JMariotte - Boogeyman Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  AnOriginal Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  A Pocket Star Book published by

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  ISBN: 1-4165-1305-1

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  About the Author

  JEFF MARIOTTE is the author of more than twenty novels, including several set in the universes ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer™ andAngel™, Charmed™, Star Trek ®, andGene Roddenberry’s Andromeda™, the original horror novelThe Slab, and the teen horror seriesWitch Season, as well as more comic books than he has time to count, some of which have been nominated for Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards. With his wife, Maryelizabeth Hart, and partner, Terry Gilman, he co-owns Mysterious Galaxy, a bookstore specializing in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror. He lives on the Flying M Ranch in southeastern Arizona with his family and pets, in a home filled with books, music, toys, and other examples of American pop culture. More information than you would ever want to know about him is at www.jeffmariotte.com.

  One

  Outside, an overcast sky blanketed the Jensen house in darkness. No stars shone; no bright moon lit the semirural landscape. Only the house’s own lights made a half-hearted attempt to illuminate the dark world—light spilling from windows where the

  curtains were partly drawn, light from the glass-enclosed bulb beside the front door. At night, Tim Jensen liked to be inside the house, where lamps could be switched on with the flick of a finger or the twist of a knob. Where the shadows could easily be chased away.

  Tim was eight years old, and he hated the dark. The only enemy that even came close was homework. He sat on the floor in the family’s bright kitchen, struggling through a reading assignment that was open in his lap, as his father worked under the sink. Tim was glad it was the old man and not him—being jammed halfway inside a cupboard like that would have made him nervous. Scared him to death, really. Tim understood he was just a little kid (but getting bigger all the time, penciled scores on the doorjamb to his room proved that) and that little kids sometimes were afraid of strange things. But cupboards and closets—where darkness seemed to dwell, as if it grew inside them and crept out to overtake the rest of the house when the lights went off—were definitely not his thing.

  “Nocturnal predators of the forest…?” he sounded out, wondering even as he spoke the words if he was pronouncing them close to correctly. That was the thing with this reading deal. He could figure out how he thought the words should sound, but half the time what he came up with wasn’t anywhere near right, and then he was embarrassed to discover just how far off he was.

  A hand flopped out from under the sink. Big knuckles, long fingers streaked with black, nails bitten to the quick. Black under the nails, too. Working man’s hands, that’s what his dad called them. “Channel locks,” the old man said. He might as well have been sounding out something for himself, as far as Tim was concerned.Channel locks? What are they? Something to do with the TV? No, his dad wanted a tool of some kind—he’d been doing this for twenty minutes, acting like one of those doctors on television performing an operation. Tim scanned the toolbox looking for something that might be channel locks. Process of elimination. He knew hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers. Lot of other, less familiar items were crowded in with those, however.

  And while he searched, another question weighed on his mind. “Dad, what does ‘nocturnal’ mean?”

  There, that had to be it. At least, it looked like it might lock down on something. He passed it to his dad, hoping it was right. He didn’t want to tick off the old man. Just a voice and a hand and some legs, right now, stained jeans and Nikes, but that was all he needed to terrorize Tim when he had a mad on.

  He might not even need the legs. Those arms, those hands, were pretty darn scary by themselves.

  Instead of “thanks,” or answering the question, Dad grumped, “Ask your mom.”

  As if on cue, Mom shoved open the door from the back hall with a laundry basket full of folded clothes. “ ‘Nocturnal’ means staying up all night,” she explained patiently. “Something you’re not going to do.” She put the basket down on the table. If there was one thing Mom was good at, it was folding laundry. Crisp. She could have taught soldiers how to get good sharp creases. But there were a lot more things she did well, Tim knew. He was crazy about his mom; like an angel, she was, a beacon of light in a dark, dark world. Tim watched her go to the cupboard, take out a glass, and fill it from a pitcher of water they kept on the counter.

  Dad chose that moment to extricate himself from under the sink. No, Tim decided, he had been wrong. The whole package was infinitely scarier than the voice and hands by themselves. Just the way he glanced at Tim, eyes dark and flashing with perceived rage, hair greasy, jaw stubbled, face streaked with sweat and grease, made the boy nervous. Dad had no reason to be angry—Tim was just doing his homework, and trying to hand over the correct tools when called upon to do so. But lack of a reason had never stopped the old man before. Tim was glad Mom was there. She could be a calming influence, sometimes. “I need the basin wrench from my toolbox,” Dad said.

  Tim started to reach for it, nocturnal animals forgotten for the moment, but Mom stepped between him and the box. She wore a dress, as she almost always did. Or maybe it was a skirt. Tim knew he was sometimes described as “precocious,” and he thought it meant something like smart, but for the life of him he could never remember the difference between a dress and a skirt. Either way, her legs were suddenly between him and the toolbox, like fleshy prison bars. “Your dad can get his own basin wrench.”

  Which Tim (precocious, after all) understood translated as, “go get ready for bed.” Before he could budge, though, the phone rang. The old man had been talking for as long as Tim could remember about putting an extension in the kitchen, but he hadn’t done so yet.

  Tugging himself to his feet with his left hand gripping the edge of the sink, Dad looked at Mom—a variation on the same glare he’d turned on Tim just seconds ago, like he was looking for a reason to get mad at someone and just hadn’t found it yet. “You expecting a call?”

  It didn’t matter if she was, obviously. The old man liked to be the one to answer the phone, especially at night. Mom shrugged, and he blew through the kitchen door to grab it, hauling the toolbox with him. The phone wouldn’t wait, but apparently neither would that basin wrench. Mom shrugged again, a small one, for Tim’s benefit, and handed him the glass of water, kissing the top of his head as she did so. She smelled like a flower garden, sweet and earthy at the same time. He loved her aroma. “Good night, Tim,” she said.

  “Night, Mom.”

  Which was the dismissal he had known was coming. He would read about nocturnal animals for a few minutes in bed, maybe, before he went to sleep. He tucked the book under his arm, took the water, and followed his dad’s path, out into the hall, toward the stairs and his room.

  To reach the stairs he had to pass
by his dad, who stood with the phone snugged between ear and shoulder, rummaging through the toolbox with his hands. “I’ll ask him,” he said into the phone. “Hold up a sec, buddy.”

  That was to Tim, who froze with one hand on the banister. He turned back to his dad expectantly. He felt like his veins had turned to ice water, and suddenly he really needed to go to the bathroom.

  “Call you later, Jack.” Dad hung up the phone, which was as far from its usual spot in the living room as its long cord would allow. Jack was a neighbor down the street, Tim knew. Which could only mean bad news. Tim started to feel a flush coming over him, tried to will it back.Don’t act like you did anything wrong , he told himself.Act like it’s just any other night…

  But his dad came up with the basin wrench, and then his full attention riveted on Tim. “You didn’t lose your Roberto Clemente baseball, did you?”

  Tim tried to control his breathing, his posture, anything the old man might be able to use as a lie detector. But he didn’t answer—words wouldn’t come to him at this moment. Instead he wiggled his shoulders in what he hoped was a casual shrug.

  “Mr. Krutchmer found one in his house.” Dad paused to let that sink in. When Tim didn’t reply, he continued. “On the wrong side of the living room window.”

  Tim forced out a response. Squeaky and flat. “No. I didn’t lose it.”I knew right where it was the whole time, he didn’t add. No sense intentionally antagonizing Dad. Unintentionally was bad enough.

  “You weren’t playing catch with Katie in his front yard?”

  Of course I was,Tim thought.His yard is flat, with plenty of grass. Perfect for it. Katie throws like a girl but she’s a good catch . He’d been the one who missed—it had bounced off the tips of his fingers and sailed into the window. They had both watched, paralyzed with fear, and then before the glass finished tinkling to the floor inside they took off running. “No.”

  “You sure?” Like that would work. Dad’s little out—like if Tim changed his mind and confessed, he wouldn’t get in trouble. Like that bogus story about George Washington and the cherry tree. Even at eight, Tim was sure that was a crock. If young George had actually chopped down that tree, it was a safe bet his old man had walloped him. The honest confession only worked on TV sitcoms, and those dads weren’t his. When it came to dealing with Tim’s father, absolute denial was the only hope. “You know what happens to bad little children who lie to their parents?”

  “Yeah.” No question about that. Dad’s theories on the subject were well known, and Tim didn’t especially want to be reminded.

  “All right. Go to bed.” The old man nodded toward the stairs. Tim didn’t have to be told twice. He had thought for a horrible moment that this evening, perfectly pleasant, in the warm embrace of his family, would turn into one of those other kinds of evenings. The kind where…

  Never mind. It hadn’t. The stairs were high and dark and Tim didn’t like going up them—too many shadows, and how could you trust shadows? But his room was up there, so he did. At the top, first door on the right, Tim stopped off in the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face. Those tasks done, he carried the water glass and the animal book into his room. He had left the lights on, but someone had come by and turned them off, he guessed.

  He flipped the switch by the door, turning on the overhead light. Then he crossed to the lamp on his bedside table, clicked it on as well, and put down the glass of water. With light flooding the room, chasing shadows, he changed into his Ninja Turtles pajamas. When the old man was on a rampage, this room could be a haven, a place of safety and comfort. All his best stuff was kept in here: his baseball bat and glove (but not his ball, anymore), a box of assorted trading cards, a couple of model rocket ships his dad had helped him build. He had his books, his comics, his toys. Action figures posed on one of his bookshelves, and Tim’s own drawings were taped to the walls. Turning off the overhead light, he clambered into bed. Took a breath. Swallowed hard.

  He switched off the bedside lamp.

  Darkness filled the room; shadows took over.

  Through parted curtains and a window he had left open about three inches, moonlight painted a pale block on one wall. A strange shape jutted into the middle of it, like some kind of threatening weapon.It’s just a branch from the tree outside , Tim told himself.It’s just a branch .

  But he didn’t like the looks of it, not one bit.

  Another odd shape loomed on his bedside table, close enough to strike without warning. He started, then got a better look, realizing it was a He-Man action figure that he had left standing there. Trying to calm the pounding of his heart, he yanked open the drawer of his bedside table and tipped the toy inside.

  At the foot of the bed, a nebula ball gave off its own minimal light, the current inside sparking and warping like a snake plugged into an electrical outlet. Suspended above, its underside washed in the nebula ball’s faint glow, a black mechanical bird caught a slight breeze that wafted in through the window, a breeze scented with night-blooming flowers that climbed a trellis outside. In the breeze, the bird flapped its wings once, then stopped.

  The nighttime world of the eight-year-old. In the dark, the veil between worlds was thin; anything could come to life. Anything could happen.

  Tim felt his hands begin to tremble under the covers.

  And across the room, his closet door creaked open.

  He caught his breath, held it, trying to see through the gloom without opening his eyes more than the tiniest slits. If he opened his eyes wide, it would see him—whateverit was. In the nightstand he kept a flashlight for emergencies. Its beam, he was sure, could keep anything at bay. Quickly, he spun under the covers, tugging open the same drawer into which he’d tossed He-Man, got a grip on the light. Before he could click it on, though, the closet door closed again. A dark form stared at him from near the closet, and Tim’s lower lip started to quiver.

  There was someone in here with him.

  He turned the flashlight on and aimed it at the form, as if it were a ray gun.

  It was nothing. His own bathrobe and some grass-stained jeans tossed over the back of his desk chair.You’re being stupid, Jensen , he told himself.

  He held the flashlight beam on it anyway, only half convinced. Watched for it to change back into a man.

  But then the light in his fist flickered, died, and Tim thought his heart would leap out his mouth and scurry under his pillow. Hazarding a glance back toward the chair, he saw that the form—no longer just discarded laundry and furniture—was standing, undeniably the shape of a human.

  Tim knew that man’s name. His dad had told it to him many times. Told him, too, that it was just a story, that the man wasn’t real.

  But there he was.

  And he was coming for Tim.

  Tim tried to scream but couldn’t; his voice snagged in his throat like a belch he couldn’t vocalize. Only one chance now. He pawed at the bedside light, got it turned on.

  As light sped across the room, pushing shadow before it, Tim’s robe and jeans fell to the floor, a pile of laundry.

  But they were on the chair before, he told himself.I know they were .

  And now they’re…they’re not. Why would they have fallen, unless…

  He didn’t even want to follow that thought.

  Tim braved the floor, despite the chance that something might snag his ankles from under the bed, and dove toward the wayward clothing. He scooped the jeans and robe up and jammed them into a dresser drawer. Grabbed the chair on which the clothes had so recently rested and muscled it over to the dresser, shoving its back up under the dresser drawer knob.

  Tim started to turn back to the bed, but something moved there, behind him. He just caught a glimpse, from the corner of his eye as he turned, just heard the slightest rustle. But it was enough to know.

  Something was over there, between him and the relative safety of his bed.

  And before he could turn the rest of the way around to see it, the bedside lamp c
licked off.

  Panic overtook him then. Flashlight out, bedside lamp gone, something in the room with him. Something malevolent—nice things didn’t hang out in the dark, in the rooms of little kids—and growing bigger.

  Tim backed away from the bed and whatever was on it, or in it, or maybe under it. But that meant backing toward the closet.

  And behind him, he knew with absolute certainty, the closet door was now open. He could feel it back there. He spun around.

  Wide open.

  The shadow man stood just inside the closet, right in the front, where, thanks to the moon and the open curtains, the darkness wasn’t quite total.

  Tim dove. If the man was in the closet, then he wasn’t at the bed any longer. Tim hit the bed, shaking, certain that any second would be his last. Trying to bury himself under his sheets, he whipped out an arm that sent his water glass sailing off the nightstand. It hit the hardwood floor, shattering wetly. Nothing he could do about that. It wasn’t safe out there. He burrowed under the covers. The only protection he had was the sheet over his head, and there was just enough light out in the dark room for Tim to see that the safety its thin fabric provided wasn’t sufficient. The shadow form closed on him, an arm reaching out, a hand grasping the fabric.