9
While John got adjoining rooms at the Holiday Inn—paying cash—Dan sought out the Adair True Value Hardware. He bought a spade, a rake, two hoes, a garden trowel, two pairs of gloves, and a duffel to hold his new purchases. The only tool he actually wanted was the spade, but it seemed best to buy in bulk.
“What brings you to Adair, may I ask?” the clerk asked as he rang up Dan’s stuff.
“Just passing through. My sister’s in Des Moines, and she’s got quite the garden patch. She probably owns most of this stuff, but presents always seem to improve her hospitality.”
“I hear that, brother. And she’ll thank you for this short-handle hoe. No tool comes in handier, and most amateur gardeners never think to get one. We take MasterCard, Visa—”
“I think I’ll give the plastic a rest,” Dan said, taking out his wallet. “Just give me a receipt for Uncle Sugar.”
“You bet. And if you give me your name and address—or your sister’s—we’ll send our catalogue.”
“You know what, I’m going to pass on that today,” Dan said, and put a little fan of twenties on the counter.
10
At eleven o’clock that night, there came a soft rap on Dan’s door. He opened it and let John inside. Abra’s pediatrician was pale and keyed-up. “Did you sleep?”
“Some,” Dan said. “You?”
“In and out. Mostly out. I’m nervous as a goddam cat. If a cop stops us, what are we going to say?”
“That we heard there was a juke joint in Freeman and decided to go looking for it.”
“There’s nothing in Freeman but corn. About nine billion acres of it.”
“We don’t know that,” Dan said mildly. “We’re just passing through. Besides, no cop’s going to stop us, John. Nobody’s even going to notice us. But if you want to stay here—”
“I didn’t come halfway across the country to sit in a motel watching Jay Leno. Just let me use the toilet. I used mine before I left the room, but now I need to go again. Christ, am I nervous.”
The drive to Freeman seemed very long to Dan, but once they left Adair behind, they didn’t meet a single car. Farmers went to bed early, and they were off the trucking routes.
When they reached the ethanol plant, Dan doused the rental car’s lights, turned in to the service road, and rolled slowly up to the closed gate. The two men got out. John cursed when the Ford’s dome light came on. “I should have turned that thing off before we left the motel. Or smashed the bulb, if it doesn’t have a switch.”
“Relax,” Dan said. “There’s no one out here but us chickens.” Still, his heart was beating hard in his chest as they walked to the gate. If Abra was right, a little boy had been murdered and buried out here after being miserably tortured. If ever a place should be haunted—
John tried the gate, and when pushing didn’t work, he tried pulling. “Nothing. What now? Climb, I guess. I’m willing to try, but I’ll probably break my fucking—”
“Wait.” Dan took a penlight from his jacket pocket and shone it on the gate, first noting the broken padlock, then the heavy twists of wire above and below it. He went back to the car, and it was his turn to wince when the trunk light came on. Well, shit. You couldn’t think of everything. He yanked out the new duffel, and slammed the trunk lid down. Dark returned.
“Here,” he told John, holding out a pair of gloves. “Put these on.” Dan put on his own, untwisted the wire, and hung both pieces in one of the chainlink diamonds for later reference. “Okay, let’s go.”
“I have to pee again.”
“Oh, man. Hold it.”
11
Dan drove the Hertz Ford slowly and carefully around to the loading dock. There were plenty of potholes, some deep, all hard to see with the headlights off. The last thing in the world he wanted was to drop the Focus into one and smash an axle. Behind the plant, the surface was a mixture of bare earth and crumbling asphalt. Fifty feet away was another chainlink fence, and beyond that, endless leagues of corn. The dock area wasn’t as big as the parking lot, but it was plenty big.
“Dan? How will we know where—”
“Be quiet.” Dan bent his head until his brow touched the steering wheel and closed his eyes.
(Abra)
Nothing. She was asleep, of course. Back in Anniston it was already Wednesday morning. John sat beside him, chewing his lips.
(Abra)
A faint stirring. It could have been his imagination. Dan hoped it was more.
(ABRA!)
Eyes opened in his head. There was a moment of disorientation, a kind of double vision, and then Abra was looking with him. The loading dock and the crumbled remains of the smokestacks were suddenly clearer, even though there was only starlight to see by.
Her vision’s a hell of a lot better than mine.
Dan got out of the car. So did John, but Dan barely noticed. He had ceded control to the girl who was now lying awake in her bed eleven hundred miles away. He felt like a human metal detector. Only it wasn’t metal that he—they—were looking for.
(walk over to that concrete thing)
Dan walked to the loading dock and stood with his back to it.
(now start going back and forth)
A pause as she hunted for a way to clarify what she wanted.
(like on CSI)
He coursed fifty feet or so to the left, then turned right, moving out from the dock on opposing diagonals. John had gotten the spade out of the duffel bag and stood by the rental car, watching.
(here is where they parked their RVs)
Dan cut back left again, walking slowly, occasionally kicking a loose brick or chunk of concrete out of his way.
(you’re close)
Dan stopped. He smelled something unpleasant. A gassy whiff of decay.
(Abra? do you)
(yes oh God Dan)
(take it easy hon)
(you went too far turn around go slow)
Dan turned on one heel, like a soldier doing a sloppy about-face. He started back toward the loading dock.
(left a little to your left slower)
He went that way, now pausing after each small step. Here was that smell again, a little stronger. Suddenly the preternaturally sharp nighttime world began to blur as his eyes filled with Abra’s tears.
(there the baseball boy you’re standing right on top of him)
Dan took a deep breath and wiped at his cheeks. He was shivering. Not because he was cold, but because she was. Sitting up in her bed, clutching her lumpy stuffed rabbit, and shaking like an old leaf on a dead tree.
(get out of here Abra)
(Dan are you)
(yes fine but you don’t need to see this)
Suddenly that absolute clarity of vision was gone. Abra had broken the connection, and that was good.
“Dan?” John called, low. “All right?”
“Yes.” His voice was still clogged with Abra’s tears. “Bring that spade.”
12
It took them twenty minutes. Dan dug for the first ten, then passed the spade to John, who actually found Brad Trevor. He turned away from the hole, covering his mouth and nose. His words were muffled but understandable. “Okay, there’s a body. Jesus!”
“You didn’t smell it before?”
“Buried that deep, and after two years? Are you saying that you did?”
Dan didn’t reply, so John addressed the hole again, but without conviction this time. He stood for a few seconds with his back bent as if he still meant to use the spade, then straightened and drew back when Dan shone the penlight into the little excavation they had made. “I can’t,” he said. “I thought I could, but I can’t. Not with . . . that. My arms feel like rubber.”
Dan handed him the light. John shone it into the hole, centering the beam on what had freaked him out: a dirt-clotted sneaker. Working slowly, not wanting to disturb the earthly remains of Abra’s baseball boy any more than necessary, Dan scraped dirt away from the sides of the body. Little by little, an earth-covered shape emerged. It reminded him of the carvings on sarcophagi he had seen in National Geographic.
The smell of decay was now very strong.
Dan stepped away and hyperventilated, ending with the deepest breath he could manage. Then he dropped into the end of the shallow grave, where both of Brad Trevor’s sneakers now protruded in a V. He knee-walked up to about where he thought the boy’s waist must be, then held up a hand for the penlight. John handed it over and turned away. He was sobbing audibly.
Dan clamped the slim flashlight between his lips and began brushing away more dirt. A child’s t-shirt came into view, clinging to a sunken chest. Then hands. The fingers, now little more than bones wrapped in yellow skin, were clasped over something. Dan’s chest was starting to pound for air now, but he pried the Trevor boy’s fingers apart as gently as he could. Still, one of them snapped with a dry crunching sound.
They had buried him holding his baseball glove to his chest. Its lovingly oiled pocket was full of squirming bugs.
The air escaped Dan’s lungs in a shocked whoosh, and the breath he inhaled to replace it was rich with rot. He lunged out of the grave to his right, managing to vomit on the dirt they’d taken out of the hole instead of on the wasted remains of Bradley Trevor, whose only crime had been to be born with something a tribe of monsters wanted. And had stolen from him on the very wind of his dying shrieks.
13
They reburied the body, John doing most of the work this time, and covered the spot with a makeshift crypt of broken asphalt chunks. Neither of them wanted to think of foxes or stray dogs feasting on what scant meat was left.
When they were done, they got back into the car and sat without speaking. At last John said, “What are we going to do about him, Danno? We can’t just leave him. He’s got parents. Grandparents. Probably brothers and sisters. All of them still wondering.”
“He has to stay awhile. Long enough so nobody’s going to say, ‘Gee, that anonymous call came in just after some stranger bought a spade in the Adair hardware store.’ That probably wouldn’t happen, but we can’t take the chance.”
“How long’s awhile?”
“Maybe a month.”
John considered this, then sighed. “Maybe even two. Give his folks that long to go on thinking he might just have run off. Give them that long before we break their hearts.” He shook his head. “If I’d had to look at his face, I don’t think I ever could have slept again.”
“You’d be surprised what a person can live with,” Dan said. He was thinking of Mrs. Massey, now safely stored away in the back of his head, her haunting days over. He started the car, powered down his window, and beat the baseball glove several times against the door to dislodge the dirt. Then he put it on, sliding his fingers into the places where the child’s had been on so many sunlit afternoons. He closed his eyes. After thirty seconds or so, he opened them again.
“Anything?”
“?‘You’re Barry. You’re one of the good guys.’?”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, except I’m betting he’s the one Abra calls Barry the Chunk.”
“Nothing else?”
“Abra will be able to get more.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Dan thought of the way his vision had sharpened when Abra opened her eyes inside his head. “I am. Shine your light on the pocket of the glove for a sec, will you? There’s something written there.”
John did it, revealing a child’s careful printing: THOME 25.
“What does that mean?” John asked. “I thought his name was Trevor.”
“Jim Thome’s a baseball player. His number is twenty-five.” He stared into the pocket of the glove for a moment, then laid it gently on the seat between them. “He was that kid’s favorite Major Leaguer. He named his glove after him. I’m going to get these fuckers. I swear before God Almighty, I’m going to get them and make them sorry.”
14
Rose the Hat shone—the entire True shone—but not in the way Dan or Billy did. Neither Rose nor Crow had any sense, as they said their goodbyes, that the child they had taken years ago in Iowa was at that moment being uncovered by two men who knew far too much about them already. Rose could have caught the communications flying between Dan and Abra if she had been in a state of deep meditation, but of course then the little girl would have noticed her presence immediately. Besides, the goodbyes going on in Rose’s EarthCruiser that night were of an especially intimate sort.
She lay with her fingers laced together behind her head and watched Crow dress. “You visited that store, right? District X?”
“Not me personally, I have a reputation to protect. I sent Jimmy Numbers.” Crow grinned as he buckled his belt. “He could’ve gotten what we needed in fifteen minutes, but he was gone for two hours. I think Jimmy’s found a new home.”
“Well, that’s good. I hope you boys enjoy yourselves.” Trying to keep it light, but after two days of mourning Grampa Flick, climaxed by the circle of farewell, keeping anything light was an effort.
“He didn’t get anything that compares to you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Had a preview, did you, Henry?”
“Didn’t need one.” He eyed her as she lay naked with her hair spread out in a dark fan. She was tall, even lying down. He had ever liked tall women. “You’re the feature attraction in my home theater and always will be.”
Overblown—just a bit of Crow’s patented razzle-dazzle—but it pleased her just the same. She got up and pressed against him, her hands in his hair. “Be careful. Bring everyone back. And bring her.”
“We will.”
“Then you better get a wiggle on.”
“Relax. We’ll be in Sturbridge when EZ Mail Services opens on Friday morning. In New Hampshire by noon. By then, Barry will have located her.”
“As long as she doesn’t locate him.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
Fine, Rose thought. I’ll worry for both of us. I’ll worry until I’m looking at her wearing cuffs on her wrists and clamps on her ankles.
“The beauty of it,” Crow said, “is that if she does sense us and tries to put up an interference wall, Barry will key on that.”
“If she’s scared enough, she might go to the police.”
He flashed a grin. “You think? ‘Yes, little girl,’ they’d say, ‘we’re sure these awful people are after you. So tell us if they’re from outer space or just your ordinary garden variety zombies. That way we’ll know what to look for.’?”
“Don’t joke, and don’t take this lightly. Get in clean and get out the same way, that’s how it has to be. No outsiders involved. No innocent bystanders. Kill the parents if you need to, kill anyone who tries to interfere, but keep it quiet.”
Crow snapped off a comic salute. “Yes, my captain.”
“Get out of here, idiot. But give me another kiss first. Maybe a little of that educated tongue, for good measure.”
He gave her what she asked for. Rose held him tight, and for a long time.
15
Dan and John rode in silence most of the way back to the motel in Adair. The spade was in the trunk. The baseball glove was in the backseat, wrapped in a Holiday Inn towel. At last John said, “We’ve got to bring Abra’s folks into this now. She’s going to hate it and Lucy and David won’t want to believe it, but it has to be done.”
Dan looked at him, straight-faced, and said: “What are you, a mind-reader?”
John wasn’t, but Abra was, and her sudden loud voice in Dan’s head made him glad that this time John was driving. If he had been behind the wheel, they very likely would have ended up in some farmer’s cornpatch.
(NOOOOO!)
“Abra.” He spoke aloud so that John could hear at least his half of the conversation. “Abra, listen to me.”
(NO, DAN! THEY THINK I’M ALL RIGHT! THEY THINK I’M ALMOST NORMAL NOW!)
“Honey, if these people had to kill your mom and dad to get to you, do you think they’d hesitate? I sure don’t. Not after what we found back there.”
There was no counterargument she could make to this, and Abra didn’t try . . . but suddenly Dan’s head was filled with her sorrow and her fear. His eyes welled up again and spilled tears down his cheeks.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.