House of Reckoning (21 page)

Mitch moved closer to the portrait, leaning in as if searching for something in Sarah’s face. Then, his back still to Ed, he said, “Tell me, Crane—does your little girl get as violent as you?” Ed said nothing until Mitch Garvey turned around, his eyes narrowing with menace. “Asked you a question, Crane. Smart cons answer when they’re asked a question. Especially by me.”

Ed’s lips tightened, then he shook his head. “Sarah’s a sweetheart. Hardly ever even gets mad about anything.”

“How about religion?” Mitch asked. “You put the fear of God into that girl?”

Ed Crane’s eyes sharpened. “What business is it of yours?”

Mitch smiled. “Oh, it’s my business all right. Don’t you know who I am, Crane?” Not waiting for an answer, Mitch leaned closer, and his voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. “I’m her new daddy, Ed. I’m her father now, and I think you screwed up raising that girl. Something’s wrong with her, Ed. Seems like she’s following in the footsteps of Satan.”

Ed stared at Garvey. “Satan?” he repeated. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“See?” Garvey said. “See what I mean? You curse like that in front of your daughter?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ed said.

Mitch could see the fear that was starting to come into the man’s eyes. “Seems she killed a dog yesterday,” Mitch said. “A helpless dog.”

“Bullsh—” Ed began, but cut himself short before giving Garvey an excuse to write him up. “Sarah wouldn’t do something like that.”

Mitch moved toward the door. “Believe it, Ed. It happened. But thanks to me and my family, your little girl’s still got a chance.”

“She doesn’t need a ‘chance,’” Ed insisted. “She’s already as good as kids get!”

“Maybe she is—maybe she isn’t,” Mitch said. Then his voice turned hard. “And you’d better make sure you behave yourself around here, if you get my drift. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to Sarah that she didn’t deserve, would we?” Mitch stayed in the cell just long enough to watch the color drain from Ed’s face as he realized exactly
the threat his daughter was now under. Then, chuckling softly, he headed back down the cellblock. Just seeing the look on Crane’s face had been worth the walk over here.

Sometimes this was the best job in the world.

Bettina Philips moved slowly through the classroom, handing out the students’ graded drawings from yesterday and offering encouragement and suggestions as the class worked on today’s assignment. When she paused at Sarah Crane’s place, the girl actually seemed to shrink away from her, and when she finally looked up, she didn’t meet Bettina’s gaze.

“I’d like to see you after class,” the teacher said, but even though she’d done her best to keep her voice warm and welcoming, Sarah still looked as if she might actually bolt from the room.

What was going on with the girl?

But finally Sarah nodded, and a moment later the bell rang. Bettina began to straighten up her desk and load her portfolio with that evening’s workload while the classroom quickly drained of students. In less than a minute only Sarah was still at her place.

“You didn’t hand in a drawing yesterday, Sarah,” Bettina said. “What happened?”

Sarah kept her eyes on the table in front of her. “I didn’t like what I did.”

Bettina eyed her quizzically. “You not liking it doesn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t have liked it.”

Sarah opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to change her mind.

“I’d really like to see all your work,” Bettina pressed. “Otherwise, how can I tell if you’re making progress?”

Sarah shifted uneasily on her stool and once again seemed about to say something, but again didn’t, and Bettina was sure that it wasn’t just that Sarah hadn’t liked whatever she’d drawn yesterday. Then she recalled the scraps of murmured conversation she’d been hearing all day, not only among the students, but some of the teachers, too.

“Do you want to tell me what happened with Nick Dunnigan and Conner West yesterday, Sarah?”

Now Sarah’s head snapped up. “I don’t
know
what happened, Miss
Philips. Conner tried to get his dog to attack Nick and me, and the next thing we knew, something happened to it.” Sarah haltingly tried to describe what occurred, but it didn’t make any more sense to her today than it had yesterday, when she’d actually seen it. “Anyway, I don’t know how it got cut, but it fell onto the sidewalk and—and—”

Bettina saw Sarah’s body shudder as her voice failed her, but her own mind was already reeling.

From what Sarah had told her, it sounded like Dan West’s dog died exactly as the one in the strange tale she’d read last night had.

“What a horrible thing to have to see,” she finally said. She moved closer to Sarah, sitting down on one of the stools on the opposite side of the table. Picking her words carefully, she went on. “I—I guess I’m not sure what you mean when you say the dog was cut wide open. You mean it was a deep cut?”

Sarah nodded. “So deep everything was—” Once again she fell silent for a moment, then took a deep breath. “—everything was falling out of it,” she finished.

“My God,” Bettina breathed. A long silence hung in the room as she tried to suppress the next question, wanting neither to ask it nor to hear the answer, but knowing she had to do both. When she finally spoke, her voice was trembling. “Sarah, can you tell me what kind of dog it was?”

Sarah looked up at her. “A German shepherd. A really big one. And it was really weird—it was coming right at me, and then Nick held up his hand and then—” She shook her head as if trying to shake off the memory itself. “Then its stomach just opened up and its guts fell out. But nobody touched it! Nobody!”

Bettina felt a terrible cold spreading through her. “You mean it looked like it had been cut open with a scalpel or something?”

Sarah nodded. “And the strangest thing is—” Again the girl faltered, and Bettina could see she was struggling, as if she didn’t want to go on but couldn’t hold it inside herself.

And as the silence stretched out, Bettina realized what it was that Sarah didn’t want to tell her.

“The—The drawing I made in class yesterday?” Sarah finally managed, her trembling voice reduced to a nearly inaudible whisper.

“Yes?”

Sarah finally looked straight at Bettina, meeting her eyes squarely.
“I drew the whole thing. I—I meant to draw the things you set up for us to draw, but something happened. I sort of just started drawing, like I did before at your house. And when I was finished, I’d drawn a man with a scalpel, and a German shepherd was lying on a table with its intestines all—” Unable to go on, Sarah covered her face with her hands for a moment, but then regained control of herself. “I couldn’t show it to you,” she whispered, taking another deep breath.

Bettina laid her hand on Sarah’s forearm. “You can show me anything,” she said. “And tell me anything, too.” But even as she spoke the words, she wondered if she truly meant them. How was it possible that Sarah had drawn what she herself had read only a few hours later?

“Thanks,” Sarah whispered. “But—”

Again she seemed about to say something more but changed her mind. Then Sarah was off her stool and heading for the door, slinging her book bag over her shoulder. “I’ve got to go—if I’m late, Angie’ll ground me for the rest of my life.”

“Sarah …”

Sarah, at the door now, suddenly turned back. “Angie thinks I’m worshipping the devil,” she said, her voice turning harsh. “She actually said it! And she thinks you’re the one that’s teaching me to do it!”

“Sarah, wait,” Bettina began, but it was too late. She was alone in the art studio, her mind churning with the imagery from the story she’d read last night, the story whose darkest moment Sarah had faithfully depicted even though she’d never seen the story, just as she had drawn Shutters as it used to be.

Just as she’d drawn a dark and secret room that Bettina was starting to believe must surely exist somewhere in the basement of her home.

For the first time in her memory Bettina Philips wondered if she wanted to go home that night.

But where else was there to go?

Nick walked slowly away from school, dragging his feet in hopes of hearing Sarah’s voice calling him to wait so they could walk together, but still not in violation of his mother’s dictum: “I want you to come straight home after school, Nick.
Straight home
. Don’t wait for anyone at all. Understand? I don’t want you getting into any more trouble.”

Not that he had ever gotten himself into trouble on purpose, and
he knew perfectly well that by “anyone” his mother had meant Sarah Crane. But if he didn’t wait for her, and she should come out, surely there couldn’t be any harm in walking with her, at least for a block or two.

Could there?

But she didn’t come out, and the second he turned the corner toward home and away from school, the voices in his head began to mutter.

“Shut up,” he said out loud, suddenly not caring who might be listening. “I’m sick of you. Get it? Sick of all of you.”

But the voices didn’t shut up, so he did his best to simply ignore them, which wasn’t too hard since today they seemed to be whispering to each other more than trying to make his life miserable.

He was barely two steps past the entrance gate to the park when the hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle.

Someone was watching him.

He could feel it.

And he was pretty sure the committee in his head felt it, too, because their babbling abruptly grew louder.

“Quiet!”

Though he hadn’t uttered the word out loud, it still resounded in Nick’s head with enough force to startle him. And, at least for a second, it worked. The voices fell silent, and he listened for footsteps, or voices, or any evidence that he was being followed.

Nothing.

The voices started up again.

He looked behind him, but saw only a couple of kids he didn’t recognize crossing the street way down the block.

It was just his imagination. It had to be. Nobody was following him, nobody was watching him.

Still, Nick walked a little faster, repeating over and over to himself that nothing was wrong, that he was just being paranoid. But the feeling of someone watching him,
stalking
him, did not go away. Goose bumps coursed down his arms.

Suddenly, Conner West stepped out of the bushes directly in front of him, his mangled arm heavily bandaged and held in a black sling.

His eyes glittered with a cold anger. “Well, look who’s here,” he said, putting his hands on his hips so the sidewalk was entirely blocked.

Nick turned around to head back the way he’d come, already starting
to break into a run, but he saw Elliot Nash there, moving toward him, though still on the far side of the park driveway.

His heart hammering, Nick shifted toward the street itself, only to see Bobby Fendler moving toward him.

He saw only one option and ran through the gate into the park, realizing his mistake a second too late: once he was in the park, he was out of sight of anyone on the street—or anywhere else—who might help him.

Now the voices in his head were screaming, and the only thing he could think to do was run—run fast—run as hard as he could down the jogging trail.

Run, and pray that there was someone else in the park besides him.

Even before he’d gone twenty yards, he could hear pounding feet coming closer and closer behind him, and then he felt someone grab his backpack. Whoever it was jerked hard, but somehow he managed to stay on his feet. He twisted around far enough to recognize Elliot Nash, then began struggling, trying to rid himself of the backpack.

Too late. By the time he got his arms loose from the straps, Conner, Elliot, and Bobby had surrounded him.

“If I had a knife,” Conner West said, barely even winded by the short chase, “I’d cut you open and rip out your guts, just like you did to my dog.”

“I didn’t kill your dog,” Nick said.

“You wish!” Conner shot back. His foot lashed out then, the toe of his shoe catching Nick’s kneecap and sending Nick sprawling to the ground, clutching at the injured knee.

“Want to see how it feels?” Conner said, lashing out again as Nick tried to squirm away. “Where’s the knife? Want me to cut you with it?” Another kick. “Huh?” Another. “Come on, asshole, where is it?”

The voices in Nick’s head were screaming at him now, telling him to fight back, to kick Conner, or trip him, or—

But it didn’t matter what the voices were saying; every time he tried to get up, someone kicked him again.

Nick curled into a ball, praying for one voice to rise above the others the way it had yesterday when the dog was about to attack. Where was that one voice that had somehow given him the power to stop the dog with nothing more than a single desperate slash with a hand that held no knife?

But no voice rose above the rest. The cacophony in his head and the taunting from the boys who kept on kicking him swirled into a nightmare of chaotic sound and searing pain.

Nick curled tighter and held his arms over his head, shielding himself as best he could, but the blows kept coming, raining down with ever-increasing force.

They were going to kill him.

He gritted his teeth, refusing to give them the satisfaction of crying out, but then someone—he couldn’t even see who—picked up a rotting branch and slammed it down on him so hard that the world around him reeled, spinning black with shooting points of light.

The voices, the sounds, the pain, all of it began to recede into a tunnel of calm, quiet darkness. But before he gave in to the quiet and the darkness, he heard one last thing.

Conner West’s voice.

“You think
you
hurt? Wait’ll you see what we do to your crippled girlfriend!”

Sarah!

Nick struggled to stand, but his arms and legs wouldn’t respond. He slumped onto the frozen ground and slipped gratefully into the darkness.

S
arah pushed through the heavy school doors, hoping Miss Philips hadn’t made her so late that Nick would leave without her. But the sidewalk and lawn around the school was empty, which meant she was even later than she thought. Nick had already gone, and Angie would be furious.