The Boys Are Back in Town (21 page)

At first he did not even notice the way Will's voice seemed to dim with the lights, and then to fade. It was not until it had dropped off almost to a whisper that Kyle became aware of the change. By the time he turned away from the page to look, Will James was little more than a ghostly apparition.

Then he vanished.

All the strength went out of Kyle and he crumbled to the ground. His knee touched the edge of the bloody circle, now dried to brown, and he pulled it back as though stung. He stared at the circle with wide eyes, a light yet impossible breeze moving across his skin as though rushing to fill the space Will James had occupied only a moment before.

W
ILL DREAMS OF FALLING,
air rushing past him, limbs flailing as he tumbles end over end, stomach and fists clenched to prepare for an impact that never comes. Now he cannot breathe. He is falling still, but upward now, and though he knows his eyes are closed he sees stars. Red stars, like crimson tears, or bloody pinholes in the night sky. His lungs burn with the need for air, falling up. . . .

October, Senior Year . . .

His eyes snapped open and he inhaled, pulling air greedily into his lungs. Will shuddered as he drew another gasping breath. His hands shook as he reached out to steady himself, and only then did he become aware of his surroundings. Pain seared his palm as his fingers touched grass and cool earth. He recoiled from both the pain and from this abrupt attack on his expectations. There had been concrete under him.

Where . . .

Grass and cool earth, and a sheen of dew upon the grass.

Will was no longer in the storage area beneath the back porch of his childhood home. His right hand rose, shaking, to cover his face, and he scraped his palm along the roughness of his chin, staring through splayed fingers at the landscape that surrounded him. In every direction he saw old tombstones, marble and granite grave markers upon which were engraved familiar names. Morrell. Ouellette. Rice. Snowden. At the center of the field of stones was a single statue rising above the rest of the markers, an angel with its face tucked beneath one wing as if in shame, or in mourning. Though he could not see it from here, he knew that the name embossed upon the base of that memorial would be Franzini.

He knew this place.

Trees lined the cemetery on three sides; a wrought-iron fence completed the boundary, separating the cemetery from Cherry Street. The fence had never made any sense to him, however, for the arched entrance had no gate. Anyone could enter. Will had been here a hundred times. The cemetery wasn't far from Caitlyn's house.

You've got to be kidding me.

A rush of disorientation went through him and his stomach lurched. His entire body spasmed and he dropped to his knees, vomit burning his throat as he threw up on the grass. Chills went through him and he shuddered, then sat back and dragged his arm across his mouth.

The tape holding the gauze on his left hand came off and the pad fell away. The long, bloody gash there seemed to wink at him. First things first, he thought, trying to collect himself. In the time they spent exploring
Dark Gifts,
he and Brian had found different interests to focus on. One of the things that Will had been drawn to was healing. Wincing at the pain, he clasped his hands together as if in prayer and muttered the only spell in Gaudet's book that had been written in Latin. He wondered if there was significance in that. When he took his right hand away there was no blood, but his left palm was bisected by a long white scar.

“Jesus,” he whispered, taking a steadying breath. He blinked as he glanced around again, trying to fight a new surge of disorientation.

It's real,
he thought.
I forgot. I forgot what it was like.

Will had believed that the spell would work—if he had not believed, then nothing at all would have happened—but he had forgotten the power of real magic. Serious magic. Back in the days when he and Brian had been dabbling with fire and levitation and Will's little healing trick, even when they had cursed Dori, they had never done anything of this magnitude.

“Back . . . back in time,” he whispered, and a light, lilting laugh issued from his lips so abruptly that it surprised even him. In those few moments, he felt more than a little crazy. His hands fluttered around as though trying to find something solid to hold on to. His stomach lurched again and he held his breath, starting to rock forward but fighting the nausea. After a moment it passed, and he took a few steadying breaths.

A battered white van rattled by on Cherry Street with ladders clamped to the roof and a sign on the door that he could not make out from this distance, even as it passed beneath a streetlight. But Will didn't need to read it. He had seen the van plenty of times growing up. The sign on the door said
Murphy Bros. Painting Services
and it belonged to a bearded, beer-drinking guy who lived with his wife and baby daughter a few doors down from Caitlyn's.

That same mad laughter bubbled up inside him again. “Holy shit,” he repeated. That van was a piece of his past, but what solidified the truth in his mind was the streetlights. These days they were all covered with a thick plastic shielding, but when he had been a kid in Eastborough they were metal domes with bare bulbs inside. Mike Lebo had once slept over Will's house, and the two boys had taken out every streetlight on Parmenter with a slingshot.

I'm here,
Will thought.

But then he frowned and glanced around.
But why here?
The part of him that had no doubt about the reality of all of this had expected to open his eyes and be under the porch of his own house, eleven years earlier. That had been what he had visualized, just as the spell had instructed. Time and place. October, senior year, the night before Mike Lebo was to die.

Will stood slowly, a hand gingerly pressed to his stomach, hoping the nausea was really gone. He glanced around, orienting himself. It had been so many years since he had been here, but in moments the geography began to assert itself in his mind. The paths that led through to Brian's street, the distance to Caitlyn's house and the houses he would pass, and how long it would take him to walk to his own home from here.

Home,
he thought. The word resonated within him in a way he had never expected. Before all of the horrors that had happened to him over the past couple of days, Will had been happy with his life. But this place, this time—right until the day he died, these streets and the feeling in the air here would be the definition of home. He tried to picture his parents eleven years younger and in the living room on Parmenter Road, right now, watching
Seinfeld.
Or Ashleigh sprawled on the floor in her bedroom, doing homework. That was home.

Even in this cemetery, absurdly enough, he felt at home.

But why here? Why would the spell—

From the darkness amidst the gravestones farther up the gently sloping cemetery hill, there came a girlish giggle and then a shushing noise. Will stared into the darkness, the shapes of the markers resolving from the shadows, and he started up the slope. The streetlights of Cherry Street did not reach this far.

“Will,” a voice said. “Cut it out!”

He frowned. She was talking to him. But how could—

“Hello?” he called.

“Will!” the girl cried, and she shot up from behind the large marble stone that marked the resting place of the Gilmore family.

In the dark he could not make out her features, but her blond hair picked up the moonlight and he knew her by her silhouette. It was Caitlyn. Will held his breath and stared at her, and even as he did a second figure rose from behind the stone.

“Hey,” the kid said. “We weren't spying or anything. We just . . . you all right, mister? Heard you getting sick, and . . .”

Will took a step backward, then another, and he bumped into a gravestone and nearly fell over. The kid's words trailed off and he put a protective arm around Caitlyn. Will stared at him.

At himself.

It was too much for him, standing there face to face with his own self, eleven years past. Numb and speechless, he backed several more paces away from the couple in the cemetery and then at last he turned and ran, heart pounding, whispering prayers and curses under his breath.

The wind carried his own more youthful voice to him from up the hill. “What the fuck's
his
problem?” asked the young Will James.

The voice was both foreign and familiar, and he recalled how odd it seemed to him every time he dictated notes into a tape recorder and then played them back. His legs pumped beneath him and he nearly tripped over a broken granite slab. Then he was sprinting through the arch and out onto Cherry Street, his chest burning from the exertion. He was out of shape. Not like that kid back in the cemetery. Not like back in high school.

Not like the Will James of
now
.

In his mind he could see the moonlight on Caitlyn's hair, could remember this night—or several like it. He recalled with perfect clarity the scent of vanilla on her neck and how he fumbled to unhook the clasp of her bra with the fingers of one hand. His face flushed as he ran, remembering the perfect smoothness of her breasts and the way she had whimpered when he licked her nipples. Will could practically still feel her hand stroking him through his jeans.

The sense of dislocation nearly paralyzed him, but he shook it off and kept running, passing the houses on Cherry Street, many with their lights on or with the blue flicker of the television inside the windows. A couple of boys, maybe eleven or twelve, sat on the front steps of one house smoking cigarettes they did not even try to hide as he ran past. The boys stared at him and Will stared back, far more astonished by them and by his surroundings than they were by the spectacle of this man running down the street.

Me. That was me.
Foolish as it was, the words kept running through his mind. He could picture the outline of his own teenage face in the moonlit cemetery, the arrogant stance, the cocky way he slung his arm around Caitlyn. All he could think about was
A Christmas Carol
and the Ghost of Christmas Past. It was a spell. It was magic. And in that sense Will had thought of this little miracle, this desperate plot to prevent Brian Schnell from altering his own present, as something fantastical and benevolent. The darkness of his past experience with magic had not changed that.

He was filled with an aching sadness and an envy of his old self, of Young Will and all that was in store for him. Meeting him, though, had been profoundly unsettling, and he was having trouble gathering his thoughts, determining what to do next. Will had known he would probably come into contact with his younger self, but had not expected it to happen so soon. Even if he had braced himself properly, he doubted he would have dealt with it any better.

What the hell happened?
he thought.
Why did I end up here?

And then he understood. He had concentrated on the room under his porch, and the spell had brought him to the right day, the right year, but his younger self had acted as an anchor, drawing him to the cemetery. That was the only thing that made sense.

Will tried to focus. He was here now. He had a goal. But how to work toward that goal? He had been angry, afraid, and desperate, had felt himself changing inside.

Changing inside. Am I even that kid anymore?
The answer came to him immediately. He was what that kid had become, thanks to his experiences. But by changing his experiences, by taking away his friends and hurting them, Brian was altering who Will had become. The man he was had been forged by his relationships with his family and his friends. Now all of that was being twisted.

He had to stop it, to prevent the crimes that were to be perpetrated in the coming days. If the spell had transported him to the night he had focused on, he had twenty-four hours before Mike Lebo would be dead. Twenty-four hours to intervene, to make certain events unfolded as they should.

But you're an idiot. For starters, how the hell are you even going to get around town?

Will's lungs burned and his chest hurt. He slowed to a jog and then stopped entirely, bent over to rest, not daring to turn back to see if he could still see the little cemetery, to see if Caitlyn and . . . and Will were watching him. He took deep breaths and then stood up straight.

I'll do what I always did. I'll walk.

He set off toward the center of town. Now that the maelstrom of his thoughts was beginning to settle, he realized that there was no way he was going to be able to keep Lebo alive and keep Ashleigh and Tess from being raped unless he had help. If he was going to stick around, he would need a place to sleep and wash up, not to mention other clothes to wear. Styles hadn't changed so much that anyone would think his jeans and Red Sox shirt were out of place, but he couldn't wear the same outfit every day. Plus, some of the cash in his wallet might be old enough, but most of the bills were the new design. Something would have to be done about that. His ATM and credit cards would be useless.

Will was going to have to approach someone, to share the truth. He knew that there was danger inherent in this plan, that intruding in any way upon the past was likely to alter the present, but hard choices had to be made. It was either risk small changes or allow the sick bastard to rape and kill his friends. No choice at all, really.

The only question was who he ought to approach. But it wasn't much of a question. There was only one logical choice.

Now that he had at least the beginnings of a plan, Will picked up his pace. His mouth tasted of vomit and he felt exhausted, both from the running and, he thought, likely from the magic as well, but he did not want to waste a moment.

The night was cool but not as chilly as it had felt when he had first regained consciousness in the cemetery. At the bottom of Cherry Street he turned up Ashtree Road. The split-levels, Capes, and ranches of the side streets disappeared and were replaced by old Colonials and even a few Victorians here and there. In the next decade nearly all of them would have been sold and renovated, but here and now most of them were still in need of painting, with lawns that were yellowed and dotted with bare patches.