The Book of Joby (96 page)

But as he closed his eyes, it came again—a childish giggle from downstairs. He bolted up in bed, and pulled the top drawer of his nightstand open. The gun he kept there was gone. He began to fear. Hamilton’s teenage vandals must be real after all. Well, children he could handle, gun or no. However fierce their masks might be, he knew that deep down children were scared of nearly everything. One just had to face them down. He got carefully out of bed and crept to the open doorway of his room where he could peer down the stairwell into the entryway and some of the dining room. All was dark.

“You’d better get out!” he called in an angry, no-nonsense voice. “Now!” He expected to hear scurrying escape, or frightened silence, but was surprised with more laughter. There were more than one of them, then, and too dumb, or stoned more likely, to know trouble when they heard it. “You think I’m funny?” he demanded. “When you took my pistol, you missed the shotgun in my closet. That makes me a lot more dangerous than you are. Now get out of here, or no one will blame me for what happens to intruders in my home!” It was a bluff, of course. He’d left his shotgun in the basement after cleaning it, but how could they know he hadn’t two of them?

There was more hushed laughter, and a brief green glow of some sort
through the living room door opposite the dining room. He knew where they were now, and that room had no exit but the one he was looking at. They’d hide when they heard him coming down, but he wouldn’t go into the living room after them. Through the dining room, he could reach the basement and his shotgun. After that, there’d be no more bluffing. He’d faced much tougher customers in his time than a couple of rural delinquents with a pistol between them, assuming they even knew how to shoot it.

“I gave you a choice,” he growled menacingly, “and you chose wrong. Now you’re going to pay the price.” He started loudly down the stairs, figuring the more noise he made, the more startled they would be. Before he’d gotten halfway down, however, the green glow kindled in the living room again, and grew until it lit the entire stairwell. Unable to imagine what might cast such a glow, Ferristaff had come to a complete halt, when something large flew through the doorway, glowing like a giant firefly! Before he had time to gasp, it wheeled to fly directly at him, talons outstretched, beak gaping wide, a piercing shriek preceding it, a huge, burning owl rushed to rake his face! Ferristaff turned to run, but went sprawling on the steps instead, banging his shins painfully as he lunged at the railing for support. When he looked up there was no owl, but a child standing at the top of the stairs—dressed in glowing bark and leaves—a child with wings, and coal black eyes devoid of pupils!

Ferristaff remained crouched, utterly dumb, staring wide-eyed at the apparition, which was not entirely opaque, he realized. “W-what—” he croaked, but there was another peal of laughter from below him, and he turned to find at least five other creatures like the one above, gazing up at him with glee.

“Is it a toad?” chortled one of them.

“It’s not pretty like a toad,” said a second. “It’s just an ugly lump.”

“A stump then?” laughed another.

“It cannot be a stump,” smiled a fourth, pointing at Ferristaff’s disheveled thatch of iron hair. “It still has leaves.”

“It must be a
tree
then!” exclaimed the second child. “An ugly stunted tree! Trees don’t belong in stairwells though. What are we to do with it?”

“Cut it down! Cut it down!”
shouted all the childlike ghosts at once, swirling into the air like great, glowing, windblown leaves, slapping lightly at Ferristaff’s face and back and hands and hair as they flew past him up the stairs to join their leader.

Ferristaff yowled in wordless fright as they gusted by.
“Who—what—who are you?”
he babbled hysterically when they had passed.

“We are spirits of the wood,” said the creature who had been an owl, no longer grinning. No one smiled anymore. “The ghosts of all the trees you’ve murdered.”

Ferristaff gaped in blank incomprehension, then he murmured, “I’m still dreaming. . . . You’re a dream.”

“Then
wake up
!” the spirit child screamed.
“WAKE UP!”
And they all flew around him once again, pinching, tugging, swatting, laughing cruelly. “Can’t you
wake up
?” cried the leader of them. “Don’t you know how to
wake up
from a
nightmare
?”

“Stop! Please stop!” cried Ferristaff. “What do you want from me?”

Immediately there was silence, and Ferristaff uncovered his head to find the “children” settled all around him on the steps again, fixing him with melancholy stares.

“Stop killing us,” said their leader very quietly.

“Go away from here,” said a second creature.

“Take your saws and trucks and cranes away,” said a third.

“And all your men,” said a fourth.

Ferristaff looked from face to impossible face and thought,
This isn’t happening.
“You,” he said, rising to his feet in sudden fury, “you aren’t real! I don’t believe in . . . in fairies!” shoving one of them aside he ran down the stairs toward his front door. Sometimes in dreams, he thought, getting out meant waking up. But as he reached the polished redwood door, its grain began to twist, the wood to bulge and groan, and all at once a giant wooden mouth yawned wide before him, screaming at a deafening volume, as if its owner were being flayed. Ferristaff crumpled to the floor in terror, covering his ears, and wailing like an infant.
“Stop!”
he screamed at last. “I’ll do anything you want! Just let me go!”

The giant wooden mouth melted into the form of a small wooden boy, who walked out of the door itself to become another glowing spirit like the others. “We will let you go,” it said, “if you’re gone before tomorrow.”

The other spirit children were drifting in the air above him now, settling to the floor around him like huge snowflakes. The leader of them stepped forward and bent down until his face was only inches from Ferristaff’s own. “We
want
you to go,” the creature said, its eyes suddenly slitted with malice, its mouth stretched impossibly wide, full of terrible needle teeth. It thrust this terrifying visage farther forward until their noses almost touched. “And don’t come back,” it growled. “For
we
are far more
dangerous
than you.” His teeth grew longer before Ferristaff’s eyes. His mouth stretched even wider.

“How . . . how can I be out that quickly?” Ferristaff stammered, numb with terror. “I have all these things to pack, my business to—”

“Let someone else do that!”
the toothy creature shouted, and Ferristaff felt his bladder go, a wet warmth spreading from his crotch.

“I’ll get out,” Ferristaff sobbed. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll be gone by morning, and I’ll have one of my people—”

“Just
go,
” hissed the apparition.

“And so you do not think us just a dream,” said the fairy boy who’d stepped out of the door, “we leave you with a gift.” He spread his arms, and, from nowhere Ferristaff could see, a flood of stones and bones and broken shells poured from between them to pile up on the floor. Ferristaff stared down at the jumble for a moment, then looked up again to find himself alone. Only their “gift” remained, and he knew with terrible certainty that it would still be there in the morning, though he, himself, would not.

The morning after their crusade, Hawk rose at dawn, drove into town, and stealthily returned to their sea cave lair to find several of his fellow crusaders already waiting. The news was good and getting better as he arrived. Ferristaff was definitely gone. Tholomey reported that his front door had been left wide open, their cryptic calling card still piled on the floor inside.

Looking like the cat who’d swallowed the canary shop, Nacho told them all that Foster’s lime-green Mercedes had last been seen at 2:00
A.M.
. racing south from town as if the hounds of hell were on its tail, “Which,” Nacho said happily, spreading his arms in a sitting curtain call, “they were!” When the cheers subsided, Nacho went on to speculate that, at the speed Foster was driving, he’d now have at least a couple of the tickets that he’d been so excited about giving out to everybody else.

Half an hour later, smiling sweetly, Autumn crouched through the cavern’s entrance and informed them that Greensong had experienced a much more “animated” encounter with several of the trees she’d always claimed to care so much about. “We told her that we didn’t like having spikes driven in our sides,” Autumn said primly. “Then we played a game of hide-and-seek with her. She hid, we seeked. She won. I don’t think we’ll ever find her now, though it wasn’t very fair of her to use a car.” Everyone giggled.

All their protective wards had held, and there’d been no sign at all of demons. As further anecdotes were shared, and bragging contests escalated, Hawk sat quietly, basking in the rosy glow of all they had achieved.

His mom had called the night before to say that she and Joby would be coming home today. She hadn’t sounded happy, which was unsurprising given what they’d gone there to do. His mother’s grief caused Hawk pain, of course, but he hadn’t known Ben well enough to take his death as personally as she and Joby did, and besides, now he’d have some news to really cheer them up when they got back. Visions of their pride and amazement danced through his imagination; he saw grateful congratulations from the Council
and ticker-tape parades down Main Street. He imagined Solomon giving him a regal nod as their awards were being bestowed, and saying,
You are a true bard now, young Hawk.
If only Rose had been here, Hawk’s happiness would have been utterly complete.

It was half an hour more before they began to wonder where the Hamilton team was. Cob, Cal, Sky, and Jupiter were not known as early risers, and the group was still debating whether someone should go roust their lazy butts from bed when Blue arrived and told them he’d just seen Hamilton in town.

“She was in the coffee bar on Shea Street, asking if anyone knew where Foster went,” Blue said anxiously. “She didn’t seem upset at all, except she wanted Foster and couldn’t find him. I was hoping Sky and those guys would be here.”

“Something went wrong then.” Nacho frowned. “I’m going to find Cob.”

“I’ll go back and look for Jup,” said Blue.

Just as they turned to go, however, Ander crawled into the cave, and stood up looking pale and shaken. For a moment he just stared at them seeming to shiver, though it wasn’t all that cold. Then, as the cave fell silent, Hawk realized that Ander was crying.

“What’s wrong?” Hawk asked with dawning dread.

“Sky,” Ander croaked. “And Jupiter,” he said, crying harder now. “They’re dead.”

“What?”
Nacho yelled.

“God!”
Sophie shrieked.
“Goddamn it!”
she yelled again.
“I told them! I told all of you!”
She burst into tears, as did Autumn. Everyone else sat gaping, their faces drained of color.

Hawk could not move at first, couldn’t even breathe. It was his fault. He’d talked everybody into this. Steal your freedom, he had told them, and now two of them were dead. Three, Hawk amended numbly. His life was over too. “How?” he heard himself ask, as if someone else had spoken.

“They’re calling it an accidental fall,” Ander said, “from climbing on the cliffs out by the Circle.”

“That’s bullshit!” Nacho shouted.

Everybody knew that both of them could fly. They hadn’t fallen from any cliffs. If anything, they’d fallen from the air as they’d been murdered.

“
It was goddamn demons!”
Sophie bawled.
“I told them not to do this!”

“Has anyone seen Cal or Cob?” Tholomey asked fearfully.

“Jake says they’re up in the Garden,” Ander said, “where they’ll be safe.”
Not looking at Hawk, he added, “Jake says the demons know them now. They can’t come back to town.”

There was nothing Hawk could say, or even think, except that this was all his fault, and everyone would know it, and there would never be a way to take any of it back. Sky and Jupiter were dead! And he was finished here. He was finished everywhere. Imagining Rose’s face when she learned what he had done, he just wanted to escape, but how could he escape himself? Hawk’s mind began to rifle through some catalog of ways to kill himself, trying to determine which one would be fastest and least painful, until he imagined Rose’s face again, when she learned he’d killed himself, and realized, with even greater despair, that he could never do that to her, or to his mother, or to anyone he knew on top of what he’d done already. There was no way out of it. He was going to have to live with this. Forever! And all the “great bard” could think to say was, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” which, he realized, he’d already started saying through tears he’d been oblivious of until now too.

They were all looking at him, some with anger, some with pity, some with what seemed fear, but he had no more power to shut his mouth or stop the words than if he’d been a dummy on some ventriloquist’s knee. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” he kept sobbing, knowing he’d be saying those words until the day that he died too.