Ragged Man (4 page)

* * *

Vicky turned to wave at her husband as the scrawny man stepped behind Mark, grabbed him by the hair, jerking his head back. He ran a knife across his neck, slitting his throat from ear to ear. The ragged man smiled, even as blood washed down the front of Mark’s sweatshirt.

She wanted to scream out, but she was struck dumb, paralyzed in place, as planted as any of the trees in the forest. She could only watch as the ragged man brought the giant knife up to Mark’s left ear and made another ear to ear incision, this time along the jaw line.

Then he ripped the skin off of her husband’s face.

Then he slashed the knife around Mark’s hair line, separating the skin and scalp from the head, pulling them off in a filthy clawed hand.

Then he jumped back as Mark Donovan, with only a bloody stump for a head, danced a quick, herky jerky, death jig, before collapsing on the dew damp ground.

That galvanized Vicky into action. Without thinking she grabbed the duck out of her daughter’s arms, threw the screeching bird aside, wrapped an arm around her daughter’s waist, tucked the child into her side like a football and started to run. Her system was working again, she was in excellent shape and the pumping adrenaline gave her added strength and endurance. She was an animal mother fleeing with her young.

She scattered ducks in her path as she ran flat out, hard and determined. She ran with the pond to her left and the bike trail to her right, seeking to put distance between herself and the evil thing that was carving up her husband’s body. She harbored no doubt as to what it would do when it finished with Mark. It would come after her and her child.

She broke right and crossed the bike trail into the forest. Brush and branch whipped against her, tearing into her sweatshirt, but she kept on. She tasted her own blood when a low branch ripped a gash in her face, but she ignored the coppery taste and slicing pain in her attempt to get away.

Then she was through the brush and on a deer trail that she’d walked many times with her husband and daughter. She turned left, picking up her pace, thinking now that maybe she had a chance. She knew these woods.

Then she heard the scream, up ahead to the left, probably on the bike trail. The wail, coming from the belly of whatever was up there, wasn’t indigenous to these woods. It was a bad thing. It was the evil that killed Mark and it was ahead, waiting for her.

It screamed again, a lightning blast to her heart. She stopped, fought her panic, turned to double back, when she heard something coming through the brush. “Another one,” she moaned under her breath. “There’s two.”

Then she saw it, a tall pine with ladder like branches. If she could reach those branches, maybe she’d have a chance. She could hold them off till help came. She ran to the tree and saw the futility of her plan. She could never squeeze through the closely packed branches, but Janis could, if she could hold her high enough to get a hold.

“
Janis, I’m going to lift you up to that branch. I want you to grab it and climb as high as you can. Do you understand?”

“
Yes, Mommy,” the terrified girl said.

“
Don’t come down for anyone or anything. Stay up there and hide, till I come back.”

“
When will you come?”

“
Soon, now come on.” She picked the child up and held her above her shoulders. She heard the thrashing in the brush getting closer.

“
I can’t reach,” Janis cried with her arms extended. “I can’t reach.”

Vicky was standing on her toes, holding Janis as high as she could. “How close?”

“
Real close, Mommy. I’m real close.”

“
Listen, baby, I’m going to jump and I want you to try and grab that branch, okay?”

“
Okay.”

Another scream ripped through the morning mist, closer, coming from the other direction. They’re closing in for the kill, she thought. Then she muttered to herself, “But they’re not going to get my baby, not Janis.”

She lowered herself, bending her athletic legs and jumped, straightening, pushing off the ground, holding Janis aloft. She felt the weight lessen and felt a moment’s satisfaction, knowing that Janis had grabbed onto the branch. But the satisfaction was short lived.

“
Mommy, I can’t get up.” Janis was trying to pull herself up onto the branch, but her child’s muscles weren’t developed enough to lift her body.

“
Let go, I’ll catch you.” Vicky could feel the evil closing in.

“
I’m afraid.”

“
You have to do it, honey.”

Janis let go and fell into Vicky’s arms

“
This is the last chance we’ll have, baby,” Vicky said. “I’m going to try and throw you. You have to grab on and climb or we’ll die.”

“
I’ll try.”

Vicky bent her knees and back and lowered Janis as low as she dared, an inner instinct told her not to let her daughter touch the ground, just in case the creature was following her scent. She straightened her legs with an adrenaline rush, throwing her hands above her head, and Janis flew up. Vicky’s aim was true. Janis sailed by the branch and came to a stop and started her descent. When it was at waist height, she reached out, grabbed hold and pulled it to her. She threw her leg over the branch and scrambled up on it.

“
Climb,” her mother said from below. She added, “I love you, baby.” Then she left the trail and went into the thick woods and was gone.

* * *

Janis started to climb and almost fell out of the tree when she heard the noise coming from the direction they’d been headed. She strained her eyes and looked down the deer path. The noise was getting louder, heavy breathing, like the sound made by the air machine on her fish tank, only louder and it was getting closer. She heard the scream again and knew that it was coming from the thing that made the fish tank noise. Then she saw it, a black blur coming fast, toward the tree, toward her. It ran past. She saw its slick black hair as it glided over the path beneath her. She held her breath and watched it go away. Then it stopped and turned. It was coming back.

It wasn’t running this time. It came slowly and stopped below the tree with its nose to the path. It was smelling the ground, smelling the ground and looking for her. It sniffed the area where her mother left the trail. It wasn’t looking for her, it was looking for her mom. She wanted to yell, to tell it to go away, but she was afraid, so she stayed still.

There was a breeze coming from the direction of the monster animal. It smelled like fish, not the fish from her tank, but the ones the fishermen brought in on the Seawolf. She could smell it, she hoped it couldn’t smell her. She stayed quiet, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.

She heard something else coming down the deer path. She hoped it was her father coming after them, he would take care of the monster below. Her father could handle anything. She started to yell, to tell her dad where she was, but she caught the words in her throat as the beggar man came into view.

He was skinny and reminded her of the stickmen that her kindergarten teacher drew on the blackboard, but he wasn’t wearing the stickman smile or carrying the flowers that those stickmen always carried. Instead he had a giant silver knife, a knife big enough to be a sword. The sun reflecting from the bloody blade, and the man’s crusty skin, combined to scream one word to the girl above, and the word was, bad.

She only saw the sores on his dried up face and his bloodshot eyes for a flash of a second, before he followed the scary animal that made the fish tank noise into the forest. She was afraid she would never see her mom again. Then she worried about her father and she started to climb higher.

It seemed like she had been up in the tree forever, but the sun said that noon was hours away. She wished her father would come and chase away the bad things.

Then she heard the fish tank noise again.

“
Oh, no,” she cried, “they’re coming.” She wiggled between the branches, climbing as high as she dared, tearing her sweat suit and scraping her skin, but she was afraid she wasn’t high enough. She strained, trying to squeeze between another branch, ripping a cut on her right arm. She wanted to scream, but didn’t dare.

She wondered again why her father didn’t come for her. She was sure he didn’t run away, but if he didn’t, where was he? And she was afraid for her mom. The things that had chased her into the woods were bad and now they were coming after her. She burrowed farther up the tree.

She saw something move past below and she squeezed her eyes shut till it passed, but it didn’t go far before it turned around and came back. She opened her eyes. She felt it getting closer. Then she saw her arm and the blood. Strange, she didn’t feel anything. It didn’t hurt. It should hurt. Always before whenever she cut herself it hurt.

She looked down.

“
Oh, no,” she cried, “it’s one of the monsters.” She tried to climb higher, but couldn’t.

The dog-like animal raised its head and Janis saw into its deep red eyes and right into its mouth, all the way to its belly. It had teeth longer than her arm. She hoped that it couldn’t climb trees.

It could.

Chapter Three

J.P. sat on the cool beach sand and wondered if he’d see his birds again. Good racers homed for life and these had been born a long way from the Northern Californian town of Tampico. The five birds were sixteen months old and had never flown free. He hoped that because they were only six months old when he and his mom moved, that they would home to the new loft. There was no loft left in Toronto, fifteen hundred miles east, for them to trap into.

At one time he thought about keeping them caged forever. They were his best birds and he didn’t want to lose them, but Rick told him they were bred to fly and he had to agree, keeping them caged would be cruel. He couldn’t put it off any longer, if they wouldn’t home by now, then they never would.

He got up, dusted off, reached into the gunny sack. He liked the smell of the bag. He associated the dusty bird smell with the far away poster places on the dusty walls of Tampico Travel. He liked to imagine that he could fly to those places with the birds. His small fingers found Dark Dancer with natural ease. He wrapped them around the bird and pulled it out of the bag.

Dancer was his favorite, a big, black check racer whose sire was a hammer tough bird that had heart. J.P. would find out soon enough if the bird was made out of the same stuff as his father. He hoped so.

He smoothed back Dancer’s feathers and thought for the thousandth time that the white corn on his beak and around his black eyes contrasted with his dark face to make him look like a dark hooded terrorist. Then, with clenched lips, he whispered, “Go, Dancer,” and he lowered his right arm, hand holding the racer, bringing the arm behind his back, parallel with the ground, stretching his muscles, feeling the strain. Then he whipped it forward in a fast arc, releasing his fingers as the arm flew past his eyes, letting the bird slide out of his hand. He felt the burst of wind caused by the strong beat of Dancer’s wings.

Four more times he repeated the ritual. Four more birds, Ballerina, Cyclone, Thunder and Lightning, followed Dancer into the air, forming a great circle above J.P., stealing his heart as he tried to keep them in sight. He watched as they circled for bearing and smiled when they headed south, into the wind, toward home, Dancer in the lead.

J.P. turned and saw a large black man standing on the boardwalk. He was watching J.P.’s birds with a smile on his face, so that made him okay as far as J.P. was concerned. The man waved. J.P. waved back, wondering if the man had had pigeons when he was a boy. Rick had told him that a lot of people did in the old days.

He turned from the black man and picked up his binoculars. He tried to follow the birds, but it was too hard to keep them in sight, so he faced the binoculars toward his mother. He yelled and waved, but she was too far away to hear.

* * *

Down the beach, Judy Donovan wandered listlessly, occasionally picking up a shell or two and dropping them into a fringed straw sombrero. She had been in a daze for over a year. She had loved her husband and the thought that he didn’t love her back tore at her heart. Fortunately, when she flew with J.P. from the never stopping pace and traffic of Toronto, they landed next door to Rick and Ann.

J.P. took to Rick like a bird to the sky and, to her great relief, Rick returned the boy’s affection. In addition, Ann’s friendship had become an important building block in the foundation necessary to put herself back together and make her life whole again.

She shivered. Somebody was looking at her. She looked right and gave a start. Red eyes, blazing with fermenting hatred, glared at her. They were a window to a soulless heart. She looked into the red ringed pools of anger and wanted to run, but she was frozen.

She felt an ache in her chest and swallowed back rising bile. She tried to rein in her fear. If anything happened to her, who would care for J.P.? She concentrated on the nauseating taste as she held back the vomit and sought strength, and failed. She closed her eyes and felt the man approach.

* * *

Satisfied that the birds were headed home, J.P. again trained the binoculars down the beach. He saw the man approach his mother and he saw the Jim Bowie knife clutched in a gnarled hand held behind the man’s back. A Jim Bowie knife, bright as a mirror, reflecting the morning sun.