Curse of the Spider King (12 page)

Jett felt a heavy throbbing on his face, and suddenly, a black helicopter appeared over Jett's father's shoulder. The craft seemed to fall out of the sky. He blinked, and for a moment, he thought a gigantic spider was about to descend upon him. It disappeared from Jett's sight, and more paramedics appeared. These wore helmets bigger than Jett's motocross helmet, and huge tinted visors.

“Your going” . . .“okay now” . . .“little tug” . . . “ride with us” . . . “hang in” . . .

The paramedics lifted Jett and carried him beneath the chopper blades. They slid him into the helicopter like a school lunch tray into a return slot in the cafeteria. Most of the light vanished when the chopper door shut.

Dad! DAD!!
Jett thought he was screaming but wondered if anyone heard. Then his father's face appeared. He mouthed something Jett couldn't hear. Jett watched his father lift and squeeze Jett's hand, but felt no comforting touch, no warmth, nothing at all.

The helicopter cabin rocked. Jett saw the sky wobble and a brief glimpse of trees. Then he felt dizzy. To this point, he'd been able to move his eyes, but now it seemed he had lost control of everything. His vision now fixed, he saw nothing but his strapped and blanketed chest rise and fall.
At least I'm breathing
, he thought.

But there was precious little relief. Gray mist like woolen blankets crept in from the corners of his eyes. He screamed silently as everything went dark.

12

Mr. Miracle

JETT WASN'T sure when or if he actually woke. There were moments, otherworldly and vague, when images came and went. At one point, he was in a blue room with three suns. Or at least these blazing white lights seemed like suns. Masked faces flitted in and out between drifting gray veils.

Once Jett found himself in some kind of long white tube. There was a strange whirring noise that seemed to spiral around his head. His mother's face appeared next, and three nurses gently pulled her back away from Jett's bed.

Ma?
he mouthed.
Ma, come back
.

A shrill beeping sound and squeezing pressure around Jett's upper arm woke him. He blinked a few times and stared at the inflating black cuff and realized that he could feel it squeeze his arm. “I feel—” He tried to speak, but gagged. A plastic tube was in his mouth and down his throat. Jett tried to swallow and gagged again.

Other tubes ran along his arms. Still more curled around the bedrail and disappeared over the side of the bed. With all the tubes and wires hooked up to him, Jett felt like a bug tangled in a spider's web. He could even imagine the IV monitor with all its small, red lights as the face of a huge spider, red eyes gleaming as it came to claim its snared prey.

As Jett faded in and out of sleep, it seemed his parents weren't there one minute and the next they were asleep, each with head and arms resting on the sides of Jett's bed.

Jett awoke with the blood pressure cuff inflated again. It seemed to be on some kind of timer set to go off every hour or so. His parents were gone.

Jett tried to blink away the sleepiness, but drifted off time and time again. Even when awake, Jett felt disoriented and weak. He lifted his right arm an inch off the bed; he could hold it for a second or two before it flopped to the sheets like a dead fish. He started to close his eyes when a doctor came to the foot of his bed.

He was a short man with dark skin and a mustache so thick it looked like a woolly bear caterpillar had decided to rest on the man's upper lip. The doctor looked at Jett for a few moments as if he were an exhibit at the state fair. He lifted up Jett's sheet and exposed Jett's feet. The doctor glanced again at Jett and took something that looked like a sewing needle from a little case. Then the doctor took the sharp end of the needle-thing and ran it under Jett's foot. He did it twice on each of Jett's feet.

To Jett's horror he felt nothing.

The doctor put Jett's feet down. He took the needle-thing and began to poke Jett's lower leg. Jett's fear increased. He wanted to kick his legs, wanted to jump up and kick the doctor for poking him, but he couldn't move his legs, not an inch. But Jett felt nothing, not a single one of the doctor's small stabs. The doctor shook his head and wiped a few beads of blood from Jett's leg.

“Jett, can you hear me?”

He opened his eyes and found a different doctor staring down at him. She had dark coppery hair tied back. Large, intense blue eyes gazed out from behind thin glasses. She had a nice smile.

“Yes . . . yes, I can hear you.” Jett realized that he could swallow now. The tube was gone.

“I'm Doctor Creighton,” she said, smiling. “And you, I'll just call you Mr. Miracle.”

“What do you mean?” Jett asked groggily.

Dr. Creighton smiled. “Well, for one thing, you're still alive.”

“I wrecked my bike . . . right?”

“You wrecked more than your bike,” she said. “What do you remember?”

Jett thought a moment. “I went too fast . . . I think. I—”

“Oh, my baby!” Jett's mother came around the curtain to Jett's bedside. She began to reach out her hands, but turned and looked questioningly at Dr. Creighton. “Can I . . . can I kiss my baby?”

Dr. Creighton laughed. “Of course you can.”

Jett had never been showered with tears before, but his mother leaned over, smothered him with kisses, and cried all over him. Mr. Green wasn't far behind. He didn't cry on his son, but softly said, “I love you, Son. You don't know how worried we were.”

Mrs. Green finally stood up and wiped her tears.

Jett lifted his arms one at a time. Then his legs. “I . . . I think I'm okay,” he said.

Mrs. Green gasped. “Praise the Lord!”

“Doctor Creighton,” Jett's dad stammered. “How?”

“Like I was telling Jett,” she said, “he's Mr. Miracle. The CAT scan, the MRIs showed no broken back, no broken ribs, no broken bones at all. The paramedics swore Jett had broken just about every bone in his body. I know a couple of those paramedics, and they're not often wrong.”

Jett's parents shook their heads. Jett wasn't sure what to say.

“That's not all,” said the doctor. “You may remember that Jett had more than a few scratches, cuts, and bruises.”

“It was horrible,” said Mrs. Green, nodding.

“Well, some of the doctors are convinced that those wounds spontaneously healed.”

“Spontaneously?” asked Mr. Green.

“We even have some documentation from the intake nurse,” said Dr. Creighton. “A wound here”—she pointed to a spot on Jett's arm—“on arrival, but gone this morning.”

“Praise the Lord!” exclaimed Mrs. Green. “My baby's been healed.”

“Yes, well, . . . it certainly seems that way,” said Dr. Creighton, a thoughtful expression lingering on her brow. “Now, we were just trying to find out what Jett remembered, if that's all right.”

“Go on, Jett. What do you remember?” his father asked.

Jett sat up a bit, glad to have most of the tubes and wires gone. He felt a lance of pain and rubbed his wrist. Then, with silent fascination, he watched as a pink scar disappeared from his wrist.

“Jett?” Dr. Creighton looked at him curiously. “You okay?”

“What? Uh . . . yeah, fine . . . good.” Jett scrunched his brows trying to recall what had happened. “I remember taking some jumps off the freestyle hills. And I guess I didn't expect how fast that bike would take me up the Monster. I knew something was wrong as soon as I went off the edge of the hill. I felt off balance. I . . . I don't remember much else. Next thing I knew, I was already on the ground, on my back.”

Dr. Creighton said, “I'm surprised you remember that much. You were wearing a good helmet . . . but not that good.”

Jett stayed in intensive care through the night, but by Sunday morning, all the feeling had returned to Jett's limbs. He was walking by lunch. The pediatric doctor and the shift nurse gave him a thorough physical at two o'clock and pronounced Jett completely healthy.

It was hospital policy for patients to be taken by wheelchair to the curbside. Dr. Creighton herself wheeled Jett down to the entrance, where his father awaited beside his truck.

Jett stood up. “Thank you, Doctor Creighton, for everything.”

Dr. Creighton smiled. “I'm glad we could help.” She turned to Jett's mom. “You better watch out for this kid. With eyes like those, girls will be chasing him all over school.”

“See, baby, that's just what I told you,” said Mrs. Green.

“Awww, Ma!” Jett complained as he slowly lowered himself into the backseat of the truck.

“And by now, half the town'll be talking about my miracle boy.”

13

The Cave

JOHNNY AND Autumn walked through the woods as if it were their first time. Everything seemed fresh, new, and exciting. Their faithful black lab, Sam, ran alongside them, sometimes darting farther down the trail . . . other times letting them walk past as he stood motionless, sniffing the air, or ears up at some elusive sound. Sam had gone on every one of their woodland adventures since he was a pup, which is to say, he was a very experienced adventurer.

They followed the dirt path that divided their family's property from that of their neighbor's, Mr. Rizzo. With well over a hundred acres of forest and wild fields, the two kids found the untamed expanse full of countless places to explore, including the mysterious cave that straddled the two plots.

Preferring the Florida winters, Mr. Rizzo only came up for the summers, leaving his vast acreage untouched the rest of the year. “As long as youse don't get hurt, I don't care what youse explore,” he'd always say before leaving for winter. It was his habitual send-off. Of course, the kids loved to hear him talk with his heavy Brooklyn accent. And Mr. Rizzo didn't mind them playing on his property as Johnny kept his grass cut, and Autumn was in charge of collecting any unforwarded mail. Having them tromping through his fields was a small price to pay for a few extra eyes keeping his home safe during his absence.