The Scarecrow: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom) Read online

  Katy flung her head back, hair flailing across her shoulders. She put her hands on his chest and caught his rhythm, pushing herself down as he released her waist at each apex. A glow built from inside her belly, a tiny spark expanding into a golden fire.

  “Yes, darling, yes,” she said, words interrupted by thrusts. “Give it to me.”

  She started to scream “Fuck me harder,” but something held her back. After all, Gordon wasn’t Mark and she’d have to adjust her sexual habits. And it didn’t seem like the kind of thing Rebecca would say.

  She smelled lilacs, but before she could comprehend the scent the fire expanded and electricity jumped the wires in her arms and legs and this was way better than another lonely bout with the vibrator as the flood of his passion erupted inside her and their hips slammed together and she may have shouted something and she hoped to God it wasn’t Mark’s name, not that Gordon would have heard her anyway because he gave a loud, shuddering groan and thrust up against her, lifting her nearly a foot off the bed. They collapsed with a squeak of bedsprings and Gordon thrust again, less vigorously this time, but she was finishing her own orgasm and so pressed down enough for both of them.

  Their bodies writhed together several more times before slowing. Katy relaxed onto Gordon’s chest, her hair flowing over his neck and shoulders, chest heaving from effort. The area below her waist was warm taffy and she couldn’t tell where she ended and Gordon began. His arms went around her and he squeezed more tightly than he ever had before, even when the minister David Tester had pronounced them man and wife in the little church on the other side of the mountain.

  “That was worth the wait, darling,” she said into the dark, curly hairs on his chest.

  “As good as the first time,” he said.

  She lifted herself, arms trembling in post-coital weakness. “What?”

  His eyes, which had remained closed throughout the intercourse, now flicked open, then widened. “Rebecca?”

  Gordon sounded dismayed. Had he carried the fantasy all the way through to the end and not even allowed himself to give anything to his new wife? As horny as she had been, was the physical release worth this feeling of rejection?

  She rolled off him, or perhaps Gordon had raised himself on one hip and eased her to the side. They separated with a slight sticky smack.

  “Gordon, what’s wrong?” she said, drawing the sheet over her breasts in an attempt to hide from his shocked stare.

  He rubbed a hand over his face and closed his eyes. “Nothing, it was just ... that was wonderful, honey.”

  Gordon bent and kissed her lightly on the forehead, then sat on the edge of the bed. He buttoned his pajama top, fussed with the alarm clock, and stood and stretched. Without a word, he went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Katy laid there, the heat fading between her thighs until it felt as if someone had driven an icicle inside her. She couldn’t escape the feeling that she had just been cheated on by her husband’s late wife. Gordon turned on the shower, and the hissing spray sounded almost like a mirthful and devious giggle.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Jett tuned out the monotone of Jerry Bennington, her Earth Sciences teacher. That was no challenge, because Bennington was lecturing about gravity and even though gravity tied all the stars and planets into place, he managed to make it sound as simple and boring as a math problem. Like there was no magic or mystery in it at all. Public school teachers weren’t allowed to address religion in the classroom, but explaining how heaven stayed in place might have made the subject a little more colorful.

  The boy sitting in front of her, Harold Something-or-other, must have raided his dad’s medicine chest, because he reeked of Old Spice or Brut or one of those stinky-sweet colognes. She could endure it as long as Harold didn’t bend forward to pick up a pencil or something and flash his sweaty crack over the belt loops of his low-riding blue jeans. She slipped Dad’s letter from her backpack and read it for the fourth time since yesterday. The fifty dollars he’d included were now squirreled away in her back pocket. Their little secret.

  Dear Punkin,

  I miss you so much mucher than all the chocolate donuts in the world. Right now I’m looking at the picture of us from the Outer Banks trip we took the summer you were seven. You look a lot like your mother in that one, more than you do now. I guess you were getting ready to be your own self.

  How do you like the mountains? I’ll bet they’re not as strange as you thought they would be, but I wish you were down here right now so we could go to Discovery Place or a Panthers game, or anywhere that sold cotton candy and root beer. You’ll have to tell me all about your school and teachers. I would email you but your Mom told me her new husband (I don’t like to say his name, I guess that’s small of me but that’s the way it is) put a password on the computer so you can’t use it without his permission. Plus ink and paper give you something real to hold on to, and you can keep a letter nearby for when you want it.

  Are you making new friends? I finally went out with that poodle woman but I don’t think any sparks flew. If they did, I didn’t get burned. I guess it’s taking me longer to get over the break-up than it did your mom. But she’s a great woman and a great mother. I tried my best but things happen, and I’ll still always try my best for you no matter what. Listen to your old man going on like this. A good parent leaves the kids out of it, they say. I wish I could have left you out of my other problems, too.

  It’s not that long until Thanksgiving and I’m so much mucher muchest looking forward to having you down for a few days. You know I’m not a cook but even turkey cold cuts will taste fine with you at the table. Work’s going great, I’m busy as a beaver with the insulation business. Nothing like cashing in on climate change. But no jokes about “Mark Draper blows.”

  I was not going to mention the drugs, but it seems like part of the problem that caused the Big Problem. I’m sorry if I was a bad influence on you. I let that stuff take me over and steal part of my soul away, and things might have been different if I had given that bit to my family instead. The reason I bring it up is this: You’re going to be a big girl soon and have to make your own decisions about your life. I know better than anybody that you can’t change your heart just by changing your scenery. Because my heart still belongs to you even though we’re a hundred miles apart.

  So tell me all about Solom and send me some pictures when you email. I’ve enclosed some stamps and a little present. The money is for you and you don’t have to tell any grown-ups about it. I miss you all the world and love you all the stars in the sky and think of you all the fish in the sea. See you in November.

  Giant hugs and supersize kisses,

  Dad

  Jett stared at the last sentences a moment.

  Heavy shit, Dad.

  “Miss Draper?”

  Jett slid the letter into the papers on her desk. She wondered how many times Bennington had called her name before she’d noticed. Harold turned in his seat with a faint farting noise and smirked at her. She was used to the stares by now. Solom’s first genuine artificial Goth girl, and the attention was half the fun. “Yes, Mr. Bennington?”

  “We were discussing Sir Isaac Newton.”

  “The guy who invented the delicious fig cookies?”

  That got a muffled laugh out of a couple of the kids. She had to admit, it was a pretty lame comeback, but she was off her game. Maybe when Tommy came through with the pot, she’d sharpen her wit a little and really wow the crowd.

  Bennington didn’t seem amused, his Grinchish frown seeming to stretch longer in defiance of physics as his lips receded deeper into his mouth. “We were discussing Newton’s Third Law of Motion.”

  “Oh, yeah, that one. How does it go again?”

  This drew a few more laughs. Bennington glanced at the clock on the wall. Two minutes away from the bell. “It seems not everyone benefited from today’s lecture, so perhaps the entire class should read chapter four in your textbooks and write a two-p
age report on Isaac Newton’s laws.”

  Bennington’s frown lifted a little as the class let out a collective groan. “Good going, witch,” Harold whispered.

  After the bell sounded, Jett hurried from the room. She was to meet Tommy just before sixth period in the boiler room behind the gym. Tommy had skipped English class, so Jett assumed he’d gone off the school grounds to score. She didn’t feel the least bit guilty for her part in his truancy. His attendance record was his problem. It wasn’t like the goon was going to last past the legal drop-out age of 16 anyway.

  The gym was set apart from the school, with a walkway that led to the bus parking lot. Phys Ed classes weren’t held during the last period, so it was the perfect place for a little privacy. Jett passed a necking couple who were tucked behind a screened Dumpster. The boy wore dark boots and a stained baseball cap, the girl wore cheap jewelry and an outdated “Friends” hairstyle. From their downscale K-Mart fashion wear, she pegged them for trailer trash. The girl would probably be pregnant by ninth grade and the boy would do the honorable thing and marry her, at least until he realized that diapers didn’t change themselves and three people could never live as cheaply as one.

  Not that you’re any great shakes, Jett, but at least you’re aware of your flaws. Like criticizing others.

  She hefted her backpack higher on her shoulder and cut around the gym entrance, where cigarette butts and old ticket stubs littered the gravel. The dirt around the boiler room was stained black from spilled fuel oil. A large rusty tank was half-submerged in the ground, the cap locked to prevent sabotage or theft.

  The door to the boiler room was ajar. The custodian must have been performing maintenance earlier in the morning. She’d expected the door to be locked and for the deal to go down in the shadows of the little brick outbuilding. The building had no widows. Now they would have decent concealment, and if she and Tommy were caught, they could always pretend they were just another couple sneaking off to swap a little saliva.

  She took a look around before easing into the boiler room. It was dark and smelled of oil, musty pasteboard, and old pipes. Something rustled behind the giant steel-plated, pipe-entangled contraption in the center of the room.

  “Tommy?”

  She reached into her hand purse for the money. She usually didn’t carry a purse, but she’d needed something to hide the score in. And the accessory had gone with a black, ruffled skirt and white, knee-high hose. Cold weather would come soon enough so she might as well log some leg time while she could.

  The noise came again, and the room grew darker. The door slammed shut behind her. A ventilation grill in the wall allowed some light, but it took her eyes a few seconds to adjust. Tommy must be playing some stupid stoner game. Or maybe he was dick-headed enough to try and get laid even under threat of death from AIDS.

  “That’s not funny, Tommy,” she said, trying the door knob. Stuck tight.

  “It’s not funny at all,” came a voice from behind the boiler. It wasn’t Tommy’s. It was deep and raspy and evoked a tingling familiarity.

  Jett turned with her back to the door. The custodian? Maybe he hung out in here with his girlie mags in the afternoon, waiting for the last bus to leave so he could run a buffer over the hallway tiles. Except how had he closed the door when he was on the opposite side of the building?

  A pipe reverberated as if someone had bumped into it. Though the boiler wasn’t running, the room was stuffy. Jett tried the door again, wondering if her screams would carry to the couple by the Dumpster.

  “It’s not funny, it’s serious,” said the voice, and a blacker shadow moved in the darkness. “Life and death.”

  The brim of the black hat lifted and the moon-white face gave a grin. Except it wasn’t a grin, Jett saw, just an illusion caused by the man’s missing upper lip. She decided it was a man though she had little evidence that it had once been human. A stench flooded the room, and Jett recognized the musky aroma of a male goat.

  “You’re not real,” Jett said, moving her backpack to her chest as if to add a protective layer between her and the nightmare.

  “Judge not, that you be not judged,” the man said. The head turned and dull silver flashed where the eyes might be. His skin looked like cottage cheese slathered over with a layer of wax. “I just wanted to tell you something while you were away from home, because home clouds your judgment.”

  “It’s not my home,” Jett said, throat dry, sure she was having a nervous breakdown spiced with a bad acid flashback and a panic attack thrown in for good measure. Each breath felt like swallowing a handful of sand. She worked the knob with all her strength, chafing her palm.

  “It will be your home soon enough.” The man waited, as if reluctant to leave the safety of the shadows.

  “What do you want?”

  “To warn you about false prophets.”

  “I don’t know any prophets.” She wondered if acid flashbacks had a time limit, or if she was likely to keep on retro-tripping until her brain was a puddle of ooze.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Okay, whatever. I’ll watch out for them, just let me go.”

  “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”

  Jett nodded toward the dark figure.

  “You will know them by their fruits,” the voice said, as the shadows merged into an unbroken darkness.

  The knob turned in her hand. She staggered blinking into the sunlight.

  Tommy Wilson sat on the oil barrel, legs crossed, cigarette trailing smoke into the cloudless autumn sky. “What the hell were you doing in there?”

  She didn’t want to blow her cool in front of this ass clown. “Waiting for you.”

  Tommy inhaled, blew out a long snake of smoke as if he were sighing, and flicked his butt onto the gravel. “Who were you talking to?”

  “I think it was the drama teacher.”

  “You’re as crazy as you look. We don’t got no drama teacher.”

  She glanced behind her but the boiler room was empty. “No wonder the girls flock to you, with lines like that.”

  “Whatever.” Tommy slid down from the barrel and reached into his NASCAR windbreaker. He pulled out a paper bag that had been twisted into the size of a hammer handle. “Here’s your quarter-ounce. Fifty bucks.”

  Jett peeled off the bills with a trembling hand, hoping Tommy would think she was nervous instead of insane. She put the paper bag in her backpack without looking at its contents. “Thanks. I’ve got to get to class.”

  “Sure. Plenty more where that came from, just say the word.”

  She left him lighting another cigarette, her heart throbbing, wondering how she would make it through math with the man in the black hat’s voice buzzing through her skull.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Katy lay on the bed, listening to the ticking of the tin roof as the sun warmed it. The afterglow of sex had faded, and only a faint stickiness remained. Her toes were cold. Her robe was tangled around her. She must have fallen asleep because the alarm clock on the bedside table read almost ten. She forced herself out of bed, legs heavy, head feeling as if it were stuffed with wet rags.

  On the way to the bathroom, she paused at the linen closet to get a clean towel. The closet was still a mess from moving, filled with garbage bags full of winter clothes, boxes of shoes, and bundled-up coats. The door bulged open, with mufflers, pajamas, and dish towels oozing from the crack. Had Rebecca been this messy? She kicked the clothing away and opened the door, and a shoebox fell from the shelf and bounced off her shoulder.

  As she put it back, she noticed a string running down the inside of one wall. She thought it might be a light switch and gave it a tug, peering into the darkness above. There was a slight metallic rasp and the squeak of a spring. Katy pulled harder and saw a small wooden door descending. It must be an attic access.

  Curious, she took a flashlight from the bedside table and carried one of Gordon’s heirloom rockers
to the closet. Climbing unsteadily onto the rocker seat, she grabbed the lip of the door and pulled it down until it bumped the shelf. Rough pine rungs had been hammered onto a set of steel bars, making a folded ladder.

  She shined the light into the opening and saw the ribs of the ceiling joists and the dull galvanized tin of the roof. Cobwebs hung in large dusty beards and the air was stale and humid. Katy grabbed the highest rung she could reach and pulled herself up. She held the flashlight in her left hand, keeping two of her fingers free for gripping. She nearly lost her balance, but managed to get a bare foot on the shelf for purchase, knocking off the shoebox again in the process.

  With one more heave, she got her other foot on the lowest rung and stood, poking her head into the attic. Louvered grills were set at each end of the attic to allow air circulation, with wire covering the openings. The old house must have once been insulated with shredded paper, because bits of gray fluff hung to the wooden support posts. Pale fiberglass had been rolled out in places, though a large section had been floored around the opening as a storage space.

  Katy focused the beam on the boxes, old lamp shades, and small pieces of furniture that were stacked around the floored area. A fuzzy orange ball bounced among the clutter, then she realized it was the flashlight’s beam reflected in a dusty mirror.

  Katy climbed through the access hole and crawled on her hands and knees to the mirror. A space had been cleared away in front of it. Two rolls of lipstick, a makeup kit with several peach shades of face blush, and a silver-handled hair brush were arranged before the mirror as if some woman had tended her appearance here. A small glass spray bottle lay on its side, and it took Katy a second to realize what was out of place: the bottle was free of dust, as if it had been recently used. One of the cardboard boxes was open and a cotton dress hung over the edge, bearing an autumnal print with a frilly white collar.