Jack made a swing by the hospital with Andi to see Theresa before they left Cincinnati to go back to Bradford’s Ridge—to talk to three possessed children and to look for Daniel! Becca was in Theresa’s room and so was Jeff Kendrick. Becca looked pale and haunted, not all that different from the way she’d looked the day he, Theresa, and Andi had bailed her out of an Indiana jail.
But Jeff Kendrick looked way worse than she did! The self-possessed, immaculately dressed, coiffed and manicured junior partner in the law firm of Taylor, Murray and Kendrick was as unkempt as a wino under a bridge. Dark circles beneath his eyes, hair askew, tie undone, suit wrinkled. And more important—profound fearfulness pulsed off him like heat from the basement boiler.
Theresa picked up on it, too, shot a knowing look at Jack and cocked her head toward Jeff. Jack shrugged. But the moment Andi had been dispatched to the cafeteria to get jelly doughnuts, Jack asked him quietly, “Did you find that woman last night, the one from the airplane?”
“Yeah, I found her.” His voice had no expression.
“What happened to you, man?”
“Bugs,” Jeff said, and a shudder ran through him that Jack could see even sitting three feet away. “Cockroaches.”
Jack listened spellbound and horrified as Jeff related the story of what’d happened to him the night before.
“So I stayed at your house, Theresa, for what was left of the night,” Jeff said. “I’m not in legal trouble. I didn’t break the law. The police have eye-witness testimony that Corrine Talbot’s death wasn’t my faul—” He stopped. “But it was my fault, wasn’t it? It’s my fault she’s dead.”
“No, Jeff,” Theresa said. “That bird’s roosting in Chapman Whitworth’s henhouse!”
Somewhere between the hospital cafeteria and the Mercedes Jeff had retrieved from the parking garage of Sweet Meets Bar, Jeff Kendrick’s exhaustion/shock/terror morphed into anger. It grew on him slowly and he was so sleep-deprived that he didn’t even recognize its presence until a little red sports car cut him off in traffic and he started screaming at the driver. When the car stopped in front of him at a traffic light, he slammed his car into park, leapt out and advanced on the car ahead with such murderous rage boiling in his chest he could hardly contain himself.
He’d drag the driver out of the car, slam him up against the door and beat his face in, put his hands around his throat and—
A blonde teenage girl looked up at him in surprise when he reached the door. Then her surprise changed to fear and he realized what a sight he must be—rumpled, disheveled, unshaven.
He backed away, saying nothing, got back into his car, and when the traffic light changed, he drove away—slowly, because his hands were shaking so badly on the steering wheel he feared he might lose control of the car altogether.
And at that moment Jeff Kendrick snapped back into himself like he’d reached the end of a bungee cord. The Jeff Kendrick who knew how to get it done, who was strong, forceful, confident and, yes, cocky. That Jeff was back. And that Jeff was pissed.
He realized then that he’d been in some sort of shock ever since he came to in the stairwell of his condo complex with…go on, say it—with roaches crawling all over him. Roaches! He yelled the word as loud as he could, along with a colorful stream of obscenities. His hands calmed then and stopped shaking.
He’d been horrified, terrified, revolted and traumatized, but now all that was replaced by a single clarifying emotion, one that superseded them all, that burned them away like the sun drying up creek mist. Jeff Kendrick was furious! He’d never in his life been so angry.
Jeff believed it now, oh yes, indeed—every word of it! He was one hundred percent in. All the crazy talk about demons and possessions—it was just as Jack Carpenter had said: whether you liked it or not, it was true.
Chapman Whitworth and whatever monster from hell drove him had stolen from Jeff the only woman he’d ever loved. Had murdered Emily. The power of the thing that possessed the man had sent rats to attack a sweet old woman. Had unleashed cockroaches to frighten him and silence the only witness to the chicanery that’d made him a hero. And had kidnapped, maybe murdered Daniel Burke.
If Jeff could have seized Chapman Whitworth by the throat at that moment, he’d have squeezed the life out of the man and cheerfully suffered whatever the consequences might be. He sat very still for a moment, until the car behind beeped and he realized the traffic light had turned green.
The heat of his rage was slowly replaced by a cold ball of determination that sank down through his chest into his belly like cold water sinks because it’s heavier. He knew then what had to be done.
Major Charles Crocker put his index fingers to his temples, closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
“Don’t tell me,” he said to Sheriff Hezekiah Lincoln. “Let me impress you with my psychic powers.” He paused. “Yes, it’s coming to me now…when Daniel Burke was snatched from the park yesterday, nobody saw anything or heard anything—right?”
Crock sat in the sheriff’s cramped office with puddles forming all around him where his raincoat was shedding the water from the morning’s downpour. The sky had since turned sunny, but frequent rumbles of thunder in the distance made it clear the rain could start up again anytime it liked, thank you very much, so don’t make any plans.
Which was playing havoc with preparations for the Spook Festival.
Crock had spent the morning getting needlessly soaked, tramping around the muddy “crime scene,” looking for anything that would shed any light at all on the disappearance of Daniel Burke. All he’d managed to do was get Sonny and Cher wet.
“Never would have pegged you for a cynical man,” Sheriff Lincoln said. “You’ve spent too much time in the big city and it’s soured you on the ways of common folk.”
“If Harrelton, Ohio, is the big city, I’m a three-eyed crow.”
Crock reached up and pulled Cher out of his right ear, opened the battery compartment of the hearing aid and blew into it, trying to dislodge any droplets of water that might have seeped in. Then he gently thumped it against his palm. Sonny seemed to be functioning fine. It was always Cher that gave him trouble—just like a woman!—and he didn’t want to spend the rest of the time he was in Bradford’s Ridge deaf in one ear. Well, not deaf. His hearing loss was strange. Some speech sounds were clear. Other frequencies were missing altogether. Without both hearing aids working, words lacked key sounds, granting conversations a stuttering quality that was maddening. He fit the small earpiece back into his ear canal and the hearing aid itself, connected to it by a translucent wire, behind his ear. Then he punched the small button on the bottom and was rewarded with the five-note chime indicating the hearing aid was working properly.
“Actually, you’re mostly right, though. Nobody saw or heard anything. All we know is that Ariel Murphy was seen near the park and nobody’s seen her since.”
“And that’s significant because…?”
“Because she’s an eight-year-old child that nobody reported missing! And because Ariel is one of the three children who’re…the children you came down here to see. I sent deputies around to talk to the parents of all three of them this morning and managed to get out of Ariel’s mother—who came to the door already falling-down drunk—that she didn’t know where the child was. Rita’d just got her five-year sobriety chip in AA, but I bet the woman hasn’t drawn a sober breath since all the strange things started happening. Got her husband’s number and called him. He drives a whiskey barrel truck, just dropped off a load at a winery in California. He’s worried sick about both of them, said he’d deadhead home as fast as he could. But even straight through, it’s going to take him a couple of days.”
“You saying this kid might have had something to do with—?”
“I’m saying this kid—who looks like a life-sized Raggedy Ann doll—is the child who ripped up my daughter’s entire rose garden by the roots. If she really is…”
The sheriff was having as much trouble saying “possessed” as Crock was. That was comforting somehow, in a way Crock didn’t bother to pick at.
“If she is, she’d have been physically capable of taking on Daniel, three NFL linebackers and Batman,” Crock said.
The sheriff was clearly struggling with all this. Who wouldn’t be?
“How about the other two?” Crock asked. “What are their names?”
“Cassidy Davenport and Russell Willis.”
“Their folks know where they are?”
“I can testify to where one of them is—in my administrator’s office. I had a deputy bring in Rusty Willis so we could have a little chat. Cassidy Davenport’s family went to church this morning and I assume she went with them.” The sheriff paused. “That wouldn’t seem likely though, would it? I mean, if the child’s…?”
“No idea. I’ve already told you seventy-five percent more than I actually know about”—he forced the word out with only a slight hesitation and was right proud of himself—“demons.”
Crock had intended to wait until Jack got back to Bradford’s Ridge before attempting to interrogate any of the possessed children—so the two of them could haul out their well-oiled good cop/bad cop routine. But Jack had stopped at the hospital to see Theresa this morning and he wasn’t back yet. Crock would have to start without him.
The boy was small—Crock would have guessed he was about six instead of eight except he wasn’t missing any front teeth. He had curly brown hair, a button nose and was sitting in a chair so big for him his feet didn’t even touch the floor. He swung them absentmindedly back and forth as he flipped through a Spiderman comic book. His mother sat in the chair next to him, clearly far more concerned about the goings-on than he was.
As soon as the sheriff stepped into the room, the mother was on him.
“What do you want from my Rusty? You’ve already asked him about those spiders and that burned-up cat and he couldn’t tell you anything about any of it. He’s a good boy! You have no right to keep hauling him in here every time there’s some petty crime or vandalism and you don’t have anybody else to pin it on.”
She went on in that vein and Crock watched her closely, listened to what she said and balanced that against the silent monologue of her body language. He quickly picked up on two things. For one, she didn’t believe a word she was saying. She absolutely did not think little Rusty was a good boy. In a quarter of a century as a police officer, he’d listened to enough other parents haul out that line to recognize sincerity when he heard it. No, she wasn’t defending the kid because she thought he was innocent. She was defending him because she was scared to death of him.
The other thing Crock noticed was that the police station, the presence of all manner of firepower and the implied “you’re in a heap of trouble, son” atmosphere had not cowed the boy in the slightest.
When the woman finally paused for breath, Sheriff Lincoln spoke in the slow, measured tone you used with a hysteric, which this woman would likely become with the slightest provocation.
“Now, Mary Ellen, we’re not saying little Rusty’s committed any crime. We only need to talk to him, ask him a few questions. Shoot, he may know something that’d help us out without even realizing it’s important.”
Before the woman could launch back into her diatribe, the sheriff gestured toward Crock. “This is Major Charles Crocker from the Harrelton, Ohio, Police Department.”
The boy was instantly alert. He didn’t look up from the comic book he was feigning reading, but he tensed, stopped swinging his legs and grew very still.
“Major Crocker wants to ask Rusty some questions that might shed some light on a case he’s working on.”
“How could Rusty know anything about something that happened in Cinci—”
“There’s a connection to Caverna County or we wouldn’t be troubling you and the boy.” The sheriff’s tone was kind and conciliatory but firm. Just the right mix. The man was a good cop, Crock decided, and with a little prep time could have played Jack’s part in Crock’s traveling good cop/bad cop show. It was too late for that now, though.
“But…”
“This will only take a few minutes and then you and Rusty can be on your way. Why don’t you come with me and let’s get some hot chocolate. The Lions Club booth is open, I think, and they’re serving funnel cakes, too.”
“I’m not leaving Rusty with—”
“Go on, Mom, do what he says.” The boy’s words ran a chill up Crock’s spine. His was not the tone of a little boy talking to his mother. And the voice was somehow deeper than a child’s voice and was…Crock couldn’t put his finger on—it was cold, that was it. The voice was as devoid of personality as an automated attendant.
Rusty then turned his gaze on Crock. “I’m glad to answer any questions the major here has for me.” The tone was insolent and mocking, and a small smirk crawled out onto the boy’s face.
Main Street was blocked off for the Spook Festival, so Uncle Jack couldn’t park in front of the courthouse. He parked a couple of blocks away and they walked to the center of town. Then Uncle Jack headed off to talk to the sheriff and Major Crocker, and Andi stayed behind to wander around the festival setup. She knew he’d been concerned she might be upset by all the Halloween decorations. Most of the workers and volunteers were dressed in some kind of costume. Witches and vampires and lots of zombies because it didn’t take much effort—some ratty-looking torn clothes and fake blood—to look like a zombie. Signs said the festival would open at noon and the morning’s storm had delayed preparations, so all the volunteers rushed around in a panic and didn’t even notice Andi. She’d stand out later as the lone costume-less kid after families rushed home from church and returned with Ninja Turtles, Luke Skywalkers and Little Mermaids in tow.
As she passed by, workers splashed water on her shoes when they dumped a puddle off the top of a blow-up spider that was bigger than a car. Farther down the street was a gigantic blow-up Frankenstein and a trio of ghosts attached by ropes to light posts. The biggest blow-up figure was a red demon fifty feet tall that towered higher than the buildings. It had horns, a forked tail and wide, crazy eyes.
She stood before the pudgy demon and shook her head. It didn’t upset her. It made her sad. This was what people thought he was like—and they laughed and joked about him. If only they could see…
Mostly, she wasn’t looking at the decorations at all. She was searching the faces, looking for Daddy. Maybe he wasn’t really lost at all, like Uncle Jack had said he was. Maybe it wasn’t anything bad like that. Maybe he’d just gone somewhere without telling Major Crocker and now he was back.
There were pillars on either side of the huge oak door at the top of the courthouse steps, each set on a marble base about four feet square. Andi climbed up onto the base beside one of the pillars so she could see the whole crowd. She scanned up and down, looking for hair the same color as hers and a red jacket. He might have been wearing his black and orange Cincinnati Bengals jacket, though, so she looked for that, too. But she saw neither.
Andi slumped back against the pillar. Trying not to cry, she touched the silver cross necklace that had been her mother’s. Uncle Jack had fastened it around her neck at Mommy’s funeral and Andi had silently sworn she’d never take it off, that she would wear it every day for the rest of her life. Sometimes touching it made her feel closer to Mommy, but not this time.
Where is Daddy?
How could he just be…gone like that? Uncle Jack hadn’t told her all of it. Grownups never told you all of it. They tried to protect you from the truth, which was stupid because sometimes you knew the truth better than they did. This was one of those times. Whether Uncle Jack said it outright or not, she knew what had happened to Daddy. He’d been kidnapped, like when she’d been on her way to her piano lesson and Dreadlock Man and Speedy Gonzales had snatched her off the sidewalk. But Daddy was in more danger than she’d been. Daddy’d been kidnapped because of that…thing…that efreet the grownups wouldn’t talk about in front of her. Though she wasn’t sure what it was, she was sure that an efreet was way worse than Tattoo Man with a knife.
Somehow the efreet thing and Daddy and her vision were all tangled up together, but she didn’t know how. She’d seen it again this morning on the way to Bradford’s Ridge from Cincinnati. She’d been riding shotgun and Uncle Jack had reached over and taken her hand and squeezed it, then held on. Sitting there holding Uncle Jack’s hand, she’d felt better, like maybe Daddy would be okay because Uncle Jack would find him just like he’d found her.
Then the red-and-gold-leafed trees outside the window had dissolved and she saw the Big Bad Thing.
The vision was different every time she saw it, not because it changed but because she was seeing it from different angles. Like looking at a tree from the ground below, then from the sky above and then out through its limbs. This time there was the smell of fried chicken and something cinnamon—apple pie, maybe. Then a big booming sound rumbled as loud as being right up next to thunder. People were screaming and wailing like before, and smoke and things flew past her so quickly she didn’t have time to get a good look at any of them. Glass was breaking, a lot of glass, and shards of it flew through the air like jagged icicles, stabbing and cutting people. Dead bodies with bloody bandages, pieces of people, a leg from the knee down, ripped off, and the shoe on the foot had a funny-looking curled-up toe.
Something big and round appeared. She’d seen it in the vision before, and when she’d described it to Daddy, she’d said it looked like a big dinner plate. But this time it looked more like a Frisbee. It was spinning through the air as if someone had tossed it at her. It flashed across her vision in an instant, but she concentrated hard to see what was written on it. She’d seen that part before, too, numbers and letters. The first one was a zero, but the right side was smashed flat. Then OSW7. Then there were flames everywhere, followed by darkness.
As quickly as the vision had appeared, it disappeared, leaving Andi staring at nothing for a moment before the real world returned. She must have looked funny because Uncle Jack asked what was wrong and she described how the Big Bad Thing had looked this time.
As she spoke, they’d rounded the last bend before the Welcome to Caverna County sign and she could see the gathering darkness. It was blacker now, much darker than it’d been before. Almost so dark it blotted out the sunlight altogether, sucking all the color from the world and casting it in shades of gray with deep black shadows—odd shadows. It took a moment to figure out what was strange about the shadows. She remembered playing in the backyard on summer evenings in the glow of big security lights on posts around the deck. She’d play with the long black shadow she cast with the lights behind her and she’d chase it to the back fence, trying to catch it. These shadows didn’t extend out from trees and signs and fences like there was a light behind them. These shadows settled in black pools around everything, puddles of darkness on all sides. Andi thought maybe if she walked into one, it would be too dark there to see anything at all.