SHUDDERVILLE FOUR (3 page)

“I don’t care,” she hissed.

He leaned forward and said, “Sure, sure. You want to know where she is, right? Your little girl. You want all the details. Right? How all this started? What’s going on? Well, Sophie. I’ll tell you. If you’ll let me.”

She stared at him hopelessly. She didn’t believe him, but at the same time she was dying to find out what he knew. She held the gun steady but her arm was getting tired. “Go on,” she said.

“Estelle and I were married in 1955. I was twenty-six. She was twenty-three. What a cutie! She had these lively brown eyes and a funny, crooked smile… always with the jokes. We laughed a lot. Despite the tears. For ten years, we tried to have kids. For ten long years we tried. We wanted a whole passel. You know? Our own little F-Troop. But, ah, no such luck. Not for us. It put a strain on our marriage. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Turns out you need a healthy sperm and a healthy egg to conceive, and we thought we had plenty of both. But it wasn’t in the cards. Not for us.

“Eventually we gave up. When Estelle stopped marking her calendar with her ovulation date, it was a very sad day for us.” He poured himself another drink. “And so we moved on. Like they say in the movies—get on with your life.” He winked at her. “Anyway, Estelle tried to preoccupy herself in other ways. Meanwhile, my career was going well. I worked for a company called Lon-Gen. We studied things. Fascinating things. I’m a mathematician; I’m pretty good at it. They hired a quantum physicist in the early sixties, and he and I got along great. We worked on some projects together. This and that. But then one day, we discovered something… how can I put this?” His voice had fallen to a mere whisper. “Something remarkable.”

Sophie’s hands were trembling. She took a deep breath and tried to steady her nerves. She tried not to accidentally pull the trigger—not now. Not when he was about to reveal everything to her.

“Well, anyway, I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, I went home that very day and asked Estelle what she wanted more than anything else in the world. What was her fondest wish? I was flexing this newfound power of mine. She thought I was kidding around, you know? I was quite the jokester back then.”

Sophie’s nerves fluttered. Her stomach tensed. Her mouth tasted sour.

“But I told her—no, take this seriously, Estelle. And she confessed what she wanted. Babies, of course. Two kids. What are you thinking? I want babies, she said! A boy and a girl. A little devil and a little angel!” He gave Sophie a significant look, then paused to wipe his brow with his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. “She got pregnant the next day. Twins. We were delighted. We decided on the names. Bella and Teddy. We were over the moon. Pregnant at last. After all these years! It was a miracle. I immediately got to work turning the guest room into a nursery.

“But then, as you well know, wishes can take strange turns.” He licked his chapped lips. “Seven months later, Estelle went into premature labor. It happened so fast. Before I could call for help, our son came out. And as you’ve probably guessed, Sophie, he wasn’t a normal little boy. He was a little devil. Literally. He didn’t cry. His eyes were bloodshot and not entirely human. I could tell right away there was something terribly wrong with him. He growled and snapped at me. I had no choice but to put him out of his misery. He was slithering around on the floor, alive and powerful, kicking and having all these seizures or something… it was awful. Just awful. It was terrifying, Sophie. I had to kill him. I remember looking around for something and finally went outside and got an axe. But I had to do it. No question in my mind.

“And then, of course, there was Bella. Our little angel. I thought she was dead. Her eyes were fused shut, and she wasn’t breathing. She couldn’t have weighed more than a pound. I wrapped her in a dishtowel and put her in a shoebox and left her by the back door. I was going to bury her later on, along with her brother. But first I had to rush Estelle to the emergency room. I needed to save my wife, but she was already gone. She never woke up. The doctors told me she’d had a stroke. Died of complications. It knocked the stuffing out of me. I couldn’t believe she was gone. I begged them to do something, to bring her back. They were very patient and kind, but I had to face facts. She was gone.

“Suffice it to say, after Estelle passed away, I forgot all about the babies—they were already dead in my eyes. I was focused exclusively on my wife. I had to talk to the hospital staff and make funeral arrangements. By the time I got home, early the next morning, I didn’t notice the baby in the shoebox. I’d forgotten all about her. I went upstairs and collapsed. The doctors gave me something to sleep.

“Next morning, I was awakened by a faint, sweet cry. The cry of an angel. I couldn’t figure out what was making that noise, so I went downstairs and remembered the shoebox, and when I looked inside, I discovered she was alive—just barely.”

Sophie’s eyes narrowed, and she could feel her willpower and determination beginning to slacken. It was being sucked right out of her, and the more she listened to Mandelbaum’s story, the more twinges of pity and empathy she felt. She didn’t want to feel those things, but it was a losing battle.

“My little Bella,” he said faintly. “She looked like a newly hatched bird. She pushed out her arms and legs and turned herself over. That’s when I realized… what a little fighter she was.” His eyes glazed with awe and pride. “Her wings were the same length as her arms, but they were folded up against her back. You could see little feathers sprouting out of them. Anyway.” He sighed. “I couldn’t tell anyone about them—Teddy and Bella. Not a soul. It was too terrible. Too complicated. There were no birth certificates. No record they existed. So I kept her hidden, but I raised her like a normal child.”

Sophie’s face began to itch. Sweat beaded on her skin. “Where is she? What happened to her?”

“She disappeared one night when she was five years old.”

“Disappeared?”

“For the rest of my life, I’ve been wondering what happened to her. Where did she go? Did she fly away? Did somebody kidnap her? Maybe it was my fault? What do I know about raising kids? Especially little girls with wings?” He finished his glass of bourbon. “I hate stirring up old feelings. Makes my stomach hurt.”

Sophie hardened toward him. “So you don’t know who took her?” she asked skeptically. “You, the great Mandelbaum who grants people wishes?”

He shook his head slowly, as if to acknowledge that it was worse than that—he didn’t know anything. “I raised her for five years like a normal little girl. She couldn’t fly with those wings of hers. They were undeveloped. They flapped like useless appendages. She must’ve wandered off somewhere. I don’t know. I’ve been looking for her for years. She left the house in a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, and she never came back.”

“What did the police say?”

Mandelbaum shrugged. “Do you honestly think I’d call the police? After all that time when I’d kept her hidden from the world? How could I explain it? They’d lock me up and throw away the key. As far as everybody else was concerned, Bella didn’t exist.” He sighed. “She weighed next to nothing when she was born, did I tell you? I honestly doubted she’d make it through the night. I went out of town for baby formula and diapers. Finally, she started to grow a little. Two pounds. Three.

“Then we got used to the way things were. Nobody knew about Bella, and she didn’t care. She’d always lived that way, so it felt natural to her. I loved that little girl to pieces. I kept putting off decisions about what to do when she got to be school age. I figured I’d home-school her. Boy was she smart. She could read a book. She was fast on her feet. She could speak her mind.

“But then when she disappeared, my legs caved out from under me. I couldn’t tell anyone about it. It was a tragedy I had to live with. It almost drove me crazy. It drove me to drink. So you see, Sophie. I understand much more than you know.” He picked up the decanter and poured the rest of the bourbon into the glass. “Bottoms up.”

“Where’s Jayla?” she said in a low voice. “What have you done with her?”

“Ah. That’s the question, isn’t it?”

She steadied the gun at his head. “Answer my question.”

“The Judge has her,” he said softly.

“Who?”

“The Judge.”

“Who the hell is the Judge?”

“My old partner at Lon-Gen. The quantum physicist who got the ball rolling. You could say he’s the co-author of the wishes.”

She blinked uncomfortably hard at him. “The Judge?”

Mandelbaum nodded knowingly. “It’s a long story, Sophie.”

“I want to hear it!” She was fed up with the games.

He rose to his feet. “The Judge has Jayla now. There’s nothing I can do about it. You might as well go home.”

“Who the hell is the Judge? What’s his real name? Where can I find him?”

“I can’t tell you that. So you might as well kill me. I buried my son tonight. I’m done.” He finished off the bourbon and set his empty glass on the table with deliberation. “Go ahead and shoot me.”

“I don’t want to shoot you,” she said furiously. “I want to get my daughter back!”

“She’s perfectly safe. He won’t harm her.”

“She’s probably terrified! She belongs with her mother!”

“Look at you,” he said, smiling smugly at her. “Sober for how long? Six months now? Eight? Good for you.”

“Where are they? Jayla and the Judge?”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie to a person pointing a gun at my head?”

There was a forceful knock at the front door.

Mandelbaum grabbed his cane.

“Who is it?” Sophie demanded to know, her legs going wobbly, her mind racing.

The knocks came faster and harder.

Bam, bam, bam
.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” she said.

Mandelbaum shook his head. His eyes were glassy.

The knocking stopped. The abrupt silence clung like sticky humidity. She became aware of her crazy heartbeat and took a deep breath. She walked across the living room and down the front hallway and opened the door. A man was standing there. Mid-thirties, big and intimidating, black hair, narrow brown eyes.

She tried to slam the door in his face, but he had wedged his foot between the door and the jamb. “Let me in,” he said, pushing it open.

She leapt backwards and pointed the gun at him. “Who are you?”

He stared at the gun. He looked at Sophie. “Hector Mendoza. I’m here to see Mandelbaum. I’m going to kill him.”

“Why? What did he do to you?”

“He made my wish come true.”

They locked eyes for a moment.

She lowered the gun.

He swept into the house, brushing past her, but Mandelbaum was gone.

“Why’d you let him get away?”

“He was just here,” Sophie said defensively.

Hector ran out of the house, and she hurried after him and stood on the front lawn. Mandelbaum’s car was gone. Hector got in his Lexus, while Sophie scrambled to unlock her Toyota. She gunned the engine, radial tires spinning in place before gaining traction. Visibility was poor. The cones of her headlights probed the pitiless darkness ahead.

She followed the Lexus down a featureless road, taillights dancing before her eyes. What was Hector chasing? Where were they going? She couldn’t see Mandelbaum’s Buick up ahead in the dark. The two-lane road hugged the coast. To their right was the deserted public beach, a haunting sodium flatness in her headlights’ glow.

Now a pickup truck pulled directly in front of her in the northbound lane. She could see the bundle of unsecured trash shaking and rattling in the flatbed and tried to pass it, her knuckles going bloodless on the wheel. Then the pickup truck took a left at the fork and Sophie kept following the Lexus.

Soon the asphalt ended and the ride got bumpy and choppy. Sophie floored it along the rough dirt road, while pieces of gravel plinked against her wheel wells. They were on a long stretch without any streetlights. About 30 yards ahead, Hector took a left and rounded a corner insanely fast, kicking up dust. The fog was rolling inland from the sea. She drove against a viscous drag and couldn’t see a thing.

Sophie downshifted into a lower gear, her headlights casting batwing shadows. She took a blind turn past a granite outcropping and lost control of the car. She tensed and hit the brakes, the Toyota’s rear end swinging wide, tires squealing. She thundered to an abrupt halt just inches from Hector’s rear bumper. The world froze for a moment as her head whiplashed and her seatbelt caught her.

“What the hell—?”

Hector’s vehicle was parked in the middle of the road with the driver’s door thrown open wide. The engine was purring and the headlights sliced through the fog.

Sophie threw an elbow into the door panel and got out. “What’s going on?”

Hector came loping toward her through the fog. “We lost him.”

“What the hell do you mean, we lost him?” Her hands were slippery with sweat. “Did we ever actually have him?”

He smiled and rubbed his chin. “Thought I had him. Guess I was wrong. Let’s go back to his place. You and I need to have a talk.”

*

Hector sat hunched at the kitchen table, ripping chicken meat apart with his fingers and making snorting sounds as he ate. He wore one of those gaudy Palm Beach shirts with the coconuts on it. “I’m staying put. He’ll be back. And I’ll be here to greet him, the motherfucker.”

She angled her chair so that she could keep an eye on him. Her throat was parched. She wanted a drink so badly she could taste it. There was a worm in her gut that needed sedating. But she’d promised herself she would never touch another drop again. And she intended to keep that promise.

He squinted at her. “Sophie, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So what did you wish for?”

“My little girl.”

His smile vanished. “Your little girl?”

“She died. I wanted her back.”

His shoulders slumped so far down that his stomach protruded like a beach ball underneath his gaudy shirt. “Really?” He shook his head and wiped his mouth with greasy fingers. “Now I get it.”

“Get what?”