One-Eyed Jack (10 page)

I didn’t have time to come up with
anything before I was driving past the police cruiser. I glanced
over and saw two cops sitting in their vehicle, both of them
watching me intently, and the red thing on the roof, also watching
me, and I lost my nerve.

The cops weren’t going to believe a
word I said. I couldn’t think of a convincing lie, and the truth
sure wasn’t going to work. I flew out here from Maryland because I
was having dreams about this kid feeding a ghost woman his own
finger? Oh, they’d believe that, of course they would!

Right.

I turned at the next
corner, the last corner; I didn’t dare go on down the dead end. And
once I’d done that, I couldn’t circle back; that would
definitely
attract the
cops’ attention.

I looked at the GPS, flipped it to map
mode and tried to figure out whether there was somewhere I could
park to come at those bushes from the other side.

It looked as if there was, but it
involved getting back out on Winchester Road, then turning into the
next development over and making my way to the back, where there
was another dead end that should connect up. Except, of course,
there might be fences or ditches or other obstacles in there that
didn’t show up on the little diagram.

Still, I didn’t have
a
better
idea. I
headed out of the development.

It took about ten minutes to get to
the spot the GPS said was closest, which was directly in front of
someone’s house. I wasn’t eager to cut through someone’s yard, so I
cruised slowly up the block, looking for an alternative.

I found one, a playing
field that backed up to a bunch of trees, and if I cut through
those trees I
should
come out at the end of the Wilsons’ street. I parked the car,
hoping it wouldn’t be too conspicuous.

There was a fence around the field, of
course. Wouldn’t want stray balls sailing off into the woods. I
went around the end and hurried, stumbling over tree roots and beer
bottles in the dark, and uncomfortably aware of the things in and
around the trees that were watching me. Something big and white was
stalking up and down the field, and black or gray things crouched
or fluttered on every side.

I was still trying to find
my way in the dark when I heard the whimpering, and saw something
moving ahead of me, something that wasn’t just the usual sort of
night-creature – though it didn’t look exactly
right
, either. “Jack?” I
called.

I didn’t care about maintaining the
dreams anymore. If he was out there, hurt, bleeding, whatever, I
intended to find him and do whatever I could to keep that Jenny
thing away from him.

The whimpering stopped for
a moment, and then that not-a-voice said,
Help him!

“
I’m trying!” I shouted.
“Jack, where are you?”

“
Over here,” a boy’s voice
said, weak and unsteady.

I followed the sound, and found him
lying on the ground beside the bushes – not under them, he’d made
it that far. He was face-down on the dirt, but I spotted him
easily, even in the dark.

For one thing, he had that
wrongness that meant he could see the supernatural; he didn’t blend
in with the background. I’d wondered about that, and now I knew. It
hadn’t shown in my dreams, but in real life it was obvious, even at
night – he had it
strongly
.

More obviously, though,
Jenny was standing over him, not touching him, her long, bony
fingers clutching helplessly at the air above his back. I could
feel her desperation – and that despite whatever she had done, she
was still hungry.
I can’t help
him
, she said.
I
can’t lift him. My touch would draw blood
.

“
Then get away from him,”
I said, as I knelt down and rolled him onto his back. I looked him
up and down quickly.

That strange distortion made it hard
to really look at him, but I forced myself.

His nine fingers were all still there,
clenched into trembling fists, and his clothes were intact; his
shoes were still on. I didn’t know whether she could eat parts of
him right through the shoes or the other clothes,
though.

His eyes were squeezed tightly shut,
his whole face contorted with pain, and I thought his face was wet
with tears. Then Jenny shifted position, and a glint of light
reflected off her white dress, and I realized that the “tears” were
too dark. It wasn’t just the psychic thing; those weren’t tears at
all.

“
Oh, my God,” I said, as I
slid an arm under his neck and scooped him up.

He gave it
freely
, Jenny said, and I felt a wave of
pride and love and guilt – and that insatiable appetite was still
there, as well.
I didn’t want to hurt him
– but I was so hungry!

“
Shut up,” I told her.
“I’ll talk to you later.” I stood up with Jack in my arms, trying
to orient myself, and I spotted the big tulip poplar. I hurried
toward it.

Jack was whimpering again. I glanced
back, and saw that Jenny was following us. The hair fell away from
her face for a moment.

I refused to think about what I saw; I
turned around and staggered out onto the street, where the police
car still sat against the curb in the next block. “Hey!” I
bellowed. “Help! Officer, help!”

A light came on in the house with the
shotgun, but no one answered, and no doors or windows opened. I
kept shouting.

I was halfway to the corner before the
cops finally heard me and turned on their spotlight. The
passenger-side door opened, and one of them got out, his hand on
his gun.

“
He’s hurt!” I shouted.
“Call for an ambulance!”

“
Stop right there!” the
cop shouted back.

I stopped; I wasn’t stupid enough to
disobey a cop in a situation like that. “This kid’s hurt!” I
called. “Come see for yourself!”

He came. The driver had his door open
now, and was talking into his radio; I couldn’t hear what he was
saying.

I looked down at Jack’s face. He still
hadn’t opened his eyes, not once since I first saw him there. Now
that I was out on the open, with the police searchlight shining on
us, I could see that the “tears” on his face were red; blood was
trickling steadily from his left eye.

The right looked okay, except for
being jammed shut with pain.

And the left eye – blood was oozing
between lids that were sunken in, not rounded out.

There wasn’t any eye there anymore. He
didn’t need to open it and show me the empty socket; I knew it was
gone.

I’d seen Jenny’s face, where her right
eye was still just a dark patch of nothing, but her left was now a
real eye, an eye that had been wide with dismay.

Then the cop was there, shining a
flashlight in Jack’s face. “What happened to his eyes?” the cop
demanded.

“
I don’t know,” I said. “I
found him like this, back there in the bushes.”

“
You found him?” The cop
moved the light up to my face. “What were you doing there? Do you
live around here?”

“
No, I was out for a walk,
and I heard him whimpering.”

He turned the light back to Jack.
“Kid? Can you hear me?”

Jack made a noise. I’m pretty sure
that if he’d opened his mouth to speak he wouldn’t have been able
to keep from crying, and he wasn’t about to do that, so it was just
a wordless noise, his lips tightly closed, and even that wasn’t
very steady.

“
It’s gonna be okay, kid;
we’ve got you now. The ambulance is on its way.”

Jack whimpered.

“
Can you tell us what
happened? This guy holding you, did he have anything to do with
it?”

Jack bit his lip and shook his
head.

“
Hey, I just found him,” I
said. “I never laid eyes on the kid until then.” I wasn’t lying.
Whatever I use to see in my dreams, it’s not my eyes.

“
Do you know who he is?”
the cop asked.

I shook my head – and that was a lie,
I suppose, but what was I supposed to say?

“
Kid, can you
talk?”

A sob escaped; then Jack closed his
mouth tight again, and shook his head, just once.

“
Bring him over here,” the
cop said, directing me toward the car.

That was fine with me. I walked slowly
up the street.

The other cop had finished talking to
the dispatcher, apparently; he called, “Is it the Wilson
kid?”

“
Looks like,” the cop with
the flashlight said. He turned the light on Jack’s left hand. “He’s
missing the same finger.”

“
Jesus.” He stepped away
from the car, slammed the door, and headed for the Wilsons’ front
door. “What happened to him?”

“
I dunno, but there’s
blood on his face.”

Then the door opened and Jack’s father
stepped out. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“
Sir, it appears your son
has been injured,” one of the cops said.

Wilson’s face went pale – I could see
it even in the gloom. He hurried down the steps and across the
lawn. “What happened?” He glanced at me. “Who the hell is
that?”

I didn’t know what to say, and I was
exhausted; I didn’t say anything, I just handed Jack over. Then I
stepped back as Wilson and one of the cops talked, the cop filling
him in.

I took another step back, and was
wondering whether I might possibly slip away, when the other cop
grabbed my arm. “Sir, if you could come with me? I think we need to
ask you some questions down at the station.”

“
Oh, my
God,” Wilson said, loudly. “What happened to his
eye
?”

Jack’s mother was standing in the open
door. “Is he all right?” she called.

“
No,” I called back. At
the time I just wanted to tell the truth, but when I saw her
reaction I realized that I’d been cruel.

And then the ambulance arrived, with
lights and sirens, and woke up the whole neighborhood, and the cop
who had my arm decided not to risk losing me in the confusion and
shoved me into the back of the car.

I sat there watching as the paramedics
strapped Jack to a stretcher and loaded him into the ambulance, and
I saw his parents huddling together looking broken, and I saw his
little sister standing in the open doorway staring out at the chaos
in the street, and I saw a dozen neighbors standing in clumps on
the sidewalks, watching everything from a safe distance. I heard
them asking whether I was the maniac who’d attacked Jack, and the
cops saying no, I was just a witness who might have seen
something.

And I saw Jenny standing unnoticed in
the darkness down the street, taking it all in, watching it all
with her one empty hollow and her one bright young boy’s
eye.

Chapter Seven

I gave my real name and my real
address and showed them my real ID. I told them where I’d parked
the rental car. I answered all their questions about what I had
seen and heard and done as truthfully as I could.

But what I couldn’t tell them was why
I had come to Kentucky in the first place, or why I was in that
particular neighborhood. I wasn’t going to tell them I was a
psychic who’d had visions about Jack; they wouldn’t believe
me.

And when you get right
down to it, I didn’t
know
why I was there.

“
It was a whim,” I said.
“I just wanted to get away for a few days, so I stuck a pin in a
map and hit Lexington.”

They didn’t believe that; maybe I
should have gone with the psychic story after all.

At least I could prove I had been home
in Maryland when Jack’s finger was gnawed off; I think that was all
that kept them from settling on me as the psycho responsible for
everything.

I don’t know how long I sat in that
grubby little interrogation room, answering questions, telling them
that no, I never met Jack before I found him lying there in the
bushes, and no, I’d never been in Lexington before, and no, I
didn’t know anyone in Lexington, and yes, I’d been sleeping in the
rental car, and no, I wasn’t really an actor or a botany student,
I’d just made those up for fun. Finally, though, they took a break
and let me make a call, and I called Mel.

I was so tired, so worn down from the
questioning, that I didn’t even brace myself; I didn’t anticipate
the curse at all. It wasn’t until I heard her voice that the dread
swept over me.

“
Greg!
Why are you calling at this hour? Why are you
awake
at this
hour?”

I didn’t point out
that
she
was
awake at this hour; what was the point? She’d always been a
night-owl. Everything seemed to catch up with me at once, and I was
suddenly so frightened and miserable I could barely hold the phone
to my ear.