The Winslow Incident (40 page)

Fortunately, she reached the
Winslow family plot with nary a rustle from beside the trail. Exhaling relief,
she aimed the flashlight across the rise and saw familiar headstones and
crosses: Ruby Winslow, Jim Adair, a smooth log resting near the pond like an
unburied bone, but no Sean.

She walked forward a few
feet—her tennis shoes tangling momentarily in the blackberry
brambles—to the edge of the pond where Sadie Mathers had drowned.
Poor
Sadie . . .

The flashlight beam penetrated the
water and for a horrified instant she thought she saw Sean submerged in the
pond. The flashlight hit the water and sank out of reach before Hazel realized
she’d let it slip from her hand. “Damn, damn, dammit!”

The flashlight came to rest upright
in the muck at the bottom of the pond, casting pale light upward through the
water. What she’d mistaken for Sean turned out to be blackened tree roots.

“I am such an idiot!” She angrily
stomped her feet on the ground, which made her elbow and ribs explode in pain.
“Ouch,” she whimpered. “Damn.”

Hazel could not afford to let
herself get bogged down like this.
He’s not here, keep going.

She noticed that the sky was
lightening at last—the long night finally nearing an end. Her heartbeat
hadn’t slowed since she’d come upon Tiny Clemshaw guarding his Mercantile, the
shotgun targeting the rainbow across her chest. Not when she’d run to Rhone
Bakery to find her father, or laid eyes on the remains of Melanie, or fought
with her Uncle Pard.

And certainly not now.
Because
I have to hurry.

In the gray light of predawn Hazel
looked up at the opening to the Second Chance mineshaft: a black mouth that had
long ago spit out the mounds of wrung earth still littering Silver Hill.
The
perfect hiding spot.

She gazed longingly at the flashlight
nestled deep underwater before she left the pond and goose-stepped through high
brambles, heading uphill toward the mine.

When Sean was seven and got fed up
with his dad Samuel, he ran away from home carrying a hobo sack (fashioned out
of a potato bag and croquet mallet) that he’d filled with three Milky Way bars,
his slingshot, and five bologna and cheese sandwiches.

Hazel knew this because he’d
stopped by her house on the way out of town to try and persuade her to come
with him. “I can’t,” she’d refused him. “
Buffy
is on tonight.”

And she remembered how small he
looked as she watched him disappear, alone, down the sidewalk on Park Street.

It was after dark by the time
Samuel and Honey Adair realized Sean was missing, and they searched every floor
of The Winslow before ending up at her house. Then Sean’s parents tricked it
out of her by saying Hawkin Rhone was sure to get Sean unless Hazel gave up his
secret spot. But Sean forgave her the betrayal because by then he was lonely
hiding up in that mine all by himself.
He’s lonely now too
, she speculated.

Trudging up Silver Hill, Hazel
tried to imagine the cacophony of hard rock blasting and drilling when the
mines were active in the late 1800s . . . and how quiet it must have seemed
once it all stopped. A dry hush, like now.

She skirted past signs reading
Danger
and
No Trespassing
, then paused beneath the square set timbers
at the entrance to the mine. It had long been boarded up tight, and reinforced
each summer to keep the kids out. Now a good-sized section was pried away as if
someone had recently entered.

“Sean?” she called into the hole.

Silence.

“Please answer me, Sean—I
really
don’t want to go in there.”

No answer. So she forced herself to
crawl between the wood slats.

Only a dozen yards into the mine,
she rounded a corner and found herself immersed in complete darkness. It was
cool in there too—she’d expected it to be hot like a furnace. Her neck
started creeping and crawling and she clasped her left hand together with the
right in the sling, holding them close to her body lest something nip at her
fingertips.

Sally forth
, she ordered herself. In school, Gus Bolinger told them
he’d made a mantra of those two words, repeating them to himself and his
comrades when things got gnarly during the Battle of Bloody Ridge. Hazel
sallied bravely forth.

“Sean?” she called again. Completely
blind in the cave, she wished like mad she’d held onto that flashlight.

Don’t lose your bearings
, she thought as she continued deeper.

It was something her dad always
warned her against. “Don’t ever lose your bearings in the woods, Hazel, or
you’ll get lost.”

What are bearings, anyway?
she wondered.
Don’t know, but don’t lose ’em—

“Who’s there?” a man’s voice
cleaved the silence.

Hazel jumped and jerked all in one
motion. She peered in the direction from whence the voice had come, but all was
black.

“Who’s there!” Deeper, more
insistent now.

Her heart pounded out hard, fitful
beats. “Hazel Winslow?” She hoped that was the right answer.

“I’m here . . .” The man sounded
distressed now—as if he’d wanted to be found but nobody had bothered to
look. “The little ones ran me out with sticks and rocks,” he whined.

“Who are you?” Hazel couldn’t help
but think
Hawkin Rhone,
and her heart thumped even harder.

“They hurt me!” The anger returned
to the voice and she took a step back.

Or was it to the side? She was
turned around; it was that dark. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, I’ll leave you
be.”

Which way is out?
She darted blind eyes all directions.
Help
me—which way is out?

As she turned what she bargained
was the right way, a hand popped out of the blackness and grabbed her arm,
ripping the sling, and she screamed from the terror and pain of it. He yanked
her down to him—he was so strong.

Maybe he’s a vampire
, she horrified herself, and any second she’d feel long,
fat teeth sinking into her neck, followed by the weak, warm feeling of blood
draining from her body.

“I beg you,” he whispered in her
face with breath that smelled of something dying inside.

And her mind shrieked,
It
is
him! Fucking Hawkin Rhone vampire!

He pulled her even closer, biting
distance now. “Please kill me,” he said. “It’s unbearable.”

Hazel screamed and kicked and
batted at him with her left hand for what seemed like minutes before he finally
released her tortured right arm, and she kept screaming as she ran, her cries
echoing back to her so that it sounded like a madhouse full of girls screaming,
and she could no more outrun that smell than she could her screams. It was on
her now, in her hair: his morbid exhalation.

“Beware the pest house,” he
bellowed.

She careened off the dirt walls,
bouncing her way out of the pitch-dark mine like a pinball, and fought through
the hole in the timbers that had somehow shrunk while she was inside so that
now she barely fit back out, terrified the whole time that she’d feel the
vampire’s bony fingers wrap around her ankle so he could drag her deep inside his
tomb.

When she did finally emerge from
the mouth of the mine, the day’s first light sliced into her pupils before they
had a chance to contract.

She veered blindly—a white
blindness now—her hand shielding her eyes, and then sprinted across
Silver Hill through dry yellow weeds that scratched her calves mercilessly, racing
for the tall water tower with its enormous
W
painted on one side of the
rusty tank, desperate to reach it and hide before the Hawkin Rhone vampire
caught her and sank his teeth into her neck.

At the ladder, she didn’t look
back or hesitate. Instead, she started up fast.
I won’t come back down.
Ever.

She climbed carelessly,
hysterically.
If I stay up here, I’ll see as soon as help comes. Somebody
must’ve made it out before they blocked the bridge. Or come up and now they’re
missed. Maybe Tanner will send help after all. His parents will wonder what
he’s doing back, won’t they? They won’t buy his story. They’ll want to talk to
Uncle Pard.

When she reached the platform, she
leaned out to glance down the ladder, half expecting to see the vampire scrambling
up right behind her, like a spider closing in on its prey.

But he wasn’t there. Panting
furiously, she crawled across the metal platform and then defensively tucked
her back against the tank like a wounded animal.

We’re just a bit out of sorts
is all
, she thought, aware that she’d
finally been driven to hysteria. Anything that had begun to heal in her elbow
was now ripped asunder and raw nerves all along her battered body screamed
their distress.

We’ll just stay put until help
gets here. It has to, right? It has to—

The vampire’s death smell
retouched her nose, and forced her to ask the question she’d so desperately been
avoiding:
Is this fatal?

The image of a duck flashed in her
mind, the dead duck that ate ergot-infested piecrust.

Hazel hung her head and began to
sob.

Is everybody going to die?

“
I
t’s not a good idea,” Aaron whispered to
Violet.

Maybe he was right, but she caved
in to Daisy anyway. They’d been cramped in their hiding spot for hours and
hours and they couldn’t sleep ’cause it was too uncomfortable and they couldn’t
cry ’cause it makes too much noise and Daisy would not stop poking her that it
was
time to get out
!

Besides, nobody was around.

Violet peeked again through the
gap in the boards and could see that nobody was around. Plus the sun was coming
up so everything wasn’t scary like before when it was so dark. Hawkin Rhone
only comes out at night (
I think maybe.
)

So she pushed open the big lid and
raised her head and still didn’t see anybody. Her legs were sleeping and pins
and needles tried to wake them up.

Aaron tugged on her dress, trying
to pull her back in. “Hazel said to stay hiding.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Violet
told him and stepped out of the fruit storage bin and into the very first
sunbeam to hit the apple orchard Wednesday morning.

I
’m lost.

How am I supposed to find the
boy when I can’t even find my way out of this place? This place made my father
do what he did. Now it’s making me. Don’t look at that eye. Blueberry. Maybe it
was my father who did it. Again. Missy, we missed you after you were gone. So
maybe it wasn’t me after all. Wait! Remember? It’s the boy’s fault. Sean Adair.
I’m lost. My bones hurt—will they ever stop hurting me? It’s daybreak.
Maybe I’ll find my way out now. Getting light fast. The eye will burn under the
big sun. I ought to go down and close the eyelid. Already lighter and I can see
him there. There—my father. Hawkin Rhone. Has he ever left? The apple
doesn’t rot far from the tree. I am he; he wants me to be. He needs me to tend
the orchard.

And now the children have come
to me.

They’re here, waiting for me to
let my guard down . . . waiting to pluck apples with small hands.

“
B
luebells, cockle shells, easy ivy over!”

From where Aaron floated above the
orchard, he watched Violet and Daisy jumping rope in their long colorful dresses.
He tried to yell, “Stop singing!” but no sound came out because his voice was
down there with his body, which was slumped in the dirt next to that ugly dead
apple tree.

Violet and Daisy’s red hair
bounced and waved, calling even
more
attention to them.

“Stop! Hide!” he tried again but still
his body only laid there.

The girls’ daddy was moving fast
though: sneaky and slithery around the trees like an eel, his face stuck on
mean. Meaner than Aaron ever saw his own dad’s face, meaner even than the worst
bad guys in the video games his mom didn’t like him to play.

Get back in!
Aaron ordered himself.
Get back in!
The closer
Zachary Rhone got, the surer Aaron was that he’d better get back into his body.
What if Mr. Rhone hurt his body when he wasn’t in it? What if he hurt it really
bad? Panic seized Aaron:
Where would I go after that?

Then he saw the other kid: a girl
with a long dark ponytail, the little girl named Missy that Hawkin Rhone
poisoned to death.

“Apples, pears, peaches and
plums,” Violet and Daisy chanted, “tell me when your birthday comes.”

“Be quiet!” Aaron tried to warn
them. “He’s close!”

Mr. Rhone continued to creep
through the orchard, slower now, trying not to scare them off.

“January February March . . .”