One-Eyed Jack (13 page)

“
Jack?” Emily called.
“There’s someone here to see you.”

Jack still didn’t move.

“
He’s sedated,” Bill
said.

That wasn’t a surprise. I stepped up
to the bedside. “Hi,” I said. “My name’s Gregory Kraft; I was the
one who found you last night.”

At that he finally turned his head a
little and looked at me. Then he looked past me at his parents and
Detective Skees.

“
Make them go away,” Jack
said. His voice was weak.

“
What?”

He pointed at his parents. “I want to
talk to you without them in here.”

“
Jack, that’s crap,” Bill
began, but Skees held up a hand. He leaned over and whispered to
Wilson.

I couldn’t make out all of it, but I
heard the word “disturbed,” and the phrase “further our
investigation.”

Emily tried to argue, and Skees more
or less pushed the two of them out of the room, which gave me a few
seconds to tell Jack, “The cop’s okay.”

Jack didn’t care about the cop. “You
can see her,” he said. He was looking less sedated now that his
parents weren’t there – still groggy, but less so.

I didn’t pretend. “Yeah, I can see
her,” I admitted.

“
How can you see her?
Nobody else can.”

“
How do you know?” I
asked.

“
She
came to the house once,” Jack explained. “And I’ve seen her in the
street, and no one else ever seems to see her, but
you
did.”

Then Skees was back, closing the door
gently. Jack glanced at him. The kid was definitely not as out of
it as he had first appeared.

“
He’s okay,” I said
again.

“
Can
he
see her?”

I glanced at Skees. “I doubt
it.”

“
Why can you?”

“
I just can,” I said.
“Something happened to me eight years ago, and now I can see them
all.”

“
All?”

“
All the night things,” I
said. “The ghosts, and the other creatures.”

“
I wasn’t... I can see
others, but not as well as I see Jenny. She’s more
real.”

I nodded. “I see all of them,” I said.
“Some are blurry and faint, some are pretty solid. Jenny’s pretty
solid, but she’s not the only one.”

“
Can you hear them?” Jack
asked.

“
Some of them.”

“
You heard Jenny. You told
her to shut up.”

“
Yeah, I heard
her.”

“
Is she okay?”

I closed my eyes and let a breath out
slowly.

I didn’t want to answer
that. I wanted to yell at the kid, ask why he cared, point out that
the damned thing
stole his
eyeball
, and was now using it
herself.

But I didn’t yell. Instead I said,
“She’s fine. Or at least, she was the last I saw.”

“
Can you take her a
message?”

I glanced at Skees again, but he was
just standing there listening, keeping his face still.

“
I don’t know,” I
said.

“
Will you try?”

“
What’s the message?” I
said, without actually agreeing.

“
Tell her where I am,” he
said. “And tell her I still love her.”

Chapter Nine

I heard Skees grunt at that. I ignored
him and stayed focused on Jack.

“
You still think you love
her after what she did to you?” I said.

“
I
do
love her!” he said. “And she loves me.”

I closed my eyes, sighed,
then opened them again. “Kid,” I said, “you don’t know that. You
don’t know what she is, what she wants, what she feels. She isn’t
human. She’s something that
preys
on humans.”

“
She loves me,” he
insisted.

“
The way
I love chocolate,” I said. “Jack, she
bit off your finger
.”

He screwed his face up
into a pout. “I
asked
her to,” he said.

“
And your eye? You asked
her to take that, too?”

“
Yes, I did!”

That stopped me for a
moment, but I regrouped. “
Think
about that a minute, Jack,” I said. “Think about
how crazy that is. She’s gotten inside your head somehow, and she’s
making you feed her pieces of yourself. That’s not love. That’s...
I don’t know
what
that is, but it’s not love.”

“
It is! I did it because I
love her! She was so hungry, and she can’t eat anything
else.”

“
You love her, so you
offered her parts of yourself?”

“
Yes!”

I shook my head.
“If
she
really
loved
you
, Jack,
she wouldn’t take them.”

“
She does love
me!”

“
It’s
an
act
,
Jack,” I said. “She tells you lies so she can eat.”

I didn’t know whether that was true,
really, but it seemed to make sense, and besides, I was perfectly
willing to lie myself to keep this kid from losing any more fingers
or other body parts.

“
It’s real! It hurts her
that she needs to hurt me!”

“
But it
doesn’t stop her, does it? What are you going to do, Jack, keep
feeding her bits of you until there’s nothing left? Or until you
bleed to death? Maybe next time no one will find you in time, or
the ambulance won’t be quick enough. Do you love her enough
to
die
for
her?”

“
I...” He stopped and
blinked his one good eye at me. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“Maybe.”

“
And
what do you think is going to happen when you’re dead?” I asked.
“Do you think she’ll just disappear? No, she’ll find some other
desperate kid she can convince to feed her. It’s what
she
does
,
Jack. It’s what she
is
.”

“
I...”
He paused, and his mouth twisted into a frown. “How do
you
know
that?” he demanded.

It was my turn to be caught without a
good answer. I’d never had an argument like this before, and I
wasn’t doing a great job of it. “It’s obvious!” I said.

“
No,
it’s not,” Jack retorted. “It’s not what
she
says. She says that if she can
just... well, that she’ll get another chance! She’ll be alive
again!”

I stood there looking
stupid. I’d never heard of such a thing happening; I’d never heard
anything claim that it
could
happen.

But then, I’d never met
anything quite like Jenny before. Most of the night things aren’t
anywhere near as human-like as her. Most of them can’t talk at all,
let alone carry on a coherent conversation. The ones I
had
talked to up until
then had mostly been either too stupid or too sure of themselves to
bother lying about what they were, what they wanted, what they
could do. Mostly they do the same things over and over and over, no
matter how pointless that is.

One of the ones that got Mrs.
Reinholt, the big one, had lied to her, fooled her into thinking it
was under her control and couldn’t hurt her, but it didn’t bother
lying to me after it killed her. It hadn’t pretended it was going
to ever be anything but what it was. It had boasted about how it
had tricked her, how it had promised her power.

Was Jenny something like that, but
promising love instead of power? Maybe her whole grieving-mother
thing was an act; maybe she wasn’t a ghost at all, but just
something that pretended to be one.

Once again, I wished that
the supernatural world I saw matched what was described in a book
somewhere. In the stories the monster hunters and vampire slayers
could just look in a book and find descriptions of whatever they
were facing; they could tell whether it was a ghost or a ghoul, a
demon or demigod. Me, I never knew. Nothing I saw ever followed the
rules. I’d tried exorcisms and wards and protective spells; none of
them did anything at all. The night things didn’t even bother to
laugh at me; half of them didn’t even
notice
me. I didn’t know whether
Jenny was a ghost or a demon or a vampire or a succubus or a lamia
or a goddamn Chinese fox spirit, or something that had never been
reported anywhere.

All I knew was that she was biting
pieces off this kid.

“
Is that what she told
you, Jack?” I said quietly.

“
Yes!”

“
And you believe
her?”

“
Yes, I do!”

“
Why?”

That threw him for a moment, but then
he went back to, “Because she loves me, and I love her! We trust
each other!”

“
And you think you’d know
if she was lying about all of it, if she were a monster trying to
lure you into letting her kill you? It could all be lies, Jack; how
would you know?”

“
I
just
know
,
all right?”

“
No,
it’s
not
all right! Think about it! She killed her children when she
was alive, right? Starved them to death?”

Jack stared at me. “How did you know
that?”

“
She
told me. Did she tell
you
that?”

“
Yes. How... when did she
tell you?”

“
So
you’re telling me that if she kills
another
kid, she’ll get a second
chance at life? Jack, how does that make
any
sense?”

“
Because... because this time she’ll have
permission
. She can’t
hurt anyone who doesn’t want to help her.”

“
But
she’ll still be
killing another
kid
! How can that be right? It’s
ridiculous! And turning human again – have you
ever
heard of a ghost being given a
new life?”

“
Why
not? What do
you
know about it?”

“
I know I’ve never heard
of it happening, and I’ve studied this stuff. It’s just something
she made up to get you to do what she wants.”

“
No, it isn’t! It’s the
truth! Just because you never heard of it doesn’t mean it isn’t
possible.”

“
And
you’re sure enough of that to
die
for it?”

He didn’t answer at first; he just
stared at me. Then he said, “Tell her I love her, okay? We’ll
figure the rest out later.”

“
I’m not making any
promises,” I said. “I don’t know whether I’ll see her
again.”

“
I
will,” he said. He glanced at
Skees. “Someday.” Then he rolled over to face away from
me.

I looked at Skees, and he shrugged. I
looked at Jack, and saw his shoulders hunched
defensively.

“
Let’s go,” I said to
Skees.

We went.

Bill and Emily were
waiting for us outside the door. “What was
that
about?” Bill
demanded.

“
He wanted to know whether
I’d seen who did this to him,” I said. “He... he wanted to say he
forgave them.”

“
Forgave
them!” Bill said. “The
people who ripped out his eye? He forgave them?”

I shrugged.

“
I
sure as hell am not forgiving
anyone!”

“
I wouldn’t ask you to,” I
said.

“
Why didn’t he want
us...?” Emily asked.

I glanced at Bill and didn’t
answer.

There was an awkward moment of
silence, and then Detective Skees said, “I want to have a few more
words with Mr. Kraft, and see that he gets back where he belongs.
I’ll be back to talk to you later, if that’s all right.”

“
Sure,” Bill said. He
stood and watched as the detective escorted me down the
corridor.

We took the elevator down, and walked
back to the garage across the street where he’d left his car. We
got in, but Skees didn’t start the engine immediately.

I didn’t rush him; I sat there and
waited.

“
That kid’s pretty screwed
up,” he said at last.

“
Yeah,” I said.

“
Do I
have it right, that he
let
that thing bite off his finger and pull out his
eye?”