He didn’t know that Findo Gask was listening to him with the same amount of interest that young children evidence when they watch ants before stepping on them. He didn’t know that he was just another wild card in a game being played by others, ready to be used when needed. If nothing else, the demon thought, the good deputy sheriff will help distract the troublesome Miss Freemark. The young lady was proving to be a much larger obstacle than he had anticipated.
But all that would change in the next twenty-four hours. Tonight’s events had dictated the need for that.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Larry Spence was mumbling to himself, nodding for emphasis.
The demon yawned. Bored, he sent a fresh nightmare into the head of the young boy sleeping in the deputy sheriff’s back bedroom, then listened idly through the phone as the boy woke, screaming, to run for his father’s reassuring arms.
-=O=-***-=O=-
Scattered snowflakes swirled on cold night winds across the mostly darkened expanse of Sinnissippi Park. Like white moths drawn by the incandescent brightness of the pole lights bracketing the roadways, they spun and twisted in small explosions of white. Elsewhere, moonlight peeked through breaking clouds to sparkle off frosted iron stanchions and crusted patches of road ice. Snowdrifts climbed tree trunks and hedges, a soft white draping against the velvet black.
Ray Childress finished locking down the toboggan slide, placing chains across steps and loading ramps, hooking warning signs in place, and closing up the storage shed with its equipment and parts. It was quiet in the park, the last of the cars dispersed, the last of the people gone home. Trail lights still burned down the length of the slide and out along the bayou’s edge where the ice had been cleared for skating, but only shadows shifted in the glare.
Ray paused in the act of padlocking the shed and stared out at the darkness below. Damned odd, he was thinking, ice breaking apart like that, all at once. He’d tested it himself earlier in the afternoon. He’d gotten four inches, solid, on several bores and no indication at all of a weakening on the run.
Damned odd.
He had been a park employee for a lot of years, and he’d run this slide during the winter months for most of them. He had seen a lot of strange things in that time, some of them of the head-scratching variety, but never anything like this.
A hole in the ice for no reason.
Standing there, thinking it over, he heard the unmistakable sound, sharp and penetrating in the stillness of the night, of ice tightening—a slow, almost leisurely crackling, like glass crunching underfoot.
He turned and looked. Twenty years, and this had never happened before.
He was a thorough, methodical man, one who followed through on what he started and made sure the job was done right. When something difficult arose in his work, he made it a point to understand the nature of the problem so that it wouldn’t happen again, or so that if it did, he would be ready.
Impulsively, almost stubbornly, he snatched up his four-cell flashlight and started down the slope. He took his time, picking his way carefully over the icy spots, finding solid footing with each step. He just couldn’t help himself—he had to have a look. He was being silly, doing it now, when it was so dark, instead of waiting for morning. But he wanted to see what had happened before someone else did so he could have a chance to think about it. It wouldn’t take long, after all, just to take a look.
Myriad pairs of lantern eyes followed his descent toward the bayou, peering out from the gloom of the surrounding trees, tracking his movements, but he didn’t see them.
His breath clouded the air before him as he eased down along the toboggan slide to the river bank and made his way past the chute where it opened onto the ice. Carol was off with the church guild and wouldn’t be back anytime soon, so there was no hurry about getting home. He shuffled his way across the ice with slow, steady steps, keeping to the edges of the shoveled area so that his boots could find purchase. The beam of his flashlight stabbed the darkness, reflecting off the hard, black surface of the frozen river.