“Hold on,” she said. “You tried to rob Jack’s?”
Jamie didn’t realize he was sobbing until he looked through the veil of tears into Sammie’s stunned, disbelieving eyes. He knew the look – she tilted her head ever so slightly, her right eye squinting. Sammie possessed a keen sense for Jamie’s tall tales, of which he’d sprouted many. She caressed him as if calming a small child.
“Jamie, have you been sleepwalking again?”
A single mocking laugh broke through his anger. “You kidding? Look at me, Sammie. It’s not like those other times.” He held up the gun. “How you think I got hold of this?”
He took to sleepwalking through town since his parents died. Jamie confided to Sammie last summer at her father’s lake house.
“Jamie, everything you’ve told me ... don’t you see how it’s crazy?”
Jamie seethed. “You think I took Ben’s gun and shot myself then made up some loony story so I wouldn’t come off like a total dumbass?”
“I wanna believe you, Jamie. I do. But … the Queen Bee? Really? Ms. Bidwell?” She looked away for an instant. “And there’s something else. You have blood stains, but I don’t see where you’re bleeding. Look.”
Jamie swept his right hand over his side, across his belly, front to back, fully expecting his fingers to land in the holes. He found nothing odd, looked down and saw no wounds.
“No way.” He twisted about and posed for the mirror, feeling himself all over in a desperate search for bullet holes. “They were there, Sammie. I crossed the river and I stopped to look. I was bleeding. See? Look at all this blood. See? See?”
He was talking to the mirror, staring through the glass at her reflection, watching her disbelief turn into something deeper – the frightened look of a girl locked in a room with a nutcase wearing a hockey mask. He rested his head against the mirror. Jamie never considered that he’d just gone through the mother of all sleepwalking adventures.
Sammie tried to touch him, but Jamie recoiled. “You don’t have a shirt. Maybe you walked into some briars. Maybe the cuts are small and it’s hard to see through all the stains. Doesn’t that make sense?”
“I took off my shirt at the river. I told you. You think briars caused all this goddamn blood?”
“Fine, Jamie. Look, this gun scares me. Put it down on the dresser. I’ll get a first aid kit and clean the blood. Maybe we’ll find the injury.”
Sammie disappeared into the bathroom. Jamie was speechless. After all he went through, he would’ve expected her to be as panicked as he, turning off the bedroom light and racing to find her dad in case bad men were outside. Jamie couldn’t fathom how calm and rational she was. Was this the Sammie who threw a conniption fit when her dad suggested she find other friends because Jamie was “a poor influence?”
“Please, Sammie. Go wake up your dad. I know I’m not his favorite dude right now …”
She emerged from the bathroom carrying a towel, a first aid kit and a pair of soaked wash cloths. “No, you’re not. That new window cost him four hundred dollars. Here.” She handed him the wash cloths, which were drenched in warm water and soap. “Let’s clean you up.”
“So when did you become Florence Nightingale?”
“I have many talents. My whole life doesn’t revolve around you.”
He wanted to ask, “Since when?” However, he bit his tongue. They stopped cleaning for a few awkward seconds but didn’t make eye contact.
“Some good news,” she said without looking up. “No bullet holes, or holes or scratches of any kind that I can see. I can’t explain the blood.”
The girl was steady as a rock. He wanted to believe her, to put all his hope into another sleepwalking fiasco. He looked around again, and his eyes widened. He glanced at his watch.
“Sammie, why are you up so late? It’s almost three in the morning.”
She shrugged. “Reading. Sometimes I lose myself in a book and there’s no stopping me. Besides, I only have one exam tomorrow, and it’s a cakewalk. What do I need to sleep for?”
He should have known. She’d always been a bookworm, except when Jamie visited and talked her into many ill-fated adventures, most of which included Coop. Afterward, she endured the inevitable, awkward lectures from disappointed parents then came back for more. She never hid her feelings. As Sammie finished cleaning him, Jamie grabbed her hand.
“Sammie, I need you to look at me.” She did, offering no hint of a smile. “Tell me the truth. I know you will because of how you feel about me. OK? Do you really think I’m making all this up? You really believe I dreamed everything while I was sleepwalking? You think I stole the gun from Ben, don’t you?”
“Come on, Jamie. You know me better than ...”
“No, Sammie. Just be honest with me.”
She set aside the blood-stained cloths and stammered for words then leaned in to Jamie. She reached out as if to hug him, then pulled her arms back, settling for a kiss on his cheek.
“I care so much about you. Gosh, for as long as I can remember. But this story … it’s beyond crazy. Think about it for a minute. This is Albion. Albion? ‘The town time forgot?’ So, you’re saying Mr. Paulus from the flour mill and Ms. Bidwell, your English teacher, tried to gun you down on Main Street? And then there’s this woman … what, Lydia? She’s talking about how you’re only going to live a few more hours, and she shows up out of thin air. How’s that possible, Jamie?”
He fought back new tears. “I’m not crazy.”
Jamie felt small. He always used to be in control when he was with Sammie because she adored him. Now, he felt her judging him, reevaluating all those years she wasted in hopes he’d make her his girlfriend. Was he so self-absorbed he couldn’t see the girl she became? Somewhere along the way, her features softened. He never really noticed how blue her eyes were, or how much her long brown hair shined.
“I’m thirsty,” he whispered.
“Dummy me. I should’ve thought of that right off. I’ll get you a glass of water. Otherwise, you’re good to go.” She started to the bathroom. “Oh, and I think you best get some clothes on before Daddy hears us. I’ve got some t-shirts and jogging shorts in the top drawer.” She pointed to the chest of drawers next to the window Jamie flung himself through.
Jamie threw on a white tank top and grey shorts with a flexible waist band. Sammie brought him a glass of water, which he drank in one long, continuous gulp. She took the glass and went for seconds.
“Oh, and here’s a ponytail tie,” she said. “You’ll feel better when you get your hair out of your face.”
“Guess you’ve thought of everything.”
She shrugged. “I just want you to feel better. That’s all.”
Jamie sat on the edge of her bed and tied up his hair. She was the only person close to him who never asked when he’d be getting a haircut. He drank a second glass of water while Sammie watched, sitting beside him. Excess driveled off his chin.
“I needed this,” he said. He handed the glass to Sammie, and they shared a cautious smile. “I do feel better,” he whispered. “Thank you, Sammie. Thank you.”
He didn’t hesitate to kiss her on the cheek. When he leaned back, Jamie stared into her eyes and felt something else. He couldn’t define it. The notion was vague and awkward, one he never sensed around her before, as if something were misplaced.
That’s when someone pounded on her door.
“Samantha, what’s going on in there? I heard voices. Samantha?”
Her father’s arrival should’ve scared him. Walter Huggins banished Jamie from this room four years ago, when he decided no boy was going to carry hormones behind closed doors with his little girl.
Jamie wasn’t frightened now because Walt would listen. Walt was older, knew the world was a cruel place, and would help.
“It’s OK, Daddy. Hold on just a second.” She grabbed Jamie by the hand. “We’re gonna figure this out, Jamie. I promise. You’re safe. You don’t have to worry about those assassins breaki
ng in here.”
She smiled, looking every bit the angel who opened her window to him. And he was almost enamored. Almost. Jamie’s smile disappeared as soon as Sammie started for the door. What did she say? Assassins? She called them assassins?
The pain sliced through his gut with a jagged blade. His heart broke into another jog, and Jamie understood what was wrong.
Jamie grabbed the bedpost as Sammie reached for the door handle. She wouldn’t say that. Why would she call them that? She dismissed his story too easily. That’s when he noticed the suitcase next to her bed. He also realized his gun had vanished.
8
3:05 a.m.
M ICHAEL COOPER WAS alone in the house, and he had only himself to blame. His parents all but begged him to come with them to his cousin’s wedding. They offered numerous incentives, but Michael was having nothing of it. Privately, his father painted the long weekend as an opportunity for debauchery, starting with a Thursday night bachelor party certain to go into the wee hours.
“Listen up, Pops,” Michael explained. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I reckon it’s no different than shoving a whole chocolate cake in front of a six-year-old and saying, ‘Dig in.’ Here’s the thing. I already got my hand in that cake, if you get my speed.”
The “speed” was littered with half-truths. Yes, Michael enjoyed a fine cigar on occasion – when he found the opportunity to swipe them using Jamie as an accomplice. Moreover, a few beers had gone missing from select Albion refrigerators over the years.
“Tell you the God’s honest truth, Pops, those Starkville Coopers … hell, something ain’t screwed on right with those folks. I can’t cotton to them. And Starkville, Mississippi? She ain’t exactly the jewel in the crown, if you get my speed.”
His father sighed. “Why can’t you speak like everyone else?”
Michael laughed. “It’s all about style, Pops. A comedian’s got to have a style all his own. Dig me?”
“You’re a card, Mike, but one of these days that style of yours is gonna get you in a mess of trouble. Life isn’t a series of one-liners and bizarre analogies.”
Then his father acquiesced to Michael’s wishes, and his parents left for Starkville by mid-afternoon, leaving behind a list of mandatory chores that leaned toward scrubbing, mopping and dusting. Michael moaned as he studied the list then turned his focus to the chaos he planned to introduce at Albion County School the next day.
He texted regularly with his fellow conspirators, who put the final touches on the special packages he’d deliver after midnight. Michael and four others, including Jamie, gathered ample cow manure, which they mixed with ground beef and molded into thin patties cut to the identical dimensions of the so-called hamburgers the state’s vendors provided its schools. They wore surgical masks and latex gloves and slipped the patties between wax paper. They placed the patties into boxes stolen from the cafeteria dumpster and stored them in a deep freezer that Arnold Wilcox’s father never used.
“They’ll never make it to the serving line,” Michael said. “That don’t matter so long as they get thrown in the oven. The odor, the panic. I reckon there’s gonna be something rotten, but not in Denmark.”
Jamie was supposed to help him deliver the goods, but Michael’s “No. 1 hombre” waffled all night. He saw Jamie fall into these funks ever since the murders. Michael tried to understand, and his tactics for perking up Jamie usually worked. Not this time. Jamie insisted he was ready to leave this hellhole. Michael tried to offer original wisecracks, but he couldn’t break his best friend’s depression. Jamie texted Michael to look at the bigger picture, to see life beyond Albion. If they hit the road together …
Michael responded with sarcasm, and Jamie texted nothing more after 1 a.m. Michael texted several follow-ups, but at some point, he laid his head on a pillow and envisioned alternative plans.
The next thing he knew, Michael woke up coughing. He flapped about like a freshly-landed trout until the object in his mouth was removed. When he realized he wasn’t drowning or dreaming, Michael took stock of his surroundings, and specifically the familiar face who towered over him pointing a suppressor-equipped pistol between the boy’s eyes.
“Here’s how it’s going to play,” Christian Bidwell said. “I’m not planning on shooting your sorry ass right now, but if you don’t go with the flow on this, no one is ever going to find your ashes. Got me, Coop?”
Michael searched his mind for outrageous possibilities. Perhaps he woke up to the wrong end of a prank. Maybe his Starkville cousins were trying to scare the hell out of him. Not likely, unless they were in the habit of recruiting the local star quarterback, power forward, pole-vaulter, and all-around Johnny All-America rolled into one.
“Bidwell. Dude. Mi casa su casa. So, what’s with the heater?”
Christian snickered. “You’re a funny guy, Coop. Think you are, anyhow.” He dropped his smile. “I’m going to lay it down once: This is not a joke. You do what I say or I’m going to shove his gun down your throat and blow the back of your head off. Crystal?”
“Crystal, dude.” Michael felt an urge to pee.
As he sat up, Michael saw another person standing in the doorway. As if on cue, the other visitor flicked the light switch. When Michael saw Agatha Bidwell, he wet the bed.
“Oh … you got to be …” He scrambled his thoughts, his brain still half-asleep. Although Michael never had to endure a Bidwell English class – he made a point of avoiding a semester of such well-known terror – he listened to ample tales of peers who wilted under her dominion.
“Look, I get what this is,” Michael stammered. “You found out. OK. I get that. But aren’t you … I mean, this is a little over the top, ain’t it?”
“Explain yourself, Mr. Cooper,” Agatha said as she approached the bed holding a pistol.
“The scheme. The prank. You found out, right? Look, I’ll turn myself in first thing. We weren’t going through with it anyway.”
“Scheme?”
“The cafeteria? Hamburger sabotage?” He saw their confusion. “You got no idea.”
Agatha rubbed her temple. “I have had fourteen of the most confounding years of my life to study teenaged children who possess a level of intellectual mediocrity that will astound and mystify historians for centuries to come. Yes? Trust me, Mr. Cooper. I have more than sufficient idea. What I don’t have, however, is James Sheridan. I want to know where he is, and you will lead me to him.” She turned to Christian. “Did I ‘cut to the chase’ sufficiently enough for you?”
“You’re getting there, Mom. Keep working on it.” He leveled the gun at Michael’s lips. “Now open wide and start talking, dumbass.”
9
S AMMIE TURNED THE lock, grabbed the handle and looked back at Jamie with a reassuring glint in her eyes. He was ten feet from the window and ready to run.
However, the tall, domineering frame of Walt Huggins bore down on him, ignoring Sammie and focusing his wrath exclusively on the teenager who had no business there. Walt grabbed him by the shoulder and jerked him. Although Jamie was 6-foot-3, he stared upward to meet this man’s fiery eyes.
“Move an inch, boy, and I’ll knock you ten ways to Sunday.”
His deep voice came across like finely-honed granite. Walt filled out everywhere – the neck and shoulders of a linebacker, the biceps of a weightlifter half his age, the chest of a circus strongman. Only his receding hairline betrayed the notion of a superman. Walt leaned in, his breath a reminder of the onions he ate with a distant meal.
“You’ve got one chance to make this good, James. Explain why I’m standing here looking at your sorry mug in my daughter’s bedroom at three in the morning.”
Jamie stammered. The man who once compared Jamie to Dennis the Menace and predicted a stint in the state penal system, seemed more than the equal to Iggy’s killers. His breaths shortened. He panicked.
Sammie came to his aid, grabbing her father by the arm.
“Daddy, please hear him out
. He said he saw horrible things tonight. Incredible things.”
Walt turned and winked. “Don’t worry, Pumpkin. I’m not going to kill him.” He asked Sammie to back off then inspected Jamie’s clothes. “Are you wearing my daughter’s things?”
Jamie and Sammie shared an awkward glance. She shrugged. “Yes, Daddy. He had blood all over him. Something happened. Please let go of Jamie and hear him out.”
Walt did as she asked but told Sammie to get her mother. “I can handle this, Pumpkin.”
Sammie gave Jamie the same reassuring smile he didn’t trust the last time he saw it. She nodded and left the room. Her father saw the bloody clothes and backed away.
“Sit down, James. My daughter seems to think you have a story to share. I’m listening.”
Jamie pieced his thoughts together. Before he began, he apologized.
“Mr. Huggins, first of all, I know you think I’m a major screw-up … and OK, yeah, I ain’t gonna deny it. But I didn’t come here to take advantage of Sammie or …”
“Give it a rest, James. I realize you didn’t come here for Samantha, because you know very well that if you had, I’d string you up from the lowest branch on the tallest tree. Now get on with your story. I heard something about blood. Time is wasting.”
He spared no details. Walt Huggins never interrupted, although Jamie saw him furrow an eyebrow at the mention of Iggy Horne’s death. Walt checked his watch as Jamie reached the conclusion. Walt stepped away, his back turned to Jamie.
As Walt turned and said, “You’re safe,” Jamie heard the scratching again, the same as in the woods. It sounded muffled, as if outside the window. Not now, he thought. Please not now.
“I know what to do,” Walt said, his voice intermingled with the growing chorus that steadily morphed into a symphony of crickets. “We’ll figure this out together, James. James?”
He lost track of Walt’s words as the shrill song returned. He put his hands to his ears, ignoring Walt’s demands to pay attention. Jamie stepped toward the window. The crickets were everywhere, millions of them coating the glass, invisible to the naked eye but too close to be denied. The window cracked, the tiniest sliver piercing the pane like lightning in reverse.
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 4
