Prowlers: Wild Things (14 page)

For just a moment, Suzanne glanced up and watched it go. Jack could see the sorrow on her face and he realized she knew what had happened, knew she was dead. She understood. Conflicting emotions surged up within him. He was sorry for her, and yet he was also relieved. It was better for their purposes if she knew.

He got down out of the Jeep and walked toward the two lost souls there on the curb. As he approached, Suzanne looked up at him curiously. In the shade from the trees she seemed a bit more solid from far away but as he moved closer the illusion dispersed. Her body was little more than a swirl of vapor given form and dull color. Through her chest he could see the ragged grass behind her. Through her pelvis, the cracked curb she was sitting on. Sometimes he had to remind himself that no matter how strong their presence, they weren't really there. Suzanne was no longer in this world. Talking to her was really a lot like placing a telephone call to somewhere else. A long distance call.
Very long distance
, Jack thought.

"Hello, Suzanne," he said.

The ghost blinked her infinite black eyes several times. Then she smiled. "I was just staring at you thinking, 'he can't actually see me, it just seems like he's looking at me, he's probably just going into the woods to relieve himself just like that boy did.'"

"I can see you."

The other specter ceased his quiet sobbing and glanced up at Jack. "Allie. Do you know Allie?"

His expression was both desperate and somehow hollow, mystified with everything around him. Jack had seen that same look on the face of Artie's uncle Bob, who had Alzheimer's disease. It occurred to him then that the recently dead must feel an awful lot like those poor souls, unable to recognize anything around them. And yet in some ways, once they became acclimated to the truth of their death, they were more the opposite of such people, able to recognize and speak to their loved ones but unable to get any response, as if everyone they have ever known has suddenly come down with Alzheimer's.

"Sorry, no," Jack said gently. "I don't know her."

"There's a monster in her," the spirit said with grave sincerity, gazing up into Jack's eyes. "Not even sure she knows it, but there's a monster in her. Asked her to go camping, and she told me — she
told
me it was a bad idea." He laughed madly and shook his head. "Shoulda listened to 'er, Chuck. Shoulda listened. Thought maybe being all alone in the woods, things might get romantic."

Chuck, if that was indeed his name, started to laugh again but his voice abruptly choked off and the tears returned. Ghost tears. He was not going to be any help. His murder, the fact of his current state of being, had slipped his mind just slightly off the track and until he returned to his senses, he'd be useless as a source of information. Jack had seen it before. He shifted awkwardly, looked away from Chuck and found Suzanne staring at him.

"I know you," she said. "You were here last night." Her gaze went past him. "You and that girl, in the Jeep."

Jack sat down on the pavement right in front of her. There were cracks in the tar and small sprays of grass had pushed up through them as though it were trying to reclaim the lot, determined to take back for nature what man had stolen. The thought flashed across his mind unbidden, but upon its heels came another.
Just like the Prowlers
.

"Yes," he said. "That was us."

"And you do see me," she said. "Us, I mean." Suzanne glanced around with a forlorn expression. "That was the third car in here this morning and I've tried talking to everyone. Nobody knows I'm here. But you can still see me."

Jack nodded again.

"Even though I'm dead?"

There was a desperation in her voice. Everything else had been a statement of fact, but this . . . this was a question. Her plaintive expression was almost more than he could bear and it was suddenly clear to him that though her mind had clung to logic and order unlike Chuck's, unlike so many, she still wanted him to lie to her. But Jack could not do that.

"Yes," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, Jesus," the ghost whispered, and she put a hand over her mouth as if to keep from shouting.

Through her hand, through her face, Jack could see the trees beyond, the deep woods where Chuck and who knew how many others had been murdered by the Prowlers. He thought of their meeting with Suzanne the night before, this maverick of a woman driving a big rig across the country, hanging around with lowlifes like Hank Krause — who was probably a Prowler but might just be mean-spirited — and yet she still had been kind and courteous.

"How?" Suzanne asked.

Jack closed his eyes a moment, silently cursing with frustration he did not want her to see.
Damn it
, he thought.
Damn it, damn it, damn it!
Whatever had happened to her had been traumatic enough that she was unable, or unwilling, to remember it. At least not yet. He opened his eyes.

"The authorities are saying you fell asleep at the wheel, crashed your truck," he told her.

Anger flared in the black abyss of her eyes. "Bullshit!" Suzanne snapped. She shook her head. "That's crap. I've never so much as nodded off at the wheel. I'm always careful. No way would I . . . but then . . ."

The other specter, Chuck, recoiled at their exchange and stared at them both in horror. He muttered something else about Allie, finding Allie, warning her about the monster inside, and he got up and walked into the woods, where he disappeared.

Suzanne watched him go, shaking her head. "Poor kid. He's not all there."

Jack wished he could touch her, comfort her somehow. "Suzanne, you remembered me. My name is Jack." He glanced back at the Jeep. "My girlfriend is Molly. You remember us, right?"

The ghost nodded.

"When we met you, there were two other trucks here. Three guys were with you. Hank and Dave Krause, and a guy named John Ford, like the movie director."

Her expression clouded over and Jack realized he had thrown her off. He loved westerns and a man named John Ford had directed a great many of his favorites, but that didn't mean the average person had any clue who he was.

"Never mind that," Jack told her. "These three guys, do you remember being here with them last night? Drinking beer? You had a card table set up and —"

Suzanne nodded quickly. "Yeah, I know those guys. I've known them all for years. You get to know folks that work the same routes you do, though you never see them very often. Any time I ran across the Krause brothers I always made a point of sitting down with them, maybe camping in a rest stop together for six hours of sleep or so. Not for Hank, mind you. He's harmless but a cranky S.O.B. But Dave's a good guy. Really loves the job. Ford's another story. Never got much read on him except to say he used to be in the army, or maybe the Marines."

"Think hard, Suzanne," Jack said. "Last night, after we left, what happened? Do you remember anything at all strange about the Krause brothers? Was there an argument or anything? Did you see any . . . any animals?"

The last word seemed to freeze her in place. Though the substance that comprised her form now was almost constantly shimmering like the haze of heat off the road on a sweltering summer day, just then it grew very still and calm.

"Animals," she repeated, as though in a trance.

Then her eyes widened with memory and terror, her lips pulled back in a rictus grin and she ducked and lifted her hands as though defending herself.

"Suzanne," he said softly. "What happened after we left last night?"

She shuddered as she raised her eyes again, but the ghost was no long looking at Jack. Instead she stared across the cracked pavement of the rest stop as though witnessing from afar the events that had unfolded there the night before.

"You two were asking about that missing boy, your cousin, and it got us talking. Brought up a bunch of other deaths we'd heard of, and some drivers we knew who were always careful. Safe behind the wheel. Started me thinking maybe there's more to all this than meets the eye, sort of what you were saying. Hank and Dave, they thought we oughta bring it up to the Staties around here. I figured the cops'd just think we were trying to do a whitewash on the reputation truckers have, trying to fight some of the bad publicity accidents bring. But then I started thinking about the boy again and about the drivers who'd died and I figured it couldn't hurt to at least talk to the police."

"And then the animals came?" Jack prodded her.

Her expression was confused, searching, and she shook her head. "No, no. Dave and Hank had been sleeping when I got here, and then Ford pulled in not long after. So we were gonna nap a little but the brothers were on their way. Took off maybe an hour after you left."

Jack stared at her. "They left?"

The ghost nodded. "I climbed up into my truck, got ready for sleep, and then Ford knocked on the door. He wanted to say good night." A tiny laugh escaped her. "I'm not young . . . not pretty either . . . he's practically a kid and in good shape too. I thought maybe he wanted to do more than say good night. I was gonna tell him good night, that's all."

"So you let him in?"

The lost soul of this kind, sweet woman bit her lip and nodded and suddenly there seemed somehow less of her, as though the essence that coalesced to form her ghostly shape, her
self
, was drifting a little. Her presence was less defined somehow.

"I let him in. To say good night. But it wasn't Ford that came into the truck."

"Yeah," Jack corrected. "Yeah, it was."

Hours later, after a long and fruitless afternoon that took them up and down nearly forty miles of Route 87, they drove back to their little hotel in Fairbrook even as evening spread across the land once more. It was mostly silent in the Jeep, the atmosphere between them heavy with a mutual disappointment that Molly hated. She was angry and frustrated by a feeling of helplessness that she knew Jack must also feel. They had spent the day in bars and diners, convenience stores and gas stations that sold diesel, asking after a trucker by the name of John Ford who looked like he'd just stepped out of boot camp. John Ford, the Prowler who had killed Suzanne Robinson the night before.

They had discovered quickly that Ford was a popular guy with the waitresses at some of these places. It turned Molly's stomach to see the way their faces brightened at the mention of his name. Some of these woman were more than a little enamored of Ford. Apparently he had a few regular runs through the northeast corridor and so he was quite a familiar face. But none of them had seen him the night before, or today for that matter. And nobody, not even the women who seemed fascinated by him, had an address or phone number for Ford.

As the sky turned dark, Molly sat in the passenger seat and gazed out at the trees flashing by on the side of the highway. Jack was preoccupied as well, for though it was past dusk and nearly full-on night by now, he still had not turned on the headlights. Both of them had been exhausted by the disappointments of the day. Ford had given them the impression he was heading north to deliver his load. If that part were true, he was long gone by now and they had no way to know when he would be through again. No way to know if he was the only one.

The radio in the Jeep was on very low so that Molly could barely hear the music, could not even tell what song it was. Her stomach rumbled and she realized how hungry she was. Lunch had consisted of a tuna sandwich and potato chips at one of the diners they had stopped in, and they had not yet eaten dinner. Her stomach growled.

"You want to try that Italian place we passed in Fairbrook this morning?" she asked Jack. "It looked nice."

"All right. Whatever you want is fine." Jack did not so much as glance at her as he spoke, and Molly wondered if he had even paid attention to what he had agreed to.

"It's on Artie now, isn't it?" she asked.

Now Jack's eyes widened a bit and he glanced at her, hands tight on the wheel. After a long moment, he nodded. "Pretty much, yeah."

"What if he doesn't find anything?"

This time the pause before he replied was much longer. He gripped the steering wheel and stared into the gathering darkness past the windshield. After a moment he frowned and reached down with his left hand to turn on the headlights.

"I don't know," Jack confessed. The bitter look on his face was unsettling. "Is Ford a solo guy? Where does he live? If all his hunting is done on this stretch of road, that doesn't necessarily mean he lives around here. We might never run into him again. But I can't . . ."

There was an angry set to Jack's jaw as he gritted his teeth and looked away. He took the exit for Fairbrook.

Molly lowered her window a few inches to let the fresh evening air in. "I know. The idea of going home, of not being able to do anything about it . . . it makes me feel awful. Useless. This is what we came up here for, right? This is our, what? Our crusade now. And there's nothing more we can do."

The quaint hotel loomed ahead, its sign glowing against the deep purple evening sky.

"I guess we just wait," Jack replied, resignation in his voice. "We can wash up, find someplace to get a decent meal for dinner, and wait for Artie to come back. I want to call Courtney, too, see if Bill ever checked in. If not, that's a whole other thing to deal with."

Molly had no interest in following up on that line of thinking, mainly because Jack was right. If anything happened to Bill while he was looking for his niece down in the city, she doubted there was a thing they could do to find him. In a city the size of Manhattan, without any leads or contacts, they would be lost. It was so absurd it made her want to laugh, for it would be yet another fruitless search, like the one they were on now.
Just another shot in the dark.

"He's probably fine," she told him, with a confidence she did not feel. "I have a hard time believing Bill couldn't take care of himself. Still, let's find out if he called in. If not, Courtney's probably going out of her mind right now."

Jack had fallen silent and as he pulled into the hotel parking lot, Molly glanced over at him. Despite his conversation with the ghosts this morning, their day had been wasted. The weight of that knowledge showed on his face, the burden of it turning his expression grim, his eyes dark.