The Knowing Box Set EXTENDED EDITION: Exclusive New Material

by Ninie Hammon

  And in the next few moments, that’s exactly what she did.

  Theresa instantly understood Becca’s reaction. She’d responded like Andi had when she’d seen the man on television. But Becca was way more profoundly affected than Andi’d been. Neither had ever met Chapman Whitworth, but Becca had met the monster that controlled him.

  ******

  The beast fixed lidless eyes on her and spoke to Becca out of the mouth of the scar-faced man on the television screen.

  “I am so glad to see you again. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Why haven’t you come when I summoned?”

  The questions were innocent, spoken in a soft voice that had a bit of an edge to it, a purr, like the sound you can barely hear when you pull velvet slowly through your fingers. But the words tore at her ears like clawed beasts, ripping at the insides of them until blood ran out and down the side of her neck. They resounded in her head like a gong, so loud the vibration shook her skull, and the pain of it, slamming into the insides of her head was excruciating. But she could only whimper as blood began to run out her nose and down her lip.

  Her diaphragm banged against the hard edge of the terror in her chest like waves against the rocks on the shore. A black frame appeared around what she could see, and it began to close, leaving a smaller and smaller field of vision. She knew that when the frame closed all the way, when it banged shut with a clang like a jail cell, she would be trapped in total darkness with the monster who was made out of hate. And he would feast on her, gorge his belly full of the pieces of her body.

  A face appeared between her and the face of the beast. A black face and it got closer and closer, filling her vision. The lips on the face moved, though she could not make out the words spoken, drowned out as they were by a sound like pounding surf in her ears. She felt hands on her shoulders, and from a great distance she heard a voice calling her name. “Becca! Becca!”

  Becca dropped to her knees and curled up in a fetal position, whimpering. Then he came. He reached out of the screen and touched her. It touched her—pure evil, as silky smooth as the belly of a spider.

  She began to scream.

  ******

  Theresa called out to Becca, but the girl didn’t respond, then she collapsed on the floor and began to scream. The look of absolute terror on that child’s face like to broke Theresa’s heart.

  Theresa didn’t know if that demon really was reaching out to Becca in some way and tormentin' her soul or if it was Becca herself, reliving what happened or imagining things that wasn’t real—awful thoughts coming from a mind that had been beat very nearly all the way to death with evil.

  Easing her bulk down onto the floor beside Becca, Theresa patted her back. Wasn’t nothing else she could do. And as she sat soothing the horrified girl, Theresa came to understand some things.

  Chapman Whitworth had a power she hadn’t counted on. Somehow he’d wielded it even on her. His voice had been hypnotizing, paralyzing that day in Miss Minnie and Mr. Gerald’s parlor. But she’d heard it for what it was, then— pure evil, wrapped in a pleasant baritone. Now, the evil was hidden, cloaked in sincerity, and all the power was channeled into persuasion, control. When he spoke, it was like you had to believe what he was telling you. Afterward, when he wasn’t talkin' no more, you could look back and not even be able to figure out what it was he’d said that you’d so totally bought into. At least Theresa could do that. But could other people? Did some people still believe him even after he quit talkin’? She bet they did, some of 'em. A lot of 'em. And that was a terrible thing, maybe the terrible-est thing of all.

  But there still was something Theresa couldn’t figure out, a niggling itch that wouldn’t leave her alone. Why would a demon as powerful as an efreet settle for taking a position as one of nine justices on the Supreme Court? Powerful as a judge might be, he wasn't in charge of nothin’ his own self. That didn’t stack up with what she knew about demons.

  The next morning when Theresa went down to call Becca to breakfast, the girl was gone. Theresa wasn’t really surprised by that. Sad, but not surprised.

  “Where’d she go?” Jack wanted to know when she called and told him about it.

  “Out there, I suppose. Another little minnow being carried along by the current.”

  “No telling how long it’ll take for us to find her again.”

  “What for? She’ll just run off again if we do.”

  “But she and Daniel and I…somehow the three of us have to…”

  His voice trailed off. Yes, indeed, somebody was going to have to find that efreet, wherever it had secreted itself like a dung beetle in a hole, and send it packing. It wouldn’t be Becca, though. Theresa already knew how this was gonna shake out, and she figured the others did, too, if they’d ever let their minds go there. When it came time to go up against that monster evil, Andi would take Becca’s place.

  ******

  1985

  Jack leaned his bike next to Daniel’s against the mailbox post in front of Bishop’s house. They hadn’t called to tell him they were coming, to ask if they could come. Hadn’t even discussed it with each other. It was like that all the time. He’d think something, look over and see Daniel was thinking the same thing. After they’d carried McDougal out of the woods to Becca’s house, dug a hole in the ground beside her rose garden and buried the dog, they’d gotten on their bikes and started back to town. When they got to Daniel’s house, he didn’t stop, just kept riding toward Bishop’s. That was it.

  If Bishop was dismayed to see them, he hid it well. At least they weren't interrupting a basketball game. Bishop was a Chicago Bulls fan, had bent Jack's ear during the whole season about one of their new players, a guy named Michael Jordan--but the Bulls had gotten beat in the playoffs.

  Bishop greeted them at the door with a solemn but not disapproving face, showed them into the living room and asked if they wanted anything to drink.

  “I’ll fetch two glasses of lemonade with lots of ice,” Theresa said, without waiting for their replies. “See if I can rustle up some blueberry muffins. I made some for breakfast, and if Bishop didn’t gobble the lot of them, I’ll warm ’em up in the oven for you.”

  “What’s happened?” Bishop asked as she turned to leave. There was the slightest hesitation, like maybe she’d stop, sit down and listen to their story. But then she continued into the kitchen and left the three alone in the living room. “Ain’t nobody hurt, is they?”

  “Becca’s dog’s dead. The Bad Kids killed it,” Daniel told him.

  “And Becca…?"

  “Just the dog. Becca’s fine.”

  “No, she’s not,” Jack said. “She couldn't be fine. She watched them murder her dog and then we helped her bury it. How could she be fine?”

  He and Daniel had taken turns carrying the dog’s body out of the woods and digging its grave. Once they’d covered the grave with dirt, tamped it firmly down with the shovel, they’d stood together, silent.

  Then Becca had turned to Daniel. “Would you…say something?” Her trembling voice had threatened to break down into sobbing.

  Daniel had begun to speak. His voice was strong, but gentle and kind, too. Jack couldn’t remember now what he’d said, only that he’d thought while Daniel was talking that he’d never again in his life have a friend as good as Daniel Burke.

  “Tell me what happened,” Bishop said. “All of it. Don’t leave out nothin'.”

  Theresa came and went during the telling, bringing lemonade and near the end of the story, warm blueberry muffins that smelled delicious. But Jack and Daniel didn’t touch them, and they sat on a plate on the coffee table, getting cold again as Daniel told Bishop what Becca had said, and Jack described the rattlesnake rising in the air and flying toward the retreating boys.

  “That all of it?” Bishop asked.

  The boys nodded.

  Bishop sat back. He’d been leaned toward the boys as they talked, sitting side by side on the couch facing him. Now, he settled back into the
chair.

  “You boys need to go wash your hands,” he said.

  That was when Jack realized his hands were covered with dried dog blood and the dirt of McDougal’s grave. “Then come on back in here and eat them muffins and drink that lemonade Theresa fixed for you. You’re gone need to listen close to what I’m ’bout to tell you.”

  When the story came, told in Bishop’s deep rumble, Jack was so stunned by the revelations that some essential part of him pushed back from the reality and stood outside, watching the two boys and the big man from a distance. He could only catch pieces of what was said. Those fragments were what Jack took away with him, images and scenes dangling and frayed on the ends.

  The six Bad Kids were…possessed by demons. And Becca could see them.

  Then Jack was yanked back into his own mind like he’d been pulled by an overextended rubber band. Bishop’s words sucked all the oxygen out of the room, and Jack was no longer an observer.

  “Isaac had the knowing, too,” Bishop said. Jack stopped breathing. “Boy had it strong, strong as my Grampa Rufus.” Bishop’s voice thickened and sank almost to whisper. “I need my son. The two of us together…but it’s just me now. Just me.”

  And that was Jack’s fault. Whatever had happened to Isaac, it was Jack’s fault.

  CHAPTER 27

  2011

  Daniel sat in his office, his morning coffee bitter in his mouth, Andi’s words when he’d tucked her in bed last night ringing in his head.

  “Daddy, what does rape mean?”

  By the casual way she dropped the bombshell, he knew she had no idea what she was asking.

  “Why do you want to know?” he said, stalling.

  “Bethany said at school today that you did that—the rape thing—and that her mommy said you should be arrested and put in jail. What does it mean?””

  “Well, I didn’t,” Daniel said, reeling, trying not to stammer. “Do the…that. So the word doesn’t mean anything at all.”

  “But what—?”

  “Enough talk now. Time for sleep. Don’t forget you have a piano lesson after school tomorrow.”

  That did it. Andi went off on how much she hated piano lessons and forgot all about the word. This time.

  So what do I tell her when I am arrested? What happens to Andi if I go to prison?

  His phone rang. He saw the unfamiliar number and almost didn’t answer it. How could a reporter have gotten his cell phone number? It rang again. He told himself to relax, probably a telemarketer and hey, you never knew when you were going to need a not-a-slicer, not-a-dicer, cutter-upper, chipper-chopper available for the next thirty seconds for a mere nine, ninety-nine, ninety-nine.

  The call wasn’t a slicer-dicer.

  “Please hold for Senator LaHayne,” a woman’s voice said into his ear, and he spent an uncomfortable minute or two trying to figure out what the senator wanted, given that the hearings began tomorrow, and they had nothing.

  Jack and Crock had worked all but nonstop ever since Senator LaHayne issued his “get me proof" directive, and the two police officers had amassed a wealth of information about a certain Edgar Wallace Boskowitz. They knew just about everything there was to know, in fact, except where he was.

  Suddenly, the senator’s pleasant gravel voice spoke into Daniel’s ear.

  “Daniel, I want you to come to Washington. Now. Today.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s all arranged. My secretary will give you the details. There will be a car waiting for you at Dulles and we’ll meet tonight in my office.”

  “Why do you want me in Washington, sir?”

  “Jack doesn’t have anything, and we’re out of time. I need you to help me implement Plan B.”

  ******

  “You ready, honey?” Mrs. Beavers called up the stairs. “Don’t forget your music.”

  As she tied the shoestrings of her bright-red Converse sneakers, Andi tried to come up with any possible way to get out of going. She could pretend to have a stomachache. But there was pink stuff in a bottle in the medicine cabinet that Mrs. Beavers thought would cure anything. Andi bet if she broke her leg, Mrs. Beavers would try to force some of that Pepto Bizzard down her throat.

  She decided she’d rather go to the piano lesson than swallow that nasty pink stuff.

  Mrs. Powell’s house was only a couple of blocks from Andi’s. As she walked down the sidewalk toward it, Andi thought about last night when Daddy said the rape word didn’t mean anything but she knew it did, too. Something really bad or why would they put you in jail for doing it? She hadn’t told Daddy how Bethany and Sophia had taunted her, calling her “Jailbird! Jailbird!” Today in school, she’d told her teacher she had a headache during recess so she wouldn’t have to go out on the playground and hear them chanting.

  Was Daddy really going to jail?

  Her stomach yanked into a knot, like it’d felt when Daddy told her Becca had left. She heard Daddy tell Miss Theresa on the phone that “Andi took the news pretty well,” but the truth was Andi was devastated. Becca gone, too. Just like Mommy. She wasn’t dead like Mommy, but if she never came back, she might as well be.

  Andi’s world was crumbling around her, and she couldn’t do anything to hold it together.

  Her shoe came untied, and when she knelt to tie it, she noticed a man lounging against a tree next to a white van parked at the curb half a block away. He looked familiar. Where had she seen—?

  Dreadlock Man! The man from her dream, her vision. What was he doing here?

  Her heart began to pound painfully. The vision hadn’t been scary, but she was afraid now all the same. She didn’t want to be anywhere near Dreadlock Man or any of the other men she’d seen. What should she do?

  Run home! Run!

  She dropped her music on the sidewalk and bolted back down the street the way she’d come. She thought she saw Dreadlock Man move away from the tree as she turned, but she couldn’t be sure, and she wasn’t going to look back now to find out. She ran as fast as she could down the block, made it to the Henderson’s house on the corner and cut across their yard and around their hedge. She burst out on the sidewalk on the other side and bumped into a man with a cell phone to his ear headed in the opposite direction. She hit him hard, and he grunted, reached out his hand to steady her so she wouldn’t fall down.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Jew need to be a leetle more careful—”

  Speedy Gonzales.

  Instead of letting her go, his fingers tightened around her arm, but she wrenched free. He grabbed for her, and she kicked him in the shin as hard as she could—wished she’d had on boots instead of sneakers—then darted out of his reach and ran back toward the Henderson’s house.

  She hadn’t thought to scream, but right now she was so scared and winded, she didn’t have enough air to scream. The Hendersons would help her. They’d call the police.

  A white van—the one she’d seen parked near Dreadlock Man—whipped into the Henderson’s driveway and blocked her path. She dodged around it as the driver’s door flew open, and Dreadlock Man leapt out and almost tackled her. She dodged his grasp and bolted up onto the Henderson’s porch and banged on the door.

  “Let me in,” she cried. “Help me.”

  She sensed rather than heard the two men closing in on her, coming up the sidewalk.

  “Help me, please,” she cried and banged hard enough to rattle the stained glass in the inset on the door. “Hel—”

  A big hand fastened over her mouth and cut off her words. Big fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arm. She found the air to scream then, shrieked, but the sound was too muffled to be heard. The man behind her yanked her backward off balance, then half carried, half dragged her kicking and struggling to the open back doors of the van.

  When he took his hand off her mouth, Dreadlock Man hissed, “Keep quiet.” But apparently he saw her take in a huge breath to scream again because he hit her.

  No one in her life had ever struck Andi. She didn’t
know whether or not her parents even believed in spanking because she’d always been a good girl, didn’t talk back or disobey—the things other kids did to get spanked.

  The force of the slap snapped her head violently to the left, and she would have staggered and fallen if the man hadn’t picked her up into his arms like she didn’t weigh anything at all, tossed her into the van, hopped in behind her and slammed the door shut. Then the van reversed, whipped a turn and sped off down the street, leaving one red high-top Converse sneaker behind in the Henderson’s driveway.

  ******

  1985

  Today was picture day. A photographer from Turner’s Photo had shown up as Bishop was getting out of the car. He said he wanted to take the individual photos first. Each boy was s’posed to have two poses from several different angles. When he was finished with the individual shots, he’d arrange them boys the way he wanted for the team picture.

  “I’d like to get the individual shots over there in front of that tree, use it as a background,” Matt Turner said, pointing to a majestic maple tree on the far side of the parking lot.

  Bishop looked around. Daniel had started to suit up in his catcher’s uniform, pads and face mask. His mother had dropped him off on her way to have his little sister’s ears pierced. Several other boys was playing catch or switching into they team jersey T-shirts. But Mikey wasn’t here. Hard to figure that boy not being here. Even more concernin’—Jack wasn’t here neither. And not one of the Bad Kids and they monsters was anywhere to be seen.

  Bishop told the boys to go on with Mr. Turner across the parking lot to the tree to get they pictures took. Daniel started to go with them, but Bishop put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and asked if he’d seen Jack this morning. He hadn’t.

  They both heard Mikey calling before they saw him, huffing and puffing down the woods trail toward them, his fat face beet red, his breathing coming in gasps. “Coach…” Gasp. “Washington! You gotta…” Gasp. “Help Jack.”