24 Hours

“He’s not picking up,” Hickey said, looking worried enough for it to distract him from his immediate peril. “What the hell?”

“He hasn’t missed a call yet! Why this one?”

Hickey shrugged. “How do I know? He’s a damn retard. Now get that knife away from me, will you? We’ve got to figure out what’s happening up there.”

“Shut up,” Karen snapped. “Let me think.”

“What are you going to do? You can’t sit like that all night.”

“I said, ‘Shut up!’”

“Okay. But why don’t you go ahead and give me that blow job while you’re deciding?”

Karen blinked in amazement, and Hickey slammed the telephone into the side of her head.

Huey had circled back around the cabin, poking at bushes and trying to scare Abby, but now his voice had faded to almost nothing as he worked his way along the dirt road leading away from the cabin.

She crouched in the dark, her head filled with images of snakes curling and uncurling like whips in the weeds around her. During the last few minutes, beetles had crawled over her feet, and fat mosquitoes had feasted on her exposed arms and face. She was afraid to swat them, because Huey might hear the sound and come running back. Part of her wanted to find a tree and climb it, but that would surely make too much noise. Besides, snakes could climb. She didn’t think they slept in the trees, though.

As she squashed a mosquito bloody against her forearm, a faint ringing sounded in her ears. She tried to focus on it, but it disappeared. Then it came again-louder, she thought-or maybe it just seemed louder because she was listening for it. Her heart thumped.

It was a telephone.

The ringing was coming from the cabin. Huey must have left his phone inside when he went looking for her! She got up to run to the cabin, then stopped. What if he had gone back to the cabin without her seeing him? What if he was inside now? No. The phone was still ringing, and if Huey was inside, he would have answered it. She grabbed her doll and the ice chest and raced out of the trees toward the glowing windows.

White light exploded in Karen’s brain. As her thoughts scattered into meaningless electrochemicals, her cerebellum executed the impulse her cerebral cortex had been holding in check for the past minute. Like a frog’s leg touched by an electrode, the hand holding the scalpel jerked back toward her stomach.

Hickey shrieked like a hog having its throat cut.

The white light shattered into stars, then faded to an unstable image of a screaming man. Karen looked down.

All she saw was blood.

Abby couldn’t find the phone. It wasn’t on the table or the broken old couch. But it was still ringing.

She looked at the floor. There was a big puddle of spilled milk and Cap’n Crunch by the bedroom door. The phone was lying half under the upside-down salad bowl Huey had put the cereal into. Abby darted to the puddle and reached for the wet cell phone, but even as she did, she knew something wasn’t right. The phone’s numbers and window were dark. She pressed SEND and put the phone to her ear.

She heard only silence. “No,” she keened, terrified that her mother had hung up.

The phone rang again.

“Hello? Hello! Mama?”

The ringing bell sounded again. It wasn’t coming from the cell phone. It was coming from the bedroom. She ran in and looked around. An old-timey black phone sat on the floor on the far side of the bed. It rang again.

She grabbed the receiver. “Hello?… Hello!”

She heard a dial tone.

“Hello?”

The phone did not ring again. She stared at it in disbelief. How could her mother stop ringing, just when she was about to pick up? Shaking with fear, she stared at the rotary dial and spoke softly as she tried to remember. “Nine-nine-one? Nine… nine-one-one. Nine-one-”

“Abby?” Huey’s voice floated into the bedroom. “Don’t run away from Huey! You’re going to get me in trouble. Big trouble.”

She froze.

The voice sounded close, but she didn’t hear footsteps. She was too afraid to peek outside the bedroom door. She grabbed the Barbie and the cell phone off the bed and ran flat-out for the back door.

Outside, she ran past a small shed and crouched beside a tree. There was just enough moonlight to see the POWER button. “Nine-one-one,” she said with certainty. She switched on the phone, carefully punched in 911, pressed SEND, and put the phone to her ear.

“Welcome to CellStar,” said a computer voice. “You are currently in a nonemergency-service zone. Please-”

“Is this the police?” Abby cried. “I need a policeman!”

Tears formed in her eyes as the voice refused to acknowledge her. She hit END and began to dial the only number she could think of: home.

“Six-oh-one,” she whispered. “Eight-five-six-four-seven-one-two.”

She hit SEND again.

A man’s voice answered this time, but it was a computer, too. “We’re sorry,” it said. “You must first press a one or zero before making this call. Thank you.”

“Press one first?” Abby echoed, feeling panic in her chest. “Press one first. Press one first…”