Rockinghorse

by William W. Johnstone

  “Look for yourself.”

  She left the room and returned in half a minute. She fixed coffee and sat down across the table from him. Her eyes were downcast. Finally she lifted her eyes to meet his.

  “You check on them, Trace?”

  “Yes. It’s as you said. I’m going to try and keep my cool until we talk with them. There has to be an explanation.”

  “I’m going to be very interested in hearing it,” Lucas replied.

  Mother and father sat open-mouthed and nearly speechless after the kids finished explaining. Both Tracy and Lucas blinked their eyes several times, and then looked at each other, neither of them trusting their voices to speak at the conclusion of the wild stories.

  Never had either of them ever heard such a bald-faced lie from their kids.

  Tracy was the first to speak. She fixed her level gaze on her daughter. “You . . . went for a ride on a horse with a boy named Randolph? The horse sailed—flew—over this estate? The boy has wolves for friends? That’s . . . interesting. And you met several more of Randolph’s friends, too? I take it they were human?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she replied solemnly. “Colby, Dorian, Firman, Hall, Harod, Phillip, and Steward.”

  “What were the wolves’ names?” Tracy blurted.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “I . . . see,” the mother said. She looked at her son. “And you met this beautiful little girl with cold hands?”

  “But with a warm heart,” Johnny said in all seriousness.

  “Of course,” Tracy said sarcastically. “And . . . Anna took you flying?”

  “Ah . . . yes, ma’am. That’s what I think she did.”

  “Wonderful. And Anna had friends she wanted you to meet?”

  “Yes, ma’am. All about the same age. There was Aldis, Delilah, Desdemona, Greer, Kendra, Perdita, and Thera.”

  “How nice,” Tracy said, on the edge of losing her temper.

  Lucas rubbed his suddenly aching temples with his fingertips. Best let Tracy handle this, he thought. He was likely to come unglued and belt one or both of them. But there was something oddly familiar about those names. Then his headache was forgotten and all thoughts of striking one of his children left him as Jackie’s words began sinking in.

  “They said, my group did, that they are known as the Woods’ Children.”

  Lucas jerked his head up, eyes staring at Jackie. “What? They said what?”

  “Sir?”

  “What did you just say, Jackie?”

  “Woods’ Children,” she repeated.

  “That’s what Anna told me, too,” Johnny said. “Kendra—that means ‘The Knowing Woman’—said they would have to live in the woods until it was time.”

  Tracy blinked. She didn’t have the vaguest idea what was going on. “Until it was time for what?” she asked.

  “She didn’t say.”

  Tracy looked at Lucas. “Why did the term ‘Woods’ Children’ mean anything to you? It doesn’t mean a damn thing to me.”

  “Because of something Kyle said the . . .” He was momentarily confused; too much had happened in too short a time. He shook his head. “This morning when he was here.”

  Tracy eyeballed each of her kids. She sighed deeply. “I’m trying to keep my temper, gang. Now you both listen to me. The truth is you both were dreaming. The dream was so real you both went outside to check. Now that’s what happened, isn’t it?”

  “No, ma’am,” Jackie and Johnny both spoke in unison.

  Johnny said, “We didn’t dream it. I thought it was, at first. But it wasn’t a dream.”

  “It was real,” Jackie insisted.

  Tracy lost her fragile grip on her temper. “Oh, come on!” she almost shouted the words. “Now you’ve both been taught—and I thought the lessons stuck—not to lie. You are both sitting there lying to us.”

  The kids shook their heads and silently stayed with their story.

  “Damn!” Tracy snorted in exasperation. She looked at Lucas.

  He said, “Johnny, what did . . . Desdemona look like?”

  “She seemed to be very sad,” the boy replied. “I never saw her smile. And her eyes seemed to be very sad.”

  Lucas nodded his head, a sick feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. “How about Delilah?”

  The boy grinned sheepishly. “She . . . ah, kinda was dressed, well, different from the others; her legs showed a lot. And she liked to flirt a lot. Made me feel funny. Sort of.”

  “But you liked the feeling?” the father asked gently, a faint smile on his lips.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lucas? . . .”

  He cut off his wife’s building protest with a wave of his hand. “Jackie, what did Firman look like?”

  “Oh, he was strange! He was dressed like . . . like you see old-timey gypsies dressed in the movies. Maybe like a pirate, too. He had a ring in one ear and he wore a real bright red bandana around his head.”

  “And Doran?”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t have anything to do with me.” He wasn’t . . . unfriendly, not really. He just didn’t get too close to me, that’s all. Come to think of it, Doran sat away from all the others all the time.”

  “All right,” Lucas said. “Thank you both. Now you go to your rooms and you stay there,” he told them. “And I mean that, kids. Don’t push us any further.”

  “Yes, sir,” they both echoed.

  When the kids had gone, Tracy turned to her husband, irritation and confusion mixing on her face. “Lucas, now what in the world was that nonsense all about? ”

  “It wasn’t nonsense, Trace. At least I don’t think it was. Listen, Desdemona is the girl of sadness. Delilah is the temptress. Firman means a traveler to distant places—the wanderer. Doran is the stranger. As a lark, I took a course in name origin in college—an elective. Tracy, there is no way those kids could have known all that. No way they could have put mode of dress with names. We have smart kids, yeah, but not that smart, not this young.”

  “Are you saying—are you suggesting? . . .” she sputtered to a halt.

  “Tracy, I don’t know what I’m suggesting, if anything. What I do know for sure is this: Their descriptions fit the names. Other than that, I don’t know. But I do think they . . . they believe they’re telling the truth.”

  She could only sit in her chair and stare at her husband. One whale of a good argument was just at the tip of her tongue.

  Jackie’s screaming cut off the argument before it could take shape. Both parents ran to the girl’s room.

  Lucas was the first one to enter the room. “What’s wrong?”

  “A man. An ugly man!” Jackie said, pointing to the window. She sat in the middle of her bed. “He was looking in that window.”

  “Have you seen him before?” Tracy asked.

  “In town,” Jackie said. “He always stared at me.”

  “The son of a bitch!” Lucas said, losing the slender hold on his temper. He looked at Tracy. “Stay with her.”

  Lucas grabbed his shotgun, checked to make certain it was loaded, and jacked a round into the chamber as he ran toward the kitchen. He ran out the kitchen door onto the veranda, lifting the shotgun. He watched as a man ran into the woods in back of the mansion. Slowly, he lowered the shotgun. The range was too far.

  “Goddamn it!” he cursed. “I gotta get a rifle.”

  “Good God!” his wife’s outraged voice reached him. “This is . . . this is positively disgusting.”

  Lucas went back into the house, walking slowly to Jackie’s bedroom, cradling the shotgun in his arms. I feel like Daniel Boone, he thought. Entering the bedroom, he said, “What’s wrong?”

  Tracy looked at him and pointed to the window.

  Lucas’s stomach did a slow rollover of revulsion at the sight.

  Before any of them could react to the hideousness hanging in the window, a noise from the floor above them turned their heads.

&n
bsp; On the landing above the living quarters, the rocking horse began slowly rocking back and forth, its runners squeaking and groaning. Its tail twitched and its eyes gleamed with evil glee. It could scarcely control its urge to whinny in happiness. Faster and faster it rocked, until its movements resembled a frenzy. It bumped into the railing, the walls, banging and crashing.

  Below the wildly gyrating wooden horse, man and wife and brother and sister looked at one another in shock and disbelief.

  “Lucas . . . ?” Tracy said.

  He shook his head and clicked the shotgun off safety. He stepped out into the hall, Tracy beside him.

  The noise stopped.

  The house was plunged into a deathlike silence.

  “What was that, Lucas?”

  He remembered the gold rocking-horse pin in his jeans pocket. “Has to be. It has to be that damn rocking horse.”

  “Lucas, you’re talking as strangely as the kids. It’s just a wooden hobbyhorse. Nothing more. It can’t—”

  A nickering, whinnying sound from above them stopped her protests. She paled as her eyes met her husband’s level gaze. “Can it be?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, as the house once more fell silent. “First things first,” he said grimly. “What in the hell was that thing that man hung outside the window?”

  “I don’t know. Neither of us got close enough to it to tell. Whatever it is, it’s disgusting.”

  “God!” Lucas said, looking at the bloody thing. “It’s what left of a dog. It’s been tortured and skinned.” He fought back sickness as he opened his knife and cut the cord, dropping the animal to the ground. “I’ll bury it later.”

  Above them, the rocking horse began rocking and whinnying and snorting. Its rocking intensified. It once more began banging into walls, snorting and whinnying as it did so.

  “That’s it!” Lucas shouted. “Goddamn it, I’ve had all I’m going to take.”

  Ignoring Tracy’s hands that tried to prevent him from leaving, Lucas jerked free and ran down the hall to the stairwell. He looked up. The rocking horse was looking down at him. Its eyes seemed to mock him. It whinnied tauntingly. Lucas raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The railing and bannisters caught most of the load, but a few shot struck the hobbyhorse. It seemed to cry in pain as it jerked back from the railing.

  “I’m dreaming all this,” Lucas said.

  The rocking horse appeared once more at the landing and spat at him, whinnying derisively.

  Then it pulled back, disappearing.

  Lucas ran up the curving steps until he reached the landing. There, he stood in numb shock, staring. The rocking horse was bucking and snorting and lunging around the small space afforded the landing. Its painted-on teeth no longer seemed painted-on. They were real and yellowed. The horse jumped at Lucas, its runners leaving the carpet. The runners seemed to actually strike at Lucas. The mouth was now open. It tried to bite him. Lucas dodged, hearing the teeth snap as they just missed his forearm.

  Not believing it, but forced to admit to the truth taking place before his eyes, Lucas cursed the hobbyhorse and lifted the shotgun. He pulled the trigger, again and again, emptying the shotgun into the rocking horse.

  Wild shrieks of pain filled the landing. The rocking horse howled in agony, as if its wood could actually experience the pain from the buckshot. The horse splintered under the impact of buckshot and the body separated from the runners. Half the hobbyhorse’s face was blown off; a foul-smelling liquid splattered the walls. Pieces of the horse were scattered all over the landing.

  Lucas lowered the smoking shotgun. His arms felt as if they weighed a ton apiece. He was suddenly very tired.

  He looked at the horse, not believing any of what he was seeing. The horse, or what was left of it, was jerking spasmodically on the landing floor. Its mangled head was still trying to bite, the yellowed teeth snapping, the jaws working in fury and pain.

  Lucas backed up against the wall.

  “Oh, my God, Lucas!” Tracy cried, reaching his side. “Look!” she pointed.

  Bright red blood was pouring from the blown-open stomach of the wooden horse. Bright red stinking blood. The blood was rapidly covering the floor, soaking into the worn carpet.

  13

  “It isn’t possible,” Lucas said. “No, by God, it just isn’t possible.”

  But the impossible was taking place, right before his eyes.

  Tracy suddenly lost her ability to keep down the food she had eaten. She threw up, the vomit spraying the walls. The sickness was infectious, and Lucas’s own stomach emptied. Both of them staggered backward, leaning against the wall for support.

  Lige had come on a run when Jackie rang the buzzer for him; he had already been moving at the sounds of the booming shotgun.

  He panted up the stairs and came to a dead halt before he got to the landing. He could see what was left of the rocking horse. And could both smell and see the blood.

  “Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Mr. Bowers,” he said. “You shouldn’t had oughta done that. Oh, Lordy. Now it’s really come unglued.”

  Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Lucas snapped, “What in the hell are you babbling about, now, Lige?”

  Lige lifted his eyes to meet Lucas. There was something odd flickering in the man’s eyes. “You jist don’t know what you’ve done here, Mr. Bowers. You done unleashed all the devils and demons. That there horse is part of this house. Been here ever since the house was built. The house’ll git you for this. Hit’ll git you, and hit’ll git your family. But hit ain’t gonna git me. No, sir. I’m a-leavin.’ ”

  He turned and ran down the steps.

  “Lige!” Lucas shouted at his back. “Lige, damn you, come back here.”

  “No, sir!” Lige called over his shoulder. “I’m a-leaving’ here. I’ll write and tell y’all where to send my pay. Good-bye!”

  “You leave these grounds and I’ll call the law on you—Ira!”

  That stopped the man cold.

  Jackie and Johnny stood under the archway leading to the stairwell, watching and listening.

  “Lucas,” Tracy said. “Lige is Ira?”

  “I think so,” he spoke softly, just loud enough for her to hear. “But it was a wild guess.”

  Lige turned slowly. When he looked up, his eyes were filled with a combination of madness and hate. His hands were balled into fists. “That’s two ways the law will get me, isn’t it, Mister Bowers?”

  “Two ways, at least, Ira. Why, Ira? Why all the pretense?”

  “You’re a lawyer and you’re asking that?”

  Lucas grunted his reply.

  “Now what happens?” Lige/Ira called up the steps.

  “That’s up to you, Ira. All that talk about demons and devils—that was just an excuse for you to run, wasn’t it? You knew I was getting very suspicious of you, didn’t you?”

  The man laughed and shook his head. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, ol’ buddy,” Lige/Ira suddenly got very intimate with his speech, and his grammar improved greatly. “But all that was the truth.”

  “Come off it, Ira.”

  The man again smiled. “You’ll see, Lucas. Oh, yes. You’ll see.”

  “Are you . . . do you really expect me to believe this house is haunted?”

  “Buddy, this place is the devil’s own. And you’re an interloper—you and your family. And you’ll all pay for violating something you don’t understand. You should have stayed away, Lucas.”

  “I think that is pure crap! What caused this rocking horse to seemingly come alive? And the blood—that isn’t real, is it? You rigged all this to try to scare us away—right?”

  “For a lawyer, Lucas, you’re a goddamned fool. Seemingly come alive? The blood not real? Oh, Lucas, you didn’t kill that old horse. It can’t be killed. It’ll be back. You just hang around and you’ll see. As long as this house stands, that horse will be a part of it. That, and . . .” He paused, then laughed. “Well, you’ll see.”

  “C
rap! ” Lucas spat the word. “You rigged all this. I know you did. You had to have rigged it. There is no other logical explanation.”

  “Ol’ buddy,” Lige/Ira said, “there is no logical explanation for anything about this house. You’ll see, if you stay, and you probably will. You’re that goddamned stupid.” He smiled.

  Lucas had difficulty trying to control his temper.

  “Who were those men who broke in here last night?”

  Ira shrugged. “Why not? They were part of the Brotherhood.”

  “The what?”

  “The Brotherhood. And they’ll be back, too. You’ll never leave Georgia alive, Lucas. None of you will. If this house don’t kill you, the Brotherhood will. You’ve been marked since before you were born, buddy. You’re the weak link in the chain.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about, Ira?”

  The man shook his head. “How’d you put it together about me?”

  “Mostly a guess. You were trying to act a lot older than you were.”

  “Very good, Lucas. But . . . now what?”

  “More questions, Ira. Were you a part of those men who attacked me and my family?”

  “Sure.”

  Blind, red, hot rage filmed before Lucas’s eyes. With an inhuman howl ripping from his throat, he dropped the empty shotgun to the landing floor and charged down the steps toward his brother. Ira braced himself and got in the first punch, a stinging right to Lucas’s jaw. But Ira was fighting an enraged father and husband, and Lucas scarcely felt the blow. Lucas snapped a short left to Ira’s mouth and the lips of the man turned crimson, blood leaking down, dribbling on his chin, dropping off to stain his dirty shirt. Ira swung a roundhouse right that Lucas ducked, and the father slammed a hard right fist into Ira’s belly. Ira doubled over, gagging. Before Lucas could follow through, Ira stepped to one side and kicked Lucas on the leg, bringing a grunt of pain. Ira followed that with a wicked punch to the side of Lucas’s head. Lucas backed up until the stars faded in his head, then charged his brother, grabbing the man’s hips and propelling him backward, slamming the man into a wall, knocking the wind from him. Ira slumped to the floor. Just as Lucas drew back his foot to kick Ira in the face, the man scooted away and came to his feet, a knife in his hand. His grin was ugly.