The Sign of Seven Trilogy (4 page)

“We're here.”

Gage only grunted at that.

“My mom said how the first white people to settle here were Puritans.” Fox blew a huge pink bubble with the Bazooka he'd bought at the market. “A sort of radical Puritan or something. How they came over here looking for religious freedom, but really only meant it was free if it was, you know, their way. Mom says lots of people are like that about religion. I don't get it.”

Gage thought he knew, or knew part. “A lot of people are mean, and even if they're not, a lot more people think they're better than you.” He saw it all the time, in the way people looked at him.

“But do you think they were witches, and the people from the Hollow back then burned them at the stake or something?” Fox rolled over on his belly. “My mom says that being a witch is like a religion, too.”

“Your mom's whacked.”

Because it was Gage, and because it was said jokingly, Fox grinned. “We're all whacked.”

“I say this calls for a beer.” Gage pushed up. “We'll share one, let the others get colder.” As Gage walked off to the stream, Cal and Fox exchanged looks.

“You ever had beer before?” Cal wanted to know.

“No. You?”

“Are you kidding? I can only have Coke on special occasions. What if we get drunk and pass out or something?”

“My dad drinks beer sometimes. He doesn't, I don't think.”

They went quiet when Gage walked back with the dripping can. “Okay. This is to, you know, celebrate that we're going to stop being kids at midnight.”

“Maybe we shouldn't drink it until midnight,” Cal supposed.

“We'll have the second one after. It's like…it's like a ritual.”

The sound of the top popping was loud in the quiet woods, a quick
crack
, almost as shocking to Cal as a gunshot might have been. He smelled the beer immediately, and it struck him as a sour smell. He wondered if it tasted the same.

Gage held the beer up in one hand, high, as if he gripped the hilt of a sword. Then he lowered it, took a long, deep gulp from the can.

He didn't quite mask the reaction, a closing in of his face as if he'd swallowed something strange and unpleasant. His cheeks flushed as he let out a short, gasping breath.

“It's still pretty warm but it…” He coughed once. “It hits the spot. Now you.”

He passed the can to Fox. With a shrug, Fox took the can, mirrored Gage's move. Everyone knew if there was anything close to a dare, Fox would jump at it. “Ugh. It tastes like piss.”

“You been drinking piss lately?”

Fox snorted at Gage's question and passed the can to Cal. “Your turn.”

Cal studied the can. It wasn't like a sip of beer would kill him or anything. So he sucked in a breath and swallowed some down.

It made his stomach curl and his eyes water. He shoved the can back at Gage. “It does taste like piss.”

“I guess people don't drink it for how it tastes. It's how it makes you feel.” Gage took another sip, because he wanted to know how it made him feel.

They sat cross-legged in the circular clearing, knees bumping, passing the can from hand to hand.

Cal's stomach pitched, but it didn't feel sick, not exactly. His head pitched, too, but it felt sort of goofy and fun. And the beer made his bladder full. When he stood, the whole world pitched and made him laugh helplessly as he staggered toward a tree.

He unzipped, aimed toward the tree but the tree kept moving.

Fox was struggling to light one of the cigarettes when Cal stumbled back. They passed that around the circle as well until Cal's almost ten-year-old stomach revolted. He crawled off to sick it all up, crawled back, and just lay flat, closing his eyes and willing the world to go still again.

He felt as if he were once again swimming in the pond, and being slowly pulled under.

When he surfaced again it was nearly dusk.

He eased up, hoping he wouldn't be sick again. He felt a little hollow inside—belly and head—but not like he was going to puke. He saw Fox curled against the stone, sleeping. He crawled over on all fours for the thermos and as he washed the sick and beer out of his throat, he was never so grateful for his mother and her lemonade.

Steadier, he rubbed his fingers on his eyes under his glasses, then spotted Gage sitting, staring at the tented wood of the campfire they'd yet to light.

“'Morning, Sally.”

With a wan smile, Cal scooted over.

“I don't know how to light this thing. I figured it was about time to, but I needed a Boy Scout.”

Cal took the book of matches Gage handed him, and set fire to several spots on the pile of dried leaves he'd arranged under the wood. “That should do it. Wind's pretty still, and there's nothing to catch in the clearing. We can keep feeding it when we need to, and just make sure we bury it before we go tomorrow.”

“Smokey the Bear. You all right?”

“Yeah. I guess I threw most everything up.”

“I shouldn't have brought the beer.”

Cal lifted a shoulder, glanced toward Fox. “We're okay, and now we won't have to wonder what it tastes like. We know it tastes like piss.”

Gage laughed a little. “It didn't make me feel mean.” He picked up a stick, poked at the little flames. “I wanted to know if it would, and I figured I could try it with you and Fox. You're my best friends, so I could try it with you and see if it made me feel mean.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“It made my head hurt. It still does a little. I didn't get sick like you, but I sorta wanted to. I went and got one of the Cokes and drank that. It felt better then. Why does he drink so goddamn much if it makes him feel like that?”

“I don't know.”

Gage dropped his head on his knees. “He was crying when he went after me last night. Blubbering and crying the whole time he used the belt on me. Why would anybody want to feel like that?”

Careful to avoid the welts on Gage's back, Cal draped an arm over his shoulders. He wished he knew what to say.

“Soon as I'm old enough I'm getting out. Join the army maybe, or get a job on a freighter, maybe an oil rig.”

Gage's eyes gleamed when he lifted his head, and Cal looked away because he knew the shine was tears. “You can come stay with us when you need to.”

“It'd just be worse when I went back. But I'm going to be ten in a few hours. And in a few years I'll be as big as he is. Bigger maybe. I won't let him come after me then. I won't let him hit me. Screw it.” Gage rubbed his face. “Let's wake Fox up. Nobody sleeps tonight.”

Fox moaned and grumbled, and he got himself up to pee and fetch a cool Coke from the stream. They shared it with another round of Little Debbies. And, at last, the copy of
Penthouse
.

Cal had seen naked breasts before. You could see them in the
National Geographic
in the library, if you knew where to look.

But these were different.

“Hey guys, did you ever think about doing it?” Cal asked.

“Who doesn't?” they both replied.

“Whoever does it first has to tell the other two everything. All about how it feels,” Cal continued. “And how you did it, and what she does. Everything. I call for an oath.”

A call for an oath was sacred. Gage spat on the back of his hand, held it out. Fox slapped his palm on, spat on the back of his hand, and Cal completed the contact.

“And so we swear,” they said together.

They sat around the fire as the stars came out, and deep in the woods an owl hooted its night call.

The long, sweaty hike, ghostly apparitions, and beer puke were forgotten.

“We should do this every year on our birthday,” Cal decided. “Even when we're old. Like thirty or something. The three of us should come here.”

“Drink beer and look at pictures of naked girls,” Fox added. “I call for—”

“Don't.” Gage spoke sharply. “I can't swear. I don't know where I'm going to go, but it'll be somewhere else. I don't know if I'll ever come back.”

“Then we'll go where you are, when we can. We're always going to be best friends.” Nothing would change that, Cal thought, and took his own, personal oath on it. Nothing ever could. He looked at his watch. “It's going to be midnight soon. I have an idea.”

He took out his Boy Scout knife and, opening the blade, held it in the fire.

“What's up?” Fox demanded.

“I'm sterilizing it. Like, ah, purifying it.” It got so hot he had to pull back, blow on his fingers. “It's like Gage said about ritual and stuff. Ten years is a decade. We've known each other almost the whole time. We were born on the same day. It makes us…different,” he said, searching for words he wasn't quite sure of. “Like special, I guess. We're best friends. We're like brothers.”

Gage looked at the knife, then into Cal's face. “Blood brothers.”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” Already committed, Fox held out his hand.

“At midnight,” Cal said. “We should do it at midnight, and we should have some words to say.”

“We'll swear an oath,” Gage said. “That we mix our blood, um, three into one? Something like that. In loyalty.”

“That's good. Write it down, Cal.”

Cal dug pencil and paper out of his pack. “We'll write words down, and say them together. Then we'll do the cut and put our wrists together. I've got Band-Aids for after if we need them.”

Cal wrote the words with his Number Two pencil on the blue lined paper, crossing out when they changed their minds.

Fox added more wood to the fire so that the flames crackled as they stood by the Pagan Stone.

At moments to midnight, they stood, three young boys with faces lit by fire and starlight. At Gage's nod, they spoke together in voices solemn and achingly young.

“We were born ten years ago, on the same night, at the same time, in the same year. We are brothers. At the Pagan Stone we swear an oath of loyalty and truth and brotherhood. We mix our blood.”

Cal sucked in a breath and geared up the courage to run the knife across his wrist first. “Ouch.”

“We mix our blood.” Fox gritted his teeth as Cal cut his wrist.

“We mix our blood.” And Gage stood unflinching as the knife drew over his flesh.

“Three into one, and one for the three.”

Cal held his arm out. Fox, then Gage pressed their scored wrists down to his. “Brothers in spirit, in mind. Brothers in blood for all time.”

As they stood, clouds shivered over the fat moon, misted over the bright stars. Their mixed blood dripped and fell onto the burnt ground.

The wind exploded with a voice like a raging scream. The little campfire spewed up flame in a spearing tower. The three of them were lifted off their feet as if a hand gripped them, tossed them. Light burst as if the stars had shattered.

As he opened his mouth to shout, Cal felt something shove inside him, hot and strong, to smother his lungs, to squeeze his heart in a stunning agony of pain.

The light shut off. In the thick dark blew an icy cold that numbed his skin. The sound the wind made now was like an animal, like a monster that only lived inside books. Beneath him the ground shook, heaving him back as he tried to crawl away.

And something came out of that icy dark, out of that quaking ground. Something huge and horrible.

Eyes bloodred and full of…hunger. It looked at him. And when it smiled, its teeth glittered like silver swords.

He thought he died, and that it took him in, in one gulp.

But when he came to himself again, he could hear his own heart. He could hear the shouts and calls of his friends.

Blood brothers.

“Jesus, Jesus, what was that? Did you see?” Fox called out in a voice thin as a reed. “Gage, God, your nose is bleeding.”

“So's yours. Something…Cal. God, Cal.”

Cal lay where he was, flat on his back. He felt the wet warmth of blood on his face. He was too numb to be frightened by it. “I can't see.” He croaked out a weak whisper. “I can't see.”

“Your glasses are broken.” Face filthy with soot and blood, Fox crawled to him. “One of the lenses is cracked. Dude, your mom's going to kill you.”

“Broken.” Shaking, Cal reached up to pull off his glasses.

“Something. Something was here.” Gage gripped Cal's shoulder. “I felt something happen, after everything went crazy, I felt something happen inside me. Then…did you see it? Did you see that thing?”

“I saw its eyes,” Fox said, and his teeth chattered. “We need to get out of here. We need to get out.”

“Where?” Gage demanded. Though his breath still wheezed, he grabbed Cal's knife from the ground, gripped it. “We don't know where it went. Was it some kind of bear? Was it—”

“It wasn't a bear.” Cal spoke calmly now. “It was what's been here, in this place, a long time. I can see…I can see it. It looked like a man once, when it wanted. But it wasn't.”

“Man, you hit your head.”

Cal turned his eyes on Fox, and the irises were nearly black. “I can see it, and the other.” He opened the hand of the wrist he'd cut. In the palm was a chunk of a green stone spotted with red. “His.”

Fox opened his hand, and Gage his. In each was an identical third of the stone. “What is it?” Gage whispered. “Where the hell did it come from?”

“I don't know, but it's ours now. Uh, one into three, three into one. I think we let something out. And something came with it. Something bad. I can see.”

He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them to look at his friends. “I can see, but not with my glasses. I can see without them. It's not blurry. I can see without my glasses.”

“Wait.” Trembling, Gage pulled up his shirt, turned his back.

“Man, they're gone.” Fox reached out to touch his fingers to Gage's unmarred back. “The welts. They're gone. And…” He held out his wrist where the shallow cut was already healing. “Holy cow, are we like superheroes now?”