Gerda Spratling stumbled around her bedchamber.
“Sharon? Where are you, girl?”
Miss Spratling found a small silver bell and shook it violently.
“Sharon!” She jangled the bell even harder.
Sharon slid open the panel doors.
The storm had torn down the power lines to Spratling Manor. The only illumination came from lightning flashing through the casement windows.
“Is everything all right, ma’am?”
Sharon carried a fluttering candle that sent shadows skipping across the cavernous room. The candlelight made everything in the creepy old house even creepier—especially Miss Spratling.
“Sharon, dearie, have I ever told you about Clint Eberhart?” A girlish smile crept across the old woman’s wrinkled lips. “Oh, he was the most. The absolute most. Thick, wavy hair. Such a dreamboat. Clint doesn’t think I’m ugly….”
“Can I bring you anything, ma’am?”
Thunder cracked. Glass rattled.
“Bring me champagne!”
Sharon tried to figure out what they sold at the gas station that might pass for champagne. Maybe ginger ale.
“No. Never mind. Clint will bring the bubbly! Daddy promised.”
“Yes, ma’am. If you require nothing further…”
“Only that you be happy for me!”
Sharon backed away. Inched toward the door.
“Oh, Daddy!” Miss Spratling screamed. “You have made me the happiest little girl in the whole wide world!”
Boom! Another blast of thunder rocked the bedroom. Zipper whimpered.
“Hey, Zip—did you know that sound travels eleven thousand feet per second? And there are five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet per mile.”
Lightning flashed.
“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five—”
Thunder exploded.
“Okay, see? That lightning was less than a mile away, ’cause for every four point seven seconds between—”
The sky flared white. Thunder roared instantaneously with the flash. Then Zack heard an explosion—like a wooden crate being blown to bits by a stack of dynamite.
The lightning must’ve hit something in the backyard!
Zack and Zipper raced to the window.
Wet oak leaves pressed against the glass and slid down like slow green hands.
The big oak near the highway was tearing itself apart. Lightning must’ve hit it. One half of the huge tree crashed down behind the house. Dead branches snapped off it like crisp icicles. The other half slammed across the highway, blocking the crossroads with a barricade of branches.
Zack and Zipper pressed their noses against the window.
“Wow. Awesome.”
Zack sensed movement. On the far side of the fallen tree.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw the shadow of a man walking through the woods. A man with a big swoop of combed-back hair.
“Zack?” his dad called from downstairs.
He turned to answer. “Yeah?”
“You guys okay?”
“Yeah. We’re fine.”
When he looked out the window again, the man was gone.
It feels good to be back inside a body—the same nineteen-year-old body he died in.
He still wears the boots, blue jeans, and black leather jacket he wore on the final night of his life. His hair is still full and thick, still combed straight back with a wavy doo-wop flip, still glued in place by glistening Brylcreem.
Wherever he goes, he leaves behind the minty scent of his oily hair cream.
He walks away from the oak tree and down to the road.
His flip-top Ford Thunderbird glimmers in the moonlight. The chrome grillwork on the convertible sparkles. There’s no hint of where the front end crumpled and slammed the V-8 engine back into the driver’s seat to crush his legs.
He hops in. Grips the steering wheel. Listens to the bent-eight engine purr and roar. He is ready to peel wheels and raise hell.
Raise some before he has to go there.
He had been terrified when the lightning bolt struck his tree, afraid it was God calling in the loan on his soul, demanding payment in full and interest past due.
When the tree split, he figured he was a goner, that it was time to move on, time to finally leave this limbo where he had been held prisoner for nearly fifty years.
But it seems he isn’t heading downstairs for fire, brimstone, and pokes from the devil’s pitchfork. Not just yet, anyway.
The stump. The roots. They sink deep into the earth. They hold him here. He doesn’t have to let go or move on.
He glances up toward the second-story window of the house behind him.
The boy’s bedroom.
I’ll be back for you later, four-eyes. Never did like nerds who wore glasses. Counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder? What a baby.
He has killed children before.
He looks forward to doing it again.
“That was pretty incredible, hunh?”
“Yeah.”
“Zipper wasn’t afraid when the tree came down?”
“Nah.” Zipper was on top of Zack’s bedspread, curled up against his legs. Zack was tucked in under the covers. “We’re both fine, Dad.”
“Good. I’ll call those tree men first thing tomorrow. Get the backyard cleaned up.”
“Cool.”
“Good night, Zack.”
His father flicked off the light. Closed the bedroom door.
Zack didn’t dare mention the shadow man he had seen because his father would assume he was making up another story with what his mother used to call his overactive imagination. The way she said it? She meant Zack was a liar.
He has a fierce hunger for a cheeseburger, fries, and a thick chocolate shake.
But the Burger Barn is gone. Something called Chuck E. Cheese has taken its place.
He wants that cheeseburger bad. Hasn’t had one in fifty years.
He jams the Thunderbird into reverse and peels wheels.
No one sees his car. No one hears it. They sense only a slight movement of wind, feel a cold swirl of air.
He makes a hard left turn and heads toward the river.
I’ll go down to the factory, he thinks. Follow somebody on lunch break. Find a cheeseburger.
He has no concept of time. It is four a.m. Nobody will be going to lunch, especially no employees of the Spratling Clockworks Factory, which shuttered its doors in 1983.
He pulls into a crumbling parking lot outside an enormous redbrick building—an empty shell three stories tall with arched windows. The giant Spratling Stands the Test of Time sign is rusty and faded.
He had started working for Julius Spratling in 1951. He pushed a broom, cleaned up trash, and flirted with the factory girls—many of whom he took out back to his secret love nest.
The machine shop. It was his passion pit—even after he was married.
In the east, the sun begins to rise. Somehow he understands he has to leave. When dawn comes, he’ll be gone. But he knows he will return come nightfall. He senses it.
He has work to do, unfinished business.
He also has time.
If that lightning bolt couldn’t send me to hell, what on earth can?
“We’ll chop it up into firewood, mulch the crown.”
Tony Mandica had brought a crew of six tree men with him to the Jennings house early Saturday morning.
“Would you guys like some coffee?” Judy asked.
“You got a bathroom we can use later?”
“Uh, sure. Right off the kitchen.”
“In that case, pour me a big ’un!”
Judy smiled. Poured coffee into paper cups. Four of the new home’s five bathrooms were still operational. The one off Zack’s bedroom was a mess. Good thing the plumber was coming that afternoon, too.