Feral (34 page)

“It's over,” Grant said.
 
“They caught your psycho at the dike, a local guy known as Dirty Dave, been around for years.
 
He's dead.”

Gordon noted Shannon's expression at the news, a mixture of emotions, chiefly disbelief.

“I've met Dave,” he said.
 
“Psychotic, I'll buy, but he's no killer.”

“He was covered with blood,” Grant said.
 
“It wasn't his blood.
 
He pulled a gun on Sergeant Winter.
 
It was Adams' gun.”
 
Adams was the officer who had been ripped open earlier that night, left to cool on the blacktop while they made their getaway.
 
“A lot of kids have disappeared around that park over the years, and based on what we've seen in the last few weeks, we have good reason to think it was his work.”

“What did he look like?”
 
Charity had come from behind while they spoke.
 
She grasped Gordon's right hand, Shannon's left, and stood between them.

Grant looked down at her, an almost pained expression on his face.
 
Gordon understood from that look that Grant had children of his own, and that he had, knowingly or unknowingly, put his own children in Charity's place.
 
He hoped Grant and his children would never have to experience what he, Shannon, and Charity had.

“He's a little bigger than your daddy, taller too.
 
Long scraggly hair, dark colored, and a thick beard.

Charity considered this for a moment, and then nodded. “Yeah, that's him,” she said, then walked back to her bed and lay down.

Minutes later, Grant and his partner said their goodbyes and headed home.
  
Their job was done.

Gordon and Shannon sat next to Charity.
 
She shook her head.
 
“I just want to go,” she said.
 
“Can we go home now?”

S
hannon walked the few blocks from their room to where Gordon's car sat, still parked from their night at the movies.
 
The streets were well lit, but the spaces between streetlights were ripe with shadows.
 
Darkness lurked between buildings, under awnings and inside storefronts like something ready to pounce. She passed them with a gawking, nervy anticipation that never wholly departed.
 
The morbid anticipation she felt as each approached was the worst.
 
It was like walking towards death's open arms.

They could have waited for dawn—Gordon said they should—but Charity wanted to leave, now, and Shannon was ready.
 
She wanted to go wherever Gordon and Charity would take her and never look back.

She tried to hold to the voice of reason, the voice in her head that said she was in no danger. Any danger that the darkness still held for them was back at the room with Charity, and that she was right in insisting that Gordon stay behind to guard Charity while she went for his car.
 
There was no reason for them all to go out and risk the open dark, she had argued, and to that Gordon had agreed.
 
The voice of reason, she now knew, was as afraid of the dark as she was.

Even as she shied away from those shadows, her focus split between their impenetrable darkness and Gordon's car.
 
It sat alone at the curb a few blocks away.

Then there was a loud moaning grunt and the shadow she skirted (but oh god she was still too close!) shot out and reached for her arm.
 
She saw something shine with reflected light from the closest streetlamp, saw the open blades of those deadly scissors coming toward her in an arc, and screamed.

Then she read the label: Thunderbird.

“I heard a shot,” the old woman said, stumbling from the shadowy mouth of an alley.
 
Hair like the pelt of a road-killed dog fell from beneath an old pink scarf, her face was pockmarked, ruddy, her nose a shining map of busted capillaries, her eyes a great expansive nothing.
 
She lifted the bottle to her mouth and drank deeply, then yanked it away with a spastic motion, barely holding onto it.

She was crying.

“They killed Dave,” she bawled.
 
“Why did they do that?”

Shannon ran the rest of the way to Gordon's car without looking back, not daring to breathe until the doors were closed and locked behind her.

She made a U-turn on the deserted main street, and was unable to help looking into the alley as she passed it.
 
The old woman was gone, swallowed by the shadows.

G
ordon packed his bags in a clumsy rush, wadding up clothing, clean and dirty alike, and shoving it in fistfuls into a large suitcase and plain gray duffel.
 
Under the edge of his bed amid a nearly forgotten pair of socks he found the books, Where The Wild Things Are (his autographed “Feral Park” edition) and the library book, “The Historical Bogey Man.”
 
He shoved them in without thinking and pulled the zipper shut over them.
 
It didn't take long; he had learned to travel light over the past few years.

In the bathroom, the shower ran.
 
He would wait until Charity was done before collecting his toiletries.
 
She was a big girl now, not a baby, and as much as he hated to let her out of his sight, she needed her privacy.
 
She had had none for the past six years, all that time under the constant watchful eye of a fairytale killer who turned out to be real.
 
Whatever else the kids got wrong in their uniformed, stumbling exploration of life, they were right when it came to the Bogey Man.

And he didn't want to scare her by knocking to be let in; he never wanted to scare her.

With nothing else to do but wait for Charity to finish her shower and Shannon to bring his car, he sat in the chair by the nightstand and counted the seconds.
 
There were too many of them, and each that ticked past gave him more leisure to imagine, and to fear.
 
But as the minutes passed, those imaginings and fears became less and less immediate.
 
The hard-won peace was so soothing, so inviting.
 
His eyes slipped shut and he dozed.

Awareness came back like a blow to the chest, a physical manifestation of every intangible anxiety, and the fever hot presence that brought beads of sweat to his brow like blood from an open wound.
 
He couldn't breathe.

When Gordon opened his eyes there was darkness, broken only by weak moon glow, shrouded by gray clouds and pulled curtains.
 
In the center of the darkness was a darker shape, a glint of bloodstained steel, the scissors Charity had left in the Chevelle, and a shark's grin.

“I always knew I would come back for you, Gordon, my dear boy.
 
Your fear was far too sweet not to taste again.”

Gordon tried to rise, to dodge the coming blow, but his strength was gone, running from his open chest and pooling in his seat.
 
The open blade found its mark again, digging deeper into the hole in him and slicing downward toward his lap as if through paper.

“I'm glad I waited, though,” the monster said through his shining Cheshire grin. “Because you gave me Charity, and you will never know how much she means to me.”

Gordon tried to scream, a warning to Charity, his baby, a curse against the monster who wound take her away from him again, but it came out in a warm, choked spray.

He heard Charity (
Daddy
?) in the bathroom, frightened and at the edge of tears.
 
He saw that Cheshire smile widen and turn away from him.

And that was all.

T
he lights had failed them in the end, as they always do.
 
Lanterns break and burn out, the campfires sputter and die in the wind, electricity runs out.
 
They can hide from him, surround themselves in light, but in the end the nightlights will always die.
 
The hand of darkness always knows where the switches are, and when it tires of waiting it pulls them.
 
The darkness always wins.

“Charity, my sweet,” he crooned, moving toward the closed door at the other end of the room.
 
He heard her behind it, crying because she knows she's been a very bad girl, knowing that even though he loves her, needs her, she must be punished.
 
“Charity, my darling, my baby, my love.”

“Daddy!” she shrieked, and it pleased him to finally hear her lose her everlasting, precious control.
 
It made his old soul feel very good.
 
Hers was the sweetest fear of all.

He heard her pound a fist against the door, heard glass shatter as she hurled something against a mirror.
 
What a temper this one had.

“Open the door, Charity.
 
It's time to go home.”
 
He spoke in his kindest, softest voice, the voice that never failed to bring the most frightened of little lambs to him on their own feet, but it did not work on her now.
 
She was growing stronger, stronger than even he believed she could.
 
When the voice of love failed, the voice of power was needed.

“
Charity
!” he roared.
 
“
Open that fucking door and come out
!”

Nothing from the other side; her raging and crying had stopped.
 
The door did not open.

He rushed the door, arms outstretched, and the thin wood shredded into a million hair fine splinters.
 
They settled around and over Charity's still body.

She had dressed hastily, as best as she could in the dark, not bothering to dry herself.
 
Her hair lay around her head in a wet fan.
 
Water pooled on the floor around her.
 
Her face was gray, sunken and sallow.
 
She looked diminished, not dead, he could see her chest rise and fall almost imperceptibly.
 
She was vacant.

She had discovered her gift, the thing about her that he loved and needed, and she had learned to use it.

“You little bitch.”
 
He lifted her body from the wet floor and tossed it over his shoulder.
 
She may have been strong, but her body was weak.
 
It wouldn't last long without her, and if this body died, she would be lost to him.

He closed his eyes, reached out with his will, and found her.

Not far
, he thought.
 
Then he was gone; folded into the darkness with her body over his shoulder.

T
he Riverside Inn was in Shannon's sight, the blue fluorescent glare of its sign stood high above the parking lot entrance like a beacon.
 
Then the building went dark.
 
The gaudy blue light of the sign, the overhead parking lights, the motel front and lobby—all dark.
 
The edgy relief she felt died with the light, and suddenly she couldn't breathe for her terror.

Then she heard Charity scream.
 
The sound exploded behind her eyes, pulsed with her heartbeat, jackhammer quick.
 
She answered the scream with one of her own, part pain and part sympathy, and jammed on the brakes.
 
She skidded and came to a jouncing halt against the curb.
 
Slowly the echoes in her head receded, taking most of the pain with it, and another sound slipped neatly in to fill the space between her ears.
 
She groaned and pushed herself off the steering wheel, and the blaring of the car horn silenced.
 
Her vision cleared and she focused again on the motel—still dark.

“No!”
 
She slammed her fists against the wheel, setting the horn off again in twin bleats, beating out her frustration and trying desperately to hold back the tears.
 
Despite their best try, the darkness had come.
 
Something had gone wrong and the darkness had come for them, for Charity.

“Daddy's dead.”

The voice was strange and thin, almost not there, like a whisper in a dream.
 
It wasn't in her head this time; it was in the car with her.
 
Shannon looked around, down on the floor, in the back seat, but she was alone.
 
Then something touched her arm, cool, thin fingers stroked the back of her hand, and Charity was sitting in the front seat next to her.

“He knows where we are.” Her face was solid enough to be real. Shannon felt a semblance of solid flesh when she reached out and touched her cheek, but she could see through it into the night beyond.
 
It was a calm face, but serious, urgent.
 
Charity's voice was emotionless, like a clever imitation.