Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection (87 page)

C
HAPTER 17

I
n Sand Creek, Tricia Carpenter sat on the wooden seat of an ancient homemade swing set in the backyard of her grandparent’s home. Her thin smile and dimples seemed permanent on her face. She didn’t mind the baking sun so much under the protective branches of the old walnut tree with a light breeze from the south.

Pearl and Eldon Bumfield were inside, trying to stay cool with open windows and seven fans of various types circulating the stale air. Every five minutes, Grammy Pearl would appear in the kitchen window and wave, and Tricia would wave back.

She sat on the swing with both arms looped around the side chains, holding her most prized possession, Raggedy Ann, by the hands. She swung back and forth, toeing the dust with well-worn, white sneakers.

She had spent hours in that same swing this past summer, discussing important issues with her little homemade friend. Grammy Pearl and Grandy Eldon were nice, and she loved them very much, but they didn’t seem to understand her quite like Raggedy Ann did.

The little girl felt a belch coming on and opened her mouth wide. A burp that could have come as easily from a hamster came out. It was nothing like the window rattling one that exploded from Grandy’s gullet during lunch not thirty minutes earlier.

With her best Shirley Temple,
Good Ship Lollipop
, deep voice she reported, “Not bad manners, just good beer!”

Raggedy Ann and Tricia had been talking about a lot of things today. They had talked about how well Tricia had helped Grammy fix lunch. They had talked about that silly Jimmy Lawrence, who lived next door and was always showing off. They had talked about Tony Parker, the nice man who came and got rid of the bad skunk, rescued the kitten and called her cutie and Raggedy Ann pretty. They had talked about Tricia’s mama and what it would be like to live in Denver when she finally found a job and sent for her. They had talked about Tricia’s father and how much fun they had when she saw him last, more than two months ago, and they went to a Kansas City Royals ball game, and how great the cotton candy was. And they had even talked about Dawg and how he acted much happier since Grandy brought him back from the Doctor’s office and how he wasn’t itchin’ as much as he was before.

As Tricia looked up to see Grammy wave from the kitchen window for the fifth time, she noticed a white van driving into town. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence to see someone drive into town but neither was it something that happened without notice in a town the size of Sand Creek. She waved back to her grandmother then broke out in song.

“Ring around the rosy,” she started singing and made Raggedy Ann dance on her knees as she watched the white van drive past the first house. “Pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, all fall down!” The last part of the song made Tricia frown as she remembered playing ring around the rosy with Jimmy Lawrence. When they came to the
all fall down
part, Jimmy had pushed her down hard, and it had hurt. It had jarred her teeth and hurt her bottom. She’d cried and run away from him, screaming that she would never play with him again.

Tricia stopped singing. Something about the van driving down the street gave her goose bumps. She didn’t know what it was, but something made her feel uneasy. But it wasn’t really the van; it was the driver. He had rolled his window down and leaned his head out as he drove very slowly. He was a dark man with black hair, and he had a patch covering one eye like a pirate.

Tricia shivered. The man who looked like a pirate had something in his mouth. It was shiny, and he made his cheeks puff out as if he blew a whistle, but there was no whistle sound.

Dogs started barking.

The dogs in Sand Creek always barked. They barked during the day and in the middle of the night. They barked when they saw a rabbit or a cat. They barked when they
thought
they saw a rabbit or a cat. They barked when they
wanted
to see a rabbit or a cat. One would start barking, then they would all join in like a small church’s choir where few had the talent to sing, but all had the enthusiasm.

Within a minute, there wasn’t only barking, but also growling. Screams and shouts filled the air. People cried.

She began to worry. Something was wrong.

She slipped from the swing and started toward the back door of the house. The barking and yelling and growling and screaming continued, now, seeming to come from all eight of the small town’s houses.

When she realized screaming even came from Grammy and Grandy’s house, she stopped. They yelled and cussed. She couldn’t understand what they said, but they sounded upset. She had heard similar voices when her daddy and mommy were still married. It had gotten especially bad just before she and her mommy had moved out. It had been nearly as bad as what came from Grammy and Grandy’s right now.

Tricia decided not to go in the back way but, instead, go around to the front. She was curious about what the pirate in the white van was doing, anyway. She tiptoed as if someone might be able to hear tiny soft footsteps in the Bermuda grass over the commotion going on all over town. She walked between her grandparent’s house and the five-foot, dog-eared cedar fence that surrounded the Lawrence’s yard.

Growling came from nearby. Very loud and angry growling erupted from behind the Lawrence’s fence. She stopped and watched just six feet away. The Lawrences had a dog. Its name was Butch, a big, brown bulldog. But this didn’t sound like Butch. She had never heard him growl with such fervor. She clutched Raggedy Ann tight with both hands and faced the fence. Running feet. A lot of very frantic running came toward Tricia from the opposite side of the fence. She could see motion between the large, twelve-inch slats.

Something crashed against the boards. Tricia’s eyes widened. She froze, too scared to move. An arm, covered in streams of red, flung over the top of the fence, directly in front of her. A face appeared, also bloody—Jimmy Lawrence’s face.

“Tricia—
ugh, ugh
. Help me!” he pleaded, looking down at her. He seemed to be straining, and Tricia could see a brown shape wriggling on the other side of the fence. It growled. Butch.

Fear held Tricia’s body. She could do nothing but stare. The boy winced and gasped. With a look of terror, he fell back behind the fence.

“Ashes, ashes. All fall down,” Tricia whispered, without intending to.

She could see the boy and the dog struggling on the other side. A lot of red and a lot of brown. She took two steps backward, turned and ran toward the front of her grandparent’s house.

CHAPTER 18

T
he high sun attacked the earth with fierce heat as the children at the Cooper Elementary School in Wichita finished their lunches. The first day of school was hotter than forecasted and almost called off due to the over-one-hundred-degree temperature and high humidity. Hope of a cold front, moving through in the early afternoon, still existed, but no hint of it had come yet.

The children frolicked behind the old brick schoolhouse on the sand playground. The L-shaped school building created two sides of a rectangle, covering half of the block. A wrought iron fence with brick posts every fifteen feet made up the other two sides. Sidewalks wide enough to allow a large truck to pass led out onto the street at each end between the fence and the building, on the opposite corners. In view through the fence on the south side was a park with a wading pool, an 1880 vintage locomotive, a cannon from the Civil War and numerous trees, mostly pine.

Nicholas Parker stood in the middle of the playground amidst the ruckus. Dozens of other kids ran and played, screamed and yelled, defying the heat. Nick had his hands in his pockets and kicked at the sand as he talked with a little girl with dark brown hair, cut in Dutch-boy style, and a face with a generous sprinkling of freckles.

A larger boy two years older with sandy-blond hair bumped into Nick, knocking him off balance, and he caught himself with one hand.

“Hey, Parker, I hear your dad is a chicken shit!” the bigger boy said.

Nicholas got up immediately with his fists balled and bottom lip protruding.

“He is not a chicken shit, Haskins!” Nick said.

“Yeah, he is. He’s a chicken, and he isn’t worth a shit! My dad says so,” the older boy insisted. “And that monster, Jezebel, is going to eat him!”

“No, he’s not, and there ain’t no monster gonna eat him!” Nick said. “And you’re father’s a dweeb! And my dad says he’s uh asshole, a big asshole!”

“Oh, yeah! Well, my dad can kick your dad’s ass, and I can kick your ass, and the monster’s gonna eat you, too!” the Haskins boy said and scuffed the ground twice. The sand sprayed against Nick’s blue jeans.

The forecasted cold front came upon them suddenly and without warning. The wind gusted violently. It blew so hard the children staggered. Sand blew into the Haskins boy’s face. As the rude bully rubbed his eyes, Nick saw the opportunity at hand and kicked him in the shin. With the bigger boy holding onto his own leg, Nick kicked him again, this time in the groin, and the kid fell to the ground in the swirling sand. Nick stood over him with both fists armed at his sides. The Haskins boy lay on the ground for a moment then jumped up and ran away.

“Wow!” the little girl said, revealing a large gap in her open smile where her two front teeth used to be. “You just beat up a third grader. Wow!”

Nick said nothing. He stood and watched Haskins until he lost him in the blowing sand and dust and playing schoolmates.

The little girl took a step closer and asked boldly, “You want to get married?”

He looked at her, puzzled.
Girls are so weird
. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Come on, it’s easy. It’ll be fun. Ple-ease. Then we can get divorced if you want.”

“No, I don’t think we should.”

The chilled wind had already cooled the playground nearly twenty degrees, and Nick shivered.

“Kelly Becker and I got married, and he thought it was fun. Come on.”

“Well, what do I have to do?”

“We just hold hands and walk down an aisle and then dance,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“What about sex? We don’t have to have sex, do we?” Nick asked and shivered again.

“Of course not, silly,” the girl said with a chuckle. “Married people don’t have sex.”

“Yeah, well, what if someone sees? They’ll laugh at me.”

“Oh, no they won’t. People do it all the time. Don’t you watch TV?”

“Well, uh, where we gonna get married?”

“We can’t do it here, there’s no aisle,” she said, looking around. “We’ll have to do it over there.” She pointed to the wide concrete sidewalk between the school building and the fence.

The wind still blew hard, and Nick squinted to see where she pointed. He looked past, into the park. Something moved on the other side of the dusty playground. The little girl saw it, too. Something black. Something big. Moving from evergreen tree to evergreen tree. Moving toward the playground.

The little girl stared blankly for a second, then her eyes widened. She screamed with a deafening shrillness, “Ahhhhhh, Jezebel! It’s Jezebel!”

The entire playground of over-active children came to a stop amidst whispers of, “Jezebel. . . . Where…? Over there. . . . Jezebel. . . . Jezebel.”

The children’s individual screams melted together into a high-pitched siren as they ran off the playground toward the school door in a stampede. The teachers watched and craned their necks to see what caused the uproar.

Nick hadn’t moved. He stood alone in the middle of the playground, eyes fixed on the black object still moving closer every second. He thought about what the Haskins boy had said. His shiver turned into a strong shudder. He lost control, and his blue jeans began to darken, starting from the crotch and continuing down his left leg. He didn’t want to get eaten. He wanted to run, but all of his joints seemed locked. He could not move.

Jezebel had come for him,
to eat
him like the Haskins boy had said. He couldn’t see the monster’s eyes, but in his mind he could see them. They glowed angry and red, and her mouth was big and had teeth like a shark’s—like the monster from
Alien
. She slobbered and growled and wanted to
eat him
.

Nick saw his teacher, Miss Berry, herding the students inside. He wanted to run to her, but still his joints were locked. She looked back to the playground. The black thing in the park still approached through the dust and blowing sand. Miss Berry sprinted out to him, the sand swirling around her. She picked him up, and he gripped her tightly as she hustled back to the building. Nick’s fear would not allow him to look over her shoulder at what might be pursuing them.

*-*-*

Tony Parker had just arrived at the animal-control shelter when the call came in. Jack Simpson had left, and Parker pulled his truck into the garage stall to wash it down, and clean out the inside. The stall smelled medicinally clean. It did not have the antiseptic scent of a hospital but more of a heavy, pungent odor, common around livestock or a veterinary clinic.

Tommy Chin came out and grabbed him by the arm as he vacuumed out the back.

“Tony, trouble!” Chin yelled over the noise.

Parker took a couple of steps over to the wall and turned the vacuum cleaner off. “What’s up?”

“They think they’ve spotted Jezebel.”

“Where?”

“Cooper Elementary School.”

“My God! That’s Nick’s school!” Parker exclaimed. He threw the vacuum hose down and ran to the driver’s side of the truck.

Chin stepped back as Parker laid rubber on the damp concrete floor. The piercing squeal of the tires echoed through the stall, and the sweet smell of exhaust mixed with the bitter smell of burning rubber.

A gray haze now cloaked the sky, and dust and a light mist made the windshield of the truck a nearly opaque blur. The wind blew against the side of the truck making it difficult to manage, and a thin film of mud made the streets slick. Parker drove frantically with emergency lights on, yet few motorists seemed willing to concede.

“Come on, come on!” Parker yelled to an unyielding senior citizen in a large antique Buick in front of him.

He pounded the dash when the old woman came to a yellow light and stopped.

“Damn it! If you can’t drive that old battleship, keep it off the road!” he yelled and pulled around into the left turn lane.

The truck slid nearly sideways when Parker shoved the accelerator to the floorboard and sped through the intersection. Two cars, coming from opposing directions on the intersecting street, slid out of control and smashed into each other, narrowly missing the back end of the Jimmy. Parker regained control, but the left rear quarter panel of the truck bumped the left front fender of a Cadillac stopped at the light in the oncoming lane.

“Ah shit! I’m gonna catch hell for this,” he said aloud.

He picked up the microphone as he continued recklessly down the street. “AC One to dispatcher!”

“This is the dispatcher. Go ahead, AC One,” a woman’s voice that Parker didn’t recognize came back. There had been a number of new people hired this summer.

“There’s been an accident at the intersection of Twenty-first and Hillside. Better send an ambulance. There may be injuries.”

“Roger, AC One. Stay at the scene and assist the injured until emergency personnel arrive.”

“Sorry, I can’t. I am proceeding to an animal control emergency at present.”

“Please be advised that an injury auto accident takes priority, AC One.”

Parker reached over and turned his radio off. “Not this time!”

The schoolyard was deserted when Parker finally arrived. He jumped the curb and drove across the playground to the side door and slammed on the brakes. Springing out of the truck, he slipped and nearly fell on the loose sand covering the cement slab in front of the door. He hit the door hard with both hands, and swung it wide as he hustled in.

The hallway was full of children, huddled in groups, some of them still noticeably upset and sobbing. Parker spotted Nick with Miss Berry’s arm on his shoulder and ran to him. He dropped to his knees and grabbed Nick by the head with both hands. The fear still covered Nick’s chalky-white face. He could smell his hot, sweaty, urine-soaked clothes.

“Are you all right, Nicholas?”

Nick nodded slowly as tears flowed.

Parker pulled Nick’s head into his chest and hugged him firmly. “Thank God! Oh, thank God!”

Parker looked up at the young teacher, her face also filled with fear and uncertainty. “Is everyone okay?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Where is she?”

“In the park across the street.”

“Stay with him,” he instructed. “And keep everyone inside.”

Parker got up and hurried outside. He went to the back of the truck and pulled out the control stick. Looking across the playground into the park, he could see nothing except trees in the midst of the blowing dust and sand. He squinted to protect his eyes and trotted toward the park.

He searched slowly from tree to tree, cautiously holding the control stick like a pugil stick, ready to defend himself. He stepped around each tree, finding nothing. Nearly ready to give up, he scanned across the park one last time.

Movement behind one of the big, bushy evergreen trees ahead alerted him. Something black. Parker approached with a deer hunter’s attentiveness, moving closer to his prey. His heart pounded in his chest. He could feel it in the arteries in his neck. If it was Jezebel, the control stick would do him little good unless he caught her completely by surprise.

Parker edged to the side of the tree and paused. He swallowed. He took a deep breath. Eyes wide and teeth clenched, he leaped out, control stick at the ready.

Plastic. A black plastic tarp flirted with the wind. Most likely, it had been blown off a pickup load of tree limbs headed for the dump.

Parker whistled out the breath he’d been holding and jabbed the plastic with the stick. No, not plastic. This was rubberized canvas. It had a zipper. An empty body bag. A small piece of paper was safety-pinned to one end.
TP
was printed in big black letters.

Parker suddenly felt nauseous and feverish. He staggered, dizzy and off balance. What was wrong? It must be the flu, a summer cold. Maybe it was a little stress-induced high blood pressure. He had to regain his composure. He quickly scanned the area to ensure that he was alone.

There would be no way of telling if this had been what the children had seen. In many ways he was relieved, even though he desperately needed to catch the giant canine. If it had been Jezebel, it would have been almost as if she were stalking Parker and his family—like in the dreams. But considering the body bag and the initials again, maybe it wasn’t a
dog
tracking him down.

He picked up the body bag and rolled it up as he walked toward the school. He would tell them that what they’d seen was just a plastic tarp, blown off a load of trash, on its way to the dump.