Nightwitch (9 page)

“
I have one of my dad’s old Army shirts.” She went to her bottom dresser drawer and opened it. “Sheila sleeps on it.” She pulled out a faded military green fatigue shirt, shook it, and brought it over to him. “Here.”

He took the offered shirt, pulling an arm behind himself to put it on. Sliding in the other arm, he smiled—he liked the way the old cotton felt next to his skin, and he smiled even broader when he was surprised to see that it fit. It was a man’s shirt. For a second he felt a tinge of pride, then he remembered that the only reason it fit was because he was fat.

“
I was sure lucky you came over tonight,” she said. “You saved my life.” The gratitude in her perfect mint green eyes was real.

He was embarrassed and turned away.

“
No, really,” she said. “If you wouldn’t have come over, one of those bullets would have killed me, because I’d probably have been sitting right there playing with Sheila. And if you wouldn’t have jumped on me, the bullet that sliced your back would have gone right through me. So, no matter if you like it or not, you saved my life. I’m going to have to follow you around forever, until I can save yours. Then we’ll be even.” She smiled.

He looked over at the remains of the smashed Tiffany lamp and noticed a hole in the wall, by her dresser. That bullet would have smashed into her small body and tore up her insides, pulling out blood, guts and gore.

“
We should clean up that mess,” he said, nodding toward the broken glass on the floor.

“
Let’s look outside first.” She picked up her backpack and held it open. The ferret scurried in and she closed it up and slung it over her left shoulder.

He was impressed. She should be scared stiff as a petrified log. Most kids would be crying and shaking, but here she was, wanting to go outside and maybe see who fired the gun into her bedroom.

“
You think that’s smart?” he said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go out right now.

“
It’ll be okay. There isn’t going to be anybody there. We heard the car peel away.”

“
I was more worried about the police. If they come and find out someone shot into your house, they’re gonna stay till your mom gets home and they’re not gonna let me leave without calling my parents.”

“
The bullets would have to go through the tree first, silly. You won’t be able to see from outside.”

“
What about in here? What about when your mother comes home?”

“
She never comes in here, but I’ll clean up the mess and move my dresser in front of the holes in the wall.”

“
What if the bullets went out the other side?”

Carolina poked her head out the door. “Didn’t go through. My mom will never know.”

“
Maybe you should tell her. And maybe you should call the police. I could go home and you could say that someone drove by and shot off a gun.”

“
No way. I don’t want you to leave. We’ll keep it secret. It was probably some old cat burglar that thought nobody was home and when we turned on the lights, he just shot off his gun because he was pissed.”

“
I could stay. I’ve been in trouble with my dad before and I’ll be in trouble again. How bad could it be?”

“
No way, Arty, we’ll keep it secret.”

“
Okay.” He pushed off the bed. Then he walked to the curtains, pulled them up and put his fingers through the two holes. “We heard three shots,” he said.

“
Who knows where the other one went.”

“
What about the lamp?” he said, looking at the glass on the floor.

“
My mom never notices anything I have. She won’t even know it’s gone,” she said as she was walking out her bedroom door. He followed, unable to think of anymore arguments or any other reason to keep her inside.

She hesitated for a second at the front door, turned to Arty, stuck out her lower lip, blew the hair out of her eyes, and said, “Well, here goes.” She opened the door just in time to see the neighbors from across the street close theirs.

“
I betcha everybody in the neighborhood opened their doors for just a second, then closed ’em right back up again,” Arty said.

“
Bet you’re right, but we’re not chickens like them. Are we?” She had that crooked smile and that twinkle in her eyes that Arty would follow anywhere.

“
No,” he said, puffing up his chest, “we’re not.” He moved past her, walking tall as an eleven-year-old boy can, across the front porch, down the steps and onto the front lawn.

“
Hey, wait for me.” She laughed and charged after him. “Only a few minutes ago I was scared shitless, and now it all feels like a game.”

“
Not to me,” he said, again remarking to himself how it was neat that she could swear without even thinking about it. To her, swear words were just words. And there wasn’t anything dirty about words. At least not to her.

Then he said, “Do you hear anything?” The hair on the back of his neck tingled and cooled, as a northern breeze moved down the block, blowing cold in from the sea not so far away.

“
No,” she said, but she was standing as still as he was. They stayed quiet for a few seconds, trying to hear through the fog that came in with the breeze. Then the fog was around them and it was dark.

“
Still think it’s a game?” he whispered.

“
No, let’s go back inside,” she said, but the fog came in strong, and it came in heavy. They couldn’t see the streetlights at the end of the street. Then they couldn’t see across the street. Then they couldn’t see across the lawn and before they realized it, they couldn’t see the front of the house and then it was hard to see each other.

“
Come over here and take my hand,” he said. She moved close to him without picking her feet up off the wet grass.

“
I’m starting to get scared,” she whispered, taking his hand.

“
Of what? It’s only a little fog. Happens all the time,” he said. This was something he was used to. He’d lived in Palma all his life and to him fog was an old friend, hiding everything it consumed, including him and his overweight, fat, roly poly, porky body.

“
Which way?” she asked.

“
This way. Be careful.” He led her to where he thought he remembered the front porch being. She was still walking without lifting her feet. “It’s okay, nothing’s gonna happen. I’ve been in fog millions of times. I like it.”

“
Ouch!” She stumbled over something and tripped. She fell onto the wet grass, pulling Arty along with her, and once again he found himself lying down with his arms around her. He decided he liked it.

“
I kicked something,” she said, scrambling out from under Arty. She crawled on her hands and knees, passing his fumbling feet as he was trying to get up. “Got it,” she said.

“
Got what?” Arty asked, shaking the grass off of himself, the way a cowboy dusts off after he’s been thrown from a horse.

“
This.”

“
Jeez Marie, is it loaded?” Even though she looked like a ghost in the fog, Arty had no trouble seeing what was in her hand.

“
It’s an officer’s model, short barreled, colt forty-five automatic, and yes, I’m sure it’s loaded, because we only heard three shots and this holds eight. My father would never go anywhere with an empty gun.”

“
Your father?”

“
How do you think I know what kind of gun this is? I don’t know anything about guns except only one kind of gun, this kind of gun, because my father showed me. He made me learn how to hold it and load it, and shoot it, so many times I can’t count them all. It was the only thing about him that I didn’t like. Sometimes I thought he loved this gun more than me,” she said.

“
Let’s get inside.” Arty took her hand and led her to the porch, then to the front door, then to the sofa in the living room.

Carolina laid the gun on an end table, shivered for a second, then laid down the backpack on a cushion next to her and opened it. Sheila scurried into her lap. “Undo me,” she said, turning her back to Arty.

“
What?”

“
The locket, undo the catch on the chain.”

“
Oh.” Arty undid it and Carolina pulled off the locket and unhooked it from the chain. She turned around, looking like she was going to cry.

“
Look up, Sheila.” She raised the ferret’s head.

“
What are you doing?”

“
I’m going to put the locket under Sheila’s name tag.” A single tear fell from her eye and she reached up and wiped it off.

“
Why?”

“
Because that’s my dad’s gun. I don’t know why he wants to go shooting into my bedroom. I can’t believe he’d do a thing like that, but until I find out why, I don’t want to wear this locket. I won’t put it on again until I know why he did it, but I don’t want to lose it either, just in case it was some kind of mistake. Sheila is always with me, so the locket will always be close by.”

“
Does your dad ever come see you?”

She was quiet for a second, her eyebrows knitted together in thought. “No, he’s never been here.”

“
If your dad’s never been by, maybe he doesn’t know where you live. Then it couldn’t be his gun. It’s just one like it.”

“
It’s his.”

“
You sure?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Then maybe your dad’s a burglar and he didn’t know this was your house.” She hoped he was wrong. But maybe he wasn’t. She knew what her father was. She’d heard her parents arguing about it before they got divorced.

“
Or maybe your dad was shooting at whoever was trying to break in, the person with the red eyes maybe?”

“
If he was trying to stop someone he wouldn’t have left the gun.”

“
Maybe they chased him away.”

“
Then how come they’re not still out there?”

“
Maybe they are.”

Chapter Six

He glanced at the dead tire lying in the puddle. It had saved his life. It didn’t seem right to leave it for the trash collector, but he was too tired to waste energy picking it up and putting it in the trunk. Besides, the car was trash anyway. He heard sirens in the background. The fog started to move in. It was time to go.

He closed his eyes for an instant and imagined that fantasy blond on that far away island, clean in the warm sun, the pounding surf in the background. All he ever wanted in life, but he’d chosen the wrong path. He sighed again and climbed in the car.

A low overcast sky hid the moon and stars and he had a difficult time seeing across the alley, through the blanket of thickening fog.

He had already managed the impossible. Three encounters with the old horror and he was still alive. It would be tempting fate to invite a fourth, but he didn’t have any choice. She was the host at this party and his invitation was in the mail, so he had to prepare.

He started the car and drove out of the alley. The sirens were behind him, and judging from the sound of them, he figured they were going to the scene of his second battle. True, he had driven across four or five lawns and ripped them to shreds, but didn’t anybody care about gunfire in the night anymore?

He stopped at the alley’s end. The fog, a double-edged sword, was getting thicker. It would give him cover and allow him to slip out of town unobserved, but it would also slow his progress, and he wanted to be as far away from Carolina as possible when she came for him again. He turned left and then right on Fremont Avenue. After a few slow blocks, he took another right on Across the Way Road.

He had to go through Tampico before he could pick up the road to the highway, which could be a blessing, because he had no other weapons save his knife, and of course, the pepper, but she’d be ready for that. There were a lot of specialty stores on both Ocean Drive and Beach Walk. Maybe he could break into one and find something before he headed toward the highway.

He kept his left hand on the wheel as he reached toward the glove compartment. He grimaced with pain. She’d hurt him. It seemed like his left side, from his waist to his shoulder, was bruised, maybe he even had some broken ribs.

Grunting, he punched the glove lock with his index finger and the glove compartment popped open. He reached in and pulled out a leather knife holder. It wasn’t a gun, but it would have to do, he thought, as he pulled to the side of the road, halfway between the two towns, and parked.

He kept the lights on, the engine running, and the car in gear with his foot on the brake, as he loosened his belt and pulled it from his Levi’s. Once free from the pants, he ran the old leather belt through his fingers. It was World War II standard Army issue. It had been his father’s. He wore it to hold up his faded Levi’s every day of his life, till the farm and the drink killed him.

He had been seventeen when his father died on that tractor. He turned eighteen a month later and joined the Army the old man had loved so much. He wanted to be a hero, like him. But heroes are hard to be, especially between wars, he mused, as he slid the belt through the loop in the scabbard.

He arched his back and eased the belt through the belt loops behind him. The night was alive. An evening breeze rustled through the trees. A cricket chirped in the background. He heard an owl hoot and a car backfire from a few blocks away. He heard the river, off in the distance, as it wound through town, taking melted snow from the mountains down to the sea. He buckled the belt and sniffed the air, like a rabbit checking for the fox. He hated being the rabbit.