Although he hadn’t seen anything happen since the van had disappeared around the house, he kept watching. He didn’t want to miss a thing.
But he wondered if he should get closer, to look inside. The idea terrified him, but it would not go away.
What if They were bringing dogs inside that terrible place? What if They were torturing the innocent creatures? Butchering them?
Eating them?
A hundred horrifying scenarios revolved around his mind like some morbid carousel, and he couldn’t make them stop.
But there was one way to check it out.
Placing the binoculars on the window sill, he grabbed his cane from where it leaned against the wall and waded through the wriggling knot of dogs. He left the bedroom, the dogs flanking him, the warped floor creaking underneath his heavy footsteps and their clicking paws.
Outside in the shadowed hallway, more dogs of various breeds greeted him with barks, wagging tails, shining eyes, and damp noses. They pressed close to him, sniffing his fingers, and he gently nudged them away with his cane.
“Ed’s busy this morning, guys,” he said. “Let Ed work. Ed thinks this is important.”
Phone books were piled head-high along one wood-paneled wall, from one end of the hall to another. He had a system for organizing them: he always placed the newest directories near the front room.
Repeatedly muttering “LB’s Heating and Cooling,” under his breath, he lumbered to the stack where he expected to find the most recent book. He blew off the dust, picked it up, and cracked it open. Squinting to read the tiny type in the dim light, he flipped through the crisp pages.
There was no listing for LB’s Heating and Cooling in the Yellow Pages.
The white business pages, as well, turned up nothing.
Shaking his head, he moaned. “No, no.”
What could this mean? How could the company not be listed anywhere in the phone book? Everything was supposed to be in the phone book.
He checked through other directories, for previous years, with the same troubling result.
He’d always believed that They masqueraded under the guise of ordinary people, ordinary companies. But perhaps this was proof that They had gotten bolder in their deceit and no longer felt the need to keep up appearances.
Cold bands of fear constricted his chest.
For the first time, he wished he had a telephone. He would call the police and report this.
But, he realized with dismay, They could have infiltrated the police department, too.
There was no one to whom he could turn, no one he could risk trusting with this vital information.
Around him, many of the dogs’ ears had perked up, and their tails went pole-rigid. They sensed his anxiety.
Perhaps they sensed the danger, too.
He shuffled back to the bedroom window and looked at the house again through the binoculars.
What was going on in there? Were dogs being maimed? Killed?
He shuddered.
Or could it be something worse than he imagined?
Since no one else could be trusted, he would have to take a closer look himself.
25
Jada lay on a narrow mattress in a shadowed bedroom that had big boards on the window, a dusty floor, and a musty smell in the air. Curled up in a ball, she sucked her thumb. She had been sucking her thumb ever since Giant had cut away the tape around her wrists and taken off the blindfold.
She could not remember the last time she had sucked her thumb. Mom and Daddy hated for her to do it and chastised her that big girls didn’t do such things, but right then, having her thumb in her mouth to suckle made her feel a little bit better.
Still, she could barely stop shaking. Where was this place? Where had Mom gone? Why hadn’t Daddy come yet?
Why had Mr. Leon, who Daddy had said used to be his best friend back in Detroit-his homeboy-tied them up and taken them away from home? Was Mr. Leon mad at Daddy over something? Was that why he was doing this to them?
She wished Mom and Daddy would come and take her away from there.
Most of all, she wished they would take her away from the big man. She didn’t know the big man’s name, so she had decided to call him Giant.
Silent as a rock, Giant sat in a chair on the other side of the room, in front of the door. The chair looked too tiny to support him, and it reminded her of when Daddy had tried to ride her bicycle. His knees had bumped against his chest, and she had laughed at him.
The memory made her want to smile, but she was afraid to smile, because Giant kept staring at her with those weird flat-coin eyes of his, and she didn’t want him to think she was smiling at him.
If he believed she was smiling at him, he might take that as an invitation to come close to her, and the thought of him near her frightened her to death. When he had taken the tape off her wrists and eyes, his fingers had softly brushed against her skin, for only a second. His touch was damp and cold, like the scales of a dead fish, and he had an excited look in his eyes, as if touching her was the most thrilling thing in the world to him.
It creeped her out so badly she’d thought she was going to faint.
She didn’t want to look at him at all, but she was afraid to turn her head completely away from him, too. Without her speech processor, if he moved, she wouldn’t hear him move, and the idea of him sneaking up on her made her queasy.
So she remained curled in a ball, sucking her thumb and watching him out of the corner of her eye.
To make things worse, she had to pee. On the other side of the room, there was a bathroom, but she didn’t want to go in there. There was a hole in the door where the knob was supposed to be, and she could imagine Giant putting his flat eye to it and watching her as she sat on the toilet.
No way. She would have to hold it a little while longer and hope that, soon, he left her in there alone. There was another door near where she lay on the mattress, but she was pretty sure that it was just a closet, like in her own bedroom.
To keep her mind off peeing and her fears of Giant, she thought about their upcoming family vacation to Disney World. She couldn’t wait. It would be their second time going, and while the last time she had been excited about seeing Cinderella Castle-she was seven then, still a dumb little kid-this time she was most looking forward to the Future World pavilions at Epcot. Science was her favorite subject in school, and she was thinking that she might become a scientist or a doctor when she grew up, so of course, she had to check out all the technology stuff-
In the edge of her eye, she saw Giant get up and start shuffling toward her. His plodding footsteps made the floor quake.
She snatched her thumb out of her mouth, bolted upright, and scooted against the wall, pulling in her legs close to her body and wrapping her arms tightly around her knees.
Please, don’t hurt me, mister, she said. Or, that was what she thought she said. Her throat was so tight she couldn’t be sure the words got out clearly.
He advanced toward her with slow, heavy steps, lips parted.
Her back pressed against the wall, she shook so badly she felt as if she might crumble into a million pieces. There was an awful, gritty taste in her mouth that made her want to gag.
Please don’t hurt me, she said again. Her head still hurt from when Giant had pushed her in her bedroom at home, and she would never forget what he had done to Mickey.
Giant halted before he reached the mattress. He stooped to the floor.
She squeezed her legs against her chest, her feet cold in her furry slippers. What was Giant doing?
She wasn’t sure, but this close, that chocolate-sour odor of his made her want to retch.
As he stared at her, his lips moved slowly. He was speaking to her.