Feral (14 page)

“Call the sheriff, and Simon!” Billy shouted.

Shannon took advantage of the lucky break and slipped out unnoticed.

S
he returned to the cellar and found Charity sitting at the edge of the steps waiting for her.
 
The scrawny girl tore into her sandwich, eating half of it before giving the chocolate milk a vigorous shake and opening it.
 
She emptied the cartoon in two long chugs and finished the sandwich.
 
She voiced her appreciation with a long, raspy belch.

“You're welcome,” Shannon said, and then worked on her sandwich with a little more tact.

“Sorry,” the girl said shyly.
 
“How was the walk?”

“Good,” Shannon said.
 
“Relaxing.”
 
She took another bite and washed it down with milk.

“You were gone a long time. Did you see anyone you know?”

“Yeah, I did.
 
I'm sorry,” she said.
 
“It must be kind of scary out here by yourself.”

“No,” Charity said.
 
“This place isn't scary at all.
 
I just missed you.”
 
She shuffled her feet.
 
“Was it a friend?”

“No,” Shannon said.
 
“He is
definitely
not a friend.”

“Oh,” Charity said, affecting a knowing smile.
 
“A jerk, huh?”

Shannon smiled weakly, and remembering a favorite line from an old Douglas Adams book, said, “Yes, a real knee-biter.”

Thunder boomed overhead, making them both jump.
 
The storm was sneaking up on them.
 
Maybe it would pass, but Shannon hoped not.
 
She hoped it would rain like hell all afternoon long.

“Tell me about your dad, Charity.”

The girl winced as if slapped in the face and glared at Shannon.
 
“What do you know about my dad?”

“Nothing,” Shannon said.
 
“I'm just curious.
 
You've never mentioned him.”
 
She was unsure how to ask what she really wanted to know, so she just did it point blank.
 
“Is he still alive?”

“I guess,” Charity said, then stood in a sure, swift way that Shannon envied.
 
She paced, a girl at the end of her nerves, and continued.
 
“I think he is.
 
Mom left him when I was little, I haven't seen him in a long time, except in dreams sometimes.”
 
She kicked a small rock, picked it up, and chucked it side-arm into the forest.
 
A bird squawked; a family of squirrels ran for cover.

“You dream about him?” Shannon asked.

“No, he dreams about me.”
 
She paused, elaborated, “The Bogey Man lets me into his dreams sometimes when I'm feeling sad.
 
He thinks it cheers me up.
 
He tries to keep me happy.
 
Dad's been looking for me for a long time, but he won't find me.”

“And why not?” Shannon challenged, trying for at least a spark of hope in the girl's eyes.
 
At nine, even Shannon had had hope.
 
It was difficult to see Charity so at ease with her skepticism.

“Because if my dad ever does,
he
will kill him.”
 
Charity's voice tripped over the last words, and Shannon was sure the tears she had pushed back for so long would come now.
 
They didn't.

“I found you, Charity.
 
He didn't kill me.”
 
Not for lack of trying
, she thought.

Charity gave Shannon a look that made her regret the words.
The day is still young, lady
.

“Do you know where he is?” Shannon asked hopefully.
 
“Can you still see into his dreams?”

“No,” Charity said, sitting down at the door again, staring at the ground between her sneakers.
 
“Sometimes,” she amended.
 
“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Okay, what do you want to talk about?”

“You,” Charity said.
 
“You know him, don't you?”

“Who?” Shannon asked, but she knew who Charity meant.
 
Suddenly
she
was the one uncomfortable with the line of questioning.

“The Bogey Man,” Charity said.

There was a long pause. Shannon felt small in the waiting silence, but she would not lie to Charity, and she would not ignore her.
 
She had ignored Alicia, and Alicia was gone.

“Yes, I know him.
 
Jared did too.”
 
She had gone most of the morning without thinking of her brother, guarding herself against the guilt and grief his memory would surely bring.
 
If she had stayed in the room with them he might still be alive.
 
She tried to fight the grief now that that it came, but she was not as strong as Charity.
 
With a cry she could hardly believe came from her, she buried her face in her hands, her body gripped in a convulsion of sobs.

“It's okay,” Charity whispered, playing the parent to Shannon's child.
 
She scooted next to Shannon and pulled her head into her arms, stroking her hair, cooing at her absently.
 
After a few minutes, Shannon's tears tapered off.
 
She moved her head from Charity's embrace and hugged her.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said wiping her red, swollen eyes.

“Tell me a story.”

“What kind of story?”

“A scary one,” Charity said, but without the childlike enthusiasm that usually went with the request.
 
“It doesn't have to be about you.
 
It can be about anybody.”

Shannon knew what Charity was doing.
 
The girl needed to know, so she obliged.

“I think I know just the one,” she said, and squeezed Charity's hands as she began.

“It happened a long time ago in this very town.
 
I knew the girl it happened to very well, but we've lost touch over the years.
 
I haven't thought of her in years, until last night . . .”

The brother and sister shared a room, toys, occasional daydreams of running away to Riverside, what they called the big city, and they shared a nightmare.
 
Their shared nightmare had come back again.
 
He lay on the floor between their beds, crooning at them, shaking the world with his soft laughter.

They stared at each other, into each others' eyes, across the threatening void between their beds.
 
They dared not look down into the face of the Bogey Man.

"Oh . . . my children," he sang.
 
"Seeing you tonight does my old soul good."

Slowly, their blanket moved, sliding across skin and PJs like the scales of a snake, pulled toward the floor between them by invisible hands.

"Such good children," he said with an exaggerated rasp.
 
"How I've missed you."

And they screamed.
 
Screamed and screamed and screamed.

When their father rushed in, still half asleep and demanding to know what the hell all the hollering was about, the Bogey Man was gone.
 
They could still hear his laughter, though, echoing in the dangerous void between them like a barely remembered scrap of nightmare.

T
he story ended, and for a long time neither of them spoke.
 
Shannon picked up her sandwich, but her stomach clenched at the thought of food.
 
She held it to Charity but the girl declined.
 
Shannon threw the last half of her sandwich into the woods, an offering to the squawking birds and scurrying chipmunks.

“I know how that little girl feels,” Charity said.
 
“Every day of my life.”
 
She stood up, bumping Shannon's milk carton over with the tip of her shoe, and ran back into the cellar.

Shannon didn't follow right away.
 
She watched her spilt milk soak into the dry earth like cold, white blood.

G
ordon and Charles rode the rest of the way to Normal Hills in silence.
 
Gordon held the open book in his lap, reading the message on the final page repeatedly.
 
Charles concentrated on the road.
 
He drove slower than usual.
 
Cautiously, struggling with what he had seen back at the park.
 
It felt like he was losing his grip on all he understood, all the logic and practicality that made him what and who he was.
 
He had seen some unbelievable things over the years, many of which he desperately wished he could forget, but none of his experiences had ever touched the supernatural.

The thing back at the park was no Bogey Man, but suddenly Gordon's recent craziness didn't sound so crazy.
 
He tried to simply file the experience away as yet another life lesson,
anything is possible . . . anything
, but the image of that girl sitting naked and bloodied before them would not be so easily dismissed.
 
Then there was the book,
Where The Wild Things Are
, and that last scribbled message.
 
This was no side road aberration; this was part of his case now.
 
How the hell am I going to log that
? he wondered.

As they passed the road to the old Normal Hills Cemetery, the first blast of thunder shook the overcast sky.
 
Gordon and Charles both jumped a little.

Gordon closed the book, set it on the seat between them, then lay back and closed his eyes.

By the time they entered town the rain had washed the remaining gore from the cracked windshield.
 
Charles had peeled the dead cat from the windshield with an ice scraper back by the park but was unable to clean up all of the blood.

They passed the commotion at the truck stop, Sheriff's Deputies and a few dozen onlookers, without paying notice.
 
They passed Little's Café and turned at the next block.

The Normal Hills Hotel was a squat brick structure; three stories tall and probably as old as the town itself.
 
The parking lot was small and mostly empty.
 
The hotel belonged to Simon Pitcher; it was where he kept his offices.

They ran across pitted blacktop to the lobby entrance and managed not to get too wet before they made it inside.
 
The rain was still light, but the dark clouds overhead threatened a squall.

Beats the hell out of the heat
, Charles thought as he passed through the lobby door.
 
Gordon entered silently a step behind.

Thunder crashed again as the door swung closed.

A redheaded teenage girl sat at the front desk reading a book.
 
She gave them a look of wide-eyed shock—caught slacking off, the look said—then set the book down and folded her hands on the counter.
 
Charles read the cover as they approached.
 
The kind of fiction a person read could be telling, and sometimes the insight was useful.
 
The book was called
Bondage By Lust
and featured a Fabio-type model on the front cover, all rippling muscles and long black hair.

“Uh, hi,” she said, smacking a mouthful of gum.
 
“You want a room?”
 
The touch of disbelief in her voice reinforced Charles' theory: this hotel was used almost exclusively by Simon's visiting "business associates."

“Thank you, miss, but not tonight.”
 
He smiled and rested his arms on the counter.
 
“I'm looking for Simon Pitcher.
 
I understand he keeps an office here.
 
Perchance is he in today?”

 
“I'm sorry,” she said.
 
“Simon's out.
 
Did you have an appointment?”

“No, ma'am,” he said, again flashing his winning smile.
 
“It is rather urgent, though—it's about his ex-daughter-in-law.”

“Oh,” she said, and backed away a step.
 
Her demeanor changed, suddenly seemed a little cooler.

“When will he be back?”
 
Gordon moved up to the counter beside Charles.
 
The question came out an impatient bark.

“I'm sorry, sir,” the girl said.
 
“I don't know.
 
There was some trouble and he had to go.”