December Park(83)
“Yeah.”
“That should narrow it down.”
“But would there be a newspaper article on some kid who was thought to have just run away?” I said. “Especially if his disappearance happened months before any of the others here in town.”
“I don’t know,” Scott admitted, “but it couldn’t hurt to check and see.”
“You could ask your dad,” Adrian suggested, looking at me. “See if the local cops know about Hughes and if they consider him one of the Piper’s victims.”
“I could try,” I said.
Just then, a strong wind swooped into the woods, stripping leaves from the trees and blowing grit and pebbles into our eyes. Thunder rumbled directly overhead.
“Christ,” Michael said, gazing heavenward. In a matter of seconds the sky had gone from sunny and blue to rumbling and overcast.
Then the rain hit, a sound like gunfire rushing down through the trees. We all pulled our jackets over our heads and shrieked like girls.
Heavy thunder woke me in the middle of the night. I remained lying there and staring at the ceiling, listening to my locomotive heartbeat, fearful I might succumb to a heart attack if I didn’t force myself to calm down.
The filaments of my nightmare, though quickly fading, still pulsed inside my head. The dream had been a combination of memory and make-believe. It was of the time Charles and I had run relay races during a neighborhood field day in December Park. I had been seven or eight, but in the dream I was my current age. Also in real life I had pissed my pants in my nervousness while standing on the starting line with the other runners. I had run, come in last place, then hid behind some trees where I had cried, mortified. Charles had comforted me, telling me that sometimes he gets so scared about things that he cries, too, and it made me feel better.
Standing at the starting line in my dream and anticipating the starter’s pistol, a warm wetness spread through my crotch and down my legs. I looked up at the crowd of ogling onlookers, a dreadful sense of shame radiating from my face so that it actually burned, and tried to make out Charles’s face in the crowd. But Charles was not there.
The starter’s pistol went off, the report echoing in my head like the blast of a cannon, and the runners took off. I stumbled forward, my dream muscles as uncooperative as rusted machine parts. The other runners were far ahead of me, but I soon closed the distance despite my rusted legs. Flanking me on either side of the track, the spectators watched me in silent condemnation. I felt their burning stares firmly on my sodden crotch.
As I closed in on the runners, I realized they were corpses, and one of them was Courtney Cole, her head caved in on one side, her right eye milky and dead and turned outward toward the sky. The other runners were the missing children—Bethany Frost, her nude body blue and so skinny I could see every twist of vertebra, every xylophonic rib, the asteroid knobs of her knees and elbows; William Demorest, his colorless, featureless face leaking blackish gore that spewed across his boyish chest from what looked like a slender, proboscis-like appendage dangling from beneath his chin; Jeffrey Connor, his eye sockets wriggling with doughy white maggots and his decomposing flesh being ravaged by enormous horseflies.
There was the boy I knew to be Aaron Ransom, too, though he possessed no identifiable features. I ran up alongside him just as he turned and grinned at me. His face was nothing but a gleaming skull, bits of gray flesh still clinging to it in places. A number of teeth had been busted out. His nose was missing, leaving behind a dark, spongy cavern in his face. Only his eyes were alive—bright blue, leering, soul-searching, and terribly hideous in that fleshless skull.
Sweating beneath the blankets, I sat up in bed and propped open the nearest window to let some fresh air into my room. I imagined I saw a man standing in the yard, looking up at my bedroom window. His was the flimsy, insubstantial frame of a scarecrow, with tendrils of inky black hair whipping about in the wind. The longer I stared at the shape, the less it looked human. And after what must have been a full minute, I realized there was no one down there and my overworked imagination had created this stark character out of tree limbs and shadows.
Once my heartbeat returned to normal, I eased back down on my mattress and listened to the spring wind blow through the leaves of the trees in the yard.
Chapter Fifteen
Neighborhood Watch
After dinner a few nights later, my father called to me from the foyer where he stood by the front door tugging on a Windbreaker.
I saw the butt of his pistol poking out of the waistband of his jeans as I came up behind him. “Yeah?”
“You finish all your homework?”
“Yes. Are you going on another patrol?” It was his night to take part in the neighborhood watch.
“Just for an hour or so,” he said. “I thought you might want to take a ride with me.”
“Really? I sure would.”
My dad rubbed the nape of his neck. His were the weary, red-rimmed eyes of a bloodhound. Based on the noises I’d heard coming from his bedroom at night, I knew he hadn’t been sleeping. “Go grab a jacket. It’s chilly out.”
I raced upstairs, stripped a nylon Windbreaker from its hanger, drove my feet into a pair of Nikes, and a minute later followed my dad to his car in the driveway. The sedan started with a grumble. We backed out onto Worth Street, my dad turned left, and we coasted down the block toward the old rock quarry.