Part 9 (1/2)
Trevor stopped buzzing long enough for me to make out what the thing was saying. I leaned back in my chair, tilting my head toward the open window.
Cooper, it rasped. Then it gained in volume, clarity. It had my attention now and wasn't letting go. Come back. We have unfinished business, you and I.
It had found me again.
Not so impossible, considering it had found me in my bedroom.
Found me in school.
But this, this was different. This was Megan's house. This was taking it beyond personal and bringing the battle to someone I cared about. I didn't know what to do. Should I run? Should I warn her?
I looked down at the table, sure I'd see some of that green web crawling over the linens, taking the twins' heads and melding them together, smus.h.i.+ng them into one green ma.s.s, but no, it wasn't there.
I swallowed hard. Mrs. Garrett laid a slice of pie before me, but my appet.i.te had run off to China. In its place was the smell of the well, the claustrophobic feeling of being there again. I could taste it in my mouth, feel the rocks against my back, the slime on my hands. I jerked away from the table, releasing Megan's hand.
It wasn't here now. But that didn't mean it wouldn't be. Soon.
”I a I have to go.”
”But you haven't had dessert,” Mrs. Garrett said.
”Thanks, but, ah, I'm full. Way full.” I backed up until I hit the sideboard so hard that the dishes rattled. The corner of the furniture piece rammed into my back, a sharp poke that felt real and solid. I slid along the edge, needing that sense of reality to help me get out of the room. My heart hammered in my chest loud enough that I was sure everyone heard it. Sure the thing could hear it, track every beat like sonar.
”Buzz, buzz, buzz,” Trevor called, laughing. ”He's scared of my b.u.mblebee!”
The Garretts stared at me as though I were an escaped lunatic. Elise gave me the evil eye. Mr. Garrett frowned. He'd always thought Megan could do better, like find a b.u.m on the street corner better. He shook his head, as if he wished he'd never wasted two bucks' worth of roast beef on my stomach, and watched me leave.
Megan rose, too, and followed me out of the dining room and down the hall toward the entryway. ”What the h.e.l.l was that about?”
”Megan, I have to leave.” I reached for the door. The growling scream increased in volume in my head, pounding out my name like a drum, over and over again, increasing waves of taunting.
Cooper, Cooper, Cooper.
Then it began to laugh. As though it could see everything I was doing. Could feel how scared I was and thought it was funny as h.e.l.l.
What was I going to do? Where was I going to go?
Nowhere was safe.
My chest tightened. My legs threatened to go out from beneath me.
The truth hit me in the solar plexus like a UFC fighter. If I didn't kill it, this would never stop, not until I was dead.
”Cooper.” Megan grabbed my arm. ”You're white as a sheet and you're acting totally psychotic. You're freaking me out.”
Cooper, you're freaking her out, the thing echoed, higher pitched, mocking Megan. If you come back here, I'll show you something really freaky.
”You're freaked out?” I leaned closer to her and lowered my voice, watching the hallway to be sure none of the Garretts stumbled upon us. ”I'm the one whose mother is a raving psycho every other hour. I'm the one who has this thing that's trying to find me. It's friggin' screaming in my ear right now, Megan. I know that sounds crazy, because I'm, what, three miles away from my house? But I can hear it. I don't know how, but I can. And somehow, it has my mother wrapped around its claws or whatever the h.e.l.l it has, and she wants to throw me down the well so this thing can have me for dinner. So don't talk to me about freaking out because I am as freaked out as it gets.”
She blinked. ”You're serious, aren't you?”
I threw up my hands. ”What did I just tell you out on the stoop? Do you think I'd make up something like this for chuckles?”
”Well a yeah. You've pulled some pretty big pranks before.”
”This is not like gluing Mr. Spinale's a.s.s to his seat in science cla.s.s! This is bigtime scary c.r.a.p.” I ran a hand through my hair and drew in a breath that shook. I needed to get a grip. ”Listen. I need help. And you are the smartest person I know besides Faulkner. But I can't ask him to get involved because a”
Megan's gaze met mine, and in that knowledge of someone who has known me since kindergarten, she finished the sentence. ”Because he doesn't believe you and trying to convince him would take more time than you have.”
”Yeah.” In that moment, I think I loved Megan. For understanding me. For knowing me. But I couldn't think about that, because I knew if I lost my focus for one second, like I had over the past week, I'd end up in the woods again. And next time, I'd end up in the well instead of beside it.
”Well, I believe you.” Megan leaned forward and wrapped me in a hug that smelled like cocoa b.u.t.ter and felt like Christmas. She held tightly for a long time, then let me go. ”Give me ten minutes, and then meet me at the playground.”
Our old place. My Megan.
Suddenly I could breathe again.
I nodded. Then I left, hoping I hadn't just made the biggest mistake of my life by tangling her in this mess, too.
”Do you have a plan?” Megan asked.
I'd paced for the ten minutes it had taken Megan to reach the playground across the street from my old house, the small white Cape my family had lived in for years, while my parents' marriage had seemed perfect. The two of them reading novels by a crackling fire every night, one of those scenes you'd seen in a freakin' Rockwell painting. Then on D-Day, my mother walked in, dropped the divorce bomb, and moved out.
A week later, she had moved in with Sam. Faulkner and I had never understood it. My father had never seen it coming. Sometimes I walked by this house and wondered what had gone wrong. What detour all of us had missed. I guess I was directionally challenged, because I never found it.
I turned away from the house. ”Not really,” I told Megan. ”It's kinda hard to make a plan, considering I haven't actually seen the thing that's after me. Only a felt it.”
”Okay. ” The disbelief was back in her voice. The kind that said I belonged on the closest crazy couch. ”So you want me to help you wipe out some unseen creature in a well that you think is trying to murder you? A creature that is working with your mother. A woman I have met, by the way, and who made me cookies when I won the sixth grade spelling bee.”
”She's not who, or what, you think.” But even as I said the words, they sounded insane. It was broad daylight on a Sunday. All around us, parents were hanging with their kids. Tossing Frisbees, walking dogs, throwing b.a.l.l.s. Normal to the nth degree.
Megan paced a few steps away, then back to me. ”Why would she do that? She's your mother, Coop.”
”I don't know.” I sat down in the center of the seesaw. ”I don't know.”
Megan slid down beside me, her arm draped across my back. She put her head on my shoulder and sat there a long time, quiet. This was what I liked most about her. How she could just be there, be with me. ”What happened?”
I didn't say anything for a second. Just breathed in the scent of her shampoo. Clean. Innocent. A world away from my world.
I told her about how things had started to go wrong almost two years ago. About the pool and how my mother had held my head under too long during a game of Marco Polo. About the time she'd backed the car up when I was on my bike, hitting the gas hard and slamming into the front tire of my ten-speed, knocking me to the concrete. And then about my mother telling me that Whipple had gotten lost and how she had convinced me to go into the woods with her to ”look for the dog.”
Really only taking me back there so she could upend me like a c.o.ke can she was going to recycle and throw me into the well. And then about the other night and her dragging me through the woods for a return visit to the bottom of the well, except I had gotten away.
When I had finished my confession Megan stared at me, her chin on her chest. ”Oh my G.o.d, Cooper.” She shook her head. ”Oh my G.o.d.”
”Yeah, that's pretty much what I've been thinking.”
”Did you tell Joey? Mike?”
”Come on, Megan. Do you really see Joey or Mike taking me seriously? Doing anything that would help? If anything, they'd get drunk, pop some popcorn, and sell front-row seats to the execution. And they'd play bookie on who would win.” I walked away, heading through the park. I gave one of the swings a push as I went, and it arced upward with a creak of protest.