“Winn!” he heard from outside. He reached the door to the pantry and opened it, and walked to Marty who was standing on the other side of the velvet rope, looking over his shoulder to see if mansion staff had observed him. “There you are! It was more than twenty minutes, so I came looking. Quick, get over here so we can leave!”
Winn slid under the rope and stood up on the other side, next to Marty. “I met him!” Winn said.
“Come on,” Marty whispered. “You can tell me all about it once we’re out of here!”
They quickly walked through the remaining rooms of the mansion and out the back door. As they were leaving, a tour guide noticed them exiting the building and stopped them.
“Sir, are you with a tour group?” an older woman asked. She looked down at Winn suspiciously.
“We were with the last group,” Marty said. “My nephew here decided to look for a bathroom and ran off. I just found him.”
“Well, the bathrooms are in that building over there, in what used to be the guest house,” she said, pointing to a small bungalow about a hundred feet away. She leaned in toward Marty and said quietly, “You need to clean him up.”
Marty pulled back from her, surprised. He looked down at Winn, not seeing anything wrong. He looked back at the woman, who merely stared at him and raised her eyebrows. He looked at Winn again, and let himself drop quickly into the River. Winn’s shoes were soaked with blood.
“I presume this means there’s a mess in the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll take care of that. You get that stuff off him, pronto.”
“Thank you, I will,” Marty said, ushering Winn in the direction of the bathroom.
“What stuff?” Winn asked Marty.
“You’ve got something all over your shoes,” Marty said as they walked.
“No, I don’t!” Winn said, inspecting himself.
“In the River, kiddo,” Marty said. “Was McGraves bleeding?”
“Oh, yeah,” Winn replied. “He had a knife in his chest and he kept pulling it out. Blood would gush everywhere. I had to step in it to get out of there.”
“Well, we need to get it off you right now,” Marty said, hauling him into the restroom. It was mercifully empty. Marty went into a stall and checked the condition of a toilet, and flushed it.
“Put your shoe into the water, and shake it around,” he said.
“In the toilet?” Winn asked. “No way!”
“The water is clean,” Marty said. “And it’s the quickest way to get most of it off you. It won’t get it all, but it’ll get enough that we might not attract any Z-flies.”
“Z-flies?” Winn asked.
“Wash your shoes, and I’ll tell you,” Marty said. “Come on, I don’t want someone to come in here and see us doing this. Hurry it up.”
Winn carefully positioned his sneaker over the open bowl of the toilet, and gingerly lowered it until it touched the water. Then he let it sink in a quarter inch, and moved it back and forth.
“Z-flies are attracted to ghost blood, just like mosquitos, but thankfully, unlike mosquitos, they’re a lot rarer,” Marty said, reaching to flush the toilet. Winn watched as the water swirled around his shoe, washing the invisible ghost blood away. He lifted his shoe to remove it from the bowl, but Marty stopped him.
“No, do it again, at least three or four times,” Marty said. “Put your shoe in as far as you can without soaking the upper part.”
Winn sighed and dipped his shoe back into the water as the bowl refilled.
“If they’re like mosquitos, they’re not that big of a deal,” Winn said. “I kill mosquitos all the time.”
“They’re only like mosquitos in that they drink blood,” Marty said. “First off, they’re about the size of my fist, and they’re very good at smelling ghost blood, even from miles away. Second, they have six legs that are like centipedes, with pinchers on the end. When they find some ghost blood, they latch on with the pinchers while they feed on it, and if that happens to be you, they will latch right into your skin.” He flushed the toilet again.
“You know how you get an itch after a mosquito bite?” Marty asked.
“Yeah,” Winn said, shaking his shoe around in the fresh water.
“Well, the pinchers on Z-flies have a poison in them that causes the gifted part of you to become paralyzed. You freeze right up. Your body can still move, but inside you, you can’t jump in or out of the River. That’s when they start cutting the ghost blood off you with their mouths. It feels like little razors, and at that point, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.”
Winn shuddered and Marty flushed the toilet again. “OK, the other foot.”
“I’ve never heard of McGraves being so bloody before,” Marty said.
“He thought I might be from some Academy. I think he was trying to be extra scary.”
“What Academy?” Marty asked.
“Some place in Sedona,” Winn replied. “He said kids keep bothering him to pass a test, and he’s sick of it.”
“Well, that would explain the blood,” Marty called back. “If any of his blood got on them and they didn’t know about it, they’d be tormented as they drove back upstate. That’s a good trick. He’s a clever one.”
“And he swears a lot, more than you,” Winn said, flushing the toilet and waiting for it to refill. “He said the f-word a lot.”
“Sorry you had to hear that,” Marty said. “Did he tell you anything about the coin?”
Winn related the things he’d learned from McGraves as he finished washing up his shoes.
“Can we go now?” Winn asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Marty said. “In case there’s any residue still on your shoes, we should make a beeline to my car. When we get back to my place, I can wash your shoes with an agent that will neutralize anything that’s left on them. I should probably wash your pants, too, in case any got on them.”
“Even after all that rinsing in the toilet?” Winn asked, incredulous.
“Even a drop is enough to draw a Z-fly,” Marty said, holding the door open for Winn to exit. “And since we’re not in the River, we won’t even see them coming. Let’s not stay out in the open any longer than we need to.”
Winn raced out the door, and Marty followed at a fast clip.
Chapter Eight
Winn opened the door to his trailer. It didn’t look or sound like his mother had gotten out of bed yet, so he quietly closed the door, not wanting to wake her. When he woke her up she was usually crabby.
He searched through the kitchen for a plastic bag, opening and closing drawers as quietly as he could until he found one. Then he went to the refrigerator and removed a stick of string cheese. He peeled it open and took a bite, then walked down the hallway to his room.
Although a bathroom separated his and his mother’s bedrooms, he still changed his clothes as quietly as he could. The walls inside the trailer were extremely thin and not at all soundproof. He carefully placed his shoes and pants into the plastic bag and he tied it up tight. He put on fresh clothes and an older pair of sneakers that had holes in them.
Just as he was preparing to pick up the bag and leave his room, he heard his mother walking past his bedroom door in the hallway. Since she was just waking up, he knew she’d go to the kitchen, make a pot of coffee, and smoke a cigarette while it brewed. He worried that if she saw the plastic bag he was carrying, she might question him, and he didn’t want that. He placed the clothes into his backpack and walked out.
His mother was sitting at the table in the kitchen, wearing a robe. Her hair was messed up, and she started to press it down as she saw Winn.
“Hey,” he said, nodding to her as he headed to the trailer door.
“Hey,” she said back, glanced at him, and then lit up a cigarette.
He opened the door and walked out, closing it behind him. He stood for a moment on the steps, his back to the door, waiting to see if she was going to come to the door and ask where he was going, or what he was doing.
; She didn’t come.
He stepped down and began walking toward Marty’s. If he had to choose between a dad like Brent’s or a mom like his, he’d choose his mom. She wasn’t mean like Brent’s dad, and she usually let him come and go whenever he wanted.
He just wished it didn’t feel so much like being ignored.
▪ ▪ ▪
After he dropped his clothes off at Marty’s, he decided to check on Brent and see why he hadn’t shown for their trip to the mansion. He walked past his trailer and on toward Brent’s. He saw that Jeanette was out, sitting in her chair, with Ears at her feet. She had spotted him through her thick glasses.
“Come here,” she called to him as he walked past. “Get your scrawny ass over here!”
Winn stopped to look at her. He glanced up and down the driveway, hoping someone would be there, Brent maybe, and he could use it as an excuse to ignore her. There was no one.
“Come here, I want to show you something,” she said, waving him over with her hand. He walked toward her.
She was wearing a faded floral print dress that came down to her knees. He could see that she’d bandaged up her calves, and there were discolored splotches on the bandages where the sores from her legs had seeped through. Either that or she spilled something on them, Winn thought. They’re disgusting!
As he approached, she held out her arm, showing him a large scab. “This is where he bit me,” she said. “See what he did?”
“Who?” Winn asked, stopping about three feet from her.
“Come over here so you can see it!” she insisted. “You can’t see if from there.”
Winn took a couple of steps forward and stopped within kicking distance of her legs. He saw Ears raise his little rat head from his paws to look at him. He sniffed a couple of times and lowered his head. His eyes looked cloudy, and Winn wondered if he could see anything at all.
“The damn dog bit me!” Jeanette said, thrusting her arm at him. “Went right through the skin, made me bleed!”
“Why’d he bite you?” Winn asked.
Jeanette looked at him through her thick glasses, giving him a quizzical look that told Winn she hadn’t been prepared for that question.
“He’s a damn dog, you hobbledehoy! That’s what they do!”
“I don’t think Ears would bite you,” Winn said. “He’s too old. He doesn’t have the strength.”
“Well, he did! What do you think this is? Aren’t you smart enough to believe your own eyes?”
“Ears just doesn’t seem that mean,” Winn replied.
“Well, he is! He’s a ferocious little thing, and you have to know how to deal with him. I bit him back.”
“You did not,” Winn said, smiling.
“I sure did. Bit him right on the leg, made him bleed too, just like me!”
Winn studied her face to see if she was lying. She didn’t crack a smile. He knew Jeanette was crazy, but she also seemed normal much of the time. She might be pulling his leg; or, she might have really bit Ears’ leg. Woman bites dog. He couldn’t tell, and she wasn’t tipping her hand.
“That’s animal cruelty,” Winn said. “You can’t bite dogs.”
“Well, what he did to me was cruelty,” she said. “I feed him and bathe him and clean up all his shit, and what do I get for it? Bit in the arm!”
“I gotta go, Jeanette,” Winn said, backing away.
“Wait, I need your help.”
“What?”
“I want you to help me pick off this scab. I want to see what’s underneath. It might be infected.”
Winn felt his stomach churn. “I’m not going to do that, Jeanette.”
“If it’s infected, I’m gonna need extra medicine, so I gotta know.”
“I’m not going to pick off the scab, Jeanette. That’s too gross. No way.”
“You’re kinda mouthy for a little prick!”
“Bye,” Winn said, turning from her.
“You don’t help someone by abandoning them,” she called after him. “Coward!”
He wasn’t sure, but as he walked away from her, he thought he heard her laughing quietly.
She’s messing with me, entertaining herself, Winn thought.
He walked behind Brent’s trailer, pulled the wooden crate from under it, and gave the tap on Brent’s window. He waited a minute, and gave the tap again. No response. Brent usually came right to the window if he was in his room. Winn didn’t want to tap again and attract the attention of Brent’s father.
He jumped down from the crate and slid it under the trailer, wondering where Brent might be. Their car was in the driveway, so they hadn’t gone anywhere. Brent’s bike was locked up at the back of the trailer.
He wandered home, unsure what he’d do with the rest of his day. When he passed by Jeanette’s he saw that she’d gone back inside, and he was grateful not to have to interact with her again. Once he reached his trailer, he went in and began rummaging for food.
His mother emerged from the back bedroom, now dressed in a tank top and cut offs. She’d had her morning doses of caffeine and nicotine, and she was ready to face the world.
“There’s no food in here to make sandwiches with,” Winn complained. “We’re out of peanut butter.”
“There’s cheese,” his mother said. “Make a cheese sandwich.”
“That’s gross,” Winn said.
“You eat grilled cheese sandwiches, what’s the difference?” she asked.
“Uh, grilled?”
“Well, you can grill a sandwich as easily as I can,” she said. “So don’t tell me there’s no food. And by the way, your gay little friend came around this morning, banging on the door, waking me up. I want you to tell him to not knock on our door so early in the morning.”
He knew she was talking about Brent. It pissed him off when she called him ‘gay,’ because he knew she was doing it to just to get a rise out of him.
“Will you stop calling him gay?” Winn said, putting two pieces of bread in the toaster.
“That kid’ll be a real knob jockey someday, mark my words,” she said, sitting down and clicking on the TV.
“I don’t care, he’s my friend,” Winn said, pulling butter out of the fridge. “And he’s a better person than most of the men you bring home.”
Winn saw her shoot him a glance, but she didn’t reply. They both knew it was true.
He buttered his toast and sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on them, then sat with her as she watched an infomercial selling a flat piece of metal that melted ice.
“You don’t normally wear those shoes,” she said, observing his feet.
“Gotta clean the other ones, I got them dirty with…” He stopped himself. He was about to say ‘ghost blood,’ but he knew it would send her into a fit.
“With what?”
“…with this really sticky mud. I’m going to wash them off with the hose later.”
“Don’t ruin them,” she said, lighting up another cigarette. “Those shoes have got to last you all year.”
Winn had tried to talk to his mother about his gift, his ability to enter the River, when he first discovered it last year. She seemed to know what he was talking about, but she wouldn’t go into details with him, and the more he brought it up, the more she shut him down. That’s when he learned that Marty knew about the River, and was willing to answer his questions about it. Marty explained that it was inherited. Winn figured it came from his mom, but for some reason she wasn’t willing to tell him about it.
Winn brought it up with her once since that initial encounter, and it hadn’t gone well. She got angry and told him to never bring it up again. He hadn’t, with her. Whenever he had a question about it, he went to Marty.
Part of him wished his mom would open up to him about it, but he knew that was unlikely. She was always distant. When he saw how other moms treated their kids, he was surprised at how involved they were, how they pestered his friends always wanting to know where they were, what they were doing, and who they were doi
ng it with. Winn’s mom never asked those questions. She didn’t seem to care.
“I got another early shift today, I’m covering for Michelle again, so I won’t be home until after two,” she said, tapping her cigarette ash into a ceramic ashtray, so full of ashes and butts you couldn’t see the picture of Saddleback Mountain on the bottom. “You know the drill.”
“Yeah,” Winn said. “I know the drill.”
The drill meant three things: keeping noise in the trailer down to a reasonable level so neighbors wouldn’t complain (like they had a month ago, when someone had called the cops because he was playing music too loud), being inside by ten, and lights out by midnight. She claimed she had spies in the trailer court who would report to her if they saw him out later than ten or the lights on after midnight, but he didn’t believe her. He routinely stayed up later than midnight with the light on in his bedroom, and nothing had come of it.
As he finished his cinnamon toast, his mother rose from the chair and smashed out her cigarette, then walked down the hallway to the bathroom. He heard the shower start up.
Brent must have come by after he found me and Marty gone, Winn thought. He’s always late. He’ll be pissed that we left him, but it’s his own fault. I told him he had to be on time.
He walked to his room and pulled his Walkman from his bed, then went out the trailer door, heading for the treehouse. It was time for some Dandy Warhols and to think over what McGraves had said to him.
Since his mother was in the shower, he knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him climbing on the trailer, so he didn’t worry about being quiet. He reached the top and climbed to the branch, then up the trunk to the platform. As he brought his head up above the platform’s height, he realized Brent was there already, lying down. He looked like he was sleeping, with his head turned away from him.
Winn pulled himself up onto the platform and kneeled next to Brent. “Before you give me a speech about ditching you,” he said, “remember that I told you you had to be on time. We waited an extra half hour for you before we had to go!”
The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2) Page 8
