Teen Frankenstein (24 page)

When I moved to climb out after him, Owen caught my wrist and held me in place. “Tor, hold on.” His eyes darted between mine. “There's … something I haven't told you. I didn't think it mattered. Just stupid high school stuff.” With my seat belt off, the door began to chime. “Until today, that is.”

A prickle worked its way up the back of my neck. “What?” And I could hear the distrust creeping into my own voice.

Red crept into Owen's pale cheeks and splotched his neck. “It's about Adam. See, I've been keeping tabs on any mention of his name in Hollow Pines. I know it's not his real name, but I figured if anyone, I don't know, said anything about him, we should know.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” I snapped.

Owen let go of my wrist and ran his fingers through this hair. “Well, first of all, you've been pretty busy trying to turn him into a ‘real boy.'” He curled his fingers into air quotes. “But, I—look, I didn't think it'd matter, but something came up. People—only a couple people, really—are saying that he might have had something to do with those two boys.” I sucked in a mouthful of air and let it sit in my lungs. “Look it up for yourself. The Lie Detector. They're these web-sleuthing forums where people discuss their theories on all these crimes. It's kind of sick, but…” He looked down at his lap. “Check it out.”

“You think it's true,” I said. “I can tell.” The hatch through which Adam had disappeared was still.

Owen lifted his chin. “All I'm saying is, how much do we really know about him?”

 

TWENTY-THREE

Possible neurobiological sources of violence include chronic traumatic stress, testosterone, or dysregulated serotonin. The most common sources of violence, though, are developmental neglect or traumatic stress during childhood. I will plan to test hormone levels to measure possible concerns surrounding impulse control.

*   *   *

Darkness had descended over my house. I knew this sounded melodramatic topped with a generous helping of teen angst, but it was true. Adam wouldn't speak. Not in words, anyway. He hugged his arms around his knees and rocked and tuned me out like I was a staticky channel on an old television set. So the only sentence that I bothered him with was to tell him that I'd be in later tonight after Mom had gone to bed to administer his
electrotherapy
, the euphemism I'd adopted for the shock. I wished I were better with words, but I was hardly any better than Adam.

Now, with my toes tucked into the comforter of my bed with the squishy, sinking, quicksand middle, my mind turned to the broken mirror, and I ran the search for the Lie Detector. A dated blue-and-white message board appeared on the screen, loading in slow motion, one piece at a time. I read through the long list of topics. The Black Dahlia. Lizzie Borden. Amanda Knox and the murder of Meredith Kercher. The list went on. It was an inventory of the grisliest crimes.

Outside my window, I heard the shrill screech of the weather vane twisting on its pole. I checked my watch. Mom must have fallen asleep in front of the TV. If it woke her, she'd be furious I hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet. I plugged my ears against the spine-scratching sound, hoping for the wind to die.

Halfway down the screen I noticed a title topic: the Hunter of Hollow Pines. Ominous, I thought darkly, as I selected the new thread. I was surprised to find that there was already more than a page of responses to the original entry.

Hollow Pines wasn't famous for much of anything. Our two sources of industry were feminine pads and canned soup and hardly anyone cared where those things came from.

But here it was causing strangers to sit up and pay attention—or at the very least, take a break from playing their Xbox. I was part of it, I realized. I was there when they found the second body. And I felt this messed-up flutter of achievement. I squashed the wings on it when I remembered why I was digging around the bowels of the Internet in the first place.

The static post at the top cataloged the two known deaths. The moderator emphasized the “known,” and I felt a shiver run down my back to think about what exactly that meant. Right away, I could tell that the overwhelming majority thought there'd be more.

Escalation
. That appeared to be the word
du jour
. The unsub's—after a quick search I determined this meant the unknown subject or killer—pattern was escalating. A poster with the username DeadBunny pointed out that he was growing more confident. He'd refined his method. A bear trap to capture his victim and a souvenir limb.

All but one of the users were certain that the unsub was male. Apparently almost all unsubs were men. Women were rarely serial killers. But the fact that this unsub targeted teenage boys made it different from most cases, more likely that a woman could have been the attacker.
But how would a woman overpower a teenage boy?
DeadBunny wanted to know. The user, DiadeMuertos, spit back that DeadBunny was just being sexist. Call me crazy, but a stronger disposition to become a murderer was something I was okay letting the XY chromosomes take.

When I'd combed through the responses, I flipped to the next page. This one was shorter. Not as many responses. I skimmed. There was one poster who believed that it was a vagrant oil-rig worker and that the concentration of crimes was a usual part of his modus operandi, only he wasn't at one place for long, so the cops never pieced it together. This added to the fact that as a rig hand, he would prey on small towns, ones with incompetent police forces, which by the other comments, incompetence seemed to be the prevailing opinion with regard to all police forces, anyway.

I was buying into this theory hook, line, and sinker until DeadBunny swooped in with another of his fatal counterpoints. The unsub had stashed the bodies in two completely independent areas, signaling a comfort level with the area. It couldn't have been a nomad. It had to be a local job. I chewed through a flake of dead skin on the side of my thumb and swished it off my comforter.

Hollow Pines, Texan here
, an anonymous post began.
I've been following these events with interest and I've carefully drawn out the timeline and I've noticed one thing. A new student started at Hollow Pines High the very day before the first body was found and he was even present when the second body was found. Coincidence? Could be. His name is Adam Smith.

I snapped my laptop closed as though it might bite me. Or worse. My chest rose and fell. Shallow breaths. Nothing felt real. I clumped my blankets into my fists and squeezed just to feel grounded. Buzzing filled my ears. I looked around, unable to process what I'd read. Everything seemed normal. Posters, books, college paraphernalia. I slid my legs out from under Einstein. She looked up at me through wrinkled lids and sneezed into the soft cotton.

“Come on.” I scooped her up in my arms and set her down on the carpet. She shook her hide, jangling her collar. I held my finger to my lips. “Shhhh.” I didn't know if she understood, but she waddled after in silence, completely content to have been allowed to come along.

I tippy-toed across the living room's shag carpet and through the kitchen all the way to the back door. I jiggled the doorknob until it opened without a creak. Einstein rolled off the ledge, onto the driveway, and I closed the door behind her. She shuffled ahead and scratched at the cellar door.

I paused. It was one user. One person's harebrained theory about what could have happened to those boys. None of it was true. Adam was mine. I knew him. I created him. And I could trust him.

But if that were true, what was I doing? I'd recognized the cold, metal glint in his eyes as something dangerous. I'd wondered. I'd felt my own blood run cold when he screamed beneath the shock. I'd heard him call himself a monster.

With my heart pounding, I pushed Einstein away with the side of my leg. Tonight held the first real hints of fall. There was a coolness that had been hidden all summer by the ferocious blaze of the Texas sun. That warmth had disappeared like a shower with all its hot water used up, and I slipped my hands into my sleeves before descending into the dark cellar.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

The brain stem includes the medulla, the pons, and the midbrain. These three parts control autonomic processes like breathing and digestion. The cerebellum sits at the back, underbelly of the brain anatomy. It controls motor skills, balance, and other cognitive functions like language and procedural memories. The medial temporal lobe near the divide of the left and right hemispheres holds the brain's declarative and episodic memory. Finally, the hippocampus possesses the ability to store long-term memory and the adjoining amygdala processes emotional and sexual behavior.

*   *   *

“Adam?” I flicked on the lights. The glass jars magnified the specimens bobbing inside them. I quickly scoured the room. The open-jawed skeleton standing in the corner mocked me. “Adam? Come out.” I sounded angry. I imagined him cowering, scared. But he wasn't there. The room was empty and, for the first time since Adam had taken up residence in it, it felt abandoned.

I made a promise to myself not to be mad. I'd ask questions, give him a chance to explain. I grabbed a flashlight from the workbench and left. I ventured back up to the surface and around the back of the house, casting the beam of my flashlight over the open field. The thing about small-town darkness was that it had the consistency of molasses. Thick and sticky, it sucked up everything below until what was left felt like outer space. Not far away, the light was eaten up entirely. I couldn't see past the initial wall of high grass and wire fences.

I moved to the edge and tried holding my flashlight up high. “Adam?” I said as loudly as I dared without waking Mom. It was silly being scared of the dark. Childish. But that didn't stop my heart from taking up residence at the top of my throat. I looked back at the house and then, with a show of being ten times braver than I actually was, I took my first step into the field. “You coming?” I patted my leg for Einstein to follow. For once, the clumsy, thick-jowled mutt would have been a welcome companion.

She whined and scooted her back end, but she didn't cross into the field. I slapped my thigh again. “Come.” Once more, she whimpered and pawed at the dirt, but she didn't come any farther. “Fine, stay there,” I grumbled. “Some guard dog you are.”

She flattened her belly to the ground and rested her head between her paws, looking guilty. Her jagged underbite made it look like she was actually pouting. I rolled my eyes and tried to convince myself that it didn't matter, but the flashlight handle was slippery in my hand, and I had to keep telling my legs to go forward.

The crumbly clay soil under my feet grew softer. The breeze blew the scent of young sweetgrass. Soon, it was soaking the shins of my plaid pajama pants. I waded in farther, thinking that I should have changed. Moisture seeped through my slippers. I swept the beam over the field. Everywhere it touched, it turned the green grass a golden yellow.

I struggled to keep my nerves in check. I was alone in the middle of the night. There was a killer loose in Hollow Pines. How could I be so sure that he would only do what he'd done to boys? An image flashed of my body lying faceup, staring at the stars.

Then an even colder thought: I could be out here searching for the killer right now.

I swallowed. I couldn't think like that. And even if I was, I thought I felt something in my gut click like a lock being latched down, and I knew that even if Adam was responsible, I might still protect him.

My resolve teetered on the edge of a cliff. The
swoosh-swoosh
of my pants drove me mad. It sounded like someone following me. Each time I stopped so did the swishing.
Chill out
, I ordered.

Turning back, I realized I could no longer see the house or hear Einstein's snorting breaths. Goose bumps spread over the back of my neck. I swallowed. “Adam?” This time my voice cracked. “This isn't funny, Adam.” I tried to sound loud, brave, but my pulse fluttered as fast and light as a hummingbird's.

Keeping my feet planted in one spot, I revolved around and around, until I lost track of which direction I'd been facing to begin with. Everywhere I looked was darkness and field. Panic bubbled. My ears strained to differentiate sounds—was that the brush of the wind or someone else in the field along with me? Sweat pooled in my armpits.

I made another feeble call of his name. Terror burned through my veins, and I dropped the flashlight to my side. Before I could talk myself out of it, I ran.

A minute later I arrived panting back at Einstein. She heaved her girth off the ground and came to lick the dew that coated my pants.

I gritted my teeth. I had to find Adam. He was my responsibility. I ducked inside the house to grab my keys off the nail but found that they were gone.

I covered up a sharp intake of breath. Then I eased around the corner of the big house to where two cars should have been parked in the drive.

There was only one.

This situation had just gotten worse. Way worse. He could have gone anywhere. He didn't have a license. He didn't even know how to drive. Or did he?

I stole my mom's keys. Tire marks snaked wildly through the dirt road, and there was a deep rut like one of the wheels had spun out.
Not good
, I mouthed, wanting to kick mud.

I loaded Einstein into the passenger-side seat of Mom's station wagon and kept the headlights off until I'd pulled out of the drive.

Where would he have gone? My first thought was the obvious one. The football field. It was where he felt most comfortable and competent. I headed back to school, realizing only when I was pulling into the parking lot how crazy this was. It was the middle of the night and no one but Einstein knew where I was.