Eve of Destruction (4 page)

“Unless you're Rainsford,” said Mrs. Goring, a sad sort of rage in her voice. “If you're him, you never die. You just stay on two legs forever, walking on all the dead people you leave behind. Laughing.”

Mrs. Goring did sound crazy as a loon, and maybe she was. But she had our attention.

“Why are we here?” asked Kate. She was confused and annoyed, but she was also curious.

“What if I told you I could get back what's been taken from you?”

That caught everyone's interest, including mine. She looked at Connor Bloom.

“What if you could stop having those dizzy spells? You could be the captain of the football team again. And you,” she turned her gaze on Marisa, pausing to stare deep into her eyes. “You want to take a long nap right now, don't you? Wouldn't it be nice to stop seeing the world as a disconnected haze?”

Marisa couldn't hold her stare as Mrs. Goring silently slipped her hand into a pocket and took out a glass vial of liquid. Whatever was trapped inside was black. She pointed the end in our direction, and we saw that it was the kind of glass container used for holding a blood sample.

“Gross,” said Alex. “You're carrying blood around in your pocket?”

“Shut up, Alex.” Connor had sat back down—they all had—and he was leaning forward on his elbows, looking seriously at the vial. If there was a shred of hope he might be restored to his former glory, he wanted to know every detail.

“This is not just any blood,” Mrs. Goring answered. “It's my own, and something more.”

She held it up to the light, sloshing its contents back and forth, and I got the sense that what was inside was thicker than blood. It looked like old motor oil.

“You're not the only ones who've been cured,” she said. “A long time ago, before any of you were a bad idea in the minds of your dim-witted parents, he cured me, too.”

“No way,” said Ben. “Were you two like, you know, together?”

“We really don't need to hear about this,” said Alex, obviously grossed out by the idea of Mrs. Goring and Rainsford disrobing each other.

“One of you is missing,” Mrs. Goring said, ignoring both boys. “Avery. She's the new me, you see? He's taken her for his own, at least for a while. But time will pass, and when it does, she will grow old. They both will.”

“But he'll do this to seven more people like us,” said Kate. “Is that what you're telling us? And Avery will end up just like you: old and bitter and alone.”

“And here I was actually starting to like you,” said Mrs. Goring. “You should learn to tame that wild tongue of yours.”

Kate had gotten under Mrs. Goring's skin and put her in an even worse mood. Perfect.

“Tell me what you were going to say,” said Connor. He'd been wobbling back and forth a little bit, having one of his spells, but he was back now. “About getting back what he took from me.”

Mrs. Goring observed Connor with a contemptible pity, and it seemed she was having a hard time deciding whether to answer his plea or continue fighting with Kate. The negative energy in the room suited her, a long-missing fuel pumping into her hollowed-out soul.

“This vial is filled with my fear,” she said, pointing the tube violently in Kate's direction, while answering Connor's question. “It's the essence of what passed between me and Rainsford, or more accurately, the sludge created out of the cure. I've carried it around a long time. Avery carries hers, too. It's our burden to carry the curse of young love around in our pockets so we never forget what fools we were.”

She turned her head slightly and stared at Connor. “But your fear is somewhere else. Your vial is hidden away in a secret place.”

“What about mine?” Alex prodded.

Mrs. Goring snapped her attention to Alex, then Ben, then me, and finally Marisa.

“All of your fears are hidden away. But I know where he keeps them. And if you bring them to me, I can give back what he took from you.”

“You mean no more pain in my hands and my back?” Ben asked, who suffered daily from debilitating arthritis. “That problem would go away?”

“Yes, that would go away. You'd still be stupid, but the pain—that I can fix.”

Kate laughed and turned to Connor, expecting him to join her, but he was all business.

“Where do we sign up?”

Commanding an army of shoulder-padded Neanderthals across the goal line again made up the sum total of his dreams.

“I would need them all,” she stammered. It seemed to me she was surprised to have gotten to this stage so easily. She had underestimated Connor's will to compete.

“God, this is twisted,” said Kate. “What would you even do if you had them?”

At this, Mrs. Goring offered a fleeting smile that lasted only a moment.

“I can't get back what he stole from me. I'm cursed to hold the rank of seven, like Avery, and we are among the few who can never go back. But you I can help. Your wretched blood can be your antidote.”

“You'd insert our blood back into us?” asked Ben. “That doesn't sound like such a good idea.”

“All of your vials together, that's the antidote.”

“Whoa, hold on,” said Kate. “You mean we go find these things—these vials of whatever—then you make some sort of witch's brew and stick a needle in my arm?”

“And then I pump you full of blood from this bunch of idiots,” said Mrs. Goring, leaning over the table and staring down at Kate Hollander. “Yes, that's the cure.”

There was a certain logic to it, in a black magic sort of way, that somewhere within all our mire lay a cure for what ailed us. But I didn't trust her just the same.

“How do you know it will work?” I asked. “And why should we believe you?”

“I know because he told me. And you should trust me because I hate him just as much as you do. We're bound by our loathing of the same person. And besides, the same thing that will cure you? It will
kill
him. That's my take in the bargain. You get cured, I get a way to put an end to this madness, an end to Rainsford, once and for all.”

“A poison for the one guy who can't be killed,” Alex commented. “Interesting.”

“But he's gone,” I said, feeling inside that I'd love to be the one to stick the needle into his arm. “You don't even know where he is.”

“I'm banking on his return at some point in the not-too-distant future. He's careful about cleaning up his messes, and you, Will Besting, are a mess.”

I pondered what that meant as Mrs. Goring stood stone cold, with her arms folded over her chest. She'd said her piece, but there was one thing she hadn't told us. I was thinking about the one thing, but it was Marisa with her haunted, weary voice who asked.

“What was your fear?”

Mrs. Goring put the vial back in her pocket.

“I am the anti-Will Besting. Or I was.”

“You were afraid of being alone?” I asked, surprised by the revelation.

“Not anymore, as you can plainly see by my circumstances. I've come to understand that people are nothing but trouble and silence is golden.”

“If you're lying to us,” said Kate, standing in unison with the rest of us as Mrs. Goring started for the door, “I'll kill you.”

Mrs. Goring didn't bother to respond as she walked the length of Fort Eden and put her hand on the handle of the door.

“It's time to take back what's yours,” she said without turning back.

And then she was out the door and we were all following her.

On the way to the pond, there was a flurry of questions about where we were going and what we would be required to do, accompanied by a grand total of zero answers from the woman in charge. Mrs. Goring had fallen into an impenetrable silence. It was a lonely walk, because no one would look at me. I'd betrayed them, Marisa most of all, and they weren't going to let me forget it.

Keith, little bro, I wish you were here.

Don't sweat it. They're just a bunch of losers. You don't need them.

What about Marisa?

It's not like you were gonna marry her. Grow up.

Sometimes the conversations I have with my dead brother are not as useful as I hope they will be. As I was lost in my pretend Keith world, I looked back toward Fort Eden. The wind was still moving through the tall trees along the path, casting those sharp shadows on the ground, but this time it wasn't a shadow I saw moving behind me. I'd caught a glimpse of someone moving from one side of the woods to the other. I dropped back from the rest of the group without being noticed. If anything, they
wanted
to leave me behind like the first time we'd been here. They wished I didn't exist, and that made it easier to be invisible.

I didn't have to drop back very far before darting into the woods at the edge of the narrow, winding path. They'd only assume I was falling behind as usual and leave me be, at least that's what I thought as I quickly doubled back on the side where I was sure I'd seen someone. I fought through underbrush and worked my way around a series of tall trees, but there was no one.

What I wouldn't give to be able to hear a little better, I thought. If only I could listen for someone walking or running away, I'd know where to go. I was about to run back and catch up to the others before they realized I was gone, and that's when I saw it, caught on a sharp limb of a tree. I edged closer, peering in every direction for signs of life, and grabbed what I'd found.

I held it tightly in my hand as I jumped back onto the path and double-timed it around two twisting corners, seeing the group up ahead. They were slowing down as I came in close, looking back at me like I'd been there all along.

I stuffed what I'd found into my front pocket before anyone else could see it.

As my fingers felt the softness of the item, it made me feel even surer that something wasn't right at Fort Eden.

It was scary, this thing I'd found, for one very important reason.

It proved that we were not alone.

Someone else was hiding out at Fort Eden.

“Any of you ever been in the pump house?” Mrs. Goring asked, breaking her silence as we came to the dock.

No one raised a hand as Connor leaned down and splashed water on his face, but all eyes were on the run-down wooden structure that sat next to the pond. It was small, like the gardening shed in my backyard at home, and it looked like it might not make it through a hard winter.

“It's not really a pump house,” Mrs. Goring continued. Then she walked away in the direction of the thing we were talking about and left us all scratching our heads about what was really inside.

She took a ring of keys out of her pocket and went to work on a big padlock at the door while Alex joked lamely about how easy it would be to put his foot through one of the walls and walk right in. When the heavy lock was removed, Mrs. Goring flung the door open and stood aside.

“When you get to the bottom, you'll find a room. Your vials are stored in there with all the others.”

“The
others
? Wait—what
others
?” Kate asked.

“He's been at this a long time, or did I neglect to mention that?”

Ben Dugan peered inside the dark, damp space, and when he talked his voice had a soft echo. “How old is Rainsford, really?”

Mrs. Goring wouldn't say, but I thought I had an answer.

“Seven vials for every time he went from old to young, only the seventh person keeps theirs on them. So all we have to do is divide the number of vials we find by six. If there are sixty vials down there, he's ten times seventy. He'd be seven hundred years old.”

“Are we getting this done or doing algebra?” Connor complained. “If there are a bunch of vials down there, how will we know which ones are ours?”

“You'll know,” said Mrs. Goring impatiently. “Trust me, it will be obvious.”

“And why don't you just get them yourself?” Alex suggested.

“The way down isn't for someone old like me, and the door is too heavy at the bottom. I can't open it.”

“Why do we all have to go down there?” asked Ben. “Why not just Will? He got us into this mess.”

“Did not,” I said. Getting dumped on was growing old fast. “We all got cured, we all got symptoms. How is any of that my fault?”

“I think we should all go,” Connor said, “Come on, it'll be cool.” And that, more than anything, is probably what got us to do it. In the end it was like a dare no one wanted to miss out on. And there was the promise of a cure, even if the promise was made by an insane woman living all alone in the woods. It was something to hold on to.

“At least make him go first,” Alex said. “That way if I fall I'll land on his head.”

Marisa didn't come to my defense. She wouldn't even look at me. It got worse when Connor started whispering to her, glancing over his shoulder as I fumed.

She's back on the market. Nice.
That's what his muscle-headed look told me, and Marisa didn't do anything to make him think otherwise.

“Fine, I'll go first,” I said, blowing past everyone and arriving inside, where a metal door with a latch sat against the ground. Mrs. Goring knelt down beside me and grabbed the lever with her hand, shoving it sideways with a grinding noise that reverberated into places I couldn't see.

“He's older,” Mrs. Goring whispered close to my ear, and I turned to her. “Let's make sure he doesn't see one more bloody year.”

She shoved something in my hand and looked at me as if it was to remain our secret, whatever it was. Did I really think it was a good idea to conspire with Mrs. Goring again? She'd gotten me in a heap of trouble with Marisa and the rest, and yet I had a weird feeling I should let it pass. It crossed my mind to tell her about what I'd found in the woods, but there was no time.