Sandman Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Though known largely for his epic tales of the American West including The Mountain Man series, New York Times bestselling author William W. Johnstone began his career by writing some of the most frightening and nightmare-inducing novels of his generation, including The Devil’s Heart and The Devil’s Kiss, which have developed a cult following in the years since their first publication.

  You can learn more about Johnstone’s books including upcoming releases and special promotions by visiting williamjohnstone.net or kensingtonbooks.com.

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  Sandman

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 1988 William W. Johnstone

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

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

  LYRICAL PRESS, LYRICAL UNDERGROUND, and the Lyrical Underground logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Office.

  First electronic edition: November 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-6018-3541-3

  Table of Contents

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  BOOK 1

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  BOOK TWO

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  BOOK THREE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  Dedicated to Jerry and Carolyn Dallman

  BOOK 1

  And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

  They danced by the light of the moon.

  —Edward Lear

  ONE

  “I hate you!” the boy hissed at his parents. His eyes shone with a strange, almost unnatural light, and through his hate and anger, he smiled, baring teeth, a cruel curving. His teeth were very white. “I hate you more than anything in this whole world. I wish you were all dead and rotting in the grave!”

  He ran out of the cottage and onto the sun-caressed and sea-kissed beach before his father could catch him and give him a whipping.

  “And I hate you, too, Janis!” he called over his shoulder. “I especially hate you. You damn bitch!”

  “Paul!” his father shouted. “You get back in here, and I mean right now!” Mark looked over at the cottage where the newlyweds were staying. But they were nowhere in sight.

  He marveled at their stamina.

  “Dead! Dead! Dead!” the boy shouted over the soft whispering of the waves on the sand. “That’s what I wish you all were—dead!”

  “Little twerp!” Janis muttered, giving the running form of her younger brother a dark look.

  “That will be quite enough of that, young lady,” her mother told her, although sometimes, like today, she silently agreed with her firstborn’s assessment of Paul.

  She left Janis sitting and muttering darkly, and went outside to sit on the steps beside her husband.

  Yuppies, it would seem at first glance. They were in their mid-thirties, very attractive people, trim and fit, each with a career that brought in six figures a year, and they lived very comfortably. Affluent would fit them nicely.

  With two lovely children.

  Well . . . one lovely child. Janis.

  Janis was a sweet girl. Ten years old and blond and already showing signs of blossoming into a beautiful woman.

  And there was eight-year-old Paul. A rotten little brat!

  He was highly intelligent and cruel as a rattlesnake, nice-looking and a sneak. Paul could have the manners of a prince and then turn around and spew verbal venom as deadly as any cobra’s.

  Mark shook his head. “I just don’t know what else to do, Connie.” She could see the tears in his eyes. “I thought this vacation would bring us all closer. Iron out . . . whatever has been troubling Paul. Looks like I blew it again. I just can’t get through to the boy.” He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and then blew his nose. “We’ve got a problem kid, my dear.”

  “I know. And if we’re to blame, I’ll take my share of it.”

  He cut his eyes to her. Serious and questioning eyes. “What blame, Connie? What have we done? Believe me, I’ve searched my soul trying to come up with something we did wrong.”

  She opened her mouth to interrupt. He waved her silent.

  “No, let me finish. I’ve got to get this off my chest. You know me, Connie—Checklist Charlie. That’s me. Before we left, I sat down and made a ledger—things that we have and haven’t done with and for our kids. Connie, we’re not perfect parents—I’ve never met the perfect parent—but we’ve tried. We try to maintain a Christian home without being strait-laced about it. We’ve never been drunk in front of the kids. Never. And we’ve geared our work around our kids. We spend more time with Janis and Paul than any other parents I can name. We always do things as a family unit. I’ve watched other couples our age, our friends. They don’t spend nearly as much time with their kids. Is that it? Have we spent too much time with ours? I don’t think so. But our work and our lives are geared around them. We include them in nearly everything we do. I’m at my wits end, Connie. I don’t know where to turn for help. I don’t know what to do. And I don’t like what I’ve been thinking lately. It scares me.”

  She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to hear it. But then some of her own thoughts about Paul had not been filled with motherly love. “What have you been thinking, Mark?”

  He sighed. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. “Connie, do you, well, believe in the bad-seed theory? That some people are just born bad?”

  “Do you?”

  They both looked around. Janis had left the main room of the cottage and gone to her bedroom. The door was closed, music filtering out to them.

  “Go on, Mark,” Connie urged. “Say it.”

  He met her eyes. “The boy is bad. He’s vicious, and we both know it. He’s been that way since he was old enough to comprehend. And you know he did that at a very early age. Too early. We can’t have a pet. They all disappear. You know why as well as I do. Paul kills them.”

  She went on the defensive. “We don’t know that for a fact, Mark!”

  “Come on.” There was a weary note in his voice. “Who killed the lovebirds—tore their heads off? Who set the canary on fire? And thought it was funny? That little—” He bit back the profanity he would have directed at his own son. “We’ve had three dogs since Paul was four years old. They all disappeared. I found the bloodstains, remember? Disappeared out of a chain-link fenced back yard. And Paul doesn’t h
ave any friends. None. The kids hate him because he’s a bully. Smart as a whip and mean as an aroused grizzly. And I might as well get it all off my chest: I just don’t trust him.”

  Connie sat for a time in silence, even under these strained conditions enjoying their closeness. “He steals, too,” she finally said.

  “Yeah. I know it. I’ve watched him sneak into our bedroom and go through my wallet. And your purse. I’ve whipped him for it. But I can’t whip him anymore. I just can’t.”

  “He peeks in on his sister while she’s undressing.”

  “I didn’t know that!” He expelled breath. “Connie, we both come from families who used the belt and the switch. Not often, but when we needed a spanking, we got a good one. Just the same, I don’t want to whip the boy anymore. Not now. It would be out of anger and not out of caring. I’m afraid if I did whip him, I’d lose what little control I have left, and I’d hurt him.”

  “I’ve marveled at your restraint the past couple of days, honey.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What are we going to do, Mark?”

  “I don’t know. Take him to see a doctor when we get back, I guess. But I do know one thing.”

  She waited, dreading to hear what she had felt in her heart for a long time.

  “It just can’t go on like this.”

  Again, she waited.

  “He’s sick, Connie. Paul is mentally ill.”

  * * *

  “Hey, little mon!” The tall man with the pretty honey-colored lady caught Paul, swung him around, and deposited him gently on his feet, in the sand. “What you all upsot about?”

  The boy jerked free and faced them, no fear in him. His eyes blazed with a wild light. “Getoutof my way or I’ll kill you!”

  The man and woman laughed, but it was a strange-sounding laugh. Hollow and deep. The woman said, “Oh, will you now? Non, I don’ tink so. I tink you need someones to talk to. Am I rat?”

  The man wore no shirt or shoes. Only a pair of very clean and very white trousers. The woman was slender and pretty, dressed in very bright colors, a multicolored bandana around her head. She wore a heavy necklace of strange-looking amulets.

  And Paul knew they were amulets.

  He stared at the pair. “I haven’t seen either of you around this place before. Where did you come from? And I’ll tell you right now: I don’t like you!”

  The man laughed and laughed. He bent over and slapped his leg. “Ma mon, you too little to be speakin’ to me lak dat. I’m a big black mons. You just a little white boy. Ain’t you ’fraid of me?”

  “Hell, no!”

  Again, they laughed. Exchanged odd looks. Odd to Paul.

  “How come you was in such a hurry, ma little mon?” the tall man asked.

  Paul stepped back and studied the man and woman. He had not seen them as he ran. And that was odd. They seemed to have materialized out of the sand. That was even more odd. Paul had prowled the area around the cottage, at night and during the day, for at least a mile in every direction, except out to sea. But he had never seen these people before. He knew the cottages along this stretch of beach were very expensive, but he sensed the pair were not tourists.

  “I’m running away,” he finally admitted.

  “Ma little mon, you can’t run nowheres far. You on an island.”

  “I know that. But I can run for a while. Before I have to go back.”

  “Dat’s de truth. And if you don’t go back?”

  “The police will come after me.”

  “How come you running so hard away from your parents, mon?”

  “I never said it was from my parents.”

  “Dat’s true. But I speak de truth, too, don’ I, little mon?” His eyes never left Paul’s face.

  And both his eyes and the woman’s eyes blazed with the same wild light found in Paul’s eyes.

  And Paul knew it.

  “Yeah. OK. You’re right.”

  “You won’ sit down and talk to me and ma woman?”

  “Why should I?”

  The man shrugged. “Why not? You ain’ got no ones else to talk to, rat?”

  Paul plopped down onto the warm sand. But it felt different to him. Softer, more pliable. And . . . He struggled for the word.

  Friendly.

  The woman sat on his left side, the man to his right. “Your poppa done give you a lickin’, huh?” the woman asked.

  “Not yet. But he will.”

  “You been bad boy this day?”

  Paul noticed the man was picking up handfuls of sand and allowing the grains to slowly trickle through his strong fingers.

  “They say I have.”

  “But you don’ tink so yourself, hah?” she asked.

  “I am what I am,” Paul said. “I cannot help being that.”

  “Dat’s truth, too,” the man said. He ruffled Paul’s blond hair. “What you won’ from us, little boy?”

  Paul slapped the man’s hand away, and cut his mean eyes from him. “I haven’t asked you for a damn thing!”

  The man laughed. “Hoo, but you did ax. Dat’s why we come.”

  “Come from . . . where?”

  The woman waved her hand around and around. The wooden amulets jangled with her movements. Paul could see she wore no bra under her dress. Her breasts moved, too. “From out dere, little mon.”

  Paul grunted.

  “You ain’t got no friends nowhere, has you, boy?” the man asked.

  “I don’t need friends. Nor do I want them. I hate people.”

  “You don’t won’ friends unless you can control them. Ain’ dat rat, boy?”

  “Maybe.” Paul wondered how the man knew that. But not really. He thought he knew why, thought he’d known all along.

  “Other peoples make fun of your birt’mark, don’ dey, hey, boy?”

  Paul sat very still. Now he knew. “I won’t ask how you know about my birthmark.”

  “I tink you already knows,” the woman said.

  And Paul did.

  It came to him in a wild rush. And his smile became a savage thing, ugly to look at.

  But to the man and woman, it was beautiful.

  “We was once lak you.” The woman’s voice was low-pitched, yet hollow sounding like the man’s. “Long time back. We comes back now and den. When ones wit’ us calls. Lak you done called las’ night.”

  Paul thought about that. He had slipped out of the cottage last night, as he had done every night since his arrival on the island, and walked the deserted beach, by himself. No fear in him. And as the sea breeze whispered around the boy, the waves licking at his feet like a warm blood-salty tongue, he had thought the darkest of thoughts. Evil.

  And he knew he had come home.

  At last.

  “You see now, don’ you, boy?” The man spoke, his eyes on the shore. “’Pose we could hep you, little mon. What would you do wit’ de power you axed for las’ night?”

  “Did I ask you for anything?” Paul lied. He had, but he wanted to be sure of the man and woman. His father might have sent them, to trick him.

  Paul sensed he was very close now, and he knew he must be very careful.

  “Yeah, you axed.”

  “Yes. I did, didn’t I?”

  The man and woman waited.

  “You’ve been in my dreams, both of you. You’re the ones who told me to urge my father to bring us here.”

  “Rat.”

  “Am I special?”

  “You special. Me and Nicole been waitin’ a long time for you to come.”

  “You’re Mantine.” Not a question.

  “Rat.”

  “You’re dead.”

  “Rat. But I comes back whenever I wants. Me and de woman. You got to tell us, boy. What you won’?”

  “I would have my way,” Paul said savagely.

  The woman began to chant very softly. Paul could not understand the words.

  Mantine began to strike the sand with the palm of his hand.

  “I would
recruit others to follow.”

  Nicole continued to chant.

  Mantine struck the sand with his hand.

  “I would serve, like I served hundreds of years ago. ”

  The chanting became a dark voice. The sand-striking a drumbeat.

  “I would destroy!” Paul damned himself as he had done in centuries past.

  The chanting stopped. Mantine began to mold a pile of sand. He spat into it, moistening it. Then the woman leaned over and spat into the sand. Paul could see her bare breasts moving as the dress parted.

  Paul spat into the sand.

  He watched as tiny figures were formed in the sand.

  “You got friends now, Paul,” Mantine told him. “Dey do what you tell dem to do.”

  “How many friends?”

  “How many grains of sand does you see?”

  “Thousands.”

  “Den dat’s what you got. Touch de sand, Paul.”

  Paul touched the damp sand. It was very hot to his fingers, almost unbearable. He grimaced against the pain.

  Under his small hand, the grains began to move and glow. The glow became intensely painful, but Paul would not remove his hand. Then voices began to speak out of the glow. Screaming was heard. Profanity. The sounds of sexual assault, of depravity, torture, and more debasement than one could endure and still remain sane. It was horrible.

  Paul loved it.

  He was touching home. Touching the dark soul of his real father.

  Mantine said, “You leave de islands in a short time, boy. But me and Nicole be rat behind you. De t’ree of us is togedder at las’.”

  “It’s been so long, brother and sister.”

  “Yeah. But now dere ain’t nothin’ kin pull us apart no more.”

  Paul looked at Nicole’s breasts. Felt an ancient stirring within him, and knew he had never been a boy. Not really. Only inside a child’s shape and form.

  “Dey’s a bucket back yonder.” Mantine jerked his head. “You fetch it, Paul.”