The Vanishing (31 page)

‘‘Who is
them
?’’

‘‘That’s part of it. You don’t know until they come.’’

‘‘Are they other grown-ups?’’ Terry asked, worried.

Dexter leaned forward. ‘‘They’re not
people
,’’ he whispered.

They’d broken up after that: Terry and Claire running back to their parents like the wimps they were; Tony, Dexter and Pam heading back down the path toward town. But before they left, Dexter invited Johnny and Alyssa to hang out with them at the fair the following night. Johnny promised that they’d be there.

He’d dreamed that night of the Place, and in his dream he and Pam had hidden together behind some bushes while they watched a woman take off all her clothes until she was completely naked and he could see everything.

Now the four of them stood staring at those who passed by the mirror house. Groups of kids like themselves. Couples. Families.

‘‘I don’t want to make fun of old people,’’ Pam told Dexter. ‘‘
I
want to go to the Place.’’ She looked significantly at Johnny.

‘‘Okay,’’ Dexter agreed. He pointed at Alyssa. ‘‘But she has to come, too.’’

‘‘No,’’ Johnny said firmly. He didn’t want Alyssa involved in any of this.

‘‘I’m big enough to decide for myself,’’ his sister told him. ‘‘Besides, what am I going to do, wait around here by myself until I get kidnapped?’’

She had a point.

‘‘If you can do it, I can do it,’’ she said defiantly.

That made him uncomfortable. She shouldn’t be here, he thought. He shouldn’t have brought her along in the first place. He was beginning to think that
he
shouldn’t have come either. All of a sudden, an evening lounging around the cabin watching TV didn’t seem so bad.

‘‘Come on,’’ Dexter said. ‘‘I know the way.’’

With Pam practically dancing behind him, Dexter led them around the back of the fun house at the end of the midway and across a field of dried grass toward a line of trees. The town was very narrow here, like one of those in an old Western movie. There was no depth to it. No streets or homes or buildings lay behind the empty lot where the fair had set up, and immediately after passing the fun house they were in open country, noise and lights and life behind them.

The woods ahead looked dark.

He wasn’t going to let Alyssa see anything, Johnny decided. He was going to make her look the other way. If Dexter tried to push, they would just leave.

Why didn’t they leave right now? Why were they even following Dexter and Pam?

Because he wanted to see the Place.

Pam was singing something as she danced, though it was not a song he recognized.

If they went too far into the woods, he and Alyssa were going to turn around. Johnny did not want to get too removed from civilization. But to his surprise, they stopped just inside the line of trees. If someone from the fair had trained a spotlight in this direction, the four of them could probably be seen.

‘‘This is the Place,’’ Dexter said.

Johnny glanced about. Moonlight filtered downward through the trees, and light from the fair and the town seeped in behind them, granting sparse illumination to the area in which they found themselves. It was enough to show him that the clearing where they stood was overgrown with lush vegetation. It was like an oasis, he marveled. The bushes were huge and full, the grass tall, completely unlike what he’d seen elsewhere around Oak Draw.

There were animals here as well, small woodland creatures like squirrels and chipmunks, robins and rabbits. Only they weren’t behaving the way normal animals did. They seemed more like characters from cartoons in the way they sat still in a semicircle around the side of the clearing, chittering, chirping . . . and watching.

‘‘This way,’’ Dexter said. He led them around the side of a particularly large bush. Behind it and under the branches was an indentation in the ground, what looked like almost a small room within the huge bush itself, where they could sit or even stand and watch whatever went on in the clearing. ‘‘We’ll wait,’’ he announced.

They didn’t have to wait long.

Shortly afterward, a couple entered the clearing from a slightly different direction than they had come, looking furtively about as though afraid of being caught. They said nothing but merely looked at each other for several moments . . . and then started to remove their clothes.

‘‘They’re going to pee over there,’’ Dexter whispered. ‘‘It brings
them
out.’’

The woman’s shirt and pants were already off, and she was squatting in the dirt where he pointed, urinating.

‘‘Let’s go,’’ Alyssa whimpered, tugging on his arm. Now she sounded scared.

‘‘In a few minutes,’’ he promised. Part of him wanted to leave, too, but part of him wanted to stay and see what happened. He hazarded a glance at the woman. She had picked up a handful of mud from between her legs and was rubbing it on her buttocks. ‘‘And everywhere that big cock went, this Sue was sure to go,’’ she said in a singsongy voice.

‘‘They like rhymes,’’ Dexter whispered. ‘‘Nasty ones.’’

The man was taking off his clothes. Johnny definitely did not want his sister to see this.

Alyssa gripped his hand tighter. ‘‘Let’s go.’’ Her voice was barely audible.

The man was totally naked now. He put his hands on his hips, facing away from them, and started chanting. ‘‘My dick is here. It took a whiz. Eat it! Eat it! Here it is!’’

All was suddenly quiet. Everything had gone silent, as though a soundproof bubble had descended over the woods. The noises of the fair, the town and the highway were gone, and only the sounds
they
made were audible. Johnny heard the crunching of leaves, the panting of breath, the slap of mud being applied to skin.

Either the moon had grown brighter or his eyes had adjusted, but he saw now that the cute little animals on the side of the clearing were dead. Only . . .

Some of them were moving.

A rabbit thumped its foot. A squirrel wiggled its tail. A bird twitched its wing.

The rabbit’s face had rotted away. The squirrel’s eyes were missing. The bird’s stomach had been ripped open.

The sounds of the outside world were still missing, but from the trees came a sharp whistle, followed by a whooshing windlike noise. The branches of bushes began whipping back and forth as though in anticipation of the arrival of something
big.

‘‘Run,’’ Johnny whispered to his sister, and he grabbed her hand. Before Dexter or Pam could stop them, they were out of the bush and dashing across a small section of the clearing, then back the way they had come. He hazarded a glance over his shoulder as they broke the line of trees and started across the open field toward the lights and noise of the fair. He saw the woman on her hands and knees, with something slimy and sort of human approaching her from behind. Where the man had been stood a creature that looked like Bigfoot, although a tree blocked part of its body.

Then they were running and not looking back, keeping their eyes on the prize as they dashed desperately toward the fair and the town. They ran around the side of the fun house, the final attraction on the midway, and back into the mix of townspeople and tourists, grateful for the music, the voices, the lights. He thought of Dexter and Pam behind the bush, watching those summoned creatures enter the dark clearing.

He jumped at the sound of the voice, startled.

Their parents were in front of the fun house and hurrying over. He saw wild relief on his mom’s face and, on top of that, bone-deep anger. His dad, too, looked at once relieved
and
ready to beat them both.

‘‘Where were you?’’ ‘‘You could’ve been kidnapped or killed!’’ ‘‘I told you you couldn’t go!’’ ‘‘What got into you?’’ ‘‘What in the world were you thinking?’’

They were both talking over each other, shouting so loudly that other fairgoers were turning to stare, and though Johnny was dreading the punishment to come, he was absurdly thankful that his parents cared so much, that they were both there for him and Alyssa.

His mom grabbed his shoulders ‘‘Where were you?’’ she demanded, her eyes boring into his.

‘‘No place,’’ Johnny said, looking away.

‘‘What were you doing?’’

‘‘Nothing,’’ he said. He glanced toward his sister, met her eyes.

She stared back at him stoically, then nodded imperceptibly. ‘‘Nothing,’’ she agreed.

Twenty-one

Brian passed by Wilson’s cubicle, paused for a second to stare at the empty chair and dark computer monitor, then continued on to his own workstation. He was pretty sure his friend was dead, but the not knowing kept everything in limbo. That made it harder in some ways but easier in others, for while he remained in a constant state of tension, waiting for confirmation, he was at least spared the pain of grieving. Because as long as he didn’t know for certain, his emotions were reined in—and that was exactly what he needed right now.

The important thing was to remain focused.

It was getting harder, though. The police had found blood all over Wilson’s house, and though investigators speculated that the two distinct types belonged not to him but to his wife and daughter, nothing could be proved and theories abounded. Many had a murderous Wilson at the center, though Brian gave absolutely no credence to any of those.

In his mind, a psychotic millionaire was behind it all, probably someone Wilson had covered for the paper, probably someone he’d known.

The man had slaughtered Wilson’s family.

And killed him as well.

But Brian didn’t know that, and right now he didn’t
want
to know.

He sat down at his desk, sorting through the notes and messages that had accumulated since yesterday. Earlier in the week, he had scanned and sent copies of both new letters to Dr. LaMunyon—the one his mom had been sent and the one he’d found in the house—but he had not yet heard back from the linguistics professor. He was about to call UCLA and see what was going on when the phone on his desk rang. According to the blinking light on the console, it was from the managing editor, and he quickly picked up. ‘‘Hello. Brian Howells. Newsroom,’’ he said, answering in the officially sanctioned manner that he was supposed to use all the time but didn’t.

James Bieber—Jimmy—asked him to come directly to his office, and Brian picked up a notebook and pen and hurried immediately to the other side of the newsroom. He knocked on the wall next to the open office door.

‘‘Come in,’’ Jimmy said brusquely. He motioned for Brian to sit down in the chair opposite his and tossed a paper-clipped sheaf of papers across the desk.

Brian picked it up.

‘‘I assume you’ve heard about Lew Haskell up in the Bay Area. Another rich lunatic. Not violent so far as we know, but he’d been abusing his wife and son, was arrested for human trafficking among other offenses. It’s all there. Public records, wire service story, local articles.’’ Jimmy leaned forward. ‘‘I know you and St. John were sniffing around this story—’’

Brian looked up in surprise, but Jimmy waved him away.

‘‘Nothing stays secret in this building. And I think you’re on the right track. No one’s connecting these, but I want us to. We’re the ones who are going to figure out the jigsaw; we’re going to draw the map for everyone else. But until then, we need to keep up with everything that’s going on. To that end, I want us to have the best, most thorough, most well-written coverage of each and every incident. So we need to talk to that woman. The one who was dating him, the one who turned him in.’’

Brian cleared his throat. ‘‘I’m not really assigned to that.’’

‘‘You are now.’’

‘‘But—’’

‘‘It’s your story,’’ the editor said. ‘‘Go with it.’’

Brian nodded. He couldn’t believe his luck. But in the world of journalism, fortunes changed overnight. One mistake, and you were Dan Rather, out on your ass. One big break, and you were Bob Woodward, perpetual icon. He was sure he was making enemies in the newsroom over this. He wasn’t exactly a rookie, but he was new to the
Times
, and some of the reporters who’d been here longer probably resented his quick rise through the ranks. Brian knew that
he
would, were the shoe on the other foot.

He only wished that Wilson were here, too. It was his story as much as Brian’s.

But he was dead.

Probably.

Had he been killed because he was investigating these murders?

It seemed likely, and Brian found himself wondering if he was targeted, too. And by whom. And why.

It was the scope of it all that seemed so daunting. All of those rich men? Over all those years? And his dad as well? There was no common thread, no dots he could connect. And yet it was epic, quite possibly the biggest, most important story he would ever work on in his life.

And he didn’t know what the hell it was.

Jimmy explained in detail exactly what kind of coverage he expected, and spelled out the travel logistics. Airline tickets and lodging costs had already been preapproved, and once he made contact with the woman—Carrie Daniels—and set up a meeting, all he had to do was make reservations, grab a photographer from the pool and be at LAX by the proper time.

Everything went smoothly, and by eleven Brian was on his way to San Francisco, photographer in tow, feeling like the Hollywood conception of a reporter. Warren Beatty in
The Parallax View.
Robert Walden on
Lou Grant.
Hell, Michael Keaton in
The Paper.
It was a good feeling, a powerful feeling, and for a brief period of time it actually distracted him from the impossible immensity of his task.

Carrie Daniels had agreed to meet him at a coffee-house downtown at one o’clock, and since he arrived over a half hour early and hadn’t eaten anything all morning save a small bag of peanuts on the plane, he decided to order lunch. Merritt, the photographer, was a good guy, laid-back, easy to hang with, and Brian charged his lunch to the account as well. Both of them sat outside in the brisk cool air, eating gourmet sandwiches, drinking lattes, laughing at the thought of their colleagues sitting in the windowless
Times
newsroom or scurrying around hot, smoggy Los Angeles in search of stories.