Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children (16 page)

Chapter 23

I stepped inside the manor. The door slammed shut behind me. I spun toward the stairs on my right and saw the raven on the railing. A red splotch covered its chest in the shape of the skeleton key. I put my hand over my heart, felt thin bone, smooth flesh. Looking down I saw the pajamas I’d worn as a kid. Raising my child-like hands, I stared at thin white fingers, the raven beyond them, hopping on one wounded leg. I wiped hair from my eyes and traced a hand over my chest, found the key still in my possession.

Studying the bird as it studied me, I whispered, “What are you?”

The raven cocked its head. “What are you?”

“I’m a person. You can talk. Or are you only mimicking me?”

“Little boy, listen.”

Gooseflesh broke out over my back as someone screamed as if stabbed repeatedly. I clapped my hands over my ears. “Make it stop!”

High above the double doors, moonlight stretched through the window and the chandelier glittered. Ahead on my left, the sound of someone playing a lilting melody on piano, a bass stab here and there, thunderous in the following stillness, rocked me back on my heels. I pulled my pajama top closed and looked at the railing. The bird puked up a piece of yellowed paper, rolled and tied shut with a red ribbon.

The piano player tapped the keys, drowned the screams. I hoped that Mike was in there practicing, and that he’d be done soon, so we could get out of here and go play in the forest while his parents slept. The old routine slipped over me. “Mike?”

I moved down the wide hall, black and white tile cool against the soles of my feet. The raven bent and nudged the parchment forward with its beak.

The house sighed as something beat against the upstairs windows. Growing more furious, it kept pace with my heart. My voice echoed down the hall. “Mike?”

Stopping next to the railing, I stooped and steadied my hands by force of will, braving myself to snatch the roll of paper, and be quick about it, before the raven had a chance to stab me with its beak.

The bird eyed me, its head cocked at an impossible angle. The boy in me wanted to laugh, but the piano snagged my attention. I knew that song. I tugged at the red ribbon as I looked down the hall at the wide doorway from which the music bled. The paper, old and yellowed, tore in a soft whisper as I unrolled it. A girl’s handwriting in blue ink stained the page. An entry date at top, no name.

August 7
th
, 1987

I don’t know why I keep doing it, but I can’t seem to stop. I feel bad for you, for what I’ve done. I know I’m sick, that I need help, but what good would it do, really? What if it’s part of me? Every time you come over, I itch with fire. If I had the ability to write poetry, I would. I’d write it for you, put these hands to better, purer means. Forgive me my trespasses. What I do, I do in love.

Sweat soaked through the thin paper. I wiped my hands on my pajama bottoms and stepped forward, patted the raven’s head. “You brought me something special. But what does it mean?”

The bird cranked its head to the right and bounced on one leg. It stared at the living room doorway and sang, making up its own lyrics to a song I had loved as a young teen.

For a week we’ve been on our own

And blood bright red marks the pages, tome,

But that’s not how it used to be.

Now this jester sings for the king and queen,

In a lie he borrowed from the stream

And a voice that came from you and me,

I eased along the wall toward the living room, slid the paper in my pocket. The raven followed.

Angela sat at the piano, the large window behind her looking out over the dark lawn. She and the raven sang together as she met my stare.

Oh, and while the boy hid his crown,

The jester stole his last smile and frown.

Those loved, and hated, burned;

No verdict was returned.

And while Johnny read The Book of Patron Saints,

God and devil, masturbate

Hearts just dirges in the dark

The day the music died.

The music stopped.
Died
, hung in the air for a moment.

The front lawn burst into flames. No. Crosses burning on the lawn, writhing men screaming toward heaven, bound by barbed wire, their voices like a choir of ill children. The stench of rotting vegetation, spilled blood, disappointment and anger, settled around me like ash. Fire lit the sky and something beneath, born of earth and ruin, slithered across the grass; a man with a lower body like a serpent, large vertical mouth full of teeth, a bright blue light perched where its tongue should have been.

I stumbled back and bumped into something. Hands grabbed my shoulders. I jerked free, stumbled forward, fell prostrate as if worshipping the burning martyrs, or the serpent kings, or Angela’s smile.

Turning over, my arms and mouth numb, I met my brother’s gaze.

It was a trap!

I glanced back, to throw my anger at Angela—in tears and words—but she faded, a soft pulse. Curtains stirred. Mark sighed and the windows rattled in their casings. “It feels like forever.”

Since you touched me?

Mark squatted, braced his arms on his knees. “We need to set things right.”

It’s too late for that. You did what you did. And I killed you.

“You’re so confused.” Mark sank to his knees and crawled forward. I tried to push myself back, away, but my body betrayed me. My bladder threatened to burst. Mark’s hand extended toward my waist.

No!

I tried to bat his hand away, surprised at the slap of flesh hitting flesh. Mark frowned and pinned my arms to my sides. He leaned in, until our noses nearly touched. “You’ve gotten so much wrong.”

Let go of me!

I squirmed, but Mark held me fast. The raven hopped around us, and stopped next to my waist. Its tongue flicked out, wet its beak. I squeezed my eyes shut, felt something inside me break away from my core, and drift toward the ceiling.

* * *

Mike stood. Black soil clung to his pants and hands. Duncan stayed on his knees, crawling around the pieces, putting an arm on this naked torso, that one, crying as he worked a jigsaw puzzle of flesh and bone—like all the king’s soldiers trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together. The cop smashed his hands against the ground, spittle on his lips. “I don’t think they’re right.”

Mike rubbed his wrists against his eyes. “I can’t tell either.”

Duncan stood and walked a tight circle around the bodies. He looked at the pine needles and Mike wondered if the poor man wanted some thread to stitch his baby girl back together. He’d seen the price men would pay to get their dead back, in Cuba. Watched as the black tide came in and consumed a local family while he put a gun to the witch’s temple and engaged heaven and hell.

Duncan’s shoulders slumped. He cleared his throat and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Shit, my mind is mush. I don’t know what I’m thinking. I broke the law just now.”

“How’s that?”

“By being stupid. I should have called this in. We might have destroyed evidence. Goddamnit. I just…”

“Your superiors will understand. It’s your little girl.”

Duncan nodded, rubbed his temples, brow bunched. He plopped down next to his daughter and ran his hand through her hair. He hit a button on the phone and held it to his ear. “Where’s McDonnell?”

Mike looked around the forest, listened for a moment. “Let me go look for him.”

“He better not have run off.”

“John wouldn’t.”

“He tried to cover for his friend out at the Andrew’s house. That was the second murder he tried to keep a lid on. I don’t think that makes him a good guy.”

“He’s better than me.”

“We need to talk about that still.”

“My record.”

“Yes.”

“Not happening.”

Duncan shrugged. “You want to get locked up too?”

“You’re going to take John into custody?”

“Him, that shit for brains mayor, the drunk coroner. Their lives are all going to be drowned with this.” He waved a hand at his daughter, the others. “Someone should have stepped forward.”

“I’m not disagreeing. Let me find him.”

“Don’t think you can find him and hide him.”

“Never dream it.”

“Don’t be smart. You’re seeing most of my life right here, washed up.” His voice grew thick as he said, “Her mom isn’t the greatest mother, but she tried, for Angie.”

“And now?”

“She’s not going to keep trying for just me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“What do you care? People get divorced every day.”

“She’s going to blame you though, isn’t she? But your biggest problem is blaming yourself. John knows something about that. Do me a favor, don’t throw him in with the other two. He’s different.”

“Find him. Bring him back.”

Mike sighed as Duncan called the crime in. He hung up a moment later. “GPS. They’ll be here within a half hour. Should have kept it on my daughter. I never bought her a phone, seemed stupid to let a teen run up a bill, talk to boys, you know?”

Mike waited, wanting to hear Duncan out. He realized it was a play, more than just sympathy. He wanted an angle, a bit of leverage to use on the man, to keep John from sitting in some dank cell that stank of drunks and child molesters and abusive husbands. He bowed his head.

Christ, forgive me.

* * *

Cat woke to the sound of a car racing down the street. She ran her hands over her clothes, thanking God she still had them on. Her jaw ached, head throbbed. Fingers groped in the dark, and she felt concrete beneath her. Raising her head, she caught sight of a window, a dozen feet above the floor. Cat listened, trying to figure out where she was, mind trapped in a haze she struggled to see through, to recall what had happened. She remembered the argument with John, a car billowing smoke like heavy prayers thrown at God. And she remembered the bare ache in her heart, left by Mark when he’d done what he’d said he would.

The darkness seemed to press against her like water as she stood. Her equilibrium was off and she stumbled in the dark, arms outstretched, feeling blindly. Her shin banged into metal. She cried out, muffled it, in case her abductor was close by, and groped until she found what had hurt her. A steel table. Part of her wanted to run a hand across the surface and see what lay on top of it, but the other part, frightened, wouldn’t let her.

What if Ethan is on this table? Dead?

She shivered, listened with all her might, focused until the slightest whisper twisted like a thorn in her ear. “Hello?” Cat swallowed and wished she hadn’t. Her mouth went dry. She needed water. Her stomach growled. Her mind whirled between escape and probing the dark corners of this prison for Ethan.
No one else is going to help me. I am not going to be a prisoner and wait for whoever kidnapped us to come back.

Bolstering what little courage she had, she swiped a hand across the table. Something cool grazed her palm. It banged on the floor as it fell off the edge, a metallic clatter. Her heart rate increased, pounded in her ears, drowned out all other sound. She knelt and ran her hand slowly over the floor.
There.
She picked it up, probed its length; two handles meeting the pair of blades, like scissors, only much larger. Garden shears, her gut said. It felt like it should bring a smile, knowing she had a weapon if it came to that, but dread settled upon her shoulders and she nearly buckled under its weight. Cat fought the questions running through her head, the panic she felt building.

Okay, I heard a car. I’m by a road. This is a basement or something. Get this table over to that window. Find a light. Find your son.

Chapter 24

Cat steadied her nerves, but her fingers wouldn’t stop twitching.

Slow steady breaths, girl.

She inhaled deeply through her nose, sorting things as she steeled herself to follow the walls and search for a light switch. The recent scent of food—burger, fries—hung in the air. Her stomach growled, and her lips puckered. Beneath it, a more metallic scent, and beneath that a lingering hint of exotic cologne.

Arms out in front of her, she found the wall, cool brick, and followed it into the deepening darkness to her right, away from the window. She ran her hand up and down, feeling for any switch. When she came to a corner, she hung her head.

Don’t give up.

She moved along the next wall and came to a staircase. On hands and knees she climbed it, saw the faint glow of light beneath the door at the top. Her heart rate increased and vision pulsed. Running her hands over the walls she found a switch above the railing. It clicked, broke the silence. The room remained dark. She tried the door. The knob refused to turn.

Damn it. Come on.

Cat leaned down and pulled her hair out of her eyes, trying to glimpse beneath door and threshold. The gap was too small. She only saw the first row of black and white tiles. After working her way slowly back into the basement—sure now that’s where she was—she went around the staircase and kept following the wall, arms fanning, hands meeting nothing but cold steel shelves, several glass-fronted cabinets. She felt like collapsing, giving up.

Not understanding why anyone would put her here, leave her in limbo, she shivered, unsettled. She’d seen enough of the news, read enough books to know that sometimes people didn’t need reasons for what they did. Some men lived on impulse. It made them dangerous, unpredictable.

And what will he do if he comes back and I’m not cowering in a corner?

She wiped her eyes.

What has he done with my son?

Cat knew it wasn’t her fault, but a seed of doubt sprouted in her mind. She didn’t know if it had something to do with her own secrets, if bad luck had followed her here, finally caught up with her again. She moved to the table and propped her hip against it. Back straining, she slid the steel a few inches, the pruners making a racket on the table. She sucked in a breath and listened.

If someone was upstairs, they’d have come down
.

She pushed harder, got the table moving, and kept it going, shoes digging into the floor, her head down, eyes closed, until the steel chimed against the brick wall. Exhausted, but determined, Cat pulled herself onto the waist high surface, her foot bumping the cutters. She jumped up, felt tiny pieces of brick crumble beneath her fingers, her hand a couple feet shy of the window ledge. Her childhood came back to her, all the times her father had goaded her to get involved with sports, and how she’d refused, said they were for people who lacked intelligence, spectator and player alike. Now, she wished she would have tried to be good at something physical, a foundation to leap from. Too late for that.

Sitting, back to the wall, elbows propped on knees, she wrapped her face in her hands. She cried and prayed for her son’s safety.

* * *

Mike passed between the trees he’d last seen John disappear into. He scanned scrub brush, an overgrown marsh of stagnant black water and bright green moss. Covering his nose, he turned around and jumped. Duncan stood three feet in front of him.

“You’re quiet.”

Duncan nodded. “So, where is he?”

Mike shrugged, looked over his shoulder, hoping John would stay hidden until he had a chance to get things under control. “He might have went in somewhere else.”

“Broken twigs there.” Duncan pointed behind Mike.

He’d noticed them, but didn’t want to say anything, fearing the cop would think John had high tailed it through the muck to…

“You see that?” Duncan pointed.

“The island?”

“You did. I bet he’s out there.”

Mike turned to the side and wiped his face. The water ran out thirty feet, and God knew how deep it was or what was in there. “He wouldn’t hide out there. He’s not hiding. Something grabbed him.”

“Says his best friend.” Duncan pointed toward the water. “Get moving.”

“I’m not going out there.”

“Afraid?” There wasn’t ridicule in the cop’s voice, just straight curiosity. And impatience.

“Me and water don’t get along. I don’t like leeches either. Or sink holes.”

“Quicksand out here?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.” Duncan looked at the darkening sky. “Shit.”

“You’re wasting your time chasing him anyway. If he’s guilty I’ll tell you my sins.”

“I’m not a preacher.”

“John’s dad was. And I know you want to know what’s on my record.”

“So?”

Good point.

“You know who we need to drag in, sir. The mayor and Mr. Wallace.”

“Ain’t no
we
about it. What do you care anyway?”

Here we go.

Mike took a deep breath. “You were in the service too, weren’t you? Where’d you go, Vietnam?”

Duncan’s chin bobbed toward his collarbone. He stared at his hands a minute, as if he just realized how dirty they were from digging to unearth the last of his grief. When he met Mike’s gaze, his eyes were clear and bright. “I was an army brat. My dad drove that shit in my head, like it’d make me into the man he wanted me to be.”

“Did it?”

“What?”

“Make you into the man he wanted you to be?”

Duncan glanced back towards his daughter. Mike wanted to get out of there before the other state boys showed up, wanted to see what hand the mayor—who he’d never liked, not that he favored any type of politician—and Rusty, who wasn’t so bad, just lost in his own past, played in this circus show of death. He cleared his throat and was about to speak when Duncan said, “None of us ever grow up to be what our parents want us to be.” He shrugged. “Forty-seven years old and I can’t tell you if that’s a good or a bad thing. Funny.”

But the look on his face didn’t say it was funny. Mike let him stare a moment longer at the girls. “The mayor might have had a part in their deaths.”

“And you want to ride along.”

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“If we get to him before your friends do, we can get some answers out of him before he lawyers up and creates an illusion of complete innocence, or passes the buck.” He pointed toward the graves, the pale gray bodies. “That’s breaking my heart, too.” His voice clouded and a tear rolled over his cheekbone, wet his ear. “My sister disappeared when I was fifteen, my twin. She might have shared the same fate, a long time ago.” Not able to turn his eyes away, and unsure why he felt the need to talk about it, at what point it had gone from getting Duncan away from John to this personal bit of long suppressed sorrow, Mike said, “I understand. I know it’s a little different since Angie was your daughter. But at least you’re going to have closure. I never did.”

Duncan pulled him into a bear hug and Mike felt the dam break in both of them, sobbing like children, foreheads on each others shoulders, shaking with pain they didn’t know how to overcome. And that was the hell of it. The pain never left. He could still see his sister playing in the woods, her smile, thin but strong body, a teenager, like these girls. And he thought he heard his mother calling, as he and Duncan drank of the same cup, shared communion bread at the temple of the lost. But her voice faded and in that instant the remaining daylight fled and he thought,
I’ve failed her, too. She’s gone.

* * *

I swung my arms out, trying to grab hold of something to take me back to the miniature manor’s living room. I kept rising, through the upstairs floorboards, Mark waiting as first my head, then the rest of me, landed in the last place I wanted to see. My brother knelt and pointed at the mat where he and I lay at the foot of Michael’s king-sized bed. I stared at my feet a moment, at the hands that were no longer a child’s, but a man’s. Michael snored from the bed. The thick quilts on the mat stirred and I saw Mark, a teen again, three years older than me, rise and head for the door—saw myself pull the blanket over my face as if I knew what was coming, and perhaps this wasn’t that first time, or maybe it was.

A floorboard creaked and a shadow spilled over the mat, the boy, the hall light soft, around the corner of the door. Natalie entered. She was every bit as beautiful and intimidating as I remembered. My eyes and mind clouded with confusion. I said to Mark, “What is she doing in here?” When Mark didn’t answer, I watched the hall, waiting for him to return, climb back into our bedding, slip his hand beneath the…

Natalie stood over the bed, her bare feet seemed to glow like wet ivory in the dim light. She knelt, pulled the blanket aside and pressed up next to me. I, standing, remembered how that had felt. How I’d thought that Mark came back and crossed a line. Mark touched my shoulder. “Now you know.”

The blanket moved, half way down, slow, methodical. I felt her mouth on my boyhood and looked away. “All this time I thought it was you.”

“You never looked.”

“I was ashamed,” I choked out, so many feelings clawing around inside.

A few moments later and she crawled out of bed and hurried behind the door as I watched my young teenage self squirm and sob beneath the blanket. Mark came back, stepping quiet. “Where did you go?”

The boy in the bed lay still, pretending to sleep.

“This place always amazed me. There are thirty rooms, all kinds of cool stuff. I’d get up and just look around in the middle of the night. She came in, though I didn’t know it back then.”

A great weight released from my shoulders and I felt something expanding inside me, a light growing brighter. After the young Mark situated himself and stroked the top of my head, Natalie snuck out from behind the door, stepped quietly into the hall, her shadow receding.

“I thought you were trying to apologize for this that day on the river. I hit you because I thought…”

“Life is strange. We miss so much of what’s right in front of us, Johnny. If you want the truth, you have to seize it. No matter how scary, no matter the amount of shame and pain it brings with it.”

I cried as he pulled me close and stroked my hair. “She kept a journal. This paper is from it.” He tapped the rolled up page against my heart. “You want to know why I tried to tell you sorry, that day a week and a half ago? It’s because I’ve sent something your way that I can’t take back. I deserved getting hit in the head with the paddle.”

“Whatever it is, you didn’t deserve to drown.”

“You say that now. But April is going to devastate you. I’m sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me. Someday.”

“What? What’s worse than this shit from my childhood? All the years that I thought you’d molested me, all the love and hate and confusion. Is it this?” I held the key out away from my chest. “Or what’s in the bowl.”

“What bowl?”

“The one you brought to Uncle Red’s.”

I realized it was in Wylie’s truck last, when everything went down at Pat’s. A troubled look passed over Mark’s face, his stance changed, he took a step back. “Wake up. April’s near.”

I leaned forward. “I don’t understand. It’s not. It’s a half a year away.”

Branches rustled and leaves stirred against my flesh, tickling the inside of my wrist. I fell in a vortex, the room spinning.

A million stars blurred overhead.