Crossroads (8 page)

Kira shook her head. "I’ll be okay in a minute," she said, foggily.     

"Like hell you will. What you worrying about? Think I’m agonna go get the cops or something?  I ain’t gonna do nothing of the sort. I got no use for John Law, I can tell you that."

Kira’s was comforted by the fact that the old man knew who
John Law
was. She’d just assumed that was only carney talk. Clancy might not be a carney, but he wasn’t a towner, either. The bag smelled of pipe smoke and something musty, but it felt like familiar hands wrapping her in a soothing embrace. She was out before her head hit the cloth.

***

Chapter 10

Sometime in the afternoon Kira half awakened to the sound of Clancy dragging up more deadfall for the fire. Jen snored on a bed of pine needles beside her. A gentle breeze wafted through the trees, and Kira tucked the cover closer to her chin as her eyes slipped shut again. The distractions weren’t enough to drag her completely from the well of sleep, and she sank gladly back into its depths.

Later she sensed that day was drifting toward night, and as it did the refuge of sleep was filled with menacing overtones.  She dreamed of staring out across a metroscape of what appeared to be one vast, alien building capped by a sky so deep and dark it was hard to tell where the city ended and the sky began. She heard the familiar crunching of boots, and instead of lying in a warm sleeping bag, she found herself standing on a high cliff. As the boot echoes grew louder she could see a familiar figure approaching up a long twisted avenue. The sound drew nearer still, and she saw first the dark figure, and then a vast horde of shadows following in its wake, and the shadows were clicking.

The
Empty-eyed-man
and more Grigs than she could count.

She wanted to run away, but when she turned she realized that it wasn’t just a cliff on which she stood but a high peak with barely room for her, and sheer on all sides.

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the
Empty-eyed-man
and the Grigs couldn’t get to her up here.

She wrapped her arms tightly about her, glowering and stamping her feet to signal that she was not as afraid as the army of monsters might think. She was, but she wasn’t going to show them that. She struggled desperately to think of some way out of her predicament, her fingers slipping instinctively to the amulet dangling from her throat.

The Grigs began to spread out, overtaking, then swarming past the
Empty-eyed-man
who maintained his steady pace, eating up the distance. Finally she was surrounded, and she was shocked to discover that the peak was not nearly so high as she had assumed. 

She was small.

The Grigs were just below her, barely out of reach, and she had to stare directly up into the black sky to keep from looking any of them in the eye. The echoing boots drew closer by the second. The Grigs parted slowly and silently, and the
Empty-eyed-man
strode up until he was glaring down at her in all his giant menacing evil. When he leaned even closer she could smell the stench of death and see so deep into his dark sockets that seemed the size of doorways that she was sure his entire head was just a huge empty cave. When he spoke his breath rustled around her like rotten leaves on the wind.

"I grow tired of this game. Give me what I came for."

She shook her head. "I don’t know what you want."

She stroked the necklace, praying that some magical burst would leap from it and turn the
Empty-eyed-man
and the Grigs into dust, but nothing of the sort happened. The
Empty-eyed-man
stared at the amulet and laughed, reaching.

"Give it to me."

She shook her head and backed away, dodging his giant fingers. She stumbled, falling backward, into the Grigs that parted to let her pass.

And she just kept falling.

Chapter 11

The sun was going down as Kira climbed from Clancy’s bag and stumbled into the woods to relieve herself. When she returned to the campsite Jen met her, yawning. The old man was nowhere to be found and didn’t answer Kira’s calls. Perhaps she had been wrong about him after all. For all she knew, at that moment he might be returning with John Law. Her heart quickened, and she took Jen’s hand, guiding her toward the tracks, but as they stepped out of the trees she spotted him, staggering down the gravel embankment, and she knew it was too late. Unless they could lose themselves in the forest. She backed up, still dragging Jen, until the old man noticed them and shouted.

"Whoa! Where you two agoin’ there?"

Kira squinted back up the tracks, but there was no one following him. Clancy ambled over to them with a paper grocery sack under one arm and a big plastic bag thrown over his shoulder.

"You didn’t think I was a gonna turn you in, did ya? You think I’m a liar?"

Kira sighed, shaking her head, and Clancy nodded, laughing.

"Just went to get some more food. Your friend there like to ate me out of house and home."

Kira stared into his eyes for a moment, finally deciding that she really did trust him. She nodded.

"Good," said Clancy, handing her the paper sack.

When she looked inside she found three steaks, a can of potatoes and a six pack of soda. Clancy still clung to the bulging plastic bag, and she eyed it.

He reached inside and pulled out two small backpacks, tossing them onto his sleeping bag. "I had to guess at your sizes," he said, opening them to reveal two matching denim jackets.

“You shouldn’t have spent your money on us,” said Kira, knowing Clancy couldn’t have much.

“Panhandled for it.”

"You got all this by panhandling?" said Kira, angling her head to eye him closer.

He shrugged, making a chewing motion with his jaw as though he couldn’t figure exactly what to say. "Well... I got quick fingers sometimes, but a big-assed chain store like that ain’t gonna miss em, and it gets cold on the road."

Kira felt a lump rising in her throat as she realized that Clancy hadn’t just spent the last of his money, he’d chanced jail time for them. "You didn’t have to do that-"

Clancy made a face that said he didn’t want to make too much of it. "I been around the block a few times. I know you two are gonna keep moving. I been on the run myself more than once."

"Thank you," said Kira, quietly, although she still felt funny about accepting the stolen jackets. She had been taught never to lie or cheat or steal, and now she wondered in extreme circumstances just how hard and fast those rules might be.

Jen nodded her thanks, trying on the jacket and smiling.

"Good," said Clancy. "You two can hang out here as long as you like. When you get antsy I’ll help you hop another freight, but it ain’t no rush. I don’t get no visitors, so you don’t have to worry."

"We can’t stay," said Kira.

"Well, you can for at least a day or two," insisted Clancy.

But Kira could already feel the night settling down around them. She could imagine the
Empty-eyed-man’s
bootheels crunching in the gravel between the ties under the tracks, and the ashes of the dream still clung to her so that she sensed prophecy within it. Others around her had already paid enough for things they hadn’t done. She and Jen were paying every minute in their flight and in their grief. The last thing she wanted to do was to draw the
Empty-eyed-man
here to this old hobo who had been nothing but a friend.

"We can’t stay any longer," she insisted. "After dinner we have to leave."

Clancy frowned. "You can’t run off in the middle of the night. Where you gonna go?"

She honestly didn’t know. All she did know was that dreaming about the
Empty-eyed-man
while hiding at Clancy’s campsite was not a good thing. It was like the
Empty-eyed-man
could figure out her location through her dreams, and if he could find her, he could follow her here, to the old man. They had to go.

"Well," argued Clancy, "get some grub in you and we’ll talk."

She glanced at Jen, but as she suspected Jen was staring greedily at the food. She wasn’t going anywhere when a meal loomed, and maybe not right after. Kira sighed.

"All right," she agreed, "but then we really are going. We have to."

"I guess I’ll get to cooking, then," said Clancy, tossing more wood onto the fire and slapping the pan back atop it. "As you may have noticed I ain’t no great chef, but at least you can go on a full belly."

The peacefulness of the woods all about and the sound of him rustling around so
normally
threatened to lull Kira into calm again. It felt so good, so safe, to be with a grown person watching over them, but she knew in her heart that was a mistake. No grownup could protect them from the
Empty-eyed-man
or the Grigs, and she and Jen were like blood bait, drawing dangerous predators right to this camp. When Clancy finally placed dinner before them on paper plates Jen ate greedily, but Kira had to force herself to swallow knowing that in a few minutes the two of them were going to be traveling through the darkness again, heading she knew not where, with the
Empty-eyed-man
more than likely right on their heels.

In the dream he had wanted the medallion, and for just an instant she wondered if she shouldn’t just face up to him and give it to him. Maybe he would go away. Only she knew that was a forlorn hope. She didn’t know why he wanted it, but she was certain that giving him the amulet would only make things worse. Her mother had told her to
never, never
take it off.

"Don’t them vittles make you feel a little better?" asked Clancy, burping loudly behind his fist. "Everything usually looks different on a full belly."

Kira shook her head. "Thank you," she said, quietly. "You’re a real friend, but that’s why we can’t stay."

Clancy frowned. "If you don’t beat all. You mean you’re really just gonna go walking down them tracks in the middle of the night, just the two of you?"

"We have to."

"What are you running from, little lady? What are you so scared of? Even the cops don’t usually chase down young girls in the middle of the night."

Kira blinked. "It’s not them we’re running from."

"Then who?"

"If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me."

"Well," said Clancy, shrugging and staring at Jen. "Maybe before you might be right, but after meeting
her
I’m gonna be a little easier to convince."

Kira suspected that was true, but what good was it gonna do to tell Clancy about the
Empty-eyed-man
? Even just knowing about him might not be a good thing.

"There’s someone after us. Someone real bad," she admitted.

Clancy nodded. "Reckon we already established that. How come they’re after you two?"

"Sometimes we owe a penance for things we didn’t do," Kira muttered.

"How’s that?" said Clancy. "Where’d you hear that?"

"My mother."

"Sounds like a pretty sad thing to go tellin a kid. What happened to your mother?"

"She was killed."

"I’m sorry to hear that," said Clancy, quickly. "What about your dad?"

"He was killed, too."

The old man’s frown turned into a squinty eyed stare. "By these people that’s after you?"

Kira nodded, wondering if she should try explaining that Grigs weren’t people. She didn’t think the
Empty-eyed-man
was really people, either.

"I’ll be frizzle frazzled," said Clancy, shaking his head. "What the dickens have you gotten yourselves into?"         

Suddenly Jen’s head jerked, and Kira held her breath. She could have sworn she heard a faint clicking, like the grinding of teeth.

"What’s the matter?" asked Clancy.

Kira placed a finger across her lips and begged the old man with her eyes to keep silent. Clancy nodded, peering into the forest himself, but no evil, skull-like face appeared there. No Grig showed one of their black, round, toothy
faces
.

Kira slipped closer to the old man and whispered. "I think it’s time to hide."

He rose shakily to his feet, letting her lead the way into the thicker trees behind them. Now she could definitely hear the clicking from the forest on the other side of the fire.

"What is that?" he whispered.

"Grigs."

"Huh?"       

She was as terrified as she’d been when the show was attacked, but this time she had the intention not of hiding, but of drawing the beasts away from Clancy. It was the least she could do for him for befriending them. Fear and resolve warred within her.

"Stay here," she said, turning to take Jen’s hand. "We’ll lead them away."

"Oh, no," he said. "I may be a feeble, old man, but I ain’t about to leave a woman and a little girl to take care of me. Now you come on."

Kira sighed, knowing in her heart that they had only moments to act and no time to waste arguing. She gave Jen a plaintive look, and Jen nodded, grabbing Clancy by the shoulders and sitting him forcefully down on his butt on the forest floor. Kira leaned into his face, resting her own hands where Jen’s had just been.

"Don’t come out of here until daylight."

She turned to hurry away with Jen before the old man could scramble to his feet again.

Chapter 12

Kira and Jen were creeping through the woods toward the tracks when Kira glanced over her shoulder and saw the first Grig, sniffing the ground noisily. Her breath caught in her throat.

The creature was blacker than any of the shadows of the forest, and its wide mouth glistened with dagger-pointed teeth. Its bright red eyes glowed hotly, and it was prowling toward the area where Clancy hid. Another Grig appeared suddenly beside it, snuffling and clicking its teeth.