“Dad! Dad!”
Paul had just started across the lawn, toward an officer waiting near the open front door, when BJ called to him from behind. He turned and found the boy padding across the lawn from the neighbor’s driveway. Harry, clad in PJs and a suit coat, trailed close behind.
He rushed to his son and lifted him into his arms, hugging him.
BJ burst into tears the moment he leapt into Paul’s grasp. He tried to relate the story of what had happened between sobs, mentioning headless monsters and his imaginary nemesis, “Voodooman.” Paul knew they could sort out the details later; right now, he just wanted to hold his son.
“He’ll be okay,” Harry said. “Hell of a thing, but he’ll pull through.”
“Where did they find him?” Paul asked, straining to keep his tone passive.
“Alex Lancaster’s place,” Harry said. “He and his wife had just come home from up north when BJ started pounding on their back door. Apparently, Lori helped him out a window, but she didn’t get out until the police showed up. Poor girl’s a wreck. The son-of-a-bitch cut her head pretty good; she’s waiting on an ambulance at my place. Jesus-All-Mighty, what’s this world coming to?”
The cop at the front door had left his post and now walked toward them.
“What about Mallory and Tim?” Rebecca asked. “Have they come home yet?”
“Haven’t seen them,” Harry replied.
The howl of tires drew their attention, and a dark, beat-to-hell SUV with no front windshield or side windows rounded the far end of the street.
Paul held his son closer when the driver sped forward, headed straight toward them. It braked to a halt at the end of the driveway, and Hale signaled the driver not to come any closer. He kept one hand positioned just inches from his holstered weapon.
Two people emerged from the vehicle, a man and a woman. Paul couldn’t help but notice the woman’s disheveled appearance and hurried pace when she identified herself as a police detective to Officer Hale.
“Are these the people who reported the break-in? We need to ask them some questions.”
“Is this the boy?” her companion asked, indicating BJ.
Despite knowing that one of the two newcomers wore a badge, Paul didn’t like the urgent manner in which they spoke. Their troubled expressions and eagerness to question his son told him that he had yet to learn the full story of what had gone on here tonight, and he feared the impending news would include Mallory or Tim or both. Beside him, Rebecca’s hands closed on his arm.
“We didn’t make the call,” Paul said, “but it was my house that was broken into. Is there something else I should know?”
The man with the eye patch opened his mouth first, but Detective Humble cut him off. “We believe the person who was in your home tonight is a suspect in another crime, and we’re hoping one of you could confirm that for us. Did anyone here get a look at the perpetrator?”
BJ shivered in Paul’s arms.
“The babysitter must have,” said the officer who’d come from the doorstep. “She was the only one left in the place when we searched it, but she was hysterical when we found her. She’s calmed down a bit now. My partner’s questioning her over at the neighbor’s. Do you want me to see what she’s learned?”
“Yes,” Melissa answered, dividing her concentration between the officer and a discharge of lightning overhead.
The other man moved closer to BJ. “How about you, son?” he asked. “You had a bit of excitement tonight, didn’t you?”
Thunder reverberated throughout the cloudbanks.
When BJ didn’t answer, the man turned his attention to Paul and identified himself. “I know he’s had a tough evening,” Frank said, “but would you allow us to ask him about what he saw?”
Paul considered the request, then looked to his son. “Could you do that, BJ? Can you tell us what happened tonight?”
When he didn’t reply, Rebecca stepped forward and ran a reassuring hand across the boy’s back, speaking to him in a soft motherly tone. “There’s nothing to be scared of, dear. This man wants to help us. He’s with the police, and if you tell him everything you can, you’d be just like a superhero helping to catch the bad guy.”
BJ looked around at all of them, his eyes still large and wet. His lower lip trembled. “It was Voodooman,” he cried. “Vermorca Azkhaneb. The Opener of Eternity. He came to get me.”
Paul’s heart sank at the fear in his son’s voice. “BJ,” he pleaded, “whoever was in the house tonight was a real person, and we need you to tell us what he looked like.”
“Where did he learn those words?” Frank asked.
Paul opened his mouth to answer, but stopped short at sight of the expression on Frank’s face. The man’s skin had taken on the complexion of a mummified corpse. Beside him, Detective Humble appeared just as pale.
“BJ can have an overactive imagination,” Paul explained. “They’re just words he made up.”
“No, they’re not,” BJ cried. His shivering continued unabated, but his eyes now radiated a look of unwavering resolve. “The Vermorca threw me in the pool because I can see him. I thought he was a voodoo doll, but he’s more like a ghost. He said that if I told anyone about him, he’d punish me even worse. He said he’d take you and Mallory away, and then I’d be left all alone, without anyone.”
Paul held BJ tight, reassuring him that neither he nor Mallory would ever go anywhere without him.
“I told Lori about him because she said she could stop him,” BJ wailed. “But she couldn’t, and now he’s going after Mallory. H-he showed me what he’s going to do to her. I saw her die, with bright light coming out of all these cuts, and, and… and Voodooman sucked all the light up, drinking it, drinking up Mallory’s life… Then she was… she was dead… all dead and empty.”
Paul stopped BJ’s horrific tale by pulling him close and hugging him, unsure of how to react. Tears swam at the edges of his eyes, and Rebecca’s, too, when he looked up at her from over his son’s shoulder.
Frank looked to Paul. “You have a daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
Paul fumbled for a reply in the wake of BJ’s outburst—not once but twice—then fell into a grateful silence when Rebecca’s hand’s settled on his shoulders and she answered the question for him. “She’s at Valleyfair with my son, Tim. You don’t think she could be in some kind of danger, do you? I mean, from whoever did this?”
Before anyone could reply, the officer who’d gone over to Harry’s called to them from the garage. “There was someone else in the house,” he said. Everyone glanced in the direction of the voice while he and his partner—a slim black woman—jogged over to the group.
“There were two perpetrators?” Melissa asked.
“No,” the female officer replied. “The girl remembers another group of people coming into the house
“So, maybe the kids
“Did the young lady get a look at the prowler?” Frank asked.
The officer shook her head. “I don’t think she’s sure of what she saw. She’s convinced her attacker was invisible.”
“
Frank and Melissa exchanged glances, the look in their eyes strengthening Paul’s fear that their presence here went beyond trying to track down a common criminal.
“That’s what she says,” the officer told Hale. “At first, I thought she was on something, but her story’s the same each time she tells it. She’s genuinely terrified.”
“What about the others she heard in the house?” Frank asked. “Who were they?”
Rebecca’s hand tightened on Paul’s arm when the patrolwoman repeated Lori Hanlon’s recollection of hearing Tim’s name called out and the mention of a barn.
“She’s talking about the old farm,” Harry said. “That rickety pile in the back forty behind the neighborhood.”
“I know the place,” Hale replied. “That’s where all the underage kids do most of their partying. The damn thing’s a teen-magnet.”
