The Third Eye (3 page)

“And you left? You just left, without finishing the game?”

“I called ‘Olly olly oxen free!’ ” Kevin said defensively. “He could’ve come home free if he’d wanted to.”

“But that was hours ago!” Karen protested. “If Bobby was hiding in his yard, he would have seen you leave. There wouldn’t have been any reason for him to keep hiding after that.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Mrs. Springer said. “You know how boys are with sitters—they love to give them a hard time. When you get back to the house, you’ll probably find him waiting.”

“No, I won’t,” Karen said with certainty. “Bobby isn’t at his house. He isn’t anywhere around there.”

“Now, how can you know that?” Mrs. Springer asked reasonably.

“I just do,” Karen told her.

There was no explanation to offer. She did not try to find one. She had learned to accept without question knowledge that came to her in this abrupt and chilling manner, because experience had taught her that it was always right.

“He’s seven years old, with brown hair and
brown eyes, and he’s wearing jeans and a yellow T-shirt.”

The sandy-haired police officer with the vivid blue eyes had introduced himself on his arrival as Officer Robert Wilson. He read back the description Karen had given him. He was young—way too young, in Karen’s opinion—to have been sent to handle something as important as a missing-child report.

“Is there anything you want to add to that?” he asked her, his eyes on his notes. “What about his shoes—if he was wearing tennis shoes, were they leather or canvas? How about a sweater or jacket?”

“I think he was wearing white tennis shoes,” Karen said.
“The jacket was a Windbreaker—blue, maybe, or green. His friends might remember. Kevin Springer and Peter Johnson were with him this morning.”

Officer Wilson jotted down the names beneath Bobby’s physical description. Watching his hands as he wrote, Karen couldn’t help noticing that his fingernails were bitten down to the quick. The discovery did little to convince her that he was an authority figure.

“The Springers live just down the street on the corner,” she told him. “I don’t have an address for the Johnsons, but I can get you the phone number.”

“I’ll call them from here, then.” He retracted the tip of his ballpoint pen with a quick snap. “I wouldn’t start worrying yet if I were you. Kids like to wander. We get a half-dozen calls like this one every week, and most of the time the kids turn up on their own.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“We find them someplace. Usually, it’s at a video game store. Or a Radio Shack. There’s something about those Radio Shacks that draws them like flies.”

Karen tried not to roll her eyes. “He hasn’t gone to Radio Shack.”

There was no way that she could imagine Bobby taking off on his own to go to a store. If he had been with other boys, it might have been plausible, but he would not have gone by himself. Besides, to her knowledge there was nothing like that within walking distance.

“He didn’t just wander off,” Karen said. “He’s trapped somewhere.”

“He’s
trapped
?”

“He isn’t able to come home. He wants to, but he can’t.” She was making no sense, not even to herself. “I don’t know why I think that, but I do.”

“That’s not very likely,” Officer Wilson said. “Despite what you’d think from watching those cop shows on TV, kidnappings don’t occur often. When a kid this age disappears, he’s usually run away to a friend’s house. Have you been able to get hold of the parents?”

“No,” Karen said. “They’re at the races in Santa Fe. I tried Mrs. Zenner’s cell, but it went to voice mail. She keeps her phone in her purse, so she probably didn’t hear it.”

“If Bobby hasn’t turned up by the time they get home, have them call the station,” Officer Wilson told her. “My guess, though, is that he’ll be back before they are.”

He made a quick call to the Johnsons from the phone in the kitchen. Then he left, saying that he would stop at both the Johnsons’ house and the Springers’ on his way back to the police station.

When the door closed behind him, Stephanie, who had been confined to her playpen during the interview, began to fuss for attention. Karen hoisted her up over the railing and took her out to the kitchen. She strapped her into her high chair and poured orange juice into a plastic cup that was decorated with a picture of Kermit the Frog.

“Here, drink your froggy juice,” Karen said softly to the baby.

The kitchen seemed unnaturally quiet. In the dreamlike silence, she could hear the tick of the clock on the far wall and the sound of Stephanie swallowing and the steady, rhythmic beating of her own heart. The late afternoon sunlight slanted in through the window over the sink and painted one side of the room with great splashes of gold. Dust motes swirled and drifted in rainbow clusters, reflecting the light like prisms. Beyond the glass the poplars shimmered and shivered with a silvery radiance.

Karen leaned against the counter and closed her eyes.
Bobby’s trapped in a box.
Incredibly, she could actually see him there, curled quiet in darkness. He was frightened, terribly frightened; the intensity of his terror had left a lingering residue like the stale odor of cigarette smoke in an empty room. The smell of fear was mixed with other scents: sweat and grease and urine. Bobby’s eyes were closed, and his hair lay damp and matted upon his forehead. His knees were drawn tight against his chest. She had been right about the Windbreaker. It was blue.

“Dear God,” Karen whispered, “please, let him be alive!” A boy in a
box
, not an electronics store! The police would not find him there; they would not be looking for boxes. “Bobby’s closed up in a box.” The statement sounded ridiculous. She could shriek it to the skies, and there would be no way in the world that any sane person would ever believe her.

The frog cup clanked hard upon the metal tray of the high chair.

“Cookie!” Stephanie announced loudly. “Cookie me!”

Karen’s eyes flew open, and the vision snapped out of existence. She was back in the Zenners’ kitchen, and she had been dreaming. Dreaming or hallucinating. How long had she been standing there, propped against the counter like a zombie? Five minutes? Ten? The baby’s cup was empty. The light from the window had subtly shifted. The sun had slipped behind the poplars, and the branches filtered the softening rays of light. The floor of the kitchen was dappled with shadows.

“Cookie!” Stephanie demanded impatiently.

“Yes, sweetie, I’ll get you a cookie.”

The cookies were still on the table where she had set them at lunchtime. Karen got one for Stephanie, loosened the safety strap, and lifted her down from the chair. The kitchen clock read five past five. The Zenners would be returning at any time now. What would she tell them?
Stephanie’s here, but I’ve misplaced Bobby?
With all the advice offered in magazines and online, she couldn’t remember ever seeing tips on how to tell parents that one of their children was missing.

He’s in a box.
The words came whispering back to her. If she closed her eyes again she knew that she would be sucked back into it, that waking dream of heavy, oily darkness.

What sort of box and where could he have found it?
Her mind leapt spasmodically from one supposition to another. An empty packing crate? An abandoned refrigerator?

Those were junkyard items, not likely to be found in a residential neighborhood. According to Kevin, the game of hide-and-seek had been played in the Zenners’ own yard. Why, then, did she feel this overpowering certainty that Bobby was not in the vicinity?

“Cookie. Me?” The chirp of a hopeful voice brought her out of her reverie. A small, sticky hand was tugging imploringly at her jeans.

“You just had one,” Karen responded automatically. “You’ll spoil your supper.”

“Me? Cookie, me?”

What did it matter? There would be no family dinner that evening anyway. Karen placed the plate where Stephanie could reach it and seated herself in a chair across from her.

She watched the child as she ate and tried not to let herself think about anything except the demise of the cookies and what a mess a toddler could make with them, while beyond the kitchen window the world mellowed into twilight and the sky changed from blue to lavender behind the darkening shapes of the trees.

At five forty-seven the Zenners got back from Santa Fe. By five fifty Mrs. Zenner was weeping hysterically and her husband was engaged in making the first of many frantic phone calls. The police were resummoned, and on this return trip the young blue-eyed officer appeared to be taking the situation seriously. Mrs. Johnson came over, bringing her son Peter and Kevin Springer. No new information surfaced.

The boys’ stories were compatible. They had been playing, and Bobby had hidden. It was the last they had seen of him. When he had refused to respond to Kevin’s summons to come home free, they had gone off to play at the Springers’.

In the midst of the interrogation, Karen’s cell rang. She carried it into the kitchen to take the call. The voice that greeted her was her mother’s, high-pitched, as usual, into a tone of accusation.

“What’s going on over there? Aren’t the Zenners back by now? Why aren’t you home yet?”

“Bobby’s missing,” Karen told her.

“What do you mean, missing?”

“He went out to play around noon and didn’t come back.”

“It’s after seven!” Mrs. Connors exclaimed.

“Don’t you think I know that? The police are here. Everybody’s worried sick.”

“I should think they would be!”

“I feel terrible,” Karen said. “I should have kept better watch over him.”

“They can’t hold you responsible,” her mother said. “You’re a conscientious babysitter. If that boy went running off someplace—”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Then what
did
happen? Children don’t just vanish. You’ve told me yourself that Bobby wears you out when you babysit.”

He’s in a box.
There was no way she could say it, not to the police, not to the Zenners, and not to her mother. She was
beginning to wonder if she was going crazy. How could she be so certain of something that was impossible?

“You’d better come home,” Mrs. Connors said. “Unless there’s something specific they need you for, you’re undoubtedly more in the way over there than anything else.”

“I can’t just walk out!” Karen objected. “Mom, this is serious!”

“Tim’s here,” her mother told her. “He says you have a date.”

“We did. I completely forgot.” Unbelievable as such a thing would have seemed earlier, it had slipped her mind completely. “Tell him what happened, will you, Mom? Tell him I’m sorry.”

“Why don’t I send him over to pick you up?”

“I told you,” Karen said, “I can’t just leave.”

“What are you planning to do, spend the night there?”

“I don’t know,” Karen told her helplessly. “I don’t know what I should do. Maybe someone will need me for something.”

“Get your things together,” her mother said firmly. “I’m sending Tim to get you. I have a splitting headache, Karen, and I don’t want to argue.”

“Mom, I can’t! I’m the only one who
knows
!”

About the box!
The unspoken statement surged back into her consciousness, urgent, discordant. No longer were the words mere whispers, hissing bewildering warnings. Now they were louder, stronger, rushing into her head with a thunderous roar.

“I can’t come home,” Karen repeated shakily. “Not until we figure out what’s happened.”

Without waiting for a response, she hung up and then turned off the phone. Her heart was pounding so hard that when she pressed her fingertips against her temples she could feel the pulsation of blood. The vision was back, more vivid than before, projected like a movie upon the screen of her brain. Although Bobby was encased in darkness, she could see him clearly. He had not changed position, but he seemed to have slid forward so that one side of his face was resting against metal.

For a long time Karen stood with her eyes closed, focusing with another, inner eye upon the inert figure. Then, just as she was beginning to feel that she had absorbed every detail, something began to happen. Although Bobby was lying so still that it was impossible to tell whether or not he was breathing, she was aware of the sensation of motion, as though he were in some mysterious manner moving toward her.

I
am
crazy,
Karen told herself with numb acceptance. The hidden strangeness had finally surfaced, as she had always feared in some dark recess of her mind that it someday would. In the space of one afternoon she had managed to lose all control of her senses.
Bobby is moving, and yet he isn’t!
Her head was spinning, and the pressure was mounting so rapidly that she was afraid her skull might burst. With her eyes still shut, she pressed her cheek against the cool, rough surface of the kitchen wall, struggling desperately to regain a grip on reality.

She could smell urine. In his initial moment of terror, Bobby had soiled himself. She could smell perspiration and
grease of a kind she associated with cars or motorcycles. There was another odor also, one that she had not formerly been aware of—the faint, sickening pollution of automobile exhaust.

Exhaust fumes! Bobby’s box is in a car!
Karen caught her breath as the realization swept over her. He was in a car, and that car had gone into motion! He was with somebody who was taking him someplace, but
where
?

She released her hold on the image, and her eyes flew open. She was back in the Zenners’ kitchen, and she was trembling.

“Karen?” Mr. Zenner spoke from the doorway. “You’re not still on the phone, are you?”

“No,” Karen said. “It was just my mom.”

She moved away from the wall. Her cheek was raw from the pressure of the plaster.

“Mr. Zenner,” she said hesitantly, “I have this feeling about Bobby. I think he’s in a car.”

“What makes you say that?” Bobby’s father asked sharply. “Do you know something more than you’ve told us? Did Bobby go off with someone?”