One-Eyed Jack (4 page)

“
Madame” was also
technically a lie, since she had never married, but Mademoiselle
didn’t sound right.

“
I didn’t really see her
face,” I said. “She was thinner than you...”

“
Oh,
thank you so
very
much!”

I jerked in a spasm of terror, and I
must have screamed, because next thing I knew the voice from the
phone was calling desperately, “It’s okay, Greg! It’s all right!
I’m not mad! Gregory, are you there?”

“
I’m here,” I said. I
didn’t say more than that; I didn’t need to. Mel knew what a
sarcastic rejoinder like that could do to me.

“
I’m so
sorry! You just describe her, and I won’t say another
word
, I promise, until
you’re done.”

“
Thank
you.” I took a deep breath, and then I said, “You know, I think it
may be
worse
over the phone now. Next time I’ll come out there and we can
talk in person.”

“
I’d like that very much.
Now, tell me about the woman in your dream.”

I told her everything I could, which
wasn’t much. She had been very thin, bony, hunched over, with long,
unkempt black hair that hung straight down like rope, hiding her
face. She wore a simple white dress or slip. Her nails were long
but unpainted. I hadn’t seen her feet, but her hands were pale and
gaunt. She was definitely female, but had nothing like Mel’s
curves.

When I was done there were a few
seconds of uncomfortable silence – at least, they were
uncomfortable for me – and then Mel said, “I’m sorry, Greg, I can’t
think of a thing that would help. I have no idea who or what she
is. She isn’t anyone I know, or that I’ve seen around here. Do you
think she was human, or something else?”

“
I don’t know for sure,” I
said. “Could be either one.” I didn’t have the confidence to say
any more than that, but given her appearance, I didn’t really think
she was human. What would a woman that thin, and dressed like that,
be doing sitting under a tree at night, comforting someone else’s
kid?

“
Then I don’t know,
either. Do you think you’ll dream more tonight?”

“
Probably.” I let out a
long, shuddering breath.

“
Well, that will probably
tell you more. If it’s exciting, you’ll tell me, won’t
you?”

“
Of course.”

“
Then
I’ll let you go. But honestly, Gregory dear, thank
you
so
much for calling! It’s lovely to hear from you, and just to
listen to your voice. Seriously. And I’d love a visit – I could
send a car, if you like. I’m so sorry your dreams are troubling
you, and I wish I could be more help.”

“
Thanks, Mel. I’m sorry
the curse is still so strong, and that I can’t resist it
better.”

“
You do fine,” she said.
“You do better than anyone else.” I think she wanted to sound
reassuring, but it came out more like a veiled threat.

“
Good night, Mel,” I
said.

“
Good night,
Greg.”

And that was that.

I sat in the armchair with the phone
in my hand for about ten minutes before I dared to get
up.

Poor Mel. She was so lonely. She did
her best to hide it, from herself more than anyone else, but I
could still tell. She was completely alone in that big house of
hers; no one else could bear to stay that close to her.

When we first met, back in high
school, I don’t think she was lonely. That was before Mrs. Reinholt
cursed her, of course. Back then we didn’t believe in curses. We
didn’t believe in witches. We didn’t believe in prophetic dreams,
or ghosts, or monsters. We believed in changing the world, and
brushing after meals, and happy endings, and the health benefits of
dark chocolate.

Kids always believe in
lies.

I wondered what lies that kid Jack had
believed that cost him his finger.

Well, I told myself that maybe I’d
find out later, but it was too early for bed. I settled at the
computer and did more searching for news items about a boy losing a
finger.

I still didn’t find any. I found some
other interesting links, and chased around the net for awhile,
reading this and that, but there wasn’t anything about a runaway
named Jack who came home short a finger.

I tried to see if I could
find something about the skinny black-haired woman in white, but
all
that
got me
was porn, some of it pretty strange stuff. It’s amazing what turns
some people on.

I checked a few other things while I
was there. My little stock portfolio was up a little, the Nationals
were losing, Congress was still being stupid. My e-mail was all
spam; I hadn’t heard from Dad for three months, so I sent him a
quick hello, just to remind him he’d had another family before he
married Nancy and she started popping out daughters.

On a whim, I looked at some real
estate listings. A lot of the houses around Mel’s place were for
sale. Not a surprise.

Poor Mel.

I did make a quick supper somewhere in
there, and watched some TV, and finally I packed it in and went to
bed.

And there was Jack’s mother, in an
office somewhere, talking to a nice man in an expensive suit who
was explaining that Jack was suffering from severely low
self-esteem, and that from a psychological point of view it was not
impossible that the wound might be self-inflicted.

“
He says it was an
accident,” she said.

“
He
wouldn’t
admit
he did it himself,” the psychologist replied. “It may be that
he meant to do something far less drastic, and the knife slipped;
that would be a kind of an accident, after all.”

I tried to look around the office, to
see if I could see a name, or some other evidence of where this was
happening.

Jack’s mother did not look convinced.
She stood up. “Thank you, Doctor,” she said. She walked out of the
office, carefully closing the door behind her, and I could see that
the name on the door was Dr. Brown, which was astonishingly
unhelpful. There must be thousands of Dr. Browns out there. She
walked down a hospital corridor to a waiting area where Jack’s
father was talking to a man in a white coat – another doctor,
presumably. The two men looked up at her approach.

“
Dr. Brown thinks he cut
it off himself,” she said.

Jack’s father started to say
something, but the man in the white coat spoke first.

“
That’s impossible,” he
said.

“
It’s what Dr. Brown –
”

“
Dr. Brown may be a fine
doctor in his own field, but I’m telling you, your son did not cut
off his own finger,” the man interrupted.

“
Why – ”

“
Even
saying it was cut off is misleading,” the man continued, ignoring
the father’s attempt to speak. “I looked at the wounds when I sewed
them up. Those weren’t nice, tidy cuts made with a good sharp
knife; if they were made with a knife at all, which I
very
much doubt, it had
a very dull blade.”

“
Then
what
did
happen?” Jack’s mother demanded.

“
Was it a dog?” Jack’s
father asked.

The doctor shook his head. “I do think
something bit it off, Mr. Wilson, but it wasn’t a dog. The
teeth-marks, if that’s what they are, aren’t right for any breed of
dog I’m familiar with.”

Jack’s mother went pale, and I took
note of the name, Wilson. I was looking for Jack Wilson, a kid with
nine fingers.

“
Then
what... if it wasn’t a dog, what the hell
was
it?” the father
demanded.

“
I don’t
know,” the doctor said. “But it wasn’t a sharp bite, like a dog or
a wolf or a cougar; something
gnawed
that finger off. Or if it
wasn’t teeth after all, then someone hacked it off, little by
little – it wasn’t chopped off with a single whack.”

Jack’s mother made a small,
half-strangled noise; her hand flew to her mouth.

“
No
child, no matter how disturbed he
is, could have done that to himself,” the doctor continued. “Dr.
Brown is simply wrong about this.”

And then a cop appeared,
and I could see the patch on his uniform that read
Lexington Fayette Urban County
, and I had the clue I needed. The three of them all turned
to look at him.

“
Mr. And Mrs. Wilson? You
can see Jack now.”

And with that, both parents hurried
into an examination room, where Jack was perched on the end of the
examining table.

His mother hugged him, while his
father hung back, looking uncertain. Jack didn't move; he accepted
the embrace, but he didn't hug her back. He didn't look at his
father at all.

“
Jack,
what
happened
?” his mother asked. “The doctor says... he says your
finger...” She couldn't finish the question.

“
Jack, did a dog bite it
off?” his father asked. “Because if there's a dog out there that's
attacking kids, it has to be found and put down.”

Jack's head slowly turned to face his
father, but he still didn't say anything.

“
Was it a dog?” Mr. Wilson
persisted.

“
I don't remember,” Jack
said. He looked down at his bandaged, four-fingered hand. “I don't
know what happened.”

I wanted to say something. I wanted to
ask about the hunched-over woman. I couldn't, though – I wasn't
really there, I was just seeing this. I didn't even know whether it
was past, present, or future.

At that thought I tried to look around
the examining room for a calendar, but I didn’t see one. So I still
didn’t know when this was, but that patch on the cop’s sleeve would
tell me where, I was pretty sure.

That didn’t tell me what I
should
do
about
it. I didn’t really know what was going on. I knew Jack had met a
thin woman who comforted him, and that he came home missing a
finger, but had the woman cut it off? If that doctor was right, had
she
bitten
it
off? Or was there more to it? There might be any number of things I
didn’t know yet.

I watched and listened for awhile
longer, as Jack’s parents questioned him, as the police questioned
them, but I didn’t learn anything useful. Jack wasn’t talking; he
never mentioned the woman in the white dress, but just kept
insisting he didn’t know what had happened to him, how he had lost
his finger. He did say it was an accident, but nothing more; when
asked how he knew it was an accident, he shut up
completely.

The dream dragged on for what seemed
like hours, going nowhere so far as I could tell, but that wasn’t
unusual for my visions, or psychic experiences, or whatever you
want to call them. I sometimes think my mysterious powers, whatever
they are, could use a good editor.

Finally, though, it was
over.

No, Jack didn’t go home. He didn’t
talk. No one solved any mysteries. I just woke up.

And when I awoke I lay there in bed,
staring at the stained ceiling.

I was at that difficult
point where I had to decide what to do. If I tracked Jack down
while I was awake, what would I do? What could I say to him? I
couldn’t put his finger back. I couldn’t make him talk to his
parents or the doctors.
I
couldn’t talk to them; they’d think I was crazy.
I wouldn’t have any idea how to go about finding the thin woman. I
didn’t know enough to be useful.

If I waited, I might dream
more, and learn more – but something terrible might happen. I had
no idea what that might be, but
something
might. Something had
caused a strong enough psychic disturbance to send me these dreams.
It might just be having a finger gnawed off, but it might be
something far worse. I didn’t know.

That something was chewing off a kid’s
finger was really, really not a good thing, as it probably meant
that there was a creature out there with a taste for human flesh
and the ability to take it. There was no telling where that might
go.

And whatever was going to
happen, it presumably involved me somehow – maybe not directly,
but
somehow
.

If I waited, I might find out more of
what was going on, but I also might be too late to stop whatever it
was from becoming an outright nightmare.

If I went now, if I found Jack and
talked to him, I wouldn’t dream about him anymore – but I might
never find out what had happened to his finger.

I didn’t think that was enough. I
needed to know more.

I wasn’t going to get back to sleep
and dream anything more that morning, I could tell that, so with a
sigh I got out of bed.