One-Eyed Jack (9 page)

The locals I talked to when I got
lunch seemed more interested in the University of Kentucky sports
program than in horses, but that didn’t provide a lot to do in
August.

I’m not horse-crazy, by any means, but
I yielded to the inevitable and spent the afternoon at the Kentucky
Horse Park. I’d probably have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been
worrying about Jack, and if I gave a damn about horse-racing.
Cooler weather might have helped, too; not only was it still humid,
but it was sweltering hot in the sun. In the shade it was
tolerable.

After supper I headed back toward
Jack’s neighborhood, hoping to talk to Jenny again, now that we’d
had a day to calm down and consider things. I intended to ask her
about her past, about her lost children and her last name. I still
didn’t know any way to harm a ghost, but I thought that if I knew
her background I might do a better job arguing with her.

I noticed I was thinking of Jenny as
“her,” instead of “it,” again. I couldn’t really make up my mind
about that. I don’t suppose it really mattered.

I had the car windows open as I
cruised down the street, taking in the sounds and
smells.

The Wilsons’ car was in their
driveway, but I didn’t see anyone in the yard, and I didn’t look in
the windows. A guy in his sixties was mowing his lawn, despite the
heat, and the roar of the mower didn’t quite drown out the hum of
the air conditioners on every side.

That carnival smell was back. Was that
real, or was it some psychic artifact? Did it have some connection
with Jenny? I let the car drift to a stop in front of the guy with
the mower. I threw the house at the end of the street a glance, but
didn’t see any sign of the shotgun-wielding hausfrau, so I thought
I was safe.

The mower man noticed me; he let the
mower’s engine die, then pulled a big old handkerchief from his
back pocket and wiped sweat from his forehead before coming over to
the car.

“
Can I help you with
something?” he asked, leaning on the car.

“
I’m sorry to bother you,”
I said, “but I was wondering if you know what that smell
is.”

“
Smell?” He straightened
up and sniffed. “You mean the peanut butter factory?”

“
Is that what it is?” I
suddenly felt like an idiot. Hot peanut oil – that’s what I was
smelling.

“
Yeah, that’s the Procter
& Gamble plant over on Winchester Road. Usually the wind’s
wrong and you can’t smell it here, but sometimes – well, there it
is.” He smiled. “Makes me feel like a kid again.”

“
I know what you mean,” I
said. Not everything odd in my life had to be supernatural, it
seemed. “Thanks.”

He was in no hurry to get back to his
mowing. “You visiting someone around here?”

I couldn’t get away with lying about
that; he probably knew every family on the street. “No,” I said.
“I’m a botany student. I’ve been studying those trees at the end of
the street.”

“
Those?” He waved his
thumb at them. “Anything special about them?”

“
Not
really. I’m just looking at growth patterns, and those were a good
sample.” I hoped the old man wasn’t a botanist himself, because I
had no idea what I was talking about. “Why? Have
you
noticed anything
strange about them?”

“
Nope. Just trees. That
big one drops a lot of twigs and stuff, though – maybe it’s
sick.”

I shook my head. “No, tulip poplars
just do that.” There were enough of them around where I grew up
that I knew that.

“
Oh. So you’re a
student?”

“
Yeah.”

“
U.K. or
Transylvania?”

If someone had asked me that a day or
two earlier I would have thought it was a joke I wasn’t getting,
but now I knew there really was a Transylvania University in
Lexington. I didn’t know much about it, though, so I said,
“U.K.”

He nodded. “And you’re just looking at
trees?”

“
Yup.”

He glanced at the Wilsons’ house. “You
aren’t interested in any of the kids around here?”

There it was again, and I should have
expected it – a stranger in the neighborhood right after a kid got
attacked, of course I was going to attract suspicion. “Nope. Not
big on kids, really. Why? Do they climb the trees?”

“
Don’t know. What if they
do?”

“
Well, that might affect
growth patterns, having that weight on the big limbs.”

“
And I suppose you asked
about the smell because you thought it came from the
trees?”

“
No, I knew it wasn’t the
trees. I wondered whether it might be an environmental factor I
needed to check out, though.”

“
You didn’t think it was
candy?”

“
Mister,
I didn’t know
what
it was. That’s why I asked.”

He didn’t look entirely
convinced.

“
Thanks again,” I said,
and reached for the steering wheel.

“
Hold up a minute,” he
said.

I waited as he walked around and
looked at the back of the car; then I leaned out my window and
asked, “Is something wrong back there?”

“
Nothing wrong,” he said.
“I was just getting your license plate.”

I blinked, trying to look puzzled.
“It’s a rental,” I said. “Why’d you want the plate
number?”

“
We’ve had some trouble
around here lately,” he said.

“
Really? Want me to keep
an eye out for anything?”

He shook his head. “I’d suggest you
not stay around after dark, though.”

“
I wasn’t planning to,” I
lied. I put the car in drive. “Thanks again.”

He stood and watched as I pulled away
from the curb, but by the time I reached the end of the street the
comfortable buzz of the mower was filling the air once
again.

The sun was low in the west but still
above the horizon as I stopped the car again and looking into the
shadows beneath the big tree. I didn’t see Jenny, but I wasn’t sure
whether that was because she wasn’t there, or because there was
still too much daylight. I scanned the area.

A curtain in the last house
twitched.

I bit my lip, considering what to do.
I’d told two different lies now, that I was an actor practicing
lines and that I was a student studying trees; if the mower man and
the shotgun woman ever compared notes I was screwed. They were both
suspicious of me, and I couldn’t really blame them; this was a
dead-end street in the sort of neighborhood where anyone other than
the people who lived here, and maybe the ice cream truck or the
trash collectors or the postman, was out of place and going to be
noticed. My cover stories were both pretty weak.

I thought of a better one,
but I really didn’t want to try it. I could claim to be some sort
of official investigating the attack on Jack Wilson. The problem
with
that
one,
though, was that someone would want to check it out – they’d want
to know whether I was a cop or what, and how to verify my
story.

I could say I was a reporter, but that
wasn’t much better; they’d want to talk to my editor. Or they might
just want me to leave; everyone here seemed to know about the
attack, but none of them seemed to want to talk about it. My guess
was that they really didn’t want any publicity; it would be bad for
the real estate values, bad for the neighborhood.

The sound of the mower cut off; the
guy had finished his lawn. I looked back and saw him pushing the
mower toward the garage. He looked at me, at my car, as he
did.

The sun was well below the treetops
now, brushing the horizon, but I still didn’t see Jenny anywhere,
and either Mr. Mower or Ms. Shotgun might be calling the cops to
come check out the suspicious stranger. I decided staying around
wasn’t a great idea. I could come back again after everyone was in
bed.

I started the car, turned it around,
and drove away.

Sure enough, as I headed out Strader
Drive I passed a cop car heading the other direction.

It might have been coincidence, of
course. They might have been coming to cruise the neighborhood for
whatever had attacked Jack anyway.

Or they might have gotten a call about
me, and Mr. Mower had my car’s license number, not to mention PT
Cruisers are pretty recognizable. I half-expected them to U-turn
and come after me, with lights and sirens.

They didn’t. They drove on into the
quiet little neighborhood, and I drove out, with no idea where I
was going.

Chapter Six

I debated whether or not to take a
nap. I worried that if I did, I’d sleep through until morning,
since didn’t have an alarm clock. I hadn’t thought to bring one,
and if my phone had an alarm as an option, I didn’t know
where.

The thing is, I didn’t know what else
to do. I wasn’t sure I dared go back to talk to Jenny again – what
if the cops were patrolling the area? I hadn’t seen any before, but
that was before Jack came home.

I had two days before my flight home,
but I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t know what Jenny
wanted, not really. I didn’t know how to find her if she wasn’t
staying under the big tulip poplar. I didn’t know what I really
hoped to accomplish.

I pulled the car over on a quiet
street and tried to think, and the question became moot – I dozed
off without meaning to. After all, it wasn’t as if I’d been getting
lots of sleep.

I dreamed, of course. I saw Jack and
his folks finishing their supper, and I saw his parents trying to
be nice to him, and I saw his kid sister staring at the bandage on
his hand where his finger used to be. I saw him say he wasn’t
feeling well and wanted to go to bed early, and of course his
parents bought that. His mother even came to tuck him into bed,
over his half-hearted protests. I saw her turn out the light and
leave the room, closing the door behind her.

And I saw Jack wait a few minutes to
be sure she was gone, then climb out of bed, throw on a bathrobe,
and climb out his bedroom window, lowering himself until he was
hanging by his fingers from the sill and then letting go, so that
he dropped into the bushes around the air conditioner.

“
Oh, crap,” I said to
myself – I don’t know whether I said it aloud or not. I tried to
wake up, so I could go to help, but I couldn’t, not yet.

I saw Jack slip through the back
yards, climbing hedges and fences, staying out of sight of the
street as he made his way down to the end of the road, past the big
tulip poplar, past the other trees, into a clump of bushes that
might have been forsythia, but I couldn’t be sure in the dark. He
ducked down and pushed through the overhanging branches and crawled
into a little hollow inside the thicket.

Jenny was sitting there
waiting for him.
You
came
, she said.

“
Of course I did,” he
said. “I told you I would.”

I knew you
would.

“
No more fingers,” he
said.

But I’m... no, I’m sorry.
Did it hurt? I didn’t want to hurt you.

“
You
didn’t hurt me,” he said, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t think
he would ever admit
anything
hurt.

I love you,
Jack.

“
I love you,
Jenny.”

And then he was in her arms, and she
clutched him to her, and I could see her claws digging deep into
the back of his bathrobe.

“
No,” I said, but I still
couldn’t wake up. “Get away!”

I’m so
hungry
, she said.
I love you so much, and I’m so very hungry.

“
I know,” he said. “I
know. And I’ll feed you. Just give me a minute.”

“
No!” I shouted – and that
did it; I woke up, soaked in sweat, sitting in the driver’s seat of
my rented Chrysler, staring out at an empty street.

“
Oh,
crap
,” I said, and I reached for the key.

Five minutes later I turned onto the
Wilsons’ block, and I had been so desperate to get to those bushes
and stop whatever was happening there that I had forgotten all
about my earlier worries.

I shouldn’t have. There was the cop
car, parked in front of the Wilson house. A reddish night-thing was
crouched atop it, but I ignored that; I was more concerned with its
human occupants than any supernatural manifestations that might
have attached themselves to the vehicle.

I had a pretty good idea what would
happen if I drove down to the dead end and got out of my car –
within two minutes there would be a cop with a flashlight asking me
what I was doing there, and the odds that he’d cut me enough slack
to get to those bushes and drag Jack out weren’t very
good.

I tried to think of something I could
tell the cops that wouldn’t make me sound insane or dangerous, and
even as I did I was wondering whether the neighbors had talked to
them about the strange young man in the gray PT Cruiser.