Dismember

Zach lifted his shoe until he could reach the toe, like he was doing stretches in gym class, then flipped back his sole and let the junk inside pour onto the forest floor below. He rubbed at the sore spot through his sock and wondered if he was bleeding. Have to check later, he guessed.

If there was a later.

Shoe back on the ground, mind already drifting again, Zach almost didn’t notice Davy dropping his hands to his thighs, patting at his bloodstained cargo pockets, and heading out from cover and across the manicured forest surrounding the house. For one second, Zach thought about turning the other way and running, but he’d already tried that. He had nowhere to go, nowhere but forward, into whatever nightmare this man led him.

They didn’t go straight toward the house, but circled around the side instead, following a route Davy seemed to have already mapped out in his head. A weathered picnic table sat among some cedar trees at the far edge of the property, and fifteen or twenty feet from that, a hammock spanned the space between two large oaks.

Comfy, Zach thought again while jogging to keep up with Davy’s long strides. How strange it was to be here, kidnapped and still able to rate the comfort levels of other people’s homes.

The sheers over the windows were drawn, but the drapes weren’t, and from this close Zach could see vague shadows inside the house, probably furniture and bookshelves, those kinds of things, but maybe people inside too, despite Zach’s previous impression that the place was empty. He had what might be a dangerous idea but went through with it anyway after a cursory glance at the man ahead. As Zach moved, he waved his hands at the windows and repeatedly mouthed the word help. If someone was inside and could see him, that person might think he was just some trespassing nut, but maybe he or she would understand the situation for what it was and help him. Just a chance, but he had to take it.

He continued waving his hands, feeling ridiculous, like he was doing jumping jacks, but not stopping until Davy turned the corner. He dropped his arms and turned away from the windows, trying to act as if he’d been following along normally the whole time.

They continued around to the front of the house, Zach huffing a little. A bluebird took flight from the porch railing just beneath an old wind chime. The bird’s sudden movement set the chime fluttering, and it tinkled. On another day, in other company, it might have sounded nice; but trailing behind his gore-streaked abductor, Zach thought it sounded ghostly and cold. Like Hell’s bells.

They reached the porch steps, and Davy stopped and stared at the front door for a long time. He touched his cargo pockets again, and Zach wondered what he had inside them. Davy turned to Zach and looked at him for the first time since stepping out of the untrimmed forest.

“—truck,” Davy whispered, shaking his head as if confused. “Should be here.”

Zach waited.

“You’re gonna knock on the door,” Davy said suddenly. “If they answer, get them out onto the porch.” He motioned for Zach to join him on the porch steps, and Zach reluctantly obeyed.

When Zach had planted his first foot on the riser, feeling like a caged animal even out in the open, Davy grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed him tight.

“No funny stuff,” he said, and then let go.

The man dropped onto his hands and knees and pressed himself up against the side of the porch, still visible from Zach’s position on the steps but probably out of view from the door and the house.

This might be his chance to run. Once on the porch, Zach could sprint down the floorboards, vault the railing, and rush into the garage before the man with the little boy’s name knew anything was happening. But Zach worried about what might be in Davy’s pockets. The man might not catch him if Zach got a head start, but a bullet sure as heck could.

Zach walked across the porch feeling like a remote-controlled toy.

The door was solid wood. No window. No peephole. Zach couldn’t warn anyone coming to the door, couldn’t mouth help again or yell for them to stay back, or to grab their guns and come out firing. He couldn’t do anything.

Except….

Zach reached for the doorbell, actually let the pad of his thumb brush against the cool plastic, but didn’t push in. Instead, he waited for what he hoped was a good thirty seconds and said over his shoulder, “I guess there’s nobody home.”

“I didn’t hear you knock,” the man hissed.

“I rang the bell,” Zach lied. “Twice.”

“Knock,” Davy said simply, in a way that seemed both commanding and instructional.

So much for that. Zach knocked.

After another thirty seconds, no one had come to the door, and Zach turned around. “There’s—”

“Again,” Davy said coolly.

Zach turned back to the door and knocked again.

He’d been right. Nobody was home. He took a long breath, closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what exactly he had just avoided, but he didn’t think it could have been anything good.

Davy stood now, looking perplexed, as if he hadn’t expected this at all.

In the distance, one of the dogs barked again. Davy tilted his head and smiled.

“Of course,” he said, though not to Zach. He straightened his head and walked back in the direction from which they’d come. When Zach didn’t follow, he stopped and turned to face him through the porch railings.

“Let’s go,” he said. “My timing was all wrong.”

Zach didn’t ask him to clarify, but Davy went on just the same.

“The dog,” he said. He looked at Zach expectantly. “Remember, Georgie?”

“Umm,” Zach said, not knowing whether a lie or the truth would put a quicker end the conversation.

“Come on, let’s go,” Davy said, relieving Zach of the need to decide. “I was all backwards.”

Before Zach left the porch, he noticed a small wooden plaque hanging from an angled nail beside the front door. He hadn’t spotted it earlier, though he must have been looking right at it.

PULLMAN, it read. Underneath, someone had shallowly carved an addition:

Trevor & Daddy

The porch steps groaned as Zach descended them. He hurried after Davy and had another idea, this one no less dangerous than his earlier attempt at flagging down someone inside. He went through with it anyway, not because he thought it had much chance of working out, but because two additional people had now become involved. Strangers, people he’d never met, but people all the same, and he had to do whatever he could to warn them.

Trailing Crazy Dave, Zach dragged the toe of his good shoe across the forest floor, letting his other shoe continue its now-familiar clappity clapping. The trench he made wasn’t deep, and it disappeared in a few places where he had to pick up his foot and run to catch up, but it was visible and obviously out of place. He wasn’t so stupid that he thought either of the Pullmans would understand the sign, would know from a simple track in the dirt that a psycho kidnapper had been stalking their home, but if they saw it (which was no guarantee), it might at least, as his mom often said, get their hackles up. He could hope, anyway. At least he would know he’d done something, hadn’t simply run away like before.

When they’d pushed back into the woods once more, Zach picked up his foot and resumed a normal trot. His scheme hadn’t drawn Davy’s attention. At least he had that.

Wondering who and where Trevor Pullman was, Zach hurried after Davy. Stay away, kid, he thought, dodging an especially wicked-looking briar. Stay far, far away.

PART II

DISMEMBER