Black House (Page 46)

T.J. shakes his head. "Just his bike and his sneaker." He pauses, remembering as hard as he can. "There were some leaves scattered around. From the hedge. And I think there might have been a feather. Like a crow feather?"

Ebbie dismisses this. He is grappling with the question of whether or not the Fisherman has actually come close to him this morning, close enough to snatch one of his buddies. There is a bloodthirsty part of him that likes the idea, that relishes the thought of some shadowy, no-face monster killing the increasingly annoying Ty Marshall and eating him for lunch. There is also a childish part of him that is terrified of the boogeyman (this part will be in charge tonight as he lies awake in his room, looking at shadows that seem to take form and slink ever closer around his bed). And there is the older-than-his-years part of him, which has taken instinctive and immediate measures to avoid the eye of authority, should Tyler’s disappearance turn into what Ebbie’s father calls "a f**karow."

But mostly, as with Dale Gilbertson and Ty’s father, Fred, there is a continent of fundamental disbelief inside of Ebbie Wexler. He simply cannot believe that anything final has happened to Tyler. Not even after Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham, who was carved into pieces and hung up in an old henhouse. These are kids of whom Ebbie has heard on the evening news, fictions from the Land of TV. He didn’t know Amy or Johnny, so they could have died, just as make-believe people were always dying in the movies and on TV. Ty is different. Ty was just here. He talked to Ebbie, Ebbie talked to him. In Ebbie’s mind, this equals immortality. Or should. If Ty could be snatched by the Fisherman, any kid could be snatched. Including him. Hence, like Dale and Fred, he just doesn’t believe it. His most secret and fundamental heart, the part of him that assures the rest of him that everything is fine on Planet Ebbie, denies the Fisherman and all his works.

T.J. says: "Ebbie, do you think — "

"Nah," Ebbie says. "He’ll turn up. Come on, let’s go to the park. We can look for cans and bottles later."

Fred Marshall has left his sport coat and tie in his office, rolled up his sleeves, and is helping Rod Tisbury unpack a new Hiler rototiller. It’s the first of the new Hiler line, and it’s a beaut.

"I’ve been waiting for a gadget like this twenty years or more," Rod says. He expertly inserts the wide end of his crowbar at the top of the big crate, and one of the wooden sides falls to the concrete floor of the maintenance garage with a flat clap. Rod is Goltz’s chief mechanic, and out here in maintenance he is king. "It’s gonna work for the small farmer; it’s gonna work for the town gardener, as well. If you can’t sell a dozen of these by fall, you’re not doing your job."

"I’ll sell twenty by the end of August," Fred says with perfect confidence. All his worries have been temporarily swept away by this splendid little green machine, which can do a hell of a lot more than rototill; there are a number of sexy attachments that snap in and out as easily as the lining in a fall jacket. He wants to start it up, listen to it run. That two-cylinder engine looks pretty sweet.

"Fred?"

He looks around impatiently. It’s Ina Gaitskill, Ted Goltz’s secretary and the dealership receptionist. "What?"

"You’ve got a call on line one." She points across the floor — alive with clanging machinery and the noisy whir of pneumatic screwdrivers loosening bolts on an old Case tractor — to the phone on the wall, where several lights are blinking.

"Can you take a message, Ina? I was going to help Rod get a battery in this little beast and then — "

"I think you should take the call. It’s a woman named Enid Purvis. A neighbor of yours?"

For a moment Fred blanks, and then his salesman’s mind, which stores up names compulsively, comes to his rescue. Enid Purvis. Wife of Deke. Corner of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. He saw Deke just this morning. They waved to each other.

At the same time, he becomes aware that Ina’s eyes are too big and her normally generous mouth is too small. She looks worried.

"What is it?" Dale asks. "Ina, what is it?"

"I don’t know." Then, reluctantly: "Something about your wife."

"Better take it, hoss," Rod says, but Fred is already crossing the oil-stained concrete floor to the phone.

He arrives home ten minutes after leaving Goltz’s, peeling out of the employees’ parking lot and laying rubber like a teenager. The worst part had been Enid Purvis’s calm and careful delivery, how hard she’d been trying not to sound frightened.

She had been walking Potsie past the Marshall house, she said, when she heard Judy scream. Not once, but twice. Of course Enid had done what any good neighbor would, God bless her: gone up to the door, rapped, then pushed open the letter slot and called through it. If there had been no answer, she told Fred, she probably would have phoned the police. She wouldn’t even have gone back home to do it; she would have crossed the street to the Plotskys’ house and called from there. But —

"I’m all right," Judy had called back, and then she had laughed. The laugh was shrill, ending in a tittery gasp. Enid had found this laugh somehow even more upsetting than the screams. "It was all a dream. Even Ty was a dream."

"Did you cut yourself, dear?" Enid had called through the letter slot. "Did you fall down?"

"There was no creel," Judy had called back. She might have said keel, but Enid was quite sure it was creel. "I dreamed that, too." Then, Enid reluctantly told Fred, Judy Marshall had begun crying. It had been very upsetting, listening to that sound come to her through the letter slot. It had even made the dog whine.