Gravestone (10 page)

21. At Your Doorstep

Four men surround me by the table. It’s a sparse room, very white with dull and cold lights above us. The table is bare and basic; the chair I’m sitting on hard and cheap. I look around and know what they’re saying, but I wonder why they’re saying it to me.

“What are you doing here?” one of the men asks.

It’s like four detectives on one of those old cop shows I used to watch. But why four? There never used to be four. Only one, two at the most.

“Where am I?”

“You do not belong here,” another says.

“Where is ‘here’?” I ask.

“No,” says a guy with a beard, probably the oldest. “Not now, not like this. Not here.”

I feel like I’m in trouble, but I don’t know why. I look around me for someone I recognize—my mother, maybe Sheriff Wells, somebody else from Solitary that I know.

“How did you get here?” the man in the beard asks me.

“I don’t know.”

“You have nothing else on you?”

“Like what?”

“Any papers or documentation?”

I shake my head and then reach into my pocket. Maybe I’ll find a silver passport or a golden ticket or my school ID or something. I don’t find anything but lint.

There’s a knock, and then the door opens. A woman stands in the doorway and glares at the men, as if they’re wanted, as if they’re in trouble. They all turn, and without saying anything they file out one by one. The bearded man glances back at me and pauses.

“Stay here, right there in that chair. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” I say.

When they’re gone, I wait for a few minutes.

I’m sure I’m being watched, though there is no one-way mirror that I can detect.

I get up and try the door handle.

It turns, and I open the door and step through.

I told the guy yes when he asked, “Can you do that for me?”

And I
could
physically do that, if I wanted to. But what I need to do is get out of here and find out where I am.

As I step outside the small white room, the lights go out like a fuse box bursting. I step ahead to find a wall or something to guide myself with, and instead I find myself falling backward, doing somersaults as I’m dropping, the wind whipping my face and my hair, and my stomach lost a hundred stories above me as I suddenly and completely find myself back in my bed.

I don’t wake up with a gasp. It’s more like I brace myself for impact.

I wake up to the sound of cracking life outside of me. I look out a fogged-over window that I wipe down only to reveal a distorted crystal spiderweb covering the outside. The world outside is one big icicle.

I open my bedroom door and holler out for my mom. Nothing.

That answers the school question. No Mom, no school. I seriously doubt the bus is going to be out on a morning like this, but even if it is, I’m staying here. If Mom is playing hooky, so am I.

Hopefully she’ll call soon to let me know she’s alive. Which is always a nice thing to know.

I think about last night—the hailstorm and the strange sounds and the even stranger dream—then I randomly pick out an album to crank.

Beastie Boys’
Licensed to Ill
does the trick.

I blast it away and cause Midnight to look up from the nest she made in the corner of the bed.

This is what it feels like to be single.

This is what it feels like to be on my own.

And I gotta say … I like it.

That all changes in an hour when I hear a knock on the door.

About time she showed up.

I have a mouth full of ancient Cheerios that taste like soft mush after being drowned in milk. I glance at the door and wonder why it’s not opening, then get up and reach for the handle.

Before I open it up, I can see him in the window.

The ugly round face, troll-like and irritated as usual.

“Come on, open up.”

For a second I consider not opening it, but my male pride lets me down. I swing the door open and finish swallowing my cereal.

Gus glances at me with disinterest. I didn’t see him at all the first week of school. Maybe he just got back from vacation or from the cave he sleeps upside down in.

“Nice little storm, huh?”

“What do you want?” I ask.

His hands are free, which is good. I look down and see a black Humvee waiting at the bottom of the hill.

“I always knew I’d be knocking on your door one day.”

“Where are your boys? And your baseball bat?”

Gus laughs. He seriously couldn’t seem to care less about the way he looks, the oiliness of his skin, the just-got-out-of-bed hair.

How can someone look that oily in the middle of winter? Especially after an ice storm.

“This isn’t my idea, you know. My father figured this would be the ideal opportunity to meet you.”

“Uh, no thanks.”

“No, Chris. If you’re smart, you will walk down the hill with me and get in the car.”

“So, what? School is open?”

Gus nods. “They don’t have many snow days, and they’ve already used a couple. Half the school won’t show up.”

“Good to see how dedicated you are.”

“I was in Florida all last week. That’s my dedication.”

“Where’s your tan?”

“What are you talking about?” Gus says. “I’m a vampire. We don’t like the sun.” He laughs and then tells me to get my stuff together. Fast.

In a weird way, I get the feeling that he knows I’m by myself.

I recall the voice laughing underneath me in the middle of the night.

Maybe it was him.

22. Ichor Staunch??

I brace myself for this meeting with a man I know I’ve seen before. Yet when I look inside the Hummer, I wonder if my eyes are playing tricks the way everything else seems to be.

“Hello, Chris.”

I know that voice I’ve heard that voice in the darkness.

Bold, bright eyes look at me in a way that Gus can’t and will never be able to. He kind of looks like Gus, though.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” the driver says as he pats the empty seat next to him. The SUV smells new.

This is Ichor Staunch?

The guy is wearing a blue dress shirt and a black sports coat. He doesn’t have fangs and a Count Dracula cape.

“Come on, I’m freezing,” he says.

I do what I’m told. I shut the door and figure that I couldn’t run away from him if I tried. I buckle my seat belt in case we tragically veer off the side of the road after I grab the wheel in a brave act of stupidity.

Stop it, Chris.

The guy behind the wheel is not Gus’s father. No way possible. Even though he sorta looks like him, there’s no way. I saw Ichor Staunch that day I walked downstream, the day I spied on the lawn of their house.

You weren’t sure that was his father. That could’ve been anybody.

“Late night last night?” the man says.

He’s got graying brown hair that’s still thick and combed to one side. He doesn’t look like some evil businessman or dark Sith Lord or the Boogeyman. He looks like just another grown-up on his way to work.

“Gus, does this boy talk?”

The Southern accent is strong but seems to be held at bay, as if it could go off when necessary.

“Oh, he talks all right. Talks way too much if you ask me.”

“It’s impolite to not reply to people, Chris.”

That voice belongs to the one I heard in the hole when I was abducted and shoved in the middle of the cabin. And it belongs to the voice that warned me about Jocelyn, the one that threatened me and my family after they took her.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Ah, you
can
speak. That’s good. I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

I nod.

“So I’ve heard from Gus that you’ve had a difficult time adjusting to Harrington High.”

“No.”

“No, sir,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“No,
sir.
”

I repeat his words. His order.

“I wanted to make sure that you realize that Gus is harmless. And Gus, you
are
harmless, right?”

“Right.”

Gus sounds timid, like a little puppy. I glance back and see him sitting there in complete and utter obedience.

“Here’s the thing about being me,” Mr. Staunch says. “I’ve earned the right to bully people. Bullying doesn’t have to stop when you become an adult. You know? But as for my son, he doesn’t quite understand the logic and etiquette of bullying. You are the new student, so he sees you as fresh meat and thus decides to terrorize you. Most students would have backed off, but I get this feeling that you’re not a ‘back off’ sort of guy.”

“No. Sir.” I emphasize
sir
in a way that I might spit out tobacco. My fear is settling in and turning over into something else.

It’s the same man I heard that night of Jocelyn’s death. I’m certain.

“Gus doesn’t realize that you don’t mess around with desperation. You can’t. Eyes are watching him, and so far, he’s been quite stupid, haven’t you, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” Gus says.

There.

The way he said
boy.

That’s it.

My skin itches with bumps, and I feel the back of my neck. It’s wet with sweat.

“I still have a reputation to keep up. If Gus is out of line then that means I’m out of line, and I can’t have that. But you, Chris, Christopher, whatever and whoever you claim to be—you need to understand that you can’t wave a red flag at a bull. Do you understand?”

I glance at him and shake my head.

“My son—my wonderful if sometimes extremely arrogant and ignorant only son—is a bull. God bless him. I love that about him. He is so much his mother, though he will never know because she’s no longer alive. But she was a bull, and he takes after her. And what do you not do with bulls?”

“Wave red flags at them?” I say.

“You don’t taunt them in any way. You stay away from them.”

“That’s always been my plan.”

“Keep it your plan, Chris. And you’ll just make it to the end of the school year.”

We’re not far away from school. The roads are a little better closer to downtown Solitary, but not much.

Nothing else is said for the rest of the drive. The SUV pulls up to the stairs leading into the school, and Gus gets out without saying good-bye to his father. If it really is his father. I’m about ready to get out when I feel a strong grip on my wrist.

“Chris, hold on for a moment.”

I wince even though I really try not to. I don’t want to show fear or hurt or pain in front of this guy.

“Remember this, Chris. Remember my words. And remember that when I tell somebody something, I mean it. You do not want to mess with me.”

I nod.

“I meant every word I said to you. You’re on very shaky ground right now.”

He lets go, and I take a breath as the world darkens a bit. It’s hazy, and my head is dizzy.

“Have a wonderful day at school,” he tells me with a salesman’s smile. The phony smile of someone who wants to eat your soul.