He shrugged grandly. “I’m just being realistic. So play nice... and I don’t mean bedroom games.”
He was at the door when she said, “Roy?”
He turned and looked at her. If he’d ever seen a woman more beautiful, he couldn’t remember when. “What?”
“...Don’t go.”
“Huh,” he said. “Seems to me that’s the same request I made of you six months ago.”
And he left her there with her paintings and her memories and, just maybe, her tears.
In the attic, Richie in his pajamas was kneeling before his mummified friend. The boy had the stethoscope around his neck.
“Nobody around here likes you except me,” the boy said. “But I don’t care. And you shouldn’t either. My name’s Richie and I wish I knew your name. I could make one up, but I don’t know any Aztec names. And everybody seems to have forgot yours, anyway.”
Richie looked at the claw-like hands, the gaping mouth with its Halloween grin, the empty eye sockets that had seemed to glow before but were just black holes now.
“You don’t look so good,” the boy said. “I’m going to be a doctor someday. Like my dad. So maybe I better take a look at you.”
He held the stethoscope’s chest piece to bony ribs and listened.
And listened.
And listened.
Was that a heartbeat he heard?
Then he paused in his examination and said, “Y’know, pal — I think you’re going to be all right.”
In the trees near the walled-in yard and house, facing the side of the old house where the window air-conditioner chugged in an attic window, a Southern Magnolia ruled, a good eighty-feet tall with a spread of fifty feet, its evergreen leaves large, and lustrous even after dark, shimmering with moonlight.
Beautiful.
Up its trunk clambered something not beautiful, unseen on its ascent and all but invisible when it settled onto a branch providing a good view of the house, and the window through which he — because this watcher was not really an “it” — had on previous unrecorded visits seen through his binoculars the figure of the boy, moving from one exercise station to another.
Dennis — for that was the name of the man who some within that house described as a “creature” — had once done exercises himself. Had built muscles on a frame thought too fragile for such a thing. Had developed dexterity for himself through long hard work. He understood the boy and he could, in a way, identity with him.
Pity the child had to die.
Chapter 6
The Doberman, Buster, was tied up outside the wall to act as an overnight guard dog along the line of trees from which the strange footprints had led and returned. The chain had enough length to allow the animal to get right up to the edge of the wooded area, and at the moment the animal was sniffing around a certain Southern Magnolia.
The four officers on duty patrolling the Ryan grounds tonight were divided up in teams of two on either side of the fieldstone wall. They walked patrol separately and only occasionally checked in with each other. None of those four were near Buster at the moment, who had not barked to alert them and even now the animal’s growling was low and rumbling. Mostly Buster was sniffing, as if looking for somewhere to lift a leg.
So no negligence on the part of the officers added to what happened next...
...when a black shape with long arms and clawed splayed fingers dropped down like a big blunt rock on the back of the dog, surprising it, eliciting only a single yipe before those clawed digits dug into the Doberman’s throat, turning a dangerous adversary into a quivering helpless mass and powerful hands gripped and twisted and choked and finally snapped bones as if they were nothing more than brittle sticks.
Out in front of the house, at the bottom of the steps up onto the porch, the two cops who earlier had carted the crate upstairs were comparing notes and grabbing smokes and complaining about their very long day, with less than half an hour before the next shift of four officers came on.
Skinny Fred frowned, looked up, saying, “What the hell was that?”
Pudgy Lou, exhaling Marlboro smoke, said, “What the hell was what?”
“Didn’t you hear anything?”
Lou blew a Bronx cheer. “Birds and bugs and beasties in the woods, kiddo. What do you expect in the boonies?”
Fred was looking toward the wooded area, treetops visible over beyond the wall, a mass of leaves shimmering in night breeze, catching some moonlight and throwing it around.
“Guess you’re right, Lou. Anything moves out there, Buster’s sure to let us know.”
Lou grunted affirmatively. “We got four guys on foot patrol, and Cutter added two cars to work the highway and the back roads within a few miles, either side. Nothing’s getting past us, kiddo. Nothin’.”
With a sigh, Fred pitched his smoke sparking into the night. “Yeah, but we’re all gettin’ punchy. That’s a lot of long hours for everybody. We’re back on at eight tomorrow morning.”
“No rest for the wicked,” Lou observed, grinning like he just thought that up.
The terrible hands drew away from the animal’s throat. The human creature, though low to the ground, nonetheless hovered over the limp bag of fur and flesh and bones that had been a living breathing and dangerous creature moments before.
He faced the fieldstone wall and his head went back, his eyes lifting to the attic window.
A light was on.
That boy was up past his bedtime.
Bad boy. Bad boy.
The human creature patted the dead dog.
Good boy. Good boy.
In his pajamas, Roy — the buzz of the two highballs wearing off, embarrassed about how things had deteriorated in his guest-room conversation with Helen — thought he’d better check on his son before hitting the sack himself.
Yet not only were the boy’s lights still on, and the bed still made, Richie wasn’t there! But some light bled from under the door to the attic.
Shaking his head, Roy went up.
Richie was kneeling at the seated desiccated corpse, listening at its chest with the stethoscope. The thing in the faded Aztec collar and thin white tunic seemed to grin at Roy, as if to say, You can’t compete with me, you pitiful human daddy.
“Son,” Roy said.
Richie didn’t hear him, the ear tips of the stethoscope in place.
“Son!”
The boy swung his head around, startled. “Uh. Oh. Hi, Dad.”
“Yeah, hi. It’s way after your bedtime, your know.”
Richie shrugged, smiled. “I know. I kinda lost track.”
Roy’s fists were on his hips. “Well, you need to get back on track. What are you doing there, anyway?”
Richie bobbed his head toward the seated mummy. “Playing doctor.”
Definitely not the way Roy had played doctor when he was a kid.
The father went to the boy and knelt, the mummy nearby, wearing its mocking expression.
“Listen,” Roy said, “you can’t be up here. Not at this hour. And you know how your mother feels about your... your friend here.”
“I know, but you don’t feel like that. Do you, Dad?”
He put some firmness into his voice. “I should have put a stop to this before. It’s disrespectful.” He gestured to the grinning corpse. “This was a human being, son. You don’t ‘play,’ not ‘doctor’ or anything else, with an actual dead person.”