Disembodied Bones (58 page)

Leonie’s resolve strengthened. Elan was
inching his way around the pit. She thought he was about to pass
the corner where the cement cap rested. “What about this one? It
seems…apt. What has two eyes and cannot see?”

“A commentary, Leonie?” Elan laughed cruelly.
“From the woman who refuses to find lost children when she plainly
has a gift that no one else has. I’d said, in the circumstances,
you’re the one who’s blind.”

Leonie made a loud buzzer sound. “That’s one,
Elan. Two more strikes and you’re out. Remember, tick-tock. There’s
a time limit.”

His foot hit the block and the cap shivered
in place.

She shifted in place. He took another step
and she shoved the block and tackle on its arm with all the force
she could muster. The chain rattled fiercely and the arm moved
effortlessly. Elan let out a pained shout as it connected with him.
A second after the block and tackle hit the other side of the wall
with a loud clank. It rebounded and Leonie stopped it with her
hand.

Leonie was still. She hoped that she had
knocked him unconscious at the very least. She began to work her
way as silently as she could toward where he was. Perhaps she could
find the flashlight and see what she’d accomplished. Her fingers
fumbled for the cement cap and she felt the edges with her bloodied
digits. A moment later she found Elan. He was lying beside the cap
and his breathing was shallow. She stifled her fear and searched
him. The flashlight was sticking out of his back pants pocket.
Pulling it out, she made to back up. She flicked the light on and
pointed it back at Elan.

His hand suddenly clutched at her ankle. It
was another wretched déjà vu, the very moment when Whitechapel had
grasped her ankle as they would have escaped into the attic. Leonie
didn’t hesitate as she swung the heavy flashlight at his arm. It
produced another loud howl from Elan as it collided with his flesh.
He let go of her ankle and she twisted away, the flashlight flew
away and cracked against the wall, but the light remained on,
showing all.

Then Leonie tripped over her own feet and
fell hard. She felt empty air and knew that her head and shoulders
were above the pit where Elan intended on leaving her. She gasped
as he fumbled for her. His strong fingers grasped her waist and
yanked her toward him. He was snarling to her, “What has two eyes
and cannot see, Leonie? Another riddle that dear old Monroe missed
out on. Come on, honey. You can tell me.” He rolled over onto her
and she began to struggle in earnest. His eyes were like
hate-filled black holes in his pale face. “I hated those goddamned
riddles. And I hated you. Never a thought in your pretty head for
who else might have suffered. Never an inkling that someone else
might have been still alive.”

Just as his right hand closed over Leonie’s
throat, she screamed, “You weren’t missed!”

Elan began to strangle her and she attempted
to throw her limbs up in an effort to dislodge him from on top of
her. He easily evaded her thrashing knees and flailing arms and
forced more of his weight down on her.

Leonie brought her hand up and clawed at his
eyes with her fingernails. Elan reared his body up to evade her
hands but she followed him, gritting her teeth, ignoring the
squeezing, unbearable pressure of his fingers. He yelled with pain
and let go. She rolled to the side and shoved him with both hands,
pain shrieking up her arm from her broken thumb. Elan went over
heavily, falling onto the cement lid.

Leonie rolled again, so that her legs faced
him, and kicked him solidly in the face. Then she frantically
kicked again, trying to gasp for air as she prevented Elan from
strangling her again, and something groaned. She thought it was
Elan, but he made a choked noise that belied his abrupt fear. She
didn’t understand but there was a rumble of noise as the cement cap
shifted. Leonie kicked it again and suddenly it fell over the edge
of the pit and took Elan with it. There was a tremendous splash and
a hoarse scream.

She was alone and Elan was gone. The
precariously balanced cement cap had overbalanced with the force of
Elan’s weight and her kicking. Leonie scrambled for the flashlight
and stopped as she picked it up in her hand.

Elan was making a sound that didn’t quite
sound human.

Five short steps later she stood above the
little opening to the pit and saw that Elan was trapped again. The
cement cap had tilted, broken and pinned his legs under them. He
was lying on his back in almost two feet of water. Leonie’s mouth
opened in shock as his eyes shot up and he gazed at her with a
glassy look.

“What’s the answer, Leonie?”

“What?” she murmured in shock. The water was
up to his chest and she could tell it was rising. If she didn’t
shut off the water somehow, he would drown. The block and tackle
wouldn’t reach into the pit. It had been designed to only lower the
lid into place.

“What has two eyes and cannot see?” Elan said
plainly, his eyes glazed in pain. Her eyes flickered and she saw
that his legs were crushed by the weight of the cement.

“Does it matter, Elan?” she said faintly and
jerked when he laughed cynically below her.

“Is there a water main, Elan? I’ll shut off
the water,” Leonie said.

“You shorted out the electricity, Leonie,” he
answered with pained amusement. “I’ll die first. Not so badly as it
turns out. Another few minutes and I won’t be able to hold my head
above the water. But you,” he gurgled in visceral enjoyment,
“you’re trapped like I was. A just end for you.”

Leonie felt a heavy burden of fear leave her
body in a wave. Somewhere above her was Gideon. He was so close he
could almost reach out and touch her. “I’ll help you live,
Elan.”

“If,” he gritted out harshly, “you come into
this pit, I’ll finish what I started, Leonie. So if you want to
breathe a little longer, stay where you are.”

“
Dieu
,” she swore. “You can live,
Elan. You don’t have to die. I can-”

The water reached his chin and he spit out a
mouthful. “Don’t. Don’t, you stupid cow. I’m not your friend. I’m
not a little child to be rescued.” The level of water reached his
mouth. His last gurgling words were, “I choose
this
.”

Leonie turned away before the water reached
Elan’s nose. The horrid gurgling started and she grieved for the
child that Elan had once been, the man he could have become if he
had been able to free himself from the past.

Then all sounds were gone, and there was
someone else there. It was someone warm, someone familiar, and
someone accepting.
Gideon? You’re going to have to dig. Do you
hear me?
An aching pain instantly assailed her, but she stamped
it back and smiled when Gideon’s amazed response immediately came
to her.

Leonie, oh thank God
. There was a
hesitation.
Dig? You’re in the old storm cellar. Got you. Is
Keefe…?

She used the flashlight to find the pit with
the imbedded glass in it and looked down to see a still unconscious
child curled against the wall. Carefully Leonie lifted him out with
her injured hands and cuddled him up to her side as she lay against
the cement block wall. She checked his pulse and nodded. The fever
doesn’t seem so bad now.
He’s okay. Just sleeping.

We’ll get something. A tractor.
Something.

Something,
she agreed tiredly.

-

What has two eyes and cannot see?

A blind man.

Saturday, September 21st - Unknown, Louisiana

I never was, am always to be,

No one ever saw me, nor ever will,

And yet I am the confidence of all,

To live and breathe on this terrestrial ball.

What am I?

Gideon had the appearance of a shell-shocked
soldier back from the wars. His mouth was open and Leonie could
tell he wasn’t sure what to say. Finally he turned to her and said,
“They’re all like that? Is that why you invited me?”

Leonie nodded. “Most of them. Some are
stronger than others. Some have slightly different abilities.” She
let a smile curve her lips and glanced down at the cast on her left
hand. Surgery had been the only way to repair the thumb and now she
had a little metal rod in there.

Gideon blinked. He had caught the
thought.

There was a little marble bench in the shade
of a magnolia tree. Leonie went to it and sat down. She looked at
Gideon pulling at the tie and said, “Why don’t you just take it
off,
cher
?”

Gideon looked at her oddly. His hair was all
combed neatly and he was wearing a pleasant dark blue suit with a
white shirt and a red tie. She thought that he looked very
handsome. He loosened the tie with one hand and rested against a
tall gravestone.

“Some wedding,” he said. If he turned his
head he could see the lovely small church on the side of the
cemetery. People were still streaming out and several were
raucously tying aluminum cans to the back of the groom’s truck. “It
felt like half of them were staring at me. And the other half was
thinking about me.”

Leonie straightened up. It was an old
friend’s wedding, one of the few family members who had never
judged Leonie. “It’s new to me, too. I caught thoughts about all
kinds of things
. ‘Anna’s wedding dress belonged to Gabriel’s
grandmother.’ ‘Emile partied a little too hard at his bachelor
bash.’ ‘Leonie looks a little skinny.’ ‘The new one is awfully
clever for an outsider.’
All kinds of thoughts. My
maman
is most disconcerted.”

Gideon folded his arms over his chest. “You
seem to like that.”

“I do.”

“I wanted to tell you something,” Gideon said
reluctantly. “Before I left Buffalo Creek yesterday, Scott shared
something he wanted to tell you. But I thought he shouldn’t. I
didn’t want it to ruin the wedding for you.” His cheeks were
flushed. “I guess I kept it out my mind successfully.”

“What?”

“They found the house you were in. Not far
away from the barn and the maze you were in, purchased another a
third corporation’s name.” He paused. “I can’t believe it took them
ten hours of digging to get you out. They found the door days
later.” Gideon diligently studied a gravestone in front of him.
“And your car was in some deep woods a few miles from my house.
Torched, I’m afraid. Not much left of it.”

Leonie shrugged lightly. “And his
mother?”

“Yes, Amanda Dolby, just like you said. In
the attic with her throat cut. Dead about a year. They put the date
of her death, the day she vanished from her home in Bossier
City.”

She looked at the long-healed cuts on her
fingers and palm. They were thin red lines that would fade into
whiteness as time passed. Not as painful as the thumb, of course.
The other wound in her thigh had healed quickly as well. After the
surgery and rampant inquisition of police and authorities, Leonie
had fled to the comfort of her mother, and oddly, there was less
acrimony from the family than there had been before.

“Why do you think there’s less now?” Gideon
asked quietly, having caught her thoughts.

“I guess because I’m more like them, although
they tease me about my Texan accent.” She smiled haltingly at him
and he blinked again.

“There’s more,” he said. “I guess Scott
doesn’t have a doubt about you now. He got some lady from Dallas to
come down to the Trinity River bluff where you said Jay
Harkenrider’s body was located. She has a cadaver dog that’s pretty
effective. The dog alerted on the fire pit. The little boy’s body
was there all the time, buried deep under a ring of stones. They
had to use a bull dozer to get to him.”

Leonie took a deep breath. “ Oh,
Dieu.
His poor, poor mother.”

He moved then and sat beside her, taking her
right hand in his. He patted it awkwardly. “They’ll do DNA tests,
just like they will on Amanda Dolby and Elan Carter. Just to make
sure.”

Leonie nodded and looked at their paired
hands. “And Keefe? How’s your nephew?”

“He’s fine. He remembers a man coming into
his bedroom and threatening his parents and that’s pretty much it.
No nightmares. Like you, no residual effects from that medication.
His father and mother, my little sister, have him locked up like a
novice nun in a convent. He’ll be lucky if he gets to go outside by
himself when he’s thirty-five.” Gideon smiled to himself. “He got
his parents to agree to move to a house where they could keep his
dog in their backyard. Protection. He’s got a Saint Bernard with
paws the size of pie plates. And also, a damned good security
system.”

There was some cheerful yelling as the happy
couple came out of the church and a group of people threw bird
seeds and rose petals at them. The bride and groom ducked and
rushed to the truck where Leonie’s old friend paused to look
daggers at the group responsible for tying three dozen cans to his
back bumper. Leonie smiled at them. “She’s half an outsider, you
know.”

“I know.” Gideon nodded. “I heard it. They
like her though.”

Leonie stood up and brought him with her.
“Come on, I’ll show you something really interesting.” She led him
into the cemetery to the middle part of it where Spanish moss hung
like cobwebs from ancient oaks. They followed a worn trail that led
up a gentle ascent.

When she stopped, they were standing in the
highest part of the cemetery and Gideon could see the vast expanse
of Twilight Lake stretching away. He was captured by the sight that
he stopped to stare at it. “It’s so black,” he said, surprised by
his sudden inability to find adjectives. “I have a hard time
looking away from it.”

She looked out at the lake and thought about
what he’d said. “Lake People have an affinity for it. It’s in their
blood. We always come back.” Leonie pointed at a gravestone. “Look,
my ancestor, Lisette Simoneaud. She’s the one I told you
about.”