was going to happen. The little boy couldn’t imagine what, though. He stared at her, never moving. She’s a Creeker, he thought more slowly this time. She had to be, just like what Eagle said. They were wrong, they were messed up. Why else would she have so many toes if she wasn’t a Creeker?
Her coal-black hair swayed in front of her face…
“You kin kiss me, ya want,” she said, and in that next second she was kissing him, real sloppy like, and putting her tongue into his mouth. At first he was grossed-out, but very quickly he started to like it. Then—
“Dawn!” a voice cracked out of the woods like a rifle shot. “Dawn! Hee-ah! Now, girl!”
Dawnie jerked back. “I go gotta now,” she whispered in panic, glancing back. “Bye!”
Then she ran off into the woods.
“Wait!” his voice broke. He wasn’t even thinking. He didn’t want her to go. He wanted to…kiss her some more. But off she went, her feet carrying her away.
What should I do? he thought quite dumbly. The answer was simple.
He ran after her.
She’d got a good head start. Leaves and branches crunched under his sneakered feet as he pedaled forward into the brush. Vines and thorn bushes scratched at his arms and face, but he didn’t care, he didn’t even feel it. His eyes darted forward. Where had she gone? All he saw up ahead were trees, woods, spiderwebs. Then he pushed through more thicket and sunlight broke on his face…
Suddenly he was standing at the end of a dirt road which led up a hill. At the end of the road stood a house.
A big three-story rickety farmhouse. Gables stuck out of the upstairs rooms; old gray wood showed through old whitewash, and some of the shingles on the roof were missing, which reminded him of Mrs. Nixerman’s missing teeth. The roof seemed to sag…
He still wasn’t thinking. He was running up the road. He didn’t see Dawnie, but he knew she must live there ’cos there weren’t any other houses around. The house got bigger as his feet stomped along the dusty dirt road. Big bugs zapped at his head.
Weathered planks creaked as he moved up the steps. He stood on the porch a moment, then took very slow steps to his right—
Toward the first window.
He placed his hand above his brow, to shield the sun from his eyes.
Then he put his face to the window and looked in…
— | — | —
Nine
Dream, the parched thought throbbed in his head.
Phil was staring up into an abyss he eventually recognized as his bedroom ceiling. Threads of sunlight strayed through the gaps in his blackout curtains, spoiling the makeshift nighttime that his work schedule forced him to create. Despite the room’s beastly heat, he felt buried in cold mud.
A dream…
Not a dream as much as a replay, a mental towline dragging him back to that day twenty-five years ago. The rekindled images, now, made it seem like yesterday…
The humid, bug-buzzing woods. The little Creeker girl. The long dirt road leading up the hill he’d never seen before, and…
The House, he remembered.
And that was all he dare remember—the House. Not the things he’d seen or at least the things he thought he’d seen. Thank God he’d awakened before the dream had replayed all of that, too…
He groaned, swung out of bed, and frowned fiercely upon opening the curtains. Working at night, of course, meant sleeping during the day, something he was accustomed to by now, except for that first rude jolt of sunlight. It seemed weird getting up at three or four in the afternoon when the rest of the world rose in the morning. But at least, he reminded himself, I never have to put up with rush hour.
The bedroom and cubbyhole den he rented from Old Lady Crane was no Trump Towers penthouse, but the price was right; it was all he needed, at least for now. The only killer was the place had no air-conditioning, and that fact drove home right this minute; he turned on the behemoth window fan, then grabbed a towel and headed for the shower. He paused at the bathroom mirror, though, long enough to mock, Looking good, Phil. Nice tan, too. He supposed he was in decent enough shape for thirty-five, but ten years of police work—not to mention his security stint on the graveyard shift—left him white as a trout belly. His image in the mirror made him laugh: palely naked, stubble on his face, his dark-blond hair in ludicrous disarray from six hours of sweat-drenched sleep. You better forget about that GQ cover, he thought. Even his normally clear hazel eyes had dark circles under them. The dream had worn him out, along with the gruelling memories…
The cold shower felt lukewarm in the ninety-degree heat. By the time he dried off, he was sweating again. He still had several hours before he needed to get ready for work, but he had no idea what he was going to do. What? Hang out at the fire station? Go for a leisurely spin through beautiful downtown Crick City? Christ… He knew he needed to divert himself, or else he’d start thinking about the dream again, or he’d starting thinking about the business with Vicki Steele. He needed to get his mind off all of that, but how could he, now that he was back in the same town, with all the old familiar sights and people? Start by shaving. He lathered up with Edge Gel, then nearly dropped his razor when someone knocked on the door.
Who the—my rent’s not due, is it? I’ve only been living here three days. Maybe it’s Reader’s Digest bringing me my fifteen mil. Shave cream jiggled on his chin as he wrapped a towel around his waist and answered the door.
“I gave at the office,” he said when he saw who it was.
The pretty face offered a snide smile. The blond icebitch, he recognized all too fast. Susan, our amiable, upbeat dispatcher.
“Nice towel,” she said.
“If I’d known you would be knocking on my door, I’d have dressed black tie. Okay, so how much are the Girl Scout cookies?”
“You really are horribly sarcastic,” Susan Ryder said.
Phil could imagine how silly he looked: green Edge Gel fizzing on his face, and a towel as the only thing keeping him from being stark naked. “All right, let me rephrase. What the hell do you want?”
“Well, I think I’m already regretting this, but I thought I’d offer to buy you dinner.”
Dinner, Phil thought nebulously. This woman hates me. She thinks I kill ghetto kids. Now she wants to buy me dinner.
“Or I should say,” she corrected, “whatever it is we night-shifters call the first meal of the day. I guess it’s our breakfast.” She seemed shaky suddenly, or even nervous. “Sort of a, you know, peace offering.”
“Peace offering,” Phil stated dumbly.
“Is your head made of bricks?” she suddenly snapped. “I’m trying to apologize! Jesus!”
“Apologize,” Phil stated dumbly. The shave cream continued to fizz. “Uh…apologize for what?”
Exasperation, or rage, thinned her pretty blue eyes. “For treating you shitty this morning. But if you’re going to be an asshole about it, then forget it.”
“Oh. Uh,” Phil brilliantly replied. This whole scene caught him off guard. “Well, in that case, your apology, and your invitation, are accepted. Can I finish changing, or do you want me to go like this?”
“You can go like that if you want,” she said, smiling. “But if that towel falls off, you’ll have to arrest yourself for indecent exposure.”
“Or unlawful display of shaving cream in public,” he said. “Come on in, I’ll just be a minute. It’s the maid’s day off, so you’ll have to forgive the current disarray of my estate.”
Susan Ryder walked in, and immediately went to peruse the bookshelf in his broom-closet-sized den, mostly law enforcement, judicial, and criminology texts from his Master’s courses. “All my Aquinas and Jung are still packed up,” he said, “but I do have every Jack Ketchum novel ever printed.” He quickly grabbed some clothes and slipped into the bathroom. He shaved haphazardly, realizing his own nervousness when he nearly sprayed Glade Air
