Authors: James Scott Bell
Don't Leave Me (20 page)
She wasn’t a ghost! It really was Julia!
She looked almost the same. Her brown hair was a little longer, her brown eyes a little more tired. But her voice was exactly like Stan remembered it. He liked it before, but now it was just freaky!
“I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through this,” Julia said. She sat in the chair where the man had been sitting only moments ago.
“But you’re alive!” Stan said. This was not right, this was not how things happened. People can’t come back from the dead, only in horror movies and Stan did not like horror movies. “How can you be alive?”
“Believe me when I say it’s best you not know,” Julia said.
She looked so sad. “Did you get kidnapped?”
Julia put her hand on his knee. He didn’t like to be touched there, but he let her this time. “Be patient,” she said.
Stan thought she might cry.
“But you were dead,” Stan said. “I saw them put you in the ground.”
“We haven’t much time. You can help Chuck.”
“Where is Chuck? Is he all right?”
“Yes. He’ll be right here soon, in this house. They just want to talk to him. If you’ll stay nice and calm, it will all be all right.”
“Where have you been, Julia? Chuck was so sad when you died. But . . .”
Julia nodded, her own sadness again all over her face. Poor face.
“Will you come back to live with us?” Stan said.
“Stan, it’s best not to ask questions now. I just want you to know you have a friend here. I’m here. Okay?”
“But you played a trick on Chuck. Didn’t you play a bad trick?”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do too! I hate it when people tell me I don’t understand something when I do. I understand that you fooled us but I don’t know how you did it. And I don’t know why you did it, but it was mean. It was a very mean thing you did.”
“I know,” she said. She stood and went to the door, hit the keypad four times. The door clicked open.
She looked back at him one more time before going out. She looked like she wanted to say something else. But she didn’t, and closed the door behind her.
.
The thing in the brush, whatever it was, was getting closer.
Animal of some kind. But what?
Chuck did not move, not wanting to attract attention. He wondered if this thing—don’t let it be a mountain lion, let it be a rabbit—had picked up his scent.
And he was still bound by the tape.
He’d been so close to getting free.
He tried not to breathe too loudly.
More rustling in the brush. Chuck estimated the distance at twenty feet. If the animal couldn’t hear him breathe, it no doubt could hear the Salvation Army drum in his chest.
Chuck worked his hands, pulled, the tape giving way a little more.
The rustling stopped.
In his imagination he saw a huge lion, stopping, snout upturned, sensing prey.
This was it. He was dead meat. A meal.
With the added help of fresh, survival-mode adrenaline, Chuck drew his hands to his chest, as if getting ready to row for old Yale. He couldn’t help grunting as he pulled as hard as he could.
The next second felt like twenty.
And then he was free with a snap.
He listened. Only silence, but it was filled with something palpable.
Slowly, as if the slightest disturbance in the wind would set the animal-thing charging, Chuck reached down for the sharp rock.
No further sound.
But unless the thing had wings it was still there.
He gripped the rock like his four seam fastball in Little League. The gesture made him remember the time he struck out Mitch Corwin in the championship game. And now Mitch Corwin was playing center field for the Milwaukee Brewers. The highlight of his athletic life was that day. He felt just like Nolan Ryan. He even wore number 30 like Nolan did on the Angels.
Sometimes Chuck wondered if he’d ever get to feel that way about anything again.
Now, holding his breath, Chuck got to a standing position. The animal-thing was directly to his left, somewhere. It was now as if he were on the mound with a runner on base.
Then he heard it, a low snarl. It froze every joint in his body, yet at the same time blasted awake every nerve. This was not unfamiliar. It was just like facing Mitch Corwin with two outs back in the championship game. Now this, the ultimate contest.
Chuck estimated the distance. One thing he always had was a sense of sound. It started when he would listen for his father coming home, fearing the worst. It got so he could judge just how far from the front door his dad was. And from the creaking of the floorboards which direction he was going. If it was toward the stairs Chuck would try to get Stan and hide in the closet. Estimating distance was crucial if they wanted to keep their butt cheeks from a beating.
About twenty feet was just right for the animal-thing. The snarl gave him the direction. Chuck tried to imagine a big catcher’s mitt and a strike zone. He brought the rock to the ready position at his chest. Then a quick lift of his left leg, a stride toward the target and his fastball. Down the middle.
He heard a thud, like the ball settling into the catcher’s glove, followed by high yelp. A dog sound. And the sound of rustling again, moving in the weeds, but this time away from him.
No more delay. Chuck started clambering up toward the road. Whatever that thing was, a coyote no doubt, maybe it had cousins.
It was time to get out of this canyon and find Stan.
.
“How could you be so stupid, so reckless?” Kovak said.
“I did what I thought was right,” Dag said. “I don’t need to be told anything else.”
Kovak folded his arms. They were standing in Kovak’s office, surrounded by computers and maps and every manner of electronic device. Dag wanted to pull wires out and throw them through a wall.
“Is that so?” Kovak said. “Now you are someone who thinks he can engineer a traffic collision? You pull a knife on someone, and think you won’t be seen? Setting fire to this teacher’s house?”
“Yes!”
“What was the point of that?”
“To put all suspicion on him, don’t you see it?”
Kovak shook his head the way he used to do when Dag was a child, the way it always made him feel like he wanted to crawl into the earth and die.
“Where is the teacher then? Simo has brought the brother, but you have managed to lose the teacher.”
“That’s not true!”
“Then where is he? Is he dead on the road? Is he walking around? Is he talking to the police?”
“We will find him.”
“No, I will find him. You have no more to do tonight. Do not leave this house.”
“I will go and come as I like,” Dag said.
Kovak slapped his son across the face.
Chuck reached the guard rail and felt like he was Steve McQueen about to flee the prison camp.
He saw a haze of light about a half mile away. It was a long half mile and his feet were raw. His body felt like a medical school class slide on abrasions and their various forms.
The other direction was black night with a ribbon of road twisting around a bend.
A ribbon with some very bad guys cruising around.
He would use both sight and sound now. He would be able to see headlights coming from up ahead, and hear cars approaching from behind. Behind was the problem. Cars from around that bend would appear quickly, throwing hard light on him.
Steve McQueen indeed. McQueen was ultimately caught.
Maybe he could be Charles Bronson. Bronson got away, didn’t he?
He touched down on the other side of the guard rail. The shoulder of the road was only about a foot wide. Rocks, gravel, glass all over it, he well knew. His best shot was to walk on the asphalt itself, and that was not exactly rice paper.
He headed for the light.
Stay nice and calm. That’s what Julia said. And Chuck would be coming to the house!
Stan wanted to believe it. Chuck close again. Chuck would know what to do.
But would they do something bad to Chuck? The man said he didn’t want to hurt Chuck, but bad men lie, mean men lie.
But Julia was here. Right here in this room, and she said stay calm and I can’t stay calm, how can they tell me that when they close me up in here?
They are bad men with guns, they shoot people, but they kidnapped us instead because they want Chuck.
I gotta help Chuck. He said he wouldn’t leave me. And I will never leave him.
But how, how?
Think.
Stan went to the door and put his ear on it. He heard nothing but a low hum of some kind. No voices.
He closed his eyes and saw the house in his mind. He saw the way they had taken him in. From a dark garage through a long corridor with tile and fancy wood and nothing on the walls. Lights right in the ceiling. Then through a door and down some stairs, past a little office of some kind––through the slightly opened door he saw a computer on a desk and a map on the wall, on a big corkboard with push pins. Then into this room, this special room with no windows, and locked in.
Then he thought he knew what he could do. Yes, he could help Chuck. He could fool them all. He didn’t care if they were wolves now. He was going to help his brother, yes he was.
If he could get Julia back in the room.
He pounded on the door. “Hey!”
He pounded again.
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