Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [21]
Jack avoided a road-killed raccoon as he crossed to the west side of the highway near the Lonely Pine Hotel. An apt name: It consisted of a short strip of seven rooms and an office, all in the shadow of one huge, lonely pine. Everything was dark except for the small neon sign at the road’s edge. Only one car in the lot—Jack recognized Miriam’s beat-up station wagon parked outside a door marked 3.
He wondered again at her story of growing an arm after Walt touched her. Maybe Walt had touched her at the tent show. And maybe she had grown an arm during the following year. That didn’t mean one caused the other. He heard his father’s repeated warnings about the commonest logical fallacy: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Just because one thing followed another didn’t mean the first caused the second.
And besides, if Walt could truly heal with a touch, he’d be world famous. Certainly wouldn’t be hanging out in Johnson, New Jersey.
He hopped on his bike and began pedaling.
2
He needed to jump off the road only twice along the way, so he arrived at the high school in good time. He pulled off the road a hundred yards or so shy of the entrance, and approached through the trees.
The buildings were dark and abandoned looking, the parking lot empty. He made a circuit of the building anyway, just to be sure no janitors were still about. He knew they did most of their work after school, but doubted any would be working at this hour. Still, he’d never done anything like this before and didn’t want to run into any ugly surprises.
Nope. All clear.
The starlight was enough to guide him to the boys’ room window. He glanced up at the dusty glow of the Milky Way arcing overhead. He pulled his bike behind the juniper hedge that ran along the wall. He’d known about the hedge, and its thorns were one of the reasons he’d worn his nylon track warm-up. Another was because its fabric was smooth and slippery. He wanted every bit of help to slide through that window. Yesterday afternoon he hadn’t had the time to check how far it opened. If he couldn’t slip through, all his plans and this entire trip would be for nothing.
He leaned the bike against the wall and shrugged out of his backpack. He removed a plastic baggie containing the penlight, shims, and spider. Clenching it in his teeth he stepped up on the seat. After swaying precariously for a second or two, he steadied himself and removed the screwdriver from his back pocket. He worked the flat tip between the window casing and the bottom of the frame.
The window wouldn’t budge.
His heart sank. Had one of the janitors spotted the open latches and relocked the window? He hadn’t considered that possibility.
He tried again, levering harder, and this time the window moved.
“Yes!”
He worked the screwdriver tip farther in, put more weight behind it, and soon the edge of the frame had moved out far enough to allow him to work his fingertips behind it. He yanked back and it swung open with a squeak that echoed through the enveloping silence like an elephant honk.
He stood silent, listening. All quiet, and yet …
… a feeling that he wasn’t alone.
He looked around, expecting to see someone standing behind him in the starlight. But no. No one there.
Still … a vague feeling of being watched.
Shrugging off the unease—really, who’d be out here at this hour?—he pulled the window open to the limit and began to wriggle through. For a gut-wrenching second his warm-up caught on the frame and he thought he might be stuck. His head filled with visions of hanging half in and half out all night, then being discovered and becoming the focus of a laughing, jeering crowd of kids until some fireman extricated him like a stray kitten from a tree.
He’d have to move into Weezy’s room and neither of them would ever show their faces here again.
But he managed to get free—maybe the warm-up hadn’t been the best idea—and lowered himself into the bathroom stall.
Wasting no time, he made his way into the hall and hurried toward the senior locker area. When he arrived at 791, he turned on the penlight