All thoughts to her daddy being dead were replaced with the knowledge—the proof—that he was here. He was alive! She could touch him, she could see him! He was alive!
But another part of her, something rational that was quickly evaporating, spilled to the surface, parting through the overwhelming emotions of joy she was feeling. “What are you doing here? We thought you were dead! What happened? Are you okay? Are—”
Daddy covered her mouth, making that shhing sound again. He looked around cautiously and Mary felt her heart leap in her chest. In her excitement she’d been loud. They stood still for a moment, listening to the silence of the house. Mary was certain that Brenda had heard her, and waited for the inevitable footsteps to come down the hall to the room she was sharing with Amy, but they didn’t. Daddy’s fingers were over her mouth, silencing her, and Mary felt such an overwhelming sense of joy at their touch, at their sandpapery texture, that she didn’t care they were cold. It was cold outside, once he was in the house for a while he would warm up.
Her daddy leaned so close to her that she could almost feel the bristle of his lightly bearded face. His long hair tickled her face. “I’m fine, honey,” he whispered, and she could feel the air of his breath. “I’m okay, and I’m here to take you home.”
“How did you get inside?” She asked, not able to stem the flow of tears now. The past five months of longing to see her daddy, to be taken into his loving embrace and be protected and cared for by him was overwhelming her. “Brenda locked up the house because she didn’t want Diana to come get me,” she said, her voice cracking. “You’re not going to take me back to Diana are you?”
Daddy’s fingers pressed lightly on Mary’s mouth again, quieting her, and he shook his head. “No honey, I’m not. Diana’s gone. I’m here now. It’s just going to be you and me, honey.”
And then Mary’s happiness overwhelmed her completely and she fell against her father, her face buried in his chest, trying to contain the sobs. Her daddy held her, whispering. “It’s okay honey. Shhh. Don’t cry. We don’t want to wake everybody up, okay? I don’t want to wake anybody up and cause a fuss.”
Mary didn’t want to wake anybody up either. Already she could feel herself relaxing in her father’s embrace, calm in the knowledge that he was here to take care of her.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Daddy whispered, kissing the top of her head. “We’ll go back home and it’ll just be you and me. Okay?”
Mary took a deep breath, containing her crying. She didn’t want to wake everybody up, but shouldn’t Brenda know that her daddy was alive? She looked up at him, her face wet with tears. “What about Brenda and Joe?” she whispered.
“They’ll be okay,” Daddy said. “I left a note for them on the table. They’ll understand that in the face of what happened to your grandparents and your Aunt Elizabeth that I had to come and get you. They’ll understand how important it is that you had to be alone with your daddy.”
Mary nodded. Of course they would understand. Her daddy had probably explained everything in his note to Brenda, and in the morning he would call and everybody could come over to the house and learn everything. She would learn everything too. In fact, she already knew that somehow the police had made a mistake. They just thought her daddy was dead. He had woken up in the hospital and had gotten out and come out here as soon as he could. That’s what happened.
And now he was here and he was her daddy again...not that crude imitation of a daddy he’d been when Diana and her kids lived with them. He had started out as her daddy when Diana moved in, but the longer she and her kids were at the house, the more daddy became less and less of himself until it felt like he was a different person. Towards the last month or so she hadn’t even seen him. But now he was here and he was better, and he had gotten rid of that nasty woman who had taken her daddy away, and they could go away together and be a family again.
“What about Mommy?” she asked, her mother suddenly coming to mind. She knew her mommy was dead, was still having a hard time trying to accept that fact.
“I don’t think Mommy will be able to come with us,” Daddy said, looking sad.
The finality of her mother’s death hit her, confirming it. She nodded, the tears streaming anew.
Her daddy hugged her closer to himself. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
Moving quietly, daddy helped her out of bed and they paused at the doorway to the bedroom. The house was silent. Daddy led Mary to the kitchen, and she wondered fleetingly if she should change out of her pajamas. They reached the side door that led out to the driveway, and Daddy lowered himself so that he was facing her at eye level. “My car is parked across the road there. You’ll be fine in your jammies. We’ll go home and get some rest together, just you and me. And in the morning everything will be fine.”
Mary nodded. She felt good that her daddy was back. She felt happy. Despite all the horrible things that happened in the past month, this was the best day of her life. Her daddy was alive and he was back!
“Okay,” Daddy whispered, standing up and taking Mary’s hand. He unlocked the door and opened it, then reached down and scooped Mary up in his arms. “Snuggle against me. It’s cold outside.”
Mary wrapped her arms around her daddy, closing her eyes as she felt the tears of happiness overwhelm her again. Her daddy carried her outside, closing the kitchen door softly behind him, and by the time she was safe inside his car well—not his SUV exactly, but the Chrysler Diana drove, which she knew Daddy had bought for her so maybe he really had kicked her out—she was crying again, only this time she let the sobs break through. She was so happy, so overwhelmed with love for him, that she just couldn’t contain her joy. And as her daddy started the car and slowly drove down the lonely country road away from Brenda and Joe’s house, Mary told herself that she was never going to be separated from her daddy ever again. They were going to be together forever and ever.
Forever and ever.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE RINGING OF the phone jolted Gregg Weaver out of a light sleep.
He hadn’t slept well at all, and the jarring of the telephone was the final nail driving away the sleep that had eluded him for most of the night. He peeked at the clock on the nightstand by the bed. Six thirty a.m. Don Grant had left the house at two-thirty, and Gregg had come straight upstairs and gone to bed, where he had lain tossing and turning and catching brief snatches of sleep ever since. He sat up quickly as the phone brayed a third time and scooped up the receiver. “Yeah?”
“Gregg, Mary’s gone!” Brenda’s voice was loud, trembling with fear and panic.
“What?” Gregg sat up, the shock of the news and Brenda’s terror-stricken voice providing a jolt to his system. “What do you mean she’s gone?”
“She’s gone!” Brenda wailed, her voice quivering in sobs. “I just went in to check on her and she wasn’t in bed. I’ve...I’ve checked the whole house and she’s gone!”
Gregg’s mind was racing in panic. “Did you call the police?”
Brenda was sobbing so loudly that he couldn’t hear her response. There was a sound on the other end of the line and then Joe’s voice came on. He sounded scared, but his voice was more level. “I’ve looked all over the house and she’s gone, Gregg. The police are on their way.”
“Is there any sign of a break-in?” Gregg asked, his heart pounding.
“There’s none.” Joe paused, and Gregg caught a sense of hesitation in his voice. Brenda cried in the background and he could hear their kids’ excited voices. “Something was here last night, Gregg,” Joe’s voice was a shaky whisper.
“What do you mean, something?”
“I went outside to look for her and saw...hell, I don’t know how to describe it.” Joe sounded like he had just seen a ghost. “Outside on our back deck where the shrubbery and the grass grow up against it...near the French doors that open out onto the patio. There’s a big patch of dead grass and vegetation there and...”
Joe hesitated
and Gregg tried to fathom what he was getting at. Of course the grass and vegetation would be dead. It was fall. Winter was officially three weeks away. What the hell was he talking about? “What is it, Joe?” he asked, trying to sound gentle but persuading.
“There’s a trail,” Joe said quietly. “That leads from the road and through our yard around the side of the house to the back deck. It stops near the window, as if somebody was looking into our house.” He paused again and Gregg could hear him licking his lips. “The yard has been yellow anyway, but this path is...well, the grass is actually white! The bushes near the back deck are white and when I touched them they just fell apart. And...” Gregg heard him gulp. “There’s this...ah shit, there’s this shit on them that’s like....grease...or slime...”
Diana, Gregg thought, his heart freezing in his chest.
“This shit wasn’t there yesterday,” Joe said. “We keep our garbage cans right outside off the back deck, and I put some trash out yesterday and the wind had blown some newspapers along the side of the house. I was over there yesterday afternoon and this shit wasn’t there!”
“Okay,” Gregg said. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, his mind racing. I’ve gotta call Don, tell him what happened, we’ve gotta go to Ronnie’s, see if she’s taken Mary there, we’ve gotta—
“I called the police the minute I realized the house was broken into,” Joe said.
“How do you know somebody broke into the house?”
“That slimy greasy shit...it’s caked all over the doorknob of one of the French doors on the back deck.” He paused again and Gregg could tell he was preparing himself for what he was about to tell him next. “And there’s a small puddle of it just inside the house, in the family room on the other side of those doors...and there’s some in Amy’s bedroom beside the bed Mary was sleeping in.”
Gregg thought about the thing Mary had claimed to see attached to her father in the master bedroom. The shapeless, slimy thing that had undulated and changed, the faces that were inside it moving around. It had come to the Wandrei’s in its natural form somehow and changed once inside. The question was, what had it changed into?
“Did you tell the police that Diana took her?” Gregg asked.
“No. I just told them we had a break-in and that Mary’s missing.” He paused, spoke something to Brenda, then came back on the line. “Police are here now.”
“Tell them Diana Marshfield broke into your house and took Mary,” Gregg said. “Have them send a squad car there. It’s a Reinholds address, 232 Severn Avenue or something like that. I’m leaving right now for Diana’s.”
“Gregg!” Joe said but Gregg hung up.
The silence was deafening.
He could feel the blood pounding through his veins.
I’ve gotta call Don, he thought, reaching for his wallet for the card with Don’s cell phone number on it. He punched the number in and it was picked up on the fourth ring. Don sounded groggy, but quickly woke up as Gregg hurriedly told him what happened. “I’m going over there now,” he said, quickly slipping his tennis shoes on over stocking feet.
“I’m staying not that far from you,” Don said. “The Sunset Motel on 272 near the turnpike. Is that too far out of the way?”
“It’s on my way to Reinholds. I’ll come get you.”
“I’ll be outside,” Don said.
Gregg hung up, grabbed his wallet and car keys from the nightstand and slipped out into the hall. He treaded downstairs quickly, thought briefly about waking his parents up to tell them where he was going, then decided not to. He didn’t have time to provide the explanation they’d demand, and he didn’t have time to scrawl down a note. He let himself into the garage where the SUV and Elizabeth’s car were parked, got into the SUV, started it, opened the garage door and started backing up before the garage door was fully open.
WHEN THEY PULLED up to Ronnie Baker’s home forty-five minutes later, the first thing he noticed was that Diana’s Chrysler was parked in the driveway. Gregg saw another car parked three houses down with two men sitting in the front seat. One of them looked vaguely familiar, and he pulled into the driveway of a house on the other side of the street and did a three point turn, heading up the opposite end of the neighborhood. He wanted to approach the house from the rear, and if Diana was home he didn’t want her to see their approach.
He pulled to the curb and killed the engine.
They sat in the car for a moment, looking at the house.
“Think she’s home?” Don asked. He’d been standing beneath the awning of the motel when Gregg arrived and had climbed into the SUV wordlessly when Gregg pulled up.
“It looks like it,” Gregg said.
Don looked nervous. He licked his lips, ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Much as I don’t like facing her, I think we should go up and ring the doorbell.”
“Me, too.”
They got out of the car and walked towards Ronnie’s house.
The men who had been sitting in the parked car got out. They walked them, as if they were heading toward the same destination.
The closer the four men drew together, the more recognizable one of them became to Gregg. He made the connection as they drew within five feet from each other on the sidewalk. “Gary?” Gregg asked the taller of the two men, holding out his hand.
“Yeah,” Gary Swanson said, shaking Gregg’s hand. “Good to see you again, Gregg.” Cindy Baker’s ex-boyfriend looked tired, as if he had been up for the past twenty-four hours. He was wearing a denim jacket over a red flannel shirt, blue jeans and brown work boots. He glanced at the smaller man, who was wearing a black leather jacket over a blue flannel shirt, and had a stubbled face and longish dirty blonde hair. “This is Ray Clark. He was Cindy’s roommate.”
Gregg shook Ray’s hand and introduced Don, who nodded politely. Gregg cast a quick glance toward the house and then back at the other men. “How long you have guys been sitting out there?”
“All night,” Ray said, and the way he said that made Gregg’s veins freeze. The smaller man had the wide-eyed look of one who has just seen the unthinkable; a tree pulling its roots out of the ground and walking, or a dog speaking Italian. Gary Swanson didn’t look much better himself.
“I think we need to talk,” Gary said.
“Yeah,” Gregg said, turning to Don. “I think that’s a good idea.”
The four men headed toward Gary’s car, which Gregg saw was a blue Toyota hatchback, an early 1990’s model. Gregg and Don squeezed into the backseat and the first thing Gregg noticed, besides the mass of papers and wadded up fast food wrappers and bags, was the sweet smell of marijuana. He said nothing, however, as Gary and Ray shut the doors and turned their attention to Ronnie’s house. “What do you guys know?” Gary asked.
“What do you know?” Don asked.
Gary turned around, his eyes lighting on Don’s for a second, then on Gregg’s. “I know Ray and I saw some weird shit here last night. That’s why we’re still here. We’ve been talking about it since one, two o’clock this morning.”
“You’ve been sitting here all night?” Gregg asked, trying to hide his amazement. “I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t call the cops.”
“I’m sure some of them are thinking of doing so now,” Gary said, glancing around the neighborhood before turning back to Gregg and Don in the back seat. Ray was sitting in the passenger seat, half turned around so he could get in on the conversation. “But I’m guessing the cops are already on their way over. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” Gregg said, his heart pounding. He saw something, his mind screamed. “Elizabeth’s cousin Brenda called them. I told them to send somebody over here because Mary’s missing. Diana took her last night.”
Gary and Ray glanced at each other, then looked back at Gregg and Don. “How do you know that? Did you actually see Diana take her?”
“No, but Joe and Brenda’s home was broken into and Mary’s missing. Diana’s already threatened to take her.�
� Gregg couldn’t contain himself any more. “You saw her last night, didn’t you? You saw her pull up to the house with Mary.”
Gary and Ray traded worried glances again and this time Gary shook his head. “No. We didn’t see Diana at all last night.”
Gregg wanted to explode; in fact, he was on the verge of exploding in Gary’s face yelling, bullshit, when Ray diffused the situation. “He’s telling the truth. We didn’t see Diana last night. We saw Ronnie.”
“What?” Gregg looked from Gary to Ray, trying to read the expressions in their faces.
“It’s true,” Gary said, nodding, trading another glance with Ray. “I kid you not, man. We were both sitting here last night, talking about what we were going to do. We came over here last night to have a talk with Diana about...certain things. Anyway, we were sitting here talking about what we were going to do when we see Diana’s car pull into the driveway, only it wasn’t Diana who was driving. We thought it was, and we were going to wait until she got out of the car but it was Ronnie who got out.”
“Ronnie?”
“Yeah.”
Gary and Ray were telling the truth. Gregg could feel it, could see it in their faces. They were not lying, as much as he wanted to believe they were.
Gregg hadn’t looked at Don, but he could sense the other man sitting in the seat beside him, silently soaking this all in. Gregg’s mind was still trying to come to grips with it. “You saw Ronnie last night. My dead brother-in-law.”
“Yeah,” Gary said, swallowing. “It was Ronnie. We weren’t seeing things. I know you smell weed in the car, but we didn’t start smoking till after we saw that shit.”
“What did he do?” Don asked.
Gregg glanced at him and saw that Don had taken a keen interest in this story. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, totally absorbed.
“He went around to the passenger door and opened it,” Gary said. “There was a kid in the front seat. I couldn’t see who it was at first, but when they got to the front door of the house I caught a glimpse. It was Mary.”
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