by Ninie Hammon
When they finally got within sight of the building, Mikey was done, “Wait up, guys!” he cried, and to his utter delight they didn’t ignore him, but pulled to the side of the road and stopped, and he pumped as hard as he could to make it up the beginning of the incline to where they waited.
Then he and Daniel stood gaping at an inferno. Becca covered her eyes and refused to look. Even from here, they could see the tops of flames licking the bottom of a column of smoke that smeared tar on the sky above. Becca did look at the mob that stretched down from the top of the hill, and Mikey figured she and Daniel were wondering the same thing he was. Was Jack in that mob? Or in the burning building?
The look of despair on Becca’s face told Mikey where she believed Jack was. Her sorrow broke Mikey’s heart.
“Hey,” he said, as soothing as he could manage with a Mickey Mouse voice that hadn’t yet started to change, “we don’t even know that Jack followed them this far.”
“Oh, yes we do!” Daniel cried and jumped off the scooter. Leaving Becca to hold it upright, he took off down the side of the road and into the woods—where Jack’s bike stood leaned against a tree.
“The chain’s off,” Daniel said. “He must have left the bike here when he couldn’t go any farther.”
“And walked to the nursing home to get help,” Mikey said, hating every word as it left his mouth.
“Which means,” Becca said, her voice so soft she was hard to hear, “that he’s…in there, now. Jack’s in the fire.”
Mikey could think of nothing to say. Daniel didn’t speak, either, merely set about fixing the chain on Jack’s bike so he could ride it instead of riding double on Becca’s scooter.
Daniel had recovered some by the time he got the chain in place.
“We don’t know Jack’s in that building,” he said with what Mikey thought was remarkable conviction, given that he didn’t believe his own words. “He could be in the crowd out front—but the police are never going to let us get close enough to find out.”
He stood and wiped grease off his fingers onto his pants. “Here’s what I think we should do—ride back to the intersection and turn down Pullman Lane so we can come at the nursing home from the south. If the crowd’s not as thick on that side, we can get past the police barricade.”
“Do you think Jack’s…ok?” Becca’s voice sounded so frightened it broke Mikey’s heart all over again. “Sure he is,” Daniel said.
Mikey was silent, just gave Daniel a look that said he wasn’t buying what Daniel was selling. Then the three got on their bikes, turned around and headed back toward Pullman Lane.
CHAPTER 45
1985
Jack bumped into a wheelchair as he crawled. He’d been trying to figure out how he was going to get across the burning kitchen floor to the other side, where there were three closet-sized doors. One of them must lead to the room where Daniel’s father had filled communion cups.
Maybe the chair could be his ride. He looked around and found a small rug that hadn’t yet caught fire, folded it over three times and placed it on the wheelchair seat. Then he stood, grabbed the hand rests on the front of the wheelchair and began pushing it backward as hard as he could toward the burning kitchen.
When the chair passed over the last of the tiles, he leapt into the seat on his knees and rode the momentum across the burning carpet and plank floor into the kitchen. He’d never have made it if his clothes hadn’t been soaking wet. The soggy denim of his jeans wouldn’t ignite, but the heat and flames from the burning floor blistered the skin on the front of his legs from his ankle to his knee.
The wheelchair rolled to a stop in front of the middle of the three small doorways, and he leapt into the room. If this wasn’t the right room, Jack would die. He’d never make it to either of the other rooms to look there. The door frame was on fire, and the flames had spread to a rug on the floor, so he tossed it back out into the kitchen. The moment he’d stood up into the thicker smoke in the hallway, he had begun to cough violently. Now, he was coughing so hard his watering eyes left him almost blind. He dropped to his knees and felt around on the plank flooring, looking for a crack, a handle, something to indicate there was a trapdoor somewhere beneath where the rug had been. He could feel nothing…the smoke was so thick.
There! There it was. Deeply inset in a space between wood planks was something cool, something metal. Jack fumbled with the piece of metal, drawing it up out of the crack to form a handle.
There was a crash and whooshing sound behind him. The kitchen ceiling was giving way. Another thirty seconds…
He pulled up as hard as he could on the handle and a whole section of planking around it rose away from the floor. He could see darkness beneath. Daniel hadn’t said how far the drop was from the floor to the dirt below, but Jack didn’t care. He dove into the hole blindly and hit hard, tucked his head and rolled with the momentum, doing a somersault before coming to a stop under the floor about ten feet from the trapdoor opening. The subflooring above his head had not ignited yet, but it was hot and smoking, eager to admit the fire to the crawl space. There was a rumble, flaming debris and sparks crashed down through the trapdoor opening.
Backing away from the opening, Jack looked around for the hole Daniel had described. He spotted it about thirty feet away. It was just what Daniel had said, nothing but a hole dug into the ground under the building. Scrabbling across the old, gray dirt of the crawl space, with the heat from the flooring above his head burning his back and neck, he got to the hole and tumbled into it. It was deep enough that when he stood up, the smoking subflooring was five or six feet above his head, so it was considerably cooler and the air was better.
When he wiped the dirt off his hands on his pants, he noted that the palm he had injured when he fell off his bike—how long ago?—was now burned as well. But that didn’t matter because the rest of what Daniel had described was right there in front of him. Outlined in light on a sloping wall were double doors that opened out, like a storm cellar.
Jack scrambled up the dirt incline, reached up and shoved on the doors. They were stuck. He shoved again. And again. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the terror he’d managed to keep at bay clamped iron manacles around his chest.
No. Oh, please, no.
The doors weren’t stuck. He could see through the crack between them the rusty lump of padlock on the outside that held the doors pinned together. He shoved a couple more times in frustration, then slumped down on the dirt slope littered with chunks of coal.
This was it. There was no way to get out of this basement, and the flooring above him would soon ignite, turning the crawl space into an oven were Jack would…cook.
******
2011
Andi swiped at the blood running down her upper lip and off her chin. When the door where she was listening to the men argue had suddenly flown open, it hit her in the face and smashed her nose, and now it was bleeding. Tattoo Man had grabbed her hair, held the big knife up against the skin of her neck and she'd cried out for Daddy. Then the man had told her not to make so much as another peep or he’d cut her throat. She’d been so terrified she’d thought she might wet herself.
She was still that scared now as he dragged her by the arm across the backyard and into the woods to a trail that ran up the hill. Maybe even more afraid because she couldn’t think of any reason why he’d drag her out of the house into the woods except…She stumbled, caught her shirt on a bramble and ripped off a small piece of fabric.
Somebody would see that!
Whoever came up the trail behind them would notice it. And she knew who that person would be. Uncle Jack. She knew he was looking for her and she sensed—or imagined she sensed—that he was nearby.
Andi wished she had a brooch, a bright-green leaf thing like Pippin had had! She’d have dropped it on the ground like he did so Strider, Legolas and Gimli would find it. But she didn’t have a brooch.
The next time she brushed past a limb, she reached out and b
roke off a tiny piece and left it dangling. She’d seen that once in a movie. That would have to do since she didn’t have a brooch.
She broke off another twig and then another.
The trail got more steep, then flattened out, and she realized she was on the top of a hill and you could see the Ohio River.
The trail ended here.
Why would Tattoo Man bring her up to the top of a hill where the trail ended?
She knew why.
In a burst of panic, she yanked her arm out of his grasp and turned to run back down the trail. He grabbed at her, got hold of her shirt and swung her back around, but she wiggled free. She was in front of him now. Nowhere to run. She looked around, frantic. He had her trapped. And he knew it.
She moved away from him, her back to the river. The wind ruffled her curls and tossed them into her eyes. Only a glance over her shoulder told her she was much higher than she’d imagined. Higher than the top of a Ferris wheel. There was nothing but a drop-off, a cliff behind her.
She began to whimper. Tattoo Man was advancing slowly on her, his arms out so she couldn’t run past him, his knife shiny in the bright sun. She took another step back. Now she was only one step away from the rim. She had nowhere else to go.
That’s when she heard the voice in her head. She’d heard it before. That day when Mommy got shot. Mommy’d told her to “Go hide, Andi. Hide where nobody can ever find you.” And she’d climbed up into the Easter pageant storage room, crawled back deep into it and down into a big basket that sat beside the stack of firewood from the woman-at-the-well scene.
But then the voice had told her to come out. The voice in her head, gentle and kind. It was the voice of the lady made out of light, Princess Buttercup, and the voice had told her to climb out of the basket, run to the vestibule of the church and ring the bell. Andi hadn’t wanted to, was scared to come out of hiding, but the voice said she must, and she couldn’t not do what the lady wanted even though it was scary.
What the voice told her to do now was way scarier than climbing out of a basket and ringing the church bell.
Play Catch Me, Andi, the voice said, like you do with Daddy.
Fall backward? Here?
When she played Catch Me with Daddy, he was right there behind her. There was nothing behind her now but the river. Andi couldn’t swim. In three miserable months of swimming lessons, she hadn’t even learned how to tread water.
The kidnapper was advancing on her with the knife. Another step or two, and he’d be close enough to grab her.
Play the game, the voice insisted.
No! Andi cried in her head. Who’ll catch me?
I will, the voice said.
Tattoo Man was within grabbing range now. He reached out his beefy hand—
Andi stretched out her arms, leaned her head back, closed her eyes and fell backward off the rocky cliff above the river.
******
Jeff Kendrick didn’t allow his focus to shift to Theresa’s still body in the dirt. He continued the spin. In a fluid arc, he brought down the foot he’d kicked backward with, transferred his weight to it, and hammered out with the other foot in a forward punch. He could see his target this time and slammed his seven-hundred-dollar Burberry leather wingtip brogue into Billy Boy’s surprised face. He actually heard the crunch sound when the man’s nose broke. Blood squirted from it and his split lip as his head snapped back. Catapulted backward, his body collided with the side wall of the house, and he crumpled to the ground unconscious, limp as a sack of doorknobs.
Jeff stood over the body, panting not from exertion but from the adrenaline rush that throbbed now in his temples. He reached down and snatched the rifle off the ground, a rage coursing through him like he’d never felt before. He snapped the handle and cocked it, aimed it at the bloody hillbilly’s head.
“Don’t shoot him!” Theresa said.
Jeff turned slowly and stared at her in disbelief.
“We can’t kill the mangy dog,” she said. “But it’d be fine with me if you wanted to kick him in the face another time or two.”
She was on all fours, in the final stage of trying to stand. Jeff ran to her and offered his hand. He couldn’t seem to get his mouth to form words, knew when he spoke he sounded mentally challenged.
“He shot you,” he said. “Why aren’t you—”
“Dead?”
“At least…injured.”
“You sound disappointed,” she said and grinned up at him. “I ain’t hurt ’cause my Bishop protected me.”
Bishop. Her dead husband.
“A ghost? Well, shoot, why not? I mean, we got demons and murderous hillbillies—what’s one spook more or less?”
He could hear in his voice the ragged edge of what had to be incipient hysteria, and he gritted his teeth to keep from bursting into a hail of giggles, or shrieks like—
He looked for the first time toward the rag doll woman he’d dumped in the dirt. She was sitting now, too, not making any effort to rise, though. But there seemed to be nothing wrong with her. She was there, present, not curled up in a fetal position howling at the moon. She was cradling her left hand, maybe injured it when he dropped her.
“Not no ghost,” Theresa answered reasonably. “Ain’t no such thing as ghosts.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“I told you when we started all this you wasn’t gonna b’lieve everything we said, but I wasn’t talking ’bout fairy tales. Spooks and such. My Bishop ain’t no spirit floating around in a white nightshirt. He’s in Heaven with Jesus. He 'saved’ me ’fore he left.”
She turned slightly. Jeff could see the motion pained her, reached around and knocked on her lower back with her fist. It made a clunking sound.
“Made me this here cookie-sheet corset to help stabilize my back so it wouldn’t pain me so bad.”
Jeff reached out and touched her back. It was like she was wearing a suit of armor.
“Course God was the one done it. He knowed I’s gonna need this thing, and that’s why he put it in Bishop’s head to build it.”
Jeff said nothing. His mind had returned like paper clips to a magnet to the little kidnapped girl, Emily’s daughter. He strode over to the hillbilly and kicked him.
“You! Wake up.”
The hillbilly groaned. His eyelids fluttered open and then closed. Jeff kicked him again.
“Wake up. You’re going to tell us where to find Andi Burke.”
“He doesn’t have her anymore,” said the woman called Becca. Her voice was ragged and husky, hoarse from screaming—and breathy, too, the way you talk when something hurts. But she seemed rational enough.
The hillbilly opened his eyes, but didn’t focus. He wasn’t fully conscious yet, but he was on the way.
“How do you know that?” Jeff asked her.
“I heard him. When I got here, he called whoever had her. Told them to let her go, to take her to a McDonald’s somewhere, give her five dollars for a Happy Meal, then drive away and leave her there.”
A sweet flood of relief flowed over Jeff so profound, he only then realized how frightened he’d been.
The hillbilly rolled over on his side and sat up slowly. Then he fingered his broken nose gingerly and grunted in pain. He looked up at Jeff with such naked hatred it was chilling. He was back now.
Jeff kept the.22 leveled at him, then nodded to Theresa.
“My cell phone’s in my jacket pocket,” he said. “Get it out and call the police.”
Before Theresa could reach for it, Becca cried, “No, don’t do that.” She had risen to her feet and crossed to stand in front of the hillbilly on the ground.
“Don’t call the police?” Jeff was incredulous. “We’re not playing that game anymore. They should have been called the instant that child went missing yesterday!”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with no kidnapping,” the man said, his words muffled like he had a bad cold.
“Then we’ll start with attempted murder and work o
ur way back to kidnapping.”
“No,” Becca said. “Please.”
“He tried to kill—”
“We’re even now,” she said, not to Jeff but to the man sitting in the dirt holding a bleeding nose. She took a step toward him, holding her left hand to her belly with her right, and glared down at him. “I was a teenager, just a kid, and the police told me if I’d testify, you’d be locked up long enough for me to vanish, and I had to get away from here, from…the evil. But the police lied. They said it’d only be for a couple of years—didn’t say anything about a mandatory twenty-year sentence or tacking on time when you refused to cooperate. Whether you believe it or not, I never intended that.”
She pressed her lips together in a tight line. “Well, this balances the books. I sent you away to prison once. And now I’m keeping you from going back to prison. We’re even.”
The man said nothing, only looked at her.
“Are we done—yes or no?” she said.
The man scowled at her, loathing so distorting his face he looked like a Halloween mask.
“We’re square,” he mumbled.
“So you’re not going to—?”
“I said we was square, didn’t I?” he snapped. “I’ll leave you be. Billy Ray don’t never go back on his word!”
CHAPTER 46
1985
What’s it feel like to die?
Jack addressed the question silently to the hot dusty darkness around him that was rapidly filling with smoke.
Does it hurt? Up to dying, getting burned will hurt, but the dying itself—is it painful?
Though he didn’t know exactly what he meant by the word, he wanted to die with as much dignity as possible. He didn’t want to fall apart and cry, scared and desperate, begging God to save him.
What was it Theresa always said?
“God’s gone do whatever God’s gone do, and if he’s set on it ain’t much sense trying to talk him out of it. What you need to talk to God about is how the two of you is getting on. ’Cause if your relationship with God’s what it ought to be, it won’t matter much one way or the other what he does.”