It had taken Jen a long time to calm him down after they'd left the gully. If he hadn't been so embarrassed about wetting his pants, he would have run right home and told his mother what Jen had done to him. Instead, he traded not telling on her for her help in sneaking him into the house and hiding his incontinence.
They had no trouble sneaking into the house; Diane was taking a nap and Steve was working in his study. Neither of them said anything to their parents about not being picked up at school. Jennifer told Jackie not to bring it up because then they would be questioned about how they got home and they'd get in trouble, not to mention that his parents would find out about his "accident" Jennifer took Jackie's pants into the laundry room right away and washed them with a load of dirty clothes that were piled next to the washing machine. Jackie had crept upstairs to their room and put on a clean, dry pair.
After that, they'd hung around; Jen reading in their bedroom and Jackie sitting in front of the television with the Care Bears and then the Smurfs on, but not really watching them. No matter how he tried, he wasn't able to rid himself of the image of the troll, or the memory of the pain in his leg, or the nauseating, paralyzing fear in his stomach. Several times during the afternoon he'd felt sick enough to puke but fought it down. Around four, his mother got up and started making supper.
The meal was a quiet one; his mother and stepfather didn't say a word to each other throughout dinner. Jackie could sense a tension between them that had never been there before. He was also acutely aware, as was an angry Jen, that both parents were oblivious to having forgotten to pick them up at school. After all their lecturing about safety, it seemed that neither of them cared how they had gotten home, or what might have happened to them on the way.
Jackie had picked at his food listlessly throughout dinner, bothered by his parent's indifference and unable to forget the horrifying events of that afternoon. When dinner was over, Steve immediately left the table and went back to his study while his mother cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, completely ignoring him and Jen.
Jennifer had finished her meal and was about to go in the living room and watch TV when Jackie lost it. He'd done his best to hold it in, to try and forget what had happened, but when his parents never even offered an explanation of not picking them up at school, Jackie feared they no longer cared. And if they didn't care, who would take care of him? Unable to control his tears, he tried to hide them by bending his head over the table as the tears flowed down his cheeks and dropped off his face onto the vinyl tablecloth.
Jennifer had quickly glanced at their mother, but her back was to them as she rinsed glasses before putting them in the dishwasher. Jen turned back to him and whispered fiercely, "What's wrong with you?"
Jackie gulped hard, but wasn't able to answer her without letting all his tears out.
"Stop it!" Jennifer hissed, but Jackie hadn't been able to help it. The horror of what had happened had tortured him until he could hold it in no longer; the floodgates had opened.
"What are you two up to?" their mother had asked then in a tone of voice that said she didn't want an answer, she wanted them to stop whatever it was they were doing.
An uncontrollable, tearful sob that had been building with Jackie's silent tears began to emit from his compressed lips in a high-pitched whine.
"Cut it out," Jen said, low and threatening.
Like air leaking from a punctured balloon, the sound from Jackie had continued, getting louder as it wheezed out of him.
Their mother whirled around from the sink and glared at them. "What are you doing to him?" she asked accusingly of Jen.
Jackie hiccuped and sneezed and snot ran out his nose and onto his lips. Unable to control himself any longer he opened his mouth and wailed loudly.
"What's wrong with you?" his mother had snapped, making him cry all the harder. She had never snapped at him like that before when he cried.
His mother had seemed suddenly to realize that, too. She shook her head and passed a hand over her eyes. "I'm sorry, Jackie," she said with emotion and an apologetic look at both of them. She came to the table and pulled Jackie into her arms. In return, he had buried his face in her neck thank ful for some affection at last. "What's wrong, hon, did something happen at school today?"
"He's okay," Jen had piped up nervously. "He's probably just overtired."
"Yes, or maybe you were scaring him again?" his mother asked suspiciously. A guilty look immediately crossed Jen's face. "How many times do I have to tell you? You know what his imagination is like.
Jackie cried louder then because he really hadn't wanted to get Jen in trouble.
In defense, Jennifer had let her anger and frustration out, saying what both of them had felt. "He wouldn't have been scared if you had picked us up at school today like you said you would. We had to walk home because we missed our bus waiting for you, and you don't even care. We could have been kidnapped by the crazy child-killer and it would have been all your fault." Jennifer had burst into tears then herself, pushing away from the table and running upstairs.
"I told ... Steve to pick you up," his mother had mumbled vaguely as if she couldn't quite remember.
Jackie had decided then and there to spill his guts and tell his mother what he saw in the woods, but she abruptly got up, put him down, and left the room, going upstairs also. Seconds later, Jackie heard her arguing loudly with Steve about why he hadn't gone after them when she'd asked him to. Jackie was left sobbing in the kitchen, blaming himself for causing everyone so much trouble.
Jackie pressed his pencil so hard on the paper while practicing his G's that the lead snapped, bringing him out of his thoughts.
"Alright, children," Mrs. McDuffy announced in her PAY ATTENTION voice. "It's five minutes to our afternoon recess. Time to put our desks in order."
Jackie swept the erasure crumbs off his desk and lifted the top, placing his paper and pencil inside. Two rows over, Betty Boone was talking to Timmy Walsh. Jackie closed his desk top and watched Betty. He thought she was cute and had a crush on her.
From the front of the room, Mrs. McDuffy cleared her throat and gave Timmy and Betty a look of warning. Timmy immediately closed his mouth and Betty turned around, facing the front of the room. Mrs. McDuffy was not one to be disobeyed. As Betty turned, she saw Jackie looking at her. She made a clucking noise and stuck her tongue out at him in the ultimate little-girl put-down. Jackie looked away, his face hot with embarrassment.
The recess bell rang and Jackie pushed himself out of his seat. He shuffled out from between the rows of desks and chairs and ran with the other children to the door. "No running," Mrs. McDuffy commanded loudly. The children heeded, at least until they were out the door, then they ran shrieking and laughing into the schoolyard.
Afternoon recess was the only break in the day that Jackie wished were over sooner. The reason was that after recess came the reading hour in Mrs. McDuffy's class. Jackie loved reading and was the best reader in A group. The class was divided into three reading groups: A group, superior readers; B group, above average; and C group, average. Jackie was such a good reader that Mrs. McDuffy sometimes let him read to the B and C groups as an example of good reading.
The playground was bathed in sunlight and filled with chattering, playing children. Jackie made his way through the groups of girls talking and playing jump rope, and boys roughhousing and teasing the girls. He went to the jungle gym near the chainlink fence that ran around the perimeter of the school's grounds.
Jackie climbed quickly and easily to the top of the gym and sat there, legs anchored securely around the top two crossbars. From this perch, he scanned the playground for his sister. As of that morning, she had still been mad at him for getting her in trouble and hadn't said a word to him on the bus (Steve had informed them the night before, after his argument with Diane, that they should take the bus to and from school from now on).
The schoolyard was huge, encompassing softball, baseball, football, and soccer field
s at the far end, which the nearby regional high school and middle school used, but the children let out for recess from the elementary school were confined to the area directly in front of the school. First, third, and fifth grades had the first morning and afternoon recess; second, fourth, and sixth grades had the second. Being a regional school, the recesses had to be staggered due to the large number of children attending.
Jackie scanned the column of kids still exiting from the fifth-grade door. He couldn't see his sister. Suddenly she appeared at the door and Jackie waved his arms frantically at her, shouting her name across the playground. He was sure she saw him-she looked right at him-but she turned away and went to the other end of the yard to where a crowd of girls from her class were standing around talking.
Jackie sighed and slumped down on the bars, letting his butt hang between them. Jen was obviously still angry with him, and that really bothered him. Jennifer was his only friend. In Boston, his mother had never let him play outdoors without Jennifer, and since there were no kids in the neighborhood his age, he always ended up hanging around with her. Things hadn't changed much now that they were in the country because he couldn't seem to make friends with any of the kids in his class.
He knew his failure to make friends was his own fault, but he couldn't help it. Yesterday, the first day of school, he'd started talking to a classmate and without meaning to, had started telling him a fantastic story about UFO's flying over his house. When the kid had called him a liar, Jackie had insisted it was true. The kid had told others in the class and soon everyone knew and was looking at him strangely.
It was ironic (though Jackie didn't know what irony was, he still had a keen sense of it) that now that he had a true story to tell about the troll, no one would believe him. It was like the story of the boy who cried wolf, no one would believe him because he had lied before. Even if he hadn't lied, he couldn't blame anyone for not believing him; the more he thought about it, the more trouble he had believing it himself.
A sudden squeal of surprise and excited laughter behind him tugged him away from his self-pitying thoughts. Betty Boone and Timmy Walsh were standing under a couple of elm trees near the fence, about fifteen feet away. Jackie strained to see what they were looking at, something up the street, but the trees blocked his view.
Above the noise of the children in the playground, Jackie realized he could hear another sound. It was a flute, trickling a melody on the wind. The sound grew louder and the figure producing it came into view down Finch Street heading for the schoolyard.
Jackie couldn't believe his eyes. The man playing the flute was tall. His pointed felt cap with a feather stuck in its red band made him appear even taller. The feather was yellow, the hat was green, as was the rest of his fringed leather outfit. Jackie looked around at the other kids in the playground to see if they saw it, too, but they were playing and going on as though they heard or saw nothing. Only Betty Boone and Timmy Walsh, besides Jackie, saw. Jackie called to them but they didn't hear him. They were too enthralled with the music.
Jackie looked at the flute player and at first thought he looked like Robin Hood, what with his pointed felt moccasins and green tights on his legs. It wasn't until he saw what was tagging along behind him, that Jackie understood who he really was. He played his flute, pranced around on the asphalt, and right on his heels, following every step and gyration of his body, every note from his flute, their tiny eyes glistening blackly, their needle teeth protruding over their lower jaws, came a mega-hoard of rats.
Betty and Timmy cheered and called to the Pied Piper. They ran to the gate at the end of the playground. Jackie felt a sudden intense fear. He crouched, then climbed down into the center of the jungle gym, where he was protected by the dome of bars. From this secure position, he watched the Pied Piper play Follow the Leader with the ocean of vermin all the way to the schoolyard gate.
Betty and Timmy pushed the gate open and rushed out to meet him. At the same moment, the Piper stopped playing and the rats disappeared. Betty and Timmy laughed and clapped their hands. The Piper put the pipe to his lips again and began to play a new song. Now it was Betty and Timmy's turn to dance to the piper's tune. Like marionettes they jumped and spun, dancing and laughing to every note the Piper played.
Jackie trembled with terror. The same intense feeling of unreality, of watching a dream inside his head, that he had felt on the troll bridge, washed over him. He crawled out from between the jungle-gym bars and walked toward the fence. Betty and Timmy were dancing down the street, following the Pied Piper.
Jackie dashed to the fence. "Betty! Timmy!" he cried.
The Piper blew a long, trilling note as he turned and looked at Jackie. He winked, lowered the flute from his lips, and disappeared; the Piper, Timmy, and Betty all gone.
Jackie climbed to the top of the fence and searched the area where they'd just been. The street was empty. He could see nothing.
Jackie climbed down from the fence and ran to the open gate and out to the street. He searched in both directions. A short distance away on the right, just turning a corner of the schoolyard fence, was a tall, hunched figure in black carrying a large black laundry sack. The sack was moving as if something, or someone was inside it.
Timmy and Betty! Jackie opened his mouth to cry out for one of the teachers to come quick, but the words never left his mouth. The hunched figure stopped at the corner and turned around. Jackie couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. All he could see were the eyes looming huge and staring. Those eyes bore into him, seemed to crawl right inside his head and, like Mrs. McDuffy cleaning the chalkboard, erase all that he had seen.
By the time the bell rang to end recess, Jackie was back on the jungle gym and didn't remember a thing about the figure carrying the sack, which he had been certain contained Timmy and Betty. By that time, the whole incident with the Pied Piper was no longer a part of his memory.
When all the children were back in class, Mrs. McDuffy took a head count, discovering that Timmy Walsh and Betty Boone were missing. Teachers were sent to search the playground and school grounds and the children were questioned. None of them had seen anything.
When Timmy and Betty were not found in a search of school property, the sheriff was called in and each child in the first grade was questioned individually. When it came time for Jackie to be interviewed, he could tell them nothing. For a moment, he thought there was something that he had seen, that he should tell the sheriff's men about, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was. He also started to tell them about what had happened to him the day before in the woods near Grimm Memorials but now that incident seemed very fuzzy, and he wasn't sure if he had just dreamed it; everything was hazy and vague in his head like a dream fading and soon forgotten.
After the questioning, and some digging into the Walsh boy's and Boone girl's backgrounds, the sheriff's men decided they were dealing with a dual case of parental abduction. Both children's parents were divorced and their mothers were on welfare. In the case of the Boone girl, her father had abducted her once before, and Timmy Walsh's father had fought for custody of his son during divorce proceedings. An APB was put out on both children's fathers, warrants for arrest were issued, and the public was assured by authorities that there was no connection between the two abductions and recent sensationalist media reports concerning the disappearance of children in the area.
CHAPTER 14
Old Mother Hubbard...
Eleanor opened the passenger door of the hearse and hefted the black sack onto the front seat. The ether-soaked rags she'd thrown in with the two children were doing their job and her two captives had stopped squirming. They would be sleeping for quite a while.
She closed the door and leaned against it. Her breathing became difficult and her heart was pounding loudly in her chest. A needle of pain slid through her left breast and she clutched at it. When the pain passed, she moved as quickly as possible to the other side of the car and got behind the wheel. She opened
her pocketbook, removed her pillbox, and slipped one of the tiny pills under her tongue. While she waited for the pill to bring relief, she rested her head against the back of the seat.
A man in a business suit walked by, but didn't glance once at the odd-looking long, black hearse, or her, seemingly passed out behind the wheel. Eleanor watched him pass and listened to his mundane thoughts about some business contract he was worried about losing. She smiled. She hadn't even had to think about it; the man never saw her or the hearse, and neither would anyone else because the Machine had taken care of the situation by reflex, just as it had told her which two children in the playground had backgrounds that would make the police think their disappearance was a family matter.
The pill began to work and she took a deep breath. She leaned forward, started the hearse, put it in gear, and drove off. On the way home, Eleanor pulled into a Cumberland Farms store on Route 47. As she got out of the hearse, a sheriff's department car pulled in next to her.
Deputy Sheriff Ken Vitelli got out of his car and smiled at Eleanor. The petite old lady in the white lace dress and shawl reminded him of his favorite aunt, Lucille. He tipped his hat to her and nodded when she sweetly returned his smile. As she went into the store, he realized that her car was a Nash Rambler, the exact same kind of car his Aunt Lucille had owned.
"Imagine that," Deputy Vitelli mused aloud at the coincidence. He circled his patrol car and took a closer look. It was amazing; the car was just like Aunt Lucille's, right down to the fuzzy white steering wheel cover and the rosary beads hanging from the mirror. As he marvelled at it all, he noticed the black sack on the front seat. Poor lady, he thought, has to lug her laundry out to do it.
Deputy Vitelli went into the store eager to meet the old woman. He wanted to get a closer look at her and ask her where she had gotten the car, in the off chance that it was the same car his aunt had owned. Who knows, maybe the old woman had known his aunt! But once inside the store, he couldn't find her. The only other person in the store, besides the pimply faced young clerk, was a very fat woman of about thirty loading her arms up with Yodels, Devil Dogs, Twinkies, and candy bars.
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