One-Eyed Jack (15 page)

It wasn’t over, I knew that – Jenny
was still there, and Jack still loved her, and he had another eye
and lots of fingers left, and I didn’t really believe he would stay
away from her, or that she wouldn’t find him.

Besides, I’d dreamed about him, and
always before that had meant there was going to be something
important between us, something that would change my life; I didn’t
think carrying him out to the street and calling the cops, or
promising to give Jenny a message and then not being able to find
her, was really enough to account for it. I thought that not only
would Jack and Jenny probably see one another again, but so would
Jack and I.

But I didn’t know of anything more I
could do, and my plane ticket was ready, so I waited around that
night, but when Thursday came I went home.

The whole way on the plane
I was thinking about it, trying to decide what I should do, what
I
could
do, but I
kept coming up blank. Jenny had no material presence – at least, I
didn’t think she did, though maybe her new eye and finger did. It
occurred to me, a little too late to be useful, that maybe I should
have taken someone else to meet her, to find out whether that eye
and that finger were visible to ordinary people, and not just to
freaks like me and Jack.

But aside from those added
body parts, I knew she was invisible and intangible to anyone who
didn’t have my special abilities. She could probably pass right
through physical barriers; certainly other phantoms I’d seen could
do that. She couldn’t be arrested or imprisoned, and I didn’t know
of any way she could be hurt. This was why I hated the spooks and
apparitions so much – they couldn’t be stopped. Most of them were
harmless and didn’t
need
to be stopped, but the bad ones, the strong ones,
the dangerous ones, could go about their business unmolested,
because except for talking to them, there wasn’t any way I knew for
a human being to interfere with them.

Maybe there were things I didn’t know;
after all, Mrs. Reinholt seemed to be able to control them, up to a
point – but only up to a point, as her death
demonstrated.

I landed in Baltimore and got the B30
bus to the Greenbelt Metro, then walked home from the Takoma
station rather than wait for another bus. It gave me a chance to
stretch my legs and think some more.

I couldn’t be sure whether Jack was
still in danger, but if he was, and if I was going to do anything
to save him, I had to talk either Jack or Jenny out of resuming
their nasty little pact. Neither of them was rational, but if I
could find a strong enough argument, maybe I could get through to
one or the other.

That was why, when I got home to my
apartment, I made a sandwich and then settled down at the computer
to eat it while looking for background on Jenny Derdiarian, the
mother who had murdered her three children.

I didn’t find any.

You’d think that a gruesome triple
child murder by starvation would be easy to research, wouldn’t you?
There should have been tabloid accounts all over the web; it should
have been archived on a hundred news sites, and mentioned on dozens
of true-crime compilations, but I couldn’t find a damned
thing.

And that was when I began to wonder
whether the entire story was a lie, whether Jenny wasn’t really a
woman’s ghost at all, but just a ghoul with a convincing cover
story.

But why? Why make up names
and specifics? Why not just say she couldn’t remember the details?
Instead she genuinely seemed to be... well,
haunted
by it.

Maybe she was really a ghost, but her
kids had survived. Maybe they had been rescued in time, and she had
somehow blanked that out. I started searching obituaries for a
Jenny or Jennifer or Genevieve Derdiarian, and I didn’t find
one.

But I
did
eventually find a Jenny
Derdiarian. She was still alive, and living in Winchester,
Kentucky, which was only about twenty miles east of Lexington, in
the next county over – presumably, that was the town Winchester
Road ran to. That was close enough that it didn’t seem likely to be
mere coincidence.

I didn’t have anything about her
except a name and phone number, and that she was on her church’s
Bible School committee – that’s where I found her name and number,
on the church website. It was her only online presence.

Somehow, I didn’t think a Baptist
church would put a triple murderess on the school committee; that
was carrying forgiveness a lot farther than most Christians could
manage. And the webpage said it had been updated just a few days
ago, getting ready for the new school year, so she had presumably
been alive then, and probably still was.

Which meant she couldn’t
be my ghost, who had been seeing Jack for weeks, but there
had
to be a connection.
Maybe a relative?

I sat and stared at that
phone number for about ten minutes, but then I looked at the clock,
and saw how late it had gotten, and I knew I wasn’t about to call
her that night, in any case. I didn’t know whether I was
ever
going to call her –
I mean, really, what would I say? But I wrote down the phone number
– two copies, in fact. I stuck one in my pocket and left one next
to the computer.

Then I picked up my phone to call Mel,
who didn’t mind late-night calls, and I scrolled to her number, but
I didn’t hit SEND; I was tired, I’d had a long day, and the thought
of talking to the Queen of Despair was too much. I knew I would
want to tell her about it all sooner or later; I owed her a thank
you for trying to get Skees to lay off me, even if it hadn’t been
necessary. She would want to hear the whole story, but I just
wasn’t up to it. She could wait until tomorrow.

I put the phone down, shut down the
computer, and went to bed, and if I had any dreams I didn’t
remember them.

In the morning I went to the store and
gave Mr. Sanchez some half-assed story about where I’d been, which
he pretended to believe. I still had a job, which was a pleasant
surprise, and I didn’t want him to regret it, so I put in a full
day, no slacking, doing my best to get stock on the shelves and
help every customer I saw.

That gave me time to think, to plan a
little. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to pull things out of boxes
and stack them on shelves, so while my hands were earning my pay,
my brain was mulling over what to say to Jenny
Derdiarian.

There wasn’t really any doubt that I
was going to call her; I had to know what her connection was to
that thing that bit off Jack’s finger, and I couldn’t see any
better way to find out than to call her and ask.

But I couldn’t jump right in with the
whole story. If I accused her of murdering three kids she’d
probably hang up on me, and I’d guess it was a fifty-fifty shot as
to whether she’d call the cops. I needed to approach it
carefully.

And if I just said I was some random
stranger, she probably wouldn’t talk to me at all. She’d probably
think I was a telemarketer trying to sell her something. I needed
an explanation for my questions.

And in the end, I decided to go with
the truth – not all of it, but some.

Chapter Eleven

I got some supper on the way home, got
settled at the computer, then called the number from the church
website. She answered on the third ring.

“
Hello?”

I felt a chill at that – not the same
kind of chill I would get talking to Mel, not terror or despair,
but a little tremble of excitement. I recognized her
voice.

Now, that may seem crazy,
since I’d never actually
heard
the ghost at all, I had only sensed its words in
my head, but the words had had a tone, all the same, and this
woman’s voice had that exact tone.

“
Hello, Ms. Derdiarian?
Jenny Derdiarian?”

“
Yes?”

“
You don’t know me, but my
name is Gregory Kraft, and I’m... well, I guess you’d say I’m a
psychic.”

I know it’s stereotyping, and it might
not have worked, but I thought a church-going woman from Kentucky
would be willing to listen to a psychic; I held my breath as I
waited to hear whether I was right.

“
Oh?” she said.

That wasn’t exactly enthusiastic, but
she hadn’t cut me off.

“
Yes,” I said quickly. “I
had... well, a sort of a vision the other day, and I’m trying to
figure out what it means. I was hoping you might be able to help
me.”

“
Well,
I’m
not a psychic, Mr. Kraft. I’m sure I don’t know what your
vision was about. Are you positive you have the right
number?”

“
I believe I do, Ms.
Derdiarian, but no, I’m not positive. Your name is Jenny
Derdiarian, yes? That was the name in my vision. But to be honest,
I’m not sure you’re the right one. Do you know of anyone else named
Jenny Derdiarian? A relative, maybe?”

“
No, I can’t say I do. The
only people I ever even heard of named Derdiarian are my first
husband’s folks, and I don’t think a one of them is named
Jenny.”

“
Then I think you must be
the right one. Tell me, do you have any children?”

“
Not that it’s any
business of yours, but yes, I do have children. Three of
them.”

I spoke quickly again, before she
could tell me anything more. “Two girls and a boy?”

“
That’s right.” She
sounded wary.

“
Ashley, Sarah, and
Jason?”

“
Now,
how did you know
that
?” For the first time she
sounded interested, rather than impatient.

“
Those were the names in
my vision, Ms. Derdiarian. May I ask how old they are?”

She hesitated for a
moment, then said, “Well, Ashley’s just turned twenty-four, and
Sarah’s in college, and Jason graduated high school this past June.
What is this
about
, Mr. Kraft?”

I swallowed, surprised. Those kids
were older than I’d expected, much older.

“
And they’re all okay, so
far as you know? They’re well?”

“
They’re fine. Jason’s
right here with me, and it looks as if he wants to know why we’re
talking about him. If you’re trying to scare me, Mr.
Kraft...”

“
No, no! Nothing like
that. I’m just concerned. In my vision they were younger than that,
so perhaps this is related to something that happened some time
ago.”

“
What
is? What is this vision you
keep talking about?”

“
Well, that’s why I’m
calling. I don’t understand it myself, and I was hoping you could
help me make sense of it. In the vision you were very upset, so
upset that you had locked all three of your children in their
rooms, and they were saying they were hungry, and you were refusing
to let them out or let them have anything to eat.”

For a long moment she didn’t say
anything; then she said, “Where did you say you are, Mr.
Kraft?”

“
I’m in Maryland, Ms.
Derdiarian. Just outside Washington, D.C. I live here, in a place
called Takoma Park.”

Her next sentence wasn’t addressed to
me, and she wasn’t speaking directly into the phone, but I heard it
clearly enough. “Jason, honey, would you go check on the car? I
think I left the keys in the ignition again.”

I couldn’t make out the words, but I
thought I could hear Jason arguing.

“
Just go, sweetie, and
make sure, okay?” she said.

I thought I could hear some further
protest, but apparently Jason went.

Then she was speaking into
the phone again. “All right, now, Mr. Kraft, or whoever you are,”
she said, quietly and intently, “how did you get this number?
Was
that
in this
vision?”

“
No, I found it on the
web,” I said. “On your church’s website.”

“
That doesn’t have my
kids’ names.”

“
No, it
doesn’t. Those were in my vision, along with
your
name. I did a
search for it – listen, I know how creepy this must sound, but my
dream, my vision, was really disturbing, and I wanted to make sure
it wasn’t... well, that everything there was all right.”

“
Well,
it
was
,
until you called me just now.” She sounded genuinely distressed,
and I felt a stab of guilt.

“
I’m really sorry if I’ve
upset you,” I said, and I meant it.

“
Well,
bless you, I’ll be fine. You know, I was never too sure whether
there were any real psychics, because I know a lot of them are
fakes, but I think you must be a real one, Mr. Kraft, because I
can’t think how else you would know about... about that. You got my
number from the internet, and you could probably find my name and
my kids’ names, but what you’re talking about,
that
isn’t on the web
anywhere.”