The Thirteenth Child

by David Dean

  “And you, Shad,” Nick managed after a moment. “What about you? What do you say?”

  Weller hardly hesitated, “Since you’re asking, chief—I couldn’t agree more.”

  The two men stared at each other for several long moments before Nick asked quietly, “Do you honestly think that old man could’ve handled Connor Lacey and Jared Case, Shad? If I believed that, he’d be in custody right now—I’m not clearing him by any means, but I’m keeping an open mind, something you might give a try.” Then continued, “If I ever find you giving out unauthorized information to the press, Captain Weller, I’m gonna bring you up on charges and bust you down to sergeant. If I had the time, which I don’t, because I’m actually trying to find out what’s happened to these children, I would pursue the matter right now.”

  Pausing to casually zip up his jacket, he added, “But don’t push your luck, Shadrick, or I may find the time in spite of it all.” Nick stepped out into the hallway, jamming his shaking hands into his jacket pockets, and striding for the stairwell exit without a backward glance.

  ?

  Nick was passing the parking lot for the library when he heard someone calling his name, “Yoo hoo, Chief Catesby, yoo hoo!”

  Turning in the direction of the voice, he found Becky Mossberg standing at the open door of her car. Another figure stood in the shadows on the passenger side.

  “Yoo hoo,” she repeated as he approached. Smiling widely she said, “Oh how lucky that you were passing by! I was just telling Fanny here,” she swept an arm in the direction of the other person, “that I couldn’t possibly give her a ride home tonight, as I’m already late for my stylist,” she patted her blown, yellow hair, “and she’s a little nervous about walking, you know, with all that’s been going on.

  “So when I saw you there, all by your lonesome, I thought, who better than the Chief of Police to get her home safely… hmmm?” She continued to smile brightly even as she slid into her seat and started the engine, backed out of her spot, and sped off, leaving Fanny standing in the now-empty lot.

  Nick read the embarrassment and discomfort in her frozen posture. She clutched a book to her breast like a shy schoolgirl and, in spite of himself, he felt all his irritation drain away—after such a day, he thought he had never been so glad to see someone.

  “She’s relentless, isn’t she?” he ventured.

  Fanny wore a long belted sweater that reached to her thighs and her chestnut hair was swept back into her usual ponytail, and when she stepped into the yellow glow of the streetlamp, he thought that she was breathtakingly beautiful.

  “She is the most awful friend anyone could ever have,” Fanny answered. “I can get myself home just fine, Nick… honestly.”

  Nick waited until she had taken the few steps to reach him then turned with her in the direction of her street. They walked together in silence for a while before Nick spoke again. “I guess I’m not as subtle as I’d like to think, Fanny, and Becky’s just calling me on it. She must think I’m pretty ridiculous, really… and I probably am.”

  Fanny glanced up at him, her dark eyes throwing off glints of light from a nearby lamp. “You’re not ridiculous at all, Nick,” she reassured him, “it’s me.”

  Smiling, Nick shook his head. “I owe you an explanation at the very least—you must know by now that the reason I’ve been coming to the library is because of you.”

  Fanny remained silent and Nick studied her long, slender neck. “When you’re the police chief of a small town there’s very little that goes on in your life that isn’t known… and what isn’t, is made up out of whole cloth to fill the gaps.”

  He saw the faintest of smiles cross Fanny’s lips at this, only to vanish once more. “What happened to your marriage?” she asked. “You don’t have to tell me, but I would like to know… I can see that the hurt is still fresh. It might help us, you know.”

  Nick nodded and they walked on in silence for a while. Then he heard himself saying, “Donna couldn’t have children. It wouldn’t have mattered to me if it hadn’t mattered so much to her. We’d been married five years before we finally had the tests done to see what the problem was—she was devastated when the doctor explained the results.”

  Turning right at the next corner, they found themselves walking beneath the low hanging branches of the ancient elms, oaks, and maples that lined the sidewalks. The houses on either side of them were mostly two-storied Victorians whose tall windows glowed warmly. Some sported jack o’ lanterns on their porches, their expressions flickering in and out of darkness.

  “When I tried to talk with her about possibly adopting children,” Nick went on, “she would just cry and cry. I never knew that anyone could cry as much as she did. So, after a while, I stopped bringing it up—we stopped talking about it altogether. It seemed like things were going along okay after that, and for about two years I thought we were going to pull ourselves through it. Then, one day, she came home from work and accused me of having an affair.

  “After that, she would sometimes stay out all night, or even for days at a time. I never asked who she was with; though I often knew—that’s one of the awful things about being a cop… you hear things you wish you hadn’t. I understood what she was doing, and even why. In a way, I think I felt I somehow deserved it because I could never think of how to take her pain away—to fill that awful emptiness she felt inside her.”

  A gentle breeze brought the aroma of burning wood, even as it stirred the dried leaves at their feet.

  “I wasn’t cheating. I never cheated on Donna, ever.” Nick stopped and stared down at his feet for a moment before looking up once more. “I’m not asking anything of you, Fanny, though I do have feelings for you. I think about you all the time. The only picture I have of happiness anymore is you.” He couldn’t think of anything else to add.

  Fanny took his hand into her own, then leaned down and kissed the back of his hand. The simple gesture took his breath away.

  “You don’t need to ask anything of me, Nick—I’ve already decided to offer you what I have… such as it is,” Fanny said quietly. She studied his face for several moments, before continuing “Neither of us are kids anymore, are we? We’ve both been banged up a little bit—you by things going bad with your wife, and some tough breaks at work; me by circumstances that have always seemed just beyond my ability to control—my father, mainly.” She smiled a little at this last and they resumed their stroll hand in hand now.

  “I’m not without some experience, Nick, but I won’t be treated like a mistress, you understand that, don’t you?”

  Nick nodded. He was surprised to discover a side of Fanny he had not seen before. “I just want to spend time with you, Fan.”

  Her laughter contained a nervous trill. “And I with you, but I suspect that you are going to try my faith at some point, Nick… at least, I hope so.”

  Now it was his turn to laugh, and he answered, “Yes, I suspect I will.”

  She came to a stop, and a little belatedly, Nick realized that they had reached the end of their journey—they stood outside the bungalow Fanny shared with her father. She shrugged. “I would invite you in, Nick, but I can see by the lights that dad is at home tonight. I guess I should be glad, but I’m not so much.”

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “I’ve got a lot of thinking to do tonight, and maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll catch a few winks as well. I doubt that I could do that if I stayed with you.” He leaned down and kissed her.

  After several moments, Fanny disentangled herself, stepping back. “I’m going in now,” she whispered, pointing at her home.

  Nick nodded. “Okay… right. I’ve got to be going, too.” He studied Fanny’s face, taking it in; then added, “So, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow then,” Fanny answered, hurrying for the door.

  Nick turned in time to see Preston pass a window, the shaggy, imperious head reminding him of Weller’s words earlier that evening—he was involved with the daughter
of a possible suspect. But he couldn’t begin to think of setting Fanny aside now. If it had been possible before, it wasn’t now.

  ?

  Fanny found her father in the sunroom, absorbed in a book that lay open on his lap, seemingly unaware of Fanny’s presence as she swept up the desperate Loki. The cat’s mewling meant that her father had not bothered to feed him.

  Turning to leave the room, Fanny was surprised when he called after her, “Fanny, come here, I need your attention for a few moments.”

  Puzzled at both the request and the tone, she turned back to her father. His lean face appeared uncharacteristically flushed, his dark eyes blazing. Leaning forward, he pointed to a chair opposite his own. “Put down that silly cat and join me.”

  Fanny glanced down at her burden and found Loki regarding her father with open disdain, his golden eyes haughty with his current favored status. “I’ll just hold on to him for now, Pop,” she answered, “he’s starving. Its way past his dinner time, you know.”

  “Oh, damn that beast,” Preston spat; then exclaimed, “Do what you will then, but do sit down!”

  “Let me remind you,” Fanny replied evenly, “that you’d be in jail right now if not for me. I suggest you adopt a more civil tone, mister, and I mean right now!”

  Glancing up at her through his spiky brows, Preston nodded meekly; then added, “I’m a little excited, Fanny… I’m… I’m sorry.”

  Fanny sat, settling the large feline in her lap while stroking his sleek skull. “What is it, Pop? Is everything okay?” She had not seen her father so enthused in a very long while and the sudden change was unsettling.

  He thrust the large book he was holding out at her in apparent answer, snapping it shut—she thought she recognized a history of the original families of Wessex County. Loki flinched in Fanny’s lap and eyed Preston darkly. “I’ve met someone,” he announced.

  Fanny stared for a moment. “What do you mean, Pop… a woman—you’ve met a lady friend?” She couldn’t begin to imagine the kind of woman her father might meet in his ceaseless wanderings.

  “A woman?” he replied, “Hell no! God save me from women. He’s a boy!”

  “A boy?” she repeated, a small shrill alarm sounding in her head. Her hand ceased its stroking and Loki squirmed in her lap at the sudden withdrawal of affection. “What boy?” she managed at last.

  “Didn’t I tell you about him just the other day? The child I met on the school grounds—Gabriel!”

  The pieces began to tumble together in her head—this was the boy he had gone to the police about, the boy that had made Nick suspicious that her father knew something about the missing little girl, and maybe even had something to do with Seth Busby’s disappearance seven years before.

  Fanny had thought he had been suffering from a hallucination, or at best, that he had been seriously confused over some innocent encounter with some neighborhood child. Now here he was speaking about him again.

  “Why are you talking with a boy?” she managed at last. “Who is he?”

  Leaning forward in his eagerness, Preston fired back, “What is he, Fanny? That’s the real question—what?” His eyes shone with a feverish quality. “I call him Gabriel for the lack of anything more suitable, though he could be called Cain or Grendel. Hell, for that matter,” he barked, “he could be Mrs. Leeds’s thirteenth child!”

  Fanny felt herself shrink back into her chair. Loki had sprung to his feet at Preston’s sharp laughter and was now regarding the man warily from her lap. “I don’t understand what you mean, Dad,” she said. “Who is Mrs. Leeds?”

  Preston assumed his lecture voice, “The legend goes that she lived in poverty in the Pine Barrens during the colonial era, and that when she learned she was pregnant with her thirteenth child, cursed him, saying she hoped the devil would take him. When the child was born it was a monster. The story claims the creature escaped into the woods where it has dwelt ever since, preying on the unwary traveler—maybe this is how the early settlers explained Gabriel, how they tried to understand him.”

  Leaning toward his daughter, he clarified, “The Jersey Devil, Fanny—they name local football teams after him, you know.”

  “Pop,” she began; truly afraid now of what she might be about to hear, “you’re scaring me. Are you saying that you’ve met the Jersey Devil and that he’s a little boy?” The fact that Preston appeared and smelled sober frightened her all the more.

  “Whatever he is, Fanny, he’s certainly no boy. I’m not even sure he’s really human! As to what he is exactly, I have to figure out. That’s where you come in… I need your help. You have access to the archives at the library and I think that somewhere in those old histories and local legends we’ll find the footprints of Gabriel’s passage.”

  “But, Pop,” Fanny whispered; “why would this… this boy… Gabriel, be mentioned in the county archives? How could he be? Some of those records are over three hundred years old.”

  Preston rose from his chair in his excitement, causing Loki to flee at last for the quiet and comfort of the kitchen. “It’s fantastic, Fanny, I admit that, almost inconceivable really, but nonetheless, he’s out there.” He pointed at the darkened panes of glass that formed three sides of the room. Fanny saw only her own white, stricken face peering back. “And he’s been out there for hundreds of years… I know, daughter, because I’ve met him… and spoken with him—by god, Fanny, he’s even allowed me to examine him!”

  Fanny felt as if she, too, might be going mad, and tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes. “Dad, what do you mean, ‘examine’? You mustn’t touch other people’s children you know… they wouldn’t understand. You haven’t actually done that have you?—what with all that’s been going on around here?”

  “I haven’t touched anyone’s child!” Preston shouted. “What have I been telling you all along—he’s not human to begin with! He just looks that way so that he can get close to us, I think.

  “You’re just like that fascist, Catesby! You think I’ve had something to do with these children going missing and I haven’t, but I do know what has happened to them which is far more than I can say for that ass of a policeman!”

  Fanny winced at the mention of Nick and found that she was shaking. “What do you mean, Pop… who… who has been taking the children?”

  Preston regarded his daughter for a long moment before answering, “It’s Gabriel, of course. What’s more, I think he’s been at it for hundreds of years. It’s what he does, Fanny, most probably what his kind has been doing since the dawn of man, or before—they hunt us—they drink our blood, and when they’re done, they sleep, for years at a time, I think. Gabriel may be the last of his line… certainly, by his own account there are no others like him left here.”

  Then, sitting once more, and as Fanny listened in stunned silence, he recounted his evening with Gabriel on the beach.

  When he was done he rose and took Fanny’s hands into his own. “I know you don’t believe me, girl. How could you? But if you think anything of your old man at all, you’ll help me research this thing, help me to find the clues that show Gabriel has been among us here for a very long time, and help to illuminate what he is. At worse, you’ll prove me wrong, even though I know that’s not possible because, sooner or later, I’ll convince him to show himself—I’ll introduce him to the world. It will be a remarkable meeting!”

  “What about those missing children, Pop? Where are they? Do you know?”

  Preston flinched and looked down, his seamed face paling. “The children…” he repeated, “… the children… yes… oh God, I’d almost forgotten them.” Raising his eyes again to Fanny’s, he said, “I believe they are still alive… according to what he told me they should be. All the more reason we have to learn more about this creature, Fanny. The more I know about him the greater chance I have of getting them back. I think he trusts me, Fanny… maybe there’s a way I can save them.”

  Fanny nodded, unable to stanch the tears that continued
to flow down her pale cheeks. At least in this manner, she thought desperately, she could keep her father close, and perhaps, come to understand his role, if any, in the disappearance of Megan Guthrie, Jared Case, and Connor Lacey.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Holding aloft his right hand, Father Gregory intoned, “Bow your heads to receive God’s blessing.” He observed his small flock to rise and obey, the crowns of their mostly grey heads exposed in their humbled postures.

  “Bless us, o’ Lord, with Thy gracious bounty,” he continued, “and open our hearts that we may be recipients of Your Grace. Teach us to be thankful for the abundance of Your blessings and for the Gift that raised the world from darkness, Your Son, and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen—In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” He sketched the Sign of the Cross in the air and concluded the Mass with, “The Mass is ended. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord and one another.”

  The small gathering that regularly attended weekday services responded by raising their heads once more, crossing themselves, and murmuring, “Thanks be to God.” Turning to the altar, he bowed to the sanctuary that held the Host, then proceeded down the aisle to the entry where he would greet each of his parishioners as they exited.

  It being a weekday, Father Gregory had no altar servers or choir, so he proceeded in what he hoped was a stately silence to the entrance lobby. He was fully conscious that he did not cut the same imposing figure as Monsignor Mulcahy, as his small, plump body in its billowing vestments was no match for the ancient Irish giant that was Our Lady of the Visitation’s senior, and ailing, pastor. Nonetheless, assuming an expression of gravitas that he thought might somewhat outweigh his physical disadvantages, he managed not to smile until reaching the lobby. Once there, however, he relaxed and looked forward to having a few words and handshakes with the doggedly devout that had welcomed him so warmly to the United States.