Black Creek Crossing

by John Saul

  “Now what?” Seth asked as Angel set the jar on the table.

  “One of us adds our own blood to the jar and drinks it. Then we wash the jar out, and the other one does it.”

  Saying nothing more, Seth picked up the knife, cut his finger, and squeezed a few drops of blood into the clear liquid in the jar. It vanished in an instant, leaving not even a hint of pink to betray its presence. Waiting only until the fluid was cool enough so it wouldn’t scald his mouth, he lifted the jar to his lips and swallowed the contents.

  He rinsed the jar at the sink and Angel refilled it. Repeating the same ritual Seth had just performed, but using her own blood instead of his, she too drained the contents of the jar.

  A moment later she picked up a second jar from the counter and handed it to Seth. “It’s the other one,” she said. “The one that lets you lift things. At least you can stop Zack from coming after you for a while.”

  Silently, Seth tipped the second jar up, draining it even faster than he had the first.

  A few minutes later, leaving no sign that they’d been there at all, Angel and Seth followed Houdini out the door of the cabin, pulled the door closed, and scrambled to the top of the berm of shattered granite. Climbing down the other side, they crossed the clearing and disappeared into the forest. Even though it was almost completely dark now, they had no trouble following Houdini as he led them back toward Black Creek Road.

  “Maybe we should go to the drugstore and get a Coke or something,” Seth suggested. They were in front of the Sullivans’ house, and both of them could see her father framed in the window, staring out at the darkness of the evening.

  Angel shook her head. “I better not. He can’t see us, but if I’m any later, he’ll just be even madder when I get back.”

  “I guess,” Seth agreed, and Angel could hear the disappointment in his voice. “I guess I’d better be going.” Despite his effort to cover it, Angel could hear the fear in Seth’s voice, just as she had when he’d asked her to go to the drugstore for a Coke the last time.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

  He cocked his head and managed a small grin. “Well, I was okay last night, so I guess I should be able to make it home, shouldn’t I?”

  “Zack probably won’t try anything,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Seth replied, but his expression told her that he was worried about it. “So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he finally said. Still, he lingered another few seconds before turning and starting to walk away.

  Houdini, who had been sitting patiently while they talked, stood up, looked up at Angel, then started after Seth. The cat took a few paces, paused, and turned to gaze at Angel, and for a moment seemed uncertain. But then, turning away from her, Houdini hurried after Seth, catching up to him before he was fifty yards down the road.

  “Hey,” Seth said, bending down to scratch the cat’s ears. “What are you doing?” He straightened up and looked back at Angel, but before he could send the cat back, she waved and turned toward her house. “You sure you want to come with me?” Seth asked, squatting down. Houdini promptly rolled over to have his stomach scratched. “Okay,” Seth sighed as he complied. “I’m not going to try to tell you what to do.”

  Twenty minutes later he was only a block from his house, and so far had seen no sign of Chad, Zack, or Jared. Instead of going up Court Street as he usually did—where Zack had caught him yesterday—this time he went around to the other side of the park and walked up Church Street, staying across the street from the park, just in case. Coming to Elm Street, he didn’t make the turn toward his house, but went halfway up the next block. Now all he had to do was cut down the alley and come into his house through the back door.

  He paused at the mouth of the alley, and as he peered down the long, shadowy row of garages—behind any one of which Zack, Chad, Jared, or anyone else could be hiding—he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to go back down to Elm Street and use the front door. Even if Chad and Jared were around, they’d be at the other end of the street anyway.

  But if they saw him . . .

  Better to use the alley, he decided.

  With Houdini darting ahead of him, Seth started down the narrow graveled lane, leaving the faint yellowish glow of the streetlights behind.

  As the darkness gathered around him, he thought he saw a faint movement off to the right, but when he turned to look, there was nothing.

  Nothing but a gate that was slightly ajar.

  Was that what he’d seen?

  Had it moved?

  Or had someone come through it? Someone who was now hiding in the shadows of the garage, which were even darker than the night?

  Hunching his shoulders against the darkness—and whatever it might conceal—he hurried his step.

  He was halfway to his own garage when Houdini suddenly froze.

  As the cat’s back arched and it stared straight ahead, Seth felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and knew then that someone was behind him.

  He’d walked into a trap.

  Spinning around, he found himself staring at a dark figure silhouetted against the glow of the streetlight at the end of the alley. For a moment both Seth and the dark figure froze, and then the figure raised one if its arms. Now Seth could see the broken beer bottle clutched in the hand at the end of the uplifted arm, and as the figure raised it even higher, so that one of its jagged points was aimed directly at him, it caught the light from behind. As if mesmerized by the glittering object, Seth’s mind went blank, and a cold sheen of sweat broke out over his body.

  Behind him, he heard a low hiss from Houdini, then a voice.

  Jared Woods’s voice!

  “Jeez! It’s that cat!”

  The silhouetted figure moved closer, and now the razor-sharp blade of broken glass was just a few inches from Seth’s face. He could almost feel the glass tearing into his flesh, laying his face and neck open, slashing at his arteries—

  From behind Seth came a muted scream, just loud enough to break the strange spell the broken glass had cast on Seth. He whirled around to see the barely visible figure of Jared Woods clutching at his face.

  Houdini! The cat must have leaped at Jared and—

  The thought was cut off by another scream, and once again Seth whirled.

  What he saw made him stagger back a pace. The figure holding the broken bottle—who Seth was now sure had to be Chad Jackson—was standing stock-still. The broken bottle was still clutched in his right hand, but even in the dim light coming from the streetlight at the end of the alley, Seth was certain he could see something dripping from it.

  Blood.

  What had happened?

  Had Chad slashed himself? He remembered, then, the last lines of the verse whose instructions he and Angel had followed only an hour earlier: . . . the payn will turn from thee and fall upon thine enemie.

  As Seth stood frozen and gaping, Chad moved again, and then was hurling himself toward Seth, the broken bottle raised high. Even in the darkness he could see an insane light glowing in Chad’s eyes, and he knew what was about to happen.

  Chad was going to kill him.

  Seth’s reflexes instinctively took over, and his mind conjured a single image.

  An image of Chad’s attack turning back on him, just as the verse had said.

  At almost the same moment, Chad lurched backward, as if an unseen force had pulled him from behind, and then he was writhing on the ground as he tried to escape the weapon that was wielded by his own hand. Out of the corner of his eye Seth saw Jared Woods, staring in stupefaction at the struggling figure thrashing in the alley, then turning to stagger away into the darkness.

  A moment later, just as the lethal point of the bottle was about to rip into Chad’s neck, Seth let go of the vision he’d conjured in his imagination.

  And as the image of Chad slashing at his own neck vanished, Chad dropped the broken bottle. Then he lurched to his feet and stumbled after Jared.

  As the
y disappeared into the darkness at the far end of the alley, Seth turned back to the gate to his own backyard, but paused to look for Houdini.

  The cat had disappeared.

  With the image of Chad struggling in the darkness to avoid the ravages of his own weapon still etched in his memory, Seth pushed through the gate, slipped into his house, and went up the back stairs to his room. He closed the door, dropped his backpack on his bed, then looked at himself in the mirror.

  On the outside, he looked exactly as he had this morning when he went to school.

  But on the inside, he knew something had changed.

  He could have made Chad Jackson kill himself just now, could have made him use the broken bottle to slash his own throat.

  Instead, he’d let Chad go.

  But now, in a small dark corner of his mind, all the things Chad had done to him over the years rose up out of his memory, all the humiliations and all the beatings, and he found himself wishing that he hadn’t let Chad go.

  He wished, instead, that he’d finished what Chad had begun.

  In his mind Seth Baker began to visualize what he could have done, and as the images of Chad destroying himself grew clearer, Seth felt a strange power growing inside him.

  Maybe, after all, it wasn’t too late.

  Maybe he could still have a day of reckoning with Chad.

  Focusing his mind, he once more turned his enemy upon himself. . . .

  Chapter 43

  E TRIED TO KILL ME!” CHAD JACKSON HOWLED. “THAT little shit tried to fuckin’ kill me!” He and Jared were in Chad’s bedroom.

  The broken bottle was gone—dropped somewhere as he’d fled down the alley to the safety of his house. As he stared at the blood covering his right hand, he felt as if he were going to throw up. He hurried to the bathroom and got there just in time to drop to his knees in front of the toilet before a violent contraction seized his stomach and he felt the remains of his lunch rise in his throat and spew out of his mouth.

  Gagging and retching, Chad hung onto the toilet, and three more times the nausea overwhelmed him. When his stomach was finally empty, he dropped down onto the bathroom floor, half panting and half sobbing. What had happened? How had Seth—Seth Baker, for Christ’s sake—done it? He and Jared had spotted him half an hour ago, and it hadn’t take them long to figure out what he was up to. They followed him almost all the way, concealed in the darkness in the park, then cut down Elm Street and through a couple of yards when they saw him heading for the alley.

  It should have been easy—Jared was ahead of Seth, and Chad was behind him.

  He was caught.

  Caught!

  Caught all by himself, except for that stupid cat.

  Where had it come from? And how could it be alive? They’d killed it, all three of them, and stuffed it in Angel Sullivan’s locker. It boggled Chad’s mind to the point where he could only dismiss it, stop thinking about it. And anyway, it was nothing but a stupid cat! If Jared had just kicked it or something—

  That was it—it was Jared’s fault.

  The last of his nausea giving way to anger, Chad scrambled to his feet, intending to find Jared, and—

  Jared was standing in the bathroom door.

  Standing there staring at him.

  “What are you looking at?” Chad snarled.

  “Jeez, Chad,” Jared breathed. “All that blood—I thought we were just going to scare him!”

  Now it was Chad who was staring. “I should have killed him!” he screamed. “After what he did to me!” He put his finger to the cheek the broken bottle had slashed only a few minutes ago, and yanked it away as he felt the sting of his own touch. “He coulda killed me!” He turned and gazed into the mirror at the throbbing, burning wound. But he also saw Jared Woods gazing at him, and he saw the doubt in Jared’s eyes. What was going on? “You saw him,” he said to Jared’s image in the mirror. “Jeez, Jared—you saw what he did to me!” As he turned to face Jared directly, he saw his friend pull away. “You saw it!” he said again.

  “It—it was dark,” Jared stammered.

  Chad’s voice rose. “He came at me! He grabbed the bottle and—”

  “I didn’t see that,” Jared said, taking a step backward. “I only saw you holding the bottle.”

  “So what are you saying?” Chad demanded. “You think I did this to myself?” Again he put his fingers to his throbbing cheek.

  Jared shook his head. “It was dark, and . . . Jeez, Chad—you had the bottle.” Chad moved toward him, but again Jared backed away.

  “You saw it,” Chad said, the fury in his voice dissolving into a whine. “You—”

  “It was dark,” Jared said. “I couldn’t really see—” He licked his lips nervously, then: “I think I better go home.” He turned and hurried down the stairs. A moment later Chad heard the front door slam.

  What had happened? Why didn’t Jared believe him? He turned back to the mirror and gazed once again at his face.

  How had it happened? It was Seth’s face the broken bottle should have laid open, not his own. How could Seth have gotten hold of him and twisted the broken glass around like that?

  And why couldn’t he remember it happening?

  He could only remember charging at Seth with the shattered bottle, feeling the warmth in his belly as he anticipated the razor-sharp glass sinking into Seth’s flesh.

  But it hadn’t happened. The glass had sunk into his own flesh instead, and torn at his own face.

  Had he tripped?

  But he didn’t remember tripping.

  All he remembered was Seth watching him, staring at him—

  He caught a flicker in the mirror and whirled around, half expecting to see Jared again standing in the doorway to the bathroom.

  But the doorway—and the hall beyond—were empty.

  Chad turned back to the mirror, and froze. The image was back, but this time it wasn’t just a flicker of motion. This time it was a face, and the face was clear.

  It was Seth Baker, and Seth was staring straight at him, his eyes cold and boring deep into his.

  As he gazed back, something inside Chad Jackson began to understand the truth, and he knew that the pain he was feeling now wasn’t the pain of his own wound.

  Now he was feeling the agony of all the wounds he had ever inflicted on Seth Baker.

  As the seconds stretched out, Chad’s eyes remained fixed on the image of Seth in the mirror, and a terrible urge came over him. Against his own will and with his eyes still fixed on the image of Seth Baker, which seemed to be suspended somewhere deep in the infinity behind the mirror, Chad opened the top drawer of the counter beneath the bathroom sink and picked up the razor that had been his grandfather’s and was now his father’s and would someday be his.

  But he needed the razor now.

  He picked it up in his right hand, opening the blade with his left. He didn’t test the blade—didn’t even see it, really.

  All he did was raise it so its point lay against his neck just below his left ear.

  He knew what was going to happen next but there was nothing he could do to stop it. It was as if the force of Seth Baker’s will had taken control of his body, and it was a force Chad Jackson was utterly powerless to resist.

  With one quick motion he pressed the blade of the razor deep into his neck, cutting through skin and muscle and sinew. As blood began to flow from the wound, he jerked the razor across his throat, and watched in shocked awe as his throat gaped open and the flow of blood surged to a pulsing gush as the blade ripped through his larynx and aorta.

  As his life drained away, the razor fell from Chad’s hand and clattered into the sink, but as he sank to the floor and the darkness of eternity began to close around him, all he heard was the faint sound of laughter.

  Seth Baker’s laughter.

  In the quiet of his own room, Seth clung to the fading image of Chad Jackson for a few more seconds, watching as Chad’s life drained away into the pool of blood spreading around h
im. Only when Chad lay still and the flow of blood had slowed to a trickle did he finally turn away from the mirror over his dresser, in which the vision of Chad’s death had been so vivid that Seth was certain it had happened exactly as he’d seen it.

  The day of reckoning had come, and the first of his tormentors had fallen.

  Chapter 44

  LL AFTERNOON JANE BAKER HAD BEEN TRYING TO make sense of what her husband was saying, but after more than three hours, she still didn’t understand. Still, she knew better than to try to argue with Blake when he was angry, and when he’d come home this afternoon, he was angrier than she’d ever seen him and telling her things that just sounded crazy.

  Like Seth attacking Zack Fletcher last night. Seth was terrified of Zack, and always had been. But if he’d finally decided to fight back, wasn’t it about time?

  And witchcraft? Where had that come from? Of course, she’d heard the stories about what had happened in Roundtree centuries ago—who hadn’t? But surely Blake didn’t believe them! And what was he doing talking to Father Mulroney anyway?

  But Blake had been too upset and too angry for her to reason with him, so she’d just listened and tried to understand, and waited for his rage to pass before it focused on her. And for a little while—the last half hour, anyway—she thought it was going to be all right.

  But a few minutes ago they heard Seth going up the back stairs, and then Blake’s fury came flooding back, and suddenly she wished she could take back the words she’d just spoken: “What are you going to do to him?”

  “I’m going to get the truth out of him,” Blake rasped, his eyes as hard as his voice. “I’m going to find out where he’s been and what he’s been doing.”

  As he turned on his heel and started toward the stairs, Jane stood up and reached toward her husband, as if to stop him. But she said nothing as he mounted the stairs, and let her hand drop to her side, certain that anything she said or did would only make matters worse. Besides, she told herself, he won’t hurt Seth. Sinking back onto the sofa, Jane picked up a magazine and began leafing through it, believing that if she could concentrate on something else, she wouldn’t dwell on whatever might be happening in Seth’s room.