“For the record,” Nikki said, his normally high voice pitched low, “This is a terrible idea.”
The four had hit the streets just after the street lights came on and as they rode, all of them kept an eye peeled for blue and white lights. Dakota had pulled a hooded sweatshirt out of his closet, and Nikki had thought similarly. His was green, but at least it was dark green. George, on the other hand, was in a denim jacket with slacks, for some reason. He was going to stand out like a sore thumb when a light hit him and it was communally agreed that if anyone was spotted, they would scatter. Crystal had gone for jeans and a gray t-shirt, and as Dakota sweated in his hoodie, he wished he had gone that route too. Her blonde hair was in a tail and pulled under a cap, and they were traveling by street light alone.
“Noted,” Crystal hissed, but she didn’t slow in the least bit.
“So what's the plan?” Dakota said, his face shadowed as they moved between lights.
“Ride around, look for suspicious vehicles, and see what we can see.”
“That's it?” Dakota asked incredulously.
“Terrible idea,” Nikki said again.
“Well, I don’t see either of you coming up with a better one,” she blurted, “All the snatchings happen after sunset, so between eight and ten seems the best time to go searching.”
She and George had formulated the idea earlier that day, Nikki and Dakota interjecting tidbits here and there.
“In all the snatchings, the kids have always been taken after sunset.” George had said, showing them instances with potential times, “No one ever goes missing during the daytime, at least not that we can tell, and the disappearances peter off after summer, usually starting in the spring again.”
Crystal nodded, tapping a map of the five closest neighborhoods. The map was overlaid with both the plastic cover for the pet disappearances and the abductions of the children. Once you put it together like that, it was hard to argue that the five blocks around the residential area weren't the kidnappers' usual stomping grounds.
“That tells me that the snatcher is taking advantage of times when kids will be out past dark and when they are likely to be alone. If we go carefully around just after sunset then maybe we can see someone cruising for kids or at least spot something the police have missed.”
That was how they had come to be in the park around three o’clock, eating a picnic lunch and watching the traffic. It was right beside the library and the playground there was one that the three boys had played on often when they were younger. Heck, they had been playing on it the day before Chris got snatched, and they couldn’t help but watch the tikes that played there now. Any one of them could be taken tonight. Any one of them could be the next victim of the snatcher.
“What if it’s not a person?” Nikki said, turning Dakota away from some kids who had been squabbling over a game of tag.
“What do you mean?” said George, “of course, it's a person. Kids don’t just disappear out of thin air, not kids barely even in middle school, at least.”
Nikki had been trying to be helpful lately, clearly noticing that they weren’t just going to let this drop. He wasn’t enjoying the game, but Nikki realized that unless he wanted to sit at home by himself then he was a part of it too. They all were, for better or worse, and this case had kind of consumed their lives for the past week and a half
“Yeah, but what if it’s a spirit or something? We haven’t explored that. I mean, we’re looking for a guy in a van or something. What if,” he leaned down to whisper the next part like he didn’t dare say it out loud, “What if it's the ghost of Harold Shelby?”
Dakota rolled his eyes, “Oh come off it.”
“You know they say he still roams the neighborhood at night.” Nikki said, raising his hands defensively.
“That's just school yard talk.” George said.
They all knew that George had the same opinion of ghosts as Eboneezer Scrooge, and considered that there was more of gravy, or wishful thinking, than of grave about them.
“You mean the guy who used to own the old Shelby Place?” Crystal asked.
“Yeah,” Nikki said, “My dad told me that when he was a kid, the Shelbys lived there still. There was Harold, his wife, and his son, Harold Jr. They say that Shelby Sr was into some weird stuff. He was some kind of zoologist or something, liked to study different snakes and reptiles and things.”
“A herpetologist,” George put in.
“No, like a snake researcher. I didn’t say anything about herpes.”
“No, it means…oh forget it.”
“Anyway, Dad said that Shelby Sr hated kids, didn’t even much care for his own son, and he was constantly running them off the sidewalk in front of his house or yelling at kids who came up selling stuff. Dad was actually friends with his son, Harold Jr, and he said he went in there a few times to see him. Dad told me that they had all kinds of snakes and species of reptiles in the house, especially in the basement. His old man used to like to breed different specimens together and Dad said he had a bunch of them. He only got to look around a few times, because when Harold SR caught them in the basement one day, he told my dad he better never catch him in his house again. Harold Jr came to school the next day with bruises and Dad said it was pretty common knowledge that he beat his wife too.”
“That's awful and all, but I still don’t see what this has to do with ghosts,” Dakota said.
“I’m getting to that. Well when his wife finally got the strength to leave him, she took Harold Jr and divorced him, moving away to live with her parents a couple of towns over. They say after that, Shelby became a real butt, yelling at kids and running them off with a golf club. They said he beat some girl and put her in the hospital, but he had enough money to pay his way out of it. Dad told me that some kids broke his downstairs windows when he was in high school, said he may have thrown a rock or two himself, and the boards have been up since then. When Shelby died not long after beating that girl up, it wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone. Some say her father did it, some say it was her brothers, some say one his snaked just didn’t like how it was being handled, but the whole neighborhood breathed a sigh of relief without the crazy Harold Shelby roaming around. The state came in and took all of his snakes for “research purposes” but I heard he had some real freaks in there. People said they covered some of them with tarps, but they were huge and some were pretty mean.”
“So,” George said, “We all know that Shelby was a real piece of work.”
“So?” Nikki said, “So why wouldn’t he come back as a ghost? Shelby
didn’t like anybody, his own family included, and it's not a stretch
that he’d feel like his life's work was unfinished. He’d be a vengeful
old spook who lures in kids and makes them pay for…I dunno, trespassing
or just existing or something.”
“Good theory,” Said George, “But you
forget that the disappearances didn’t start till about five years after
Shelby died. What was he doing for all that time? Catching up on his
correspondences?”
Nikki shrugged, “I dunno. It’s just a thought.”
George and Nikki went back and forth about ghosts a little more, Crystal just shaking her head at them as Dakota scanned the vehicles around the park.
It could be any one of them.
Any of those vehicles could hold whoever they were looking for.
“What about you?” she asked Dakota, “Any other theories on who the Snatcher is?”
“It would honestly be easier if it was just a ghost,” Dakota said, watching a white panel van as it pulled over to ask a mother and her daughter something, “If it was a ghost then we could just sprinkle some holy water on it and say some hail marys to make it go away. More like it's some guy who likes to hurt kids, and that's scarier than any ghost. People are harder to get rid of with some words and a dousing of water.”
They cleaned up not long after that and started aimlessly riding their bikes around Culver.
They were still riding as the sun sank beneath the trees and the insects began to tune up around them.
“Okay,” Crystal said, “Now we can start.”
* * * * *
“It’s been an hour,” Nikki said at about nine o’clock, “how much longer are we gonna be at this?”
“Just a little longer,” Crystal said, moving her head around fitfully.
“We need a plan,” Dakota began, but then hissed as he saw the front of a white car at the end of the block, “Hide!” he growled, thinking it was a cop car.
They swerved into a ditch, their shoes now full of muddy water as the car pulled lazily into view, turning out to be just someone's hatchback.
As it left, they all sighed in relief and started rolling again.
“Come on,” Nikki said, slapping at a mosquito, “If we were gonna find anything we’d have found it by now. Let's head back.”
“Not yet,” Crystal said, “Just a little longer, I,” but as they passed Piney Road the chuff of her break made them stop.
There was a dark colored car in front of one of the houses and someone was in it.
The lights were off but the engine was still purring away. Through the fish eye window on the back, you could see the hazy shadows of two people moving in the back of the car. It was hard to tell from here, but they looked like they might be tussling, the car shaking ever so slightly now and again with their efforts.
“Let’s get a closer look,” Crystal breathed and the four of them came quietly towards the car.
The closer they got, the more they could see through the smeery back window, and the less they liked it.
Was this the snatcher they had been looking for as he took another kid?
“What are we gonna do if it turns out to be our guy?” Dakota whispered.
“Put our lights on him, I guess,” Crystal said, “Startle him, get a good look at him, maybe give whoever he has time to get away.”
“Get grabbed too,” Nikki hissed.
“There's five of us including whoever is in that car,” Crystal put in, “I think we can hold off one adult long enough for some of us to get away and call the cops.”
“I’ll get his license plate number just in case he speeds off,” George said, and they all nodded, thinking that was a pretty good idea.
They laid their bikes on the sidewalk and approached on foot. They could get to them easily if they needed too, and as George bent down to write the plate number, the other three snuck up to the back door. The care was definitely jouncing some, and as they moved into position, Dakota thought he heard that song again. Hall and Oats were once again trying to warn him off something, but he’d begun to hope that maybe it was a sign. Perhaps the duo were trying to lead him to something, and he hoped it wasn’t dangerous.
As they pulled the door open and shone their lights into the car, Dakota turned his head as the song blasted out onto the street.
What it had led them to was something different.
“What the hell, kid?” yelled a guy who was only about four years older than him tops and had no business calling anyone a kid.
He and the girl in his backseat looked at them like deer trapped in headlights, and they had startled them in the middle of something that was far from a kidnapping. The boy was naked to the waist, the girl's top opened to reveal her white bra. They could see now why the windows had been smeery, and as he slammed the door closed, all three of them beat a hasty retreat before the boy could get out to give chase.
They had grabbed their bikes, preparing the scat, when just as a different light hit them.
When the blue and white flipped its own lights on, they mounted up and beat a hasty retreat.
Forty
five minutes later, after a lot of riding and huffing and cutting
through people backyards and between houses, the four of them sat at the
edge of the grass lot and caught their breath.
It was a quarter till ten, and when Nikki suggested they pack it in, it was decided in favor of.
Decided on, but not unanimously agreed to.
“Come on, guys,” Crystal huffed, out of breath but not deterred, “Just a bit longer.”
Nikki slapped a bug off his cheek, not the first time that night, and George was a panting mess as the underarms of his jacket bled darkly with sweat. Nikki looked at Crystal as if he had something he really wanted to say, but Dakota rode over the start of his sarcastic response.
“If we were going to see something, we’d have seen it by now. No one has been grabbed this late, at least not that we’re aware of, and at this point, we’re just tempting fate.”
Crystal couldn’t argue with that, and as the four turned for home, they were forced to call the night a bust.
Now they were heading home with nothing to show for their efforts but sore legs and sweaty clothes.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Nikki complained as they peddled for home.
“It was an idea,” Dakota said, “Whether it was bad or not is up for debate.”
“If you wanted a slumber party,” he said, turning to Crystal, “you could have just said so. We could have been in your garage playing my Super Nintendo this whole time, taking turns on Mario Brothers or something. We didn’t have to come all the way out here just to hang out.”
Crystal looked away, and as she passed beneath the street lights, Dakota could see her eyes were a little shiny.
“Lay off, Nik. She thought what she was doing would help.”
They were turning down their own block now, but Nikki was far from done.
“Yeah, I know,” Said Nikki, his usual good humor running short, “That's what we all thought we were doing out here, but we’ve done nothing but scare the crap out of some High School kids that will probably wanna kick our butts the next time they see us. All we’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks is sticking our noses where they don’t belong. After tonight, can we maybe get back to doing some normal things, because I’m a little tired of,”
Whatever it was that Nikki was tired of they would never know.
He came up abruptly short as his front tire hit something and he went flying over his handlebars before skipping across the pavement.
The others skidded to a halt, Nikki already moaning and gripping his leg, but whatever he had hit, they had missed. He had been at the extreme right of their formation, and as they went to him, they heard the harsh rasp of something as it slid across the asphalt. George had gone down to help Nikki, trying to see how bad it was, and Dakota was halfway to his side when he heard Crystal make a strange noise.
It was like a scream pushed through a wet hose, and he turned around as her hand slipped shakily into his.
He saw it behind them, its body rising as it spat out a harsh sound like an angry wasp. It was huge, its body rising nearly nine feet into the air and it had a dark hood around its head that opened like a sail. Dakota wanted to reach for his flashlight, wanted to see what this shadowy creature was, but he was frozen under the gaze of those piss-yellow orbs. Nikki was gibbering now, and Dakota thought it had nothing to do with his leg. George was still fussing over him, trying to figure out what was injured, but when Nikki turned his head he suddenly saw what had grabbed their attention and loosed a loud scream to the night.
Whatever it was, it left them then, heading towards the shadowy hulk that happened to lie beyond one of the few street lights that didn’t work.
Straight towards the Shelby Place.
“Wha,” Nikki began, gulping as he tried to bring moisture back to his mouth, “What in the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” Dakota whispered, but as a light from a nearby living room caught his eye when it winked to life, he realized they had to get out of the road.
“Come on,” he said, helping George lift Nikki as they pulled him towards Crystal’s house.
The garage door opened smoothly, and as they sat him on the ratty sofa, George sucked in a harsh breath.
Nikki’s toes were facing his other foot.
“His ankle is broken,” George whispered as Nikki sucked in painful little breaths now that he was stationary.
“I don’t know why you’re bothering to whisper,” Nikki panted out, “My ears work just fine.”
“We need to get him to a hospital,” George said, and Dakota nodded, realizing this was all going to end badly.
They would have to explain why they had been riding bikes at nearly eleven o'clock at night in the first place, and all four of them were likely going to be grounded till school started.
As Nikki put the back of his hand in his mouth to stop from sobbing, however, Dakota realized that his friend was worth the trouble and they couldn’t leave him like that.
“Okay,” he said, “Crystal, where's your,” but when Dakota turned, he realized that Crystal wasn’t with them.
Looking back to the street, all he saw was the pile of bikes they had left on the road as well.
He started to panic for a half second, and then he looked to the shapeless mass two houses down and knew where he would find her.
She was more like Chris than any of them could have known, and she had chased her answers all the way to the last place he wanted to go.
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