Keene was just reaching one of Jett's favorites, "My Mother Looked Like Marilyn Monroe," and her stoned mind adapted it into "My Mother Looked Like Marilyn Manson." Maybe Weird Al Yankovich could do that one sometime.
She reached over to turn the CD player up a notch when she saw the man in the black hat through her window, standing by the barn. He motioned to her, his waxy fingers stiff. The hat shaded his face, but the lower part of his chin showed over the collar of his wool jacket. His skin was the color of clabbered milk.
Jett thought the best plan of action was to get in bed and hide her head under the pillows. If Gordon were here, she could point out the man and say, "See, I told you I wasn't losing it." Except part of her was afraid mat Gordon, like the kids in her class, wouldn't be able to see him. That would serve as proof to Gordon that Jett needed a good, long stretch in the nutter wing of Faith Hospital in Boone. Lockdown wouldn't keep away the man in the black hat, though; hallucinations had a way of ignoring doors and windows.
Jett was about to turn away when the man tilted his head to look up at the window. More of the face was revealed, a dark line of lips, sunken cheeks. The fingers moved again, beckoning. Jett shook her head.
The man began walking toward the house, moving with brittle steps. The grass wilted where his shadow fell. When he reached the fence, he didn't climb over or slow down. Instead, he seemed to pass through the wire, though at no time did he appear transparent.
Jett turned over her racing thoughts, trying to find something important. She hadn't locked the front door. But who was she kidding? If it passed through wire, a door would be no problem. She could dial 911, but then what would she say? A cheese-faced dude in creepy clothes was breaking into the house?
She could hide. But where? The house was old and rambling, but it didn't have any hidden passageways or bookcases disguising secret rooms. She could hide in the linen closet, but that would be the first place he would look.
The attic. When they'd moved in, Gordon had asked her to put some of her summer clothes away. She and Mom had sorted them, stuck a few stinky mothballs in the boxes, and tucked them into the dusty space above the linen closet. Jett hadn't gone into the attic, just set the boxes around the edges of the access hole. But she'd gotten the vauge impression of a large, cluttered space, with old furniture and stacks of boxes. If the man went up there and found her, she'd be trapped, but she was trapped now, unless she made a run for the back door. The man moved like an arthritic puppet, but that didn't mean he couldn't make his boots drum if necessary.
She hurried down the hall to the closet, the energetic pop music providing an incongruous soundtrack. She climbed the shelves and tugged the string that led to the access, and a little folded ladder appeared as the small door swung open. Jett straightened the ladder and scrambled up, closing the ladder behind her as she went. The access door slammed shut with a creak of springs. The attic was dark, with the only light leaking from ventilation slats at each gabled end of the house.
Jett's heart thudded in her chest, and the marijuana made her aware of the blood pulsing through her body. She paused and listened, wondering if the man had reached the front door yet, and if he was going to enter. All she could hear was the muffled backbeat of the music. She crept deeper into the attic, ducking under the ceiling joists until she came to a cluster of furniture. There she found a pine box that was nearly the size of a coffin, but was obviously a shipping crate of some kind. She lifted the lid, then scooted it to the side, taking care not to make scraping sounds. Any noise she made would likely be audible to the man if he was on the second floor.
When the gap in the lid was wide enough, she felt through the opening to see if the box was empty. Her hand brushed against coarse cloth. There appeared to be room inside, so she climbed in, then slid the lid back into place, hoping the stirred dust didn't make her sneeze. In the blackness of the crate, she could hear the rasping of her breath. It sounded as if she had emphysema, but that must have been an acoustic trick of the confined space. She closed her mouth, forcing stale air through her nose. Still the rasping continued. In her bedroom, the CD ended, and the house was quiet. She wondered if the man's boots would make footsteps, or if he somehow floated over the floor in the same way he drifted through the fence.
Despite her fear, she was still buzzed, and her brain raced frantically. Pot sometimes gave her anxiety, and she thought this would be a real bad time to get claustrophobic. She was wondering how long she would have to hide before the man would give up. He didn't look like the giving-up kind.
Something wriggled beside her, in the pile of clothes. It was probably just the cloth settling from her moving it. Probably. Certainly it wasn't rats.
It wriggled again.
She held her breath, but the rasping went on. A hand touched her arm, or what felt like a hand, though the surface was abrasive. Like a scratchy piece of wool. Her heart jumped against her rib cage and she kicked the lid off.
Jett scrambled out of the crate as the hand grabbed at her leg. She kicked backward in the darkness, and the rasping changed pitch into a low chuckle. A chest of drawers with a mirror was beside her, reflecting the scant light. In the mirror, she saw a shape rising out of the crate. She screamed and ran for the access door, banging her shoulder hard against one of the joists. When she reached the access, she climbed onto it, and the door swung open under her weight, pitching her into the closet. Sparks of pain shot up from her ankle, but she rose to her feet and opened the closet door, fully expecting to come face-to-face with the man in the black hat. But he couldn't be as scary as that chuckling creature in the attic.
The hallway was clear, and Jett made a run for it, hobbling on her gimpy leg.
"Jett?"
Mom was downstairs. Jett ran to the head of the stairs. Mom stood below her, a paper grocery bag in her hand.
"What's going on?" Mom asked.
"Nothing, I was just…"
Hiding from a hallucination.
"Your face is pale. Are you running a fever?"
Sure, Mom. Bogeyman fever. "No, I'm okay."
"Did you know you left the front door open?"
I didn't. He did. "Sorry."
"Come on down and help me make dinner. I got a new recipe to try."
Jett descended the stairs, using the banister to keep the weight off her injured ankle. She checked rooms as she passed wondering if the man in the black hat was going to get two people for the price of one. But he wasn't in the house. Assuming he'd even existed in me first place.
Chapter Twenty-one
Sue Norwood had spent the morning doing inventory. Winter was not a big merchandise deal in Solom, and the kayak rentals all but died as the weather got colder. She normally took December off, though she'd thought about starting up a cross-country skiing racket and see if she could get the Floridians to bite. Trouble was, most of them took off at the first frost. Besides, the end of the year was a time to start lining up tax deductions.
Today she'd only had three customers: a scruffy college kid who purchased a North Face sleeping bag, a housewife who popped in for a two-dollar tube of Wounded Warrior all-purpose healing salve, and a big-boobed blonde with a flat tire on her ten-speed. Sue noted that the Everharts hadn't turned in their rental bikes during the night.
She was patching a split seam in a kayak with fiberglass and epoxy when the bell over the door rang. She figured it was the Everharts, limping in sore and tired. "Hello?" she called from her work area in the corner of the shop.