A car pulled up, parking on the other side of a battered truck, and Amber glimpsed the occupants.
Terror stabbed her heart and she dived behind the Charger.
Milo stiffened. All at once his gun was out of its holster and held down by his leg.
Amber heard the car doors open and close. The beep as it locked. Footsteps on loose gravel.
And then her mother’s voice. “Excuse me, we’re looking for our daughter. Have you seen this girl?”
The driver of the truck. She could picture him in her head. Hispanic. Short. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He’d been eating at the counter when they’d ordered. Had he looked up? Had he noticed her?
“Sorry,” she heard him say. “Can’t help you.”
The truck started, reversed all the way round the back of the Charger, and the driver happened to glance her way. She shook her head, mouthing the words please, no.
He hesitated, then pulled out on to the road and drove off.
“Hi,” she heard her dad say, from the other side of the car.
“Hi there,” Milo answered. He holstered his gun.
“We’re looking for this girl,” Bill said. “Would you have seen her, by any chance?”
His voice moved round the car. Milo opened the door, shielding Amber from view, keeping his feet planted to hide her own. He took off his jacket and threw it in.
She heard Bill and Betty stop walking suddenly. For a moment, she thought she’d been spotted.
“That’s a nice weapon,” said Bill. “What is it, a Glock?”
“Glock 21,” said Milo. “You cops? I’ve got a concealed carry permit.”
Betty had a smile in her voice. “No, we’re not police. We’re just looking for our daughter. Have you seen her?”
There was a moment while they showed Milo a photograph.
“Sorry,” Milo said. “Don’t think I’ve—”
The door to the diner opened and Glen came out. His eyes flickered over Amber and rested on her parents.
“Hi,” he said, puncturing the silence. “Did we do something wrong?”
Betty laughed politely, with just the right amount of sadness. “No, we’re not police officers. We’re just looking for this girl. Have you seen her?”
Glen walked out of Amber’s view. She shrank back against the Charger. If she had to trust in Glen’s acting prowess, she wouldn’t be hiding for very much longer. She got ready to shift. If she shifted before they did, maybe she could outrun them in the forest.
“Yeah,” said Glen, “I’ve seen her.”
Amber screwed her eyes shut. No, you idiot.
“You have?” said Betty, excited.
“You have?” said Milo. “Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure,” Glen said. “They were at the table behind us when we got here. You’ll have to excuse Milo – he doesn’t notice a whole lot when Whitesnake is playing. I’m the brains of the operation. Name’s Glen. How do you do.”
“Hello, Glen,” said Betty. “I’m Betty, and this is Bill. You’ve seen our daughter? You’re sure it was her?”
“I think so,” said Glen. “I didn’t get a good look at her face, but I’m pretty sure. She was with a woman, a small woman with grey hair. They had a map out.”
“When was this?”
“Milo?” said Glen. “When did we get here?”
“About an hour ago,” said Milo, clearly resenting his role in this.
“Did they say where they were going?” Bill asked.
Glen hesitated. “Uh, listen, I’m sure you’re good people, but if your daughter’s run away, she probably has her reasons. No offence, but for all I know you might lock her in the cellar or something.”
“We love our daughter,” Betty said. “All we want is for her to be safe. That woman she’s with, she’s part of a cult. We have to get her back before we lose her for good.”
“A cult?” Glen echoed. “Oh wow. Yeah, absolutely. My cousin went off and joined a cult years ago, so I know what that’s like. It was a UFO cult. I hope your daughter’s not in a UFO cult – they’re the worst. I heard the woman say they were going to Toledo. I’m usually terrible with place names, but I remember that because, y’know, the phrase ‘Holy Toledo’. Hey, you think that’s where the phrase comes from?”
“Either that or the holy city of Toledo in Spain,” said Bill. “Did you happen to see what they were driving?”
“A white van,” said Glen, “in dire need of a wash. I didn’t notice any UFO bumper stickers or anything, so you might be in luck. Like I said, they left about an hour ago.”
“Thank you, Glen,” Betty said, and Amber listened to their retreating footsteps.
“Hope you find her,” Glen called.
Their car beeped and they got in, and Amber crawled on her hands and knees to the front of the Charger as her parents’ car pulled out on to the road and accelerated fast.
She stood.
“So,” Glen said, “your parents, huh?”
THEY SPENT THE NIGHT at a Motel 6 somewhere in Indiana. Amber barricaded her door again, and she tossed and turned, but didn’t fall asleep until a half-hour before Milo knocked. She didn’t eat any breakfast and she kept her head down and her cap on while walking out to the Charger. It gleamed, the dust and dirt of the previous day’s travel washed away like it had never happened.
If only that was true.
As they were bypassing Chicago, Amber relented and told Glen about Shanks. He’d earned the right to sit at the table with the cool kids, she reckoned. They drove through an endless suburban sprawl of strip malls and chain restaurants, the parking lots and signs repeating as if copied and pasted, and got into Springton, Wisconsin a little before three that afternoon. The day had dulled, become cold, and sporadic showers of rain splattered the windshield. They passed the high school, a building of red brick set a dozen steps above street level, and carried on to the town square. The library sat on one side, and opposite it, on the south side, sat the Mayor’s Office – white, with pillars outside denoting its obvious importance. The buildings to the east and west housed various businesses and eateries.
They got out. Stretched. It was maybe ten degrees cooler than when they’d started their journey, and Amber was wearing jeans now. They felt weird on her legs. She pulled on a jacket and made sure her cap was secure.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We ask about Dacre Shanks,” said Glen before Milo could answer. “We split up. We’ll cover more ground that way. The sooner we get to him, the better, am I right? We’ve got your parents on our tail, Amber. I may have been able to throw them off the scent yesterday, but that won’t stop them for long. Here, that guy looks like he might know something.”
Glen strode towards an old man walking his dog.
Amber looked at Milo. “He’s trying really hard.”
Milo nodded. “You notice how quiet he was this morning? He didn’t make one single stupid comment.”
“And he was very useful yesterday.”
Milo hesitated, then shook his head. “Doesn’t make one bit of difference. This is where we cut him loose, before we talk to Shanks. The less he knows …” He trailed off.
Amber frowned. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“What, Milo?”
Milo sighed. “Your parents know him now. If we leave him here and they find him, they might …”
“Do you think they’d kill him?”
“They killed those cops without a second thought, didn’t they?”
They both looked at Glen, who was now arguing with the old man while the dog yapped and nipped at his legs.
“So,” Milo said, “should we leave him, or …?”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Glen jogged back. “What? What are you laughing about?”
“Nothing,” said Amber, trying to contain herself. “Did you learn anything?”
“No,” said Glen. “Turns out that old guy is German
and doesn’t speak a word of English.”
“Then what were you arguing about?”
Glen looked puzzled. “How should I know?”
This set Amber and Milo off again. Glen tried to laugh along with them, then gave up and went for a walk.
A full third of the library was given over to computers, the bookcases crammed together in the space left. Amber walked the labyrinth until she found a section marked Local History. It was a single shelf with five books on it – four of them the same book. She flicked through the fifth – Springton: A Legacy, by a local author with a bad photo. She learned that Springton was established in 1829, and got its name from its wondrous spring-water reserve. She learned that the industry that built up around it polluted that reserve so much that the water became virtually undrinkable. The author called that ‘ironic’.
Amber flicked through the rest of it, then checked the index. No mention of Dacre Shanks.
She replaced the book and wandered out of the stacks. Glen found her.
“They have a Springton Gazette,” he said. “I asked the librarian if I could see the old editions, y’know, to read the articles on Shanks as they were printed? She said they’re only available on microfiche.”
“What’s microfiche?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of small fish, presumably.”
Amber frowned. “Where’s Milo?”
“Chatting up the other librarian. The cute one.”
Amber looked around. Milo stood in that slouchy way of his, giving a smile she hadn’t imagined he possessed to an attractive woman in her forties. She had brown hair with a streak of silver running through it. The librarian laughed and Milo’s smile widened.
“I could do that,” said Glen. “I just picked the wrong librarian to charm, that’s all. I picked the old one. I thought she’d be the one to ask. If I’d known there was a younger one, I’d have called dibs.”
“She’s twice your age.”
“Older women find me intensely attractive.”
“Well, that’s good, because younger women certainly don’t.”
Glen stopped glaring across at Milo, and switched his attention to Amber. “Oh, is that so? So you’re telling me that you feel no attraction to me whatsoever?”
She blinked at him. “What? Where has this come from? No. None. None at all.”
“Yeah,” he said, laughing. “Right.”
“Seriously.”
“There have been studies carried out that say the Irish accent is the sexiest in the world.”
“Who carried it out? Irish people?”
His smile faltered for a moment. “Maybe,” he said, and then it was back. “I could charm you. You know I could charm you. The only thing stopping me is your age. You’re too young for me. I prefer girls in their twenties.”
“I will have to live with that crushing disappointment.”
“Of course,” he said, moving closer, “I could make an exception.”
“Please don’t.”
“I could overlook the age thing if … you know.”
Amber frowned. “What?”
“If you transformed,” he whispered.
She lost all good humour. “Drop dead, Glen.”
She made for the exit. He followed.
“Oh, go on! Just transform once for me. You’re amazing when you transform. You’re astonishing. Those horns are just the most beautiful—”
She spun round to face him. “Stop calling it that. Stop calling it transforming. You make me sound like an Autobot.”
“Well, what’s it called?”
“I don’t know. Shifting. There isn’t really an official term for it.”
A slow grin spread across his face. “I’ve got one. Do you want to hear it?”
She walked away. “No.”
“It’s a good one,” he said from right behind her.
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll love it,” he said. “I promise you, you’ll love it.”
They reached the exit. Milo was walking towards them. Amber couldn’t help herself.
“Fine,” she said. “What? What would you call it when I change?”
Glen’s grin was immense. “Getting horny.”
“Oh, I hate you so much.”
Milo joined them. “She’s hiding something,” he said. “The moment she guessed where I was steering the conversation she closed down. You find anything?”
“Just a new level of annoyance,” said Amber.
“She wants to join me in my utter hilarity,” said Glen. “You can see it in her face, can’t you? She wants to joke around. Give in to it, Amber. Give in.”
She sighed. “Are you finished yet?”
Glen grinned, and turned to Milo. “What’s microfiche?”
“Microfilm.”
“Ohhh. So it’s not a small fish.”
“Come on,” said Amber, “let’s get something to eat. I’m starving.”
They had lunch sitting in the window of one of the cafes on the square. They watched the high-school kids pass on their way home. A bunch of younger kids came into the cafe, and Amber looked at Milo with her eyebrows raised. He shrugged, and nodded, and she turned on her stool.
“Hi,” she said, keeping her voice down. “I was wondering if you could help me? Have any of you heard of a man called Dacre Shanks?”
The name made the kids draw back in suspicion.
“Ask someone else,” one of them said.
“So you’ve heard of him?”
“We’re not talking about that.”
“Why not?”
“Cos they’re scared,” said the smallest kid, black, with adorably huge eyes. “They’re afraid their allowance might be taken away.”
“Whatever,” the other one said, and got up and walked out, followed by his friends. All except the little kid.
“You’ve heard of Shanks?” said Amber.
“Course,” the kid said.
“And the others – they won’t talk because they’re scared of him?”
The kid laughed. “Scared of who? The boogie man? Naw, they’re scared cos last year a bunch of us trashed two of those dollhouses they got up in the school, and when people found out they beat the hell out of us. I’m talking grown-ups here, y’know? Punching and kicking me while I’m all curled up on the floor, crying for my momma. Disgraceful behaviour, know what I’m saying?”
“I’m sorry, dollhouses?”
“I know, right? Dollhouses. This town’s obsessed with them.”
“What’s your name? I’m Amber.”
“Name’s Walter,” said the kid. “Walter S. Bryant. The S stands for Samuel. Had a teacher once, said my destiny was to become a poet with a name like that. But he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. I can barely spell, and most of the words I know don’t even rhyme with each other.”
“Walter, what’s so important about a few dollhouses?”
“Where you from?”
“Florida.”
“Florida,” he repeated. “Wait, you mean with Disney World and all?”
“Yep, we have Disney World.”
“You ever been?”
“A few times,” she said. Always with friends, though – never with her parents.
“Aw man,” said Walter. “Disney World. I’d like that, walking around and everything looking like it’s out of a cartoon or something. Ever meet Mickey Mouse?”
“I have.”
Walter laughed. “That’s cool. You met Mickey Mouse. That’s cool.”
“I’m from Ireland,” said Glen.
“I don’t care,” said Walter.
“Can you tell me about the dollhouses?” Amber asked.
“Oh yeah,” said Walter. “I knew you weren’t from around here, cos if you were you’d know already. There’s this dumb story everyone’s been telling us our entire lives, and they all expect us to believe it, y’know? Dacre Shanks. He was a real person, back in the 1970s, cos I looked him up. He was a toymaker, ri
ght? He had a little store down beside where the arcade once was, but he only made crappy toys like dolls and model railways and stuff. Nothing cool. But what nobody knew was that he was also this serial killer, and he killed a ton of people before the cops figured out who he was and came and shot him.”
“I looked him up, too,” said Amber. “I didn’t see any mention of dollhouses.”
“Course not,” said Walter, “cos that’s the part they made up, isn’t it? The story is, he came back from the dead, right, ten years later, and kept killing and he, like, shrank his victims or something and put them in these dollhouses he made.”
Amber frowned. “He shrank them?”
“How stupid is that, right? Not only do they have him come back from the dead, but they have him shrinking people, too. Anyway, the school had three dollhouses that supposedly held these shrunken victims – although officially they’re just normal dollhouses with nothing weird about them at all. Cos every school has a few dollhouses in a huge glass cabinet right inside the door, don’t they? I mean, that part’s totally normal. Nothing weird about that. Ask any of the teachers; they all say the story’s a load of crap, but they say it in a way that’s supposed to make you think they’re lying. We had to pass those dollhouses every single day. I’m not stupid. I know why they were there. It was a message, wasn’t it? Stay in school. Keep your head down. Don’t question authority. Or Dacre Shanks will get you.
“Well, practically everyone else in my school were cool about going along with it, but me and a couple of others, and you just met them a few minutes ago, got talking one day and figured hey, we were getting a little tired of being treated like fools.”
“So you trashed the dollhouses.”
Walter nodded. “Stomped two of them to splinters before we were caught.”
“What happened then?”
“Aw, everyone went insane. I knew the school would be mad and all, but they were threatening to expel us. It was crazy. Only reason they didn’t is cos they didn’t want the State Board to know about their dumb stories. But everyone, like, the whole entire town, was against us. Everyone except the old people. They didn’t see what the fuss was about. But our folks, some of our older brothers and sisters, they just … I didn’t know they’d take it so seriously.”