My ears rang. Or else what?
I heeded McCardle’s advice. We snaked our way through the trees. He watched the ground closely. The crying grew louder.
I jumped at the sound of a metal clap behind the wheeled coffin. McCardle paused. He held his lantern high over his head. “Looks like you found one.” On the ground, the jaws of a bear trap had clamped shut after one of the wheels had passed over it.
McCardle lowered the light and continued on. I hurried to stay near.
“Hello?” I heard the quiet call of Meg’s voice over the rustling branches. “Hello, is someone there? We need help.”
The rain poured harder over the foliage. More of it trickled onto the bare spots of my skin. My hands were freezing around the rope. We entered the empty clearing. The sobbing felt nearby now. I looked frantically around before I saw Meg’s face, a few paces away on the outskirts of the clearing. It was twisted in agony. She sat on the ground next to a figure that was lying prostrate.
“Adam.” My voice was hoarse. “What’s wrong with him? Adam?” I called.
“I don’t know.” She wept. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. He just gave up.”
McCardle’s boots trampled the wet grass. Rain now soaked through our pants, our hair, our everything. Lightning streaked through darkness like a network of blood vessels. He held the lantern over the pair. Meg’s hands were wrapped around her ankle. A trap bit through her foot. She rocked back and forth. Close by, another trap had caught Adam around the anklebone. He groaned but didn’t move.
I stopped myself short of blurting out the obvious. Meg hadn’t recharged him. Who knew how long it had been. Days? A week? My eyes darted to McCardle. I didn’t want to volunteer any extra insight.
No. That was all that was going through my head. No, and this couldn’t be happening. There was no one here to save me. I was as good as alone.
“I need to help him,” I yelled over the storm.
He shook his head and looked up into the heavens. “Come on. They’re not going anywhere.”
“Tor!” Meg screamed.
McCardle pointed the gun at me. I weighed my options. I wanted to run to Adam, but the gun was a convincing reason to stay.
“We need to go in there.” I pointed to the center of the generators. “Is my leg going to be snapped in two if I walk any farther?”
McCardle grunted no. We passed beneath the shadows of the three great columns. I stared up at the giant orbs. Their motors hummed with life. A low charge hung in the air. Think, Tor.
My steps were heavy. I marched to the center of the ring of generators. McCardle’s mouth hung open as he took them each in. In the middle, I stopped and stared up, turning in a slow circle. The lightning was gathering closer and stronger.
“Stop stalling,” he said.
I dropped my chin. “Right, sorry.” But stalling was my only plan. “I, uh, have to prepare the body. It’s … complicated.” I let go of the rope and went around to the back wheels where my borrowed tools were. “I … may need your help. We’ll see.”
I felt his eyes on me as I carefully sifted through the equipment he’d brought. Instead of a scalpel, there was a small Swiss Army knife blade and a rusty razor. I pressed my thumb to the knife’s point, testing it. I wasn’t sure what good it would be against a gun. Besides, McCardle seemed to know his way around a blade just fine.
I glanced over my shoulder. McCardle had yet to so much as look away as far as I could tell. I found a screwdriver, a hammer, a few copper wires. I stared at the tools. I had no plan of actually resurrecting the corpse, but I still felt shorthanded.
“Victoria…” I stopped at the moan coming from Adam. “Victoria…”
McCardle waved the gun at me again, and I lowered my head.
My hand trembled. I balanced the Swiss Army knife between two fingers and stared down at the body. Its shriveled lips hardly looked human. Rain dripped from the tip of my nose. I bent over and gingerly pressed the blade at the point between the boy’s collarbones. He sank a few centimeters in the viscous liquid before finding the bottom. I pressed harder. The skin opened up. The insides were yellow like a dissected frog. Not a hint of blood on the knife’s blade.
I lifted the back of my hand to my mouth and stifled a gag. I cut along the ridge of his sternum, all the way to the bone underneath. Foam squelched from the open wound. Another flash of lightning lit up the clearing. When it did, I nearly screamed. I had seen Owen unmistakably making his way through the woods toward Adam and Meg. The lightning abated, and his figure was blotted out. I looked to McCardle. He was still watching me closely. He hadn’t seemed to notice anything amiss.
Owen. Owen was here. I had almost forgotten that I told him my plan was to go to the generators. I wanted to cry with joy and with fear. My mind raced. Somehow my entire life seemed to have converged on this moment. The loose threads of a plan began to dangle in front of me, waiting to be knitted together. Keep the old man distracted. I could do that.
“Is this what your son would have wanted?” I asked the first question that fell on my tongue. Over my top lip, beads of sweat mixed with the rain.
McCardle’s features were twisted, and, in the rearranged pieces, I could see underneath where the guilt and the years had worn at him like termites on damp wood. “He shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. So sayeth the Lord.” He was eaten alive by the death of his son, and what was left over was a haunted shell of a man whose blood had been transformed to poison.
Instinctively, I looked away, like I was witnessing something that no one should ever have to, the unbuttoning of a man before my very eyes. So I sliced downward on the corpse’s body until I reached the bottom of his breastbone. I hardly noticed the chill of the stolen eyes staring up at me anymore, and long moments passed when all I could see from the forest was darkness.
I kept my eyes on the corpse, scared that I’d give something away, that maybe the hope would show in my eyes. “And the boys that you murdered.” My voice shook. “What would the Lord have to say about that?”
Thunder vibrated the air around us, and the bowels of the clouds above let loose. Cold rain poured over us with renewed intensity.
“For just as Jonah was in the belly of this fish,” McCardle called, “so will the Son be in the heart of the earth, for his subsequent rescue from death is what vindicated his mission to go forward.” He turned his face up and let the rain fall on his forehead, run into his eyes, and wet the thin strips of hair on his scalp.
I flattened the kinks of four copper wires in my hand. I was running out of time. The orbs above us had begun to glow a dull bluish tint. Sparks zipped between the cables that connected the generators.
At the next burst of lightning, I saw Owen fiddling with the traps. My breath lodged in my throat. Careful, I wanted to tell him. Don’t get too bold. I wondered if he had seen the gun or if Meg had told him. I was thankful for the blustering storm that offered a cloak.
At the center of the ring, I peeled back the layers of skin, exposing the mealy rib cage underneath. There, I inserted two of the wires in the crevice I’d created. The chest cavity matched Adam’s almost exactly but for the fact that I had no metal plate to give this dead boy.
Another groan came from the distance. The sobbing had continued nonstop. Quiet, Adam.
“He’ll look like an abomination of your son,” I said. “He’ll be an idol. A fake. Look at him.” And there was no mistaking that I was right. This person, this thing, was nothing like Adam. He might have started as someone’s child. He might have been good and kind in life, but there was nothing left of him that was sacred. Dwarfed by the giant monoliths of the lightning generators, I felt like McCardle and I were in the midst of a sacrificial ritual. I wiped water from my eyelashes.
“And thou shalt believe,” McCardle murmured. He turned his face up to the sky and let the rain pour over him. “And thou shalt believe in thine heart that God hath r
aised him from the dead.”
The sky above was being torn apart by light. The generators were doing their job. “It’s not safe here,” I said, beginning to shake. “We could be killed.”
The next burst of lightning came from directly overhead. When I looked over, I saw that Owen was gone. And so was Adam. A jab of dread filled me. What if they had left? Was that less than I’d deserve for killing Adam and for lying? I wedged the Swiss Army knife in my fist, ready to fight.
The next lightning strike looked as though it landed somewhere in the forest. The brightness flickered. And then I saw Adam’s face inches away from mine. This time I did cry out.
“Victoria.” He staggered, looking less human than he had ever looked before. His joints were stiff. He teetered unevenly on stilt legs.
Now I smelled the first hint of smoke.
McCardle wheeled around. He dropped the lantern. It rolled on the ground. Another burst of lightning. But this one lingered, caught between the generators’ crosshairs. I had a split second to react.
“Now!” I shouted as if this had been my plan all along. With all my might, I grabbed Adam by the arm with both hands. I wrenched him over, pushing him on top of what was left of McCardle’s son. He splashed into the liquid.
Above, lightning tangled, mixing and blurring. I shielded my eyes. The orbs lit up bright blue, electric with energy. I scuttled back. One great, combined streak of lightning shot down. The glass coffin was a wash of white-hot color.
There was the sound of glass cracking like a footstep on a frozen lake. I held my breath for a heartbeat. The coffin shattered. Liquid poured from broken shards.
“No!” McCardle howled, and it sounded like a dying animal. He lunged for the heap of flesh where his son’s body lay at the same moment that the silhouette of one body emerged. The outline that was Adam arched his spine. He rolled back his shoulders. McCardle realized his mistake too late. He should have known by now what Adam was capable of.
Adam stretched out his arm, grabbed McCardle by the neck, and flung him sideways. The old man crumpled to the ground. The wind burst from his lungs, and he wheezed, clutching his chest. The gun skittered an arm’s length away.
Adam’s eyes shined in the flickering light of the lantern. They were cold. He lowered his chin, and his brow hid his eyes in shadow. I recognized the look from just after his recharges or in the moment that he hurled Knox off the stage. He moved methodically toward McCardle with a slight limp to his gait.
McCardle cowered on the ground as Adam closed on him. He lifted an arm to shield his face. “You … would save her?” The old man’s voice was ragged, and he puffed for air. “The girl that killed you?”
I went limp. The truth, the one I’d been holding on to with a death grip, the one that every day I’d had an opportunity to share and that every day I’d chosen not to, was out. What could I say now that hadn’t already been said in one bone-crushing sentence?
Adam stopped. When he turned, his expression was a raw wound. His eyes held pools of sorrow. “Victoria?” There was still awe there and hope, and I felt it begin to crumble through my fingers.
“I killed you,” I said softly. “It was me that night.” A strangled groan, nearly inhuman. “It was an accident.” Since the night of the wreck, we’d come miles, but when I stared across an endless chasm at my creation, I felt that I’d returned to our start. I stood dripping wet in front of him, begging for his forgiveness, pleading with him to understand. I didn’t know whether I deserved it, only that I was what I was and he was what he was and that neither of us could hide from it. Neither of us were perfect, only special.
He wrapped his hands around his head and pulled his elbows over his face like a cage. The air between us crackled, and I mentally readied myself for an attack. I could feel the violence raging within him. My own creation may kill me with his bare hands, I realized.
Find the thing you love and let it kill you. That was what my father had done.
He lowered his hands. His entire body was shaking now. “I remember,” he said. “It’s…”
Out of the corner of my eye, there was movement. I tensed. McCardle stretched his fingers for something. The gun on the ground. “Adam!”
There was less than an instant. Adam’s decision balanced on the edge of a razor before it tipped over and fell. Forever. Irrevocably. And then he was mine.
He lurched on a damaged leg and pinned McCardle’s arm. “Not … Victoria.” I watched horror-struck as Adam’s hands wrapped around the neck of the man who used to be our school’s janitor. Tearing myself from the spot, I reached for the gun, pulling it to safety and out of reach. The weight of it in my hands again felt deadly and even scarier now that it had been pointed at my brain. Milliseconds went by that felt excruciatingly long. McCardle began to gurgle. His frail lips worked for words.
I could have stopped Adam, but I didn’t. I was ready to watch McCardle die, when suddenly, Adam released his grip. He slid away from the old man and sank his head into his hands. “Not yet, Adam,” I said, too quietly for anyone to hear.
“My son,” McCardle wept. “My son.” The contorted evil that had engulfed his features had vanished, and what was left was just a man stricken with grief.
I sensed the defeat in McCardle as he dragged himself to his feet. The retreat in his step. I watched as he tried to shift into the shadows, to disappear into the woods he knew so well. The Hunter of Hollow Pines. Only, it was too late. I couldn’t let that happen. He knew our secret. He knew what Adam was. He knew what I had done.
My hands were slick with sweat. I held the barrel of the gun straight out from my body. I had to do something. I always knew when something hard had to be done and when someone special had to do it. So I did. I fired. The first bullet missed, whizzing by to lodge in a tree trunk somewhere. Lost. I fired a second shot.
This time Old Man McCardle doubled over. He clutched his stomach. The word son made it halfway out before he collapsed. The muscles in my arms dissolved, and the gun plummeted from my hands.
THIRTY-NINE
A description of the event: The storm approached Hollow Pines from the northeast corridor. As it neared, it became clear that the lightning was both attracted to and reinforced by the presence of the generators. A few stray lightning bolts hit close to home, but when, at last, a series of bolts found their mark, the electricity was harnessed and strengthened through the use of the adjustable spark gap. The tangle of lightning was too bright for the bare human eye to view without discomfort. A single, combined bolt made it to the ground, amplified in brightness and intensity more than any observed in nature of which I am aware.
* * *
The adrenaline drained from my body with the waning storm and we were left with the damage. The final shot rang in my ears. My eyes were too wide. I stumbled to the overturned lantern, barely seeing. I stared at the wreckage, which seemed to fan out from me like I was a bomb that had already detonated.
McCardle’s son stared into the vast nothingness with eyes that would never close. A puddle surrounded him. In the debris, the stitching on his legs had loosened to expose the ends of whitewashed bone that glistened in the moon now beginning to peek through the passing clouds. I hugged my torso. My sopping clothes chilled me to the core. A single trickle of blood dribbled from the corner of Old Man McCardle’s mouth. Red blossomed through the front of his flannel shirt. I stepped over his legs when I heard Owen’s voice calling.
I’d been so lost in the small blown-up world between the generators that I had forgotten all about Owen and Meg. It felt like I’d spent hours in a cage match, and yet it couldn’t have been more than minutes. I glanced back at Adam, who was still hunched over, catatonic. Reluctantly, I left the circle. I followed the sound of Owen’s voice and followed the light of the lantern. The sobbing had stopped, and I now heard faint whispers through the noise of the rustling branches.
I found Meg with her arm wrapped over Owen’s shoulder. She’d taken off her shoe and held her foot
a few inches above the ground.
“Easy does it,” Owen said as he guided her closer. The lantern glinted off his glasses. His forehead wrinkled when he looked up. His face broke into a broad smile at the sight of me. “Tor,” he said. “You’re okay. What happened?” He caught my wrist and pulled me into a tight hug, which ended up being crowded with the three of us, and it was like we were long-lost friends reuniting. “Janitor McCardle was the Hunter?” he said.
I nodded. “I guess he really was as crazy as people said he was. How bad is it?” I gestured to Meg’s foot.
She winced. “He says it will heal and that I was lucky it only got my foot.”
“The puncture wounds are deep,” Owen said grimly. “And there are probably a few small fractures. She should keep it still and elevated as much as possible. See a doctor … if she can.”
As though drawn by a magnet, we gathered back at Adam. Meg whimpered at the two remaining bodies.
“I was going to kill him.” Adam was still hunched over. He let his hands fall from his face. “I already killed two people, and I was going to kill him, too. With my bare hands.” He turned his hands over, examining them front and back. “I remember now.”
A cold sweat spread to the backs of my knees. The three of us standing shared glances between us. “What did you see, Adam? What do you remember?” I asked.
“Everything.”
I bent down. A tuft of his dark hair fell over the bridge of his nose. I brushed it away.
“I’m John Wheeler,” he said, staring at his boots. Blood seeped through his pant leg where the trap had caught him, but he didn’t seem to feel the same pain that Meg did. “But I’m Adam, too.” He looked at me imploringly. The naive boy I’d created was fading and being replaced by something wiser and less familiar. “I saw it,” Adam said. “I know why the house was burning. I—I killed someone. I punched him. I didn’t mean to kill him, but, I punched him again and … I don’t think I was sad. I was standing over his body.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched his chin to his chest before continuing. “Then there was gasoline. I … poured it in the house and then I lit the match.” He sucked in a deep breath like coming up for water. “And you were there.” He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at Meg like this was the part he couldn’t quite place. “You were screaming for me. You told me to go. So I went.”
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