Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (11 page)

“The only thing anybody will talk about is
witchcraft,” Dr. Reynard said. “Why are people so interested in
that around here?” She looked closely at Jenny.

“I don’t know,” Jenny said. “I don’t really
go to church.”

“No thoughts?” Dr. Reynard asked. “Do
you
have any idea what happened on the town green?”

Jenny shook her head. “Are we done?”

Dr. Reynard changed out her disposable gloves
for a fresh pair. She’d even brought a small container where she
could stuff the used ones. She winked at Seth. “Your turn.”

While she’d taken a lot of time with Jenny,
her testing and sampling of Seth was quick and efficient. She
didn’t seem very interested in him at all, Jenny thought. Which
meant she was very interested in Jenny. That worried her.

Dr. Reynard thanked them and packed up her
bag.

“Do you have any questions?” the doctor
asked, smiling at Jenny again.

“When do we get our results?” Jenny
asked.

“Results?”

“From the tests,” Jenny said.

“Oh.” Dr. Reynard looked puzzled. “We aren’t
really getting back to individuals unless we find something
unusual. So, no news is good news. Is there something you’re
concerned about?”

Jenny shook her head.

“Anything you want to ask me? Or tell
me?”

Jenny looked down at her own shoelaces.

“If you change your mind, call me.” Dr.
Reynard gave Jenny a business card. She offered one to Seth, too,
but he turned it down, so Dr. Reynard laid it on the coffee table.
“I’m in charge of the investigation.”

“Okay,” Jenny said.

Dr. Reynard turned toward the front door, and
the Homeland Security officer pivoted to accompany her out.

“Oh, one more thing.” Dr. Reynard turned to
face Jenny. “It’s a little bit of a strange thing. Several people
told me they saw you drown in a pond on Sunday night. Over at the
Goodling residence. Any idea why people are telling me that?”

Jenny didn’t know what to say.

“They must be confused,” Seth said, but Jenny
didn’t think his comment helped anything.

“Were you at the Goodling house Sunday
night?” Dr. Reynard asked. “Or at the town square?”

Jenny wasn’t sure what to say. The woman
seemed trustworthy, but a lot of people seemed that way. And the
Homeland Security guy didn’t seem like he would be very
sympathetic.

“No,” Jenny said. “We were home.”

Dr. Reynard studied her, then gave a quick
nod.

“Okay,” Dr. Reynard said. “Thanks so much for
your cooperation today. Jenny, get in touch any time.”

Jenny watched the doctor and the uniformed
man leave her house. She closed and locked the front door as they
pulled away.

“I am so screwed,” Jenny said, leaning
against Seth.

“You said you wanted someone to study
you.”

“But this could be really bad. I don’t know
what to do. What should I even expect?”

Seth held her tight. He didn’t have any
answers, but at least he was warm.

Tommy loved the open road, with the Harley
roaring beneath him and infinite blue space before him. Oklahoma
was very flat, which made for dull scenery, but it really let you
open up the throttle.

Using the fear inside him, he’d mugged
somebody in Evans, just outside of Augusta—a man in a suit who was
able to withdraw six hundred dollars at the ATM. He’d bought a
black motorcycle helmet to avoid getting pulled over. Considering
he was an escaped prisoner riding a semi-stolen bike, it would be
stupid to get busted on a minor helmet law. He could usually deal
with a lone police officer just fine, but it was always risky, and
he didn’t want the hassle.

He was in a hurry. Daylight was starting to
break in the east. He’d been driving for eighteen hours, with only
a brief stop for a nap in the Ozark National Forest.

The sores on his hands, arms and face were
healing, but slowly. He didn’t know what that bitch had done to
him, but he couldn’t focus on her until the immediate business was
handled.

He sped through the dreary countryside, past
collapsing farmhouses and rusty barbed wire, towards the miniscule
town of Sulphur. There was a bright grin on his face. He was going
to sort some things out today, and sort them good.

In his childhood memories, the Tanner house
and the outbuildings made up a massive compound, almost like a
town. When he pulled up the dusty gravel driveway, he almost
thought he had the wrong place. The main house looked tiny and
gray, many of its exterior boards crumbling to dust. The
outbuildings seemed much smaller than he remembered, too.

Tommy parked in front of the house, next to a
big rusty pick-up truck, and he looked up to the tiny window on the
second floor. Then he knew he had the right place. That window had
been his eye on the world for nearly three years.

The lights in the house were already on. Mr.
Tanner liked everyone to be up by sunrise, to get started on chores
around the farm.

Tommy stepped off his bike, hung his helmet
on it, and walked past the chickens scraping and pecking in the
yard. The front door opened as he approached it—someone must have
heard his engine.

Mrs. Tanner stood behind the screen door, a
few years fatter and grayer. A boy of about ten stood beside her,
his eyes bulging with fear.

“Howdy,” Tommy said with a wide smile. He
wondered how he looked to them, with the oozing infections leaking
down his face.

“Who are you?” Mrs. Tanner asked. “What do
you mean making all this noise so early in the morning?”

“Don’t you remember me?” Tommy took off his
sunglasses and stared at her with his gray eyes.

“Thomas?” she whispered.

“Fuck yeah.” Tommy pulled open the screen
door and stepped inside, forcing Mrs. Tanner to take a step back.
The little boy stared up at him. “What’s your name?” Tommy
asked.

“Paul,” the boy whispered.

“Did Mr. Tanner baptize you when you got
here, Paul?” Tommy asked.

“Yes,” Paul whispered. “He baptizes me all
the time.”

Tommy scowled and looked past the boy and
Mrs. Tanner. Two more kids ate breakfast at the kitchen table,
staring at Tommy over spoonfuls of shredded wheat (not the frosted
kind, as the Tanners believed that would spoil children). The boy
looked about fourteen or fifteen, while the girl looked twelve or
thirteen.

“Oh, look.” Tommy nodded at the girl. “It’s
the future Mrs. Tanner.”

“That is disgusting!” Mrs. Tanner
snarled.

“You’re getting a little ripe, aren’t you?”
Tommy poked Mrs. Tanner’s doughy arm. His touch made her gasp and
back away. “A little old for Mr. Tanner.”

“He was right,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “You
do have the devil in you.”

“True.” Tommy picked up a bowl of unsweetened
shredded wheat from the table and ate a spoonful. “This stuff is
nasty. You kids like this?”

The two kids at the table shook their
heads.

“What in the Lord’s name is happening down
here?” Mr. Tanner tromped down the staircase, dressed in overalls
and boots. He glared at Tommy. “Who are you?”

“You forgot me already, Mr. Tanner?” Tommy
asked.

“This is Thomas,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “He
ran away. Remember?”

“I don’t care who he is,” Mr. Tanner said. He
jabbed a finger into Tommy’s chest. “You gonna get out this house
right now, less you want me to grab my shotgun and plow a trench
through your skull.”

Tommy seized Mr. Tanner’s hand.

“Get the shotgun if you want, old man,” Tommy
said. “It’ll end with your brains splattered on the ceiling. I
promise.”

He squeezed tight, giving Mr. Tanner a good
dose of fear, then released the man’s hand. Mr. Tanner just gaped
at him.

“Mrs. Tanner,” Tommy said. She jumped at her
name, but he had her attention. “When the old man died, you brought
a couple of witches here to talk to his corpse. To find some
missing money.”

“You did what?” Mr. Tanner stalked toward his
wife. “Witches? I’m gonna whup you so bad. Get upstairs and take
them britches off.”

Tommy grabbed Mr. Tanner’s throat and slammed
him back against the kitchen wall. Pots and pans hung overhead
crashed to the scuffed linoleum floor. The little girl at the table
started crying.

“You stay put there,” Tommy hissed to Mr.
Tanner. “Or I’ll kill you like I killed your daddy.”

Mr. Tanner’s face looked fishlike, big cold
eyes and lips gulping at the air, reminding Tommy of Pap-pap on his
way into death. Tommy could feel the darkness flowing out in a
river now, washing away any doubts Mr. Tanner might have had about
Tommy’s devilish nature.

Tommy turned back to Mrs. Tanner.

“I’m looking for them witches,” Tommy said.
As always, his deep-country accent grew thicker when he was angry,
or scared, or just excited. He was a little of each right now. “You
tell me how to find ‘em.”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “It’s
been years—”

“Tell me!” Tommy snapped, and she
cringed.

“I have the phone number upstairs,” Mrs.
Tanner whispered. “I’ll go get it.”

“Don’t try to pull any tricks on me,” Tommy
said. He was still pinning Mr. Tanner against the wall. “I can kill
him. All I got to do is think about it.”

“Do what he says,” Mr. Tanner whispered. “Do
anything he says.”

Mrs. Tanner whimpered and scurried from the
room.

The ten-year-old, Paul, was crying louder
than the girl now. He knelt on the kitchen floor, weeping.

Tommy pulled Mr. Tanner off the wall and
turned him so his back faced the doorway where Mrs. Tanner had
gone. If Mrs. Tanner tried to pull anything—if she came back with
that shotgun, for instance—she would have to go through her husband
first.

Fortunately, Mrs. Tanner was timid. How could
she be otherwise, Tommy thought, after a lifetime with Mr. Tanner?
When she returned to the kitchen, she was holding nothing but a
scrap of yellowed paper in her shaking hand.

“What’s that?” Tommy asked.

“Her phone number,” Mrs. Tanner whispered.
“It’s all I have. I’m sorry.”

“Bring it.” Tommy tightened his grasp on Mr.
Tanner’s throat. He reached out his other hand to Mrs. Tanner.

She approached Tommy with small, trembling
footsteps. When she was close enough, Tommy snatched the paper from
her hand, and she gasped and darted away.

The scrap of paper was a grocery store
receipt.

“On back,” Mrs. Tanner whispered.

Tommy turned it over. GUADALUPE RIOS was
hand-written on the back, along with a phone number.

“What area code is this?” Tommy asked.

“Texas,” Mrs. Tanner said. Her voice was
almost too quiet to hear. “Fort Worth.”

“Okay. Perfect.” Tommy folded the paper and
stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

“It won’t do you any good,” Mrs. Tanner
added. “They’re scam artists. They never did come up with any
money.”

Tommy smiled. He looked at Mr. Tanner, who
was downright terrified from being in Tommy’s grasp so long. He
could let the man go now. Then Tommy looked at the three frightened
children. He remembered his own childhood, how often Mr. Tanner’s
twisted, insane ideas about religion seemed to involve stripping
and beating the children.

“You were right,” Tommy said to Mr. Tanner.
“I do have the Devil in me. And today, the Devil wants you.”

Tommy let the black lightning rip out of him,
filling Mr. Tanner. Mr. Tanner’s shuddered hard in Tommy’s hand,
and a trickle of blood leaked from Mr. Tanner’s nose. Then the man
slouched, and Tommy let him fall to the floor.

Tommy kicked him, but Mr. Tanner didn’t
respond. His eyes stared into empty space. Heart attack, stroke or
seizure—one way or another, Mr. Tanner had died of fright.

Mrs. Tanner screamed and dropped to the floor
to embrace her husband’s corpse. “Oh, Jesus!” she cried. “Oh,
Jesus. Oh, Jesus…”

Tommy ignored her. He grabbed a box of long
kitchen matches and walked outside.

In the biggest barn, where the horse trailer
and the ancient canvas-sheathed Buick were parked, there were also
large plastic jugs of gasoline for the tractor. Tommy picked up two
of them.

The three children trickled out of the
farmhouse to look at him. They trailed him, at a great distance, as
he walked to the old barn Mr. Tanner had converted into a church
for his weird little personal cult.

Tommy pulled open the barn door. He splashed
gasoline on the handmade pews, the wooden dais, the willow cross.
He splattered more along each of the four walls.

The children stood outside, several feet from
the open door, and watched him with open mouths.

When he’d emptied both containers, he walked
to the door, and the children ran back ten or twenty feet. Then
they turned to watch him again.

Tommy gave them a grin as he struck a kitchen
match. Then he flicked it into the barn. The burning matchstick
tumbled end over end, until it landed in a gasoline puddle in the
middle of the dirt floor. For a moment, he thought the match had
simply gone out.

Then a gout of fire belched up, and rivulets
of flame rushed out to the four walls of the barn. The cross and
the whole altar area went up in a bright red whoosh.

Tommy walked along the dirt-rut road. The
children cleared off of it and ran up the slope to the stable, to
watch him from a safe distance as he passed.

“Do yourselves a favor,” Tommy said to the
three of them. “Run off. There’s nothing good here. You got to sort
out your own life for yourself, sooner or later.”

Tommy walked past the gaping children, and on
past the farmhouse, where he could hear Mrs. Tanner wailing over
her dead husband.

Then he got on his bike and headed for
Texas.

Almost three weeks after she’d been called to
Fallen Oak, Heather sat on the edge of the bed in her room at the
Lowcountry Inn, and she watched the local TV news with an open
mouth.