One-Eyed Jack (40 page)

After that it wasn’t a fight anymore,
it was a hideous combination of a massacre and a meal, and the
false Jack, no longer one-eyed, seemed to grow larger as I watched
him devour what remained of the child-killing monster. Every so
often bits of red, torn flesh appeared amid the darkness, and
tumbled free.

When it was done there was nothing
left of Jenny; there was only Jack.

Jack, and the remnants of Andrew
McPhee.

The ghost-Jack turned to face me, an
expression of supreme satisfaction on its face. Where before it had
been Jack’s height, barely up to my shoulder, now it towered over
me.

The bitch is
dead.

“
Yeah,” I said. “I saw
that.”

I got her.

“
Yeah.” I looked at
Andrew’s scattered remains and struggled not to vomit. “Can we go
somewhere else, please?”

Sure. Lead the
way.

I turned and got out of that room,
away from the smell of blood. “Nurse!” I called. “You need to get
someone in here. Call security. And a doctor.”

“
What?” She had gotten
Jesus Martinez into a wheelchair, straightened out his IV line, and
calmed him down – he still looked shocked and miserable, but he
wasn’t screaming or moaning. He might have been crying quietly; I
couldn’t be sure from where I stood.

“
There’s something in
there – something bad,” I said, pointing.

She gave the other nurse, who was
holding the wheelchair, a quick glance, then straightened up and
bustled toward me.

I stepped out of her way, then turned
and walked quickly away. I didn’t want to hang around; I didn’t
want to be involved in the discovery of what was left of poor
little Andrew.

The hulking ghost followed close
behind me.

I heard the nurse gasp; I didn’t look
back. I kept walking.

When we were two corners away, I
turned and asked the ghost, “So, you’ve done it. Now
what?”

I hoped that it was satisfied, that it
was done, that it would fade away now that its purpose was served,
but I feared I was wrong. What if it went after Jack’s other
enemies? What if it went after his parents, who had neglected and
belittled him?

Gotta kill the
bitch
, it said.

I blinked. I hadn’t expected that.
“You just did,” I said.

Yeah, well, gotta do it
again. Take me to her.

“
I can’t,” I said. “I
don’t know where she is anymore.”

Don’t tell me that. Take
me to her.

“
I can’t! I swear, I don’t
know where she’s gone!”

Take me to her!
It clenched its fists and loomed over me
threateningly.

I heard running footsteps in the
distance, heavy footsteps – probably security guards, not nurses. I
heard voices. “I... okay, look, I don’t know where she is right
now,” I said. “You wait here, and I’ll go find out.”

Gotta kill the
bitch.

“
Yeah, you bet,” I said.
“Just stay right where you are, and I’ll be right back.”

It hesitated, then
said,
Okay.
There
was something of the twelve-year-old boy in that, despite its broad
shoulders, beard stubble, and fearsome face.

I nodded. “Right there,” I said,
pointing at the floor. “Don’t you move until I get
back!”

Then I turned and hurried
away.

I didn’t start running until I was out
the door onto the sidewalk, but then I bolted as if my life
depended on it. Which, for all I knew, it did.

I’d thought that when it had killed
Jenny it would just vanish; its purpose for existence would have
been fulfilled. I thought it could just fade away
harmlessly.

That was stupid. After
eight years of watching the night-creatures obsessively, endlessly,
and pointlessly repeating themselves, why had I thought anything
could satisfy one and make it go away? They did the same things
over and over; they were
never
satisfied.

I got the rental car out of the garage
as quickly as I could, tires squealing as I made the turn onto
Limestone. I didn’t head straight back to the motel; I’d come out
of the garage pointing the wrong way, and I didn’t want to take the
time to get turned around. I wanted to put some distance between
that thing and myself.

Maybe it seems crazy to be
so scared of it, since all it wanted was to kill Jenny, and I bore
no resemblance to a skinny ghost in a white dress, but I had those
scratches on my face to remind me that sometimes, when a ghost got
strong enough, it could hurt people other than its actual target.
More specifically, it could hurt
me
. Maybe my ability to see the
night-things gave me an edge in some ways, but it also apparently
made me vulnerable to them.

I did not want to be around when
Jack’s ghost got frustrated and angry because it couldn’t find the
monster it had already devoured.

I took South Limestone all the way out
to New Circle Road; somewhere in there it changed name to
Nicholasville Road, but I didn’t pay any attention. I got on New
Circle, headed west – this part of it was limited-access highway,
instead of being old-fashioned urban sprawl like the stretch north
of Winchester Road, so I was able to give the car some gas and put
some miles behind me.

The drive let me calm down, and by the
time I got back to the motel I was in control again. I called Ben
Skees.

“
Ding, dong, the bitch is
dead,” I told him, feeling more than a bit giddy. “Jack’s ghost
ripped it to bits. Some of those bits came from Andrew McPhee – had
you heard about that yet?”

“
I’m off duty,” he said
coldly. “Hadn’t heard squat.”

The possibility that he might be off
duty hadn’t even occurred to me. “Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

Then I gave him an account of my
evening, from the moment I got in my car at the Burger and Shake
right up until I called his cell. He listened.

When I was done, he said, “So you left
this monster standing in a hospital corridor?”

“
Yeah, I did,” I
admitted.

“
You think that was a good
idea?”

“
Well,
yeah, I kind of do,” I said, irked. “It isn’t going to hurt anyone.
The only thing it wants to hurt is already dead, and I don’t think
it
can
hurt anyone human, except maybe me. This one isn’t interested
in finding suicidal kids to eat, Detective; it wants to
avenge
them. If
anything, I think it might be beneficial – if any other predatory
ghost-women turn up, it’ll dispose of them.”

“
I don’t like just leaving
it there.”

“
I don’t see much of a
choice.” I sighed. “Look, I didn’t know this was going to happen; I
thought when it had done what it was created to do it would quietly
fade away, or pop like a soap bubble. I was wrong.”

“
I may have told you I
didn’t think creating it was a good idea.”

“
You made your opinion
known, yeah. But did you have a better idea? Jenny’s gone,
Detective; I consider that a plus, and I’ll bet the parents of
Trevor Atwater and Jesus Martinez and Lisette Babcock agree with
me. The McPhees, well, I’m sorry about them, but what could I
do?”

“
Maybe,” he grudgingly
said.

“
One thing, though – I
don’t know what would happen if it met Jack. And maybe his father.
You might want to suggest to his family that if they ever need to
take him to a hospital, they choose a different one.”

“
Um.”

“
I’ll call Jenny
Derdiarian myself.”

“
Yeah,” he said. “You do
that.”

He hung up.

I called Jenny Derdiarian
myself.

I didn’t go into a lot of detail; in
fact, I went into as little detail as I could. I just told her that
we’d found a way to dispose of her doppelganger, and that we’d had
to leave our device active, and while it might not be a danger to
her, she was the one person in the world it might mistake for its
target.

“
It
won’t come after you,” I said. “It’s very stupid, doesn’t know
where you live, doesn’t know you exist at all. If it
sees
you, though – well,
I wouldn’t risk it.”

“
I appreciate the warning,
Mr. Kraft,” she said.

And my third and final call, of
course, was to Mel.

I desperately wanted to talk to a
friend at that point, someone who wouldn’t be angry that I hadn’t
found a tidier way to deal with Jenny, someone I didn’t need to
warn away from the U.K. Health Center, someone who knew me and
would take my good intentions as a given. Mel should have been that
person.

But Melisandra de Cheverly was the
Dark Lady, the Queen of Despair, Mistress of Fear. Nothing she
could say could be comforting or reassuring; her best attempts at
sympathy scared me half to death.

But she was all I had, and she tried
hard to be the friend I needed, and when the trembling had stopped
I was grateful for that.

I went to bed, hoping I wouldn’t dream
about what I had seen that day, and hoping that I wouldn’t dream
about anyone new.

I didn’t need any more big changes in
my life right then.

And I didn’t get them.

Epilogue

I caught the 10:55 flight without any
trouble, and got home without incident.

I’d lost my job. No surprise. Mr.
Sanchez was apologetic about it, at any rate. He said that if the
economy had been better they might have kept me on, but they’d been
looking to cut staff anyway, and my sudden mysterious absence had
provided a good excuse.

Mel drove down from Sandy Spring a few
days later, to see whether I could pull the curse out of her the
way I had pulled the ghost out of Jack Wilson. I
couldn’t.

I couldn’t change my own psychic
abilities, either. I tried.

Ben Skees called me once, just to
chat. There hadn’t been any more incidents at the hospital after
the body parts turned up, but that gory little evening had been
enough to trigger two lawsuits and five resignations. If the thing
that I’d left in the corridor was still there, it was invisible and
silent.

Jenny Derdiarian was fine; the
destruction of her counterpart hadn’t troubled her at
all.

Angie Ballard thought I was some sort
of con man, a quack pretending to be a child psychologist, and had
debated filing charges of some kind, but decided, in the end, not
to bother. She wanted it known, though, that if she ever saw me
again she wouldn’t be as tolerant.

And Jack Wilson was doing okay. He was
a surly, withdrawn child, but he was doing better. No more
disappearances, paying more attention in school, treating his kid
sister better. No anger issues. He didn’t dwell on what had
happened; he barely seemed to remember it. His father seemed to
have been chastened by the whole thing, and was reported by the
neighbors to be doing much less yelling these days.

All in all, it had turned out
reasonably well, even if Skees had to list the attacks on Jack
Wilson as unsolved and leave a few hundred parents nervous about
the mysterious lunatic who had maimed the Wilson boy.

I landed a new job over in Silver
Spring – retail again, but it paid the rent. Just
barely.

I started planning out
ways to use my newfound talent. Finally, I could not only
see
the spirit world, I
could
do
something about it. It was only a very limited something, but
still, it was
something
.

And night after night, I watched the
creatures in the streets and parks, saw them plummet from rooftops
and throw themselves under buses, saw them try hopelessly to attack
women, and I wished I couldn’t see them.

But now, at least, I had a few clues
about what they were, and maybe someday I could change their
world.

- end -

~~~~~

Also available in e-book form:

The Next Step in the Evolution of Evil...

The Nightmare People

A Novel

by

Lawrence Watt-Evans

(read on for a sample)

Chapter One: Wednesday, August 2nd

1.

The air was hot and thick, heavy with
moisture, and he lay unwillingly awake beneath its weight, his
bedsheet soaked in sweat. The ceiling was gray and blank above him
when he opened his eyes. When he closed them and tried to sleep, or
pretended to try, he saw only a darker gray.

He thought he could almost hear the
air moving about him, a slow, sluggish, viscous movement, like the
shifting of wet sand, and he wished that his clock-radio were an
old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock, so that at least he would have
the ticking to mark off time for him. As it was he lay in an
infinite timelessness, feeling the perspiration ooze from his back
into the mattress.