Maggy hung up the last bed-sheet and turned to her sister, busy digging yet another hole in the ground with a stick. Hoover had joined in the fun, and between the two of them they were making a shambles out of the back yard.

“Kelly.” 

The child turned. 

“You better control your dog or Chief will have his head.

Kelly stared at her. Dirt was ground into the knees of her overalls. A wisp of blond hair covered her right eye and she used a dirty had to swipe it behind her ear and sighed while biting her lower lip. Her blue eyes shone with emotion she kept in check. It broke Maggy’s heart. She was brutally reminded of the child’s earlier words about ‘making the feeling go away’ and wondered if that was what she was doing now, burying those feelings.

“All right,” Maggy said, resigned. “You’ll just have to help me return the dirt later, before Chief gets home.”

After the laundry was hung, Maggy led her sister and the dog into the house. 

“Where’s Mike?” Kelly asked as she let the screen door slap behind her.

“He’s in Chief’s office, working,” Maggy answered. When the child made to go in that direction, Maggy halted her. “Don’t you go bothering him, now. He’s very busy.”

“I won’t bother him. Just want to see what he’s doin’, is all.”

Maggy set her hands on her hips. “Okay, you can ask him if you can visit, but if he says, no, you come directly back here.”

“Yes’m.” Kelly turned.

“Kelly?”

“Yeah?”

“It will only take me an hour to finish up. If you’d like, you can help me do the baking for the wedding tomorrow. You can even decorate the cake.”

Kelly smiled. “Okay.”

*  *  *  *  *

Mike heard the door open and turned to notice Kelly, sanding in the doorway with indecision on her face. “Squirt? What brings you this way?”

“Maggy said I could only stay if it’s all right with you. Can I Mike? I’m powerful bored.”

Mike gave her a warm friendly smile. “Sure, Squirt. You can stay, but just be quiet and don’t get in the way, okay?”

“Yes, sir!” Kelly answered quickly and approached the desk. “What are ya doin’?”

Mike glanced at his notes and the book he’d been studying. “Trying to make sense out of it all, Squirt.”

“All what?”

“Past, present, future.”

“There is no sense in all of that, Mike. Don’t ya know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ya can’t do nothin’ about what’s already happened, but they make ya think ya can do somethin’ about what will happen, but you really can’t, any more than ya could before, when it all was happening.”

Mike smiled at her. “Very funny. But if you spend most of your time believing the rules are set, you won’t spend any time trying to break them, then what would be the point in making any decisions about your future?”

“I guess. But who’s to say those decisions aren’t set up already?”

Mike stared at her. “Who indeed, Squirt. I don’t know. Live it as it comes, I guess.”

Kelly’s attention shifted to the log. “What’s that?”

Mike glanced briefly at the book, open in front of him. Before he could answer, Kelly's attention darted to the charts still tacked to the wall.

“Mike? Who was Charley Stevens?”

Mike followed her gaze  and contemplated how much was safe to tell the child.

“Why do you ask, Squirt?”

“I heard Mr. Mort and Coach talkin’ about him. They said Billy’d seen it.”

“Seen what?”

“They didn’t say. Just it.”

Mike nodded.

He was still considering the girl when she said, “I was just wondering if he was part of the Dead Place too, like Billy is. Or if he’s the reason Billy is.”

“What makes you say Billy’s part of the Dead Place?”

“On account I see him there.”

“How often do you have those dreams?”

“It’s getting so’s I can’t stand to shut my eyes at night.”

“I can see how it would get to you.... Are they always the same?”

“Mostly.”

Mike studied the child. The light from the desk lamp softened her delicate features: her blonde hair, closer to white, and her eyes– they held intelligence that went beyond her years. But they were saturated with heavy undercurrents of fear and dejection. It was the dejection that helped Mike decide; he owed her an explanation of everything they knew so far. She had the biggest stake in their success.

“You want to help me figure something out?”

“Sure, Mike.”

Mike wondered how much of the answers were contained in the child’s Dead Place. He realized she knew something; that she had part of the puzzle- the part that had him stumped. The trick was to ask the right questions to get her to reveal it. Mike motioned to the love-seat by the wall. “Let’s go over there and talk.”

Mike started, “I’d like to first talk about the Dead Place, okay.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Do you just see it when you’re asleep, in those dreams?”

Kelly was quiet. Fear crept into her blue eyes; her pallor blanched. She swallowed audibly, before turning to the floor. “I see it sometimes in the dark places. It makes me cold.”

“Dark places? You mean shadows?”

Kelly nodded. “If I look over too fast, I see them there.”

“Who?”

“The white people.”

“The white people?”

Her attention remained on the floor as she nodded her answer.

“What are they doing?”

“Smearing blood all over themselves and dancing in circles.”

Mike sat back and glared into the space in front of him as if in shock.

It was a while later he asked, “Do you know why they do it?”

Kelly looked up at him. “No, sir. Maybe, like the tiger, they want to get out.”

Mike studied her. “Out of where? The Dead Place?”

Kelly nodded.

“I see,” Mike whispered, his mind still turning over and examining the child’s responses.

“But the tiger can’t get out until he eats the bird,” Kelly continued. “And he can’t get to the bird, until he eats me.”

“I thought the tiger and the bird were in cahoots. On the same side.”

“That’s what I thought at first, but it’s just what the tiger wants the bird to think.”

“Why? So he can kill it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Huh.”

“But now the tiger has the man with no eyes on his tail. I think he wants the tiger to take him out with him. Either that, or he wants the tiger to get his eyes back for him…” She appeared to be considering her own explanation and frowned.

“What?” Mike asked.

“The man with no eyes… he wants the bird dead, too.”

“Why?”

“It took away his eyes... and left him in the Dead Place, like the tiger. And...”

“And?”

“I don’t know. It shifts... I can’t get it all... there’s something else–”

“In the Dead Place?”

Kelly’s expression shifted again, as her thoughts intensified. Her breathing became erratic as she clutched the cushions of the sofa. To Mike, she looked to be in pain.

“Squirt?” Mike ventured to break that concentration.

“I can’t see it... It’s out of the Dead Place...past it.”

“What is?”

“I don’t know!” Kelly screamed. Her expression cleared and her breathing returned to normal. She blinked and stared at Mike. “I don’t know,” she repeated more quietly. “It’s what the bird wants.”

“You see this in your dreams?”

“I-I just saw it.”

“You mean just now?”

“Yes, sir. Sometimes thinkin’ on it, makes it happen.”

“I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but I need to know.”

“S’all right, Mike.” She cocked her head to the side. “Ask your questions.”

“The man with no eyes? Is it Sam? You said the bird took his eyes in a dream.”

“It’s not Sam. It’s the man with long white hair on his face...” Kelly’s expression changed in thought. Mike sensed her efforts at trying to relay the events of the strange dream.

Mike leaned back. “Let me get this straight. The tiger wishes to kill the bird... he needs to kill you first to do so. But the bird helps him to find you- Why? Does it know what the tiger has planned for it?”

“It knows.”

“Then why does it help the tiger?”

Kelly looked at him. Her expression became one of total sadness and acquiescence. Mike could almost see the tears form behind her eyes. “Because...it just helps because...it helps the tiger because it wants me more than it wants the tiger.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I can see into the shadows.”

“What do you see?”

“I told you–”

“Tell me again.”

“Pockets of the dead place... the white people and the bird... dancing in the blood and the red and blue smoke...and..”

“And?”

“The blood... all the blood...dripping... I can feel–”

“What?”

“It.”

“It?”

“It. What’s past the Dead Place.”

“And the bird cares?”

“The bird wants to reach It.”

“This is all in your dream?”

“No,” Kelly answered. Her attention remained straight ahead.

“You see it now?”

Kelly nodded. She looked up and Mike swore her eyes flashed. He looked about the room and saw no stray light that could have caused the reflection.

“Who are the white people, Squirt?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think.”

Kelly swallowed. She glanced about the room, but saw no shadows. “They’re the bird people...They’re the ones that make the bird. They stay in the shadows if the bird is killed.... The major, Sam’s cat, killed one... They’re what’s left.”

Mike took a deep breath.

Kelly turned in her chair to face Mike squarely. “Mr. Mort said I had part of it because of the tree.”

“That tree has no business growing there, in a climate such as ours,” Mike said, his voice detached in thought as he tried to piece the child’s symbolism together. “I guess the other trees in the area protect it.”

Kelly glanced up sharply.

“What?” Mike asked when he noticed her attention.

“The trees in the dream are alive. They keep trying to stop me. To trip me so’s the tiger could get me.”

Mike regarded her without speaking. His mind tried to fathom her explanations. The tiger was a given: Fred Blackney. The reference to the ever-present bird had to be the cult. The raven was their symbol–that made the white people followers, if the raven was the cult incarnate. Did that make the white people sacrificed souls? Then there was the reference to eyes. What were they? It’s been said  that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Now the trees. What was their significance? What did they represent? And the cult? Where was it now? He had tried to answer that question all morning. Is the answer to that question locked in Kelly’s Dead Place? She saw into the shadows. Where had Mike heard that expression before? ... And the smoke? Red and Blue. Who saw into the smoke?

“Describe the trees in your dream, Kelly.”

“Pointy… sharp. Black... like they’d been burned. And they all had faces... and looked like they were screaming.”

“And the Dead Place. What’s it like?”

“I told you–”

“Tell me again.”

“It’s dark... foggy. The fog is mostly gray...but once in a while it swirls blue and red. The ground is smelly and black and oozing all the time... like worm guts. The fog is thick and hard to breathe... and it’s so cold but it burns.”

Mike nodded. “Worm guts...” he muttered and fell silent. “Waste,” he said after a while. “Everything is laid to waste... the trees, the ground...the air.” Mike looked at the child. “You see into the shadows...you see the white people. You can recognize them. Maybe that’s why they are directing the tiger after you.”

Kelly shook her head. “It’s on account they want out, Mike. The tiger can take them, if it eats me.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Squirt.”

Kelly shrugged and looked at the wall of charts.

Mike took a heavy breath. “About your earlier question,” he said. “Charley Stevens was part of a case Sergeant Moss and your father worked on years ago. He was killed by a religious cult- do you know what that is?”

Kelly shook her head.

“It’s a group of people who get together to worship in unconventional ways. In this one’s case, they killed young boys.”

“They killed Charley Stevens?”

“Yes, Squirt. They killed Charley Stevens and several others in this area.”

Kelly bit her lip. “And Billy saw them.”

“That’s what Sergeant Moss, your father, and Coach believe. But there’s no way to be certain. Billy stopped talking suddenly, though. It was roughly the same time the boy was killed.”

Kelly was staring across the air of the office, her eyes resting on the book at the desk. “And that book is their Bible?”

Mike glanced at the book also. It sat on the desk, its guts exposed. In its pages were recorded all the evil of past generations. In itself, it was harmless. But in its pages the list of horrors mount with every passing decade. The lives the cult pulled in, the lives it took, and the lives it ruined. There it sat, the cult’s- Holy Book.

“I guess you could call it that.” He returned his attention to the child. “Your father and Sergeant Moss, he was an Federal investigator at the time, worked together in solving that case. Only back then, there was no concrete proof that it existed. The Bureau was convinced it was all the act of two men. Jonas–”

Kelly gasped and looked at the chart.

“That’s right, Squirt. He’s the one on top there. Sergeant Moss had been investigating Jonas for close to eight years, during a killing spree over multiple states. Then Jonas came here and met up with Barry Bartlett. From what Sergeant Moss and your father could surface, Bartlett had been killing unsuspected for over fifty years. Somehow the two met and struck up a partnership. But Sergeant Moss and your father believe there was more to it. That there was an organized group, a cult, responsible for the killings.”

“Then the cult was here before Jonas got here?”

“According to their book they’ve been practicing their rituals for centuries. It started with just animal sacrifices.”

“Like they said Sam did.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I remember those rumors, too. I bet the cult could account for the majority of those missing pets.”

“Why did they do it, Mike? Why did they kill things?”

Mike studied the child’s face. He felt his own expression grow tight. Then he answered, “They thought they could gain power from them. By drinking their blood and blood being the power of life on the earth world, and stealing their dreams, dreams being the power that sets us all above the earth world.”

“How’d they do that?”

“Asked them to make a wish before dying,” Mike answered quietly.

“Make a wish,” Kelly whispered. “He said that at the depot.”

“The tiger?”

Kelly faced him. “Yes, sir. When he killed the Preacher. And he saw me. But Uncle Fred stopped him from killing me.”

“Do you know why?”

“He called me Katherine. That was my mother’s name. The bird started him to killing,” Kelly said. “After Jonas. The tiger killed for the bird.”

“That’s what the book states. But you’re telling me the tiger wants to kill the bird. How does doing their bidding accomplish that?”

“He wants to get past the Dead Place,” Kelly said quietly. “Not out.”

“What’s past the Dead Place, Squirt.”

“I told you,” Kelly said, tears in her eyes. “It is... and the blood...” Kelly shivered.

“Do they want past the Dead Place as well?”

Kelly nodded.

“And they believe they can get there after the tiger kills you.”

Again the child nodded. Returning her attention to the floor. 

“I see,” Mike answered quietly. He looked closely at the child. “And the man with no eyes. Does he wish to go through also– once the tiger kills you. Is that why he holds onto the tiger’s tail?”

Kelly glanced up sharply. “No. I think he just wants out, Mike. I think he’s afraid of the tiger, now.”

Mike stared at her. “Tell me something, Squirt. Have you ever seen the man with no eyes before?”

Kelly concentrated. Then nodded. “I think I might have seen him in Berritts Hills that one day.”

“What day?”

“Remember when me and TJ were at the library there, we lost our bus money...you gave us a ride back in the police car.”

Mike nodded. “I remember.”

“Mike?”

“Yeah, Squirt?”

“I lied to you that day. It was the only time I ever did, though.”

“Why’d you do that?” Mike asked and smiled. “Spend all your bus fare on candy?”

Kelly stared at him, her eyes growing moist.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Mike pulled free his handkerchief.

“It was that Mr. Lewis,” Kelly said, wiping her eyes.

“What about Lewis?”

“I...”

“Go on, what did you do?”

“I... We saw him by the pond with Miss Elly. He was making her pay him money.”

“It’s all right, I know all about that.”

Kelly shook her head. Her distress was obvious. “What’s going on, Squirt?”

“I made TJ go with me... I knew when that sneaky Mr. Lewis would show. I’d been staking the pond out fer weeks. So we waited in the bushes. When he did and was busy with Miss Elly, we snuck to his car and got in the trunk.”

“You did what?” Mike’s voice was deep and his expression, severe.

“I wanted to find out where he went. Find out more about why he made Miss Elly pay him.”

Mike contemplated the girl, making sure she felt the weight and seriousness of his stare. “You were very lucky, you know that? He could have driven clean out of the county, with you and your friend tucked neatly in the trunk. Not to mention, if he had ever found you two there, knowing the kind of man he was, I’d wager he wouldn’t hesitate at using you kids against your father.”

“It wasn’t very smart, I know. But I just had to help Chief. I wanted to make it all up to him.”

“All what?”

“What happened to my mother; my killing her. I didn’t want anything getting in the way of him and Miss Elly being together, the way I got in the way of him being with my mother.”

“We settled that. What happened to your mother was not your fault.”

“I know, Mike. But then I didn’t know it.”

“I see.”

The room fell quiet, and again Mike broke the silence. “So that’s where you saw the old man?

“I think so. Only he still had his eyes, but they weren’t working. He had to push a stick in front of himself.”

Mike nodded. Smiley Bennet. His thoughts turned to Chief and Mort and he hoped they were having luck at finding the man. Absently, he asked, “So what did Lewis do in Berritts?”

Kelly’s tense expression relaxed. “He didn’t do much of anything. Just went to a drugstore and called some guy named Tony Macaroni or something like that.”

Mike whipped around, his gaze narrowing. “Could that be, Tony Perretti?”

Kelly looked up with recognition. “Yeah, I think it was.”

“Did you hear the conversation?”

“Just Mr. Lewis’s half.”

Mike smiled. Kids. “I gathered you wouldn’t be able to hear any of Perretti’s end of the conversation, Squirt. What did Lewis say?”

“I don’t remember much of it now.”

Mike looked into the empty air and again nodded, noticeably disappointed.

“But I wrote it down,” she added quickly, regaining Mike’s interest.

“Where?”

“At first on my cast, then I copied it over on some paper when I got home. It’s in a note pad I swiped from Chief. I think it’s in my dresser.”

“Can you go get it?”

Kelly nodded and rose from the couch just as there was brisk knock on the door.

“Come in,” Mike called from the sofa and Maggy pushed her way into the room.

“I have lunch waiting on the kitchen table for both of you.”

© Copyright 2025 C J Driftwood. All rights reserved.