The Gingerbread Boy (15 page)

It was just her and Beth. For the whole, long, tedious weekend.

The thought would have been even more ghastly if Catherine hadn’t been too swallowed in misery to care. Beth’s cruel words seemed so far away.

Suddenly Catherine pushed her chair from the table, got up and strode past Beth. She snatched her car keys off the counter and headed toward the door.

“Think the old bomb will start?” Beth taunted. “Think it’ll make it all the way to Daniel’s house? I doubt it.”

Catherine turned toward her. “How would you like me to report to the campus police that you put the same parking ticket on your windshield over and over?”

Beth frowned and narrowed her eyes as Catherine stalked out of the door.

****

Catherine’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as she pulled into Daniel’s driveway. No one was in sight as she drove up the hill to the garage. She turned off the engine and lowered her window.

She gazed solemnly at the house. Every drape was closed. It was so deserted she could hear the wind whispering in the pines. She smacked the steering wheel with her hand in frustration.

Where could Daniel be? How could he have not told he was going away?

Catherine lowered her face in her hands, forcing herself to breathe slowly, trying not to hyperventilate. She’d thought Daniel told her everything. His dreams, his fears, his tribulations. She now knew all about his father’s terrible death, she knew of the freak hunting accident that had taken his sister’s life, and how Daniel struggled to this day with the guilt of believing it was his fault. He’d told her so much, had opened up so completely.

So why not tell her if the group was touring out of town again?

“Daniel,
where are you?
” she sobbed. Then, with a sudden burst of courage she jerked open the car door and scrambled outside. She stalked to the garage window, cupped her hands over her eyes, and peered inside. She gasped when she saw the Corvette resting inside.

But Bruiser was gone.

Why take Bruiser, not the Corvette?

“Dummy,” said a voice in her mind.
“If they’re on tour, they’d need to lug equipment around.”

So. They probably
were
touring somewhere.

“But why didn’t you tell me?” Catherine cried out loud, stomping a foot in frustration.

The sound of a car’s engine broke the terrible silence of the countryside. Catherine spun in hopes of seeing a lumbering blue van sputtering up the driveway, but it was a yellow Mustang she recognized as belonging to the band’s drummer, Mitch.

The car pulled up next to hers, the engine died. Catherine watched numbly as Mitch and the frizzy-haired keyboard player nicknamed “Burr-Head” stepped out.

“Is Daniel here?” Mitch asked.

Catherine threw them a puzzled look. “You guys aren’t on tour?”

They stood silently, gazing at each other in wonder.

Finally Burr-Head broke the silence. “You mean, even
you
don’t know where Daniel is? We all assumed you two were together, getting hitched in Vegas or something.”

“What?” Catherine gasped, and the enormity of the situation struck her. “You two don’t know where he is either?”

They shook their heads, trading even more puzzled looks.

“He’s probably visiting his mom. He sometimes does that when he’s on a quest,” Mitch tried to reassure, but he didn’t sound as though he believed it himself.

“A quest?” Catherine asked. “When did you last see him?”

“Last week.” Burr-Head frowned. “Who knows what he was thinking about? That’s just Daniel, deep as a river… twice as murky.”

Catherine was filled with an even more uncomfortable terror.

Mitch stepped forward to twist a key into the garage door. “He’ll turn up, he
has
to. We can’t keep practicing without the lead singer, we have some big gigs coming up.”

Catherine snapped her fingers. “What about You-Hoo! Is he inside? Are you guys feeding him?”

“He’s gone.” Said Mitch, stepping into the garage, “That’s why I think this has to be planned.”

“It’s still weird,” Burr-Head added, stepping past Catherine to follow Mitch into the house. He turned back to look at her. “Don’t let Mitch fool you. This isn’t normal for Daniel. We found his cell inside, don’t know if he forgot it or left it on purpose. Why don’t you come on in, the other guys will be here soon. Maybe Daniel will show up, and we’ll all take great pleasure in pulverizing him.”

Catherine nodded, her hands twisting together in front of her.

Maybe he
would
show up. Maybe. If something didn’t happen soon, she was afraid the only thing besides Daniel that she’d lose would be her mind.

Chapter Twelve

The thundering voice was louder than ever this evening, but Hazel was determined to ignore it.

Maybe Eugene could use his phone to call thugs to stop her from leaving town, but he couldn’t get them to force her to keep scrambling after his every obnoxious whim.

“Get up here, woman!” he wailed, “You still owe me! You’ll owe me ‘til the day you die!”

Hazel winced. Did she still owe him? She wasn’t at all sure anymore. At one time guilt had tormented her. He was a paraplegic because he’d tripped over one of her cats and tumbled down a long flight of stairs – that much was true. She’d told herself a thousand times that that didn’t give him the right to turn her life into a prison. She should enforce some of the common sense she had always tried to drive into Catherine.

Catherine.

Sadness filled Hazel at the thought that she may have driven her young friend away with her own rantings and ravings. Catherine had met some supposedly wonderful young man, and all Hazel could do was warn her that he could still be vermin, then ignore that part of Catherine’s life. Hazel didn’t blame her for not writing as often.

Some friend Hazel was.

She needed to write Catherine and apologize. Before it was too late. She’d written a short note to tell Catherine that she was all right, and had just called from the bus station because she was excited that an old friend was visiting. That was a lie. Hazel had no friends. Eugene would not allow it, and Eugene’s spies were everywhere.

Hazel gazed down at the blank paper in front of her and lifted the pen.
How should she start this letter? Would Eugene’s thugs try and confiscate this, too?

As she began her first sentence, Eugene bellowed something so horrifying Hazel dropped her pen and froze in horror.

“Get up here, woman! I’ve finally gotten a hold of one of your cats again! Better get up here, fast!”

Hazel cringed. What could Eugene do to it this time?

She rose, trembling, and walked stiffly out of the den. Two cats trotted behind her, tails straight up in curiosity. She turned around and sternly reprimanded them. “No! Don’t follow.”

At the reprimand the cats backed in confusion, then split in separate directions and disappeared. Hazel breathed a little easier. At least those two were safe for now.

“Hurry, woman!” Eugene continued to shout in his gravelly voice. Hazel scurried through the house, scattering every cat she saw.

“You don’t have much time! Twenty seconds… nineteen… eighteen…”

By ten seconds, Hazel was at the foot of the enormous curved stairway and clutching the banister. Why was Eugene’s voice so clear behind his door? She clicked up several steps as the countdown continued.

“Five seconds… four seconds…”

He seemed not to be in his room, but in the hallway.

When Hazel reached a bend in the stairway she gasped and flattened back against the banister in terror.

Sitting at the top of the stairs like an obscene, bloated toad spilling over the sides of the wheelchair, sat Eugene. His eyes were black and without pupils. His white hair and beard draped filthily across his shoulders.

But that wasn’t the horrible part.

Hazel began to wheeze and threw her hand over her heart, gulping in tiny pockets of air. In Eugene’s lap was Cinder, with one end of Eugene’s bathrobe belt tied around her neck. Eugene’s mottled, sausage sized fingers were clasped around the struggling animal’s face, preventing it from crying out.

“See what you make me do?” Eugene said in a calm voice, a voice so calm it was eerie coming from him. “See what you
made
me do? This cat is going to hang.”

Hazel continued to choke for air. Eugene’s form wavered before her eyes, blurring into a gel of color
.
Then a sound like the rushing of water filled her ears and all strength left her legs. She crumpled onto the stairway and lay still.

All went silent.

Eugene loosened the grip on the traumatized cat just enough to peer through the railings at his wife. At once Cinder squeezed out of his grip, and a flurry of needle sharp claws and teeth slashed at her captor’s face before she jumped free. Eugene screamed and lurched forward to grab the animal, and all four hundred pounds of the bloated madman came off the chair. There was a splintering of wood, a wail of terror – and Eugene crashed through the shattered banister, baggy arms raised in horror.

He struck the marble floor in a terrific crash followed by an avalanche of broken railings, then all was breathlessly still in the VanHoofstryver household.

Still, that is, except for the nervous twitching of a cat’s tail high above the carnage, and the twitch of a smile from an old woman lying on the stairway.

Chapter Thirteen

Catherine came awake in a sudden sharpening of senses. She tensed.

What was that sound? Was it Beth?

No, the sound hadn’t been deliberate. It sounded like someone padding softly down the hallway outside her room. It could never be Beth. She wasn’t that conscientious. But she and Beth were the only two in the house.

Catherine’s muscles turned to stone. They were
supposed
to be the only two in the house.

Breathing thinly, Catherine willed her sleepy muscles to move. She turned silently toward the wall and wiggled out of the covers enough to drop to the floor where she lay wedged against the cool wall and the side of her bed. In horror she realized that she was trapped and if the intruder didn’t fall for her trick and believe she wasn’t in the room she was defenseless. Her only weapon, a can of pepper spray that she kept on her nightstand, was sitting on the other side of the double bed.

Catherine pressed her eyes shut and twisted as soundlessly as she could toward the opening under the bed, then opened them once more to stare into the gloom. Idiotically, she wondered if the opening of one’s eyes could make a revealing noise.

No don’t be crazy. Stay calm. Think, girl, think!
Maybe no one was actually in the house, anyway. No one coming to get her. The noise had just been the sounds of an old house settling, was all.

Catherine sucked in her breath, forced herself to peer beyond shapeless forms of junk stashed under her bed and looked toward her opened door. A silvery light cast from a night-light plugged into a hallway socket filtered into her room. There was nothing else in sight, just the dingy tan carpet, the dusty molding at the bottom of the walls, the wadded up form of a nylon sock she couldn’t find that morning. Nothing to be afraid of.

Well, she smirked, the dust bunnies coating the sock were a
little
frightening.

She took a deep breath, her heart finally slowing.

Had she imagined the sound?

She began to feel ridiculous pressed against the wall, her shoulder aching from being wedged against the thinning carpet. She looked at the dark shapes hulking below the springs under her bed… smelled dust webs. How could she have stashed so much junk under her bed, anyway? She didn’t even know what it all was. Books, boxes, old clothes. She’d always kept an outward appearance of being so neat
.
Maybe it took checking beneath a person’s bed to find out their true nature. Catherine allowed herself to smile at the thought. She found her mind wandering to what it might look like under Daniel’s bed. What discoveries could be there?

Daniel.
Where could he be?
Her heart ached at the thought.

Then, impossibly, a pair of sneakered feet moved into the doorway entrance.

Sneakers. Huge ones that seemed to glow. A man’s shoes. Instantly Catherine knew they could not belong to Daniel, Daniel always wore boots. Sneakers seemed difficult for him to lace for some reason. Then came the outline of a stranger’s legs silhouetted against the pale light.

Silently, the feet moved
.
Took one step toward the bed… then another.

Can’t he see that I’m not here?
Catherine’s mind screamed.

The feet took two more steps, and then were lost from view behind a box under the bed. Catherine’s nerves went taut against this malevolent presence, the monstrous silence. It took Herculean effort to remain still. Her mouth went dry.

What now?

Then the feet were backing away. She exhaled silently as the constriction in her chest lessened.

Get out! Get out, now!
Catherine thought frantically, her hands, crunched beneath her hips, balling into fists. Then the feet stopped. Catherine froze once more. Wouldn’t he just leave? Just turn around and leave!

Suddenly there was a clicking sound, and a bright light illuminated the room, stinging Catherine’s eyes. She shut them tightly, wincing. She blinked once or twice, adjusting to the light, certain the intruder could feel the force of her heartbeat vibrating through the floor. Then the feet were scurrying rapidly back and forth by her dresser, turning one way, then the other, no longer cautious. Then they stopped, and Catherine heard the scraping of her old dresser drawers being opened.

How dare he! Thief, rapist, no matter. Catherine had personal letters and poems from Daniel stashed in those drawers!

In rage, Catherine twisted silently into a position allowing her to get to her hands and knees. Slowly, her eyes burning with anger, she rose above the edge of the bed.