Brood XIX (2 page)

It was an amazing night. Vanessa had never
really been the kind who enjoyed carnivals like this. They always
felt so dirty, as though anything she touched would make her
sticky. And yet she was absolutely loving every minute of it. Not
the rides or the curiosities. Just being with her husband and her
daughter, doing something outside of the normal routine into which
they seemed to have settled. They didn't have to talk about how the
recession was slowly killing Warren's practice or about how
Medicaid disbursement fell by nearly ten percent annually or about
how the rising cost of private health insurance had become so
exorbitant that fewer and fewer people were able to afford it. They
were able to relax and enjoy the moment, each other's company, and
the excitement positively radiating from Emma, who scampered ahead
of them through the crowd, dodging legs and whipping her head from
side to side to absorb everything there was to see. Her new dress
was already dirty and her new shoes were covered with Lord only
knew what.

She had never looked happier.

"This was a wonderful idea," Vanessa said.
"Thank you for doing this."

"Nothing but the best for my ladies," Warren
said. He hugged her around the shoulders as they walked. "Besides,
you know I've never been able to resist the opportunity to lay
siege to my arteries with a full frontal assault of fried food. I
take it as a kind of personal challenge."

"Don't even joke about that. I don't know
what I'd do if you ever left me."

"You couldn't get rid of me if you tried." He
kissed her on the top of the head and pulled her closer. "Although
there are much worse ways to go than death by corndog."

She pinched the skin above his hip and gave
it a solid twist.

"Ow!" He goosed her ribs in retaliation. "I
was just kidding, you know. Sheesh."

"You're just lucky I didn't go after my first
choice of targets."

"Ouch. I think that would fall under the
category of cruel and unusual..."

His words trailed off, leaving the clamor of
hundreds of voices, all vying to be heard. He stopped and the crowd
channeled around them.

"What?" she asked, but she already knew. She
could feel the tension in his arms, in the way his posture
stiffened. It raced through her like an electrical current. Bodies
shoved past them from both directions. Faces flashed past, familiar
and unfamiliar alike, stained by the winking lights, eyes recessed
in shadow. Someone clipped her side in an effort to squeeze past
and nearly sent her sprawling.

"Where's Emma?" she whispered.

Warren stood on his toes in an attempt to see
over the restrained bedlam.

"She was just here," he said. He released her
shoulders and turned a slow circle. "She was right in front of
us."

"Emma!" Vanessa called.

"She can't have gone very far." The note of
panic in his voice only served to amplify her own. "I'll go this
way. You check over there."

He ducked away from her through the crowd
toward the ring toss. She turned her back on him and shoved in the
direction of a mobile home with a plywood façade painted with a
two-headed goat and a mummified dwarf.

"Emma!" she screamed. Her eyes darted left
and right, scanning faster than her brain could rationalize. People
became blurs. She was bumped and jostled from all sides at once.
"Emma!"

She watched for a fleeting glimpse of her
daughter's black- and indigo-striped felt dress, of the red bows in
her hair, of her chubby cheeks.

Nothing.

"Emma!"

She grabbed the nearest man without looking
at his face.

"Have you seen my daughter? She has long dark
hair and a---"

The man jerked his arm out of her grasp and
rushed away from her.

"Emma!"

She turned and ran back to where she had left
her husband. He met her halfway. She could tell by his expression
that he hadn't found Emma either.

"Stay right here," he said, taking her by the
shoulders and looking directly into her eyes. "This was the last
place we saw her. She's a smart girl. Once she realizes we've been
separated, she'll come back here. In the meantime, call your
brother and let him know what happened. I'll keep looking. I have
my cell phone. If I find her first, I'll call you immediately. And
you do the same."

He tipped up her chin and wiped away her
tears with his thumbs.

"We'll find her," he said more softly. "You
believe me, right?"

She could only nod her head. Her heart was
beating so hard and she was shaking so badly that she couldn't
formulate a reply.

"We
will
find her," he said. He kissed
her on the lips and dashed away through the throng of oblivious
passersby.

And then he was gone.

* * *

"Slow down," Trey said. He had to park the
cruiser and press his free hand over his opposite ear to glean his
sister's voice from the background noise. "Start again. From the
beginning. I can't understand you. Are you crying?"

He rolled up his window so the only sounds
were the purr of the engine and the whoosh of the air
conditioner.

"Calm down, Vanessa. Take a deep breath and
tell me what happened."

His sister explained everything that had
transpired up to that point. Consciously, he was sure she was
overreacting, and had she been anyone else, he would have told her
so. Emma had been out of her sight for five minutes at the most.
She was a bright kid and would surely realize soon enough that she
couldn't find her parents and would work her way back to where she
had seen them last. Warren was right on the mark with his plan. It
was exactly what he would have told them to do. And yet still he
had a sinking sensation in his gut.

Perhaps it was the fear in his sister's
voice, or maybe just the fact that it was his niece who was lost
somewhere in the seething crowd, but he couldn't shake the feeling
that something was desperately wrong. He knew he was being
irrational, that children wandered away from their parents' side
all the time in places like this, where everything was new and
exciting and promised the kind of fun they only envisioned in their
dreams, and that they always returned. A stranger would find them
crying and help them locate their parents, or someone would
recognize them and stay with them until their terrified parents
tracked them down. Jefferson was a small community. That was one of
the things he liked most about it. Maybe everyone didn't know each
other per se, but they were all bound to each other in a direct
way.

"Listen to me, Vanessa," he said. "Stay right
where you are. I'll check in with you again in five minutes. If you
find her before I call you back, then you call me. If you haven't,
then I'll contact the sheriff and the other deputies and we'll
canvass the whole carnival. But trust me, sis...she'll be right there
with you again in a matter of minutes. I'll bet she probably just
saw something she'd never seen before and got distracted."

This seemed to pacify her to some degree, but
he could still hear the tears in her voice.

At least he was the one charged with the
security of the parking lot. There were all kinds of petty little
things that could happen right under his nose, but sneaking past
him with his own niece definitely wasn't one of them. Emma was down
in that carnival somewhere. There was no doubt about it.

But still, something felt...wrong.

The muscles in his lower back were clenched.
His grip on the wheel was too tight. And the tingling sensation in
his gut had spread to his groin.

Just five more minutes, he told himself, and
if Emma didn't turn up by then, he would take matters into his own
hands.

But he also knew, far too well, that an awful
lot could happen in five minutes.

* * *

Warren slalomed through the shifting maze of
humanity, shouting his daughter's name. Everyone he passed looked
exactly the same, their features washed out by the blinking lights.
He shoved people aside, his ears deafened to their shouts and
curses. Every child resembled Emma until he was right on top of
them. He had never been so terrified in his life. If anything
happened to his daughter, he would never be able to forgive
himself, let alone live with the guilt. He should have been
carrying her, or at least holding her hand, but one often adopted a
false sense of security in such a small community, where everyone
felt like extended family to some degree. Strangers stood apart the
moment they entered town, yet it was the evil that hid behind a
friendly face from which one always had the most to fear.

The big top rose above him, reaching high up
over the surrounding forest canopy. Vendors blew by to either side,
hawking everything from glowing necklaces to foil balloons. The
ticket booth materialized through the crowd to his right. It stood
lifeless and forlorn as the entire population now swarmed within
the carnival's hastily erected fence.

He caught movement on the path across the
field that led uphill to the parking lot. Two silhouettes of shadow
against darkness. One tall, one much smaller. Holding hands.
Walking fast.

"Emma!" he shouted.

He ran past the ticket booth. A voice from
inside yelled something about a hand stamp as he sprinted out onto
the path.

"Emma!"

The smaller shadow stopped. Even in the dark
he could see the fringes of a dress at her knees. The larger figure
urged her onward with a tug on her arm.

Warren swore he heard Emma's voice, calling
to him from somewhere beneath the tumult.

"Stay where you are!" he yelled. "Wait for me
right there!"

He forced his legs to run faster than they
ever had before.

Focused solely on the smaller figure, he
didn't see a third shadow emerge from the tree line to his right
until it was too late.

A sharp impact to his chest.

A sensation of bitter cold in the right side
of his chest, then heat.

Then searing pain.

His legs slid out from under him and he
landed on his back.

He saw stars dotting the night sky. A quarter
moon shrouded by clouds. They were eclipsed by the wild-haired
silhouette of a woman's head. She screamed right into his face and
the pressure in his chest momentarily abated.

A flash of reflected light on a long kitchen
knife, already slick with blood.

Then it was gone and the pain in his chest
intensified.

Another flash.

More pain.

His mouth filled with blood. He couldn't
manage to breathe.

The woman vanished and he saw the stars
again. They were now blurry and appeared to drift aimlessly.

His trembling hands pawed at his chest and
probed through his tattered shirt until his fingertips slipped into
the deep wounds, from which damp heat poured unimpeded.

He tried to call his daughter's name, but
only produced a coughing sound and a rush of blood that drained
down his cheeks and over his chin.

His thoughts were disjointed, murky, and yet
he managed to focus on Emma, drawing strength from her image, a
sense of purpose.

He rolled onto his side and struggled to all
fours.

Blood poured from his mouth and chest.

His watery vision constricted.

Two large figures now held his daughter. One
restrained her arms and silenced her with a hand clasped over her
mouth. The other pinned her legs.

He recognized them now.

It wasn't my fault
, he thought.

He saw them duck from the path into the dense
forest.

And then he saw no more.

* * *

Barely four minutes had passed when Trey
heard the first screams.

He hit the gas and sped straight toward the
end of the central aisle. The path wasn't wide enough to
accommodate the cruiser, but he didn't care. Branches scraped the
sides of the Caprice, slicing through the paint before snapping
off. With a resounding crack, his side mirror disappeared. The
trees fell away and a small meadow opened to his left. He slammed
the brakes and skidded to a stop on the gravel.

Dust settled over the car. Through the haze,
he saw a clumped gathering at the edge of the field.

Screams tore the night.

He threw his door open and drew his pistol in
one motion, and hit the ground running. Left arm extended, he
forced his way through the small crowd.

A man knelt over a supine form. Gus Tarver.
The lower half of his face and his arms, clear up past his elbows,
were covered with blood. Hands clasped, he thrust his stiff arms
down against the other man's chest. Over and over. Compressions,
which only served to squeeze more blood out of the man's ruined
torso.

Trey looked down at the man's waxen face and
felt a sudden and deep sorrow.

Gus leaned down and closed his mouth over
Warren's. Crimson burbled from the wounds as the ribcage rose once.
Then again.

Trey walked around his brother-in-law's body
and gently placed his hand on Gus's shoulder before he could resume
compressions.

Gus toppled onto his rear end and smeared the
blood from around his mouth with his sleeve.

Trey looked at the stunned faces surrounding
the corpse. His stare latched onto one he knew nearly as well as
his own.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

* * *

Vanessa screamed and threw herself toward
what remained of her husband, but her brother stepped into her path
and wrestled her backward. She hit his chest, the side of his head,
begged for him to let her go.

He held her even tighter.

Over his shoulder, she saw the love of her
life lying dead on the ground. Blood shimmered black on his face
and torso, in a wide pool around him on the wet grass.

She moaned and felt her legs give out.

Trey managed to support her weight long
enough to lower them both to their knees.