Black Creek Crossing (49 page)

The air, washed clean by the storm, smelled sweet. As Seth gazed upward, the last remnants of the clouds evaporated into nothing. But for the freshness of the air and the dripping of the still soggy trees, the storm seemed to have left no trace at all, for even the wind that had driven the rain into a slashing torrent had died so completely that Seth felt no breeze against his cheek. He pushed the window shutter wide and opened the door as well. The fresh air left by the storm flushed out the acrid fumes left by the fire as the last rays of the setting sun washed away some of the gloom in the tiny cabin chamber.

Seth came back to the table and watched Angel ladle the contents of the kettle into a small jar. Meanwhile, Houdini twined himself first through Angel’s legs and then through Seth’s, and finally stretched out in the small patch of sunlight that found its way through the doorway.

“Now what?” Seth asked as Angel set the jar on the table.

“One of us adds our own blood to the jar and drinks it. Then we wash the jar out, and the other one does it.”

Saying nothing more, Seth picked up the knife, cut his finger, and squeezed a few drops of blood into the clear liquid in the jar. It vanished in an instant, leaving not even a hint of pink to betray its presence. Waiting only until the fluid was cool enough so it wouldn’t scald his mouth, he lifted the jar to his lips and swallowed the contents.

He rinsed the jar at the sink and Angel refilled it. Repeating the same ritual Seth had just performed, but using her own blood instead of his, she too drained the contents of the jar.

A moment later she picked up a second jar from the counter and handed it to Seth. “It’s the other one,” she said. “The one that lets you lift things. At least you can stop Zack from coming after you for a while.”

Silently, Seth tipped the second jar up, draining it even faster than he had the first.

A few minutes later, leaving no sign that they’d been there at all, Angel and Seth followed Houdini out the door of the cabin, pulled the door closed, and scrambled to the top of the berm of shattered granite. Climbing down the other side, they crossed the clearing and disappeared into the forest. Even though it was almost completely dark now, they had no trouble following Houdini as he led them back toward Black Creek Road.

“Maybe we should go to the drugstore and get a Coke or something,” Seth suggested. They were in front of the Sullivans’ house, and both of them could see her father framed in the window, staring out at the darkness of the evening.

Angel shook her head. “I better not. He can’t see us, but if I’m any later, he’ll just be even madder when I get back.”

“I guess,” Seth agreed, and Angel could hear the disappointment in his voice. “I guess I’d better be going.” Despite his effort to cover it, Angel could hear the fear in Seth’s voice, just as she had when he’d asked her to go to the drugstore for a Coke the last time.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

He cocked his head and managed a small grin. “Well, I was okay last night, so I guess I should be able to make it home, shouldn’t I?”

“Zack probably won’t try anything,” she said.

“Maybe,” Seth replied, but his expression told her that he was worried about it. “So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he finally said. Still, he lingered another few seconds before turning and starting to walk away.

Houdini, who had been sitting patiently while they talked, stood up, looked up at Angel, then started after Seth. The cat took a few paces, paused, and turned to gaze at Angel, and for a moment seemed uncertain. But then, turning away from her, Houdini hurried after Seth, catching up to him before he was fifty yards down the road.

“Hey,” Seth said, bending down to scratch the cat’s ears. “What are you doing?” He straightened up and looked back at Angel, but before he could send the cat back, she waved and turned toward her house. “You sure you want to come with me?” Seth asked, squatting down. Houdini promptly rolled over to have his stomach scratched. “Okay,” Seth sighed as he complied. “I’m not going to try to tell you what to do.”

Twenty minutes later he was only a block from his house, and so far had seen no sign of Chad, Zack, or Jared. Instead of going up Court Street as he usually did—where Zack had caught him yesterday—this time he went around to the other side of the park and walked up Church Street, staying across the street from the park, just in case. Coming to Elm Street, he didn’t make the turn toward his house, but went halfway up the next block. Now all he had to do was cut down the alley and come into his house through the back door.

He paused at the mouth of the alley, and as he peered down the long, shadowy row of garages—behind any one of which Zack, Chad, Jared, or anyone else could be hiding—he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to go back down to Elm Street and use the front door. Even if Chad and Jared were around, they’d be at the other end of the street anyway.

But if they saw him . . .

Better to use the alley, he decided.

With Houdini darting ahead of him, Seth started down the narrow graveled lane, leaving the faint yellowish glow of the streetlights behind.

As the darkness gathered around him, he thought he saw a faint movement off to the right, but when he turned to look, there was nothing.

Nothing but a gate that was slightly ajar.

Was that what he’d seen?

Had it moved?

Or had someone come through it? Someone who was now hiding in the shadows of the garage, which were even darker than the night?

Hunching his shoulders against the darkness—and whatever it might conceal—he hurried his step.

He was halfway to his own garage when Houdini suddenly froze.

As the cat’s back arched and it stared straight ahead, Seth felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and knew then that someone was behind him.

He’d walked into a trap.

Spinning around, he found himself staring at a dark figure silhouetted against the glow of the streetlight at the end of the alley. For a moment both Seth and the dark figure froze, and then the figure raised one if its arms. Now Seth could see the broken beer bottle clutched in the hand at the end of the uplifted arm, and as the figure raised it even higher, so that one of its jagged points was aimed directly at him, it caught the light from behind. As if mesmerized by the glittering object, Seth’s mind went blank, and a cold sheen of sweat broke out over his body.

Behind him, he heard a low hiss from Houdini, then a voice.

Jared Woods’s voice!

“Jeez! It’s that cat!”

The silhouetted figure moved closer, and now the razor-sharp blade of broken glass was just a few inches from Seth’s face. He could almost feel the glass tearing into his flesh, laying his face and neck open, slashing at his arteries—

From behind Seth came a muted scream, just loud enough to break the strange spell the broken glass had cast on Seth. He whirled around to see the barely visible figure of Jared Woods clutching at his face.

Houdini! The cat must have leaped at Jared and—

The thought was cut off by another scream, and once again Seth whirled.

What he saw made him stagger back a pace. The figure holding the broken bottle—who Seth was now sure had to be Chad Jackson—was standing stock-still. The broken bottle was still clutched in his right hand, but even in the dim light coming from the streetlight at the end of the alley, Seth was certain he could see something dripping from it.

Blood.

What had happened?

Had Chad slashed himself? He remembered, then, the last lines of the verse whose instructions he and Angel had followed only an hour earlier:
.
.
.
the payn will turn from thee and fall upon thine enemie.

As Seth stood frozen and gaping, Chad moved again, and then was hurling himself toward Seth, the broken bottle raised high. Even in the darkness he could see an insane light glowing in Chad’s eyes, and he knew what was about to happen.

Chad was going to kill him.

Seth’s reflexes instinctively took over, and his mind conjured a single image.

An image of Chad’s attack turning back on him, just as the verse had said.

At almost the same moment, Chad lurched backward, as if an unseen force had pulled him from behind, and then he was writhing on the ground as he tried to escape the weapon that was wielded by his own hand. Out of the corner of his eye Seth saw Jared Woods, staring in stupefaction at the struggling figure thrashing in the alley, then turning to stagger away into the darkness.

A moment later, just as the lethal point of the bottle was about to rip into Chad’s neck, Seth let go of the vision he’d conjured in his imagination.

And as the image of Chad slashing at his own neck vanished, Chad dropped the broken bottle. Then he lurched to his feet and stumbled after Jared.

As they disappeared into the darkness at the far end of the alley, Seth turned back to the gate to his own backyard, but paused to look for Houdini.

The cat had disappeared.

With the image of Chad struggling in the darkness to avoid the ravages of his own weapon still etched in his memory, Seth pushed through the gate, slipped into his house, and went up the back stairs to his room. He closed the door, dropped his backpack on his bed, then looked at himself in the mirror.

On the outside, he looked exactly as he had this morning when he went to school.

But on the inside, he knew something had changed.

He could have made Chad Jackson kill himself just now, could have made him use the broken bottle to slash his own throat.

Instead, he’d let Chad go.

But now, in a small dark corner of his mind, all the things Chad had done to him over the years rose up out of his memory, all the humiliations and all the beatings, and he found himself wishing that he hadn’t let Chad go.

He wished, instead, that he’d finished what Chad had begun.

In his mind Seth Baker began to visualize what he could have done, and as the images of Chad destroying himself grew clearer, Seth felt a strange power growing inside him.

Maybe, after all, it wasn’t too late.

Maybe he could still have a day of reckoning with Chad.

Focusing his mind, he once more turned his enemy upon himself. . . .

Chapter 43

E TRIED TO KILL ME!” CHAD JACKSON HOWLED. “THAT
little shit tried to fuckin’ kill me!” He and Jared were in Chad’s bedroom.

The broken bottle was gone—dropped somewhere as he’d fled down the alley to the safety of his house. As he stared at the blood covering his right hand, he felt as if he were going to throw up. He hurried to the bathroom and got there just in time to drop to his knees in front of the toilet before a violent contraction seized his stomach and he felt the remains of his lunch rise in his throat and spew out of his mouth.

Gagging and retching, Chad hung onto the toilet, and three more times the nausea overwhelmed him. When his stomach was finally empty, he dropped down onto the bathroom floor, half panting and half sobbing. What had happened? How had Seth—Seth
Baker,
for Christ’s sake—done it? He and Jared had spotted him half an hour ago, and it hadn’t take them long to figure out what he was up to. They followed him almost all the way, concealed in the darkness in the park, then cut down Elm Street and through a couple of yards when they saw him heading for the alley.

It should have been easy—Jared was ahead of Seth, and Chad was behind him.

He was caught.

Caught!

Caught all by himself, except for that stupid cat.

Where had it come from? And how could it be alive? They’d killed it, all three of them, and stuffed it in Angel Sullivan’s locker. It boggled Chad’s mind to the point where he could only dismiss it, stop thinking about it. And anyway, it was nothing but a stupid cat! If Jared had just kicked it or something—

That was it—it was Jared’s fault.

The last of his nausea giving way to anger, Chad scrambled to his feet, intending to find Jared, and—

Jared was standing in the bathroom door.

Standing there staring at him.

“What are you looking at?” Chad snarled.

“Jeez, Chad,” Jared breathed. “All that blood—I thought we were just going to scare him!”

Now it was Chad who was staring. “I should have killed him!” he screamed. “After what he did to me!” He put his finger to the cheek the broken bottle had slashed only a few minutes ago, and yanked it away as he felt the sting of his own touch. “He coulda killed me!” He turned and gazed into the mirror at the throbbing, burning wound. But he also saw Jared Woods gazing at him, and he saw the doubt in Jared’s eyes. What was going on? “You saw him,” he said to Jared’s image in the mirror. “Jeez, Jared—you saw what he did to me!” As he turned to face Jared directly, he saw his friend pull away. “You saw it!” he said again.

“It—it was dark,” Jared stammered.

Chad’s voice rose. “He came at me! He grabbed the bottle and—”

“I didn’t see that,” Jared said, taking a step backward. “I only saw you holding the bottle.”

“So what are you saying?” Chad demanded. “You think I did this to myself?” Again he put his fingers to his throbbing cheek.