Invitation

by Frank Peretti

  I heard the door to the station open and close. The sound of it came with the smell of cooked meat. It was a tad early for lunch, but we were up early and hadn’t eaten. Add to that the fact that we hiked a long way in the snow and endured some real emotional strain, so we were beyond hungry. We also needed to make sure Littlefoot had some food. She had to be hungrier than us. We also wanted to be able to tell CPS that we had done right by the little girl.

  I smiled at her. She didn’t smile back, but she did blink those lovely eyes—hazel? Weren’t they brown? I remembered the paramedic calling her eyes blue.

  “Chow is here, guys.” Wad walked into the break room struggling to carry several bags of food and a tray of drinks. “Burgers and shakes.”

  My stomach did a couple of flips of joy.

  “Thanks,” Uncle Bart said and reached for one of the drinks.

  Wad sat at the foot of the table. Littlefoot eyed him for a moment, then looked at the bags of food. I removed a small cheeseburger, unwrapped it, setting the wrapper on the table like a napkin, and then set the burger on top of that. She looked at the burger as if she expected it to get up and move. I took a chocolate shake and inserted a straw, then placed that near the cheeseburger. I felt a bit of guilt about giving her this kind of food. I probably should have asked for something healthy. That’s me. I have tons of great ideas; I just have them about a half hour after they’re needed. Besides, what kid doesn’t like a burger and a shake?

  I took a sip of my shake, placing the business end of the straw in my mouth and watching Littlefoot. It’s hard to say why, but I had a feeling that all of this was confusing her. I took another sip, smiled, and said, “Yum.” I pointed at her shake. She pulled it close, lifted it from the table, put the straw in her mouth and waited. Of course, nothing happened.

  “You gotta suck, kiddo.” I showed her again, exaggerating the way to use the thing. She got it on the second go around. I watched the chocolate ice cream rise in the clear straw.

  She set the cup down and frowned, then she smacked her lips and stuck out her tongue a few times like a dog trying to get peanut butter off the roof of its mouth.

  “No doubt about it,” Wad said, “the kid is missing a few marbles.”

  I may play football, but I don’t believe in violence. Not usually, anyway. Wad was giving me a reason to change my point of view.

  Uncle Bart was staring at him. “I need a favor, Deputy.”

  “Sure, Sheriff, what can I do for you?”

  “You can keep your opinions to yourself. Eat your burger, then get back on patrol.”

  “All I’m saying is . . .”

  Uncle Bart’s expression made Wad trail off.

  “I think I’ll go eat with Millie.” Wad rose from his chair and left.

  Uncle Bart didn’t try to stop him. I saw no reason to insist he stay.

  Littlefoot repeated her actions: sip, frown, followed by tongue gymnastics. I don’t think it tasted bad to her. It was as if she had never seen a milkshake or burger. She tried the sandwich, first licking the bun, then the edge of the meat patty.

  It broke my heart. Littlefoot was as innocent as any child I had ever seen. Where had she been living that she didn’t know what a burger and milkshake were? A vision of the child locked in a closet for years invaded my brain. A stew of emotion boiled in me. I was glad she was safe; I was pleased she was unharmed; my heart ached at her simplicity and confusion; and I was furious that anyone would let a child grow up this way.

  I think Uncle Bart was reading my expression or something because he spoke in a tone softer than I was used to hearing from him. “You’ve been a big help, Tank.”

  “I ain’t done much. Just showed the kid a little kindness.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, boy. The world can use a little more kindness, especially the kind you’ve got. That little girl took to you when she’d have nuthin’ to do with anyone else. She sees you as a friend.”

  “Well, I’m not wearing all the police gear you are. I’m just a big teddy bear.”

  Uncle Bart laughed. “Is that what they call you on the football field?”

  I looked away. I didn’t want to talk about football. Littlefoot watched me bite into the burger. Man, the cafeteria made a good cheeseburger. She cocked her head, then picked up the food and nibbled a bit of the bread. She set it down while she chewed as if examining some strange object. She picked it up again and this time took a bigger bite. She was getting the hang of it.

  “What’s going to happen to her, Uncle Bart?”

  “You can’t keep her, Tank. She’s not a puppy.”

  “I know that. I’m just worried about her. She’s so innocent.”

  “Social services will be here soon. They’ll get her set up all nice and comfy. Soft bed, warm covers, toys, whatever she needs.” He paused. “You think she’ll go along with them easily? I hate to think of them picking her up and putting her in the back of the car. I’ve seen it before—some kids refuse to leave a place even if it’s for their own good.”

  “I hope so, Uncle Bart. I don’t think I could stand to see that.” The image made my appetite disappear, and it took a lot to do that. “I can’t figure her out. Somebody’s gotta be looking for her.”

  “Unless they just dropped her off and drove away. I’ve seen worse.”

  Just hearing the words twisted my guts inside out. “I don’t know how you live with what you see. I’d lose my mind.”

  Uncle Bart studied the table. “I’ve lost my composure a few times.” He was seeing something in his head.

  He snapped out of it. “After CPS gets here I’ll drive you back to the house. You’ve had a full day and it’s not even noon. You can rest and watch the Rose Bowl. I wanna follow up on some things.”

  “If it’s all the same, I’d rather hang out with you.”

  Uncle Bart smiled. “I knew there was a cop somewhere in you.”

  I didn’t correct him. Didn’t seem the right time to do such a thing.

  He carried on. “I’ve got Millie making calls to the other LEOs. Maybe someone in some other county knows something.”

  “LEOs?”

  “Law Enforcement Officers. Other cops in other departments.”

  “Oh. Thanks for letting me help, Uncle Bart.”

  “As I said, Tank, I’m thanking you.”

  We ate in silence for a few moments—even Littlefoot—then Uncle Bart said something that nearly knocked me off my chair.

  “I know about what happened, Tank. I know about your football.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  Back to the Tracks

  3:02 P.M.

  The rest of the morning and the first part of the afternoon passed slowly. I continued to worry about Littlefoot although she showed no signs of distress. She had eaten half of the cheeseburger and downed about a third of the milkshake, doing her dog-licking-peanut-butter-from-the-roof-of-its-mouth after each sip thing. On one hand it was funny, but on the other kinda sad. Nonetheless, she seemed to enjoy the meal.

  Still, she never spoke and never moved from any chair I placed her in. She didn’t show much reaction to events around her. I continued to study the paper she’d given me but I could get nothing out of it. It was gonna take someone a lot smarter than me to figure it out, and a part of me worried that even the smartest man or woman would walk away as confused as I was.

  The paper fascinated me, but even more fascinating was the girl’s response to it. When we first saw her, she stayed away from everyone but me; then, once we were in the station and asked for the paper, she handed it over. She showed no interest in it after that. None. One moment she seemed to guard it with her life; the next she no longer cared. It was as if I was meant to have the message and once she delivered it, she was done with it completely.

  The problem was, I had no idea what I was looking at or why she would want me to have it. As is often the case in my life, I had more questions than answers.

  I had something else on
my mind: Uncle Bart’s revelation that he knew about me and football. I didn’t know what he meant, but I could guess. He didn’t bring it up again. I had the feeling he was leaving that up to me.

  At two thirty or so, two women from Child Protective Services showed up. One looked fresh out of college, probably a sociology major. She looked to be about my age. Maybe a couple years older. The other woman could have been the young social worker’s mother. She was maybe fifty-six, round in the face and in the belly. She had the look of a grandmother, and I thought that was perfect. It’s easy to trust grandmothers. Grandmothers stood for milk and cookies, pies, hugs, tickles, and kisses on the top of heads. They say there is no love greater than that of a parent. Grandmothers may be the exception.

  They came into the station, showed some identification first to Millie, then to Uncle Bart, who came out of his office when he heard them arrive. Littlefoot showed no fear, and when the grandmotherly woman held out a hand, she slipped from her chair and took it. My heart shriveled in my big chest, a raisin alone in an empty warehouse.

  I stood just outside the station’s doorway and watched as Littlefoot crawled into the backseat of a county sedan. The grandmotherly woman joined her; the young woman slipped behind the steering wheel. I took a few steps closer and waved good-bye. Littlefoot bent forward, and I could see her pure face.

  She was staring back.

  With green eyes.

  The image was still playing in my mind when Uncle Bart pulled the patrol car to the side of the road, to the same place in front of Old Man Weldon’s spread. During the drive he told me what he was up to. He wanted to follow the tracks again, this time in the opposite direction.

  “Since we know the tyke is safe, we can take a little more time with our search. She had to start her hike from somewhere, and I want to know where.”

  That made sense. “Couldn’t the helicopter do this faster?”

  He nodded. “It was needed elsewhere. Once we found the girl, the pilot had to move to some other pressing issue in the county. Besides, we can get a better feel for things walking the ground.”

  That made sense, too.

  We exited the car and followed our own tracks from earlier to the spot where Weldon first led us. Snow had filled in things some, but not as much as I had feared. Oddly, the snow filled our tracks more than Littlefoot’s. I’m not sure how that can be, but then none of this made much sense to me.

  “Okay, son, let’s see if we can’t find out where this journey began. If we can find the where, then we might find the why. Police work often works that way. You’ll learn that in time.” At some point, I was going to have to break Uncle Bart’s heart.

  We started backtracking Littlefoot’s journey. We encountered another fence, and the tracks looked as if she had either walked straight through the split rails or levitated over it. Both ideas were impossible, yet that’s what the tracks showed.

  We continued on, mostly in silence. I worried about Littlefoot and decided to distract myself with a different kind of unpleasantness.

  “Uncle Bart, what did you mean when you said you knew about my football?”

  He was slow to answer. He took a breath, then blew it out like a smoker emptying his lungs. “Straight up, Tank?”

  “I think that’s the best way to go.”

  “I know you were cut from the team.”

  And there it was. “Dad?”

  “Yeah, he called about a week ago. Figured he should let me know since you were going to be up here. I gotta ask, Tank—is that why my brother didn’t come up to watch the game this year?”

  A wave of shame washed over me. “I hate to say it, Uncle Bart, but yes. He’s—angry with me.”

  “Angry?”

  “Furious, really.”

  Uncle Bart chuckled. “He’s always had a short fuse. The stories I could tell.”

  “I haven’t seen him since I moved from Southern California to Washington. He was proud as he could be of the football scholarship. I’ve let him down. Big time.”

  “Mind if I ask what happened?” He didn’t look up from the tracks. “I’m not trying to butt in, son, just trying to be a good uncle. Was it the injury?”

  “No, not really.” How did I explain? I’d reviewed everything in my mind time and time again, and it was all so weird that I barely believed it myself . . . and I lived it. “Players get injured all the time: concussions, broken bones, hyper-extensions; I guess there are as many possible injuries as there are body parts, so a busted toe is nothing new. I was third string anyway, being new to the university and all. I was still learning the plays the team uses.”

  “So it wasn’t your toe—how is it by the way?”

  “Okay. It hurts, especially in the cold, but the doc says it’s healing up pretty good. I should be back to normal in a couple of months.”

  “And here I’ve been dragging you through snow.”

  “No problem, Uncle Bart. It’s just pain. I’m not making things worse.”

  We walked on another dozen steps, our gaze fixed to the tiny prints. “So, if not the toe, then what?”

  This was the difficult part. “I needed to take a trip. Since I couldn’t play, I asked if I could travel to Florida.”

  “Florida?”

  I didn’t look at him. It took all my focus to keep talking. “You know the friends I mentioned, the ones coming to Dicksonville.” He said he did. “They needed me in Florida for something. Coach said I could go. What he didn’t say was that a real football player wouldn’t leave his team even if he couldn’t play. He didn’t say so, but I think he wanted me to prove my loyalty. Leaving told him I wasn’t committed to the team.”

  Talking about it hurt, but I continued. “I should have realized that, but I’m not real good with subtlety. I blew it as far as the coach was concerned, and an injured, third-string guy isn’t all that valuable.”

  “He should have been more upfront with you, Tank. He handled that wrong. All wrong.” He paused for a moment as if he were trying to scoop up some memory buried in his brain. “Can they cut you like that, Tank? Wouldn’t they wait ’til next year to cut you? It seems a little strange to me.”

  It seemed strange to me too. Rules were being bent if not broken, but what did it matter? The coach wanted me gone and he made it happen.

  “Maybe, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. I would have gone anyway. I had to make a choice.”

  Uncle Bart stopped and stared at me. “Let me get this right, Tank. You had a full football scholarship to the University of Washington and blew it all off to go party with friends in Florida. That is the dumbest, most selfish—”

  “It was no party, sir. No party at all. We weren’t there to hang out.”

  “Then why were you there?”

  I was getting frustrated. “Uncle Bart, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  I started walking again. “I’ve got a feeling you’ll understand when this whole thing with Littlefoot is over. Strange things happen, and for some reason, me and my friends get pulled into it. I think it’s a God thing.”

  “A God thing? You blame God for flushing your scholarship?”

  “No, sir. I don’t blame God for anything.” This time I stopped and looked him in the eyes. “Weird things are happening. Don’t ask, because I don’t have many answers, but let me ask you a question. When was the last time you tracked a little girl walking barefoot in the snow who can pass through fences and levitate to the top of a barn? Have you seen anything like that before?”

  “No, not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?

  He looked away. “Okay, never anything like that.”

  “We don’t have answers, Uncle Bart, but somehow, some way we are all tied together in this and there isn’t much we can do about it. I just know that it is the most important thing I’ve done or can ever do. I blew it on the football thing, but I’d do it again if my friends needed me. I’d go to them, just like they’re coming here—and I didn�
��t call them. I was going to, but they were already on their way.”

  “How could they know?”

  “Beats me. We’ll find out when they get here.”

  We continued our hike in silence, then Uncle Bart said, “Just so you know, boy, I love you like my own son. You need to know that. I’m here if you need me.”

  My eyes grew wet. “Thanks, Uncle Bart. I love you, too.” A few moments later I asked, “Is that why you said I didn’t need to go to college to get a job as a deputy sheriff?”

  “Maybe.”

  We chuckled. The chuckles stopped ten steps later. We had found the end of Littlefoot’s tracks, or rather the beginning of the tracks. The first steps were surrounded by a wide, circular depression in the snow. I figure it was thirty feet across.

  Uncle Bart was the first to speak. “Maybe I was too quick to nix Deputy Wad’s UFO idea.”

  I think Uncle Bart was right.

  We both turned our eyes upward.

  CHAPTER

  7

  The IT

  JANUARY 2, 3:33 A.M.

  IT was closing on Littlefoot. She ran. Screaming. Cold air pushed her hair back. Tears ran from her face. Her face. Her face. Dear God, her face. The fear. The shock. The panic.

  I ran toward her. Through the snow. Pushing my bare feet through the snow to the frozen ground beneath. Shards of ice bit my feet, cutting them, jabbing them, shredding the skin. I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop. I had to get to her first, before . . . before . . . the Thing did.

  The Beast. The Animal. It was fuzzy, indistinct. I could hear its demonic yapping, like it was laughing. It found joy in Littlefoot’s terror. I saw white teeth. I saw thick, black fur.

  The IT was closing. Every stride moved it a couple of feet closer to its prey, to its evening meal, to my friend, to tiny, innocent, ten-year-old Littlefoot.

  She screamed and dear God it burned my soul like acid.

  Faster. I had to move faster. I could not allow the IT to catch her, shred her, dismember her. . . .