It seems to make sense to tell Kelsey what I need to tell her here.
I walk with her hand in hand, and it takes us a while to get to the small creek flowing from the falls. Large rocks surround the area, and I find one that’s flat to sit on. It’s near the edge of the creek and provides a scenic view of the falling waters and the pool underneath.
“You’re scaring me a little,” Kelsey says.
“Don’t be scared.”
She smiles and looks around. “This is beautiful.”
“You’ve never been here?”
Kelsey shakes her head. I tell her that it’s Marsh Falls and that the waters are supposed to be magical.
Her bright blue eyes study me in the middle of these woods. “Why’d you bring me here?”
“Because it’s the only place I can think where someone might not be watching me,” I say. “I don’t know why I think that. Maybe someone is behind the falls with a video camera and recording equipment. I don’t know. But this place seems … safe.”
“Safe for what?”
I sigh and sit up and face her and take her hands. “I have to break up with you.”
Instant confusion fills her pretty face. “What?”
“No, listen. That’s what it’s supposed to look like. Kelsey—there are bad people around here. Bad men. I could try and go into detail and tell you every little thing I know about them, but I think that would just make things worse.”
“Are you in trouble?”
I nod. “Yeah, you could say that. Not because of something I did. But just—these people—it has to do with who I am and who I’m related to. And it has to do with my family.”
“But what’s it have to do with me?”
I squeeze her hands and smile. “Nothing. That’s the thing—they think that I shouldn’t be with you. And these people—I have to do what they tell me to do.”
They might be able to control what I do, but they can’t control fate. They can’t control the fact that one day a guy decides to talk to a girl in his art class and it turns into something more.
“I don’t understand.”
I nod.
Of course you don’t.
“Kelsey—there are people in this town who are evil. I know—I know that you’ve heard stories and weird things—everybody has. But it’s real. They don’t want me with you. They don’t like the fact that you and your family are Christians. They don’t like that at all.”
“But what—why do they care?”
“Because …”
I don’t know exactly what to say because the more I say the more insane I’m going to sound.
“Because they feel they own me,” I say. “And they don’t want to have anything to do with God or Jesus or anything good. And that includes you.”
I can see her mind trying to make sense of this, but I know it’s not going to happen, not here, not now.
“I can’t be seen with you anymore. We can’t talk. Or email or text or anything.”
She lets out an exasperated and bewildered chuckle.
“I know. It’s crazy. Listen—I’m coming to Illinois with you. I’m going back there for college. Or at least to live. And this—you and me—we’re not done. But we have a couple of months to go, and I don’t want anything happening to you.”
“This is about the stuff you’ve told me—about the bad people who have it out for you?”
I nod. “Yeah. These evil people—they want me for something, Kelsey. They think they own me because of who I’m related to. Because of my great-grandfather. And yeah, it’s totally insane. All of it. But it took me a long time to finally stop saying it was insane and realize it’s all true.”
“What are you supposed to do for them?”
The steady pounding of the water falling into the pond keeps our words from being heard. Yet still I end up scanning the woods around us for a moment.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I say. “It’s like the family business or something. Like the mob. They’re coming to tell me I’m a part of them and have to do what they say or else. Except this isn’t the mob. This is some cult.”
Kelsey doesn’t laugh in my face. But that’s because she lives around here and goes to Harrington, and anyone who does that has to know a little deep down. The rumors and the weird things and the disappearances and the overall vibe of Solitary. Anybody knows something.
Instead of looking confused, Kelsey looks scared.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her. “But we can’t—this, you and me, can’t be anymore. Not public.”
“Chris?”
“Yeah.”
“Did something happen to Jocelyn? Is that why she’s gone?”
I nod and stare at her.
Then I see the tears forming in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
She swallows and wipes her eyes.
“I swear, you’re going to be okay,” I tell her.
“But can’t we tell someone? What about my parents?”
“No. I’ve tried that. Others have tried that. That’s why—I swear, Kelsey, you have to trust me. You have to do this. Just stay quiet. And stay away from me.”
She continues to cry, so I move over and hold her in my arms.
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I tell her as my mouth is gently pressed against her ear. “I’m going to take care of you.”
Kelsey moves back so she can look at me. I see those vibrant eyes looking scared and hurt but also lovely. They stare up at me in a strange and magical way.
“I love you,” Kelsey says. She’s shaking as she holds my hands, and tears are in her eyes, but somehow she’s also smiling. “I really do, Chris. I really love you.”
I don’t expect this and don’t know what to say.
But Kelsey solves that for me when she moves over and kisses me. I move my arms around her waist, and I kiss her for a very long time.
I kiss her hard and kiss her knowing it might be our last kiss for some time.
77. Midnight
On Friday afternoon of the same week I tell Kelsey good-bye, a face from the past is waiting for me after school lets out.
Gus used to be an everyday menace, but he’s left me alone this year. I’m sure it’s because of the vicious beating with a spoon that he got in front of everybody at the Labor Day picnic at the Staunch house. A beating that his own father gave him. A beating I can relate to, since I’ve felt the brunt of his father’s anger too.
I’m sure Staunch has told Gus to lay off me. But there have been other things too.
Oli dying over the summer. I don’t know if Gus was involved in any way, but that seemed to take the high school bullying antics to a whole new level.
I figured Gus and I were never going to cross paths again, and that was fine by me.
Instead, he’s standing there by my motorcycle in an Avenged Sevenhold T-shirt, looking the same as always. In fact, he looks even fatter and uglier than usual. As if the spoon beating just made him meaner and more miserable.
He greets me with an offensive and colorful word that I’m not surprised to hear from his mouth. “Thought you were done with me, didn’t you?”
“What do you want?”
He’s still just a dumb redneck. Yeah, he’s got a monster for a father, but it doesn’t excuse his being an idiot.
“I’ve been waiting and watching, Chris. You think I was just gonna let you go and not get you back for everything you done?”
He still has a hick accent and a mean, beefy face.
“Get out of my way, Gus.”
“Or what? What’re you gonna do?”
I just stand there. I’m in no mood to fight or to argue or even
communicate with this big lug nut.
“I know what you’re gonna do,” he says. “I know exactly what you’re gonna do.”
“What’s that?”
His eyes shrink as he glares at me. It’s like looking at the hot coals of a fire. I can just feel the hatred coming from him.
“I don’t care who you are,” he says in a lower voice. “I don’t care what you’re supposed to do. I don’t care when you’re supposed to do it. Or why.”
Gus curses and spits out something thick onto the pavement.
“I don’t even care if I get in trouble, because I’m always in trouble. Don’t matter. I just want to see you cry. I want to see you on your knees scared and begging for help.”
He smiles in a way that makes me nervous.
“So I know exactly how that’s gonna happen,” he says.
“Gus, come on—I didn’t do anything to you.”
He barks out another curse. “Nothing? You did everything. Nothing’s been the same since you moved here, and I’m tired of it. Tired of you. Tired of having to stay away from you. But I’m not laying a single finger on you. Not at all.”
Gus lets out a sick and twisted laugh.
“What?” I ask.
“I promise, I won’t hurt you. Maybe your dog, but not you.”
I look at him for a second. He laughs again, and his face seems to glow in delight.
“What’d you say?”
“Woof woof,” Gus says.
Midnight.
I don’t say anything, because the chances are high he’s lying. I just wait for a minute.
“What do you call that little black mop of a poochie you got there?” Gus asks.
“Midnight.”
“Ah,” Gus says, acting and gloating and doing a lame job at both. “Well, that’s very fitting.”
“Why’s that?”
“You ever want to see that dog of yours again?”
My stomach drops, because I suddenly know Gus isn’t lying.
He’s smiling way too big to be bluffing.
“What’d you do?”
“Oh, she’s fine. For now. But come midnight, I don’t know.”
“Gus, I swear, if you did anything—”
“What? What are you going to do?”
“Where is she?”
“You can find her around the stroke of twelve.”
“Where?”
He shoves me back, since I’m in his face. “You do anything now or get me in any kind of trouble,” Gus says, “and I’ll squash her. I swear. I’ll sit on her. I don’t care.”
“Where?” I ask again.
“Midnight is going to be down in the tunnels.”
“What tunnels?”
Gus just laughs. “That’s funny.”
“Where in the tunnels?”
“That’s the fun part, Chris. Mr. Golden Boy. Mr. Chosen One. You’ll have to find your little doggie in the dark. And trust me, you’re not gonna want to go down there, not after midnight. Not when he’s roaming about.”
Gus laughs and starts to walk away.
I grab him on his shoulder, and he whips around and almost pounds me in the face.
But he holds himself back.
“Ever wonder about the animals around here?” Gus says with a smirk. “How they’re all just a bit weird? Why you find dead animals all around? Huh?”
“Is she okay?”
“What? Your dog? Yeah, sure, she’s fine. For now. But the evil spirits don’t like animals. They like to feed on them. And so does he.”
He just glares at me, and I say nothing. I can’t.
I think I’m a bit too shocked.
The mental images going through my mind won’t leave.
“Good luck, Prince Buckley,” Gus spits out as he walks away.
78. Heading In
That evening I realize just how attached I’ve grown to the dog Jocelyn named Midnight. My family never had an animal growing up, so this was my first dog. And while maybe I always imagined it would be nice to have a big one, maybe a golden retriever or a strong Lab or even a German shepherd like my uncle’s, it didn’t take me long to fall in love with the little black Shih Tzu.
Maybe because I fell in love with her owner.
Midnight isn’t just a dog, however. She isn’t just this little companion that has been a bright spot (even if she’s pitch black) in a dark world. She stands for this wonderful thing I didn’t know I was looking for when I first arrived at Harrington High.
This wonderful thing that Jocelyn found before I did.
Hope.
I don’t really know what I’ll do if something happens to Midnight. If I can’t find her down below. If that creature ends up …
Stop it.
Mom knows something is wrong, but I don’t tell her what. She just assumes it has to do with everything else going on. The overall blah of being here. Midnight is such an easy dog to take care of that Mom doesn’t even know she’s missing.
I get a backpack that belongs to Uncle Robert and load it with stuff I might need. I wish I still had that gun I once used on Wade, but it’s long gone, just like he is. I have a knife that I’ll carry in my pocket. My flashlight will be in my hand. I stuff a jacket, an extra set of batteries, and a digging tool that one would use in the garden into the backpack. I’m not really sure what I’ll use that last thing for. I mean—if the ground caves in I don’t exactly think I’ll be digging myself out with a tiny shovel used for flowerpots.
I grab a bag of chips, then make myself a sandwich. Mom just assumes I’m still hungry from dinner. You know, like most seventeen-year-old boys tend to be. She doesn’t see me slip the sandwich into a plastic baggie as if I’m going on a picnic or a school field trip.
She makes a little small talk as we’re watching television, but I don’t really talk back. It’s an art to talk with someone but really not say anything. But I can’t stop thinking of the dog that may or may not be lost somewhere in the tunnels.
Gus might be lying. He might have already done something to her.
“Where’s Midnight?” Mom eventually asks.
She’s usually lying right next to me on the couch like some guard dog that resembles a chocolate-covered donut.
I don’t want to lie to Mom. I’ve lied—no, make that we’ve lied enough to each other.
“I don’t know,” I say.
And I don’t.
I’m just not telling her that I have to go down to the tunnels and look for her.
Mom doesn’t seem worried, since I’m not. We start watching one of those Friday night news shows about a man who murdered his family. Mom changes the channel, and on that show they’re talking about a woman suspected of killing her baby.
“I’m going to bed,” Mom eventually says, in a way that says I’m so tired of this dark and dreary world.
“Good night,” I say.
She tells me good night back, and for once I really, truly hope that those words mean something.
I can’t exactly head into Mom’s bathroom and then disappear down the ladder into the tunnels. That entrance has been boarded up for a while, and it seems we haven’t been visited recently. I’m not sure why, but I don’t care.
The less I have to think about those tunnels, the better.
But now I head back to the creepy little cabin that in so many ways was the start of everything. The start of the realization that I had moved somewhere really bad, and that things were only going to get worse.
It’s cool but not cold. I’m wearing a sweatshirt and jeans and can feel my steady breathing as I walk uphill. The cabin looks just like before—small and abandoned and left to rot in these woods. My flashlight scans the empty windows that remind me of empty eye socke
ts—
Stop it.
It doesn’t look like anything has changed since I was last here. No remodeling by one of those television shows that brings in the semi and gets the town to make a dream home for a poor, helpless family.
“We made this into a special black well just for you, Chrisssssssss!”
I’m already a bit freaked out, and my nerves are making me think crazy thoughts. And this is all before I’m even down in the tunnel.
I step inside the cabin and see the torn floor in the center, the hole looking just like it did the first time I stepped over decaying wood and fell through to hit a dirt bottom.
My flashlight finds the bed next to the wall, the one with the shackles next to it.
I think of what Pastor Marsh told me about the Solitaire family in France.
They weren’t real vampires, of course. But they acted the part. They really were just monsters. They would slip inside people’s home and rape the women and kill the men. Selectively, of course. To make sure they ruled with fear.
A bed with shackles in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere suddenly makes sense.
This wasn’t some little place a family lived once. It was where someone was imprisoned.
I think of Mom screaming that something was coming into her room in the middle of the night.
Are demons physical beings? Or do they have to inhabit someone in order to get around?
I’ve tried reading up on demons in the Bible, but I haven’t gotten a lot of information. It seems like most of my “knowledge” is from movies like The Exorcist and Paranormal Activity, and I don’t think they should be regarded as the definitive truth.
Can demons rip people out of their beds?
I don’t know.
I think there’s a lot—a lot—that we don’t know about the spiritual side of things. That maybe we’ll never know.
That I don’t ever really want to know.
I shiver and then remember the extra few things I packed away for this little late-night journey.
They’re there for when I need them.
I find a little comfort in that.
I soon find the rungs of the ladder going down into the cold, gaping hole. I head down carefully, not wanting to fall again and knock myself out.
Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series) Page 23
