“Good. Call me if anything strange happens.”
You mean like finding a tongue in a jar? “Strange how?”
“I mean if there are any questions. Don’t hesitate to call.”
“Okay,” I said.
She hung up. I checked the time on my cell phone. Just after seven. I still had an hour to kill before I could put the kid to bed.
I turned on the lights in the master bedroom. “Oh no. I think Jack’s disappeared.”
A giggle came from the closet.
“Maybe he’s under the bed.” I knelt down to look under the bed while scoping out the room. Small nightstands stood on either side of the bed and against one wall was a large dresser.
I pulled open a nightstand drawer. “Aha, you’re in here.” No keys. I tried the other nightstand but it was locked.
Now I had a freezer and a locked nightstand to get into.
I put my hand on the closet door’s handle. “Maybe you’re in the closet.” I opened it just an inch. “No, that’s silly. Boys don’t go into closets, clothes go in closets.” I shut the closet door.
Loud giggling came from the closet.
I put my hands to my cheeks. “Oh no. Where could Jack be? I think he’s disappeared. I sure hope I don’t have to call the police.”
The closet door flew open. “Here I am.” His grin couldn’t have been wider.
“You win,” I said. “Want to play again?”
“Yeah,” he flew from the room.
“Wait, Jack. Don’t I get to hide?”
He came back. “I can count to eight.”
“Okay, you count to eight and I’ll hide. Then it’ll be your turn to hide again.”
“One. Two. Three.”
I left the bedroom, went to the bathroom, and stepped into the tub, closing the shower curtain halfway. Shortly, Jack came down the hall, directly to the bathroom.
He pulled the shower curtain aside. “Found you.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re good at this. Now I’ll count again. Go hide.”
He ran off again. Why do little kids run everywhere? I counted aloud as I headed to the living room and noticed, just inside the front door, a small shelf. Above the shelf was a hook with a ring of keys hanging on it.
Could I have been any less observant?
I grabbed the keys and stuck them in my pocket and quickly finished counting before yelling “Ready or not here I come.”
I followed the same routine as earlier, checking the bathroom, speaking loudly so Jack could hear me, and checking his bedroom. This time I heard no giggling.
“Hmmm,” I said loudly. “I wonder if Jack hid in the closet again.”
In the master bedroom I was tempted to try unlocking the nightstand but wanted to check on Jack first. Something felt wrong. I opened the closet door. No Jack.
Where could he be?
I did a quick check in the closet, looked under the bed, and went back to the hallway.
“Wow Jack. You’re a really good hider.”
I listened. No giggling. Where was he?
I opened the hall closet, but he wasn’t in there either. In his bedroom I checked the closet and under the bed.
Where was the little bugger?
I had checked the bathtub earlier, but not under the bathroom sink. He was neither there nor in the laundry hamper.
Back in the hallway I yelled for him. “Okay Jack. I give up. You win.”
I waited.
Nothing.
My cell phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket. “Hello?”
“Where’s Jack?” It was Mrs. Jellstout.
“We’re playing hide and seek. He’s hiding.”
“Did you give him any water?” she asked.
“Uh.”
“Emily! Listen very carefully. Did you give him any water?”
“He was thirsty but didn’t want tap water so I gave him a glass from the pitcher in the fridge.”
“Oh my God. We’re on our way. Wait for us. Don’t go outside and don’t call the police.”
“Why would I call—” but she had already hung up.
Did I poison him with the water? And how did Mrs. Jellstout know?
“Jack! This isn’t funny. Where are you?”
I ran back down the hall to the master bedroom and looked again. “Jack! Are you in here?”
I rushed though the hall closet again and his bedroom and the bathroom, all the while calling his name.
Where did he go? Maybe he slipped past me and was back in the kitchen.
I ran to the living room. The masks on the wall seemed to be judging me. I rushed into the kitchen, checked every cabinet and the pantry.
“Jack! Come on! You want more ice cream?”
Maybe he slipped past me into the garage when I wasn’t looking. I headed across the kitchen to the garage door and opened it. The lights were still off from earlier. I doubted Jack would be in the dark garage, but I flipped on the dim light anyway.
There weren’t many hiding places in the garage. “Jack, you out here?”
I stared at the padlocked chest freezer, indecisive. Should I check it out or continue trying to find Jack.
I was tempted, but what was more important? Satisfying my curiosity or finding the missing kid?
I hadn’t checked the doors and windows. I rushed back into the house, leaving the garage door open behind me, and ran to the front door. It was locked and the deadbolt was set. He couldn’t have gone out the front door.
“Jack! You’re mom and dad are coming home and they’re going to be very angry with you.”
I checked his bedroom window. It was closed and for some reason had bars on it. He couldn’t have gotten out there.
I ran to the master bedroom. Neither of the windows there had bars, but they were both closed.
“Jack. I’ll give you all the dinosaur stickers you want if you come here right now.”
I ran back into the hallway. Where else were there windows?
The living room windows didn’t open. Above the bathtub was a small window. Maybe it was small enough for a little boy to climb through but how would he reach it? He couldn’t have gotten out.
In the hallway I screamed. “Jack! Come here now!” The neighbors probably heard me screaming but I didn’t care.
Where’d he go? Why did Mrs. Jellstout tell me not to go outside? And how had she known he was gone?
What if Jack wasn’t Mr. Jellstouts real son and the biological father had kidnapped him?
I ran to the garage again and checked the walk-in door. It was locked, but he could have went outside and pulled it shut behind him.
The Jellstouts would be home any minute. I rushed over to the chest freezer, fished the keys from my pocket and tried different keys in the padlock. The third one fit. I unlocked it and opened the freezer.
Jack was inside the freezer. He lay flat on his back, eyes closed. A quarter inch of frost covered him.
I heard a shriek. It sounded far off in the distance. After several seconds I realized it was me screaming.
Darkness shrouded the edge of my vision and I felt lightheaded. I reached out, grabbed the freezer for support, trying not to crumple to the ground. But I couldn’t look away from Jack. How did he get in there?
The motor on the garage door whirred to life and the garage door started rolling up. What could I do? I hadn’t put him in the freezer but the Jellstouts would think I had.
Their car came halfway into the garage. Both doors opened and Mr. and Mrs. Jellstout rushed to me.
I laughed—I don’t know why. Laughter was not appropriate. Nothing seemed real. Was I stuck in a crazy dream?
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Jellstout said, putting her arm around me. “It’s okay. It’s all okay.”
I pulled away from her. “No it’s not. He’s in there.”
“I know dear. It’s okay.”
Mr. Jellstout grabbed me from behind.
I tried to slip from his grip, but he was too strong.
&nbs
p; “Bring her,” Mrs. Jellstout told her husband. She walked past me, into the house and I noticed her necklace. The gem was no longer red. It was gray and it pulsed. Bright-dim, bright-dim, reminding me of a beating heart.
Mr. Jellstout pushed me forward. I started to scream but his hand clamped around my mouth.
He whispered in my ear. “You be quiet if you want to live through this.”
He pushed me into the kitchen and into his chair—the one Jack had been afraid to sit in—and stood behind me. Mrs. Jellstout was searching for something in the junk drawer.
“Whyaht?” I said, a combination of why and what. I couldn’t even form the questions I had. There were too many.
Mrs. Jellstout found what she was looking for in the drawer. She came toward me, holding a hand behind her back and speaking. “I’m sorry Emily. I thought it would be okay, but we were gone too long. See, Jack drowned almost a year ago.”
She was crazy. Jack wasn’t dead. Yet he was in the freezer. Impossible. I didn’t understand.
“It was the worst day of my life, but Jonathan knew just what to do. We froze poor little Jack’s body and he contacted a shaman friend he had in West Africa.”
I just stared at her.
“Three weeks later they were able to give Jack’s spirit form. I had my little Jack back.” She looked at her husband. “Hold her.”
He held my shoulders.
“It’ll all be fine, Emily. You won’t remember a thing, but I’m afraid we won’t need a babysitter again for quite a while.”
She brought the needle out from behind her back.
The Sinister Smile
Conrad Phillips pulled his ‘74 Ford Pickup to the side of the road and checked his notes. This is it. Where Barker Road splits into Cherry Lane and Madison Road.
An old cypress tree stood near the road. Its roots branched into thick, brown octopus legs. He grabbed the shovel and a paper sack from the back of his pickup and walked to the tree.
His back to the tree, Conrad consulted his notes once more before marching ten paces. This placed him in the middle of the fork in the road. He started digging.
The ground was softer than he’d expected. It should be like concrete with all the cars driving over it. Conrad looked around and chuckled. What cars? Mine’s probably the first in days.
When the hole was a foot deep he knelt in front of it and placed his notes on one side and the sack on the other.
Here goes nothing.
He took an apple from the sack and dropped it into the hole. “This represents health, for strength and vigor all my days.”
He placed a dollar bill in the hole next to the apple. “Money represents the success that will be mine.”
A small Tupperware container of sand was next. He poured the contents into the hole. “May my friends be as numerous as sand on the beach.”
Conrad spread several spoonfuls of honey over the hole’s contents. “To sweetly bind together all areas of my life.”
He refilled the hole and sat back, waiting.
Nothing.
Now what?
Nothing.
What did I expect? That this Hoo Doo stuff would really work? He returned the shovel and sack to his truck. Turning back, he noticed the dark man.
The man wore black. His shirt, pants and boots were all the color of night. Atop his head sat a stovepipe hat, like Lincoln’s. He stood at the fork in the road and slowly extended his arm. One long, bone-white finger beckoned Conrad to approach.
Conrad gulped and moved toward the dark man.
The dark man cocked his head sideways. “You enter into this contract of your own free will?”
Conrad’s insides turned sour at the sound of the man’s voice. The voice sounded … rancid. He suppressed the urge to be sick and nodded his head.
The dark man raised his arm once more and slowly extended his finger towards Conrad’s chest. His finger burned through Conrad’s shirt, sending tendrils of smoke into the air. It pressed into the flesh over his heart, hissing, and continued through flesh and bone until it touched his heart.
Conrad fell to his knees. His mouth opened wide, but the scream caught in his throat and wouldn’t come out.
“It is done. I will collect in ten years.” The dark man removed his finger from Conrad’s chest.
The scream finally came. Conrad ripped open his shirt to see where the man had touched him. He was branded with a dark scar. It was a smiley face, but this face didn’t look happy, it looked sinister. As Conrad watched, the smiley face winked at him.
Conrad looked up. The man was gone.
Pact of the Banshee
At night, the Banshee cry
Good men go out to die.
Wee-hoo, wee-hoo,
In dirt we lie.
— Chorus of Children’s Game
Every able bodied man joined the village elders in the tavern to discuss the Banshee. I stayed near the entrance, anxious to listen, but not wanting to attract attention.
Campbell, the most ancient elder and sometimes barber, saw me. He was old and wrinkled and skinny and so tall his neck had a permanent stoop from ducking through doorways. Campbell had been in charge as long as anybody could remember.
He approached me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Sean Collins, you a wee bit young for the tavern.”
“Aye,” I said, trying not to shudder. “I’ll be fourteen in a fortnight.”
Campbell raised his walking stick, a tall, thin, gnarled piece of ironwood, a reflection of the old man himself. He pointed to the door with it. “Out. This is no time for youth.”
I pulled away from him and leaned against the tavern’s log wall. “So you are goan after the Banshee?”
Campbell’s eyebrows slashed a “v” over his wrinkled face. He gestured at the door with his stick again.
“I have a right,” I said. “Family right.”
He craned his long neck downward so his face were but inches from mine. “Do not make me tell you again, Sean Collins.”
I trudged through the tavern door. Not fair. I weren’t there for ale; I only wanted to hear the men’s plans. I had more right to be there than most the village. Last night the Banshee killed my uncle and when I was four, it killed my dad.
Outside, I looked around, trying to figure a way to eavesdrop. The tavern’s side window.
Campbell stood in the tavern’s doorway, neck hunched down, watching me.
I ignored him and headed along the cobblestone path toward my house. I passed the tavern, the sheriff’s office, and the barbershop before looking back. Campbell no longer watched me. I ducked around the barbershop, going behind the buildings and back to the tavern. I crouched low beneath the tavern’s side window. It was open.
Through the window I heard Campbell speaking. “Nay, we can’t send more than two men into the woods at night. Remember ten years ago?”
“If we scare the demon off, so much the better.” I recognized the voice, Shamus Brennan. The Banshee got his son ten years ago, the night before it got my dad.
“We goan to scare her every night?” Campbell asked.
“If we have to.”
“Aye, but the one night we miss, the one night we grow confident, she will compound our sorrows tenfold. Nay, we must attack in small numbers.”
The crowed murmured and grew silent. I waited.
Campbell thwacked my head with his walking stick. The instant before it connected I looked up and it hit my forehead with a loud “dnckk” sound. Even though I crouched on one knee, I fell to the ground.
Campbell laughed, a surprisingly deep laugh came from his thin frame. “Young Collins. You are as much a mule as your father was.”
I scrambled away from the window, away from his stick. My forehead throbbed.
“Run away, Sean Collins,” Campbell said. “I catch you again I won’t be so gentle.”
I hotfooted it away, back down the cobblestone path, past the sheriff’s office, past the barbershop. Then I stopped. I wasn�
�t going to let crusty, old Campbell stop me. I owed it to my dad and my uncle to find out the plan against the Banshee and help.
I went behind the buildings again and stopped at the tavern. The window was still open but I couldn’t hear from behind the tavern. If I went round the corner, Campbell might see me. I looked around, trying to figure out how to listen in. A tree grew close to the tavern’s back side.
Nobody in the village had my skill at climbing trees. Most our trees were tall lodge poles, trunks not more than two feet across. They went up thirty, forty feet before any branches. The trees were perfect for buildings, but hard to climb unless you had the knack. By looping your belt around the tree and holding onto each end, you could climb by digging your boots into the trunk and pulling yourself up. Some people put spikes on their boots but I didn’t need spikes. My friends and I once had a contest to see who could climb upside-down. I won, making it almost thirty feet.
I removed my belt and used it to climb twenty feet up the tree, level with the roof’s peak. I couldn’t quite reach the rooftop, so I leapt, landing as softly as I could on the bark shingles. I flattened myself on the roof and listened if anyone had heard me. Undetected, I crept along the roof to above the window. I lay down, head close to the edge, and listened.
“Who will join Doyle tonight?” Campbell asked.
“I’ll go,” said Shamus Brennan.
“Let’s meet back here at nightfall.”
The meeting was breaking up. I moved away from the window and rolled off the side, grabbing the eave with my fingertips. I dangled for a second before letting go and falling five feet to the ground.
Just before nightfall, I positioned myself inside the woods, far up in a tree, sitting on a branch and waited. Ryan Doyle and Shamus Brennan would enter the woods near here. Once they passed, I’d follow them and be ready to help with the Banshee. I had my iron dagger, the only thing I had from my dad. Legend said iron weapons could kill a Banshee.
From my perch I could see most the area from the tavern to the woods. Shamus and Ryan came out from the tavern. A group of men gathered around them. There was much hugging, back slapping, and gestures of encouragement. The crowd cheered a “hip, hip, hoorah” before they entered the woods.
Strange Perceptions Page 12