The Gingerbread Boy

The Gingerbread Boy

by Lori Lapekes

Published by Astraea Press

www.astreaeapress.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

THE GINGERBREAD BOY

Copyright © 2013 LORI LAPEKES

ISBN 978-1-62135-164-1

Cover Art Designed by For the Muse Designs

I dedicate this book in the memory of one of the kindest souls I’ve ever known, Mr. Paul Ferner (Esquire)

PART ONE

Chapter One

Catherine doubted the stale cheese curl could adequately punch a creepy stranger in the eye. But what felt like a dime, a crumpled ticket for a campus meal, and that stale, pointed cheese curl were all she could scrape out of her coat pocket. And unfortunately, the footsteps down the otherwise deserted sidewalk behind her were getting nerve-wrackingly closer.

She glanced back at the stranger behind her as branches swung above her like bony fingers in the wind. Snowflakes spiraled before the tall form in a long dark coat. She noticed a splash of red near the head. A scarf? A hat? Catherine couldn’t be sure. As her deep brown hair billowed past her face, she turned her head forward, and forced her legs to move faster. Stiffening her shoulders in what she hoped appeared a confident manner she lifted her chin, praying she was wrong about this man following her. It couldn’t be her old boyfriend, Calvin, stalking her. Please, not that monster.

Breathe slowly.
Feel the air rushing in and out of your lungs. Be realistic. Calvin is hundreds of miles away. Y
et she winced as the memory of the breakup with that cruel man rushed back to her, and angrily pushed those thoughts aside. What a revolting thing to have running around in her head.

Swish… crunch. The footsteps were growing closer. Matching her own.

How had she ended up this far from campus anyway? She loved the MSU campus with its sprawling, timeless beauty. She could have taken a long walk anywhere there, but she’d had to do something different. Walk in a surrounding neighborhood. Why hadn’t she looked back a few times in her wanderings over these unfamiliar sidewalks on this get-out-of-town stroll past all these dark-windowed houses? The noise, shouting and general mayhem surrounding the Michigan State win still hurt her head; it seemed every house near or around East Lansing’s M.A.C. Avenue was partying. The throng of voices shouting “State! State! State!” still throbbed in her ears. But no one seemed to be celebrating in that area of town, as she’d originally hoped. There was no one around at all. No one except one strange man following her, that was.

“I should confront the stalker, I’ve done it before,” Catherine muttered, balling her hands into fists. She stared down at the snow-powdered sidewalk sliding beneath her feet. Then, looking up, hope stirred in her. The sidewalk took a bend around a massive shrub that might temporarily shield her from the stranger’s view. Could she simply hide from him? It seemed a much more appealing alternative than confronting him with nothing except a stale cheese curl.

Catherine scurried around the shrub, and then spotted an even better shelter, a thick-trunked maple tree near the road. Noticing that the sidewalk wound around another corner not far ahead, she hurried to the far side of the tree, pressed back against the rough bark, and held her breath. Her skin tingled. Maybe the stranger would walk on, out of sight, not realizing he’d passed her. She stared at the road only a few feet in front of her. No tire tracks broke the powdery snow. Didn’t anybody ever drive down this street? Her heart lurched as a thought struck her.
Had she left footprints
? There was half an inch of snow on the ground! With a gasp she pressed tighter against the tree, feeling the bark jabbing into her back, too afraid to peer around the trunk.

Silence. Catherine held her breath. She listened for the sound of his boots, but could hear nothing beyond the relentless throbbing of her heartbeat in her ears. Moments passed. Summoning frozen muscles to move, she edged farther around the tree, careful not to trip on the slippery roots poking above the snow. Snowflakes spun in the streetlight as she contemplated her predicament. Maybe the stranger had passed already. Flattened against the enormous tree trunk, she wasn’t able to tell where he went. How many minutes had gone by? It seemed it’d been enough time to let the man walk past, especially if he’d merely been an innocent local on some errand, which he probably was. Of course he was! Silly her. What a dummy.

Catherine closed her eyes, her heart slowing in relief. She removed her stiffened hands from the icy bark behind her and cradled her fingers for warmth. What a fool she’d been. So afraid, and of what? Probably of nothing. When her heart stopped racing she slowly opened her eyes…

…to see the man standing directly in front of her.

Catherine’s leg sprung out like a lever and she kicked him in the kneecap. He backed in surprise, slipped, and then fell. Catherine turned to run, but in her haste, tripped on the tree roots. Her arms pin-wheeled in the air, and she slammed to the ground a few feet from him. She prepared to scamper back on all fours, to kick, to bite, anything in defense until she looked into the man’s face.

This wasn’t Calvin coming back to torment her, just a heavily bundled man, rubbing his kneecap, and staring at her with dark, almond-shaped eyes. A cap was pulled down over much of his forehead, and a red scarf obscured his face from the nose down. The man reached up with one hand and loosened his scarf enough to speak.

“Does this mean we’ve fallen for each other?”

Catherine’s fear ebbed, but only slightly. “Why did you sneak up on me like that?” she blustered. “I could have done a lot more damage. I could have…”

“I was too close to you for a kick that high.”

“My knee would have done the job!”

The man shrugged, and then released his own knee to sit back and look at her. From the crinkling around his eyes, Catherine sensed he was smiling behind the scarf.

“You think this is funny?” she gasped, her mind still spinning with thoughts of escape. “Why were you following me like that!”

His voice was gentle. “I was afraid you’d think I was following you. But I wasn’t.”

Catherine let that statement fall flat. “So why did you sneak up in front of me just now? Where did you come from?”

“The man raised his eyes and pointed a finger toward the sky. “From a distant galaxy, far, far away.”

Catherine smirked and scooted back in the snow, feeling dampness seeping through her backside. “This is embarrassing,” she mumbled, creeping backward, waiting for a chance to lurch to her feet and run.

The man shrugged. “Don’t worry. No one saw us.” He paused, then, “You know, I was in a bowling alley one day, and saw a pair of pantyhose fall out of a woman’s slacks and land in the middle of the alley. Probably caught in the dryer from static cling
.
Now
that
had to be embarrassing.”

Catherine raised her eyebrows at the nonchalant manner in which the man had just stated such a peculiar thing. Her lips begged to tug upward at the picture forming in her mind, but she forced her countenance to remain grim. “Don’t you get embarrassed?” she asked, still inching backward, backward…

Again, he shrugged, seeming to be thinking. “When I was younger, a store owner caught me as I twisted the lid off of a peanut butter jar to drop a rubber spider inside. I was a little embarrassed that day. And a lot sore when my mother got after me.”

She couldn’t stop it. Catherine’s mouth tipped in a slight grin, but she refused to humor him with any more questions. She peered at him, trying to guess this jokester’s age, but it was hard to tell in the dark with so much of his face obscured. She wondered if he was also an MSU student, and what he was doing walking around this far from East Lansing, like she was.

He’s a smooth-talking serial killer,
came her brother Tony’s voice in her mind all of a sudden.
He wants to get to know his victims before he attacks.
Because Tony’s voice jarred into in her mind so often, Catherine wondered if she had any consciousness left of her own. She shook her head as if to scatter the thoughts.

“What does your sweatshirt say?” the man suddenly asked, and Catherine found him gazing at her chest. Her cheeks started to burn until she realized that the buttons on her coat had popped loose when she fell, revealing the words. The stranger read the sentence out loud. “Real doctors treat more than one species.” He paused, and settled back a little lower in the snow. “What year veterinary medicine are you in?”

“First year.”

“Undergrad?”

“No. This is the grueling real thing.”

They stared at each other a few more moments as Catherine’s backside began to prickle from the cold. “Are you a student?” she asked, shifting her weight, surprised that she was no longer eager to run. If this man was a lunatic, he was an interesting one.

He shook his head. “No, I live in the area.” He pulled his knees up and clasped his hands around them, and Catherine was surprised at his graceful, long fingers. Hands much too graceful to strangle or harm someone…she hoped.

Suddenly he was holding a hand out to her.

“I’m Daniel,” he said.

She stared at his hand, and stiffened. Although it appeared Daniel wasn’t dangerous, she realized many women, including herself, had been charmed by monsters in disguise and were later attacked or worse.

“I’m Catherine. Catherine with a ‘C,’” she finally replied.

“Greetings, Catherine with a ‘C,” Daniel said. “Are you called Catherine or Cathy?”

“Catherine is fine, although friends sometimes call me Cathy.” She paused a moment, wondering what to say, then, “Do you prefer to be called Dan, or Danny?”

“I like Daniel. My full name. Sounds respectable.”

“I see. Respectable.” They quickly shook hands. And were quiet once again.

Finally Daniel cocked an eyebrow at her. “Is your butt as numb as mine is?”

Catherine raised her eyebrows. “It must be. I’d forgotten I had one.”

Daniel offered his hand again. As she took it, he rose to his feet and pulled her up with him. She fought the notion to turn and run as he released her hand and began to brush the snow off of his clothes. Where was there to run to?

“Are you all right?” he asked, “That was a pretty hard fall.”

“I’m fine. You seem to be okay, too, considering the kick, and the cold.”

“Speaking of cold, it’s getting worse by the minute,” said Daniel. “It seems too early in the season for this. Maybe you should button your coat back up.”

Catherine buttoned it with cold, unresponsive fingers. She felt awkward, like a toddler trying to clasp her jacket for the first time.

“Don’t feel bad,” Daniel said, slipping his own hands deep inside his coat pockets, “I have that problem every day.”

There was a thoughtful silence, and Catherine wondered what he meant by that, but continued with her task. When she had buttoned her coat at last, Daniel sighed and turned to leave. “Time to carry on,” he said. “I really wasn’t following you deliberately,” he added, turning his head back toward her as he began to walk away. “Be careful out there.”

“So long,” Catherine called after him, watching him shrink into a blur in the darkness behind gently falling snow. Her eyebrows knitted together. Something seemed wrong. A sinking sensation filled her chest. Almost a longing. But how could that be? He was only a
man
, a “filthy abomination,” according to her ancient friend, Hazel VanHoofstryver. Yet she and Daniel had had a conversation. They knew each other’s names. There was a lingering feeling of unfinished business.

She was tempted to call out to him but what in the world would she yell? She should just forget about him, and go on with her stroll as she’d planned all along. Forget about the stranger from a distant galaxy.

Catherine was almost ready to walk in the opposite direction when she saw Daniel’s snow-shrouded figure pitch forward and crumple on the sidewalk. She gasped and hurried toward him. In seconds she was standing above his motionless form. She reached down to shake him. “Daniel! Are you all right?”

He spoke from beneath the crook of his arm. “My knee,” he moaned. “It gave out on me. I think your kick did more damage than I realized.”

Catherine’s mind spun. How hard had she kicked him? She glanced down at her pointed, leather boots darkened from the snow. Weapons, those things!

Daniel worked himself into a sitting position, clutching the injured leg. His face twisted in a grimace.