Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [7]
“There, there, Ben Ben,” she cooed, kissing the little girl’s face. “Don’t be frightened now. It’s all right. Everything’s all right.” She shivered in spite of herself. “It was just a little fall. Time to be going home now, sweetie. Look, there’s your house, right over there. Can you see the lights?”
Daniel winged past one final time and disappeared into the dark, bearing Pick with him. The feeders were scattered, so the owl and the sylvan were leaving, entrusting the return of Bennett Scott to her. She sighed wearily and began to walk through the park. Her breathing steadied and her heartbeat slowed. She was sweating, and the air felt hot and damp against her face. It was silent in the park, hushed and tender in the blanket of the dark. She hugged Bennett possessively, feeling the little girl’s sobs slowly fade.
“Oh, Ben Ben,” she said, “we’ll have you home in bed before you know it. You want to get right to sleep, little girl, because Monday’s the Fourth of July and you don’t want to miss the fireworks. All those colors, all those pretty colors! What if you fell asleep and missed them?”
Bennett Scott curled into her shoulder. “Will you come home with me, Nest? Will you stay with me?”
The words were so poignant that Nest felt tears spring to her eyes. She stared off into the night, to the stars and the half-moon in the cloudless sky, to the shadows of the trees where they loomed against the horizon, to the lights of the buildings ahead where the residences and the apartments began and the park came to an end. The world was a scary place for little girls, but the scariest things in it weren’t always feeders and they didn’t live only in the dark. In the morning she would talk with Gran about Enid Scott. Maybe together they could come up with something. She would look for Spook, too. Pick would help.
“I’ll come home with you, Ben Ben,” she whispered. “I’ll stay for a little while, anyway.”
Her arms were tired and aching, but she refused to put the little girl down. By the time she reached the crossbar blocking the entrance to the park and turned left toward the Sinnissippi Townhomes, Bennett Scott was fast asleep.
Chapter Two
Robert Roosevelt Freemark — “Old Bob” to everyone but his wife, granddaughter, and minister — came down to breakfast the next morning in something of a funk. He was a big man, three inches over six feet, with broad shoulders, large hands, and a solidity that belied his sixty-five years of age. His face was square, his features prominent, and his snow white hair thick and wavy and combed straight back from his high forehead. He looked like a politician — or at least like a politician ought to look. But Old Bob was a workingman, had been all his life, and now, in retirement after thirty years on the line at Midwest Continental Steel, he still dressed in jeans and blue work shirts and thought of himself as being just like everyone else.
Old Bob had been Old Bob for as long as anyone could remember. Not in his boyhood, of course, but shortly after that, and certainly by the time he came back from the Korean War. He wasn’t called Old Bob to his face, of course, but only when he was being referred to in the third person. Like, “Old Bob sure knows his business.” He wasn’t Good Old Bob either, in the sense that he was a good old boy. And the “old” had never been a reference to age. It was more a designation of status or durability or dependability. Bob Freemark had been a rock-solid citizen of Hopewell and a friend to everyone living there for his entire life, the sort of man you could call upon when you needed help. He’d worked for the Jaycees, the United Way, the Cancer Fund, and the Red Cross at one time or another, spearheading