Chapter Three
“It’s the reporter,” the man said. “It’s time, honey.”
Their eyes met. “How much time do we have?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Enough, I hope.”
She returned to the stove. It felt so strange, cooking again.
But Robin had to eat.
“Is anybody going to answer the door?” a teenage girl asked, walking into the kitchen.
“Yes,” her father said, but there was reluctance in his voice. He hoped that he could pull this off. He had to make this reporter believe.
Exasperated, the girl plopped down in a chair. “Mother, why won’t anybody in this family ever talk about Uncle Sand? It’s stupid!” She brushed back a lock of raven hair from her forehead, her dark eyes moving from man to woman as the knocking on the door came again.
She has changed, the mother thought, looking at her daughter through loving eyes. All grown up now. And looks so very much like her namesake.
“Sand didn’t do anything wrong,” the man defended the mysterious Sand. “Those punks had it coming. All of them.” He balled big hands into big fists.
His wife noticed and thought: After all these years, and the emotion is still within him.
And the sorrow still within me, she finished it.
“Now somebody wants to write a book about Sand, and make a movie about his life.” He snorted and then smiled, the smile was a bit savage, a lot more knowing, and a bit scornful.
“We started it, Richard,” his wife said. “So now let’s get it done.”
A woman’s voice spoke from the open window by the breakfast nook. “I really hate to be a pest.”
“Then why are you a reporter?” the man asked, but it was said with a smile.
The young woman standing on a box outside the window laughed. A nice laugh. Not like some of those reporters who used to come around.
“Come on in,” Richard said. “Have a cup of coffee. I don’t believe I’ve ever talked with a big city reporter.” He fibbed about that, having talked with a lot of reporters where he’d been first sent some years back. He hoped the fib would go unnoticed by those who kept such records.
His words sounded rather hollow to the young woman. A deep, rather odd sound to them. She shrugged that away, stepped off the box, and walked around to the back door, stepping into the kitchen.
The teenager wriggled with excitement. A book and a movie about Uncle Sand. Wow! The local legend. A hero to some, an outlaw to others. But a legend that few would ever talk about.
And the girl could never understand that.
“I’m Sunny Lockwood,” the young woman introduced herself.
“Richard and Linda Jennings. Our daughter, Robin.” He looked at Robin, the love shining in his eyes. Richard had been dreading making contact, but knew it had to be. The Fury was loose. And if it was to be stopped, it had to be in this time frame.
Richard did not really fear the Fury. The thing could not destroy him, or any with him. But if Sand didn’t like this young woman; didn’t believe she would tell the truth – it would all be for naught. For if the growing Fury was to be stopped, the townspeople had to have Sand’s help. For no one could stop it without help from the other side of life.
But the truth – the truth from Sand’s mind, and only he knew the truth – had to be told.
That the truth would set you free was a lot more than mere words to Richard and Linda and several others. When one took into consideration where they’d been existing for some time.
Around them, for some distance around them, time ceased its passage, allowing just a tiny part of the universe to settle stationary.
Sunny felt a falling sensation. She grabbed at the corner of the table to steady herself. She blinked. The sensation passed.
Jesus! she thought. Earthquake?
Then she could not remember anything about the odd sensation.
Richard closed his eyes for a moment. Time and strength and truth, he prayed. Please? Amen.
He opened his eyes to find Sunny looking at him. “Some breakfast?” he asked her. “Robin must eat to sustain herself.” Watch yourself, Ace, he cautioned his mind. Remember where you are ... and what you are.
Talks funny, Sunny thought. “Some coffee would be very nice, thank you.”
“I’ll get it,” Robin volunteered.
“No!” the father’s words were sharp. He smiled at his daughter and said, “You . . . can’t, baby. This time will be on us. You just relax.”
“You mean I don’t have to do dishes?”
“That’s right, baby.”
“You got a deal, Pop.”
Sunny looked down. A steaming cup of coffee was on the table in front of her. Who put it there? She could swear that no one in the room had moved.
She sighed. “Lots of excitement in town yesterday and last night. But I guess you all heard about it.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Richard said. He looked at Robin.
The girl closed her eyes, then slowly opened them.
“Did you hear about it, Robin?” Sunny asked.
“Hear about what?”
“Those gruesome murders.”
“What murders?”
Sunny began to wonder if she’d wandered in through the back door of a nut house.
Then she couldn’t remember what she’d been talking about.
Something cold touched the young woman; something the hot coffee could not warm. She shuddered.
“We’re too close,” Linda said.
“Can’t be helped,” her husband told her. “We’re running out of time.”
There was a roaring in Sunny’s ears. She could see the lips of Richard and Linda moving, but she could not hear the words.
Then the roaring abated, and she could not remember ever experiencing it.
“I got into town yesterday, Mr. Jennings,” Sunny said, “and went to the local newspaper to go through their morgue. But all the stories concerning Sand were gone. I found that really odd.” She stopped when she noticed the word morgue had brought Richard’s head up, his eyes changing to a very strange color . . . and so cold-looking. She was suddenly uncomfortable under his cold gaze. “I’m sorry. Morgue is newspaper jargon for . . .”
“I know,” the man said, a gentleness to his voice. “It’s just that we,” he indicated his wife, “have a very close friend named Morg. M-O-R-G. He was killed the same night Sand got his ticket punched.”
Sunny let that register. She blinked. “You have a friend named Morg who is dead?
Richard smiled. “Why don’t we all go into the den? We’ll be much more comfortable there. We must talk about Sand. We’re wasting time.”
“I’ll bring the coffee pot,” Robin said.
“No!” her father told her. “You . . . can’t. Remember our deal, honey.”
Sunny sighed, thinking: Weird family.
 
 
“Nice-looking town,” Major Claude Jackson said. “Friendly-looking place.”
“I wonder if they’ll remain friendly, when they learn why we’re here?” Capt. John Hishon asked.
Three officers rode in the lead van. Three sergeants in the van behind them.
“I don’t see why they shouldn’t.” Lt. Kathy Smith said. “It’s going to mean big bucks in their pockets when this is set up.”
Major Jackson shrugged and put the van in gear, pulling away from the shoulder of the road and onto the main highway. “You never know how civilians are going to react to the military. Especially when they learn the base – however small – will be used for the rough training of special warfare troops. We’ll just have to play it by ear.”
Since government vehicles don’t normally come equipped with personal radios, Sgt. Keith Preston had brought his own, complete with ear plug.
Sgt. Janet Dixon noticed Keith’s frown. “What’s the matter, Keith?”
The nineteen-year-old buck sergeant looked at her and smiled. “I just lost all my stations except for one. And all it plays is crap out of the fifties.”
“Watch it, buddy,” Sgt. Maj. Gary Christensen said jokingly. “You’re talking about my music now.”
“You can sure have it, Sergeant Major.”
Keith listened for a moment, his face a study as he changed expression several times.
“What’s the matter now?” Janet asked.
“Jesus, Janet. This guy’s voice is spooky. And the crap he’s laying down is wild. Here,” he jerked the jack out of the radio, allowing the sound to come through the speaker. “Listen.”
Raw, undiluted sewer filth came spewing out of the speaker, embarrassing the men and shocking Janet.
“That’s a radio station?” she asked, disbelief in the question.
YEAH, YOU DUMB ARMY WHORE. the voice sprang from the radio. WHAT DO YOU DO, SCREW THE TROOPS?
Janet’s mouth dropped open.
YOU WANT A DICK SHOVED IN THERE?
Janet closed her mouth.
“Turn that crap off, Keith,” Gary ordered. “And keep it off.”
“Yes, Sergeant Major.” He turned the radio off.
“Was that a tape, Keith?” Janet asked, finding her voice.
“No. Look.” He opened the cassette compartment. It was empty.
The lead van pulled over, and Gary pulled in behind it. Major Jackson ran back to the van. “Have you people been listening to a radio?”
“Right,” Gary said. “I never heard anything like that before.”
“Same with us. That can’t be a licensed station. Has to be someone with a sick sense of humor.”
Janet looked around at the outskirts of the town. “I don’t know whether I like this place or not.”
 
 
Norris and Bergman, the state police team sent in to assist, sat in Gordie’s office and listened. They had viewed the remains of the two victims, both agreeing it was shaping up to be a very strange case.
Now, all of a sudden, it was going from strange to really wild.
Norris clicked off his tape recorder and looked at Sheriff Rivera and Watts. “Now, guys . . . come on! Floating eyeballs? Detached hands? Bloody lips? Monsters in the night? You people haven’t gotten into your evidence room and been smoking left-handed cigarettes, have you?”
Gordie tossed his crotch-bloody trousers on the desk. Judy’s bloody shirt followed that.
“I’ve had Dr. Anderson up since before dawn, comparing blood from the victims against blood scrapings from that clothing. It’s a match. One victim now has no hands, the other no eyes or lips. The assistant coroner checked the coolers this morning.” Gordie stared at the state men. “Last night, I had made up my mind that it was nothing supernatural. Had to be the work of a madman. Or madwoman. Person. Whatever. But sounds do not emanate from a dead radio. And I just had my radio checked out.”
“Could have been a skip. Good time of year for it,” Bergman offered.
“No,” Watts said. Up to this point, except for corroborating Gordie’s story, he had remained silent. This was Gordie’s show. Watts was just a civilian. Technically.
“You have a theory, Colonel?” Norris asked. It was a bit difficult to address Watts by any other title, even if he was retired.
Watts spoke for five minutes without pausing except for breath. He took it from the beginning. Sand. The killing of Sand. The thunder. The whole bag, from thirty years back to the present.
Norris and Bergman stared as if Watts had taken leave of his senses. The phone rang. Gordie picked it up; his unlisted private number. He listened, smiled grimly, then handed the phone to Bergman. “It’s for you.”
Bergman stuck the phone to his ear. “Bergman.”
HEY, JEW-BOY! I’M GONNA NAIL YOU UP BY YOUR PECKER AND STICK YOUR YARMULKE UP YOUR TUSHIE!
Bergman was speechless. He opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out.
DO BOP DE DO BOP DE DO BOP, DE DO.
The singing faded.
Bergman cleared his throat. “How . . . did he know my name? How did he know I was even in town? And Bergman is not necessarily a Jewish name. How?”
“It seems to know everything,” Watts said. “And it seems to be everywhere. But something that we’ve been missing, or avoiding, came to me last evening.”
All looked at him.
“What does it want?”
 
 
Angel Ingram and her brother, Howie, sat on the curb, waiting for the school bus. The kids, ages ten and eleven, looked up and down the street, wondering why the other kids had not shown up. It was almost time for the bus to arrive.
But unless the other kids hurried up, it looked as though they were going to be the only ones getting on.
“This is weird,” Angel said. “I guess I’m going to have to apologize to you. So I’m sorry. Big deal. You were right.”
“You feel it now, Angel?”
She sighed as only a ten-year-old can. “No, Howie, I don’t. But if you say you do, I believe you.”
“Thank you. It’s rather hard to explain. It’s just a ... feeling, you know?”
“What sort of feeling, Howie?”
“Just odd, that’s all. A feeling of impending doom, perhaps.”
“Howie, would you like to say that in English, please?”
“Something bad is going to happen.”
“I still don’t know what you mean.”
“I have elucidated to the best of my ability, Angel.”
She laughed at him. Even though she was a year younger, Angel was always looking after her brother – the smart one. The brilliant one. The eleven-year-old who was taking high school and college courses. But Howie sometimes didn’t keep up with things like other eleven-year-old kids. Howie didn’t give a flip about sports – which was all right with Angel, she thought them sort of dumb herself – but Howie didn’t even like to be around kids his own age. He was just too damn smart; even though he tried to talk like your average eleven-year-old, he just couldn’t pull it off most of the time. The funny thing was, with Angel, he could.
When he wanted to.
But the other kids didn’t like him. They shunned Howie and made fun of him. And Angel, who was no dummy herself, knew a lot of that ribbing had to have originated in the kids’ homes, from stupid parents with misguided values.
“Here comes the bus.”
“Nobody on it.”
Angel looked around. Front doors were opening, and the kids were pouring out of the homes in the subdivision. She was curious about that, for usually the kids all gathered at the curb, talking and bitching about school.
’Course, Howie never bitched about school. Except when he caught a teacher in a mistake. Which didn’t endear him to the few sloppy teachers. Howie liked school.
“Something is wrong with them,” Howie said, observing the mass of kids.
Angel looked. “They seem fine to me.”
“Look again. They’re all moving as though they’ve been automatized.”
“Say what?” the pretty and petite honey-blonde asked her tow-headed big brother with two left feet.
“Zombies, Angel.” He grinned, the kid in him surfacing briefly. “Doom doom de doom doom de doom doom doom,” he hummed a very bad version of the funeral march.
“You want to knock that off, Howie?” Angel looked. But her brother was right. The kids were moving funny. She stood up. “Come on. We’ll miss the bus.”
“We should be so lucky.”
 
 
“Your home is lovely, Mrs. Jennings,” Sunny said, as she sat down in the den. The home was lovely, but there was a very faint odor of charred wood in the house, and she found that odd. And a very slight musty smell. There was another sort of floral smell that she couldn’t quite pin down. Then it came to her: that sweet fragrance was the smell of flowers. The smell of a funeral home, with the casket open and flowers all around it.
This just gets weirder and weirder, she thought.
“Please call me Linda,” Mrs. Jennings said with smile.
Sunny nodded and placed a cassette recorder on a coffee table. She glanced at Richard. “Do you mind if I record all this? It’s so much easier than taking notes.”
“No. I don’t mind at all. But there are others who might. If nothing comes out, I’ll apologize in advance for that.”
Sunny stared at him briefly. What others might object? She wondered if Richard might have a drinking problem? Was he hitting the sauce this early in the morning?
Richard said, “Sand wants the truth told, Sunny. The truth.”
“Sand wants? . . .” She closed her mouth. Humor him, she thought. Just . . . humor him. “Sand has been dead for thirty years, Mr. Jennings. But I assure you, the truth will be told.”
“Or nothing at all will be told, Sunny. Because no one will be here to tell it.” He knew it was wrong of him to say that; and knew those who kept the records would know it was no slip on his part. But right or wrong, Richard—as he was aware of his wife’s sharp glance at him – had concluded that Sunny Lockwood had to know at least a part of what faced her.
Sunny leaned back. “Mr. Jennings, what in the hell are you talking about?”
Richard and his wife both laughed. Robin seemed to be dozing. Richard said, “I mean, Sunny, that things are not quite as they seem here. If you stay, you could be in very serious danger. Now listen to me, young woman: I’m taking a chance just by telling you this much. Look at Robin, Sunny.”
Sunny looked. The girl’s eyes were closed. My God, was she asleep?
“No,” Linda broke into her thoughts. “She is not asleep as you know it. Our daughter is just . . . well, away for a time.”
Her husband said, “She has to be protected for she is our flesh and blood, and much more vulnerable than you. And, I’ll admit, much more valuable.”
Sunny tried a laugh. It came out more like a very nervous giggle. “You’re . . . deliberately trying to scare me. I was warned that you hated reporters.”
“It would be very difficult for me to hate, Sunny. I am limited to strong dislike. But even . . . before, I didn’t hate reporters. I just didn’t like the way many of your colleagues twisted words to suit their own gains. Sunny, be very sure you want to do this. There is still time for you to leave. But not very much time.”
Sunny rose from her seat to pace the den. That damn sweet smell was annoying. She glanced at Robin. The teenager was still out of it. If she wasn’t asleep, then what the hell was she? Her eyes were sure closed.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Sunny looked out the window – and for a moment, she could see nothing – and became frightened. She did not see Richard lift a hand. All of a sudden, the landscape came into her view. The day was clear and cool and lovely.
She didn’t understand the thunder.
Yet.
She sat back down. “Why am I in danger, Mr. Jennings?”
She felt his eyes, those strange eyes, boring into her, almost as if he was seeing into her thoughts. She mentally shrugged that off as impossible. “I can protect you, Sunny, only as long as you remain here, with us, in this house. That’s why Robin is here, and not in school. Even we are permitted some . . . well, call it latitude. But once you leave our presence, if you do decide to leave, to return to your motel, I cannot help you.”
She shook her head. “I’ve covered stories in Lebanon, Central America, Northern Ireland, and in Africa. Are you comparing Willowdale, Colorado with those places?”
“Get out, Miss Lockwood,” Richard ordered. “Take your tape recorder and leave here. You have no idea what you’re facing.”
“No. You invited me here, remember?”
Both Richard and Linda Jennings laughed softly at that, Richard saying, “Did we, Sunny? You’re sure of that? Oh, I have no doubt that you were invited, but it wasn’t us who did the inviting.”
She waved that away. She had the letter from them. At least a letter that was signed by Richard Jennings. Why was the man smiling so? It was infuriating. “Tell me what’s going on, Mr. Jennings.”
“I’ve told you as much as I can, Sunny. The rest is up to you.”
“To stay or to leave?”
“Yes.”
“I’m staying.”
Richard sighed. “Very well. May God have mercy on your soul.”
The thunder rolled in heavy cadence.