by Andrew Smith
I slid and squirmed along the bottom of the pipe. I realized I was just as black as Ben—coated in the granular dust of the mold growths, made even worse because I was soaked with Ben’s piss. With each stretch forward, my mind raced all over the place—maybe I was falling under the effects of the drug, too.
Ben will be okay.
He has to be okay.
Fuck this place.
I’m going to fucking beat the shit out of Quinn if he hurts Griffin.
I am never going to feel clean again.
Ben has to be okay.
Keep crawling, Jack.
You fucked up everything.
Fuck you, Jack.
The fight between Griffin and Quinn was over by the time I bellied out from under the black jungle. Both boys were seated, faced in opposite directions, nursing their wounds.
At least they were both still alive.
Griffin held a bloodstained hand to his face, pinching his nostrils shut, and Quinn, worse for wear, slumped his head down over his bent knees. It looked like every wound on his body had opened up again and started bleeding.
Quinn was obviously crying.
He just had no clue about how to get along with other human beings.
Odds.
“You guys are stupid,” I said. I stood up and pulled the rope tight, shining my light back at Ben, who was still lying on his back, staring up at nothing, watching the show. “I could use some fucking help.”
I handed Griffin the flashlight I’d taken from his brother.
He was about to say something, too. And I knew what it was. I could tell. He was about to call Quinn a cocksucker or a faggot or whatever boys Griffin’s age call other boys when they get into fights, but I didn’t want to hear it.
I held up my hand. “Don’t start any more shit, Griff. The fight’s over. Let’s get your brother out of there.”
Griffin sniffed and wiped at his bloody nose. He looked like hell. I looked worse. Griffin said as much. “You look like you crawled through a shithole, Jack.”
He grabbed the rope behind me and we pulled together, slowly.
Griffin sniffed again. “And you smell like piss.”
My stomach turned. “Fuck.” I shook my head.
With each pull, I could hear Ben grunting, “Unh. Unh.”
Then Quinn got hold of the rope behind Griffin, and we kept tugging until Ben was clear of the mold. I lifted up his shoulders.
The three of us dragged him all the way back to the junction just before the main tunnel.
* * *
Griffin leaned over his brother. He wiped his hand across Ben’s face and hair while I poured water on him.
We tried to get him to drink, but Ben choked and gagged, spitting the water all over both of us.
“He’s a fucking mess,” Griffin said. He patted Ben’s cheek. “Ben? Hey? Can you hear me?”
Quinn hadn’t said a word since I came back out of the mold, he just hovered over us, watching, pouting, sniffling. And Ben stared at us while we tried washing him, but we could tell he wasn’t actually seeing us. He’d just murmur things that didn’t make any sense.
“Wow. It’s okay. It’s moving. It’s opening up. I can see forever. Jack. It’s you and Griffin. Jack. The hole in the sky is the way through for everyone. I know who you are. Jumping Man. I can see you. I love you, Griff.”
Griffin chewed at his lip, and kept his hand in Ben’s hair.
He was scared and I could see it.
“Ben never says shit like that.”
“He got bit, Griff,” I said. “One of those things got on his back and bit him. It was like the hand you found, only it was some kind of spider.”
“Where’d he bite him?” Quinn’s voice, cracked and strained from the fight with Griffin, from crying, surprised us.
“On his back,” I said.
I turned Ben onto his side and Quinn cautiously stepped toward us to look. Ben’s arm flopped limply across his chest; slick drool ran down the side of his cheek.
“Did it unfold its legs?” Quinn asked. “Did it have really long legs that were folded up, and then he was maybe bigger across than the kid?”
I looked at Quinn and nodded. “What is that thing?”
“A whip spider.”
Just the way he said it—the tone in his voice—told me it was something bad, and Quinn knew what it was, too.
Griffin leaned in and put his face right up to the marks on Ben’s back. They seemed bigger now, and there was a spreading red mass that seemed to be growing across Ben’s skin. It looked like it was snaking in both directions along the boy’s spine.
Griffin put his hands flat on either side of the bite. “It feels like he’s on fire.”
I shined my light on Quinn’s face. His cheeks were streaked with mud. “How bad is this thing?”
Quinn didn’t flinch. He frowned and shook his head.
I put my hand on the side of Ben’s head and then looked at Griffin. He knew what Quinn meant.
I dropped the flashlight and stood up. I got right up against Quinn, so our chests touched. He felt soft and small, afraid. “What the fuck, Quinn? What the fuck?”
Quinn started backing away. He was scared, and I’ll admit a big part of me wanted to punch him again, but I felt sorry for him, too. And I was so tired of the kid at the same time. But I couldn’t help thinking about Ben Miller’s bones inside a fucking trash barrel with Griffin’s, secreted away in Freddie Horvath’s garage, and how that fucked-up version of the world couldn’t be real; and now here we were and this redheaded fucker was telling us how Ben was going to lie down in a fucking sewer and die right in front of us while we watched him go.
And this couldn’t be real, either.
But we couldn’t escape.
I couldn’t get Ben and Griffin home.
And it was my fault.
I put my hands on Quinn’s shoulders, not hard, not threatening, just like I wanted to hold the kid down, to make things okay. It took all the will in the world to keep my voice restrained, to not claw my fingers into his pasty white flesh, to not shake the living shit out of him.
Deep breath, Jack.
“I’m not going to hit you, Quinn.”
I could feel the kid begin to relax, loosen up, under my touch.
“What do you know about those spiders?”
He shook his head, tried to look away from me. “He ain’t gonna make it, Billy.”
nineteen
“What do you mean?” I said. I shook the kid angrily. “What the fuck do you mean?”
But I knew what he meant.
Quinn didn’t have to say it.
I probably would have hit him if he did. He stood there sniffling, looking like he was getting ready to cry again.
“You’re full of shit,” Griffin said. “You’ve always been full of shit, you fucking prick. I should have said yes. I should have told Ben we needed to kill you.”
Griffin poured water across Ben’s chest, washing his brother, wiping his skin with a shaking hand.
The muscles in Ben’s neck had tightened, so his head tilted back, and his mouth stretched open even wider now. Except for the movement of his ribs when he inhaled, he already looked dead.
“I don’t know what to do, Griff.” I sounded pathetic, like every fucked-up thing I’d ever done to them had all clotted in my mouth and was choking me.
Griffin wouldn’t look at me. I knew what he was thinking.
He kept trying to clean Ben’s skin.
I slipped the noose on the speargun away from my neck, let the weapon rest on the floor beside my wet and black-stained boots. I dropped the pack next to it.
Then I began unwrapping the bandage from around my hand. But even as I did it, I had an understanding that nothing would happen—I needed to be outside, under the hole in the sky. And if we were outside, what could I expect? To drive everyone to madness? To send Quinn running off in terror, looking for a hook where he might hang himself? Or maybe I’d deliver Ben
and Griffin back to the cramped prison of a plastic waste barrel inside a killer’s garage in a Glenbrook that is not Glenbrook?
Bad magic.
Everything came through Jack.
I was the arrow through every fucked-up layer in this universe, and when I broke the lens, the shaft of the arrow splintered everything. That’s what I did. Ben knew it, too. The hole in the sky was the fracture of the lens was the cut in my hand was the doorway to every not-world I never wanted to see.
Griffin put his face down on his brother’s chest. I couldn’t tell whether he was resting, giving up, or trying to hear if Ben was still alive.
I looked at my hand.
My skin was white and puffy with moisture. I stunk. The black salt had soaked through the bandage. Was there any spot on my body not covered in some kind of filth?
The mark was a deeper color of pink now, zigzagged in the identical pattern to the thing we’d all seen in the sky. If I laid the Marbury lens in my palm, it would match like a puzzle piece. If I had Conner’s part of it, too, maybe we could put things back.
I shined my light on Griffin, and kneeled down on the opposite side of Ben’s chest.
That was exactly the moment Ben Miller stopped breathing.
“Stop fucking around!” Griffin yelled at his brother. He pushed his hands down against Ben’s unmoving sternum and pushed. “Don’t fucking do this to me!”
Griffin put his mouth over his brother’s and began blowing gasps of air into Ben’s lungs. And when I put the flat of my palm over Ben’s heart, I could immediately feel how cold and stiff the boy was.
I grabbed his hand, squeezed it.
His skin was like wax.
This can’t be happening.
I felt sick, choked. I wanted to scream, but everything locked up in my throat.
“Ben? Ben?”
Then Griffin pulled his head away from his brother’s and said, “Get the fuck away from us.”
I pulled my hand away from Ben.
I deserved this. Griffin had every right to say it.
Then we heard noises at the opening to the main tunnel.
It sounded like metal clicking against metal. I couldn’t see Quinn. He was gone again, and I thought maybe he’d taken the other flashlight, but it was here with us.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Getting louder.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Coming toward us.
I got up, scanned the floor for the speargun.
It was gone.
I flashed the light across the opening out to the main tunnel. Something moved in front of the circle of black.
I grabbed my knife and walked toward the noise.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Quinn? Are you there?”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Ssshhhhh …
Another flash of movement, at the edge of the light’s beam. Something gray.
When I shined the light on it, the form became unclear. I was looking directly through it, could see the wall of the pipe on the other side of it.
Seth Mansfield stood there, watching me from the edge of the drainpipe.
Seth.
Griffin wailed and coughed behind me.
His brother was dead.
It was the worst sound I think I’d ever heard in my life. Out of all the places I’d ever been, all the not-worlds, here was the darkest.
“Seth!” I said. “What can I do? What can you tell me to do? You came back, Seth!”
Seth looked tired and small. I could see his ribs straining the skin above his belly. He wiped his eyes and looked at me. “I never left you.”
“Please. I need you to do something, Seth.”
“I know. But he’s afraid of me. That one named Ben is. He might fight it anyway, Jack.”
“Will you try?”
Seth turned his hands up. “You need to put things back before too much more time goes by, Jack.”
“I’m trying.”
“You might not ever get out.”
“I don’t care about me. I need to get those boys home. Please help me do that.”
Seth turned gray, flattening out into a snaking pale mist that flowed over the floor past my feet and scattered like ash on a wind in the direction of the boys.
Ben jerked.
His chin went down onto his chest and his eyes finally closed, then he threw his hands out in front of him and began coughing.
Griffin screamed. “Jack!”
Ben shook and gagged. He rolled onto his side, wracked in spasms. It hurt. I knew how much it hurt. Griffin tried to hold him still, but Ben was too big, too strong. He kicked and thrashed with his arms, catching Griffin in the mouth, splitting the smaller boy’s lip open.
I stood back and watched, afraid of getting too close to them again.
That’s when I heard Quinn running out of the tunnel, clattering noisily away from us.
The idiot didn’t even have a light with him.
I ran.
I jumped down from the side tunnel, out into the expanse of the first underground channel we’d followed all the way from Quinn’s firehouse. Fifty feet from where I landed, Quinn stood, square, with his legs slightly parted.
He held the speargun pointed directly at my chest.
“You don’t play nice, Billy,” Quinn said.
“Just go away and leave us alone, Quinn.”
I slid my hand back along my thigh, shining the light at Quinn’s face so he wouldn’t see I was feeling for the knife.
“You stole from me, Billy.”
Quinn swallowed.
“I’ll give everything back,” I said.
Quinn shook his head.
“I am King of Marbury,” he said. “You know that, Billy?”
“I know that.”
“I want you to show me where you boys really come from.”
I looked back into the tunnel where I’d left Griffin.
“You’re standing in the center of it,” I said.
I dropped the flashlight, startling Quinn.
I dove to my right, and Quinn fired the speargun. I watched the arrow, ghostlike in the dusty dark of the Under, buzzing like a wasp through the haze of the flashlight’s beam.
The arrow sailed over me and clattered invisibly against the steel wall of the channel, lost forever in the hungry darkness that swallowed everything here.
Quinn threw the empty gun down into the dirt and bolted off, farther into the Under, his milk white skin fading like a sick glow down in the depths of the tunnel.
This was how Quinn used to play with his friends down here.
Fun game, Quinn.
I picked up the flashlight and went back for Griffin and Ben.
* * *
Griffin heard me coming. He never looked away from Ben as I approached.
“He started breathing.” Griffin wiped a hand across the bottom of his nose, then glanced up at me. “You look like hell, Jack.”
I didn’t say anything. I picked up my pack and slung my arms through the straps. Then I stepped over to Ben’s side so I could take a look at him. He blinked. I could see that he recognized me.
I kneeled down beside him and put my hand over his heart. It amazed me how the last time I’d touched him, I knew I was touching the skin of a dead kid, and now Ben was warm and I could feel the life in him.
“You and I both need to stop dropping out on our own.” I patted his chest.
Ben swallowed. I watched his Adam’s apple bounce up and down. “What happened?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Let me see your back.”
I lifted Ben’s shoulder. He winced and rolled onto his side. The marks where the whip spider had bitten into him were gone, completely healed. And Griffin had managed to bathe away most of the black salt from Ben’s skin.
Ben closed his eyes. The kid was wiped out. He wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.
I told Griffin, “Keep your eyes open and wait for me.”
“What ar
e you doing?” Griffin said.
“Hang on to your spear.”
I stood and turned away from the boys.
“What are you doing, Jack?” Griffin’s voice was angry, sharp.
I shined my light out into the main tunnel.
“I’m going to look for a way out.”
“You can’t fucking go by yourself.”
I answered him by jumping down into the larger channel. Griffin yelled and cursed, but I knew he wouldn’t leave Ben alone.
Griffin didn’t need or want me around right now, anyway. Maybe never.
I could do this.
I had to.
Fuck you, Jack.
* * *
I’d gone a few hundred yards before Griffin finally quit cussing and screaming for me to come back. I moved fast, in part because it scared me to imagine the kinds of monsters that might catch me if I didn’t, and also because I was so exhausted that I believed I might drop off to sleep while still on my feet.
And I knew Quinn was out there, watching me, waiting for something.
I tripped over a rotting car battery, landed hard on my chest, spitting and choking on a mouthful of dirt. I fought the urge to stay down, to sleep.
I walked.
An hour later, I found Quinn Cahill in the Under.
At first, I thought the kid was sleeping, or dead. My light fell across the paleness of Quinn’s body as he curled on his side in the dirt twenty feet in front of me.
He was hurt.
“Quinn?”
He saw the light, but he did not lift his head or look back at me.
“Go away, Billy. Go away. I give up. You won.”
I took a slow step forward, my knife held point outward. It was Quinn, after all. It had to be another trick.
“What happened?”
I stood back, ready to drop the light if I had to, muscles tensed, so I could spring on him if he did anything. I wanted him to do something.
“I busted my foot up.”
When I shined my light on Quinn, I saw that he had run himself out of one of his boots. His bare foot had a bloody gash along its outer edge. He must have stepped on a jagged piece of metal, maybe glass or bone.
The kid was crusted in filth and blood.
I could only imagine how messed up I must have looked, too.
Quinn had nothing on but one black-stained boot, and hardly more than a rag for trousers. Small trickles of blood ran down his chest from beneath the cut on his face.
