One-Eyed Jack (5 page)

I didn’t get my breakfast right away,
though. First I went to the computer and searched on “Lexington,”
“Fayette,” and “Urban.”

That got me a nice clear answer:
Kentucky. The Wilsons lived in Lexington, in Fayette County,
Kentucky.

I’d never been to Kentucky, and I
didn’t know anything about Lexington.

I had an idea, though, that I was
going to learn a few things pretty soon, whether I wanted to or
not.

And I thought that maybe it was time I
paid a visit to the Bluegrass State.

Chapter Three

I could get a flight out of Baltimore
for $353. National or Dulles would be $500-plus. Amtrak didn’t go
to Lexington, and I hate long-distance buses even more than I hate
flying.

Renting a car and driving wasn’t
totally out of the question, but flying would be faster.

But there was the question of what I
would do when I got there. Wilson was a common name, and I didn’t
know the parents’ first names, so finding the right family might
take awhile, and when I found them, what would I say? “Hi, I’ve
been dreaming about your son, and I think his finger was bitten off
by a mysterious woman in white, who might be a supernatural
creature of some sort, not really human at all. No, I don’t know
who she is, or where to find her, or why she would bite off a kid’s
finger. Yes, I dreamed this, I have no actual evidence. Yes, I
guess I’m a psychic, but not one you ever heard of. I’ve never been
on TV, I’ve never worked with the police or anyone official, and I
don’t know a thing about your town. I’ve lived pretty much my
entire life in Maryland.”

Yeah, that would go over
well.

But I couldn’t sit home and do
nothing, either. I’d tried that. It didn’t end well. I had dreamed
about the man who killed my mother, and I didn’t do anything
because I thought they were just nightmares. I had dreamed about
the cop who decided I must have killed Mrs. Reinholt, and if I’d
paid more attention I might have avoided some of that mess and
graduated high school.

Or maybe I wouldn’t have
avoided a thing; I doubt I could have ever convinced him of the
truth. I saw the thing that killed Mrs. Reinholt – I didn’t dream
about that, since I already knew her, but I saw that thing, and
even spoke with it, after a fashion, but how would I have ever made
anyone else believe me?
They
couldn’t see it, even if it had hung
around.

I hadn’t known what to do. I wasn’t
even completely sure yet that what I saw was real; I thought I
might be hallucinating.

I wish I
had
been hallucinating.
I wish those dreams
had
just been nightmares. And I wish I had
done
something. My
mother might still be alive. Mrs. Reinholt might still be alive.
Mel might not be calling herself the queen of despair, and she and
I might have graduated with the rest of our class.

I didn’t ignore the dreams again,
ever. They weren’t always about terrible things – I saw Nancy in my
dreams before Dad even met her, and she’s not a bad person – but
they were always important. If I hadn’t had dreams to warn me, I
might have handled Dad’s new girlfriend even worse than I did. The
dreams I had about the guy who used to own Mel’s house had helped
me deal with that mess, and might have kept Mel out of jail – or
kept her from unleashing several kinds of Hell on the cops. So I
didn’t ignore the dreams.

For the most part I did ignore the
things I saw that other people didn’t – there were just too many of
them, and most of them were harmless, and anyway I didn’t know any
way to stop the ones that weren’t. If they were really determined
to hurt someone, and they were able to do it, there was nothing I
could do. Usually, the night-things couldn’t touch humans any more
than humans could touch them – but there were exceptions. When I
spotted the exceptions, I would try to chase them off. Sometimes
just letting them know they’d been seen was enough to drive them
away.

Sometimes it wasn’t. The thing that
killed Mrs. Reinholt knew I saw it, and it hadn’t cared. It didn’t
think I could stop it. It didn’t think I could hurt it.

It had been right – but
maybe if I’d done something sooner, I could have frightened it
away. Maybe if I’d warned Mrs, Reinholt,
she
could have stopped
it.

But I didn’t, and she died.

So now, if one of the
creatures looked dangerous, I’d try to do something. Oh, I didn’t
go out looking for them, in fact I tended to stay indoors after
dark as much as possible, but when I
did
see one trying to hurt someone,
I didn’t ignore it.

I didn’t know if I could stop whatever
had chewed off Jack’s finger, but I intended to try.

But first I had to find it, and the
only link to it that I had was Jack Wilson, who was in Kentucky and
who didn’t seem eager to talk, but who I could watch in my
dreams.

I was going to meet Jack eventually; I
knew he was the one because he was the only one who was in all my
recent dreams. The rest of the family had been in most of them, but
in the one during my break room nap there had only been Jack and
the mystery woman, so Jack had to be the key. I was going to meet
him, and if my previous dreams were anything to go by, that meeting
was going to change my life somehow. Everyone I had dreamed about
this way had precipitated some major alteration in my
circumstances.

So I was going to meet Jack, and when
I did, the dreams would stop. I grimaced at that. If I couldn’t get
Jack to talk – well, maybe I didn’t want to rush off to Kentucky
just yet. I didn’t really know what was going on; maybe once I did
I would know what to do.

But then, if I stayed home
I would probably keep dreaming – and if I went to Kentucky, I would
probably keep dreaming. It was only when I met Jack that it would
stop. In Kentucky I could talk to other people, look for the thin
woman, and generally get involved without meeting Jack. I didn’t
know just what I would do, but there would be
something
.

I booked a flight for Sunday – there
weren’t any decent fares for anything sooner, and that would give
me time to prepare. The return flight was trickier, but I could
always change it; I went for Thursday. I thought three days should
be enough to get a handle on the situation. I booked a rental car,
too, and made sure they had GPS available, since I didn’t know
Lexington.

This was going to come out of savings,
of course, out of the little investment portfolio that Mom had
called my college fund. When she was alive everyone assumed I would
go to college, even if it was just Montgomery; it was only after
she died that everything fell apart. I got my GED a couple of years
later, when things were a little less chaotic, but college? Maybe
someday.

I tried not to use the college fund
for everyday expenses, but I didn’t go flying off to Kentucky every
day.

I told Mr. Sanchez that I had to leave
town for a few days, I didn’t know how long but I hoped it would be
less than a week, and that I hoped I’d still have a job when I got
back. He said I probably would, but that it better not be more than
a week, which I thought was fair.

I called Mel again and told her what I
was doing.

I packed a bag – underwear and jeans
and a toothbrush and a couple of shirts. No amulets or magic swords
or spell books; I wish I had stuff like that, and that it worked,
but I didn’t and I don’t.

Mrs. Reinholt hadn’t seemed to need
any books or talismans, anyway.

I dreamed again every time
I slept, even just a catnap, and in my dreams I saw Jack being held
in the hospital or youth center or whatever it was, being
questioned by doctors and cops, talking to psychiatrists and
counselors – or really,
not
talking to them, as he stuck to his story of not
knowing what happened to his finger. He insisted nothing was wrong.
His parents were fine, he said, they never hit him, though his Dad
did yell sometimes. He and his kid sister got along. School was
okay; he was going into seventh grade. Everything was
fine.

They didn’t believe him. Neither did
I. But they were going to release him on Monday anyway, because
there wasn’t anything they could do if he didn’t cooperate. I got a
look at a calendar in one office, and that was this coming Monday,
the day after I would arrive.

Kentucky’s school year was starting on
Wednesday, a couple of weeks earlier than Maryland’s. I had no idea
whether that would complicate matters or not.

Sunday came, and I took the 25 bus
down to the Takoma Metro, rode out to Greenbelt, and got the B30
bus to the airport. I changed planes in Cincinnati, and then I was
landing at Blue Grass Airport, looking out the plane’s window at
horse farms and trees.

The rental car was a gray PT Cruiser.
I didn’t much care, so long as it ran and the GPS worked. I hadn’t
booked a room anywhere; I figured I could sleep in the car if I had
to.

I didn’t know where I was going, but I
got in the car and started it up. I hadn’t driven in months, but it
came back quickly enough; I got out of the airport and turned right
onto the main drag into town, Versailles Road.

I got supper at a sub shop, and while
I sat there eating my ham and cheese I thought about what I should
do next.

There were hundreds of
Wilsons in town, and I had no way of knowing which family was
Jack’s; I still hadn’t gotten his father’s first name for certain,
though I thought it might be Bill. I knew what the street where
they lived looked like, but not where it was. I thought that if I
could find the neighborhood, I might be able to find the mystery
woman. I didn’t know any street names or anything, but it wasn’t
downtown, and it wasn’t new. I might be able to find it just by
driving around; Lexington wasn’t
that
big, and I could skip any areas
that were recently built, and any areas that were too
old.

Versailles Road went straight east
into downtown, and I didn’t want that, so instead I turned onto
Alexandria Road and started driving.

Even as I did it, I knew it was a
stupid idea, but I just didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t
really know what I was doing there at all. Some kid had his finger
bitten off, and I had come to do something about it – but
what?

I didn’t really know.

I couldn’t put his finger back; about
the best I could do would be to prevent whatever it was from biting
any other pieces off kids. Which was a worthwhile goal, but I had
no clue how to go about it.

So I drove randomly through the
streets, looking for anything familiar, anything I had seen in my
dreams, as the sun settled toward the western horizon. If night
fell before I found it, I didn’t know what I would do; I wasn’t
sure I would recognize it in the dark.

And there would be other things out
there in the dark, distracting me.

I turned south on a road called Clay’s
Mill Road, but that started getting into housing developments that
were too new, so I turned east and began winding my way through
residential streets.

I had more light than I had expected;
I hadn’t taken into account that I was a few hundred miles west of
home. Lexington was still on Eastern time, but it must be on the
edge of the time zone or something, because sunset was definitely
later than back home in Takoma Park. I was able to get through a
dozen neighborhoods, all around the southern half of the city,
before the light really began to fade.

There was a stretch where
the neighborhoods were
too
old, maybe a hundred years old, but then I got
back into the postwar areas, and finally I turned a corner onto a
wide, straight street where sprinklers were hissing on green lawns
and trees shaded the sidewalks, and if it wasn’t exactly the right
street it was close. I slowed the car to a crawl.

The architecture was right. The trees
were the right size and spacing. But it wasn’t the street I
wanted.

I turned left at the next corner, and
then left again onto the street paralleling the first, and that was
it. That was the place. I saw Jack’s house; his sister Katie was
sitting on the front steps with a woman I didn’t recognize,
presumably an aunt or a neighbor who was looking after her while
her parents were with her brother, talking to doctors and social
workers.

I didn’t stop; I just kept the car
moving slowly up the block, and turned right at the next
intersection.

I had the neighborhood, and the
street, and I programmed it into the GPS. Now I began studying the
trees, looking for the one where Jack had laid his head on the
mystery woman’s lap.

If I were a twelve-year-old boy taking
an unauthorized evening walk to get away from a verbally abusive
father, I asked myself, which way would I go?

I tried to remember what I had seen in
my dreams; which way had Jack gone when he walked out the
door?

I drove down to the end of the block,
and on into the dead end beyond.