The Third Eye

by Lois Duncan

  Karen was growing increasingly irritated as the conversation continued.

  “Do they always do things like this? Just go running off, I mean?”

  “Let’s just say it isn’t the first time,” Mrs. Johnson said. “If you do go over there, you tell Peter—”

  There was a pause. Against the thin hornet’s wail of the baby, Karen could hear the muffled thud of a slamming door.

  “Is that you, Pete?” Mrs. Johnson’s voice rose sharply, channeled away from the telephone. There was a mumbled response; then Peter’s mother was back again. “It’s him, all right. At least he’s got enough sense to know when he’s hungry.”

  I wish Bobby did, Karen thought ruefully as she replaced the receiver on the hook.

  The Zenners’ home was on Elm Street. The corner of Elm and Hawthorne was half a block away. Karen wondered whether she should try to go there now. Stephanie was sleeping soundly, and the round-trip to the Springers’ should take no more than ten minutes. At the same time, she didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone in the house, even for that short a period. Freak accidents did occur; you read about them in the paper. Fires broke out, or babies twisted in their sleep and got caught between the slats of their cribs.

  If Bobby was old enough to wander, he was old enough to come home. It wasn’t as though there were anything to really worry about. Mrs. Johnson’s calm reaction had made it obvious that this disappearing act was nothing unusual for the neighborhood kids.

  Karen set the second milk glass back in the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table to eat her own lunch. After the noise and activity of the morning, the house seemed strangely silent. With nothing to distract her, it was difficult to keep her mind from returning to the argument with Tim. If they did break up—

  We won’t! We can’t!

  But if they did—

  Would I go back, Karen asked herself, to what I was before?

  When it came to that, what had she been before that had been so markedly different from what she was now? It was not as if there had been a physical transformation. The pale hair and brown eyes that people now seemed to find attractive were the same hair and eyes she’d had the semester before. The slender, small-boned body that Tim thought was “sexy” had developed a few years ago, just like the other girls’.

  So what had caused the strangeness? Even her own mother had felt it.

  “Karen is not quite like other children.” How many times had Mrs. Connors repeated that statement? To relatives, to teachers, to mothers of elementary school classmates who expressed concern because “that sweet little girl seems to be alone so much”?

  “Karen is different,” her mother would tell them, laughing a little as though to soften the starkness of the revelation. “She’s a very distinct individual, our daughter, Karen.”

  Why had she been different? She hadn’t tried to be. She had, in fact, gone out of her way to conform. She wore jeans when the other girls wore jeans; she wore skirts when they wore skirts. When straight hair was the “in” thing, she had grown hers long and let it swing loose and shiny over her shoulders. When curly hair was in, she had used a curling iron. She had performed well in school, but not so well that she stood out from the others. She was not an overachiever any more than she was a slacker. She was average. Just like everybody. Except…

  Except that she wasn’t.

  The difference could not be seen, but it had existed for as long as she could remember, separating her from her classmates like an invisible wall. It wasn’t that they didn’t like her; they were simply not quite comfortable around her, and when they formed their cliques, she did not have a place in them. When she was younger, this had hurt her. Eventually she had managed to convince herself that it didn’t matter. She had her reading, her babysitting, and her summer job at the day care center. She did not need friends. There was nothing they could provide for her that she could not equally well provide for herself.

  Or so she had rationalized. It had not been true. We’re not breaking up. It was just a little argument. I won’t think about it, Karen told herself firmly. There are other things to think about.

  For instance, Bobby. Something had to be done about locating Bobby. It was now two o’clock, a full hour past his usual lunchtime.

  Shoving back her chair, Karen got up from the table and went to look in on Stephanie. The baby was sleeping heavily. Her thumb had slipped from her mouth, and the small, soft hand was curled against her cheek like an unopened flower. Her chest rose and fell with her slow, steady breathing.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie,” Karen said softly. “I know it’s not fair to disturb you, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  Bending over the crib, she made an awkward attempt to gather the child up into her arms. Stephanie whimpered and bunched herself together, refusing to open her eyes.

  When Karen finally had her hoisted against her shoulder, she sagged there, limp as a sack of potatoes, making small, pathetic snuffles of protest.

  “I guess you’ll have to make the trip by stroller,” Karen said with a sigh.

  She had to return Stephanie to the crib while she went in search of the stroller and got it unfolded. Then she got the baby up again and put shoes on her feet and worked her arms into the sleeves of a sweater. By the time she had completed preparations, another twenty minutes had elapsed and it was practically two o’clock in the afternoon.

  There’s no excuse for this, Karen fumed silently as she hurried along, trying to keep from jolting the nodding baby. Bobby knows better than to run off this way.

  It was obvious immediately that the brick house on the corner was one in which neighborhood kids habitually congregated. An assortment of bats and balls and other toys littered the front lawn, and a bevy of bicycles crowded the driveway. A blue Windbreaker (Bobby’s?) was draped across a bush, and three skateboards were piled in a heap on the front doorstep.

  The moment she rang the bell, Karen could hear pounding feet stampeding from several directions, and when the door was thrown open she found herself confronted by two small blond girls and a red-haired boy whom she recognized from that morning.

  “I’m here to get Bobby,” she told them.

  The girls stared at her blankly.

  The boy said, “Bob’s not here.”

  “Where is he, then?” Karen asked impatiently. She could imagine Bobby crouched, giggling, just out of sight behind the door.

  The boy shrugged. “I guess he’s back at his house.”

  “If he were,” Karen said, “I wouldn’t have had to come over here to find him. Is your mother home?”

  “Yeah. You want me to get her?”

  At Karen’s curt nod, all three children disappeared from the doorway. The boy reappeared a few moments later, accompanied by a woman with the same rust-colored hair as his own.

  “Kev says you’re looking for the Zenner boy,” she said. “I haven’t seen him at all today.”

  “Are you sure?” Karen pressed her. “Mrs. Johnson seemed to think that all the boys were playing over here.”

  “Pete was, for a while, but I don’t think Bobby was.”

  Mrs. Springer turned to Kevin. “Was he over here, Kev? Don’t play games, now. I’m going to be real upset if you know where he is and you’re not telling.”

  Kevin shook his head. “We wanted him to come, but we couldn’t find him.”

  “Couldn’t find him!” exclaimed Karen. “What do you mean?”

  “We were playing hide-and-seek,” Kevin told her. “I found Pete right off, but Bobby hid real good.”

  “And you left? You just left, without finishing the game?”

  “I called ‘Olly olly oxen free!’ ” Kevin said defensively. “He could’ve come home free if he’d wanted to.”

  “But that was hours ago!” Karen protested. “If Bobby was hiding in his yard, he would have seen you leave. There wouldn’t have been any reason for him to keep hiding after that.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Mrs.
Springer said. “You know how boys are with sitters—they love to give them a hard time. When you get back to the house, you’ll probably find him waiting.”

  “No, I won’t,” Karen said with certainty. “Bobby isn’t at his house. He isn’t anywhere around there.”

  “Now, how can you know that?” Mrs. Springer asked reasonably.

  “I just do,” Karen told her.

  There was no explanation to offer. She did not try to find one. She had learned to accept without question knowledge that came to her in this abrupt and chilling manner, because experience had taught her that it was always right.

  CHAPTER 3

  “He’s seven years old, with brown hair and brown eyes, and he’s wearing jeans and a yellow T-shirt.”

  The sandy-haired police officer with the vivid blue eyes had introduced himself on his arrival as Officer Robert Wilson. He read back the description Karen had given him. He was young—way too young, in Karen’s opinion—to have been sent to handle something as important as a missing-child report.

  “Is there anything you want to add to that?” he asked her, his eyes on his notes. “What about his shoes—if he was wearing tennis shoes, were they leather or canvas? How about a sweater or jacket?”

  “I think he was wearing white tennis shoes,” Karen said. “The jacket was a Windbreaker—blue, maybe, or green. His friends might remember. Kevin Springer and Peter Johnson were with him this morning.”

  Officer Wilson jotted down the names beneath Bobby’s physical description. Watching his hands as he wrote, Karen couldn’t help noticing that his fingernails were bitten down to the quick. The discovery did little to convince her that he was an authority figure.

  “The Springers live just down the street on the corner,” she told him. “I don’t have an address for the Johnsons, but I can get you the phone number.”

  “I’ll call them from here, then.” He retracted the tip of his ballpoint pen with a quick snap. “I wouldn’t start worrying yet if I were you. Kids like to wander. We get a half-dozen calls like this one every week, and most of the time the kids turn up on their own.”

  “And the rest of the time?”

  “We find them someplace. Usually, it’s at a video game store. Or a Radio Shack. There’s something about those Radio Shacks that draws them like flies.”

  Karen tried not to roll her eyes. “He hasn’t gone to Radio Shack.”

  There was no way that she could imagine Bobby taking off on his own to go to a store. If he had been with other boys, it might have been plausible, but he would not have gone by himself. Besides, to her knowledge there was nothing like that within walking distance.

  “He didn’t just wander off,” Karen said. “He’s trapped somewhere.”

  “He’s trapped?”

  “He isn’t able to come home. He wants to, but he can’t.” She was making no sense, not even to herself. “I don’t know why I think that, but I do.”

  “That’s not very likely,” Officer Wilson said. “Despite what you’d think from watching those cop shows on TV, kidnappings don’t occur often. When a kid this age disappears, he’s usually run away to a friend’s house. Have you been able to get hold of the parents?”

  “No,” Karen said. “They’re at the races in Santa Fe. I tried Mrs. Zenner’s cell, but it went to voice mail. She keeps her phone in her purse, so she probably didn’t hear it.”

  “If Bobby hasn’t turned up by the time they get home, have them call the station,” Officer Wilson told her. “My guess, though, is that he’ll be back before they are.”

  He made a quick call to the Johnsons from the phone in the kitchen. Then he left, saying that he would stop at both the Johnsons’ house and the Springers’ on his way back to the police station.

  When the door closed behind him, Stephanie, who had been confined to her playpen during the interview, began to fuss for attention. Karen hoisted her up over the railing and took her out to the kitchen. She strapped her into her high chair and poured orange juice into a plastic cup that was decorated with a picture of Kermit the Frog.

  “Here, drink your froggy juice,” Karen said softly to the baby.

  The kitchen seemed unnaturally quiet. In the dreamlike silence, she could hear the tick of the clock on the far wall and the sound of Stephanie swallowing and the steady, rhythmic beating of her own heart. The late afternoon sunlight slanted in through the window over the sink and painted one side of the room with great splashes of gold. Dust motes swirled and drifted in rainbow clusters, reflecting the light like prisms. Beyond the glass the poplars shimmered and shivered with a silvery radiance.

  Karen leaned against the counter and closed her eyes. Bobby’s trapped in a box. Incredibly, she could actually see him there, curled quiet in darkness. He was frightened, terribly frightened; the intensity of his terror had left a lingering residue like the stale odor of cigarette smoke in an empty room. The smell of fear was mixed with other scents: sweat and grease and urine. Bobby’s eyes were closed, and his hair lay damp and matted upon his forehead. His knees were drawn tight against his chest. She had been right about the Windbreaker. It was blue.

  “Dear God,” Karen whispered, “please, let him be alive!” A boy in a box, not an electronics store! The police would not find him there; they would not be looking for boxes. “Bobby’s closed up in a box.” The statement sounded ridiculous. She could shriek it to the skies, and there would be no way in the world that any sane person would ever believe her.

  The frog cup clanked hard upon the metal tray of the high chair.

  “Cookie!” Stephanie announced loudly. “Cookie me!”

  Karen’s eyes flew open, and the vision snapped out of existence. She was back in the Zenners’ kitchen, and she had been dreaming. Dreaming or hallucinating. How long had she been standing there, propped against the counter like a zombie? Five minutes? Ten? The baby’s cup was empty. The light from the window had subtly shifted. The sun had slipped behind the poplars, and the branches filtered the softening rays of light. The floor of the kitchen was dappled with shadows.

  “Cookie!” Stephanie demanded impatiently.

  “Yes, sweetie, I’ll get you a cookie.”

  The cookies were still on the table where she had set them at lunchtime. Karen got one for Stephanie, loosened the safety strap, and lifted her down from the chair. The kitchen clock read five past five. The Zenners would be returning at any time now. What would she tell them? Stephanie’s here, but I’ve misplaced Bobby? With all the advice offered in magazines and online, she couldn’t remember ever seeing tips on how to tell parents that one of their children was missing.

  He’s in a box. The words came whispering back to her. If she closed her eyes again she knew that she would be sucked back into it, that waking dream of heavy, oily darkness.

  What sort of box and where could he have found it? Her mind leapt spasmodically from one supposition to another. An empty packing crate? An abandoned refrigerator?

  Those were junkyard items, not likely to be found in a residential neighborhood. According to Kevin, the game of hide-and-seek had been played in the Zenners’ own yard. Why, then, did she feel this overpowering certainty that Bobby was not in the vicinity?

  “Cookie. Me?” The chirp of a hopeful voice brought her out of her reverie. A small, sticky hand was tugging imploringly at her jeans.

  “You just had one,” Karen responded automatically. “You’ll spoil your supper.”

  “Me? Cookie, me?”

  What did it matter? There would be no family dinner that evening anyway. Karen placed the plate where Stephanie could reach it and seated herself in a chair across from her.

  She watched the child as she ate and tried not to let herself think about anything except the demise of the cookies and what a mess a toddler could make with them, while beyond the kitchen window the world mellowed into twilight and the sky changed from blue to lavender behind the darkening shapes of the trees.

  At five forty-seven the Zenners got b
ack from Santa Fe. By five fifty Mrs. Zenner was weeping hysterically and her husband was engaged in making the first of many frantic phone calls. The police were resummoned, and on this return trip the young blue-eyed officer appeared to be taking the situation seriously. Mrs. Johnson came over, bringing her son Peter and Kevin Springer. No new information surfaced.

  The boys’ stories were compatible. They had been playing, and Bobby had hidden. It was the last they had seen of him. When he had refused to respond to Kevin’s summons to come home free, they had gone off to play at the Springers’.

  In the midst of the interrogation, Karen’s cell rang. She carried it into the kitchen to take the call. The voice that greeted her was her mother’s, high-pitched, as usual, into a tone of accusation.

  “What’s going on over there? Aren’t the Zenners back by now? Why aren’t you home yet?”

  “Bobby’s missing,” Karen told her.

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  “He went out to play around noon and didn’t come back.”

  “It’s after seven!” Mrs. Connors exclaimed.

  “Don’t you think I know that? The police are here. Everybody’s worried sick.”

  “I should think they would be!”

  “I feel terrible,” Karen said. “I should have kept better watch over him.”

  “They can’t hold you responsible,” her mother said. “You’re a conscientious babysitter. If that boy went running off someplace—”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “Then what did happen? Children don’t just vanish. You’ve told me yourself that Bobby wears you out when you babysit.”

  He’s in a box. There was no way she could say it, not to the police, not to the Zenners, and not to her mother. She was beginning to wonder if she was going crazy. How could she be so certain of something that was impossible?

  “You’d better come home,” Mrs. Connors said. “Unless there’s something specific they need you for, you’re undoubtedly more in the way over there than anything else.”

  “I can’t just walk out!” Karen objected. “Mom, this is serious!”