Ragged Man

by Ken Douglas

  Three separate groups of river runners passed him, unaware of the danger he represented. He swam out to the center of the river as the two girls grew closer. The blond passed three feet overhead and he thought of her cover-girl looks as he eyed her legs through the murky water. He let her float on by, waiting, a still predator set on his kill.

  The redhead floated over next, kicking her feet and splashing water with her hands. Storm imagined her chewing on her hair and clowning around. Morrow’s friend Ronny floated over with his belly down, paddling furiously with his arms. Storm watched, worried that the boy might see him, since he was floating face down, but the boy was more interested in catching up with the girls than checking out what lay below.

  Then came Danny Morrow, sitting in his tube, buttocks hanging down through the middle, arms and legs dangling over the sides. Here was a man without a care in the world, Storm thought, just floating down the river, watching the sky go by.

  Storm swam under Morrow’s tube, coming to the surface behind him. He reached out of the water, clamping a strong right hand over Morrow’s mouth and with his left, he brought the Bowie knife up through the center of the tube, up between the young man’s legs, driving it point first into his belly. Then he dragged the head below the water and held it there, to make sure.

  He held on to the body as it went through the dancing spasm of death and when it was still, he pulled the tube over to the calm water. He felt a slight twinge of guilt, but he shrugged it aside, and brought the knife around the dead man’s neck, pulling it through, severing the head.

  Then he swam back to his hiding place, removing the weight belt, regulator and tank on the way, letting them drop to the bottom of the river. He left the mask and fins at the river’s edge, grabbed his tube and went back into the water, heading for the chute. He gave the tube with the headless body a slight shove as he passed.

  He entered the current behind a gaggle of giggling girls from Texas A amp; M. He listened to their banter and smiled when the giggles turned to screams of delight and anticipation as they neared the chute.

  He followed them into the churning water, holding fast to his tube as it spun in the spray. He came out of the chute paddling with the current, directing himself to the opposite bank. He dragged the tube out of the water and made his way to the blue bus. He shoved his tube into the back and climbed on board. He took his seat as the bus started and didn’t look back when the screaming began.

  Chapter Nine

  Rick woke on the living room sofa to the smell of coffee. He thought about Christina upstairs and he wondered if last night had been a dream.

  “ Morning, Uncle Rick,” Torry said.

  “ Yeah, morning,” Swell echoed.

  “ Morning.” He yawned.

  “ We gonna do something today?”

  “ Does your mother have anything planned?”

  “ Yeah, she’s gone flying.” Torry smirked. “She said you’d entertain us today.”

  “ She’s gone flying?”

  “ Yeah, on Sunday some people go to church, Mom goes flying.”

  “ Every Sunday?”

  “ Never misses, thanks to you.”

  “ Thanks to me?”

  “ Well, you sold her the plane.”

  “ How long does she stay in the air?”

  “ All day. She says it clears her head.”

  “ Yeah. She needs the time to herself, at least that’s what she says,” Torry added.

  “ I had no idea.”

  “ There’s a lot about Mom you probably don’t know,” Swell said.

  “ Like what?”

  “ Like she’s in love with you.”

  “ Come on.”

  “ No, really, she is,” Torry spoke up.

  The girl’s words tore at his heart. He thought of Christina as a special person and he loved the twins. They were the children Ann and he couldn’t have.

  “ We’re just very good friends.”

  “ Come on Uncle Rick, how can you say that?” Torry said.

  “ Yeah, especially after last night,” Swell said with a knowing smile.

  “ Look, Mom’s back,” Torry said, looking out through the living room window. “Guess she changed her mind about flying.”

  “ Went to the airport and came right back,” her twin said.

  “ We should go to the mall.”

  “ We should go now.”

  “ Right.”

  The girls grabbed their purses and headed for the front door in time to greet their mother.

  “ Hi, Mom,” they said as one.

  “ Where are you off to?”

  “ The mall.” Torry held out her hand.

  Christina dropped her car keys into it.

  “ No drive safely speech?” Torry asked.

  “ Go.”

  “ We’re gone,” both girls said and they were out the door.

  Rick watched as Christina closed the door after the girls. She was wearing Levi’s and a faded red tee shirt. Her shoulder length hair was tied back with a matching red bandanna. In the fifteen years that he’d known her, she had never looked better.

  “ God, Chris, you look great.”

  “ I love you. I’ve been in love with you for years. I just thought you should know.”

  It was one thing to hear it from the girls, another to hear if from Christina herself.

  “ You don’t have to say anything. I’ve always known you were in love with Ann and that all we could ever be was friends. After she died I was so used to the relationship, you know, the friends thing, that I never imagined anything else. But after last night I can imagine more. I don’t know what exactly, but I can imagine something else.”

  “ I love you too,” he said.

  “ No you don’t.” She smiled. “Well, maybe you do love me, but you’re not in love with me. There’s a difference.”

  “ So what do we do?”

  “ Take it one day at a time and see if you fall in love with me.”

  “ That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “ Will you keep living in Tampico?”

  “ No. There’s nothing holding me there now.” He felt a twinge as soon as the words left his lips.

  “ Nothing? How about the girl next door?”

  “ There’s nothing between us. And say,” he laughed, “what do you know about the girl next door?”

  “ Come on, Judy’s a good friend. They spent last Christmas with us. I know how you love J.P. You must feel something for his mother.”

  “ That’s not fair.”

  “ Last night was great, probably the best night of my life, but let’s face it, there were times when you weren’t all there. Admit it.”

  “ I was there, all there, enjoying every second.”

  He saw the lines of tension leave her face and the determined set of her lips relax into a smile and he realized he had a problem. He cared for Christina and was maybe even in love with her, but until she put it into words, he wasn’t aware of how strongly he felt about Judy Donovan.

  “ So where do we go from here?” she asked.

  “ I don’t know. Ann hasn’t been gone that long. She’s still the first thing I think about when I get up in the morning, the last thing on my mind before I go to sleep.”

  “ It’s been six months,” she said, “but I understand you still need more time.”

  “ And I plan on taking a little more, not too much, but a little. I’m going to buy a new Jeep and take awhile driving back up to Tampico. I’m going to stay at cheap motels off the freeway and check out all the small towns along they way. Maybe I’ll find a new place to live,” he said.

  “ Look, I don’t want what happened last night to come between us. I’ve seen too many situations where sex ruined a perfectly good friendship. I don’t want to lose you,” she said.

  “ You could never lose me.”

  “ Oh yes I could. I could pressure you into something you’re not ready for and drive you away and I’ll be damned if I’ll do
that. So here’s what I’m proposing. We go on like we did before. Friends. When you come to L.A. or Long Beach, and I hope you’ll come often, you stay here, only you sleep with me instead of on the sofa. That is, if you want to.”

  “ I want to,” he said.

  “ And if you should choose to be with someone else, the girl next door for example, I’ll deal with it.”

  “ I don’t think you have anything to fear. I’ll go to Tampico and make arrangements to sell the house. It shouldn’t take more that a couple of weeks. Then I’ll be back.”

  “ Where will you live?’’

  “ Why don’t we talk about that when I get back.” He smiled. “I’m sure we can work something out. Who knows, maybe I’ll have found that small town on the edge of nowhere. How would you like living somewhere with the desert for a backyard, or maybe a small town on the sea coast in Oregon or Washington? Someplace large enough for a bookstore, but too small for a movie theater.”

  “ Really?” she jumped into his arms and hugged him tightly.

  “ Really.” He squeezed her in a strong embrace.

  Rick guided the new Jeep along the two lane road, getting into Tampico before the sun, with his mind full of Christina, the future and the twins.

  He started to run through what he would have to do. He had to box the personal possessions he wanted to carry over into his new life with Christina and the girls. He had to contact a broker and put the house on the market. And he had to start living the rest of his life.

  He made the left off of Solitude River Road onto Seaview and started up the hill, when something darted in front of him. He cranked the wheel hard to the left, stomped on the brakes as he shoved in the clutch, but the moves were unnecessary, because it was too fast to be hit by a car doing less that thirty miles an hour. However, the brakes locked the rear wheels and he found himself screeching to a stop on the wrong side of the road. Shaken, he downshifted into first and eased the car back on the right side of the road and parked to catch his breath and his wits.

  It must have been a mighty frightened bear, he thought, because he had never seen one move so fast. If it made its dash across the road a fraction of a second later, he would have hit it head on. He counted to ten, released the clutch and drove on.

  By the time he pulled into his driveway his adrenaline rush was as dead as he felt. He shut off the ignition and hauled himself out of the Jeep. He grabbed his overnight grip from the back seat, closing the door without locking it. He looked next door and noticed the light was on in J.P.’s upstairs bedroom.

  He opened the door and entered the living room, turned on a lamp and stared in stunned disbelief. Someone had been living there. Empty beer cans littered the living room and foil dinner trays, left over from frozen dinners, filled a waste basket. The remnants from daily newspapers lay throughout both the living and dining rooms. The television was on and there was a note taped to the flickering screen.

  He walked over to the set and read a childish scrawl.

  Your wife saw the knife before she died.

  In the kitchen, he found dirty dishes and uneaten food on the breakfast table and counter tops. He emptied filthy water from the sink and rinsed the dishes, worrying and thinking about the note as he worked. Then he turned on the disposal, grinding the rotting scraps into the city sewer system. He filled the sink with clean soapy water and started to wash the dishes, when he was interrupted by the doorbell.

  He dried his hands, wondering who wanted him so early in the morning. He decided not to take any chances. He hadn’t told anybody when he was coming back and his house had been broken into, two good reasons to exercise caution.

  He went out the back door, into the cover of the forest that encircled the two houses on the hill. He worked his way around the back, to the west side of the house, trying to move as quietly as possible, using tree and bush as cover. He paralleled the house, till he was opposite the front porch and saw her. His caution hadn’t been necessary after all.

  “ Judy?” He stepped from behind a tall pine.

  “ I saw the light,” she said.

  “ I had a break in. The burglar left a note.”

  “ They must have been awfully quiet, we didn’t hear anyone.”

  “ You want to come in?” He mounted the porch, inviting her inside.

  “ Sure.” She followed him in.

  She saw the beer cans and refuse, but her eyes quickly fastened on the note taped to the television screen.

  “ That’s the note?” she asked.

  “ Read it.”

  She crossed over to the television. “Oh, no.”

  “ Yeah.”

  “ You think maybe she was killed?” she said.

  “ I don’t see how.”

  “ Maybe J.P. really did see a knife,” she said.

  “ I did.”

  The pair turned to see J.P. framed in the open doorway.

  “ You scared me,” Judy said.

  “ Sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose. I saw Rick drive up, so I got dressed and came over.”

  “ Have you seen anybody around here?” Rick asked.

  “ No,” J.P. said.

  “ That’s hardly surprising, you’ve been gone a long time. He could have been here six months or six days ago,” Judy said.

  “ More like six months,” Rick said. “The food scraps have started to come alive with mold.”

  “ I saw an animal though, the Ghost Dog,” J.P. said. “It comes sometimes at night and sniffs around. Mom says it’s a dog, but I know better. It’s the Ghost Dog.”

  “ There have been some reports of a large wild dog,” Judy said.

  “ The Ghost Dog,” J.P. repeated.

  “ J.P., there’s no such thing as ghosts or ghost dogs,” Rick said. “Your mother’s probably right, it’s a dog. I’ve seen it too.”

  “ Really?”

  “ Yeah, it ran in front of my car this morning. I almost hit it.”

  “ Did you think it was a bear?”

  “ At first, but it was too fast. It looked more like a big dog, maybe a black lab.”

  “ Maybe the Ghost Dog?”

  “ It wasn’t a ghost dog. It was just a big dog. Right now it’s probably asleep in a nice warm house.”

  “ Really, you think so?”

  “ I know so.”

  “ I’m glad, I was kinda scared, but I’m not now.”

  “ Good boy.”

  “ I’m glad you’re back,” he said.

  “ I’m glad to be back.”

  “ You wanna go fishing?” the boy asked.

  “ I’ll get my gear,” Rick said, “but first I’ve got to call the sheriff.”

  Within minutes Sheriff Sturgees was in Rick’s living room, reading the note.

  “ Probably kids,” he said.

  “ How can you say that?” Judy said.

  “ Nothing missing, no real damage done and the note looks like a kid wrote it.”

  “ I can’t believe anybody around here would be cruel enough to write a note like that,” Judy said.

  “ Me either,” Rick said.

  “ You don’t know kids,” the sheriff said. “What we think is cruel, they think is good clean fun.”

  “ I can’t believe that,” Rick said.

  “ Oh yeah, when is the last time you pulled the wings off a bee, or stuck a fire cracker up a frog’s ass, or put a cherry bomb down a mailbox? Kids having fun can be cruel.”

  “ Maybe?” Judy said.

  “ I have my doubts,” Rick said.

  “ As long as I’m here I’d like to ask you something,” Sheriff Sturgees said.

  “ Ask away.”

  “ Tell me about the Ragged Man,” he said.

  Rick was stunned and the sheriff saw it in his eyes. J.P. bit into his lower lip and took his mother by the hand.

  “ That’s a strange question,” Rick said.

  “ In two months I’m throwing in with my brother, we’re gonna buy the Chevy dealership in town. Ever sin
ce that day when Mark, Vicky and Janis were killed, the luster has gone out of this job, but I’d like to walk away knowing that I didn’t leave any stone unturned. I’ve heard this nonsense about the Ragged Man and this Ghost Dog the kids have been talking about and I want to know more.”

  “ Sheriff, you can’t believe this stuff?”

  “ Didn’t say I believed it, said I wanted to know more.”

  “ And why ask me?”

  The sheriff turned to J.P. “My boy says you told him a story about the day Mrs. Gordon was killed.”

  “ Yes, sir,” J.P. said.

  “ J.P.!” Judy said.

  “ That’s okay Mrs. Donovan. Don’t blame the boy. Kids talk, they don’t mean nothing by it. I just want to hear the story from Mr. Gordon.”

  “ Then we better all sit down,” Rick said.

  “ Then there is a story?” The sheriff plopped down on the sofa.

  “ When you were a child, Sheriff, were you afraid of the Bogeyman?” Rick asked, his voice cracking.

  “ I don’t have time for games.”

  “ Ann was afraid of the Bogeyman. She had a name for him. She called him the Ragged Man. And her bogeyman has a familiar, a black dingo with saber-tooth canines and tiger-like paws.”

  “ What’s a dingo?” J.P. asked.

  “ A wild dog, like a wolf,” Rick said. “They live in the Australian outback.”

  “ Are you going somewhere with this?” Sturgees asked.

  “ You want to know about the Ragged Man?”

  “ Yes.”

  “ Two years ago we were stranded in the Australian outback. Ann and I were racing in the Australian Safari. That’s a desert road race, and we broke down. While we were wondering what we were going to do, an old couple, Aborigines, came along in an old Jeep.”

  “ Like yours?” J.P. asked.

  “ It’s the same Jeep, J.P.”

  Rick looked out the window, half expecting to see Ann, then continued with his story. “The woman was ill and we asked if they needed help. The man said we could bury them and then they died.”