Feral (7 page)

“I know,” Jared snapped, turning away from them and waving a hand in disgust.
 
“Heavy Metal.
 
You told me.”

Shannon said nothing more.
 
She knew her brother well enough to recognize his bluster.

Though he didn't want to, Jared believed her.

D
avid
Trudoe
, or Dirty Dave to those who knew him, waited until they were gone, then entered the park from the trees along the highway.
 
Once a young executive with a promising future, he was a mess of matted, filthy hair and baggy urine-stained cloths.
 
He mumbled to himself as he walked, looking at his old worn workbooks.
 
He didn't look up as he approached the playground, several bags of old food culled from fast-food dumpsters hung from his gnarled fists.
 
A collection of tacos, burgers, and fried chicken left to the rats and cats.
 
The smell of prepared food was maddening, but he resisted.
 
They were not for him.

He circled the playground without looking up, entered it, ducking automatically where the playground equipment was too low to pass unscathed.

He stopped by the sandbox, and waited for a while, almost comatose in his stillness.
 
Then he dropped the bags in the sandbox and spoke aloud to the playground.

“My children of the wild,” he croaked, his voice strange and out of practice.
 
“Be damned if you're not causing trouble again.”
 
He cackled, scratched his chin through his thick beard, and pulled something from the inside pocket of his dirty wool jacket.
 
It was far too hot for the heavy clothing, but the jacket was like a security blanket—he never took it off.

He dropped a compact disc next to the bags and walked away.

“Be good, children,” he said.
 
“Your uncle Dave loves you.”

Before he left the playground, the bags of food and the CD were gone.

T
heir late lunch consisted of drive-through cheeseburgers, fries, and ice water.
 
Jared drove them to Riverside's little mall and bought Charity new clothes and shoes.
 
Then they drove back home.

Shannon walked stoop-shouldered toward the house, the heat, the lack of sleep, and the shock of the past day dragging her down.
 
Charity wasn't much better.
 
She needed a shower, her hair hung in her face like strands of frayed rope.
 
Her clothes, Alicia's clothes, were filthy and wrinkled, the shoes worn almost to rags.
 
What she needed more than a shower and change of clothes was rest.
 
She was a nine-year-old hag.

Only Jared seemed vital—perhaps the stress and physical demands of his previous career prepared him better for what they were going through.
 
Or perhaps he was only better at faking it.
 
He was alert enough to notice the tiny scratches around the lock of his doorknob.
 
Someone had been there.

“Stop,” he said, the command in his voice reminding him of a time not so long ago when he had been worthy of the respect that tone commanded.
 
These days life seemed like a dirty joke, and he the punch line.

Charity stopped instantly, looking around nervously as if reading his thoughts.
 
She had to yank on Shannon's arm to get her to mind.

“What?” Shannon said, looking up from her feet.
 
She seemed half asleep already.

“Someone's been here,” Jared said.
 
Charity squeezed Shannon's hand, worked to keep her brave face.

Good girl
, Jared thought.
 
Tough girl too
.

He tried the door.
 
It was locked.
 
He fished the keys from his pocket and unlocked it.

“Stay out here,” he said, handing the car keys over to Shannon.
 
“Be ready to run if there's trouble.”
 
He mentally calculated the distance from the door to the mantle above the television, where he kept a gun hidden behind an old family picture.
 
He could reach it in two or three seconds, and God help whoever might still be inside.

He leaned close to Shannon and said, “We're not letting this motherfucker take her again.”

Then he slipped through the cracked door and raced across the room, agile as a cat despite his old wounds, leaping over the low back of the sofa and grabbing the gun from its hiding place on the mantle.

The next few minutes were tense for Shannon and Charity, but the stress relented when he returned and opened the door for them, the gun hanging ready from his right hand.

“It's clear.
 
If there was someone here they're gone now.”

“Can I take a shower?” Charity asked, hugging the bag with her new clothes to her chest.

“Yeah, I checked the bathroom.
 
It's clear.”

She startled him with a quick hug and disappeared down the hallway.

“She's turning you into a softy,” Shannon commented.
 
Her eyes were weary, her skin ashen, but she managed a smile.

“Shut up,” Jared said, but he was smiling too

J
ust down the block, hidden behind the tinted windows of his Caddy, Charles watched Charity disappear into the house.
 
When the door shut he put the Caddy into gear and drove away.

I
t started the same way as the dream he had often, the one that had convinced him from the start that Charity was still alive.
 
He saw Charity standing in the dark, an almost perfect dark.
 
She held her arms out, shouting “daddy . . . daddy” as he ran to her, and he seemed to run forever.
 
This time, though, she was not the toddler he'd last seen six years ago.
 
She was growing up so fast, he might not have known her out of this context, and that scared him more than the dream itself.
 
She was nine now, not his baby girl anymore.

Would she recognize him if he ever found her?

In the distance between them he could see the pendant that hung around her neck; it flashed at him like a tiny star.

It was like running through water; the air seemed to clutch at him, hold him in place; moving one foot before the other became an act of frustration.
 
It felt like the waking world was holding onto his shirtsleeve and he was dragging it through the dark behind him.

Usually the dream went on like this for hours, until the light of dawn or his own frustration woke him, but not this time.

All around, like a part of the night itself, a familiar voice taunted.

“Ah, the little bed-wetter is all grown up now.
 
I remember you, Gordon, the spoiled only child hiding under satin sheets.
 
How you used to shake when I came to visit.
 
It was only my echo, I think you knew it even then, but it was enough to make you piss your bed every time.”
 
A chuckle rippled the darkness, vibrated painfully in his ears.
 
“How it used to anger your father.”
 
A current of scorching wind passed over his head, a living heat of violence and malice.
 
The air groaned around it as if in pain.
 
He could see its vague shape moving toward his daughter with purpose.
 
“That's why I never came for you, you know.
 
It would have been like killing my favorite pet.
 
I enjoyed your company so much.”

Charity saw the shapeless thing coming at her and screamed.
 
The bright, star-like pendant around her neck dimmed as the dark heat took shape next to her.

He smiled at Gordon, and it was the same face Gordon remembered peeking out of his closet on those dreadful nights so long ago.
 
It was the same face that haunted him his every waking moment as a child, and promised new terror with each sunset.

“We lost touch, Gordon,” the Bogey Man said, almost apologetically.
 
“I'm afraid it happens all the time.
 
I have so many children, you know, and my echo only reaches so far.”

Gordon ran, and though the air around him seemed to thicken further, he was getting closer.
 
He tried to scream, but nothing came out.
 
All words, all sound, seemed to catch in his throat, as if his breath had become solid inside him.
 
He focused on Charity and tried again, felt he would explode if he couldn't voice his rage, but it was still in vain.

She watched him struggle toward her with a heart-sickening sadness, but did not move.

“She's a rare one,” the Bogey Man said.
 
“I've never seen one like her in all my years.”
 
He looked down at her; a smile of affection and speculation lit his eyes.

Gordon was suddenly more frightened than he had ever been, frightened for Charity.
 
He knew the look in that old monster's eyes.
 
He felt like killing and dying at the same time.
 
He was closer now and could see the same sick understanding in Charity's eyes.

“We've been watching you, Gordon, we've been watching you for a long time.
 
I've told her all about you, the good and the bad.
 
She wants to see you again, but she knows it can never happen.
 
She understands it is not meant to be.”

One hand crept over her shoulder, around to the back of her neck, stroking her long hair.
 
“She's a smart one.
 
If I live to see the end of time there will never be another like her.”
 
Then he moved behind her, dark hands clutching her shoulders, holding her steady before him.
 
“I won't let her go, Gordon.”
 
All softness had left his face; all feigned humanity fell away from him like a mask.
 
What was left was a look of hate in its purest sense.
 
“I've left you alone because she wants me to, Gordon; that's the only reason you live.
 
Stop following us, leave us alone or I will rip you apart like I did her worthless bitch of a mother.”

Gordon was close enough to see the other changes in his daughter now, a distention of her belly that looked freakish in relation to her thin frame.
 
It was not the loose flab of a portly child.
 
It was something else.

“She was meant for me, Gordon.
 
She's mine!”

Finally the scream came; a great inarticulate whoop of rage.
 
Then they were gone, and he was alone.

In the receding echoes of that great, soul-rending scream he heard the laughter of children.

H
e awoke with her name still caught in his throat, and this time it took an act of will
not
to scream it aloud.
 
His heart beat so fast he could hear his pulse throbbing in his temples.
 
The dream followed him into full consciousness, clinging like the cold sweat on his brow.

After a few minutes his heart slowed and the coolness of the room dried his sweat, but the images and implications of the dream lingered.
 
As he rose he became aware of the dampness in his crotch, and felt the absolute depth of disgust and shame.
 
Suddenly he was the child hiding under his covers again, shaking in fear of the face in the closet, the voice that seemed to whisper to him from every shadow and unseen place in his room.
 
He was the little boy who dreaded each coming morning almost as much as each approaching night, because his father would come to wake him and see that he had wet the bed again.

C
harles knew it couldn't possibly be her, no way in hell.
 
Cold, dead trails didn't suddenly burst into flames for no reason, and dead girls—yes, he believed she was dead—didn't walk.
 
Cases this difficult never came to this easy a conclusion, and coincidences this big simply did not happen outside the warped minds of conspiracy theorists.
 
It had to be someone else, a young relative or friend of the family.

Still, although the latest picture he'd seen of her was taken six years ago, it looked like Charity.

If it was her it would explain a few troubling things to Charles, like the killers abandonment of tradition where the Shannon Pitcher's family was concerned, but it opened up another line of more troubling questions.

Who are you, Shannon Pitcher
? he wondered.
 
Who are you and how much traveling do you do
?