One-Eyed Jack (23 page)

One of the strangest
details, to me, was
why
Jenny said she had fantasized about eating the
baby – that had been a way to put it back inside her, which would
somehow make her a
real
mother more than anything external
could.

I’m sure a psychologist would have a
field day with that.

But at any rate, that whole thing had
really been a harmless daydream.

Starving the kids to death
had been very different; that had definitely included plenty of
pain and guilt, though still no blood. I’m not going to go into the
details, but listening to her calmly describe the whole thing was
utterly horrifying – and part of the horror was because it clearly
didn’t bother
her
anymore. Oh, she was a little embarrassed to be telling me
about these ghastly scenes that belonged in a horror novel, but the
heavy emotional content that had obviously been there once really
was gone, completely gone. She felt no guilt, no shame, no pain
about any of it; it might as well have been a party game for all
the impact it had on her.

As for how it had all
ended, one day she had been so angry with the kids and with her
desperate situation that she had walked out the front door, afraid
that if she stayed in the house a minute longer she might really
hurt someone – maybe one of the kids, maybe all of the kids, maybe
herself, but
someone
. She had walked down to the end of the street and sat down
under the tulip poplar and put her face in her hands and
cried.

And then, she said, she
had felt something change, as if a weight had been lifted off her,
and the idea of hurting her kids was just
gone
. She was still worried, still
concerned about money and debt and keeping the family fed, but all
the lurid, complicated fantasies about starving the kids, or eating
them, were gone. She had stood up, dried her tears, and gone back
to the house, and from that moment on her life had started to
improve. She didn’t know whether there was any connection, or
whether it was merely coincidence, but nothing else important went
wrong for months – no one got sick, no appliances broke down,
nothing went wrong at work or at Ashley’s school. She met a nice
man who convinced her that she wasn’t completely unlovable despite
what the children’s father had said, and then not long after that
she met Chester Craig, who showed her that she could still love
someone else besides her kids. That afternoon under the tulip
poplar had been a turning point in her life; no wonder she thought
God had intervened for her then.

It must be nice sometimes to believe
in God; I haven’t been able to manage it since I was a kid,
especially not after Mrs. Reinholt and my mother died.

Anyway, her story explained a lot
about why ghost-Jenny was what she was and did what she did, and it
gave me a new and unpleasant awareness of how horrible even the
nicest, most ordinary people could be under the surface, but I
didn’t see anything in it that helped me figure out where Jack
might be, or where he planned to meet his Jenny.

I wondered what would happen if ghost
Jenny met real Jenny; would the phantom realize that it wasn’t a
ghost at all?

Would it
recognize
the real
Jenny?
I
could
see that they were the same woman, but would a ghoul, ghost, devil,
or demon see it?

One of the things that worried me the
most was that even if I found Jack, even if I kept him away from
Jenny, I didn’t know of anything I could do to stop Jenny from
eventually finding some other kid to eat. I really did think she
was getting stronger somehow, and if she wasn’t stopped I thought
that in time, she would be strong enough to coerce a child into
being eaten.

Or maybe she would eat a baby, as in
the original fantasy – one too young to object...

When that idea struck me I almost said
something aloud, almost interrupted Ms. Derdiarian’s narrative, but
I caught myself at the last moment. I let her finish – after
nagging her into this, I couldn’t very well tell her to stop, and
besides, there might be something else.

But if there was, I missed
it.

When she had finished I thanked her,
promised I’d let her know what happened to Jack, finished my
lemonade, then went back down the steps to the street, where my
rental car was waiting.

I hesitated for a second, debating
whether to call Mel or Detective Skees first, and settled on Skees.
I raised my phone and found his number.

“
Skees,” the familiar
voice said.

“
This is Greg Kraft,” I
said. “Did Katie say anything useful?”

“
I’m afraid not,” Skees
said. “She claims that Jack and the hard-to-see lady sent her away
while they talked and wouldn’t let her hear anything.”

“
What about later, after
Jenny was gone?”

“
Funny you should ask. It
seems our boy Jack asked his little sister about all her friends.
Were any of them sick? Did any of them have new brothers or
sisters? But she says she didn’t tell him anything. So did you hear
anything interesting?”

“
I’m in Winchester,” I
said. “I just talked to the original Jenny Derdiarian, and she says
that it should really be a baby that gets eaten, not a kid Jack’s
age. I think Jack’s looking for a baby, someone too young to object
when Jenny gets hungry.”

Skees didn’t reply immediately, but
eventually he said, “Okay, I can see that. So where does that put
us?”

“
Well, I’m kind of hoping
it puts a cop in every maternity ward in Lexington, especially
whichever one is closest to Jack’s school,” I said.

“
You think he’d just pick
a baby at random?”

“
He’s twelve, Detective.
What else is he going to do?”

“
You may have a point.
I’ll see what we can do. And I’ll ask the Wilsons if there are any
babies in the neighborhood.”

“
I don’t think he’ll dare
go near his house,” I said.

“
Neither do I, but we need
to cover all the bases here.” He paused, then said, “You know, I
don’t think there’s a hospital anywhere near Crawford Middle
School.”

I wasn’t happy to hear that. “He’s had
all day to get to one,” I said.

“
You don’t think he’s more
likely to just find a playground?”

“
I don’t know,” I
admitted.

“
Well, we’ll keep it in
mind, Mr. Kraft.” He cut the connection.

I didn’t like it. A playground didn’t
feel right, somehow; it didn’t fit the way I thought Jack and Jenny
thought. A hospital where they could find a newborn baby seemed
like a better match to me. At a playground there would be mothers
watching, and other kids, and everyone would be moving and active;
in a maternity ward there would be a bunch of babies sleeping in
those little plastic cribs with a bored nurse watching over them.
Jack wouldn’t need to catch anyone, or talk to anyone, or steal a
baby out of a stroller; he could just let Jenny in and turn her
loose.

Besides, it would need to be done
after dark – Jack couldn’t see or hear Jenny in daylight. Parks and
playgrounds didn’t have many babies around after dark, but hospital
nurseries did.

I considered calling Skees back and
explaining this to him, but so far he’d always figured things out
for himself, so I thought he’d get this one soon enough, too. I
glanced up at the sun, which was far to the west, but still well
above the horizon. I had time; I didn’t think Jenny could hurt
anyone by daylight.

I called Mel instead, looking for
advice.

She listened to my explanations
without saying a word. With anyone else I might have thought that
silence was rude, or that it meant they weren’t listening, but with
Mel I knew it was simple consideration – she knew what her voice
did to me. Even when she didn’t speak, just knowing she was there,
on the other end of the connection, was enough to make me absurdly
nervous. My hand got sweaty, so I tried to switch the phone from my
right hand to my left, and dropped it down the side of the seat. I
fished it out, started to ask whether she was still there, then
decided I didn’t want her to answer; I would just assume she was.
The display didn’t say I’d lost the signal.

I told her about meeting the real
Jenny Derdiarian, and about her fantasies, including the baby
eating. I didn’t go into a lot of detail, though; it wasn’t my
story to tell, and repeating some of it felt like a violation of
trust.

I said enough to convey everything I
thought was important, though, and then explained my theory that
Jack would be looking for a baby, the younger the better, to feed
to the ghost. I told her about my call to Ben Skees, and my fear
that he wasn’t taking me seriously.

“
He probably doesn’t have
the manpower to put guards on every newborn in Fayette County,” Mel
said. “After all, dear boy, this isn’t a serial killer he’s after,
it’s just a runaway kid. He can’t send the entire police force out
on some psychic’s theory.”

I instantly saw the truth
in that, and my heart sank – but then,
anything
Mel said would provoke fear
or despair; that was the nature of her curse.

“
I’ll bet he’s phoning the
hospitals, though, and asking the staff to check for an unattended
boy fitting Jack’s description.”

That didn’t raise my mood.
Intellectually I knew she was right, and that it was a good thing,
but because it was Mel I couldn’t believe anything good would come
of it.

“
You think Jack will go to
a hospital, then?”

“
I can’t think of a better
idea.”

“
Which one? There must be
dozens in Fayette County!”

“
One with a maternity
ward. One he’s heard of, or seen. One that isn’t out in the middle
of nowhere.”

“
There still must be
several of them.”

“
Maybe. Maybe not. Do you
have your computer with you?”

“
There’s no wifi
here.”

She must have heard something in my
voice that told her the curse was getting to me. “I’ll call you
back, Greg,” she said, and broke the connection.

It was as if a weight had been lifted
off my shoulders. The sun was suddenly brighter, and the situation
seemed far less hopeless.

I
hated
that I felt relieved that Mel
had cut me off. She was my best friend, and I owed her big-time for
everything she had done for me, and I just hated the fact that
talking to her was such a nightmare.

But my hands were trembling, and I had
to wipe the sweat off my palms three or four times before I felt
confident I could grip the wheel properly.

I put the phone away and started the
car, heading back down to Main Street, where I turned right and
drove toward the interstate.

Chapter Sixteen

I was most of the way to Lexington
when my phone rang – or rather, when it started playing Dire
Straits, which is what I had as my ringtone. I answered
it.

“
Greg,” Mel’s voice said,
and I had to fight to not slam on the brakes – what had seemed like
a reasonable highway speed a second before was suddenly a
terrifying headlong rush that could only end in
disaster.

“
Yeah,” I said.

“
I’m not as good at this
as I’d like to be, or even as I thought I was, but I’ve been
searching the web and I think your best bet is the University of
Kentucky’s birth center on Rose Street. 800 Rose
Street.”

“
Oh,” I said, resisting
the temptation to jerk the wheel over and slam the car into a
railing.

“
It’s four or five miles
from his school, but he’s had all day to walk it, or to hitch a
ride.”

“
Yeah,” I said
again.

“
You’re
driving?”

“
Yes, I am.”

“
Drive safely,” she said,
and ended the call.

I put the phone down and
took a few seconds to calm myself. I almost missed the turn onto
I-75, and I
did
miss the exit for Winchester Road. I took the next one
instead, and let the GPS guide me down Man O’ War Boulevard to
Liberty Road.

I felt like an idiot. Trying to guess
which hospital had been stupid. Not realizing the obvious until Mel
called me back made me a moron.

The U.K. hospital was
where they’d taken Jack when he lost his finger, and again when he
lost his eye. He
knew
that hospital. Of
course
that’s where he’d go. I hadn’t realized it had a
maternity ward, but why wouldn’t it? It was obvious.

I hadn’t said as much to
Mel because there wasn’t any point in making
her
feel stupid, and besides,
saying
anything
to her was difficult. Maybe I’d been slow to make the
connection before because I was rattled by talking to her, in fact
– but that was no excuse. I should be used to it by now.