by Ninie Hammon
Jamie stands oblivious to the horror, a lopsided grin on his face.
The first of the monsters leaps up onto the porch, reaches out a witch’s hand that ends in claws. The creature rakes them across Jamie’s face, opening up gashes to the bone, the white of forehead and cheekbones visible before the gush of blood.
Jamie shrieks.
Fish is too stoned to move effectively, can’t coordinate his limbs, staggers as a creature leaps toward him. It’s smaller than the one that ripped Jamie’s face off, but when it strikes Fish in the chest, it knocks him off balance. He reaches out, arms flailing and strikes Jamie in the back of the head. The young man staggers forward and falls head-first down the steps.
The creature is in Fish’s face, gaping maw open to rip out his jugular.
Fish was breathing in great heaving gasps. Charlie was grateful that his words exploded out of his throat in a strangled whisper Merrie could not hear, tucked away on the other side of the room inside her hymnal castle, singing happily some nonsense song about a witch, a dragon and a doughnut.
She was looking at Merrie when Fish spoke in a normal voice again, not a whisper, though the voice was hoarse.
“It was real.” All emotion was seined out of the words. “What I saw was not a drug-induced hallucination. It — they screamed pieces of the poem. ‘Jabberwock. Jabberwock. Jabberwock,’ the words came from all of them in different voices. The thing, the one, the smaller one that … I could smell its breath like a rotted corpse.”
Fish reached up with trembling fingers and began to unbutton his shirt, when he was halfway down, he pulled it open, like Superman displaying the S of his Superman suit on his chest.
Fish wasn’t wearing a Superman suit. What he revealed was a bony chest, thin and hairless, with four thick white scars that started low on his right side and swept across his chest and onto his shoulder.”
Charlie couldn’t help gasping.
Fish slumped back against the wall then, buttoning his shirt.
“I don’t know why I didn’t die. I thought I had, thought I was dead and had gone to hell. Then I opened my eyes and I was lying on the porch of that building on my back in a puddle of blood, my chest ripped open. And when I got to my knees, I saw Jamie lying in the street below.”
He took a shaky breath.
“He was dead. I’m not sure what … how he died, the cause of death. His face was sliced … almost off the front of his head, but I don’t think that killed him. I think his neck was broken … which would mean, of course, that I killed him. I’m not sure exactly what happened.” He paused. “I am making a bit of a habit of that — I don’t know what happened to Martha Whittiker, either. But the salient point to remember in both cases is that they ended up dead and it’s my fault. I put Martha Whittiker’s body in her grandson’s apartment, and I threw Jamie Forrester’s body down an old well shaft — no one ever knew he was here, that he died here. If he had family — he didn’t say — they never knew what happened to him.”
Fish barked out a sad laugh into the stunned silence that followed that remark.
“But, of course, I didn’t need somebody else to blame me. I blamed myself quite adequately, thank you very much. I tried to punish myself by drinking myself to death. Unfortunately, I survived long enough to kill two more innocent people.”
His chin dropped to his chest and he began to cry again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Neb yelled at Essie.
“Stop it! Stop that bleedin’, you hear me. Stop it right now.”
Essie just looked up at him with confused eyes as blood flowed out beneath her in an ever-widening circle on the porch.
What should he do?
What?
Neb was paralyzed, couldn’t move even a finger. Locked down like that Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz before Dorothy squirted oil on his joints from the can. The Wizard of Oz was Neb’s favorite movie.
His mind bounced off the images of Munchkins and flying witch creatures that didn’t have no names and ruby slippers to the pistol lying in the grass. The Smith & Wesson he’d shot his sister with.
Neb quit yelling at her to stop bleeding and just stared at her belly in fascinated horror. He was so scared his bladder let go and he felt warmth between his legs. He’d pissed himself.
Call 911. Yeah, that was it. You was supposed—
Wasn’t no 911.
Go for help. Help where?
Wasn’t no help anywhere in town. Onliest doctor was a vet and he’d got dog bit and was dying his own self of rabies.
Stop the bleeding. That was the most important thing. Had to stop the bleeding.
Neb accidentally did the next thing right.
He ripped off his tee shirt and wadded it up in a ball and jammed it down on the bloody hole in Essie’s tee-shirt, looked around for some way to hold it there.
His fingers shaking, wet and sticky with blood, he ripped off the gun belt, yanked the holsters off it and threw them into the yard and then wrapped the belt around Essie. He lifted her fat body up and scooted the belt under her and then fastened it tight across the wadded-up tee shirt on her belly.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, please don’t let her die.
“Don’t you die on me,” he cried into her face. She didn’t look surprised anymore. Her eyes looked dull.
“Heeellllp!” he cried out at the top of his lungs in fear and longing.
Wasn’t nobody around to hear him. The Nower House — the Tackett House, he’d get in trouble if he didn’t call it that — didn’t have no close-by neighbors. All the yards on this side of the street were huge, this one in particular, wide areas of grass in front and back. Obie’d left the mower sitting because Neb’d been supposed to finish up mowing the yard only he’d gone in the house instead and got his guns so he could practice—
He’d shot her. Hadn’t meant to. It was an accident. He never dreamed the trigger pull on that pistol would be so light he’d pull it just drawing the gun out of the holster. He hadn’t intended for nothing as awful as shooting his sister to happen just ‘cause he was playing with them guns.
Only then did the realization strike him — what was Mama gonna do to him when she found out what he’d done?
Found out he’d been playing quick-draw like some little kid and shot …
What if Essie died? What if he’d … killed her?
No! No, no, no, no. He had to help her, had to keep her from dying, had to do something. He couldn’t even load her up and take her … take her somewhere. He didn’t have no car. Obie’d took his pickup to the sheriff’s office and Mama’d gone off with Zach in his fancy …
The truck was out back! The farm truck they’d come to town in. Mama’d lost their pickup truck to the Jabberwock and they’d been driving around in that old truck ever since — ‘til Zach and Obie got their own cars. He could load Essie up in the truck and take her … where?
Where?
To the clinic in the Middle of Nowhere. That’s where Sam Sheridan was!
Yeah. He’d take Essie there and Sam could fix her up, make her good as new like she’d done when that spider had bit him. Hadn’t nothing in Neb’s life hurt like that did, and then it’d got infected. He started running a fever, sick like he had the flu and Mama’d sent Obie down to ask Eunice Martin would she please call Sam Sheridan and ask her to come by and see to him.
By the time Sam got there, Neb was so sick he barely knew what was going on, just remembered Sam had jumped dead in the middle of Mama for not calling her sooner, said that infected bite coulda killed Neb! Mama took Sam’s yellin’ meek as a lamb.
Yeah! Neb had to load Essie up in that old truck and take her to Sam at the clinic.
How was he gonna get her to the truck?
He’d have to carry her. But Essie was almost big as he was. And Neb wasn’t strong like his brothers. How was he supposed to pick up big ole Essie and carry her all the way around the house to the truck?
Essie made a little moaning sound, pitiful-l
ike, sounded like a baby rabbit the dogs had got to and ‘fore Neb knew it he had reached down and lifted her up into his arms and was staggering down the porch steps with her.
Wasn’t no way he coulda done it if he’d thought about it but he didn’t think, just done it. Stumbled to his knees and very near dumped her in the grass at the bottom of the porch steps, but he made it back up to his feet and lurched across the yard toward the driveway that led to the garages in the back of the house. Three of ‘em. A double garage on one side and then a single one alongside it, but the single one was filled up with junk Mama hadn’t yet decided what to do with — stuff belonging to the Nower family that Sebastian hadn’t took with him when she run him off.
The farm truck was parked in front of the single garage. Neb gasped for breath, stumbled toward it, had made it halfway down the driveway when he heard a sound from the street and cried out his own self in relief, then dropped to his knees. The vroom-vroom sound purred softer as Zach pulled his fancy black sports car into the driveway, taking the corner too fast so the tires squealed when he stopped. Neb laid Essie down on the concrete and leapt up, went running to his mother who was climbing out of the car.
Neb was crying, blubbering, snot running down his lip, babbling.
“Mama, Mama, Essie’s hurt.”
Mama could see that her own self soon’s she got out of the car and she run up the driveway and knelt beside where he’d left Essie. Mama let out a little cry of surprise and put her hands on Essie’s cheeks, patting them.
“I’s trying to get her to the truck so’s I could take her to Sam out in the Middle—
“What happened?” Mama fired the words into the air. “She fall down, hurt herself …?”
Mama was examining the wad of his tee-shirt strapped to Essie’s belly with his belt.
“She didn’t fall, Mama. She … been shot.”
Mama’s head snapped toward him and her eyes bored into him like railroad spikes.
“Shot? Essie, shot?” Surprise and shock were instantly replaced by anger. “Who done it? Who shot my Essie?”
“I don’t know, Mama,” Neb heard his mouth say. “I didn’t see who done it. I was … mowing the lawn, just like you said, and I heard a bang, and I come running ‘round the side of the house as a car was driving away. Found Essie on the porch. Shot.”
It hadn’t occurred to Neb until that moment to lie, and he’d said the first thing that come to mind. But it was a good story. Somebody drove by the house and shot Essie. And he never seen who it was.
The story worked. Neb didn’t have no gun on him. He’d dropped both the pistols in grass so tall you’d have to step on ‘em to see ‘em, the holsters, too, even took off the gun belt and used it to hold Essie’s bandage in place.
Of course, Essie knew what really happened, but she couldn’t talk clear enough to make much sense out of her words. Couldn’t hardly understand nothing she said.
The flame of pure hatred and rage in Neb’s mother’s eyes was a horror to behold as she looked out at the street, considering the imaginary gunman who’d shot down her baby girl. Then she banked the fire, left the heat of it bright behind her eyes as she focused on Essie.
“Zach, get in the house and call Obie and tell him to get here fast in his truck.”
Obie. Neb hadn’t even thought to call Obie.
Then his mama took Essie’s hand and patted it, told her she was gonna be just fine, petted her cheek and stroked her forehead, running her hand back over Essie’s mostly bald head.
It occurred to Neb only then how enormous it was that he’d dodged the bullet of responsibility for what had happened to his sister. He surely wouldn’t want to be the one who eventually caught the blame for the deed. He literally couldn’t imagine what his mother was gonna do to whoever she held to account for it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Malachi faced the deranged father of a dead teenager — the grandfather of the baby she carried — and knew it would do no good to argue with him. Duncan Norman was way past the ability to reason. Nothing Malachi said would convince him that Malachi had not … what was it he was babbling, ravished his precious baby girl. From the little pieces of coherent thought in the reverend’s ravings Malachi pieced together that he knew the father of Haley’s baby was Malachi because he had read it in her diary. Which made no sense at all. Malachi knew the teenager, of course, at least knew who she was, remembered her from J-Day, sitting blinded in the parking lot in the Middle of Nowhere, asking where her vehicle was, refusing to tell Fish where she’d been going.
Sam said Hayley’d told her she’d been on her way to Lexington that day to get an abortion. And when she couldn’t get one, and Sam refused to perform one, the baby’s father, Howie Witherspoon, had killed her.
But there was no way now to get Duncan Norman to believe that, no way was he rational enough to comprehend it. Malachi had to get the gun away from him. He doubted Norman’s reflexes were quick enough to fire before Malachi jumped him. He hoped they weren’t — his life depended on that. But he needed a second, just a moment, had to catch the man off guard.
And then Malachi noticed the bloody handprint on the window.
“I’m not your man,” Malachi said. “And I can prove it.”
“Don’t you even have the decency to admit what you did?”
“Look at the car window, Duncan.”
“The window you smeared with my daughter’s blood!”
“The handprint, Duncan. Look at the handprint!”
He saw Duncan cut his eyes toward the window only for an instant but long enough to see the print on the glass. It looked like somebody had stuck their hand down into a can of red paint and then carefully applied it to the window pane. Not just somebody, of course. Howie Witherspoon.
“The person who killed your daughter came back to her car after he committed the crime,” Malachi was careful not to say words that would incite him. Left out “beat your daughter until she was unrecognizable” and “threw her dead body off the cliff.”
“Shut up. Just shut your filthy mouth.” Duncan seemed to grab hold of the impending explosion of rage then. Took a breath. “You have until I count to ten to make your peace with God. A man like you doesn’t even believe there is a God but the second I put a bullet through your heart, you will discover how very wrong you are. There is a God and there is a devil. You and Satan are about to become besties.”
He paused.
“One.”
“The man who killed your daughter had her blood on his hands and he smeared it on the car. You can see that.”
“Two.”
“He placed his hand on the front window to close the front door.”
“Three.”
“He left a bloody handprint there.”
“Four.”
Malachi had to take a chance. He reached out slowly toward the mark on the window.
“I told you not to move.”
“The handprint, Duncan. The man who killed your daughter made it with her blood. Look at it.”
Duncan did glance at it then, but only glanced. Not good enough.
“And you know that because it was you who made the hand print.”
“No, it wasn’t me. And I can prove it — that is not my handprint.” Duncan kept his eyes trained on Malachi, but surely he could see the handprint out his peripheral vision.
“I am going to open this car door. If you have to shoot me, shoot me. And then after I’m dead you will see that I couldn’t have been the man who killed your daughter.”
Duncan didn’t move, stood frozen.
Malachi moved his hand slowly to the door handle, pulled on it, and eased the door open. Then he pointed to the handprint.
“This is the handprint of the man who killed your daughter. And it is not mine.”
Malachi put his own hand up to the glass on the inside, in the spot where there was a bloody handprint on the outside. Malachi’s right hand lined up perfectly with the bloody left-hand print on the
other side of the glass and it was instantly clear what he meant. Malachi had big hands. His sergeant had called them catcher’s-mitt hands. Apparently, Howie Witherspoon’d had very small hands, but his fingers were pudgy, like sausages. The bloody handprint was clearly, noticeably smaller than Malachi’s hand. Malachi’s fingers were thinner than the handprint, too, but at least half an inch longer. The handprint’s palm was rounded, Malachi’s was thin and angular and much bigger.
“That’s not my handprint, couldn’t be. You can see that. I didn’t kill your daughter.”
Malachi tensed to jump.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“My fraternity brothers always said that the reason beer went through your system so fast was because it didn’t have to pause inside to change colors before you peed,” Stuart said. “So I don’t get why this coffee is draining through me like there’s a hose connecting one end to the other. Coffee does have to pause inside to change colors.”
Filters were definitely going down. With all three of them sleep-deprived, there was no telling what might come out of their mouths. Cotton suspected Stuart McClintock wouldn’t likely have dropped that comment into polite conversation if he weren’t bleary-eyed with exhaustion.
But Cotton had to keep shoving coffee down Stuart’s throat because the man refused to take the NoDoz tablets Cotton had bought. And Stuart had to stay awake — they all did. Could not go to sleep. Cotton thought of the dark areas outside the known world on ancient maps that bore the notation “Beyond Here Be Dragons.”
Sleep was now a dark void beyond the boundaries of awareness — a land of dragons. And worse.
There was a knock at the kitchen door. He and Stuart turned from their coffee and looked through the curtained window to see a man standing on the back porch. Stuart shot Cotton a questioning look and Cotton shrugged. He had no idea who the man was.
When Cotton opened the door, the man took off his rain hat — it wasn’t raining, but he was dressed in a raincoat — and introduced himself.