August 12th, 1991. 10:30PM
Burlwood, Indiana
"Darkwing?" Chucky's lightly slurred speech called through the speaker. Then there was static... a pause... the voice again. "Darkwing, are you there?"
Jacob hurried into his room, blue and red lights painting his walls as he kicked his die-cast DeLorean and sent it tumbling into the corner along the way. Diving into his Batmobile car bed, he grabbed for the blue walkie talkie near its foot.
"Yeah, Chucky," he replied, depressing the button on its side. "I'm here."
"Are they still out there?"
Looking out his bedroom window, the one that faced Booger Woods, Jacob could see that they were. Floodlights lit the forest brightly, now, erasing all traces of the darkness that had frightened Chucky; erasing the darkness of the night itself, painting the world with the whitewash of high-pressure sodium lamps. Yellow tape cordoned off the entirety of what had been their playground, men and women -- some in uniforms, some in suits -- ducking underneath it from time to time.
Some of the men Jacob knew. Clyde Rambo, the town sheriff, had gone in early in the day and had yet to come back out. Ron Boudreaux, the deputy, had come and gone a few times. Father Lovett went in, too, but only for a minute. It was quiet when he did; no one moving, no one rustling, no flash-bulbs flashing. When he left, it all resumed -- and it continued, now, in the wee hours of the night.
There were many others throughout the evening, people Jacob didn't know but had seen around town at some point or another. Most everyone was carrying something with them into the woods. Pads of paper, cameras, briefcases, shovels and digging tools, mostly. One group had pulled up in an ambulance and tried to push a rolling stretcher in, but there was no use with the tangled brush. Instead, they took a board off of it and turned it on its side, weaving it through that way.
There was a television news crew with a camera set up facing the scene as well, a sharply dressed woman speaking loudly into a microphone and pointing into the trees. She said the same things over, and over and over again, saying them in different ways and different tones of voice each time. Sometimes she would stress one word -- like child, then the next time it would be murdered or dismembered. Then, she started saying things like molested, sodomized and predator... things Jacob didn't understand. The only predator he had ever heard of had been an alien in an action movie, and he knew that couldn't be what she was talking about. At one point, not long after that, he heard her say the word butcher with a great deal of emphasis. Thus, a nickname was born... entered his lexicon, and began its haunting of his childhood.
He had watched for hours, fascinated and curious, but had grown tired of the activity as the evening stretched on. Rambo and Boudreaux had come by earlier and asked him questions. Questions about what they were doing in the woods, what they had seen and what they had done once they found Joshua Banks' arm.
Joshua Banks, that's whose they said it was. He had been nine years old and gone to school in Garthby, where he lived; had been missing for two weeks, since his mom and dad had a big fight and he ran outside to get away.
They asked if Jacob had seen any grownups in the woods through his bedroom window... asked if he had heard any noises out there in the recent days or weeks. He hadn't, and he told them so as his mother cried and hugged him tight. They asked him lots of things, and the whole time he just wished that they would stop... stop, so his mother would stop with the crying.
She was always crying, always upset about something -- and Jacob hated it. She had barely stopped since that Christmas, two years ago, when they found his dad out hanging in the shed, wearing a sign on which he'd written I'm Sorry. Sheriff Clyde and Deputy Ron had come out then, so had Father Lovett. Having the policemen in the house probably reminded his mother of that day; that cold and wrenching Christmas, which had started off like any other Christmas and ended up in such life-changing despair. All she had done was cry since then... cry and take her pills.
Now, she was crying for Joshua Banks; crying for her son and what he'd seen. "So much death," she sobbed... "Why should my little boy be exposed to so much death?"
He told her it was okay... told her it hadn't bothered him, that he could deal with it like he had before. It was true, mostly -- he could cope. It had scared him just a bit... holding a dead arm, an arm that was cold and stiff and just a little bigger than his own. Seeing the missing thumb had turned his stomach, and the print his own fingers left in the gooey flesh had almost made him puke... but he could cope. He had experience... he knew how to do it.
Telling her these things only made her more upset, though, and he couldn't understand why, no matter how he tried. He just wanted her to stop... to take her pills and stop.
The police gave her their cards when they left, told her to call if he remembered anything else that could be important. Once they were gone, he got her medicine from the cabinet and sat with her until it made her fall asleep. When she was sleeping, she wasn't sad... so Jacob liked it when she slept.
"What are they doing now?" Chucky asked through the static.
He watched for a moment and saw people coming back out of Booger Woods, carrying small yellow bags at arm's length. He wondered why they hadn't used the board they took in earlier, but figured it was probably too much of a maze to get through with it flat. The woman with the microphone tried to stop some of them, but they just kept on walking... as though she wasn't there. Eventually, a police officer shooed her away -- like you would a dog. She was from the city, that was probably why... one of the city people who only come to Burlwood to make fun of the backwoods rejects, that's what his mother said about them.
"I think they're bringing him out," he explained. "They're carrying bags... lots of them."
"Do you think they found more of him? More than his arm?"
"I guess so, Chucky, there are lots of bags," he replied.
Looking closer, he thought he could see the vague outlines of what were probably Joshua's body parts, pulling at the bottom of each bag. One had a sharp ridge hanging down, like the point of a knee or an elbow, with the plastic tracing a form at forty-five degree angles around it. Another was bigger and had a person carrying it at each end... probably his torso. Yet another was almost perfectly round... that must be his head, he thought.
"Doctor Loomis said my wrist is broken," Chucky recounted. "It's all big and swollen, and it hurts really bad. I have to wear a cast for six weeks, then I can have it off." a pause. "I guess we can't play any more sports this summer."
"I'm sorry, Chucky," Jacob said. "Sorry that we made you go in there... sorry that you got hurt... sorry that you had to see--" his speech trailed off into silence, so he released the talk button and let the silence say the rest. Silence was the answer he got, too, for a reasonably protracted period, before Chucky finally spoke.
"Do you think it was Pennywise that did it?" he asked. "Do you think he's here, and out to get us?"
"No, Chucky," he said assertively, "Pennywise is just pretend!"
More silence, then "I'm afraid, Darkwing..."
"Don't be, Chucky!" Jacob ordered, trying to send his strength over the air to comfort his frightened friend... the way he comforted his mother when she was feeling low. "You know I won't let anything hurt you... I'll never let anything hurt you, Chucky, because we're blood brothers -- remember?"
Chucky thought about it for a moment... remembered the day last summer, when he cut his hand on broken glass buried in the sand around the swing set at Memorial Park. He was crying, squeezing his bleeding palm like he squeezed his flashlight when it was dark at bed time. There was so much blood... he thought losing so much meant that he was going to die. Jacob told him he was okay and hugged him, then picked up the piece of glass and cut himself... on purpose. Then, taking his dripping hand, he told him that he was giving Chucky his blood... that he wouldn't die, because his blood would make up for that which he had lost.
Looking at th
e scar on his left palm, Chucky remembered that Darkwing had been right... he didn't die... Darkwing had rescued him and kept him alive. Afterwards, Darkwing said that sharing each other's blood meant they were brothers now... blood brothers... inseperable, together and with each other forever. Plus, he had strong blood in his veins, now... blood that would help him be less afraid of scary things.
He called on the power of that blood as he lay wrapped up tight in his sleeping bag -- a new, blue, flashlight clenched tightly in his sweat-lined right hand. He wondered if he would have nightmares... nightmares about Pennywise, or about Joshua Banks' parts. Joshua Banks, who had been all put together before but was all taken apart now... taken apart and dead, dead like Gary Duncan, and spread all over Booger Woods... Booger Woods, just two streets down and around the corner from his house.
"I promise, Chucky," Darkwing said through the crackling walkie talkie. "I won't let anything hurt you... ever."
These were words spoken to comfort, but also spoken as a pact... words he would have to live up to, time and time again.
FOUR