“The program activates, doesn’t it? Oh god.”
We will never be safe.
I leave that unspoken between us. Jack knows. I know.
Nothing left to do but run and hide. “We need to find a beach town where we’ll be somewhat anonymous and settle down.”
Jack shakes his head. “We can’t, and you know it. The longer we stay someplace, the more likely Quincrux will find us.”
“We don’t know that, really. We don’t know anything about him, or the witch. We don’t know what they want or who they work for. Or how much money or power they have in the real world.”
“We know they’ve got enough power to control people. If they can read minds, they’ll find us.”
I don’t reply. He’s right, but I’m tired of running.
“I had a vision last night.”
That just popped out there. My mouth moves in mysterious ways.
Jack looks at me like I’m some kind of deep-sea creature floating to the surface, gelatinous and strange.
“Don’t look at me like that, man. I didn’t ask for any of this.” I tap the fingernail of his sixth finger. “Just like you didn’t ask for it.”
I go ahead and lay out what I saw. Finding Vig and Coco. Seeing the black hole to the north. The bad vibes I got from it.
“I wondered why you weren’t as eager to get to Maryland, why you bought us tickets to here.” Jack looks at me sharply. “We’re landlocked, you know. No practicing.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I just…” I don’t know how to say it other than just to say it. “I got scared. It’s black to the north. There’s no human light. No indication of… of the illumination of people.”
Jack looks at me in the watery, unwavering way he has. Not judgmental, just considering. And waiting.
“Whatever is up there … whatever is causing that great black hole … it nearly killed Quincrux. And whatever I’ve learned, I’m nothing compared to him. So, yeah … I’m scared.”
Again, silence. We stay that way a long while.
“Well, we can stay here for a couple of days.” Jack claps an over-fingered hand on my shoulder. “But we’ve got to find somewhere to stay, and it’s getting late. How much money do we have left?”
We have maybe three hundred dollars.
“Why don’t we hit a few stores before they close and then try another hotel,” I say. I look down the street. This part of Raleigh is crowded with big office buildings interspersed with motels, hotels, and chain restaurants. The sun slants in the afternoon sky, giving trees and buildings a warm haze even in the cold. In a couple hours it’ll be dark. It’s easier to make folks see what I want them to see when it’s dark. I don’t know why.
“Sure,” Jack says. “Let’s make some money.”
We cross the road, navigating the traffic, and enter the Kwik Mart. The store smells like incense, tobacco, and stale beer. Jack grabs a pack of gum and a couple sodas, puts them on the counter. The cashier, a fat, hairy biker with full sleeve tats, is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a gigantic black raven. He turns away from a small television blaring wrestling and raises his eyebrow at Jack.
I go in, a full dive. It’s like diving into a pool and finding all the water has been drained. It’s like slamming into a brick wall, his mind is so strong.
Jack holds up a one-dollar bill, like we’ve done so many times before.
“That’ll be three twenty-nine.”
Jack’s face clouds, and he glances at me.
I make another run at the biker, giving it all I’ve got. For a second I feel like I’m slipping behind the curtains, beyond the veil of sight. But I hear a buzzing, and then … inexplicably… I sense tectonic plates shifting, and something massive stirs, uncoils. A presence.
I think of Wolf-boy’s father in the pharmacy, his head like a steel door.
During my vision I was suffused by Coco, by Vig. This feels like I’m witnessing someone—or something— suffuse the biker. Blackness pushes in on the edges of my vision, and my arms break out in goosebumps. I shiver.
The biker glances at me, blinks, and then turns back to Jack.
“That ain’t gonna cut it, son.”
Jack sheepishly pulls out more money, takes his change, and we leave.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask. I don’t know what happened in there. Something is wrong. I felt—”
“Your nose is bleeding.”
“What?”
I dig a handkerchief out of my backpack and wipe up the blood. It’s just a little. Not too much.
Did the ability wear off? I felt like Quincrux opened a door in my mind, but could it have been temporary? Could I have lost it? The idea scares me. And thrills me. To be just a kid again. That’s something…
“Wait a sec.”
I turn around and go back into the store. The burly man glances up from the wrestling and raises a caterpillarlike eyebrow.
“Excuse me, sir.”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“What is it? Can’t you see I’m busy here?” He gestures at the little TV set perched beside the register, nestled in among the cigarettes.
He doesn’t look particularly busy to me, but he looks crotchety enough that I’m not going to push it too far.
“Just one question. Are you from Maryland?”
“No. Born in Philly.”
“But your shirt…”
“Yeah. Lived in Baltimore for a couple months last year with my old lady. Edgar Allen Poe’s two-hundredth birthday or something like that. What’s it to ya?”
“Oh, nothing. Just settling a bet with my brother.”
“Well, if there was money on it, you gonna split it with me?”
I laugh, because that’s what it feels like I should do. After a moment, the biker laughs too, his bearded face splitting into a craggy grin. I wave and go back out to where Jack’s waiting on the sidewalk.
“He lived in Baltimore last year.”
Jack opens his mouth and then shuts it. He gives me a look like he’s waiting to hear the rest. Quite the nonverbal communicator, he is.
“Baltimore is in Maryland, Jack.”
“I know that. So?”
“I think there’s some kind of connection between Maryland and not being able to … you know…”
Jack doesn’t like talking about my abilities. He might be as ashamed of what I can do as he is of his hands.
“How could that be? I mean, why would that prevent you from doing…” He waves his hand in the air. “Your thing?”
“For a second I felt something weird. Like he had a rider.”
“A rider?”
“Someone was already occupying the space where I was trying to go. Or something.”
Just saying it gives me shivers.
“Hold up. Or something? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. When I got a little bit in, it just felt … foreign.”
I can’t really express what happens when I go inside someone, and Jack can only understand the shockwaves he can generate and his many, many fingers. All this mentalist stuff bothers him, it’s so removed from the body.
His understanding is locked up. Rooted in the flesh.
Incarcerado.
I sigh, put my hands on my hips. “Just trust me, man. Someone—something—else was there. Not controlling, just riding in the background. Watching.”
Jack’s quiet, looking at me closely.
Eventually he says, “I don’t like how you say that.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, man. I didn’t get any warm and fuzzies from whatever it was. That’s all.”
“I’m thinking we don’t need to go any closer to Maryland.”
I remember Quincrux’s conversation with Ilsa. How he said at full strength he could make the whole yard of Casimir, all of the boys there, kill one another if he wished. The more I know now, the more I believe him. But he was recovering from
the “incident in Maryland.”
Now, if I were a hero, I’d set off trying to figure out what the darkness to the north is. I’d solve the mystery of the entity behind the biker’s eyes. Behind Wolf-boy’s father’s eyes.
Screw that.
I should have realized that if Quincrux doesn’t want to tangle with what’s in Maryland, I sure as hell shouldn’t get close to it. I fought Quincrux as hard as I could, and he cut through me like warm butter.
It doesn’t take a mind reader to realize that going north isn’t the best idea after all.
But we can’t keep running forever. I just can’t do it, squatting in condos, tricking hotel attendants into thinking we’ve got reservations and credit cards. I don’t like it. I’d rather be back at Casimir. You know where you stand in juvie, and there’s always a bed and three squares— which is more than could be said for even Holly Pines. For a moment I’m overcome with an intense anger at Jack, this kid who came and disrupted my sweet life there. It wasn’t the best joint in the world, but it was safe, it was comfortable. I knew where I stood. I belonged there.
Ah, crap.
Jack’s looking at me, head cocked and eyes wide, in the way that reminds me so much of my little dude. Of Vig. And my anger dissipates. Slowly. Slowly. But it goes.
“Maybe you’re right.” I’m quiet for a while, rubbing my chin. “We’ll head back south. At least folks down there speak right.”
He laughs, an easy laugh. I think back to what he was like when he first came to Casimir Pulaski. How locked off he was. How he would barely smile, or talk, or do anything. And now he’s laughing.
We take a street to the right, backtracking, maybe one turn too early, heading back to the train station. Late afternoon now, light angled and beginning to turn golden. There’s a nip to the air, and our hoodies are welcome. We pass a couple of blocks of pretty nice houses—nicer than anything in Holly Pines, but that ain’t saying much—and up comes a chatter and hollering of voices. Boys’ voices, teens maybe, not far away.
Jack looks at me, and I shrug. “Let’s check it out.”
Take a turn on the next block and there’s a small empty lot, brown and green and golden in the light, with a handful of boys and girls—teens and younger—swarmed in the dust tossed from their restless feet on the sneaker-packed dirt.
“Here they are,” the largest boy, easily my height, calls. “Now we got even teams!” He hefts a Wiffle bat and whips it around in an excited circle. “Come on, guys!”
I grin at Jack and he returns it, shucking off his backpack and leaving it on the ground, and the other kids don’t realize they don’t know us until we’re standing among them and pulling back our hoods.
“All right,” says the largest and obvious chieftain of the kids, “Now that Phil and Greg are here…”
“That’s not Phil,” says a girl. Smiling funny as she says it, as if she’s in on the joke. I wink at her.
“Huh?” Chief spins around, looks at us. “What the…?” He scans the road, the neighborhood, and looks back at us. “Who’re you?”
“Shreve. That’s Jack. We’re new in the neighborhood.”
“You guys play Wiffle?”
I snort.
His eyes narrow, but with everyone lined up, looking at him, the light failing, he shrugs and says, “Okay, Shreve. You guys are in. You know the rules, but we play that you can bean somebody for an out. If you miss, the person can run it home.”
“That’s cool.” We played a similar variation at home.
“You hit the Stevensons’ roof? Auto homer. First team to ten or dark.” He points with the long Wiffle-ball bat at a nearby roof and then whips the bat in another whistling arc.
A small lot in a small neighborhood with regular kids. Sunlight failing. Motes in the air. Jack smiling. A woman’s high-pitched voice carries through the air, bright and piercing. “Daaaaannnneeeeee!!!”
“Shit, Chuck. She’s calling for me,” one kid says.
“Ignore her.”
A good-looking blond kid scuffs his sneakers in the dirt and says, “She has to come lookin’ for me, she’s gonna be pissed. Let’s hurry this up.”
“Aubrey, you pick the other team.”
A red-haired girl moves to stand beside Chief. They divvy up sides. Jack and me being the last two kids picked, we’re on different teams.
The white Wiffle ball makes wonderful thocks as we hit it into the air, burning worms, skanking the fences. In the gathering dark Jack laughs, and I laugh with him, running as hard as hell and tossing the ball around. These kids are cool—nice kids. Aubrey asks me where I go to school, and I chuck my head from the direction we came from. “Malbey Fields?” She smiles. “Me too. You have Mrs. Crotchet, yet? She’s a fucking doozy.”
“Not yet.” Chief pitches and the kid at bat clocks one, up high, and I dash to the fence and snatch it out of the air. “Booyah!”
We play. So easy. I feel like my body has become lighter, buoyant. There’s one kid back in the “outfield” watching each batter like we’re in the major leagues, and I can hear him saying under his breath, “Short’s the best posish they is … they is…” over and over again.
Jack’s up at bat, hefting the yellow implement of Wiffle destruction. Chuck does his windup routine, pitches a couple of woofers, which Jack swings at anyway. The kids yell out the strikes as they happen.
Jack connects with the next one, the white ball making a hollow twhock! as it peels off to the left, falling outside of the baseline, and the group, almost as one, yells “Foul!” and Jack rehefts the bat.
It’s then that one of the kids, Danny whose mother is waiting on him, says, “Holy shit, guys, he’s got six fingers on his hand.”
Silence. It’s so out of the blue, no one says anything, and Chuck, who must not have heard, pitches the ball. Jack doesn’t swing. His face has gone slack except for the pain around his eyes, and his shoulders hitch high, as if he expects a blow instead of the pitch.
The ball hits the ground in a puff of dust and rolls away. No one goes to get it.
Jack drops the bat.
“Shit, seriously. You see that? Hey … you.” Danny begins walking toward Jack, and I intercept him.
“Back off, man. None of your business.”
These kids look at me, and I’m struck for a moment because I thought I’d see anger or hatred on their faces. Or loathing. There’s just interest, curiosity. Jack is new.
This isn’t Casimir, and these kids aren’t the general pop.
I look at Jack. “We better go, man”
We’re putting all these kids at risk. Quincrux.
But secretly I’m thinking, Damn you, Jack. Goddamn you for being so different. Couldn’t we have just had this one afternoon?
I’m ashamed at my anger with him. Moms was right. God, how I hate her for being right.
Luckily, at that moment Danny’s mother calls again, and the sun is down and the Wiffle ball game has ended. A few kids, uninterested in the physical anomaly amongst them, take off for home. Chuck picks up the bat and ball. Danny stares hard at Jack even though his mother is calling and finally says, “That’s cool, man.” He waves and takes off, calling over his shoulder, “Nice to meetcha!”
We gather our backpacks, start to walk back towards the shops and drag just a few blocks away, when Aubrey trots up and falls in beside us.
“You’re not really from around here, are you?”
I shake my head. Jack’s got this vacant, empty stare— hollow as a Wiffle ball.
When I don’t respond any further, she says, “Well, I think it would be awesome if you went to school at Malbey.” She takes my hand. Hers are very warm. Slightly moist. “Your brother is cute. But I like my boys tough,” she says and passes me the piece of paper. She’s got brown hair and a narrow face, but her smile is easy and generous and there’s a mischievousness to her stare that makes me warm and nervous.
She lets go of my hand and walks off into the dark, toward home.
J
ack and I walk a few minutes more. I open the paper, look at it.
A phone number.
It’s harder than I thought to throw it away.
We decide to hit a few more stores and shops and see if I can work the scam at all. To make sure this thing that Quincrux gave me hasn’t dried up. We walk south without even thinking. Away. Putting distance between us and … and…
It. The thing in the north.
But all the while I’m thinking, Them. Between us and them.
FIFTEEN
Another cashier with a noggin like titanium, and then our luck changes and we manage three in a row as easy as getting into as an unlocked car. I dive in and root around. Nice folks, regular lives, struggling to get by. They’ve all done bad stuff and had bad stuff done to them, but nothing out of the ordinary. It’s not that I want to snoop, but I need to prove to myself I can still do it.
It’s scary, but I’ve come to rely on my ability. I guess Quincrux didn’t realize he was giving me a gift when he was possessing me. But if I had my way, I’d rather he’d never come to Casimir.
I can’t say the same about Jack. And with Jack comes Quincrux. It’s a sad truth that I won’t linger over.
When our cash flow is back up near a grand, it’s late, nearing ten. And the later it gets, the more nervous I get, worrying about local curfew laws. They say the freaks come out at night.
And here we are.
We grab a cab and head back to the Amtrak station, the second time today.
By the time we roll out of the cab, the downtown Raleigh streets are semi-deserted. I realize as I’m staring up into the buzzing, lonely streetlight outside the train station that I don’t even know what day it is.
Jack looks dazed. He’s got his thumbs hooked in the straps of his backpack like some farm boy snapping his suspenders. His fingers are fanned wide and on display for any Tom, Harry, or Dickhead to come along and see.
“Jack.” I toss my head in the direction of all those fingers pointing everywhere. “Hey, man. You’re a bit conspick.”
“Huh? Oh.” He stuffs them in his pockets and blushes.
The Twelve-Fingered Boy Page 13
