Luke put a hand on his brother’s shoulder when Mike went to approach the boy. Mike shook him off, his eyes never leaving the kid’s as he spoke. “Seriously, Luke? There are three of us and one of him.”
I doubted that was the case, and after reading those few short passages in that book, I didn’t believe that anybody in this town was completely harmless. Maybe last night I was fine with asking complete strangers for help, but not now. Surrounded by vacant, phoneless houses and creepy manuals … if we were smart, we’d cut our losses and run.
I gripped Luke’s hand and jerked hard. There was something about the boy I didn’t like, something that made me feel threatened. “I have a strange feeling about him, Luke. Please, can we go?”
“Are you kidding?” Mike argued. “He’s the first person we’ve seen, and I have some questions I want answered.”
“I’m with Dee,” Luke said, lowering his voice to a nearly inaudible level. “You have no clue what she’s been through, Mike. None. Let me handle this.”
I knew that’s all Luke would say. It was an agreement we’d made last year when he’d begged me to tell him why I still flinched sometimes when he touched me. It had taken some prodding on his part, but I finally told him about my dad, the group homes, and the three foster families I’d lived with before finding the Hoopers. That night, Luke promised me that he would keep my past a secret and keep me safe.
Luke might have broken through my carefully fortified walls, but even now he still had to put up with a lot of my crap. He’d learned the hard way not to trap me against the lockers for a kiss and realized that tackling me on the bed to tickle me often landed him a knee to the balls instead of sex. But I was better now, or so everyone thought.
I watched Mike’s expression darken as he processed Luke’s words. It must’ve been hard to always be around me yet have no clue why I was so guarded, why Luke was so protective.
Luke took a step forward, a growl of warning rumbling from his chest.
The boy stood his ground, and my eyes traveled the full length of his body. The broad expanse of his shoulders, his height, and the size of his hands all gave me pause. He was huge. Not huge as in one-too-many-pancakes-at-the-Waffle-House huge, but huge as in holy-crap-he’s-built-like-a-brick-wall huge.
Plus, there were a lot of pockets in his coat. And I’d learned a long time ago that pockets could hide a lot of weapons.
Luke scanned the horizon, no doubt looking for the boy’s friends. His family. The rest of this town.
The kid nodded in understanding. “I’m alone.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
He gave me a passing glance before ignoring my question. “Did Mary send you?”
“Who is Mary?”
He shook his head, his shoulders shrinking at my words. “Nobody.”
“You have a name?” Luke asked.
“Joseph.”
I knew that name. From the house. From the book. From the death certificate. “You’re not dead.”
He flinched as if my words somehow stung. He tried hard to cover it up, but I saw the panic flash across his expression. “Nope, not dead. Not yet anyway.”
Ten
I spun around and gestured to the house we’d just left. “It’s you. That’s your house, isn’t it? You’re that Joseph.”
His attention flicked over to the house, then back to me. It was quick, and I doubted Luke or Mike caught it, but I recognized it immediately—the fear and anger behind his expression, the quick flash of sorrow in response to a memory the rest of us didn’t share. I recognized it because I’d mastered that same combination of emotions years ago.
The Joseph in the margin of that book, the one who got locked in the closet for six hours because he’d broken a dinner plate, was the same one standing in front of me now. He didn’t need to admit it. The flat look in his eyes gave him away. And it was that look that worried me the most.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” I asked again, desperate to prove I was right.
When he didn’t answer, I inched forward, intent on screaming my question at him. But he held up his hand and pressed a finger to his lips in a silencing gesture. In the absence of any sound, of any real people except for him and us, his gesture seemed odd.
“Why do we need to be quiet?” Mike asked, his head shaking in what seemed to be amusement. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s nobody here.”
“Oh, they’re here. Trust me, they’re here,” Joseph said as his eyes met mine. He looked serious, so serious. And scared.
That makes two of us.
“What do you mean, ‘they’?” I asked.
He ignored my question and fixed his gaze back on the empty road. “Listen. You’ve probably got an hour, two tops, to get out of here. After that, well … ”
“After that what?” Mike’s tone was sharp, his normal carefree attitude slipping away, replaced by genuine anger. Luke nudged me back and rose to his full six-foot-two height, using all of his bulk to instill some well-deserved fear in Joseph.
I’d seen huge kids back away from Luke on the field, physically retreat from the defensive line. But Joseph didn’t flinch; he met Luke’s eyes without the slightest hesitation.
I leaned into Luke, standing on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “He lives there, Luke. That name in the book, on the death certificate. That’s him.”
“I know,” Luke whispered, then raised his voice. “Listen, we don’t want any trouble. We’re just looking for some gas so we can get back on the road.”
“That’s going to be a problem,” Joseph said, turning to walk away. I guess he presumed we’d follow. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Luke reached out to grab him, his hand encircling Joseph’s arm. “Where the hell are you going?”
Joseph stopped but didn’t try and pull away. A shudder worked its way through his body. Maybe frustration. Maybe anger. When he finally turned around, his face was neutral, peaceful.
“My brother asked you a question,” Mike started in. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not stay in this place any longer than necessary. So, if you could point us in the right direction, that’d be fantastic.”
Joseph smiled. “Brother, you say?”
“Uh huh. I’m Luke, this is Mike, and this is Dee,” Luke said, pointing at each of us in turn.
“Dee,” Joseph said as if testing my name. “Are you their sister?”
There was a twinge of hope in his voice, one that made me cringe. “Nope,” I said, running my hand across Luke’s waist before tucking it into the back pocket of his jeans. I wanted Joseph to know exactly who I was to Luke, who he’d have to go through to get to me. “I’m definitely not his sister.”
Joseph looked at me, then at the hand I had tucked in Luke’s jeans. “I’ll help you. I can’t get you gas, but I’ll help you.”
“Great,” Luke said. “Start talking.”
Joseph shook his head. “Not here. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but not here. Not out in the open.”
“Fine. There,” Mike said, tipping his chin toward the house we’d camped out in. “It’s warm. I bet there’s even some dinner left over from last night you could eat.”
“No. No way. That’s the first place he’ll look.”
I understood his hesitation. The house I’d grown up in was less than a ten-minute drive from the Hoopers’, but you couldn’t pay me to go back there. Not to the house. Not to the street. Not to the neighborhood.
I may have gotten the kid’s mentality, but I was the only one. Luke had hit his threshold, his hand flexing in a useless attempt to rein in his anger. “Fine, then you stay here and do whatever it is this town does. We’re leaving.”
“You won’t make it out of here,” Joseph warned. “My guess is he’s already found your car.”
Done. That was the only w
ay to describe Luke. Completely and totally done with Joseph. With this town. With this entire situation. “What the hell are you talking about?” Luke yelled, his entire body shaking in time with his anger. “I don’t have time for this. Or you!”
I reached for Luke’s arm, tugging on it until he made eye contact with me. The fire in his eyes quickly drained away, regret filtering in. He was scaring me, and he knew it. If the one person I counted on to be steady and strong was losing control, then things couldn’t be good.
Luke looked back at Joseph and nodded his apology. “We’re not going anywhere. Not until we have some answers, anyway.”
“Fine, we’ll play this your way,” Joseph said. “Those sirens you heard, I set them off. That house you stayed in, that’s mine. That grave you got your foot stuck in yesterday, that’s my mother’s. The man who put her there is named Elijah Hawkins. He’s my father. And as for your car, well, that’s not going anywhere.”
“Your father?” I asked. My hands were shaking, my voice a strangled whisper.
Luke instantly reacted, wrapping his hand around my shoulder and pulling me into his side. I don’t know what he whispered into my ear; I wasn’t paying attention, but I knew from his tone that it was meant to be reassuring. It wasn’t.
I closed my eyes tight, the hammering of my heart suddenly drowning out everything around me. We were at his mercy, this Joseph kid who’d come out of nowhere. This boy whose blank look haunted me like each bruise my father had left behind. He may have been my age, and we both may have suffered a broken arm or two courtesy of our fathers, but this kid was nothing, nothing, like me.
“What are you not telling us?” I mumbled.
“It’s not easy to explain,” Joseph said, and I squeezed Luke’s hand, a billion horrible thoughts racing through my mind. Inbred townspeople. Radioactive mutations. Axe-wielding nut jobs. The possibilities were endless and insanely idiotic.
“Try,” Mike said. “Because I want to know exactly what you meant when you said our car’s ‘not going anywhere.’”
“The car is the least of your problems,” Joseph replied. “But if you can trust me for five minutes, I’ll show you.”
Eleven
We followed Joseph, not because we were stupid or we’d suddenly decided to trust him. We did it because we needed answers, and following him seemed like the only way to get them.
We cut through the backyard of his house and skirted the edge of the dying fields before Joseph led us into the stalks. I think he intended to hide our movements in the fields, which meant I had to trust that whatever lay on the other side of the decaying stalks was friendly.
On the surface, it made sense, but I was having no part of it. I needed a clear view not only of him, but of the town I feared would come roaring back to life. Luke’s fascination with D-list movies had taught me well. I’d take my chances with the silent town rather than risk dancing with some machete-wielding nutcase.
I stopped dead in my tracks, Luke coming to a halt beside me. “I can’t see the road if we’re walking through the fields. I want to see the road.”
“I agree,” Luke said.
“There’s a slight chance he doesn’t know you’re here yet,” Joseph reasoned. “If that’s true, you’d do best to keep it that way. I get that she’s scared, and I have no intention of hurting her, of hurting any of you. I can help you, but you need to trust me on this. We need to stay clear of the road.”
“Unless you got a can of gas or a speed pass out of this place, then there isn’t a damn thing you can do to help us,” Mike fired back.
“Gas is not what you need,” Joseph mumbled, and I wondered what he meant by that. I planned on asking, but he started talking again before I got the chance. “Fine, we’ll move closer to the road. We can cut a path three or four rows in. That should be close enough for you to see the street, but it’ll give us enough cover that … ”
“That what?” I wanted to know what was out there, what he was so afraid of.
“Nothing,” Joseph said as the blank mask he was so fond of wearing settled back into place. “We should be fine.”
We headed back toward the edge of the field. There were only three miserable rows of dying, waist-high stalks to conceal us. When the backside of the buildings started taking shape and I could make out the closed sign in a store’s window, I relented and took a step farther into the fields. There was something about those darkened windows that had me wanting more than three feet of dead crops between me and them.
“You taking us back into town?” Luke asked. It wasn’t a question; more of a subtle warning.
“No,” Joseph replied.
“Then where?” Mike asked, obviously annoyed. “Cuz there’s nothing but fields for miles. You can’t tell me there’s a phone booth or Holiday Inn sitting out in the middle of these stupid corn stalks.”
“It’s soybeans, not corn, and no, there’s no … ” Joseph paused, waffling his hand as if he was trying to comprehend the meaning of the words “Holiday Inn.” He eventually gave up and moved on to Luke’s original question. “We’re not going into town. We’re headed toward an irrigation shed on the edge of town.”
“Irrigation shed?” Luke questioned. “Yeah, no.”
Joseph ignored him and kept walking, stopping abruptly a few yards up. His attention was focused on the town, and it took me a second to grasp what we were supposed to see. “I’m guessing that looks familiar,” he said.
I stumbled back and landed on my butt for the second time that day. Luke went to help me up, fear clouding his eyes. He’d seen the same thing and was doing little to shield me from his panic. Joseph watched me carefully, his eyes softening briefly as I surveyed the crumpled-up hood of a car that looked alarmingly like ours.
I needed to get a lot closer to confirm the license plate, but given that every other car in this town was your standard blue, four-door Ford and ours was a red Toyota, there was little left to guess. And it was sitting right there in the gas station lot. Town still deserted. Streets still silent. But our car had been moved, towed to the same station I’d begged Luke to let us hide out in last night.
The front driver’s side of our car was bashed in, nearly totaled, and even from a distance I could see that the hood was popped open. My eyes trailed downward and I noticed what looked like a piece of the engine lying on the ground next to our flat front tires. Apparently Joseph was right. Finding gas was the least of our problems.
“That’s our car,” Mike said, his voice seething with anger. “What did you do to it and how did it get there?”
Luke fished around his pocket and pulled out the car keys, staring at them in disbelief. “What the hell?”
“I didn’t do anything to it. I’m trying to stay hidden like you.”
“Why should we believe you?” Mike fired back.
The time it took for Joseph to acknowledge the question seemed like forever. It was like he knew there was no possible way to convince Mike completely, so why bother to try.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Joseph finally replied. “I didn’t do it, and I want out of this town as much as you. Probably more.”
I exchanged glances with Mike, wondering if he’d buy Joseph’s explanation. I doubted he would.
“There’s no way we’re following you into some shed,” Luke said. “There is not a single person in this town, you destroyed our car, and don’t even get me started on the weird shit we found in your house.”
Rather than answer, Joseph tilted his head to the right, as if seeking out a sound that no one but him could hear. The stalks on our left swayed. Luke saw it too and we both swung our heads around, hoping to God we weren’t surrounded.
In front of us was the town and God-knows-who. Behind us was the messed-up house I had no intention of ever setting foot in again. Whoever was parting those stalks to our left was also rapidly appro
aching from the right. And Joseph stood dead in front of us. None of our options looked good, and we didn’t have the time for a debate. Whatever was coming out of those fields would be on top of us in seconds.
“Where’s the shed?” I blurted out. I didn’t want to go there any more than Luke did, but right then it seemed like the safest place to be.
“There.” Joseph pointed, already running toward it. The small rectangular structure was half a field away; half a field for whatever was stalking us to speed up and catch us out in the open.
Twelve
Since it consisted of little more than a roof over what app-eared to be a gigantic motor and a mess of pipes, I couldn’t imagine this was the shed Joseph was referring to. A few posts held the A-frame roof above the tangle of run-down equipment. With only one wall at the back, it looked more like a stall than anything else. I didn’t see any space for a body to fit, never mind four.
Luke stood at the edge of the massive motor, his lips pressed into a thin, tight line. “What is that?”
I peered around him, inhaling sharply as a second shed came into view. The water pump and irrigation equipment had completely eclipsed my view of the even-smaller structure behind it.
This shed was about half the size of the shoebox dorm room Luke complained about having to live in next year. And with no idea who or what was waiting on the inside, I seriously considered taking my chances with whatever was out there in those fields.
“I don’t think I can do this.” I heard the panic in my own voice and glanced behind me, searching the fields for a sign that whatever had been lurking there was gone. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to go in there.”
Luke advanced on Joseph, his eyes filled with a protective anger. “I’m going to trust you because right now I don’t have any other choice. But if you hurt her, if you so much as look at her funny, I’ll kill you with my bare hands. You got that?”
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