Part 7 (2/2)

Something about that didn't sound quite right. I mean, what a guy did after work was his own deal, right? But then again, it was the boss's property. ”Yeah. But a I thought you just said on the phone that Paolo was missing.”

Sam lunged toward me. ”I said he didn't show up for work. That's different. He's a drunk, did you hear me? He's home and sleeping it off, like he always does. I'm firing him the next time I see him.”

Except a a part of me kept seeing that pile of hair and brains in the hat.

StepScrooge Sam started to walk out of the kitchen, but stopped next to me. ”Don't tell anyone, you hear me, Cooper?”

”Yeah.”

Then he clapped me on the shoulder. Hard. And left the room.

A s.h.i.+ver of uneasiness ran through me, but I shrugged it off. Paolo did like his wine. Sam could be right.

After my mother and Sam left for dinner, Faulkner came down and joined me in the theater room for a bucket of b.u.t.tered pops and a rerun of a Bruce Willis flick.

”Mom made this for us. Everything's cool,” Faulkner said, digging into the bowl. ”Nothing's happened with you and her, right? That day was probably just some weird freak-out.”

In the past few days, my mother had been normal, even extra nice, as if she knew how upset I was about the dog dying. No one had talked about Whipple again after that night, but Mom had done small things, like had my favorite box of crackers and a six-pack of c.o.ke waiting on the counter when I got home from school. She hadn't nagged me about homework or my room or getting to bed on time. She asked me a couple more times about my birthday, but I just shrugged it off. I totally wasn't in a cake-and-ice-cream mood.

So a part of me wanted to think yeah, things were normal. Everything was cool again. The whole thing had been some weird fluke. And a part of me wondered if maybe the well, or whatever was in the well, wanted me to think that, too. Wanted me to get comfortable in my shoes again, like in the movies, when the hero stops looking over his shoulder. All week, though, I'd had this feeling, this eerie raise-the-tiny-hairs-onmy-arm feeling, that something was there, waiting, like the constant buzz of mosquitoes. I didn't know what it was-or whether I'd just seen too many Friday the 13th sequels.

Kind of like that moment back in the kitchen earlier tonight, when Sam and I had been talking about Paolo. A weird feeling, but not much more than that.

”Yeah. Nothing,” I said.

Why didn't I tell Faulkner about the green slime from days before? Why did I keep holding that back?

Why didn't I tell him how that web had spread over my hands? Attacked my computer?

Maybe because I thought he'd think I was one drumstick short of a KFC bucket?

Faulkner hadn't believed me before and sure as heck wasn't going to believe me now, not with us all back to Candy Land life.

'Muy bueno, ” Faulkner said, socking me in the arm. ”Guess you were just hallucinating, huh? You and your imaginary world. *Member when you were six and used to think you were the Hulk?”

”Yeah. Whatever.” I thumbed up the volume on the remote, and Faulkner and I settled back to watch Bruce Willis mow down the bad guys. Just like a normal family.

I awoke to the sound of laughter tickling my ears, like wind.

I stirred and rolled over, brus.h.i.+ng at my ear. Then I heard a crunch beneath me, felt something poke into my ribs. And I realized I wasn't in my bed.

Oh c.r.a.p.

I froze. My muscles turned to icicles, pinning me in place. I opened one eye, then the other. Ebony black kept me blind for one long second, and then the images came into a sort of hazy focus, the kind that came not because I could suddenly see in the dark- But because I had been here before. And knew this place too well.

Twisted vines. Tangled skinny branches. Weird, nearly transparent white grapes, the last few shriveled ones left on the vines.

Rough-hewn dark gray stones, curving upward in a circular wall, coated with a deep green moss.

I scrambled backwards like a crab, all four limbs working at once, grabbing anything I could to get back, get away- From the well.

Oh dear G.o.d. Not again.

My heart slammed in my chest, beating against the wall of my rib cage like a prisoner wanting off death row. It took three tries, three tries of slipping and falling, my bare feet losing the battle against the Slip *n Slide of damp earth, before I got to my feet.

Going somewhere, Cooper?

I didn't stop to wonder how I had ended up here. Who had dragged me out to the middle of the woods while I slept. Who had left me by the well. I knew those answers, even if I didn't want to check off C: Mom on the multiple-choice quiz.

I turned and ran. My breath heaved in my chest, lungs struggling to wake up, along with the rest of my body, which felt so heavy, so, so heavy, as if I'd been- Drugged?

Impossible. She would never.

Would she?

My heart sunk, knowing that if that popcorn she had made us had been drugged, then Faulkner was probably still in the theater room, out cold. Incapable of helping me.

I tried to put on some speed, but it felt as if I were slogging through pancake syrup. My legs weighed a hundred pounds each, my feet could hardly remember the one-foot in-front-of-the-other rule, and my arms flopped at my sides instead of pumping like pistons.

Behind me, I could hear laughter, rising and falling on the wind like the screeching of gulls. Like the chuckles of the Grim Reaper himself.

I pushed myself, trying to pretend I was the Michael Phelps of the woods, but the harder I tried to run, the harder it was to breathe, to move. The trees worked against me, branches slapping my face, twigs tripping my already clumsy steps, as if the land was on the well's side.

That was crazy. Trees didn't move. Didn't think. Didn't try to kill people.

You don't know what I'm capable of, my boy. The thing laughed again. Now, come back, because we have something to talk about.

”Leave me alone!” I shoved at the branches, their sharp edges poking me, jabbing, hurting. ”Leave me the h.e.l.l alone!”

Come back, Cooper. Now! The monster's voice again. Louder, angrier.

”Get away from me!” Whatever was in my system was starting to either wear off or be beaten back by an adrenalineand-fear c.o.c.ktail. The dark closed in around me, tight like a blanket, and I had only one thought- Get the h.e.l.l out of the woods.

I let out a shriek and pushed my body even harder, even as the fallen sticks sliced at my bare feet and the tree branches. .h.i.t harder against my sides, my hips, my arms. The woods were thicker here, closing off the light from the moon. My heart slammed against my chest, and I told myself I had stopped being afraid of the dark when I was nine.

Yeah, except that that had been when I had thought there weren't any monsters in the dark. That had turned out to be the largest load of c.r.a.p anyone told his kids.

I could feel this monster watching me, could feel him sensing me.

Somehow he knew everything I did. Somehow he saw me. And somehow- He was chasing me right now.

I heard the thunder of footsteps first, the breaking of branches, felt the heavy thud that told me I wasn't alone in the woods and that what was running behind me sure as h.e.l.l wasn't the neighbor's cat. The night coated everything with its black sightless paint, and there were only sounds.

The sounds of death coming for me.

Terror clawed up my throat, and for a second, I couldn't breathe, couldn't think. I stumbled over a log and went down, feeling the air rush past my face and knowing this was it. He was coming, and I was going back down in there.

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