The Camaro Murders Read online

  That filthy old man…why did he do it? His motions continue to replay in my mind, and I can’t shut them off. Every detail is there—the dirt beneath his fingernails, the spittle in the corner of his mouth, the way his face strained and contorted. I’d vomit if I could.

  I thought for sure I could handle it. When Jasper and I first went to seek out a harbinger—the phantom that told us the girl would die—I didn’t lose my composure. When some of the wanderlings followed us to Graehling Station, their little forms didn’t cause me to dwell on the girl. Not until we were in the field did I understand how hard it would be.

  Jasper and I looked on and did nothing to stop it. He said we weren’t allowed to interfere and looked ready to hold me back once or twice. His burly hands would have met their match that afternoon had I not exercised restraint.

  My thoughts return to the girl, and I walk over to kneel beside her. She doesn’t shy away, so I hold her hands in mine and say, “I’m so sorry. I wanted to do something…to stop him. You didn’t deserve this.”

  She doesn’t respond and looks away.

  “You’re going to have to be strong now. You can do that, can’t you?” I say. “There are more of us. We’ll help you. And I promise…” I stop to make sure she’s looking at me. “I promise no one will hurt you again.”

  I’m not sure what I’ve committed myself to, but I don’t know what else to say. She’s so helpless and confused, and I begin to worry about her safety once out in the Territory.

  Jasper says there are some who work against the Fold; their allegiance is only to themselves. They target vulnerable souls like the girl to see if they can use them. I’ll have to make sure she doesn’t have to walk alone.

  Maybe Conrad can help—him or one of the other wanderlings. They would be willing to accompany the girl for as long as it takes.

  I first met Conrad in the woods surrounding this cottage. He was so innocent, so oblivious to the raw deal he’d received. Yet I was struck by his loyalty and protectiveness. If he only knew the truth of why he was here…

  I turn my attention to the window. The sun is going down and the wanderlings will be searching for hiding places along the fringes of the Territory. From there they will watch people’s dreams during the night. I’ll have to look for Conrad in the morning.

  The Wolf

  November 26th, 1986

  Inside the Driver’s Camaro

  The tires resist before grabbing the pavement. From there, the Camaro’s exhaust lets loose its discontented moan. There’s no one to complain about my driving on this back country road, so I don’t moderate my speed. I need to get back to the cottage soon.

  I don’t like leaving the girl alone for long. I have visions of someone stumbling upon the cottage and finding her inside. The worst would be someone ready to do violence for no reason—like the man called Tickseed.

  Last week Jasper and I found ourselves in the same alleyway as he. Our encounter was brief. Tickseed was well-spoken and harmless in his mannerisms—almost old-fashioned—but Jasper hurried us along as if Tickseed was leprous.

  Later Jasper explained the atrocities Tickseed was willing to commit in order to survive in the Territory. He cautioned me against even conversing with Tickseed.

  This seemed silly at the time—almost childish. I’m confident I can handle myself should our paths cross. As the car goes up and over the next rise, I realize I’ll get a chance to test that theory. There’s a figure further up the road, maybe ten feet from the shoulder. Somehow I know it’s Tickseed.

  He’s bent over, struggling with something near the trees. Whatever it is, it’s giving him a fight, but he continues to choke it.

  I slow the car to an idle to get a better look, and then bring it to a full stop when I see Tickseed has hold of a harbinger.

  Its wraith-like form thrashes, but without arms it can’t fight back. I want it to scream or make some kind of protest, but it remains silent while Tickseed struggles to keep it under control.

  Tickseed turns when he hears the tires skid in the gravel. “Your sense of timing is…unfortunate,” he says, dropping the harbinger like a dog whose lost interest in its toy. He takes a half-step towards my position on the road and says, “Come here. I want to show you something.”

  “That’s OK. I think I’ll stay here,” I say from the Camaro’s open window. I’m not going near him.

  “Too busy playing hero, are we?” he says with venom. “You and your stupid car…” Leaning against the tree with his hands in his pockets, he tips his head a bit, almost as if to watch for my response.

  “Playing hero?” I ask as the harbinger darts away and dissolves into mist.

  “Don’t play dumb, my friend. I know how you spend your nights.” He snickers like he’s trying to incite a reaction from me, then he continues. “I know you’ve been haunting the boy at night when he dreams. You know he’s going to be killed, and now so do I.”

  I feel my resolve start to slip. It’s true I’ve been looking in on the boy. I can’t help it. After seeing the girl die…I feel helpless because I know what’s going to happen to him. Secretly, I want a way to warn him.

  And now I know Tickseed has been tracking me. It’s my fault—I’ve been reckless and brash, howling through the most populous areas of the Territory. The wail of the car has become the juvenile symbol of my anger and frustration. It’s clear the harbinger told Tickseed the rest.

  Tickseed allows a slight grin. “Was it hard the first time? You watched, didn’t you? Do you think you can make a difference with the boy? You know you can’t interfere. That’s the madness of it! Those images will stick to your soul forever. He’ll be just like the girl.”

  I swing the door open and step out of the car. “Don’t talk about her. You know nothing.”

  “It’s no big loss,” Tickseed says with a chuckle. “She would have been a whore anyway.” At that, he grins from ear to ear.

  I curse at him and lunge for his throat.

  Laughing, Tickseed braces himself as my forearm pins him against the tree. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t interfere. I just want to watch. Oh, pleeeaaase can I watch?” he begs in a mock childlike voice.

  “Shut your mouth!” I say. I don’t recognize what’s welling up inside of me.

  “I want to see the look on his face—and yours,” Tickseed says, laughing.

  “I said shut it!” My forearm digs harder into his skinny throat, and then I give him the backside of my fist.

  Despite Tickseed’s height, the blow sends him reeling to the ground. He continues to giggle as if he’s enjoying it.

  I start to kick him when he attempts to get to his knees. Each blow I land to his midsection produces more laughter, so I strike with increasing violence. My flailing becomes less controlled, and as I venture further from the car, my blows lose effectiveness.

  Tickseed begins to rise, absorbing my beating with ease. He sloughs off a punch and grabs me by the shirt, and then several things happen.

  First I hear crunching inside of him—it’s what I expect breaking bones to sound like. Then I perceive him to nearly double in size. I say perceive, because my vision nearly goes black. I barely make out his form, still gangly but now disgusting and disproportioned.

  “You are worthless!” he says in a guttural, animal wail. “Excrement!” He shakes me with a force that feels like it will take my head off. “Excrement!” he says again, growling.

  I’ve lost all capacity for reason, as if I don’t have a mind of my own. There’s no will to struggle, only a shocked sense of surrender. Hanging from Tickseed’s spindly arms, it seems the ground is rumbling, and I turn to see a massive body appear from my left and crash into Tickseed. It’s Jasper.

  Tickseed drops me in order to defend himself.

  Through bleary vision, I watch the freakish figures belt each other, and I’m awestruck as Jasper wages war. I don’t know where he came from or how he got here.

  Jasper lets out colossal grunts and swings c
inderblock fists. Leaning backwards with an outstretched arm, he delivers each blow with great effect.

  Tickseed, his skin now brindled, appears almost ghostly. His mouth is elongated and protruding, but parts of his face don’t seem substantial. He tries to dodge Jasper, sometimes on all fours, clawing and gnashing like a dog.

  When Tickseed lunges for Jasper, Jasper grabs him by the shoulders and throws him to the ground. Then he hammers Tickseed’s face with each hand.

  Tickseed manages to wiggle free, his mouth hanging limp. He looks beaten.

  Jasper delivers a combination of a swinging forearm and a driving shoulder to Tickseed’s head, which sends him rolling a few feet further.

  At this, Tickseed regains his footing and makes off for the nearby woods, moving with extended strides. He disappears in a matter of seconds.

  Jasper wanders back to where I still sit on the ground. He’s not bruised or bloody like I’d expect, but he looks tired—if that’s even possible with these bodies.

  My vision has cleared and I bring myself to stand. “I don’t know what happened,” I say.

  “You let him get the best of you, for one,” Jasper says with a matter-of-fact tone. “The rest isn’t your fault. The man’s a sadist. If he can drag you down with him, he will.”

  “That’s not really what I meant,” I look away.

  Jasper’s mouth moves somewhere beneath his beard. “I know, but it’s for your own good that you heed what I say.” He waits for me to nod before continuing. “If there are any black arts here, Tickseed practices them. He’s found a way to manipulate himself, but it’s all farce. It’s under a guise through which he operates—a guise of something that doesn’t exist.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.” Sometimes Jasper loses me when he tries to explain the Territory.

  Jasper shifts his weight before replying. “I mean the way he looks—the way he transforms—it might as well be a dream. A nightmare, maybe, but he doesn’t manifest reality. He’s trying to prey on unfounded fears. Something from the movies…”

  Looking at my feet, I say, “I guess that makes sense, kind of. But that’s not the worst of it. He had hold of a harbinger when I found him. He was choking it. And the look on his face—it was like he was having fun. I think it told him about the boy.”

  Jasper flinches slightly. “He’s becoming more aggressive, which isn’t surprising. He wants back into the physical world. I don’t know how he thinks he’ll manage to do so, but I don’t want him anywhere near when you go to gather the Crisp boy.”

  The Choke

  November 29th, 1986

  Culver Crisp inside Ezra Mendelssohn’s house

  “Culver, give me your coat,” my mom says to me. My family has just arrived at Ezra Mendelssohn’s house. In the front room, we can smell the roast cooking and hear the voices of others toward the back of the house.

  Mom says we’re having a potluck. Ezra had been sick in the hospital, and some of the congregation wanted to welcome him home.

  The men talk in the front room, while the ladies work in the kitchen. My sister wants to help them, so my mom sends me to play with the other children near the stairs.

  I recognize Ted Witherspoon from school. He’s kind of bossy, but I don’t mind him too much. I don’t know the other two boys playing with him, but I think they’re brothers. They’ve got the same curly hair.

  All of them brought toys—some matchbox cars and a few G.I. Joe figures. I didn’t remember to bring any of mine.

  “Hey, Culver,” Ted says. “Wanna play?”

  “Sure,” I say. I don’t really feel like playing. I’d rather be looking for Starla. I heard there was one more search party going out today, but my mom wouldn’t let me go. She said I wasn’t allowed to go even if my dad went with me.

  “Here,” Ted says as he hands me a car, “our base is up here.” He points to the landing halfway up the stairs.

  I follow Ted up the steps and listen to his directions on how I’m supposed to play with the car.

  He says I’m not supposed to drive it too close to the edge of the stairs and I have to make all the engine sounds. “Pretend it’s real,” he says.

  The older of the two brothers joins us after awhile. He says his name is Jim. He’s pretty good at playing cars; he even makes gear shifting noises.

  Soon the younger brother notices us and follows. He’s loud and doesn’t know how to play with the cars the way Ted says. His name is Joey.

  Ted and Jim aren’t happy about this, and so Jim takes Joey back down the steps and distracts him with the G.I. Joes.

  When Joey isn’t paying attention, Jim returns to the landing. We have a few good wrecks and explosions before Joey is back on the landing.

  After this happens a few more times, I start to wish Joey would stay at the bottom of the steps. He interrupts us so much that I feel like we didn’t get to play long enough when Mom comes to tell us it’s time to eat.

  The four of us follow her into the dining room where there’s a big table for the grown-ups and a smaller table for the kids. One of the men says the blessing and offers up a prayer of thanksgiving for Ezra’s health.

  The food is passed around after that. There’s roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, Jell-o, rolls, and things like that. Mom makes sure I get a helping of green beans.

  I don’t say much during the meal. Ted and Jim talk about what they want for Christmas. The grown-ups talk about the weather and the choir at church. No one talks about Starla.

  I wish somebody wanted to talk about her. Talking about her is the next best thing to seeing her. I hope she’s OK.

  My mom cried when she heard Starla disappeared. I think she was thinking about how she’d feel if it was me or my sister who was missing. I didn’t tell her that I was in the woods with Starla, but somehow she found out.

  My dad wasn’t happy when he heard about it. “You know better than that,” he said. “I don’t ever want to hear about you sneaking off during recess again. Look what happens when you disobey.”

  I knew dad would be disappointed in me, but wasn’t Starla more important? I don’t understand why it bothers him so much if I “goof off.” He always wants me to be so serious.

  The grown-ups are passing the food around a second time when I ask to use the bathroom. I finished my plate and need to go number one.

  My mom tells me the bathroom is at the top of the stairs. “Don’t forget to wash your hands,” she says.

  I shove my chair away from the table and walk out of the dining room. In the hall, I decide I don’t like old houses. They smell funny and creak every time you take a step.

  The stairs make more noise than the floor does. Past the landing, it’s a lot darker than downstairs.

  The bathroom is across from the stairs, just like mom said. Inside, there’s a big white tub with feet. The toilet sits next to a window on the far wall. It’s freezing near the window and I can’t see out of it because it’s frosted.

  I pee and then turn around to wash my hands. There’s a little piece of soap shaped like a sea shell in a dish on the sink. The whole room is really plain.

  I wipe my hands on my jeans because I can’t find a towel. At the bathroom door, the sound of everyone downstairs in the dining room is far away. I stop to listen to them for a few seconds, and pick out Mom’s voice from the rest.

  There are two rooms with open doors on each side of the bathroom. One looks like a bedroom. It must be Ezra’s. The other is filled with cardboard boxes and piles of newspapers.

  There is a third room but the door is closed. I didn’t see it at first because it’s around the corner from the stairs. The door has a keyhole in it like the others, with a skinny metal key inside.

  I wonder why this room is closed. All the other rooms in the house are open. Maybe it’s a closet. The light from the bathroom window falls at the bottom of this door and I can see there’s something small underneath.

  On my hands and knees
, I find that it’s the edge of a pink ribbon. I pull and the rest of it comes out from under the door. A pink ribbon…why would Ezra Mendelssohn have a pink ribbon? Pink ribbons are for girls. Starla wore her pink ribbon the day we went into the woods. Starla…

  “What’re you doing, boy?” It’s Ezra standing behind me. There are brown blotches on his head and saggy skin under his eyes.

  “Nothing,” I say. I didn’t hear him coming up the steps. The ribbon is still in my hand and I feel like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t.

  Ezra looks at my hand and says, “Why don’t you give that to me.”

  My mouth won’t move even though I think I should say sorry. I hand the ribbon to Ezra without looking at him.

  “It’s not polite to be snoopin’ around other people’s houses,” he says.

  I’m afraid he’ll tell my dad I wasn’t minding my manners. “I’m sorry,” I say, mumbling.

  Ezra doesn’t say anything else so I walk past him and down the stairs. I can feel him staring at me the whole way. There’s a lump in my throat like I’m going to cry, and I don’t want to be here anymore.

  Everyone is done eating when I get back to the dining room. It feels really hot, and the skin on my back is tingling. I must look like something is wrong because Mom asks what the matter is.

  I don’t know what to tell her because I don’t know what to think. Was that Starla’s ribbon? It couldn’t be, could it? Why would Ezra Mendelssohn have Starla’s ribbon? What if…what if he took her? Ezra. Ezra Mendelssohn took Starla. No, that’s not true.

  The lump in my throat squeezes tighter. I feel like I’m having a bad dream and that everything isn’t real. Should I tell Mom? How would I say it? Ezra has her ribbon. Doesn’t that prove it?

  “Culver,” Dad says. “Mr. Witherspoon is taking the boys on a hay ride on the tractor. Do you want to go?”

  “No,” I say. My voice sounds small. I sit down in an open chair next to Mom instead.

  She puts her hand on my back and rubs it a few times while she talks to some of the ladies at the table.