one,” Pete said simply when they approached him. Hank got into his truck and Liam got in with him and they drove away. “Willi
e Cochran — you remember him, got his thumbs mashed off in the mine by a scoop when he was a kid.”

  Malachi remembered him.

  “He’s what — eighty-five, ninety years old?” Charlie said.

  “Was eighty-seven. He showed up like Fish did, choking like he’d swallowed his tongue. But ‘fore anybody could do anything for him, he just went limp. Heart attack, I suppose.”

  “He had heart problems,” Sam said.

  Malachi looked after where Hank’s truck had disappeared around a bend.

  “Where’s he taking the body?”

  There was no longer a funeral home in Nowhere County, but the facility remained. Somebody’d bought the Bascum’s Mortuary building while Malachi was deployed, tried to turn the plush viewing rooms into a dress boutique. The business had failed, but Malachi figured the basement embalming parlor hadn’t been part of the renovation, that there were still “body drawers” there that slid out of the wall.

  “If the refrigeration system still works at Bascum’s … but if not, Roscoe gave him the key to Foodtown.” There was a beat of silence. “It has a walk-in freezer.”

  Sam shooed Malachi into E.J.’s office, where she could do a professional job on his bandage. Merrie accompanied her because the little girl was, after all, the veterinarian’s assistant. Charlie wandered from one of the “front line” people to the next, asking how things had been.

  Business had been slow. But the conduit was definitely open.

  Chapter Forty

  When Liam Montgomery returned from Bascum’s, he took out a pad and pencil and started taking notes and giving directions, standing in the shade beneath the awning of E.J.’s office. He’d stepped up to the plate admirably, given that he had no training and absolutely no idea what he was doing. Sam was impressed. He’d taken charge and would keep the wheels on until …

  Until whenever.

  Short term, until Senior Deputy Skeet Phillips sobered up and showed up and nobody was looking forward to that.

  Long term … Nobody wanted to think long term.

  Charlie had just come out of E.J.’s office with Merrie, who was pitching a fit because she wanted to stay and play with the bunnies, when Abner Riley let out a strangled cry. All eyes snapped to where he was standing. He was in front of the bus shelter and someone had just appeared there.

  Someone. Or something.

  Charlie turned and shoved Merrie back into Raylynn Bennett’s arms and slammed the office door in their faces while Sam and Malachi started across the parking lot.

  It was Abby and there was no way to tell if she was dead or alive. She looked dead. Long dead. Long dead and …

  Her whole body was swollen like a corpse bloats when it decomposes. Sam had seen only one decomposing corpse in her life and the smell of it … Abby had no dead body stink. She just looked like a balloon was swelled up inside her.

  Her face was a horror, totally unrecognizable. Nobody would have known who she was without the blonde hair and the telltale Mickey Mouse smock. It had been so baggy it had hung off her skinny frame and now it strained at the seams to contain her.

  Sam outdistanced the others hurrying across the lot to help Abby, but when she got about fifteen feet away from the shelter, Malachi caught up and grabbed her arm. Wouldn’t let her go any farther.

  “Malachi,” Sam began. “I need to—”

  And that’s when it happened.

  Abby Clayton exploded.

  It was as if a bomb had gone off inside her. Her head blew apart like a pumpkin dropped off the first-floor balcony onto the porch. The rest of her exploded as well, but her clothing prevented the spewing of body parts everywhere.

  But her head …

  Abby Clayton’s head was all over the parking lot.

  Charlie had caught up with Sam and Malachi, her eyes as big as marbles, her face the color of a new gym sock. She looked at Sam and opened her mouth, but had to find a breath before she could speak.

  “What could possibly … what could cause a thing like that?”

  There was no medical … but Sam knew. They all did.

  “The Jabberwock,” she heard herself say, her voice faint and airless.

  Malachi’s deep baritone was a whisper, too.

  “With jaws that bite and claws that catch.”

  The End

  A Note from the Author

  Thank you for reading The Jabberwock.

  If you enjoyed this book, you please consider writing a review on your favorite bookselling site so other readers might enjoy it too. Just a couple of sentences would mean a lot to me.

  Thank you!

  Ninie Hammon

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  About the Author

  Ninie Hammon (rhymes with shiny, not skinny) grew up in Muleshoe, Texas, got a BA in English and theatre from Texas Tech University and snagged a job as a newspaper reporter. She didn't know a thing about journalism, but her editor said if she could write he could teach her the rest of it and if she couldn't write the rest of it didn't matter. She hung in there for a 25-year career as a journalist. As soon as she figured out that making up the facts was a whole lot more fun than reporting them, she turned to fiction and never looked back.

  Ninie now writes suspense--every flavor except pistachio: psychological suspense, inspirational suspense, suspense thrillers, paranormal suspense, suspense mysteries.

  In every book she keeps this promise to her Loyal Reader: "I will tell you a story in a distinctive voice you'll always recognize, about people as ordinary as you are--people who have been slammed by something they didn’t sign on for, and now they must fight for their lives. Then smack in the middle of their everyday worlds, those people encounter the unexplainable--and it's always the game-changer."

  Also By Ninie Hammon

  Through The Canvas Series

  Black Water

  Red Web

  Gold Promise

  Blue Tears

  The Unexplainable Collection

  Five Days in May

  Black Sunshine

  The Based on True Stories Collection

  Home Grown

  Sudan

  When Butterflies Cry

  The Knowing Series

  The Knowing

  The Deceiving

  The Reckoning

  The Fault

  Stand-alone Psychological Thrillers

  The Memory Closet

  The Last Safe Place

  Nonfiction/Memoir

  Typin’ ‘Bout My Generation