Cannibal jack, p.3
Cannibal Jack, page 3
Nearly a week passed before Jack began to think of leaving the pile. In that time, the ever-growing stack had been his bedroom and bathroom, his heaven and hell. Since first burrowing into the leaves, he had managed to dig himself a small niche in the ground. His body now lay fully beneath the surface, covered only by leaves and enclosed on all sides as if in a cocoon. He felt the ground vibrate whenever someone approached and soon he learned to gauge their size and age from those vibrations.
So it was that he could easily tell when Danielle approached. His body shook with her crisp steps on the concrete sidewalk; he heard the jangle of the beads she always wore in her hair, detected the scent of her perfume and beyond it the blood. It was her time. The smell of that filled his senses and set his stomach on fire. And as she passed, Jack lashed out with one hand and snagged an ankle, toppling her to the ground and dragging her toward the leaves.
She let out a small cry, more demonstration of surprise than fear, and lost her breath as she hit the ground. Long painted fingernails dug into the dirt as she struggled to crawl away, kicked at whatever or whoever was holding her ankle. But that grip tightened and she was hauled backward and down, yanked into those leaves as her nails left ruts in the ground. Her wide, frantic eyes locked on the tree in the hope of grasping a root. She suddenly began to pant from the exertion.
For a moment, she saw Steven’s face in the soft curl of grain and knot as she stared at that tree. His face filled her gaze, just as it had on their last meeting. She fought harder, her face red and hot as she gained a few inches, then was yanked backward brutally, the bottom half of her disappearing into the leaves. Her father’s words of warning came back to haunt her, stinging her eyes with tears and ripping at her heart. If only she’d listened to him, she might see Steven’s face once more.
A quick bite at her ankle, then her thigh, and she opened her mouth to scream. Jack cupped one hand over her mouth to quiet her, then locked one hand onto her shoulder to reel her in. Danielle felt blood trickle from those first two bites, saw another quick flash of Steven’s smiling face. In the end, even the face that was to be her future wasn’t enough to fuel her struggle. In the end, Jack’s teeth closed on her neck and Danielle slipped into darkness.
He fed for days on the girl as he lay in the leaves. All around town they searched for her. Her books were found by Jack’s pile of leaves but of course they never found Danielle or Jack. He had been careful not to leave a single drop of blood to taint the clean air. If they caught him, if they found out, they would put him in that asylum just like they had the mother, only he would never be allowed to leave.
Soon, the tree would drop its last leaves and Jack’s pile would begin to blow away. He knew that he would have to burrow deeper into the ground then, but for now he was safe. Still, he was trapped in the confines of those leaves for the moment. Just as the mother had stopped being enough, so the pile of leaves had become too restricting. He needed escape, a way to move about unnoticed. Then he could choose where and how and on whom he feasted.
It was clear to him now, what he must do. No more waiting for the passage of the moon, for the start of a new cycle. He would move from one to the other as they came into their time. There would be no more limiting himself to the blood that was freely and safely given. He could take what he needed without fear of being caught. And if he went east, kept in a straight line, he would eventually end up at the cemetery. Nobody minded bones at a cemetery. In the cemetery, he could hide their remains. In the cemetery he could rest.
In the cemetery, he could be with the mother again.
Chapter Three
From his position at the desk, the sheriff watched the boys playing in the park across the street. Summer sweat beaded their foreheads and dripped from their noses as dirty hands gripped dirtier still baseballs. The dull roar of voices suddenly split with the sharp crack of leather meeting wood, the baseball soaring through the air in a perfect arc. All eyes turned skyward, watching, as the sheriff watched, the clumsy kid with the glasses as he ran backward in an attempt to catch that ball.
His glove stretched out to receive the baseball, the boy with the coke-bottle glasses backpedaled across a good twenty feet of grass. The ball sailed through the air, seemingly destined for his glove. Propelled only by his digging heels and a good dose of momentum, the boy ran faster, faster, his eyes locked on the prize as leather cut through air. He could catch it, he knew he could, if only…if only….
A sharp knock on his open door evoked a physical jump from the sheriff, whose hand shot up in a silencing gesture. He rose quickly, crossed the room in three long strides and gripped the window frame to steady himself. Teeth sunk into flesh as he bit his lip, watching the poor boy’s progress across the field until his back finally struck the wall. The boy’s eyes closed, his glove curled in anticipation of the ball’s arrival. The sheriff sucked in a good breath and held it, his eyes glued to that glove. And the ball, swift and sure and as kind as any ball had been to any boy, struck the glove directly in the center with a soft whoosh of air.
The sheriff exhaled and straightened his back, ready to become a man again. But then the ball betrayed the boy, bouncing off the too-soft leather and landing on the ground at his feet.
The sheriff’s head sagged to its fullest extent, his body dangling from both strong hands as they held the window frame. Slowly, and with the greatest of effort, he straightened himself and turned to face his visitor.
“What is it, Keene?” The sheriff’s voice lacked resonance and his face had gone cold, but there was still that hint of disappointment in his dull eyes.
“You said to come talk to you right after I got back from the Dawson place.” Keene fussed with his badge and ran a thin hand through his blonde hair. “So here I am.”
“Right.” The sheriff mimicked the gesture and took his seat, concentrating solely on rolling his chair into that one perfect position behind his desk. “And what did you find out?” He spared a glance for the window, but the boys had already fled the field.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dawson are dead. We found them both in the basement…or what’s left of them.”
The sheriff leaned forward and scowled. “What’s left of them?”
“Well, the bodies weren’t completely intact. Part of them had been…eaten.”
“Eaten.” It was more statement than question. The cold slap of that fact made his heart tick a bit faster.
“You know that kid they had. I mean, it was always a rumor, but I think we all knew it was mostly true. He was born messed up somehow and they kept him in the basement. We found their remains in that basement. The door was locked. See, the way I got it figured is, there was some problem or other and the folks went down there. Then the boy went nuts and killed them. When he realized what he’d done, that he was left in the basement with nobody to tend to him, he simply ate the bodies…or part of them anyway.”
“Or somebody coerced them down there. Or they shoved them down and locked the door. It doesn’t matter.” The sheriff scrubbed one hand over the stubble on his chin and moaned. “Where’s the boy now?”
“We haven’t exactly found him yet. See, I think he must have found the keys on one of his parents and let himself out.”
A question tickled at the tip of the sheriff’s tongue. He fought against it, knew the answer would open festering wounds that couldn’t be closed again. But he had to know. “Did you find anyone else?”
“No, sir.” Keene’s cherubic face looked askance at the sheriff.
“No other remains?”
“None.” That querulous stare turned to near accusation as Keene let his eyes pour over the sheriff’s face. “Should there have been?”
“Of course not. But I had to ask.” The sheriff rocked in his chair for a moment, his eyes desperate to wander over to the window. “Are your boys all through over there?”
“Yeah. You want to run over and check things out yourself?”
“I think might ought to.”
Keene stood and righted his badge again. “Okay, Sheriff. I’ll have my report for you before I go home.”
“Thanks, Keene.”
Keene headed for the door, his feet stopping dead in their tracks as his hand found the door frame. He turned slowly, his face a mask of worry. “Is there something going on that I should know about, Sheriff?”
“Not a thing, Keene. Not a thing. You go work on that report and I’ll take a run out to the Dawson place.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sheriff watched as Keene padded down the hall, his service shoes tapping lightly on the linoleum. His hand still on his hat as if he intended to leave right away, the sheriff slumped back into his chair and buried his face in his hands and his life in misery.
Sheriff Mark Sloane stood before the house on Oak Street, hands on his hips, demons on his heels. The place had haunted him his entire life. There were rumors about what went on inside that house but not one of them could come close to the horror of what had actually happened.
He had known all along that this day would eventually come and now that he was faced with it, he couldn’t get his feet to carry him into that house. He had spent a lifetime trying not to think about what had happened that night, but it was all for nothing. The bitter, terrifying memories flooded back.
“Terrible what happened in there, huh, Mark?” said a voice right next to his ear.
How had he missed Tom walking right up and standing next to him? How long had he been there? “Terrible.”
“You okay?”
“Nope.” He drew in a great breath and unpocketed his hands. “But I have to be okay…now.”
“You going in there?”
“Yeah.
“Stay to the left of the walkway. I saw a couple of your deputies lose their lunch over to the right there.”
“Thanks, Tom. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Tom said no more. He simply clapped Jake on the back and walked back across the street.
Mark drew in a deep breath and steeled himself for what was to come. He had never actually been inside that house. He didn’t want to go in there now.
He forced himself to move forward, keeping to the left of the walkway just as Tom had told him to. Sure enough, there was a liberal application of puke on the azaleas. He wondered who had done it and found that it didn’t matter. Whatever they saw, they earned the right to toss their cookies.
The porch needed work. The steps were wood and there was little more than a peppering of paint chips left on them. Mark stepped up slowly, testing his weight on each step before moving on to the next. Who was he kidding? He was delaying the inevitable.
Mark pulled the house keys out of his pocket and looked them over. Two obvious car keys. One strange key he didn’t recognize. One padlock key. The remaining key had to be for the house, so he pulled it out and slid it home in the deadbolt. It turned. The knob turned. Jake closed his eyes and prayed to whatever patron saints cops had that he could actually make it through this without losing his own lunch…or worse.
He ducked under the crime scene tape and stepped into the house. It was dark, just a few gashes of late afternoon light stabbing through the darkness. He felt the wall to his left and found switches, which he threw on with the flat of his hand. That didn’t make things much better.
The old house was like a museum. Furniture that hadn’t been made for fifty years at least. One of those awful wood Sears couches with brown floral fabric vied with a green Naugahyde recliner for dominance. There was an old Victorian light by the recliner. A huge wood table in the center. A small TV, one of those “portable” jobs that they sold for a hundred bucks back in the day. And a rug with more holes than a sieve.
The silence wasn’t merely the absence of sound. It was an entity all unto itself, and as it grew and spread, it forced Mark to notice it. His footsteps sounded out of place, alien in this mid-century grotto of decay. He paused every now and again to look through some things and to steel his nerves. He wished he had a bottle with him. A shot of Jack would go down real nice right now. Liquid courage.
A slanted table next to the stairs held an old lamp and a stack of mail. Mark picked it up and glanced through it. Allstate. Local bank. A flyer for the local Dairy Queen. A bill for the electricity. He tossed it down and glanced up the stairs. He didn’t want to check up there…not yet. Besides, his business was in the basement. That’s where it had all started and that’s where it had all ended.
With a heavy sigh, Mark made his way into the kitchen. Not much tidier in there, sadly. A chrome and Formica table took center stage, backed by a chorus line of matching chairs and one of those counter-height stools that could double as a highchair or a step stool. His mother had had a red one just like it…way back in the day.
The basement door was currently shut. It broke up the side wall and separated the china hutch from the cabinets. Jake put his hand on the knob and paused.
“Please be in there,” he said sadly.
He turned the knob quickly, before he could lose his nerve. The door creaked open and came to rest against the kitchen wall. Just inside the stairway was a switch and he flicked it on. A bare bulb over the stairs buzzed to life. Further into the basement, another bulb joined it.
Mark started down. He was not a particularly large man, but each stair complained under his weight. His slow descent into hell took nearly a whole minute and throughout it all, he braced himself against some sudden attack. Here there be monsters and he was the only man alive who could prove it.
Finally on firm ground, he hitched up his belt and, for reasons he couldn’t even explain, unclipped his holster. There was a workbench against the back wall…the long one with all the little windows. Someone had replaced the pane of glass from where Jake had broken it all those years ago. Of course they had. What kind of idiot leaves their basement open to the elements, especially when they have secrets to hide?
To the left was a crude bookshelf, filled now with a few cans of paint and the oddest thing in the room: One of those baby busy boxes where the giant wood beads slide on thick wires. Mark decided to let that go and he looked at the right-hand wall. There, in the corner, was a mattress. The sheets on it were gray and looked as though they hadn’t been laundered since purchase. The mattress itself had suffered from a couple of spring floods, apparently, because it was infested with mold and mildew. There was a perfect impression of a man in the center. It all came together to make Mark’s stomach roil. He couldn’t imagine anyone or thing living in this place.
He grabbed his flashlight, switched it on, and shone it over by the stairs. There was a lot of blood soaked into those old wood stairs and he hadn’t even seen it when he’d come down. More blood, still moist, soaked into the concrete at the base of the stairs. Mark looked away from it. He swept the light back and forth over the cement floor, looking for differences in texture, color, or finish. Nothing. That’s when he saw it. On the wooden crate next to the mattress sat a small brown teddy bear. Its eyes were shiny plastic and looked like they’d just been installed. The rest of it looked like it had been run over by a truck.
Mark could find nothing out of order. Everything looked perfectly normal, for a basement living space meant for a monster. He made note of the chalk outlines where the bodies had been discovered. He mentally calculated how long it would have taken the old couple to bleed out after a vicious bite in the neck, or, say, the thigh. He shuddered.
He looked away from the blood and the grime and the chalk outlines. And that’s when he realized that he was standing on a rug. In the center of the room, right below his feet, was a red Oriental rug. He stepped off the rug and yanked it aside. Underneath was a patch of concrete about three feet square that was lighter, cleaner, newer than the rest.
That was it. The thing he had hoped to find…and dreaded to find. After all these years, he would finally know what had happened down here.
He tossed the rug aside and started toward the stairs. He wanted out of that basement and out of that house. So much had happened because of that awful house and the people who had lived there. But they were gone now, all of them. The basement floor was proof of that.
He hurried up the stairs and shut the door, then made haste for the front door, remembering, somehow, to turn the lights out as he went. He ducked under the crime scene tape and locked the door and never looked back as he headed for his cruiser. But as he turned toward home and took one last glance in the rearview mirror, he saw a light on in the upstairs window…the same window where the Dawsons had slept…the same window that had lit up the night they lost Dewey.
Mark sped up.
Chapter Four
Asudden gust of hot wind blew a lock of brown hair into Barbara’s face. The sun flashed off the rearview mirror like a warning beacon. She cleared her line of sight and jerked the truck into gear, letting out a breath that she had seemingly held for the last four days.
Barbara turned the big steering wheel and aimed the nose of the truck at the house across the street.
“Bring it straight back. Keep it steady.”
When had she actually pressed down on the accelerator? Barbara couldn’t remember. There were a lot of things about the last two years she couldn’t remember, for that matter.
In the mirror, her daughter stood on the lawn, waving at her, guiding her in. Shannon was only sixteen, but it seemed to Barbara as though the girl had always been there, guiding her in, guiding her through life.
“Slow it down. No! To the left. MOM!”
The truck made a decisive crunching sound and Barbara slammed her foot down on the brake. She turned the truck off and leaped down from the cab.
“Just great!” Shannon hollered, arms flying up into the air, the chains on her leather jacket singing in protest. “You made it all the way across country without incident. And in the last few feet, you mow down our new post lamp! I hope you’re pleased with yourself, young lady. I hope you know this is coming out of your allowance.”
