Part 9 (2/2)
I heard Megan curse behind me. She had to be royally p.i.s.sed at me to swear. It wasn't that Megan was perfect, just that she had this thing against swearing. She'd given it up for Lent one year and never picked up the habit again. It was one of the things I liked about her. She stuck to stuff. Unlike me, who had all the lasting power of a Paris Hilton relations.h.i.+p.
”Wait, Cooper.” She did a light jog and caught up to me, grabbing my hand. ”Why me? Tell me that and I'll help you.”
I toed at the ground, disrupting a few stones and kicking them to the side. A few feet away from us, a family of four was heading home, the kids walking between the mom and dad. My stomach clenched, and I stared at the ground again instead of at Perfecto Family. ”Because you're the only one I trust. Name another high school freshman who is going to believe there's some freakin' creature in a well telling my mother to throw me down there for its midnight snack?”
”You have a point. It is pretty unbelievable.”
”Exactly. If I hadn't been down there myself, I wouldn't believe it.” I looked away. Swallowed hard. ”I think whatever this is that takes her over is getting stronger.” Friday night reared its ugly head in my mind. ”I can see it in her eyes. I can feel it in the way she looks at me, hear it in the way she talks. And in the way the thing talks to me.”
”It talks to you? Like, with real words?” Megan stared at me incredulously, as if this was all still too much. ”What's happening, Cooper?”
The air between us stilled. The breeze froze. Leaves stopped rustling. Birds held their chatter.
And then laughter started, but it wasn't coming from anyone in the park, but from far away, far across town.
The whisper of my name carried on a slight breeze. I felt the creature reaching for me, like fingers dancing up my spine. It was coming for me. Again.
”We have to move.” I yanked Megan away from the swing set and started to run.
”What is it? Tell me, Cooper. This is weird, really, really weird.”
”It's looking for me again.” I ran out of the park, Megan keeping up easily because she did spring track. We circled past the elementary school, down Larch Street and over to Hill. I charged down that street, down another, a third, a fourth, running until my lungs hurt and my stomach ached and I was bent over, gasping for air, looking at Megan's face beaded with sweat. And still I could hear it in the back of my head. ”I can't get away from it. I have to get in a car or on a plane or on the freakin' s.p.a.ce shuttle.”
”Or a” Megan paused. ”Kill it.”
I looked at her and decided I did love Megan. I leaned over, and without hesitating-h.e.l.l, why bother hesitating with anything anymore, especially after all this?-I kissed her, not caring that both of us were sweaty and still catching our breath, that we were supposed to be over, that she had made it pretty clear that she hated me, that I had broken up with her because I thought it would be better for her. Safer.
I just grabbed her and kissed her. She tasted of chocolate and goodness and made my heart sing, my head swim. I pulled back after a moment, feeling right then as if I could float all the way to the moon. ”Thank you.”
”For what?” A blush filled her cheeks, that smile I loved square on her lips.
”For believing me.” I put an arm around her, then turned back in the direction where my old house lay, where everything used to be normal. Megan and I stood there watching the sun set, not saying anything for a long time.
But I couldn't avoid the real world forever, and the truth knocked at my brain, moving the rest aside. ”And for being here,” I added, giving her shoulder a squeeze, thinking it might be the last chance I got for a long time. ”I need all the help I can get right now.”
I had no real weapons. It wasn't as if I could walk into a store or go to a street corner and buy a gun. I came from white-bread America, a small town in the middle of Maine, not war-zone Detroit. Guns weren't exactly lying around and gun dealers didn't hang out on the corner of Larkspur and Bayberry.
Not to mention I had exactly twenty-seven dollars in my pocket. Enough to buy a really cool water pistol. Whoo. That'd really scare the monster.
”Okay, so you don't have a gun. You do have a knife,” Megan said, pulling out the long, skinny knife I'd managed to swipe from my mother's kitchen before I met up with Megan. Three nights ago, she'd used it to make lemon chicken for dinner. Now it had turned into a weapon. One I might have to use against her. But I couldn't think about that.
No matter how bad things got, she was still my mother.
But what if things did get that bad? What if I was in the woods with her again and this time couldn't get away? Could I use the knife? Could I stab her?
I didn't know. And honest to G.o.d, I didn't want to know.
Instead, I focused on the task at hand. ”I also brought along some rope. And pepper spray. StepScrooge Sam gave it to my mother for when she goes into the city to go to the mall. On the, like, once-a-year occasion she goes by herself.” I rolled my eyes. ”Whatever. Like Maine is riding the crime wave.”
Megan paced the living room in the abandoned house we'd holed up in, the same one I'd stayed at that first night. It had been quiet that night-a seriously freaked-out quiet, but quiet all the same in my head-so I figured this place was safe.
”Is it talking to you now?” Megan asked.
”Nah. For some reason, there's nothing from the monster when I'm here.”
”Did you know the old lady that lived here?”
I shook my head.
”Her family used to live on your property, you know.”
”What do you mean?”
”At the vineyard. My mom told me about it. The old lady that lived here used to do tailoring and stuff for my mom. And she said her family used to live at the vineyard. Like, her great-great-great-aunt or something grew up there.”
”Huh. Small world.”
”Yeah.” Megan crossed to the piano that sat against the wall, so old that it looked about ready to cave in. She ran a finger over the keys, and they let out a screech of notes. She thumbed through the music on the stand. ”There are names here. One of them is the old lady's. Beatrice.”
”Nice name. If we have kids, we'll name our kid that.”
She shot me a glare. About the kids thing or the name, I wasn't sure. I gave her a grin, to show her I was kidding.
”Here's a Victoria and a”-she moved closer to read the faded writing on the last one-”Amelia.”
”Can we get back to the plan?” I said, my nerves pinging like a pinball machine.
”Sorry. What is the plan?” Megan tied her hair back in a red bandanna, looking sort of like a samurai getting ready for a battle.
”You lower me into the well. I stab it. Happy ending.” I doubted it would go that smoothly. But I couldn't keep running.
This thing-whatever the h.e.l.l it was-was going to follow me and find me. If it didn't climb out of the well itself and I had a feeling it was going to at some point-it would send its skinny green soldiers to drag me back down, and one of these days, there wouldn't be a Faulkner waiting at the top to pull me out. Or a Megan.
I'd die in the well. And that wasn't the way my future was supposed to go. Not if I had anything to do about it.
”I don't know, Cooper.” Megan chewed on her fingernail. ”What if I'm not strong enough to pull you back out?”
”You wrap the rope around a tree and use that for leverage. You can do it, Megan.” My voice sounded a lot braver than I felt, though.
For a second, I hated myself for dragging her into this. I should have gotten someone else, like Joey or Mike, even if they were idiots. I cared too much about Megan to have her get hurt. But there was no going back now.
What choice did I have? If I called Joey, he'd just laugh his head off. Knowing him, he'd let go of the rope and leave me down there for an hour just to have something to jabber about in gym the next day.
Megan and I might be over, but she was the only one I trusted to hold on and hold tight. She looked at me, her face a strong but determined shade of pale. ”You ready?”
”Yeah.” I managed not to sound like a weenie when I said it, but as we walked the couple of miles back to my house and into the woods, my legs turned to jelly and I wanted to p.i.s.s my pants and run like h.e.l.l.
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