Adam's Woods (14 page)

He began to mentally recite psalms from memory, which helped subdue his headache. Before falling into sleep, where the pain became the thunder of a distant storm, he uttered a short prayer for Eric, that he would find the peace his soul so desperately sought.

The boy awoke, but this time with no brief moment of forgetfulness. In a way this was a blessing. Better just to know and not waste time on wishing. But know what exactly? He had no idea what the man wanted from him. He was lonely and afraid all of the time. There was one thing yet he hadn't tried, and that was escaping through the woods. The van wouldn't work there, and he thought maybe, just maybe, he could get away.

But he feared the woods. It was large, he knew that, imposing even in daylight when the world had been sane. What other beasts it might contain he didn't want to think about. Before this, or at least before the books and the fear, he could have laughed at the thought of werewolves or nameless creatures with daggers for teeth and a taste for tender boy flesh. Now, when nightmares had come to life, who knew? It came down to facing the unknown versus the known. And the unknown could be bad, but worse than the man?

The boy went downstairs, cautiously, fearing company but the house was silent. He wished that if the man planned to kill him too, he would simply do it. He crept to the front door and looked out on tiptoes through the square of glass without opening it. A plate of food lay on the floor again, and although his stomach wanted it, this time he refused. Instead, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of Lucky Charms. They were a little stale, but the milk was good, and at least had no taint from his town's murderer like the food outside.

He looked out the window, at the crisp blue sky devoid of clouds, the colorful leaves still on the trees but sporadic in their coverage as more fell to the ground revealing the bare bones underneath. He realized it would snow soon. If he were alive then, would he make it through the winter? And what about school? He should be back today. Randy too. Would they call, and when they couldn't get through, would someone come for them? He began to feel hopeful. Sure, someone would come. A whole town couldn't just disappear without someone noticing: friends, relatives, customers to the few stores here would notice and call the police.

As if on cue, waiting for this thought, the boy saw a police car cruise slowly down the street in front of the house. He dropped his bowl of cereal, the milk splattering impressively on the linoleum now speckled with red hearts, yellow stars, green clovers and blue diamonds and the rest that he thought looked like cat food but had to be eaten with the little marshmallows if he expected his mother to buy it.

He ran out onto the porch, waving his arms and yelling, but the car had already passed the house and continued its crawl down the road. He ran into the yard to get his bicycle, only vaguely aware he had no shoes on. The fallen leaves that his father should have raked blanketed the front yard and crunched vigorously under his feet. Preparing to ride after the cruiser, he stopped on seeing motion originate from a house slightly ahead of the policeman's route. A man came out.

The man.

The car stopped as he approached and the driver's door opened. A uniformed cop got out, and the boy expected him to pull him gun and shoot, or at least make an arrest. Instead he approached and the two talked for a few minutes in what appeared to be a typical conversation between two men that he had witnessed hundreds of times. He couldn't hear anything, only make out some hand gestures - pointing, a shrug, and then shared laughter. This last thing broke his torpor and he got on the bike and rode towards them shouting.

"Officer! He killed them all. My family. Everyone here. Please, help me!" He continued to ride, heedless of the fact that the man stood right next to the police officer and his pedaling carried the boy closer.

The man said something, but the officer put up a hand and stepped in the boy’s direction. He looked alarmed, shouted, "What's the matter, son? What's happened?"

"He killed everyone. Please, you have to...look out!"

The officer turned but not in time. The boy saw the blade burst from his neck, all the way through from the thrust of its entrance on the other side. The man drew the pistol from the cop's belt and shot him in the forehead. He let the body fall to the road, holding the knife handle and letting gravity pull it from the body.

"No!" The boy skidded to a stop ten yards from the scene, and waited for the blade or the gun. He couldn't run or ride fast enough, he knew. He watched the policeman's blood pool on the road and slowly brought his eyes up, following the line of sight of the dead man to his assailant. The man hadn't come any closer, but was looking at him. He wore the ball cap again, his eyes in complete shadow but his mouth frowned in what the boy felt was...disappointment? To emphasize his mood, the man shook his head back and forth, as one would to express disapproval of an idiot. He took a step towards the boy, who couldn't move, still in shock at the policeman's death. Not just his physical death, an act to which he'd almost become accustomed, but the easy dispatch of the symbol to which the boy assigned all power and rightness and ultimately his salvation.

But the man didn't come for him. He spoke, the first words he'd heard. The voice was surprisingly normal, not the devil voice he'd expected, and it made it all the more terrifying.

"This is your fault, Sean. If you just do what's expected, it will be so much easier for both of us."

"What do you want from me?" He asked, his voice small and distant, pleading for understanding, to make this end.

"Everything, Sean. I want everything. I have to go now, and take care of Officer Boone. Say’ goodbye’, Officer." He reached down and grasped the dead man's sleeve, raised and shook it in an imitation of a wave.

The boy screamed. The man smiled, then dropped the arm and grabbed the policeman's heels and dragged him on the road to the cruiser, his head bouncing obscenely on the asphalt. The man opened the back door and threw the body in as if tossing a scarecrow filled with straw.

He stood up and smiled at the boy. "See you soon, buddy," he said, and the boy, Sean, whimpered, as the man got in the car and drove away. As he reached the end of the street, he flicked on the siren for a moment, the sound echoing off of the vacant buildings and making Sean jump. An arm poked out of the car in a wave as it turned towards the main highway and disappeared.

When he found he could move again, the boy's thoughts turned to flight, but he'd tried that. Even if it seemed the man had left, had business with Officer Boone, he knew that once he had reached the edge of town, the man would intercept him. Seeing the police officer had caused him to revert to being a child again, and so he went home and fell on the couch as a child and wept.

Eric stopped and re-read what he wrote, and then added more. In the story, over the course of the next few days, the man began creating domestic scenes inside the former homes of the corpses he’d taken away. Sean came across the first, a family from up the road, the Sweets, sitting at their dinner table, their mouths forced into grins, silverware placed into their stiff hands, their own guts sitting on the plates in front of them. He'd wake in the morning to find similar exhibitions in the yard, or on the street. The boy approached a breaking point, in which he'd either go insane, find some way out, or some hatch a plan to defeat the man. And here Eric’s ideas truly dried up. He simply didn't know. And wondered now if it mattered.

He knew he could manufacture something. It was his job. But the whole point had a work with an autobiographical underpinning, and this possessed something of that flavor, more symbolic than real but still. It would be anticlimactic if the boy just accepted his plight and the killer faded away to memory.

He sighed, unsure of the story or anything else, and looked at the clock. Two in the morning. He wanted to call Mary, but she kept realtor's and not writer's hours. He saved his work, and then shut off the light in preparation for bed when he heard the screen door bang shut. He froze. Icy terror, some real, some residual from immersion in Sean's world, ran through him. His bladder, full and ignored while writing, nearly let go.

Angry now, thinking of Fisk, he walked to the front door and flipped on the porch light. He saw no one, but what appeared to be a sheet of paper sat on the porch, and again the feeling that Sean's world had crossed into his own seemed more real than it had any business being. He opened the door, looking around for someone but seeing only his reflection in the windows. Approaching the paper, he prepared to stifle a scream if whatever message it contained came in large block letters.

It was folded over, no food beneath thank God, and on opening it, he found a hand-written note in letters not so far off from his fear. It said:

ERIC - STOP BY TOMORROW, WE NEED TO TALK.

I'LL BE IN ALL DAY SO COME WHENEVER.

JUST YOU. I'M SURE YOU KNOW WHERE

I LIVE - JT

Eric breathed a sigh of relief, read the note over, and then shut off the lights. He locked the door, double-checked it, and then went to bed, too tired to guess what JT wanted to discuss with him.

Eric slept until ten the next morning, and by the time he'd showered, drank a pot of coffee, and ate a brunch of pop-tarts and a ham sandwich, it was nearly one o'clock. He picked up JT's note again, decided that now was whenever, and started driving down to his house despite the easy walking distance, didn’t want anyone to guess where he was going. He called Mary before he left and got her voicemail, leaving a message telling her his destination. Only half-joking, he said he wanted someone to know in case he didn't come back, feeling again the shotgun barrels pushed into his neck.

He pulled into the driveway a few minutes later and parked next to the gate of a tall wooden fence that surrounded the house and yard. Eric got out of the car and called out, "JT! It's Eric!" and heard nothing but his own voice. Shouting once more with the same result, Eric tried the latch on the gate and it lifted easily. He swung it open slowly and stepped onto the property into a small but well kept front yard. The grass was cut short, weeds whacked, and several flowerbeds lined with mulch supported a surprising array of flowers. The house was, as Mary had said, something of a dump. White paint peeled from the entire two-story structure. The window below the peak of the roof in the front had been boarded up. Several four by fours assisted in holding up the sagging porch.

Eric's inspection ended when a pair of silent and sleek Doberman Pinschers appeared at the side of the house on the run. He stumbled backwards as they came on, a combined low rumble emanating from their throats. Trying to keep his balance but failing, Eric fell down hard on his backside in time to see the pair only several yards away, understood the deadly intent in their rush and cursed John Thomas Groves while covering his head with his arms in what he knew was a futile attempt to protect himself.

"Hey!"

The shout came from the porch, and when the ripping and tearing he anticipated didn't happen, he peeked through his arms at two muzzles inches from his face, could feel and smell their hot breath. They stood still as statues, eyes locked on him, waiting to see if the command to kill would follow.

"John! Lee! Get over here!" The dogs instantly obeyed, running to their master, sitting down on either side of him with the precision of a drill team, motionless again and staring at Eric, daring him to come attack their master.

"Figures, Eric, you'd come by the one time I had to use the restroom. Good thing I didn't take a magazine."

"John and Lee? Interesting names. I would have thought Spike and Killer would be more appropriate," he said, trying to make light of his second near death experience with this man in as many meetings and wondering with trepidation what the future held. He got up slowly with whatever dignity he could muster, brushing the grass from his clothing.

"It's John Wilkes and Lee Harvey, actually. Kind of a joke, after the whole John Thomas thing sounding like an assassin's name. Thought I'd give the boys, the real assassins around here, their due. Sorry about that. Just glad I got out here in time." His face took on a look of dismay as he appeared to consider which of Eric's arms the boys would be playing tug of war with right now.

"Come up here and let me introduce you. Once they know I accept you they're like puppies."