One-Eyed Jack (35 page)

“
She...
she ate his
eye
?”

I nodded. “The left one.”

I was so hungry, and he
loved me so much! But then he stopped loving me, and I came here
instead.

“
That’s one way of looking
at it, I suppose.”

Trevor did not appear happy as he
glanced back and forth between Jenny and me. I wondered which of us
looked scarier, with my face covered in bloody bandages.

“
You’ll notice she’s not
denying it,” I said, after a moment.

Trevor turned away from us both. I
thought he might be crying, or struggling not to.

Trevor, I love you.
She moved closer and leaned over him, her long
hair draping across his shoulder.

“
I don’t go around telling
kids I barely know that I love them,” I said, “but I don’t mean you
any harm. I’m here because we’re worried about what Jenny might do,
to you and other kids, and we’re trying to find a way to get rid of
her.”

Trevor buried his face in his pillow,
then raised it just enough to say, “You brought the scary lady
here.”

“
Yes, we did,” I agreed.
“Madame de Cheverley is an old friend of mine, and she’s very, very
scary. We thought maybe she could scare Jenny into going away
forever. It didn’t work. I’m sorry.”

“
She
scared
me
.”

“
Of
course. She scares
me
, and I’m her best friend. She
scares
everybody
.
I think the fact that she
didn’t
scare Jenny is the best proof I’ve seen yet that
Jenny’s not anything remotely human.”

I was human
once.

“
No, you weren’t. You just
think you were.”

I was!

“
No. You really
weren’t.”

How can you know? I was! I
had a home, and three children...

“
Ashley, Sarah, and Jason.
I know.

...and I killed them, and
became a ghost, and I must wander the Earth until I can make it
right by helping other children I love.

“
Is that really how you
think it works?”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed
now, stroking Trevor’s hair, and had apparently stopped listening
to me; she didn’t answer.

Trevor didn’t, either. For a moment I
was afraid she had somehow managed to smother him, but I realized I
could see that he was still breathing.

He had fallen asleep.

I could understand that; he was a sick
little boy, it was getting late, and he’d had a very busy, exciting
day. I didn’t see any reason to wake him.

I settled onto a blue-cushioned
visitor’s chair and smiled at Jenny. “Looks like it’s just the two
of us for now,” I said.

Go away.

I snorted. “I’m not going
away. You can’t make me go, any more than I can make
you
go.” I smiled.
“Looks like we’re stuck with each other for the moment. Why don’t
you tell me a little bit about yourself?”

She looked at me
suspiciously with those mismatched eyes of hers.
Why?

“
Because I’m curious – and
hey, maybe you can convince me to go away and leave you alone after
all.”

Oh?

“
Maybe. So let’s get to
know each other, shall we? Tell me, how did you die?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

We talked for almost half an hour
before my phone finally sang to me. I didn’t learn much new,
though. The monster had only very vague memories of anything at all
about Jenny’s actual life – she didn’t remember her parents, or her
husband, or much of anything other than killing her children, and
wanting to eat babies but not being allowed to. She claimed to have
died quietly in her sleep under the big tulip poplar, while waiting
for the authorities to come and take her away. When she woke up her
body was gone, and she was a ghost.

I didn’t argue with any of that; she
believed it all fervently. I didn’t want to anger her; the
scratches on my face still stung. I was relieved she’d been willing
to talk, instead of going straight to the claws; I guessed it was
because she didn’t want to look scary in front of
Trevor.

I didn’t know why she was
getting stronger, but she obviously was. Maybe she was feeding off
the attention the kids gave her, or maybe it came from the flesh
she’d eaten – it had been her left hand, Andrew’s hand, that could
hurt me, not her original, unaltered right one. She definitely
seemed to be getting more solid, more
real
, as she added pieces like
that.

Trevor didn’t have any innate psychic
talent, so far as I could see – he looked like any other kid, very
much a part of the real, everyday world, with no trace of that
strange not-belonging that Jack and other people who could see the
night-things had – but he could hear Jenny, and see her a little.
He said he hadn’t seen any other supernatural creatures, just her.
And Lisette Babcock – well, I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her
much, and she’d had a faint glimmer of the talent, but I didn’t
think she was very prone to hauntings, either.

So Jenny was definitely a
genuine threat, and I understood why Ben Skees was trying
everything he could think of to get rid of her, but I didn’t see
how any of it could work. Mel hadn’t frightened her at all. Trevor
had ordered her out of his room, but she had come back.
I
couldn’t chase her
away anymore.

I didn’t think anything human would be
able to stop her.

I didn’t think she would always need
her victim’s consent, either.

I understood what Skees had in mind,
bringing the real Jenny Derdiarian here; he wanted to convince the
monster that it wasn’t Jenny, it hadn’t starved its children to
death, and it had no reason to eat children. I thought this scheme
of his was like something from the original “Star Trek,” where the
brave Captain Kirk would talk an unstoppable killer computer into
destroying itself by showing it its own internal
contradictions.

And I didn’t believe for a minute that
it would work. This Jenny-thing wasn’t a computer, it was a
monster. It didn’t need to be logical; eating children because it
had killed its own made no logical sense in the first place. There
was nothing rational about it; it was a collection of obsessions,
not a computer program.

Not that computers actually work
anything like they did in old Hollywood shows in the first
place.

Still, I didn’t see that
it was likely to do any harm to get the two Jennys together, and
maybe it
would
help somehow. Maybe Jenny would re-absorb her old obsessions
– which would kind of suck for her, but at least
she
wouldn’t actually
eat any kids.

Or if she did, something could be done
about it.

I’d thought that through several times
by the time Detective Skees called to tell me that he and the real
Jenny were on the way in.

I told him where we were, and settled
down to wait.

The Jenny monster, meanwhile, was
leaning over Trevor, smiling down at him lovingly, her hair
brushing against his cheek. She wasn’t interested in me, or my
phone calls; she was there because Trevor was, and because Trevor
had not sent her away permanently. She seemed almost happy – though
I could feel a growing hunger.

If we were going to get
rid of her, I thought the best way had nothing to do with trying to
chase her away ourselves. My advice would be to tell all the kids
about her.
All
the kids. If
they
all told her to leave, she would
leave.

Well... probably.

The door swung open and Ben Skees
looked in. I held a finger to my lips and pointed to the sleeping
Trevor.

Skees nodded, and stepped into the
room.

Behind him came Jenny
Derdiarian, the
real
Jenny Derdiarian, looking around curiously.

“
Mr. Kraft,” she
whispered. Then she looked at Trevor. “Is this your
son?”

I shook my head. “Never saw him before
today,” I whispered back. “But the thing that claims to be your
ghost is here.” I pointed at the thing leaning over the
bed.

Jenny looked around. “Where?” she
asked.

I sighed. “Right there by the bed,” I
said. “You can’t see it?” Where the monster had absorbed a part of
her I’d thought there might be some connection that would allow her
to see it, but apparently that wasn’t the case.

“
No.” She gave Skees a
quick look, then stared at the bed, as if she thought that if she
stared hard enough, she could see her doppelganger.

“
It’s there,” I told
her.

She focused on a spot to one side, not
on ghost-Jenny, but I didn’t see any point in correcting her. “Now
what?” I asked Skees.

“
What’s the ghost doing?”
he said. “How’s she reacting?”

“
Reacting?” I grimaced.
“She’s not reacting. She’s ignoring us. She’s only interested in
Trevor.”

“
What’s she
doing?”

“
She’s leaning over the
bed, stroking Trevor’s cheek,” I said. “Not that he can feel
it.”

“
Does she know we’re
here?”

“
Hey, Jenny,” I called to
the monster.

Go away.

“
I thought we were past
that. I mean, we’ve been talking for the last hour.”

You’ll wake him. Go
away.

I glanced at Trevor, who had indeed
stirred. “It won’t kill him,” I said. “Look, there’s someone here I
want you to meet.”

Go away, all of
you.

“
She knows you’re here,” I
said.

“
Has she noticed Ms.
Derdiarian?” Skees asked.

“
Not that I can see. She’s
fixated on kids; all her attention’s on Trevor.”

“
Can you
get her to
look
at Ms. Derdiarian?”

“
Detective, right now she just keeps telling us all to go
away. She doesn’t
care
about us, not unless we interfere with her
contact with the kids.
I
can’t get her to do anything.”

“
What if the kid talked to
Ms. Derdiarian?”

“
She’d
notice
that
,” I said.

With that, Skees crossed to the bed
and put a hand on Trevor’s arm.

The boy’s eyes opened, and he made a
questioning noise.

“
Hey,” Skees said gently.
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” He turned and beckoned to
the real Jenny.

“
Who are you?” Trevor
asked, looking up at the detective and ignoring the approaching
woman.

“
My name’s Skees. I’m a
policeman.” He stepped back and gestured for Jenny to take his
place. “And this is Jenny Derdiarian.”

Trevor blinked up at her for a moment,
then snapped his head over to look at ghost-Jenny, then back to the
real Jenny.

“
You are?” he asked. “I
mean, I think... I can’t see her very well, and you maybe look a
little like her, but you’re... you aren’t as thin, and your hair’s
different...” His voice trailed off.

“
Not as thin as who?”
Jenny asked.

I’m Jenny!
the monster insisted.

“
As her,” Trevor said,
pointing. “The ghost.”

“
I don’t see any ghost,”
Jenny said, looking around.

Trevor stared at her. “She’s right
there.”

“
I can’t see anyone
there.”

Trevor looked back and forth between
the two Jennys. He looked scared. He pushed himself up into a
half-sitting position.

“
I don’t understand,” he
said.

I decided it was time I
stepped in. “I told you it wasn’t a ghost,” I said. “It
thinks
it is, because it
stole its memories from this woman fifteen years ago, but it’s not.
She’s alive and well.”

“
Stole her
memories?”

No! I’m Jenny. I’ve always
been Jenny. I died fifteen years ago.

“
As near as I can tell,
yeah,” I said. “That whole thing about killing her kids was just
something Ms. Derdiarian...” I threw her a quick glance, remembered
I was talking to a nine-year-old, and changed the word I was about
to use. “...worried about. It never really happened. Her kids are
fine. They’re all grown up now.”

They’re gone, lost lost
lost, all dead.

“
They’re alive and
well.”

“
She...” He leaned on one
elbow to look at the monster. “She lied?”

No no no. They lie. Not
me.