by Ninie Hammon
The words echoed like they were bouncing off the walls of an ancient church.
She needs both of us!
But the second time he heard them, it wasn’t Emily who spoke them. It was Jack Carpenter.
Daniel’s mind was suddenly filled with a scene so tangible that it shoved reality out of the way and took its place.
CHAPTER 16
“She needs both of us,” Jack says.
Daniel shakes Jack’s restraining hand off his arm, his own hands balled into fists of rage, and turns toward the woods.
“We have to stick together. You go running off trying to be a hero, that leaves me here by myself. Just me”—he gestures toward the little girl sitting in the dirt a few feet away, covered in blood, sobbing uncontrollably—“and Becca.”
Daniel sags.
“Ok, you’re right,” he says.
Daniel doesn’t like it that Jack is right, doesn’t like admitting that he is not big enough or strong enough to inflict revenge for Becca’s loss all by himself. He wants to be, but knows he isn’t. And he understands that it’s more important to be with Becca right now than to score points with her by making Jacob Dumas and Victor Alexander pay for what they’ve done.
Still, the sound of Becca sobbing hurts Daniel’s heart in a way he’s never felt before. He wants to fix it, to make it right. But he can’t. He looks at Becca’s face, a mask of grief as she cradles the dead animal—most of it anyway—to her chest and rocks back and forth.
“Vic’s probably watching us right now,” Jack says, softly. “Sent Jake to get the others.” Jack scans the nearby bushes. “We need to get her home before the rest of them show up.”
Daniel glances uneasily over his shoulder. The three of them are in the woods, in a clearing beside a big sycamore tree. He can hear a nearby stream laughing its way over small stones, and birds chirping in the trees. That’s good, the chirping birds. Means nobody’s coming. Yet.
Jack gestures with his chin toward the round, bloody object lying in the dirt a few feet from where Becca is sobbing. Daniel shoots a questioning look at Jack, who continues to communicate with looks rather than words. Jack looks at the round thing lying in a puddle of blood that’s already attracted a couple of flies, then back at Becca.
Jack’s right again. Daniel walks slowly to it, bends over and picks it up, trying not to look at it, trying not to get blood all over his hands. But there is no way to keep from doing either.
The sightless eyes are glazed over with a film and look like dirty marbles, the mouth is open, the tongue hangs out and blood is still dripping from the gory hole in its brown fur where the head had been attached to the dog’s body.
He kneels beside Becca, not knowing what to do, what to say, holding the dog head awkwardly—how do you not hold the still-warm head of a butchered animal awkwardly?
She sits in the dirt clutching the rest of the dog’s bloody body to her chest, tears streaming down her face from eyes squeezed shut tight.
“Becca, we need to go now,” he tells her as tenderly as he can. “I’ll—we’ll—carry McDougal for you. Jack and I will dig a grave and we’ll bury him.”
“I shouldn’t have let him off the leash,” Becca says, the words interspersed between wracking sobs, her wet face turned up to the sky. “But he loves to run in the woods and I never thought…”
She opens her eyes then, looks at the bloody body she has pulled into her lap, and then at the dog’s head that Daniel’s holding. She bursts into hysterical sobbing again, hugging the limp dog in her arms and shaking her head.
“Dougie,” she cries. “Precious DD.”
The truth is, they never should have come out in the woods today at all. Things between them and The Bad Kids had been getting worse every day. Becca’s father was the biggest, meanest dope grower in the state and nobody messed with him or his little girl, but these guys didn’t seem to care. Nothing frightened them. Their animosity toward Becca was as vicious as it was unexplainable. And she couldn’t stay holed up in her house all the time.
That’s why Jack and Daniel had let Becca talk them into hiking up to Red Rock, which was only a little over a mile from her house. She’d taken McDougal, the beloved mutt she’d adopted from the animal shelter, used the leash as they walked beside the road because McDougal—AKA McDo, McD, Dougie, Dougal Dog and DD—was an unrepentant car chaser. When they turned up the logging road and then into the woods, she’d unclipped the leash and slipped it into her pocket.
It was a hot, sticky day as are most summer days in Kentucky. They’d taken off their shoes and waded upstream in the creek. McDo plopped down in the cool water, rolled over in it until he was soaked, then stood and performed his amazing full-body shake that sprayed water on them all. They paused often for Jack and Daniel to try to wrestle each other into the creek. Becca and Jack had been laughing at Daniel, who’d eluded Jack’s attempts all afternoon to dunk him, then slipped and fell flat on his backside in the water, when they noticed that McDougal was missing.
“Dougle Dog,” Becca called. “Here, D.D.”
One call was always sufficient to bring the dog charging out of the undergrowth, tail wagging. But McDougal didn’t respond. He’d been running out ahead of them, sniffing every leaf, stump, rock and tree limb he came to, but now they couldn’t see him anywhere.
“Dougie,” Becca called again. They were slightly below the crest of a hill and climbed up to the top of it, sure they’d see the dog there, or at least be high enough he’d hear Becca when she called.
But the dog wasn’t all they found when they got to the crest of the hill.
Daniel was ahead and saw them first. About thirty feet away beside a big rock were Jacob and Victor. Victor had McDougal clutched tight to his chest with his fingers around the dog’s snout to keep his mouth closed so he couldn’t bark.
As soon as Becca saw them, she cried out, “McDo!” and started toward them.
“I’d stay right where I was if I’s you,” said Jake. “Wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to your worthless mutt.”
Becca froze. “Don’t hurt DD. He never did anything to you.”
“Give Becca back her dog,” Jack said and began advancing on them.
“Say please,” Victor said.
Daniel could actually hear Jack’s teeth grind together.
“Please,” Jack said.
“Ok, since you asked so nice—sure, we’ll give him back to her.”
Then Victor lifted the dog up, holding him in one hand by the neck. McDougal was a good-sized dog, weighed at least sixty pounds, and he was wiggling frantically, squirming and whimpering, trying to break free.
“Here, you go,” he shouted. “You can have him.”
Vic reached up and took the dog’s head in both hands, then twirled the dog’s body around it, the way you wring a chicken’s neck.
It had all happened so fast, Jack and Daniel had no time to react. Around and around the body went—once, twice—then Jacob snapped his wrist like popping a whip, and the dog’s body flew out into the air and plopped down a few feet away, blood gushing from the hole above its shoulders where its head had been.
Becca let out a horrified, anguished shriek. Victor tossed the dog’s head on the ground, turned and fled with Jacob into the woods.
Now Becca rocks the dog’s body and sobs, strangling out anguished words, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let him out of my sight. All those other dogs, you know Jacob and Victor killed them, too.”
Jack and Daniel had suspected as much, and this proved it. What other explanation was there for the sudden reign of terror that had descended in a freight-train rush on animals in Bradford’s Ridge? Seven small dogs had been killed in less than a week, their mutilated bodies left on their masters’ porches. Other small pets—rabbits and cats—had been set on fire.
Four big dogs—two German shepherds, a pit bull and a Rottweiler had been found with their throats slit. The whole town was in a full bore, raging panic about it, eager
to form a lynch mob if they could find somebody to string up, and unwilling to let their pets out of their sight.
It wasn’t only pets, though. Suddenly, snakes had started turning up everywhere. Two middle-aged women were digging through the bin of “on sale” accessories in Franklin’s Department Store, and one pulled out what she thought was a leather belt. It turned out to be a three-foot-long black snake. Mr. Franklin closed the store for the rest of the week, found four other snakes in the building—two in shoe boxes, one in the coat pocket of a man’s suit, and one wrapped like a necklace around the neck of a mannequin in the storeroom.
A tangle of half a dozen garter snakes were found in the trash can in the girls’ bathroom at Harper’s Drive-In. The manager couldn’t even lure teenage girls back into the building with free milkshakes.
When Mrs. Milligan almost stepped on a hog snake on the steps of Daniel’s father’s church last Sunday, she’d had a heart attack and was still in the hospital in intensive care.
Obscenities and swastikas and yellow stars-of-David had been randomly spray-painted on downtown store fronts, sewage dumped into the swimming pool at the park and the fountain in front of City Hall.
And that’s only what Daniel and Jack knew about. There were other things—obviously worse things—that grownups stopped talking about when they got near.
Jack puts his hands on Becca’s shoulders. “We have to go,” he says.
She nods. She eases the dog’s body off her lap onto the ground. Jack helps her to her feet
“We’ll go to the sheriff now, the three of us, we have proof.” Daniel says, but knows as soon as the words leave his mouth that no one will believe a twelve-year-old boy could kill a sixty-pound dog that way.
Jack elbows him and gestures with his chin. Standing at the base of the small hill they’d climbed are Jacob and Victor and a handful of other boys. The boys stand looking up at them for a moment, then start up the hill. Jack leans toward Becca.
“Dano and I are going to take them,” he says softly. “When we jump them, you run, run as fast as you can all the way home, don’t look back until you get there.”
“No,” she says.
Then she calls out to the boys climbing the hill. “I see you and I’m not afraid of you. You don’t have any power over me.”
Jack and Daniel look at each other, uncomprehending.
The gang of boys stop, their faces so expressionless they look like robots.
“Really?” Jacob says. He is carrying a gunny sack. He reaches down, pulls open the drawstrings, then flings the sack at them so that whatever is in it comes out in the air. “Not afraid of this?”
The snake lands in the dirt not three feet in front of Becca.
“A rattlesnake?” Victor roars at Jacob, grabs a handful of his shirt front and yells in his face. “You stupid—”
The diamondback is huge, probably five feet long, and it curls instantly into a striking position, its head in the middle of the coil, its tail sounding a rattling alarm. Jack and Daniel freeze.
The other boys don’t freeze, though. In fact, they’d started backing up even before the snake came out of the sack.
Then the snake begins to lift off the ground. Daniel gapes at it, slack-jawed, watches as it is flung at the retreating boys as if by an invisible hand.
“Dan,” Emily said his name in the tone of voice you use when this isn’t the first time you’ve said it.
The image Daniel saw so clearly in front of him faded. But before it blinked out altogether, Daniel saw something he hadn’t seen when he was in the scene, living it with Jack and Becca. He saw a light beside Becca so fiercely bright the sight would stick pins in his head through his eyes if he looked directly at it.
A light like Andi described, so bright you can’t look at it straight on.
Then it was gone.
“Dan!” Emily said. “Are you ignoring me?”
“No, I … I saw something, Emily. Something strange.”
“Not you, too.” There was real apprehension in her voice.
“No, not like that,” he said. “Just a memory, a vivid memory from the summer when I was twelve years—”
They both heard it at the same time, the sound of Andi crying. But not from her room upstairs. They turned together and saw her, sitting on the stairs halfway up with her head in her hands sobbing. Daniel felt the sudden weak, boneless sensation he’d felt that day they’d been playing Catch Me, and he’d tripped and almost missed her.
Had she been sitting there when…had she overheard?
CHAPTER 17
Ossy hopped up onto the bed with Andi. The big calico circled around twice before curling snug up against Andi’s side. Ossy was short for Curiosity—but not because curiosity killed the cat. Ossy was a curiosity because he was a male Calico and Daddy said only about one in every three thousand calicos were boys.
And he was an even bigger curiosity because only one in every thousand boy Calico cats can be a daddy, but Ossy was the father of the kittens the purebred Persian cat next door had last spring—which made Mrs. Shutterbaum mad, but Andi thought they were adorable. No matter how special the cat was, though, he still wasn’t supposed to sleep with Andi, but he did almost every night.
Andi waited until she was sure her father was all the way downstairs, until she could hear the hum of voices which meant he and Mommy were talking, before she reached into the top drawer of her bedside table and took out her mother’s iPad. She tapped the screen a couple of times, then settled back on her pillows with a sigh to take up where she’d left off last night.
Ossy began to purr.
“Who are you?” Prince Humperdink asks Westley who is pretending he is totally fine but really he can’t move.
“No one of consequence.” Westley says.
“I must know,” the prince says.
“Get used to disappointment,” Westley says.
Andi giggled. She always giggled at that part. It was one of her favorite Princess Bride lines, but not as funny as when Westley tells Princess Buttercup about the time he spent on the pirate ship, how the Dread Pirate Roberts said to him every night before he went to bed, “Good work, Westley. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
Suddenly, Andi heard a sound that she had no name for, a sound like singing, only there were no words, and like music, except there was no instrument she had ever heard that could create such a melody. The sound was also color, which made no sense, but it was, a rich golden glow, soft and sometimes so bright you couldn’t look at it. It was smell, too, the air after a spring rain, and the sound felt smooth against her cheek, like satin or velvet, or the touch of the blond curls that tickled her nose when she held the Kirby’s baby.
She knew instantly where the sound/sight/smell/touch came from. She had only heard it one other time in her life, but she would never forget it. Mommy and Daddy had been standing beside her as she lay on the bed in a hospital. She knew they were there, but she couldn’t open her eyes to see them and she could hear her mother’s voice but she couldn’t make out what she was saying.
Then the light had come, the light and sound. This light and sound.
But this time the light was not nearly so bright, not piercing. It pooled at the foot of her bed and standing in the middle of the pool was Princess Buttercup.
Ossy lifted his head, turned and looked at the figure at the foot of the bed. He let out a soft “meow,” then put his head back on his paws and went back to sleep.
Maybe Andi ought to be afraid. After all, somebody had appeared out of nowhere in her bedroom, even if it was Princess Buttercup—no, Princess Buttercup lit from the inside like a nightlight. But Andi wasn’t afraid at all.
“Who are you?” Andi asked, though she was almost sure she already knew. “You’re not really…?
Princess Buttercup walked around the bed and sat on the edge of it next to Andi. Ossy had to scoot over a little to make a place for her but he didn’t even wake up.
�
�Do you know the one thing that’s said in the Bible more often than anything else—more than three hundred and fifty times?”
Andi shook her head.
Princess Buttercup smiled. “‘Do not be afraid,’” she said. She made a gesture toward herself. “Princess Buttercup isn’t scary, though, is she?”
Andi shook her head again. Normally, she’d have been babbling and chattering and asking questions. Now, she merely stared in awe and wonder—couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“I want to show you something, Andi,” Princess Buttercup said. “I need you to watch carefully.”
Andi’s room vanished. It was replaced by a darkness that was not scary because there seemed to be light on the edges of it, like a blanket thrown over a lampshade so the light shone through.
Then images began to appear in the blackness. It was almost like the movie she’d been watching on the iPad, only the images didn’t speak, and they were huge, way bigger than could possibly have fit inside her little bedroom. But they did fit, because there were no walls or ceiling or floor in her bedroom now, only the black all around with light behind it and the images.
Though it was similar to watching a movie, it wasn’t like a movie. No special effects she’d ever seen could possibly have looked like this. And there was no talking, no people to talk, only images, huge and bright, colored with the shades of logs burning in the fireplace, tumbling slowly over and over in front of her. And there was no plot either, just the images in the air, huge and scary-looking, only she wasn’t afraid. She couldn’t feel afraid as long as the music-sound that wasn’t actually music played in her ear and Princess Buttercup was sitting right there beside her.
She saw the same scene three times. Exactly the same, like she’d hit rewind on a video and played it again. The images made no sense, but by the time she had seen them for the third time, she could have identified them anywhere and they were impressed in her memory so vividly that she could see every detail of each one.