At the End of the Road (24 page)

She stayed to the wall, not daring to venture out into the open space of the room and risk tripping or overturning something.

She could hear deep, rhythmic breathing. Snoring. As she worked her way along the wall, the snoring grew louder. She knew it was the paralyzed man, but she did not think that she was in his bedroom. A bedroom would be to the rear of the house.

She maneuvered past a picture hung on the wall, careful not to disturb it. The snoring was louder now, closer, and it unnerved her. She started to hurry. She just wanted out. She brushed up against a floor lamp, felt it leaning to the side, sensed it tipping over; but she reached out and caught it before it could crash to the floor.

Her hand touched a cool oval of solid metal. A doorknob. The door! She had found the door. She opened it with care, and was about to step through when the sharp odor of mothballs assaulted her nostrils. A closet. It was just a closet. She closed the door with quiet care and continued along the wall.

The snoring seemed to be all around her now, boring into her mind. She wanted just to scream, to scream and run. Her hip bumped something solid and immobile. She reached down and prodded it with her fingers. It felt like a wheel. Her fingers played upward and sunk into the flabby flesh of the paralyzed man. Melodie recoiled. The paralyzed man grunted, but the snoring continued. She stepped around him and found her way back to the wall. The hysteria was returning, and she could not stop herself from hurrying. Her hands were almost beating the wall as she rushed along it.

She jarred another picture, the cheap hook gave way, and the frame came crashing to the floor.

The wood cracked, the glass shattered.

The snoring stopped.

lence. She could not even hear breathing now. She stood and listened, not daring to move. Was he awake? If he were awake, he would say something. There would be movement.

She stood in that spot until she felt her legs giving way again. She had to move or she would fall. The broken glass crackled under her bare feet, cutting them. She came to another door. It had a glass window centered high. It was the front door. She turned the knob and pulled, but the door would not budge. Was it stuck? She let go of the knob and felt along the jamb until she found the turning mechanism for the dead bolt. She retracted the metal bolt and pulled the door open.

Cool night air baptized her. She was reborn.

“Poor child.”

Melodie heard the metallic click when the paralyzed man cocked the hammer of the .22 caliber revolver he kept in the side satchel of his wheelchair. There was a loud pop and the door frame exploded inches from her face, embedding splinters and shards of wood under her skin.

Melodie ran. She ran across the front porch and caught the handrail directly at hip level. Her body flipped over the railing, and she landed with a thud on her back. She turned over, gasping for breath. She could hear the electric hum of the wheelchair as it emerged onto the porch. By the time she had got back to her feet, she heard the rubber tires squeaking on the sloping zigzags of the wooden ramp.

Again, she ran. Her fall had left her disoriented, and it was purely an act of providence that she ran away from the house rather than toward it. When her feet hit the dirt road, she turned to follow its path. She was running blind. The road was her only hope.

Behind her, she could hear the electric motor whirring, high-pitched and straining now, being pushed to its limits. And over the sound of the motor, the delighted laughter of the paralyzed man. It was as if the sound of that laughter was some kind of voodoo spell, sapping the rest of her strength, her will to live. Whatever last bit of energy reserves Melodie Godwin had called upon to make her escape was depleted now. She slowed. The wheelchair was closing the gap. She stumbled like a wounded gazelle. The wheelchair was at her heels, the laughter trapped in her head.

The gunshot felt like a jabbing punch to her lower back as the .22 caliber bullet passed through her side, just missing her right kidney. She collapsed, tumbling into the roadside ditch with the last of her momentum. She was deep in weeds and brambles, looking straight up. She imagined that she could see the paralyzed man peering down at her.

“Looks like the boy will have some work to do.”

She heard him grunt with exertion while he leaned over his chair to gather leaves, limbs, and trash. She felt the debris raining down on her, covering her a bit at a time. He was hiding her.

the shed behind his house—the stupid boy never remembered to lock it. He closed the door behind him and pulled at the low hanging ball chain to turn on the light.

Kenny knew that it was only a matter of time before he was caught. How could he not be caught? The colored policewhore was so far up his ass he needed an enema to get her out. She was closing in on him and he could feel it.

He placed the pistol in his lap and maneuvered his chair over to the long utility shelf. The shelf was too tall for him to see the surface from his seated position, so he felt along the top until his fingers came to a small rectangular box. He pulled it toward him too fast, and the box of ammunition tumbled onto the floor. The .22 caliber cartridges spilled across the concrete surface. It took him several minutes of reaching and grunting to retrieve the two replacement rounds he needed.

The cartridges were hard to feed into the chamber. His hands were shaking. He needed his shot.

He needed the boy. Needed him now. He had used the boy to clean up the pets in his yard. There had been no other choice. The remains had to be disposed of, and the car hidden forever. There was no other choice. The boy was the only tool he had at his disposal. But when dawn came, it would mark the seventh day that the boy had not come to him. A solid week.

Ever since he had showed the girl what Wonder Woman was all about. Maybe he had gone too far.

And now he needed the boy again. He had to clean up the new mess.

Kenny closed his eyes and focused his mind.

He put the universe in motion and set about drawing the boy to him.

miles from Eden Road. In fact, not far from Melodie Godwin’s home. Kyle knew where he was, and he knew how to get where he wanted to be. He walked the night. And found his way home.

Eden Road was dark and quiet, and Kyle kept to the side as he made his way down the dirt road.

He heard an owl high in a pin oak, and stopped to listen.

In the ditch at his feet, Kyle saw a faint dark movement and he could hear the rustle of a possum burrowing under the limbs and leaves, scavenging for food.

Kyle kept walking.

Turpin hit the blue lights on her cruiser as she merged onto I-285, the beltway around Atlanta.

When she hit I-20, she added the siren as well.

man. It was a monster. And she was the reticulated woman.

Her mind had again dissolved into the webwork of light and dark. But it was different this time. This time there was emotion. The webbing hummed with it. The web shook with one overriding emotion: hatred. And under the hatred, pushing it up, was the most basic of human instincts, self-preservation. The hatred would propel her to do what was necessary to save herself. The time for running had passed. Survival depended on one thing: killing the monster. She would never be free until the monster was dead.

She thought she could hear light footsteps on the road, but as she focused her hearing to listen carefully, a seizure convulsed her body. A person standing near that ditch on Eden Road would have seen nothing more than a vague shuddering movement under a dark mound of branches and leaves, as though a possum were burrowing underneath.

Five minutes later, a hand poked up through the leaves. Then another. The hands pushed away the branches, leaves, and debris. The reticulated woman sat up.

off the highway onto Lee Road. She kept her speed up. As she approached Eden Road, Dana flicked off the blue lights. She did not want to announce her arrival.

Eden Road was dark and deserted. There were no streetlights on this country road, and the scattered houses were mostly dark.

She crept forward, vigilant.

tered, the reticulated woman stumbled down the middle of Eden Road. She did not know if she was moving toward the monster’s house or away from it, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was moving. She was moving. She was going to make something happen. Her mind called out a single message. Over and over like a homing beacon, a single thought compelled her onward: Kill the Monster. Her mind was not capable of forming a thought beyond, or even in support of this one basic drive.

She stumbled forward through the darkness, and sadly, as though fate wanted one last laugh at the expense of Melodie Godwin, she was moving away from the house of Kenny Ahearn. Her current path would lead her to a tangle of discarded, rusty barbed wire that Daddy-Bob had been meaning to clear out of that ditch for years now, but never quite got around to. If Melodie had completed those last ten steps, she likely would never have gotten back up. But before she did, Melodie paused, realizing that the darkness of her world was no longer total, and she stood still, now able to make out shadows and gradations of darkness.

There was light. Coming toward her, seeking her out.

A new thought entered her mind. Hide.

Melodie reversed direction and felt her way back to her burrow of leaves and limbs. And when Dana Turpin’s patrol car crept around the curve, Melodie was hidden. The light felt warm as it swept over her hiding spot. When it was past, she lifted her head and could just make out the twin red dots of taillights glowing weakly like dying embers.

The thing that was just barely Melodie Godwin crawled back into the road, and another thought filled its mind: Follow.

lyzed man’s house. It was empty.

He had seen the light creeping through the cracks of the storage shed, but he had to be sure. Kyle searched from room to room, but there was no sign of the man’s presence. In the living room, he saw evidence of trouble: a shattered picture, the broken doorjamb. Satisfied that he was safe for the moment, Kyle snuck upstairs. The attic too was empty. It still smelled of Melodie’s captivity, like the cage of a neglected and abused animal.

Kyle saw the blade on the attic floor, bent and streaked with blood in places. He picked up the severed chain and noted where the unoxidized metal gleamed at the cut ends. He smiled.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Kyle opened the refrigerator and saw that the dish towel that was laid out inside to hold the prepared syringes of insulin was empty. Maybe the paralyzed man was dead. He was capable of preparing the syringes by himself, but only with a good bit of effort. If he had needed the insulin in a hurry . . .

Kyle dug through the kitchen cabinet and pulled out the things he would need. He sat down at the kitchen table and prepared the syringes.

Kyle watched the paralyzed man roll into the kitchen. “We got work to do, but first reach in the Frigidaire and get me my shot.”

“I’m done doing for you. It’s finished.”

“No, son, it ain’t finished. Not by a long haul. You get my shot.”

“You can’t make me do anything for you. Not no more. I’ve seen through you. You’re the devil. You can’t control me.”

“Maybe you’re right. But maybe you’re wrong. The time for quittin’ has come and gone. You’re in this as deep as me. Maybe deeper.”

Kyle stood up. “I told you I don’t care no more. I’m gonna tell it. I’m gonna tell it all. I don’t care what happens to me just as long as you can’t hurt no more people.”

Kenny picked up the pistol from his lap and pointed it at Kyle. “Sit back down, boy. You’re gonna do just like I tell you.” The gun shook and jittered in Kenny Ahearn’s hand, and a sheen of oily sweat sprang out on his forehead. “You fix me my goddamn shot.”

Kyle reached into the refrigerator and pulled out one of the syringes. Then he changed his mind and tossed it back inside, slamming the refrigerator door shut.

“Get it your own damn self.”

With only one good hand, Kenny would have to put the gun down in order to open the refrigerator and administer his own injection. He locked eyes with Kyle. “You do it.”

“No.”

“Do it, boy. I’ll put a bullet straight dead in your brain.”

“No.”

“I’ll find your sister. I’ll find your mother. I’ll call them to me. I can do it. You know I can do it. Maybe you really have seen through me. Maybe you don’t serve me no more, but you know I’ve got the power to control. Maybe you’ve got it too. Maybe we ain’t so different.”

Kyle opened the refrigerator and picked up the hypo.

“Maybe we’re not.”

He stabbed the short needle into the meaty thigh of the paralyzed man’s dead right leg.

and let the cruiser roll to a stop about fifty yards above Kenny Ahearn’s house. She approached the house with care, wary of making her presence known. A rectangle of greenish light fell through the kitchen window onto the side yard. Dana stepped around it and made a circuit around the house, securing the perimeter. She checked the door to the storage shed and found it unlocked. Using a penlight from her utility belt, she scanned the interior. She noted nothing out of the ordinary, but as she turned to exit the building, something small and hard like a pebble rolled under her shoe. She shined the light down and saw .22 caliber rounds scattered across the concrete floor. She unsnapped the safety strap on the holster that held her service revolver.