“But you’re headed down the wrong road, son.” The tone was fatherly, but with an edge.
Who the hell was this guy, and why did he give a shit what Tommy was about?
“I know that you’ve been messing around out at the Perkins Place.”
Sobriety punched Tommy right in the face. The valium was gone in an instant, having been replaced with a growing sense of alarm.
“You know that they never caught the person that killed those two boys.”
Something wasn’t right here! Not right, not right, not right! What was that in his voice? The fatherly tone had moved over and made way for something that sounded downright gleeful. The voice! Tommy tried desperately to place it.
“He could be anyone. He could be anywhere. He could be right beside you.”
Tommy knew the truth of this statement in an instant. The voice! It was the same voice that he and Nicky had heard that night at the Perkins Place! Come out, come out, wherever you are… He wanted to scream for help, jump out of bed and run, but his mind was overwhelmed and his useless body refused to move. He lay there, frozen, a captive to this murderer as surely as if his hands and feet were bound.
“And such a man,” the killer went on, “has likely done this before. There have probably been other children through the years.” He paused here, as if reflecting, and when he spoke again the gleeful tone in his voice turned into something in the neighborhood of downright giddy. “He’ll likely do it again,” he added. “And soon.”
Chomp, chomp…
“The point is, Tommy, that it’s dangerous for you out there. If you were to go back there for some reason… Well, you know what happened to Chris and Johnny, don’t you?”
And then he fired the kill shot. Standing up, (Tommy heard the chair legs scraping on the floor again, temporarily missed the smell of the spearmint gum, only to have it return much closer to him this time), the man placed his hand on Tommy’s cheek in a manner that was much too familiar. He stroked his cheek and then his hair, letting his hand come to rest on the crown of Tommy’s head.
“We wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to you, would we?” He finished. At once he clenched his fist, grabbing a knot of Tommy’s hair in it. And his other hand… (oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!) slid down Tommy’s chest, over his stomach, and came to rest just above his inner thigh, just in the place where he least wanted the hands of a child-molesting monster.
And once again, Tommy was screaming. He screamed blue-bloody murder. He screamed for God, and for Julie, and for John. He screamed straight through the man’s explanation to his sister that “he didn’t know what happened, everything had been going fine, perhaps an adjustment to the medication was needed?” He screamed right through John’s assurances to the man that all would be well; Tommy was just under the weather right now and prone to wild imaginings. He screamed while Julie did her best to comfort him and to quiet him, and eventually he screamed through another dose of valium. And sometime later, he became conscious of the fact that he was alone again. He didn’t know if he was awake or asleep and dreaming, because in his world there was no longer any light.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tommy was scared to death to do anything. He was also afraid not to. In the end, the ‘not to’ won out and he made a phone call to Beth. They’d have to wait until everyone else was asleep, since Tommy was not supposed to be out of bed.
It was just past midnight when Beth tapped lightly on his window. Within minutes, she had helped him out and they were headed up the road to where she’d left her car. She held Tommy’s hand the entire way, guiding him and helping him not to fall.
“I’m so sorry,” he said when they’d finally made it into the car. “This whole stinking mess is my fault.”
“I’m as much to blame as you are,” she answered. “I don’t think either of us handled things very well. But it doesn’t matter now. I just want to get it over with so we can have a life again. All I want is for us to be together again, Tommy, like it was.”
And it almost felt like that. Topo Gigio, Beth’s St. Bernard, was sitting up in the back seat (Jesse was also back there, though Tommy couldn’t see either of them). Tommy could hear Topo panting. He reached out and patted the dog, who immediately responded by planting a big, sloppy kiss on Tommy’s cheek. And then they were off. All too soon, they pulled into the driveway of the Perkins Place.
The property lay in total darkness and was eerily quiet. With no moon to speak of, Beth could see little better than Tommy. Reaching into the glove box, she retrieved a flashlight.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” he answered, smiling, but in truth he was as nervous as he’d ever been.
They had a plan. Tommy had remembered seeing an old ladder up against the back of the house. It would be an easy thing, really, just drop the ladder into the well, climb down, grab the skull, and done. They’d take it back to the cemetery in a box and leave it, anonymously, and things could get back to normal in Goshen. This would all be over soon.
Officer Wheldon, fifteen miles away and in his bed at home, tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He’d had an uneasy feeling all evening. Something was eating at him, though damned if he knew what. His wife slept peacefully beside him and his own children were safely tucked in their beds. Still…
And that’s when the handheld on the nightstand whirred to life again. First, the telltale click, then a bit of static, and then that high-pitched buzzing noise. No! his brain protested. Not again! Susan Wheldon slept through it as if it made no sound at all.
Johnny and Chris stood watching from the bedroom doorway. Jack still could not see them, but he felt them. He didn’t know what to call that feeling, or how to define it, but it was there just the same. To his mind, it was an energy of sorts, a charge in the air that made him uneasy as hell. He’d felt it several times in the past few days. He felt as though something was building, though he was hard-pressed to say what that something might be. You didn’t get to be a 20-year veteran of the police force without having some kind of intuition. He felt that it had to do with the Perkins place, recognized that it had something to do with those two kids, but beyond that he was mystified. Nothing like this had ever happened to him.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” the radio squealed. “Olley, olley oxen free!”
He knew that voice! That son-of-a-bitch! He could hear the sounds of Johnny and Chris crying in the background. And then the dial on the radio spun up just a notch and the sound changed. Suddenly the quiet bedroom was filled with the sounds of a car braking, squeeee…! and then glass shattering and was that Nicky Freeman’s scream? It was!
Jack was up and dressed by the time the dial spun up another notch. Something was happening! But what? He was ready to go and wondering which direction to go in when the radio kicked back in.
“Tommy?” That was Beth’s voice and she sounded scared. “Tommy? Oh my God, TOMMY!” She screamed.
This sounded bad. Worse than bad. Damnit! Tommy was supposed to be in bed! What were the two of them up to now? He was pretty sure he knew the answer to that. In fact, he thought he had a good idea where that skull was hidden, but he’d been biding his time, waiting for Tommy to tell him. He had hoped he could offer Tommy a little leeway if he’d only talk to him. Never in a million years had he thought Tommy would be dumb enough, especially in his condition, to go back out there. Kids! Damnit! Jack grabbed his keys, his gun, and the handheld from the nightstand, and he hit the ground running.
Beth and Tommy made their way through the brambles along the side of the house. The only sounds were the dry brambles snapping as they pushed their way through. No birds, no buzzing mosquitoes, not even a cricket or a bullfrog sounding off from the stream nearby. This house was toxic, choking out anything that had ever been alive.
“It’s just around the back,” Tommy reassured her. The night was warm enough, but, even so, chill bumps covered his arms and legs. He desperately wished that they didn’t have to be here.
It didn’t take them long to get through to the garden and locate the ladder.
“I don’t know,” Beth said dubiously. “It looks pretty old. Maybe we should have brought a rope or something instead.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Tommy answered. The wood felt solid enough to him. “We only need it for a few minutes. I just hope it’ll reach to the bottom is all.”
It had been made by hand with the purpose of getting onto the roof of the house, and, as such, it was a very tall ladder. And cumbersome. They spent several minutes trying to figure out the best way to get it down from the side of the house, and, finally, Tommy just got behind it, gave it a shove, and let it fall. The noise cut through the silence with a resounding crash. Tommy, who knew the crash was coming, had made it happen, was still startled enough to cry out.
“Gah!” he shouted. And then they were laughing again. It was all so creepy but it was kind of fun, too. It was nice to be with Beth again. Jesse also seemed to be enjoying this adventure. He followed closely behind them, his eyes alight with anticipation. Topo Gigio had wandered off. Tommy could hear the sound of him lumbering through the underbrush off to the right somewhere.
Together, they dragged the ladder over to the well, Beth leading and Tommy following. Getting it down inside proved a much more difficult feat. Eventually, they managed it by putting the foot of the ladder down inside the hole and then walking it upwards until it slid the rest of the way in. The ladder made it to the bottom with no problem, and stuck out the top of the well with a few extra feet.
“Perfect!” Beth declared. “You wait here with Jesse and I’ll go down.”
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “I got us into this mess, and I’m gonna be the one to get us out.”
Beth was having none of that.
“Oh, no. No way. You can’t see, Tommy! And you only have one arm. How do you think you’re going to manage all of this?”
“It’s not like it’s my first time on a ladder. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to go once I’m on it. It’s a straight shot down. Even a blind man can do this.”
“That’s not funny. Not funny at all.”
“Just give me a hand, Beth, and talk me through it, okay? Please?”
And she did. She took hold of his good hand, placing it on the side of the ladder and watched as he began to lower himself. Later, she would ask herself how she could have been so stupid, but right now it didn’t seem so hard after all.
Tommy managed the first few rungs without any difficulty. And then he encountered the first hitch.
“Pffffhhhhhhh!” he shrieked. “Oh Christ!”
“What? What is it?”
“Freakin’ cobwebs,” he said, laughing. “Oh Gawdddddd, that’s nasty.”
And there were gobs of them, but spiders had never bothered Tommy much. He laughed and cut right through them. He was a warrior and his prize, his princess, was waiting at the top! He might be blind, but he was still a man.
About half of the way down it started to get hairy. He could feel the narrow circumference of the well closing in around him. He was reminded that this had been a tomb for Chris and Johnny. His voice began to echo off of those walls and a trapped feeling set in.
“You okay, Tommy?” Beth called.
“Yes!” he answered, fear and frustration setting in. He wanted her to stop talking to him. He wanted to stop answering her. He wanted to be less aware that he was blind and entombed in this nasty, stinking death hole.
Breathing was becoming more difficult. This wasn’t fun anymore.
The further he went, the more damp it became. The walls felt slimy, and he tried to avoid touching them. And it stunk. It smelled of mold and decaying vegetation and who knows what? There were things down here that had probably been down here for a long time. There were things down here that had been down here when Chris and Johnny had been here. He held his breath, trying not to breathe the stuff in. Just one step… and then one more.
In this halting manner, he pushed through, step after step, one foot and then the other. It began to feel like there was no bottom. Did this thing go all the way to hell? And then his right foot touched water. He froze for just a moment and then he reasoned that if he was feeling water then he must be nearing the bottom. Almost there now. Almost over.
But how deep was the water? And what was in it? He took another step and then one more. The water was icy and it was up to his knees now. The worst part was that it didn’t feel like water. It was thick, not like water at all, but more like a stew. And as he descended, his legs and body displaced the water, stirring it up and causing… things to swirl around and bump into his legs. Oh, God, why had he worn shorts tonight? He desperately wished that he had put on long pants for this.
He took another step, hoping to feel the bottom of the well. Still, no. Hoping against hope, he decided to feel around the top of the water to see if the skull might be floating. In order to do that, he had to hold onto the ladder with his broken arm and feel around with the good one. It hurt like hell, and, in the end, the only thing he managed was a further stirring of the pot. Now he knew a bit more of what was actually floating around in here—not exactly what it was, but what it felt like, at least. Leaves mostly, he guessed, and small twigs, but it felt greasy. And now he knew that he was going to have to dive into it.
“You okay?” Beth hollered from the top.
“Jesus Christ, Beth!” he hollered. “No. No I am not fucking okay, all right? I am at the bottom of a well filled with some of the nastiest shit I’ve ever felt in my life, I can’t see, and I don’t know what’s down here with me. This is NOT okay, so stop asking, all right? Let me just get this over with!”
He took a breath and steeled himself to dive. He let out that breath and took a bigger one. How deep was this thing? How far would he have to go? How much water had been over the heads of Chris and Johnny? What if he died down here too?
His mind slammed shut. No. No, nope, not going to do it. Hell no! At that moment, nothing else took precedence. Nothing, no amount of consequences, good or bad, right or wrong, blind or seeing, nothing was going to make him dive into this sludge. He’d go to jail if he had to. Anything was better than this! Oh God, oh God, oh God! If being blind were horrible, being blind and having to dive into this was the worst possible scenario, and Tommy was not going to be able to pull this trigger. He desperately wished he could see, desperately wanted a candle to light up this darkness.
And then he heard a voice… Beth? Not Beth. That was Laura Cooper’s voice!
“Tommy?” she called softly. “Come to me, baby…”
But she wasn’t calling from the top of the well, she was calling from below! Her voice sounded funny, muffled and watery, as it floated up through the debris.
“Mom?” Tommy called out. “Mom?”
“Tommy!” Beth called from the top. The fear in her voice was palpable.
“It’s okay, Tommy. Come to me.” Her voice was soft, nurturing; she coaxed him like she had when he had been a child.
Tommy wanted to see his mother more than anything. It had been so long, and he missed her so much! He completely forgot any fear he had of the water and the things that floated in it. He completely forgot about Chris and Johnny. He forgot about Beth waiting there at the top. For just a moment, he remembered how Jesse could imitate his mother’s voice, and then he forgot that as well.
Tommy forgot everything, and he dove.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was a leap of faith, for sure, but faith is a beautiful thing. Tommy dove straight into the waiting arms of his mother. The moment he felt her arms close around him, he could see again. Oh, not the murky water, nor the things swirling around in it, but he could see her face, her clear, blue eyes, her smile, the happiness within that smile that told him this reunion was everything to her. He forgot the mission as he floated there in her arms, warm and comfortable. Light surrounded her and encompassed them as she pulled him down.
&nb
sp; Down, down they went, in slow-motion, to the bottom. He felt the rock beneath his feet. He was blessedly calm, felt no fear, as she took his hand and placed it on the skull. He took the thing and tucked it into the sling on his left arm, and then they were rising again.
But Tommy didn’t want to go back! He did not want to feel his head break the surface of the water unless she was coming with him. Instinctively, he knew she was not. He began to struggle, to kick against the rising.
“No, Tommy,” she warned. “You mustn’t.”
He blew out all of the breath he’d been holding and sucked hard at the water. The foul stuff rushed in and he gagged and choked on it and spit it back out.
But on this side, Laura Cooper had been made strong again. She held him firmly and guided him to the top. When they reached the surface and broke through, she lingered for just a moment. Tommy coughed and sputtered and protested.
Nathanial's Window- The Wrath of Jesse Eades Page 9