Authors: Jonathan Maberry
(1)
Mike got to school early and managed to slip into the bathroom and clean himself up without being noticed. He drifted through the rest of the day in a kind of haze and at lunch sat with his friend Brandon and talked about comics. Mike could do that on autopilot. When Brandon shifted onto last night’s episode of
Heroes
, Mike just listened and nodded whenever he thought he should. He hadn’t seen the show last night and could not for the life of him remember what he had done. He knew that not knowing should bother him more than it did, but somehow he could not work up the energy to care.
One thing he did care about, one thing that wasn’t blunted by the apathetic glaze that seemed to be coated over everything in his mind, was his mom. He hadn’t liked the sound he heard in the cellar. He hadn’t liked that one bit, and even though he knew that she was supposed to be out—and that she never went down into Vic’s cellar willingly—that knowledge did little to ease that gnawing doubt.
“I gotta make a call,” he said abruptly, standing. Brandon, caught in midsentence, just stared at him. “I’ll be right back.”
Mike turned and headed to the far side of the cafeteria where the pay phones were. No one much used them—everyone but Mike had a cell phone. He fitted some quarters into the slot and punched his home number. The phone rang six times and went straight to the answering machine. Mike slapped the receiver down, fed in more quarters, and dialed again. Maybe she just hadn’t gotten to the phone in time.
“C’mon, Mom,” he breathed, “pick up….”
Again the machine picked up. He hung up and leaned against the wall, staring across the cafeteria into nothingness.
After school he sped home on his bike, but as he was rounding the corner on his street he saw Vic walk through the side yard and into the front of the house. He was carrying a toolbox in one hand and under his other arm he had folded shutters. Mike slowed to a stop behind a parked SUV and watched.
Vic had a ladder against the front of the house and Mike saw that he’d already installed heavy slatted shutters on the porch windows and one of the upstairs master bedroom windows. He set the toolbox down and fished in it for a hammer, then climbed the ladder one-handed, the shutters still under his arm.
Vic was a very thorough craftsman. Mike knew that much about him, and he never did anything around the house that was slipshod. When he installed shelves for his DVD collection—mostly World War II movies and westerns—everything was precisely measured, perfectly cut, and as straight as an arrow. When something broke down, like the time the lawn mower crapped out, Vic worked on it with meticulous care and ever since the machine had never so much as sputtered.
What Mike was seeing now, however, was a completely different Vic Wingate. Standing on the ladder Vic pounded nails with sloppy force, brutalizing the wood around the nailheads. Mike looked at each shutter and not one of them hung completely straight. Mike could have done better himself and he barely knew which end of a hammer to hold. Vic’s love of tools had engendered in Mike a dislike of them.
He stood there, watching in perplexed concern, as Vic clumsied the shutters up and battered them into place. He had no idea what to make of it.
When Vic finished, he just pulled the ladder down and let it fall onto the front lawn. Snatching up his toolbox, he stomped up the steps and jerked open the front door. “There! You happy now, you stupid bitch?”
Those words rolled all the way down the street to where Mike hid. When Vic slammed the door the echo ricocheted off every house front on the block.
Mike picked his bike up and turned it around and headed back toward Corn Hill and the Crow’s Nest. As he rode away Vic’s vicious words pounded in his head. Vic always called his mom horrible names, but there was something worse about this. It felt worse somehow; it felt
meaner
, if that was even possible for Vic. As he pedaled away he could feel a sinking dread for his mother’s safety forming in the pit of his stomach; but at the same time he felt a white-hot scalding rage building in his hands and behind his eyes.
If he, or anyone else, had seen his eyes at that moment they would have been terribly afraid. All of the blue was gone, as was most of the white. What was left was a mingled cloud of black, like a storm cloud, veined with bloody flashes of red.
(2)
“How are his vitals?” Weinstock asked as he entered Terry’s room.
“Same,” said the nurse. “No change since this morning.” She recited the numbers. Nothing encouraging, but nothing discouraging. A gloomy status quo.
Weinstock went through a cursory examination, but there was nothing new to see, nothing to learn. Nothing to tell Sarah that would bring her out of the funk she’d been sliding into.
He made a note on Terry’s chart. “Keep me posted.”
He and the nurse left and Terry’s room settled back into stillness.
Except for the tiny figure who stepped out of the shadows in the corner and walked up to the side of Terry’s bed. Mandy’s eyes were wet and her torn throat trembled with silent sobs.
She rose onto her toes and stretched to kiss Terry on the cheek.
There was a strangled little sound in her brother’s throat and he turned his head slowly from side to side—less a negating motion than one of an animal struggling to pull free from a leash. Mandy stepped back, looking scared.
“Fight it, Terry!” she said, but her voice was silent and Terry was deep, deep down in the dark of his mind where all he could hear was the roar of the beast. Mandy put her tiny bloodstained hands to her mouth and stood there, watching moment by moment as Terry lost his fight.
(3)
Midmorning Sarah Wolfe came by to pick up Val. They wanted some time with each other and they both had a lot of things to handle in the aftermath of Little Halloween. Since Mark and Connie were not going to be buried right away, Val had to arrange a memorial service. Mark was well liked in the community and had been an influential businessman. There would be a lot of people who would want to pay their respects. Setting that up was going to take a lot of detail work, but Crow knew that detail work kept Val steady, so he kissed her good-bye, hugged Sarah, walked them to Sarah’s big Humvee Alpha, and watched as they headed into the stream of traffic.
The Crow’s Nest was slow that morning, which was good because Crow had a million things to do to stay on top of the Festival preparations. He called all of the hotels to make sure that the arrangements for the visiting celebrities were in place; then called half a dozen airports to check on bookings. He spent some time on the phone with BK, working through the details for the security measures he wanted to have in place for Halloween. BK had managed to round up a solid crew of bouncers, off-duty cops, and martial arts guys to work the gig and the ticket was going to cost the township—and the Wolfe family—a bundle. Crow didn’t sweat that…any additional disasters would cost everyone more.
He used Terry’s laptop to log into his friend’s e-mail and spent two hours sorting through the mass that had piled up. There were so many people needing to be reassured that things would go well even with Terry in the hospital, and Crow gave what assurances he could, and he lied a little here and there.
He called John West, an amusement park consultant and general fix-it man, and asked him to spend the next few days going over every inch of the Hayride and the Haunted House. West, who used to oversee the Cyclone roller coaster up in Coney Island and who now ran a general consulting firm in Lahaska, was pleased to take the job. They’d worked together a number of times at the Hayride and where Crow was able to conceptualize the spooky stuff, West was able to make it work.
“We can’t afford so much as a tourist getting a splinter this season, John,” Crow said.
“Okay, buddy, I hear you. Leave it to me.” And Crow was content to do just that.
By the time Crow finished with all of the Festival matters, it was midafternoon and he was waiting on Mike. Before things went to hell on Little Halloween, Crow had been teaching Mike some jujutsu. Not the deeper secrets or the more esoteric aspects of the art—just the hard-core take-no-prisoners hand-to-hand stuff. Mike had been reluctant to study, largely because it made him confront, however obliquely, the fact that Vic was abusing him. Crow knew about it, but Mike would not be drawn into an open discussion on the subject. He did, however, start training, and Crow was impressed with his progress. The kid had a real talent for it, and he picked up the moves extremely quickly, something Crow attributed to genuine motivation. He looked at the wall clock. Mike was supposed to come in early today so they could pick up where they left off, but the kid was more than fifteen minutes late.
A knot of middle-school kids came in to buy Halloween costumes and by the time Crow had helped them make their judicious selections Mike was there. He wandered into the store as silent as a ghost, looking pale and worn.
“You okay, young Jedi?” Crow asked as the kids left.
Mike shrugged. “Sorry I’m late.”
When Mike was like this Crow knew that something bad had happened at home. There were no visible bruises on Mike’s face, though, and he didn’t wince as he walked over and dumped his backpack behind the counter. Crow looked at the clock. “You up for a little backyard Fight Club?” he asked, expecting Mike to say no.
But Mike surprised him. Straightening from behind the counter, Mike gave him a long, steely look. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I could really use that.”
Crow closed the shop for an hour and they went out through his apartment into the yard. Crow took him through some warm-ups and stretches, and Mike followed along, silent and intense. He did his bends and reaches, his twists and reps, matching Crow and keeping up without effort.
Either I’m getting old or he’s getting better,
Crow thought as they did side-by-side push-ups. The boy’s body went up and down, straight as a board, with no more than a small grunt of effort with each push away from the ground.
“Let’s start with some evasions,” Crow said as they got to their feet. “I’ll throw some punches and kicks and you just evade them. Block only if you can’t slip the shot, okay?”
Mike nodded and settled into the defensive crouch Crow had shown him: weight on the balls of the feet and evenly distributed, knees slightly bent, the whole body springy, hands raised but loose. Crow began prowling a slow circle around him, watching as the boy turned to keep his body angled away to protect belly, throat, and groin. Crow faked a punch and Mike twitched his head back—but it wasn’t the frightened-rabbit flinch Mike typically did when he was surprised; this was a classic boxing slip. That was a good sign.
He threw a looping right at about half speed and Mike just stepped back away from it as if he’d seen it coming yesterday.
Okay, fair enough
, Crow thought and dialed it up a bit. He added more speed to his punches and kept the arcs and lines of each blow shorter, still deliberately leading with his shoulder to give Mike a chance, but doing that less and less as Mike slipped and bobbed away or under each hit. Crow faked a jab-overhand right combination and then pivoted to throw a roundhouse kick that missed Mike’s hip by an inch as the boy spun away. Without putting his leg down Crow shuffled sideways on one foot and fired three more roundkicks, chasing Mike across the yard. Only the last one tagged him, and even then Mike blocked most of it with his elbow.
Crow grinned at Mike and gave him a thumbs-up for that, but Mike’s face was a mask. There was sweat on his face and in the glare of the late afternoon sunlight the kid’s eyes looked funny. Almost red.
They moved like that for five more minutes and then Crow stepped back, palms up and out. Out of nearly a hundred attempted kicks and punches he tapped Mike only eight times. Even though Crow was not going at full speed or power it was exceptional, and Crow said so.
Mike just made a face and shook his head. “That means you hit me eight times. It’s not the ones you evade, it’s the ones you don’t that matter.”
“What jackass told you that?”
“You did, the first day we worked out.”
“You shouldn’t listen to strangers, Mike.” That got a tiny flicker of an artificial smile. “Okay,” Crow said, turning to get some padded mitts from his equipment bag. “Let’s see how you like hitting back.” He fitted on two gloves that had thick flat foam pads covered in black leather. “I’ll move around, changing the position and angle of the targets. You hit and kick them as many times as you can. Don’t worry about power—concentrate on speed—and don’t let up, even if I back off. When you’re winning a fight you press the attack until your opponent is down. Fighters who get a good one in and then step back like good sports to give their opponents a chance to collect himself deserve to lose the fight.”
“No mercy,” Mike said under his breath.
“Well…I’m not sure I’d go as far as that. Let’s just call it the will to win.”
“Whatever.” Mike raised his hands and began moving forward before Crow even had his pads up.
“Whenever you’re—”
Mike’s fists slammed into the pads before he could finish, and even through the thick pad Crow could feel the brutal power of the blows. Hard. Much too hard for the weight and muscle Mike carried. As they moved Crow watched the boy’s hips and legs and feet, and he saw that on each punch he was shifting his weight and torqueing his hips to put body weight behind each blow, and the speed gave each shot more foot-pounds of impact. It was right, it was perfect; and Crow was not really sure he had ever shown Mike how to do that.
Mike hit without a sound except for his fists and palms and elbows slamming into the targets. His face was bright with exertion and sweat, and all the while his upper lip was curled back away from his teeth in a feral snarl of hate.
Jesus Christ,
Crow thought,
this kid is in hell.