Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (9 page)

The Goodlings made pretty good money, Tommy
thought. Their house was spacious and full of sunlight. Some of the
rooms were two stories high.

He wandered into the living room and looked
at the photographs on the wall. There was the object of his
obsession, the girl whose face filled his dreams. Golden hair,
enchanting eyes, mysterious smile. In the pictures, she was every
age, selling Girl Scout cookies, playing the Virgin Mary in a
children’s play, kneeling in her cheerleading uniform with her fist
tucked under her chin.

While Darcy filled the dog’s water bowl,
Tommy went upstairs.

He found Ashleigh’s room right away. It was
large and frilly, with a private bathroom and walk-in closet, and
everything here smelled sweet.

Tommy sprawled on her bed and buried his face
in her down-stuffed pillows. He sniffed deep. This was the right
place, the right girl.

“Um, hey, Tommy?”

He lifted his face from the pillow. Darcy
stood in the doorway, watching him.

“What?” he asked.

“So I guess I should go,” Darcy said. “You
can wait around here.”

“Wait!” Tommy stood up. “Where is Ashleigh? I
have to know.”

“Um…”

“Tell me!’ Tommy shouted. He seized the girl
and shook her. “Where is Ashleigh?”

“She’s dead!” Darcy wailed, and then she
broke down crying. She sank to the carpet. “She’s dead! Jenny
Mittens killed her!”

Tommy squatted down and looked her in the
eyes. He squeezed her arm tight, pushing fear into her.

“Explain,” he said.

Darcy led him into the back yard, past the
duck pond and the shaded outdoor swing to a magnolia tree with
sprawling arms and royal purple blossoms.

“It’s called a Purple Queen magnolia,” Darcy
said. “It was Ashleigh’s favorite. That’s why I buried her
here.”

Darcy pointed to the giant gnarled roots of
the tree, which might have been hundreds of years old. A section of
the otherwise immaculate lawn had been churned up between the
roots, leaving a muddy mess.

“Ashleigh is…buried here?” Tommy asked. He
felt dizzy. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

“Well, Jenny turned her all to bones and
little pieces,” Darcy was blubbering, with a little drizzle of snot
running from her nose. “It was so bad. And Dr. Goodling never came
home. And I couldn’t just leave her there. She was my best friend,”
Darcy sobbed.

Tommy felt kind of bad for the girl. He
wanted to reach out and comfort her, but he could never do that.
His touch never comforted anyone.

“I wish she could come back,” Darcy said. “I
wish it was me instead of her. I’m the one who sinned. I’m the one
God should have taken.”

Tommy stared at the churned earth. Fury
swelled inside him. The girl had been alive only a few weeks ago.
Alive and ready to give him answers, bring him understanding. But
something had happened, and he’d missed her completely.

If he’d been faster, and if he’d been here
for her, she would still be alive.

Tommy screamed and punched the solid trunk of
the magnolia. “Fuck!” he said.

Darcy cringed. Tommy seized her by the
shoulders again, and he snarled into her face.

“Who did this?” he shouted. “Where are
they?”

Darcy told him.

When Jenny heard the engine in her driveway,
she thought it would be one of the government vehicles. Or maybe
her dad, if they were finally letting people back into town.

She stood up, walked to the front door, and
grabbed a pair of light cotton gloves from the basket by the door.
Seth sat on the couch in front of the TV.

“Where are you going?”

“Out to see who it is.”

“Wait,” Seth said. “Maybe they’re just
turning around or something.”

“You can come with me if you want.” Jenny
pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the front porch.

It wasn’t a Homeland Security or National
Guard vehicle in her driveway, though. It was a Harley-Davidson,
painted with a fire-red gargoyle. The man who stepped off it wasn’t
in a uniform, either, but a denim jacket and black jeans.

“Hey!” Seth opened the screen door and
stepped in front of Jenny. “Who are you?”

The biker was a young man with black hair,
maybe a year or two older than them. He didn’t wear a helmet. He
took off his sunglasses as he approached.

“Are you Jenny?” he demanded.

“I asked you first,” Seth said.

“Did you?” He glared at Seth. His eyes were a
rainy shade of gray, and Jenny had only seen one other person with
eyes like that.

“What do you want?” Seth asked.

“I want to find the person who killed
Ashleigh Goodling.” He pointed at Jenny. “Was it you?”

“You still haven’t told us who you are.”

The young man kept walking toward the porch,
so Seth descended the steps to meet him.

“Seth,” Jenny whispered, but he ignored
her.

“You better get out of here right now,” Seth
said.

“I’m leaving soon,” the young man said.
“After I take care of this.”

He threw the first punch, and Seth dodged out
of the way. Seth landed a fist in the young man’s stomach, and he
doubled over and backed away.

“Go,” Seth said.

The man sprang up and clapped his hands to
either side of Seth’s head. He bared his teeth.

Seth shuddered in his grasp, as if being
electrocuted, and then he screamed. The man punched Seth in the
face twice, one quick jab with each fist. Then he used one foot to
sweep Seth’s ankles out from under him, and Seth crashed to the
ground.

The man spun around and stalked up the steps
toward Jenny.

Jenny backed up. She took off her gloves and
let them fall to the porch floorboards.

“You don’t want to touch me,” Jenny said.

The young man hesitated a moment, as if her
comment had thrown him off guard. Then he ascended the final
step.

“I’m serious,” Jenny said. The cold shadow
was taking over inside her, the ancient and evil thing that had
killed so many over the millenia. It seemed particularly strong
when Seth was hurt or in danger.

“You killed Ashleigh Goodling?” the gray-eyed
young man glared at her.

“You’re right. I killed her.” Jenny folded
her arms and glared back. “You want to be next?”

He seized both her hands and squeezed. Jenny
pushed the pox into him, willing her infection to burn in deep.

Something lashed out at her from his touch,
like a lightning flash of dark, twisted energy.

And then she was terrified. She’d had a
recurring dream, the last few nights, of all the diseased people
from the town green, all surrounding her, closing in on her,
accusing her of murder, and then tearing and slashing at her.

Now she had the sense that they were coming
for her. Any moment they would pour out the windows and door onto
her porch, or smash up through the floorboards, grabbing and biting
at her. They would come boiling out of the woods, screaming her
name.

And the attack would be led by the young man
squeezing her hands now. Already, he looked like one of her
victims, open sores and bloody rashes spreading up his arms, boils
and blisters opening on his face—

He screamed and let go of her hands. He
stumbled down her porch stairs, lost his balance and fell into the
dirt.

Jenny trembled where she stood, still
terrified of him.

He pushed up to his feet.

“What the fuck are you?” he screamed. His
face was covered in pus and black swellings.

“What the fuck are you?” Jenny whispered.

He ran to his bike, turned a wide circle in
Jenny’s front yard, and then roared away.

Jenny stumbled down to Seth, on her shaking
legs, and helped him up. He still wore a shocked look on his
face.

“Was it my great-grandfather?” Seth
whispered. “Was he here?”

“Let’s get inside, Seth,” Jenny whispered. “I
want to lock up.”

They went into the house and bolted all the
doors and latched all the windows. Without discussing it, they
pulled all the window curtains tight, then turned off all the
lights so no one could peer in at them.

They huddled together under her blankets,
shivering, gripped with their individual fears. Shapeless monsters
seemed to threaten them from the dark all night.

Jenny didn’t want to admit it, but she was
even feeling a little scared of Seth, too.

Just before sunrise, Tommy rode out of
Ashleigh’s driveway. He was covered in mud. He’d left the
clay-smeared shovel on the floor of the workshop, which was built
onto the garage, and closed the door. Maybe nobody would notice it
for a while.

Tommy had found Ashleigh’s remains, wrapped
in a Sunday dress, just as Darcy had told him. Along with the skull
and broken bones, Darcy had thrown in a gold cross necklace and
some kind of silver ring.

Tommy then stuffed Ashleigh’s remains into a
backpack he found in Ashleigh’s house—Ashleigh’s, he assumed, from
the colorful, girly patches added to it, lots of flowers and
animals and hearts.

He’d crammed the backpack into one of the
motorcycle’s saddlebags. And now he was leaving town.

He passed a convoy of vehicles going the
other way, towards Ashleigh’s neighborhood. There were a couple of
the Homeland Security cars, a yellow Caterpillar excavating
machine, and some kind of truck full of pipes and hoses.

Tommy kept his head low as he drove past
them.

He didn’t fully understand what had happened
the night before. He’d put the scare in both those kids, for sure,
but they’d given him a little parting gift, hadn’t they? The
infection was all over his arms, his torso, his neck and face.

You don’t want to touch me
, she’d
said. The same thing Tommy had said himself, countless times. It
was sometimes a threat, sometimes a warning. Sometimes just a
matter-of-fact observation.

And she’d been right. She had a thing inside
her as bad as Tommy’s. Worse, even. Tommy didn’t know if he would
heal—his sores had run bloody all night as he worked the shovel.
But he was pretty sure that if he’d held on to that Jenny girl for
another minute, he would have died.

The day was uncomfortably warm for a
biohazard suit. Heather was sweating as she watched men in similar
suits handle the pumping of the pond.

They’d dropped a pair of long, fat hoses into
the duck pond. Pump machinery on their truck slurped up the black
water. The water shot out of another hose, turning the far end of
the Goodlings’ back yard into a swamp.

Nobody had answered the door when they
arrived that morning. Attempts at interviewing neighbors hadn’t
gotten far, but nobody had seen the Goodlings in days. Heather felt
like there was something the town just didn’t want to tell
outsiders like her.

Draining the pond was a sluggish process, so
Heather went in to explore the house. They had broken in the back
door to confirm nobody was there before they brought the pumping
equipment into the yard.

The house was airy and bright, with huge
picture windows and open modernist-style staircases. Everything was
cheerful. Every room, she noticed, included a shrine to
Ashleigh—her ribbons and awards and trophies and pictures. It was
clear Ashleigh’s parents adored her, maybe even to an unhealthy
extent. Like they all but worshiped their only child.

She identified Ashleigh’s room, a frilly
princess-style theme with a canopy bed, and lots of pictures of
Ashleigh and her friends on the wall. Prominently featured were two
girls, one a freckled girl with red hair, one a pretty black girl.
Heather recognized her. Neesha Bailey, the sole African-American
caught in the outbreak. Another piece of the puzzle.

In some of the picture frames, half the
picture had been cut out, leaving Ashleigh posing by herself.

In an end table drawer, Heather found the
missing halves of those pictures. They each featured a handsome boy
with blue eyes and strawberry blond hair. The pictures seemed to be
taken over a period of years. They’d been together a long time, for
a couple of teenagers.

Heather wasn’t sure how any of this could be
relevant to the investigation. But data was thin. No hint of a
pathogen had been identified, despite the laboratory trucks running
night and day inside the old warehouse that Homeland Security had
assigned for the testing of the bodies. The two refrigerated trucks
were parked in there, too, and the whole interior of the warehouse
sealed with white plastic sheeting. Nothing was to be moved out of
the town yet, per Homeland Security.

The broad public screening hadn’t yielded
much, either, as far as anyone could tell. Nobody had any unusual
illnesses, or any symptoms similar to those of the confirmed cases.
It was as if the disease had snuck into town one night, killed two
hundred people, and then vanished without a trace.

That didn’t sound possible to Heather. It
sounded supernatural. And she did not believe in the
supernatural.

She found signs of a struggle in Ashleigh’s
room. The window over the bed was smashed out, the curtains puffing
in the breeze. Heather leaned out and looked down at the paved
white walkway that curved from the Goodlings’ driveway to their
front door.

If there had been any wreckage below,
shattered glass or broken window frame, someone had cleaned it up.
The only thing on the walkway beneath her was a bouquet of assorted
flowers. They looked fresh and bright from here, as if someone had
just set them out last night.

Heather would have to jot her observations on
her small personal notepad, as soon as she was out of this bulky
suit.

She returned downstairs and walked back
outside.

The back slope of the Goodlings’ lawn was
flooded. Much of the water had collected in a deep puddle between
the roots of a large magnolia tree.