One-Eyed Jack (8 page)

Hungry, I was so hungry!
He did it for love, and I love him for it. Go away!

“
I don’t think...” I
began.

Then it stood up, like a marionette
unfolding out of its box, rising up on bone-white, bone-thin legs,
and pointed at me with one of those long, white fingers.

Go. Away.

It didn’t just use words, either; a
wave of revulsion swept over me, and again I stepped back without
meaning to.

The thing took a step toward me, then
paused, and then took another step, its gaze fixed on me, its
finger pointing.

I hadn’t been sure it could move away
from the tree, but it did. It was advancing toward me, obviously
furious. I didn’t know what it was capable of, but it had bitten
off a boy’s finger, so I knew it wasn’t completely
harmless.

“
I’m going,” I said, “but
I’ll be back. You stay away from Jack, and from the other kids on
this street.”

Go!

I went; I got back in my car, being
careful to never turn my back on the creature, and closed the door.
I fumbled the key into the lock, started the engine, and flicked on
the lights.

The thing flung up its hands to shield
its eyes, but it didn’t retreat.

I turned the car around and drove
away, heading nowhere in particular.

I didn’t know where I was going. I
didn’t know what I was going to do. At least now, though, I had
some idea what I was up against.

Not that I was happy about it.
Child-eating monsters – what sort of sense does that make? I hate
the supernatural. It isn’t logical. You can’t figure out how it
works.

Or at least,
I
can’t.

I looked at the hunched
old woman on the sidewalk, and a fluttering thing in the trees, and
a dozen other creatures as I drove, hating them. They were, so far
as I knew, completely harmless, but why were they
there
?

And why was that bony woman lurking at
the end of that street?

I didn’t really know where that ghost,
if that’s what she was, came from, or how long it had been around,
or why it was under that particular tree instead of somewhere else,
but I didn’t think it mattered. All I wanted was to make sure it
didn’t hurt anyone else.

I had no idea how to do that. Somehow,
I didn’t think a stern talking-to was going to cut it. My warning
to stay away from Jack didn’t seem to impress it.

Going by what it had said,
it had been a woman once, or thought it had – a woman who blamed
herself for her children’s deaths. Why did that result in something
that wanted to
eat
children? Shouldn’t it want to
protect
them, to make up for failing
to protect its own?

And plenty of people
blamed themselves for unwanted deaths; why did
this
one wind up a sort of
ghoul?

Maybe I should have tried harder to
find out what its last name had been when it was human – assuming
it really had been; for all I knew, it had eaten the original Jenny
and absorbed her memories, and it hadn’t ever been human at all.
Still, with a last name I could have poked around online, maybe
found out what happened to her kids, maybe found some way to use
that.

I turned left, and considered going
around the block and heading back to talk to it again.

What the hell, why not?

I drove back to the end of the street
and killed the lights. I leaned out the window and called softly,
“Jenny?”

No answer. I waited for my eyes to
adjust to the darkness, then looked under the big tulip
poplar.

Nothing there.

I scanned to either side, but I didn’t
see that white dress anywhere.

In fact, I realized I
didn’t see
anything
unnatural there. I looked up in the trees, as well as along
the ground.

Nothing. Nothing flittering,
fluttering, or flapping, nothing slinking or slithering. For a
moment I wondered if I’d lost my... my special ability, my second
sight, or whatever you want to call it.

But no, when I turned around I could
see the usual night-things in the yards and walks along the street,
and something unpleasant was hovering in the air above a house just
past the corner. It was only the little grove at the end of the
street that was strangely free of any supernatural
infestation.

I was sure I’d seen and heard things
in those trees before, but they were gone now.

I didn’t understand it. I
found it creepy. I mean, the night-things were creepy to begin
with, but I was used to them, and somehow
not
seeing them, when they’d been
there just a little while earlier, was even creepier.

It had to be related to Jenny’s
disappearance somehow, but I didn’t know how.

I waited for awhile to see
whether anything would reappear – I mean, it’s not as if I had
anything better to do – but eventually I gave up. I intended to
find a quiet place to park and sleep in the car, but I didn’t want
to sleep
here
,
because having Ms. Shotgun find me snoozing out front in the
morning would not be good for my situation, so when I found myself
starting to doze off I started the car and headed back out of the
dead end. I eventually settled in a quiet corner of a shopping mall
parking lot, curled up, and went to sleep.

Chapter Five

I did dream about Jack, but nothing
that seemed significant. I saw him lying in his hospital bed,
inspecting the bandage where his finger had been; I saw him eating
ice cream the nurses brought, and watching TV.

And then I saw him waking up, and
getting dressed, and waiting for his parents, who arrived, and
helped him pack up, and took him downstairs and loaded him in the
car and drove away.

I’d had a long day, so I suppose I
shouldn’t have been surprised that I slept later than I intended
to. I’d expected the noise of the mall’s Monday-morning business to
wake me up no later than nine, but apparently business wasn’t
booming, or I’d picked too quiet a corner, or I’d been more tired
than I thought, because when I was finally awake enough to look at
it my watch said half-past ten.

“
Damn,” I said. Jack was
probably already home. My dreams had probably been in real time,
not visions of past or future.

I wasn’t ready to meet him yet; I was
still hoping the dreams would show me more about Jenny, and about
Jack, and about why she was preying on him, and why he hadn’t told
anyone what happened.

Of course, maybe that was just common
sense – “My finger was gnawed off by a skinny woman in a white
dress who lives under a tree” would probably not have gone over
well with the cops and psychologists.

Still, I thought there was more to be
learned from my dreams.

I didn’t know just how much contact it
would take to make the dreams stop; it hadn’t been an issue in the
half-dozen previous instances, because in every case I met the
person directly. I spoke to him or her, and usually shook hands,
the first time I ever saw him in person.

If I saw Jack from a distance, would
that be enough? If he saw me, would that do it? I didn’t
know.

I didn’t know what to do about any of
this.

If Jenny had been human it
would have been simple – call the cops, let
them
deal with her. If she were a
vicious animal, once again, there were people to call, people who
dealt with such things.

Most people couldn’t
even
see
ghouls
like Jenny, though – or ghosts, or whatever she was. There wasn’t
anyone I could call.

If Jenny had been a live person, and
attacking children, and for some reason I couldn’t call the cops,
again, there would be a simple solution – get a gun and shoot her.
Killing a beast in self-defense, or defense of innocents, wasn’t a
crime. But shooting a ghost wouldn’t do any good. Bullets wouldn’t
hurt her.

Well, actually, I’d never
tried shooting, but I knew a blade wouldn’t cut a ghost, and
running a car into one didn’t hurt it. I
had
tried
those
. I didn’t think bullets would
do any better, and I didn’t have a gun, or particularly want
one.

I didn’t know any way to kill a ghost.
Exorcism didn’t work; I’d tried it. It was just words, and it
didn’t do anything.

I had a moment of
existential despair sitting there in the mall parking lot – what
was I
doing
here?
What did I hope to accomplish? Why hadn’t I ignored my dreams and
left Jack and his family to their own devices? I wasn’t doing
anything here but wasting my pitiful inheritance, putting my job at
risk, and wishing I’d gotten a hotel room so I could take a
shower.

This wasn’t my responsibility. My life
was already pretty crummy, yet I’d risked my job and burned off
part of my savings to come here – for what? What had I expected to
accomplish?

I could put an end to the
dreams by walking up to Jack and introducing myself. Then I could
go home, and let Jenny get him or not, however it worked out. It
wasn’t
my
fault
she was after him; I was just an observer. I didn’t have any way to
stop her; I wasn’t sure there
was
any way to stop her.

But giving up and going home now
wouldn’t make sense. I was here, and my return ticket wasn’t good
until Thursday. I’d had the dreams because Jack was going to be
important to me somehow. At least, that was how the dreams had
always worked before. I had dreamed about the man who killed my
mother, and I had dreamed about the guy Mel ruined, and I had
dreamed about my stepmother, and so on; I didn’t dream about random
people hundreds of miles away.

So what was my connection with Jack
Wilson?

Maybe I
did
dream about random
strangers now. I had no reason to think my gift, or curse, or
talent, or whatever it was, couldn’t change.

Or maybe I was going to be accused of
attacking Jack; after all, Mrs. Shotgun had seen me acting
suspiciously.

But I wouldn’t have been there at all
if I hadn’t dreamed about Jack. The dreams had never been
self-fulfilling prophecies before; they were always about people I
would have been involved with anyway. Had that changed?

I had come to Kentucky to head off
whatever bad things might be coming my way. If I hadn’t ignored the
dreams I might have been able to prevent Mom’s death, and I wasn’t
going to make the same mistake again.

Or maybe I couldn’t have
prevented it. Maybe I would have just died with her. I couldn’t
know. Or she might have died no matter what I did. But I
didn’t
try
,
because back then I didn’t know the dreams meant
anything.

I was in Kentucky to try to prevent
whatever new horror might be coming, but I didn’t know what it was.
I hadn’t had a chance to save Jack’s finger, but there might be
worse coming.

Or there might not.

My thoughts were going in circles, and
I decided I wasn’t going to figure it out sitting in the parking
lot; I started the car and headed for the Wilsons’
neighborhood.

Their car was in the driveway, but I
didn’t see anyone out in the yard; presumably they were all
indoors. It was a pretty hot, sticky day, so there wasn’t anything
unreasonable about staying inside with the air conditioning on. I
cruised on past and down to the end of the street, hoping Mrs.
Shotgun didn’t notice me.

There was no sign of Jenny
anywhere, but that was no surprise in bright sunlight. I was pretty
sure at least some of the night-creatures were still out there,
though weaker or even dormant, but I also knew I couldn’t see them
in daylight. Anything supernatural and inhuman that was visible in
the daytime was very, very bad news; I hadn’t seen anything
unnatural in full sun since Mrs. Reinholt died. I had
felt
things – if nothing
else, Mel’s curse was just as strong by day as by night – but I
hadn’t seen them.

I didn’t feel anything now.

I didn’t linger; I didn’t want to
attract attention. I turned the car around and headed back
out.

I didn’t know what to do with myself
all day; I really did want to give the dreams another chance to
make themselves useful, and I couldn’t talk to Jenny until sunset.
Eventually I decided I might as well enjoy my visit to the Heart of
the Bluegrass, as the tourist brochures called it, and I headed
downtown looking for local attractions.

I’ve got to say, Lexington seems as if
it might be a nice place to live, but if you’re a visiting tourist,
you better like horses. There’s a house where Henry Clay used to
live, and if I’d remembered more of who Clay was I might have
checked it out, but other than that pretty much everything I could
find advertised was connected to horses and racing. If I’d wanted
to drive a few hours out of town there were caves and distilleries
and assorted scenery, but in Fayette County it was all
horses.