Black Creek Crossing

by John Saul

  “You won’t believe it,” he said as he dipped the ladle into the kettle once again, this time offering it to Angel. “It’s not even hot.”

  Though Angel could see the steam rising from the ladle, she still held it to her lips and took a careful sip. Seth was right—it was cool! Tipping the ladle further, she drained it quickly, and felt the coolness spread through her. Houdini had now approached and sat by her feet. Dipping the ladle once more into the kettle, Angel held it close to the floor, right under the cat’s nose. Not even bothering to sniff it first, Houdini lapped thirstily, sucking up the liquid until the ladle was empty.

  Ten minutes later, with the kettle empty, the ladle put back on its peg above the counter, and the book returned to the niche behind the loose stone in the wall of the fireplace, they closed the cabin and climbed the stone berm.

  When they got to the top, Angel turned around and looked down at the stone they used to mark the spot where they’d buried Houdini. “Let’s try something,” she said to Seth as she recalled the strange words of the recipe’s second verse. Focusing on the stone, she tried to visualize it rising into the air until it was level with the cabin’s roof.

  For several long seconds nothing happened. Then, as she and Seth watched, the stone slowly rose from the ground, seemed to float in the air for a moment, and dropped back to the earth.

  Chapter 35

  EITHER ONE OF THEM SPOKE AS THEY FOLLOWED Houdini back along the trail to Black Creek Road, but as they emerged from the woods and stepped onto the solid asphalt of the roadway, Seth finally voiced the question that had been in his mind ever since they’d turned away from the cabin and started home: “You think it really happened?”

  Angel shrugged. “We both saw it, didn’t we?”

  “But how?” Seth pressed. “I mean—”

  “I don’t know!” Angel broke in. “But I know what we both saw, so it must have happened.”

  “But—”

  “All I did was what the book said to do.”

  Sensing that Angel had no more idea than he did about the rock rising into the air, Seth lapsed back into silence until they came to the last bend in Black Creek Road before Angel’s house would become visible—which meant they would be just as visible from the house. “What if your dad sees me?” he asked, stopping before the house came into view.

  “Then I guess he’ll be mad at me,” Angel sighed. “But if Mom’s there, it’ll be all right.”

  “What if she’s not there?”

  Angel shrugged as if it wouldn’t make much difference, but she knew that if her mother wasn’t there, and her father had started drinking—She’ll be there, she told herself. And Dad won’t be drinking.

  But a few minutes later, when they saw the house, she knew she was wrong about at least one thing—the car wasn’t in sight, which told her that at least one of her parents had gone somewhere. And if it was her father who was home, and if he’d been drinking . . .

  She felt Houdini pressing up against her leg, and bent down to scratch him behind the ears. “You’ll take care of me, won’t you?” she asked, trying to make her words lighter than her mood.

  “M-Maybe we should go get a Coke at the drugstore, or something,” Seth suggested. But as Angel glanced around at the gathering darkness, she shook her head.

  “I better go in.” Yet she made no move to start across the lawn toward the house. Seth waited for her to speak again, and at last she did. “A-Are you scared?” Angel asked, her stammer betraying her feelings.

  Seth nodded. “I—Well, I didn’t really think any of it would—I mean—” His eyes dropped to Houdini, who was looking up at them as if he understood every word they were saying. “I guess I still thought maybe he wasn’t really dead, and must have dug his way out of the hole even though we couldn’t see how. But when . . .” His voice faded away, but he didn’t have to finish for Angel to know what he was talking about.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go back there,” she said. “Maybe we should just pretend like we never found the book or the cabin at all.”

  “But we didn’t find it,” Seth said. “Houdini led us to it, and—”

  “Angel!” The single word rang out like a shot, and Seth and Angel whirled around to see her father standing on the front porch of the old house, a bottle of beer clutched in his upraised fist. “You get in here, you hear me?”

  Angel glanced at Seth, her face paling. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Seth held up a hand as if to stop her, but her father was already off the porch and starting across the lawn toward them.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from my daughter?” Marty snarled.

  “We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Angel began, stepping in front of Seth, as if to block her father.

  “You get in the house,” Marty said, shoving her aside. “I’ll get to you when I’m done with him!” But Seth was already gone, running down Black Creek Road toward town. “Coward!” Marty bellowed. Draining the last of the beer in a single long swallow, he flung the bottle after Seth, then turned back to the house as it shattered on the pavement thirty feet short of where he’d been aiming.

  Retreating back into the house, he slammed the door behind him. There was no sign of Angel in the living room, so Marty continued on into the kitchen, pulled another beer out of the refrigerator, knocked the cap off on the edge of the counter, then sucked half of it down his throat before mounting the stairs. When he got to the top, he paused for a moment, glowering at the closed door to his daughter’s room.

  His daughter, who didn’t seem to give a damn about what he told her.

  Well, now was as good a time as any to teach her a lesson.

  He started toward her door, lost his balance, but caught himself before he fell. Twisting the doorknob, he flung the door open without knocking.

  Angel was on the bed, huddled up against the headboard, her knees drawn up to her chest.

  In her arms she held a cat.

  The same black cat with the white blaze on its chest that had attacked him yesterday.

  “Get that thing outta here,” he said, his voice rasping, his fingers clenching the beer bottle.

  The cat bared its teeth, hissing at him.

  Draining the beer, Marty flipped the bottle around so he was holding it by the neck, then smashed it against the floor. As razor-sharp shards of brown glass shot across the floor, he straightened up again. Now he held the broken neck of the bottle in his right hand. Three jagged points, one much longer than the other two, were pointing at the cat.

  The cat, and Angel too.

  “Wanta try it again, cat?” Marty whispered, moving closer to the bed, jabbing at the cat with the broken bottle.

  Angel’s eyes widened as she stared at the broken beer bottle and the fury in her father’s eyes. “Daddy, don’t,” she pleaded. “I—I’ll put him outside.”

  “I don’t want him outside,” Marty replied, moving closer. “I want him dead! Should’ve killed him last time . . .”

  Angel felt every muscle in Houdini’s body grow tense as he prepared to launch himself at her father. For a moment she felt paralyzed, but then her mind focused, and again she remembered the rock that had suddenly lifted off the ground and flown through the air.

  And in her mind, she visualized not a stone, but her father, and not the top of the bluff, but the bottom of the stairs.

  As if grasped by some immense unseen force, Marty Sullivan was suddenly propelled backward out of the room, his head crashing against the top of the doorway as he passed through. A moment later Angel heard him tumbling down the stairs.

  Stunned by what had just happened—barely able to believe it—Angel remained motionless on the bed until Houdini squirmed free of her grasp and bounded through the open door. Then Angel got up and quickly followed.

  Looking down, she saw her father lying at the foot of the stairs, sprawled out on his back, his eyes closed. The neck of the beer bottle lay next to his right hand,
and he was bleeding from a deep cut in his cheek where the broken glass must have slashed him as he tumbled down the stairs.

  Houdini sniffed at the wound, then licked at the blood that was running down Marty’s cheek.

  Was he dead?

  Angel started down the stairs, but then her father stirred, tried to sit up, and dropped back down again. “I’m gonna kill you,” he mumbled, trying to push the cat away. “I’m gonna . . .” His voice faded away and he passed out again, and Angel suddenly knew what she had to do.

  Hurrying downstairs, she skirted around her father, found the dustpan and broom in the closet under the stairs, and hurried back up to her room. A moment later she was back downstairs, where she dumped the broken glass from the dustpan onto the kitchen floor and put the dustpan and broom back where she’d found them. Then, picking up Houdini, she went back up to her room, closed the door, and sat down to wait, silently praying that her mother would come home before her father woke up again.

  After he left Angel’s—or, to be completely honest with himself about it, after he’d run in the face of her father’s fury—Seth didn’t slow down until he was certain he was around the bend and out of sight. When he finally paused to catch his breath, he started feeling guilty, and wondered if he shouldn’t go back and make sure Angel was all right. The sun had finally set, though, and as he realized how late it was getting—and how late he’d be for dinner—the thought of his own father’s rage made him continue toward town.

  Night had almost completely fallen by the time he came to the village, but that hadn’t bothered him—he’d learned years ago that the darkness of night was his best protection from Chad Jackson and his friends; if they couldn’t see him, they couldn’t start after him. He walked past the cemetery, as he’d done hundreds of times, and as always, was not the least bit scared. Of course, this was the first time he’d walked past it since he and Angel came upon the story of Forbearance Wynton and her mother in the library, and then found the graves of their family—but not their own—the next day.

  Still, he hadn’t done more than glance into the graveyard, and there was nothing there that frightened him. No shadowy figures lurking among the gravestones, no rustling sounds, no oddly cold drafts, nor anything else that might have suggested the presence of anything out of the ordinary.

  He peered into the drugstore as he passed it, but it had closed half an hour ago, and the only lights still on were way at the back, where the pharmacy and the office were. If Chad and Jared had even been there earlier, they were long gone.

  In fact, everyone seemed to be gone.

  The streets were empty, and no cars passed him as he walked past the square, turned the corner onto Court Street, and started up toward Elm.

  As he was passing the small park next to the courthouse, the first sense that something wasn’t quite right came over him, but as some instinct deep inside him sounded the first warning, he tried to dismiss it.

  Still, he quickened his pace.

  The feeling persisted, but as he continued up Court Street, he told himself it didn’t mean anything. And besides, it would be weirder if he didn’t feel anything strange after what had happened out at the cabin. Even now, he wasn’t sure how much of it had actually been real. Certainly, he had a clear memory of going out and gathering the stuff he and Angel needed to follow the recipe in the book, but he still couldn’t quite believe there wasn’t some more reasonable explanation for how Houdini had come back to life and gotten out of the grave where they’d buried him than some kind of magic.

  But Houdini had been dead—he was sure of it.

  And he was just as sure that no one else had been out there messing with the grave either.

  A chill passed over him—the same kind of chill that occurred in horror stories when there was a ghost in the room. But he wasn’t in a room, and wasn’t even anywhere near the graveyard anymore.

  He walked even faster, then forced himself to slow down, sure that if he began running he’d get even more scared than he was right now.

  But there’s nothing to be scared of, he told himself. There’s nothing in the park—or anywhere else. Yet even as he silently reassured himself, the eerie feeling only grew stronger that something—or someone—was there, just outside the limits of his vision.

  Hiding in the darkness.

  He gave in to the impulse to move faster past the park, yet his presentiment of danger only grew stronger. At the next corner, he paused in the bright pool of light flooding from the fixture hanging in the middle of the intersection. But instead of feeling safer, the bright light left him feeling exposed. Whatever the danger was, it was creeping through the darkness, surrounding him, using the shelter of night to trap him in a noose that would slowly tighten until—

  A strangled sound welling up from his throat, Seth darted off the curbing, dashed across the street, and hurried along the sidewalk until he was out of the pool of light and the shadows of the trees swallowed him up.

  Then, just as the terrible feeling of danger lurking close by began to ease, a figure stepped out from behind a tree to stand in the middle of the sidewalk ten yards ahead, blocking his way.

  Seth stopped dead in his tracks, his heart pounding as the sense of danger came flooding back. But this time it was no presentiment. This time he could see the danger, and even before he heard the voice, he knew who it was.

  “Hi, Beth,” Zack Fletcher said softly. “Thought you might be coming this way.”

  Seth stood perfectly still, wondering what to do. He was still three blocks from home, and there was no way he could outrun Zack, even if Zack were by himself.

  Which, Seth was certain, he wasn’t.

  Chad Jackson and Jared Woods would be hidden somewhere in the darkness nearby, guarding Zack’s flanks.

  And making certain he had no way to escape.

  “Tell me how you did it,” Zack said with a cold quietness in his voice that frightened Seth far more than any furious yell would have.

  “D-Did what?” Seth countered, knowing what Zack was talking about and stalling for time. He glanced around, searching for some sign of Chad and Jared, but saw no flicker of movement in the darkness and heard no crackling of the unraked leaves that lay thick on the lawn beside him.

  “Don’t mess with me, Baker,” Zack snarled, moving closer, his right hand squeezed into a fist. “You couldn’t beat me at anything on the best day of your life. So you cheated.”

  “Like you and your friends cheat off my homework whenever you can?” Seth heard himself say, the words having risen unbidden into his throat and emerging from his mouth before he realized he was going to speak. And yet, even as he saw Zack’s whole body tense with anger, the fear that had filled him a second ago began to drain away. He glanced around again, and once more neither heard nor saw any sign of Chad Jackson or Jared Woods.

  And then he heard himself speak again, and once more had no memory of formulating the thought before he uttered it: “By yourself, aren’t you, Zack? Big mistake.”

  Zack, who was slowly but steadily closing the distance between them, stopped, and for just an instant appeared taken aback.

  And now, Seth knew what he was going to say before he spoke: “Why don’t you just go away?”

  Zack Fletcher’s eyes widened. “You gone nuts, Beth?” he asked, but the dangerous, quiet tone in his voice was gone, and Seth thought he heard a quaver, at least of uncertainty if not quite of fear.

  “Don’t ever call me that again,” Seth said. “I don’t think I like it.”

  At that, Zack seemed to regain his self-confidence. “Yeah? Why should I care what you like?” He moved closer again, his fist cocked, and Seth could almost feel the pain of the blow that was about to strike him. “You’re nothing but a—”

  But before Zack could finish, he rose off his feet, his head smashing against the lowest branch of the oak tree in whose shadow both boys stood. And then he dropped back to the sidewalk, sprawled out flat on his back, his head crashing agains
t the concrete sidewalk.

  As Zack moaned and whimpered, cradling his head in his hands, Seth edged around him. “I warned you,” he said quietly. “All you had to do was walk away.”

  Chapter 36

  YRA SULLIVAN WAS LATE, WHICH SHE KNEW meant that Marty would be angry, which meant he’d be drinking. As she pulled the bag of groceries out of the trunk of the Chevelle she braced herself for the tirade she would almost certainly face the moment she opened the front door. It was her fault, of course—she should have gone to the store earlier, which she would have done if the thunderstorm hadn’t swirled in out of nowhere. In fact, she’d been about to leave the house when the first bolt of lightning lashed out of the sky and a moment later the house shook under the crash of the thunderbolt that came on the heels of the lightning.

  And then the skies had opened.

  She’d peered out the window for a few minutes, waiting for the rain to let up, but finally took off her coat and went back to unpacking the last of the boxes that were still in the unoccupied bedroom upstairs, while Marty settled in to watch a football game. The lightning was ruining the reception and he could barely see anything on the flickering screen, but instead of shutting off the set and helping her with the boxes, he kept opening more beers and grumbling that she should have had the cable turned on last week. Knowing better than to argue with him, she kept working until the storm finally passed, then went out to get what she needed to feed them that evening.

  Apparently, everybody else had the same idea, so it took her twice as long to get out of the store as she’d planned, and now Marty would be angry. Well, it couldn’t be helped. He was her cross to bear, and whatever pain she had to endure in this life would be rewarded in the next.

  As she lifted the groceries out of the back of the car and headed for the house, she saw a light glowing in Angel’s window, which was a relief. At least she could stop worrying about where Angel might be.

  Preparing for whatever anger Marty might have been nursing while she was gone—and knowing it would be amplified by her lateness—Myra wondered for a brief second what it might be like to have a husband who actually came out to carry the groceries in for her. Banishing the thought almost as quickly as it occurred to her, and offering up a quick prayer for forgiveness to the Holy Mother, she pushed the front door open.