Lucas studied Elaine. “Yeah,” he said.
“Lucas, Elaine lives in the other house, that one.” Julia pointed it out.
Elaine looked a little puzzled but waved. “Okay then. Lucas, I want you to do one thing for me, okay?”
“What?” he said even more quietly.
“Keep it real. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” Elaine said. “Then you don’t have to worry about anything.”
Julia drove up past the main house and parked by the cottage. It was getting dark. Once inside, Lucas shut the front door and locked it. Then he went around and locked all the windows.
“You want to get pizza for dinner?” she asked. She was trying to keep him occupied, if not entertained. She had just started playing Despicable Me on her laptop—she didn’t have a TV—and they were on her couch watching it. He sat with his arms wrapped around his knees.
“I don’t want to go out,” he said. “Do you have anything to eat here?”
“We don’t have to go out. We can order,” Julia said, searching for her phone. “What do you like? Cheese? Sausage?”
She ordered two large pizzas from Paul’s, the local place, thinking she could put leftovers in the fridge. What kid doesn’t like pizza for breakfast? When she sat back down with him, she noticed again his frailness, his birdlike shoulders. Her desire to help him, to protect him, swelled up stronger than ever. Now that she knew how he had been living, she wondered if he was suffering from serious malnutrition.
He should be checked out by a doctor. He should’ve been taken straight to a hospital.
She wasn’t going to make Lucas’s night even worse by rushing him off to War Memorial Hospital right now—an hour away—just when the movie was getting good and they had pizza coming. But she could make sure something was arranged for tomorrow. She went into the kitchen with her phone. Sheriff Eastin had given her his number.
His phone rang many times before he answered.
“Yeah, who’s this?” He sounded almost out of breath and there was a siren, loud, in the background. She had the impression that he was driving.
“It’s Julia Grey. I wanted to ask you—I think Lucas should see a doctor, get checked out. I think he’s malnourished and, given how he’s been living—”
“Yeah, yeah, of course. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
“Is everything all right?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“I’m headed over to Ballard Creek. It sounds like some people got hurt over there tonight—maybe bad.” His voice sounded raw. Not the confident man who’d showed up in the Mudders a few hours earlier. “Miss Grey, I have to go, but there’s something else I ought to tell you… We got into the basement. I’m gonna ask you to keep this to yourself. What we found down there was, uh, a lot of animals. Dead ones.”
“What kind of animals?” she said quietly, so Lucas wouldn’t hear.
“Dogs mostly, dogs and cats. Some of them had collars and tags. They were, ah—I’ve never seen anything quite like it. They were kind of… twisted around. Like with their necks and their… bodies broken.”
“Broken?” she said.
“Like somebody wrung them like towels and broke everything inside them,” Eastin said. “And… some of them hadn’t been down there that long. Some of them had only been there… maybe a week. Or less.”
Julia looked back into the living room. Lucas was watching the movie.
“How big were they?” she said faintly. She heard what sounded like a police radio crackling.
“Small. Cats and small dogs.” He knew what she was thinking. He said, “Miss Grey, I don’t know what happened to those animals in that basement. But if you don’t want that kid in your house tonight, I get it—you bring him over to the station. You understand?”
“I’ll call you back,” she said quietly.
She hung up. She looked back into the living room. Lucas was not watching the movie anymore. He was looking at her.
She remembered the way he always recoiled at school if anyone got near him, like he was scared he smelled bad. But he didn’t smell bad…
He smelled like pets.
tried to wring them like towels
broke everything inside them
Julia looked at his skinny arms, his small white hands.
He couldn’t do that. Could he?
She walked slowly over to him. He kept watching her. She sat next to him. She looked him in the eye.
“Lucas,” she said, “How long ago did your father and your little brother die?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbled.
“You need to,” Julia said. “How did they die?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he repeated almost inaudibly.
“Did you see it?”
He didn’t speak. She looked at him. That quality he had, which she had interpreted as vulnerable shyness… could it be something else? Something colder, more reptilian? She remembered that movie, The Bad Seed. Or was it The Good Son? Someone—one of her relatives—had made a joke about it when she became a teacher.
“Lucas,” Julia said, her voice catching in her throat, “they found some animals in your basement. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
No answer.
“Do you know how they got there?”
No answer.
“Did you… put them there?”
He shook his head slowly. She took his arm. It was as thin as a bone.
“Lucas… if you don’t answer me, I can’t help you. Please, tell me the truth: Who killed the animals in the basement?”
He just stared at her.
Thoughtlessly, as if in a dream, she stood up and started backing away. Dimly she was aware of the dogs barking over at Elaine’s house, but then they both went silent. The movie, still playing on her laptop, chirped mockingly. Lucas watched her back into the kitchen. Then he turned to look out the window, where darkness had fallen.
She called Sheriff Eastin back. She had to call three times before he answered, and when he did, she could hear screaming in the background—the gender of the person was impossible to know, but they were screams of fresh, shattering grief.
“Who is that? What’s happening?” Julia said unsteadily, a panic rising.
“Miss Grey, I gotta call you back,” the Sheriff said hoarsely. “Some people got… killed over here in Ballard tonight.” The way he hesitated before he said killed made it sound like they hadn’t just been killed. Like something more awful, more… specific had happened to them. “I think maybe… some kind of animal’s gotten loose. And we don’t know where it is now.”
Rabeez
She had a flash image of a human body torn apart, broken—tried to wring them out like towels—lying like a huge, shredded red rag on one of those neat green Ballard Creek lawns.
“Sheriff, I want to talk to you about Lucas—”
“Not now,” he said distractedly. “Just lock your doors.”
She said, “They already are,” and then Eastin hung up on her.
and all they wanted to do was go to town and eat people
Except maybe he hadn’t hung up on her, because when she looked at the phone, she had no service anymore. Just like earlier, at Lucas’s house. And just like earlier, she felt a chill of dread, the fine hairs all over her body standing on end.
She looked at Lucas again. He was still looking out at the window into the night, but now he was gripping the edge of the couch with white-knuckled hands. If he were a dog, the hair on his back would’ve been standing straight up.