Part 14 (1/2)

Don't look down.

Don't look down.

s.h.i.+t. I'd looked.

My pulse double-timed and I tightened my grip on the downspout. Okay. How was I going to get from here- To there?

A whole lot of break-my-back-and-kill-me distance?

I looked down again. Oh man, no way. I'd sooner risk the wrath of Sam than jump.

Then I heard the laughter. Cool and calm, as if it knew. Knew I was too chicken to make that leap.

Oh, Cooper. Are you too scared to come out and play?

It knew where I was. It knew what I was doing. Somehow it saw me. How? And why me?

Come on, Cooper, come join us. Megan's waiting, painfully waiting.

A grenade of fury detonated in my gut. I wanted to take that creature and twist its neck until it laughed itself to death. I wanted to pummel it, stomp it, stab it, just destroy it. Everything within me boiled with anger. ”Don't you touch her. Don't you f-”

I'll do whatever I want. I'm in control. More laughter. Not you.

Megan was going to die if I didn't do something and soon. That knowledge made ice race through me, a ma.s.sive Arctic front freezing every vein, every major organ.

I stood up, gritted my teeth, and jumped.

For one long second, I was tumbling into the well again, pushed by my mother to my death. I opened my mouth to scream, the terror clawing its way out of my gut and up my throat, but before the sound could escape, I landed with a hard thud and a hundred painful pokes.

In the shrubs.

For the first time since I'd moved into Castle a la Sam, I sent up a silent thanks for the megalandscaping. The man may have been a jerk, but his overage on the lawn had just saved my b.u.t.t.

Literally.

I started climbing out of the shrubs, pus.h.i.+ng off their clawing branches. The motion-sensor lights sprang to life, flooding the backyard like a watchdog on high alert. I crouched down, scanning for Sam.

Silly Cooper, he's not looking for you. I am.

I jerked back, landing farther into the shrubs. The creature laughed, as if it could see my pathetic attempt at cover. As if I were three years old and thought playing peekaboo behind a Dixie plate meant my father couldn't see me.

Then I saw the vines, the slimy, mossy spider web of green that had somehow leapfrogged across the lawn, maybe while I had been too busy being scared to jump off the roof. It zigged and zagged through the gra.s.s, under the bushes, then up and over the branches, as if it was searching, almost a Sniffing.

Impossible.

But then again, what the h.e.l.l had been sane about this whole thing?

I tried to back up, but the bushes were dense. Nowhere to go. I started to climb up and over them, but the web's reach climbed, too, faster than me, its natural tentacles reaching for me like some love-crazed Jonas Brothers fan.

I pushed through the shrubs, even as they tried to scratch and claw at me. One of my Vans caught on a twig and slipped off, hanging in the thick green like a wounded soldier.

I kept going, my arms and legs working like a steam engine, climbing and clawing, until I finally hit gra.s.s, the well's vines hurdling over themselves to get to me. I spun back, reached into the shrubbery for my sneaker, and grabbed it just as one of the web things broke off from the pack and hurtled itself outward like a giant bright green kamikaze loogie. With a grunt, I threw my body back and tumbled across the gra.s.s, landing out of its reach.

For now.

I looked back at the house, sure I'd see Sam on the deck, ready to drag my a.s.s back inside.

Instead, I saw something that scared me ten times more.

My mother, standing on the bottom step of the deck stairs, watching everything that had happened. And staring at me with an intensity bordering on painful.

Then she started walking toward me. I put on my sneaker. Everything in my brain said run, but my body didn't move. It was glued to the gra.s.s by the stupid half that kept hoping the whole thing was a mistake. That she was going to come out here and help me, not feed me to the lions. ”Cooper,” she said.

I didn't respond.

”Cooper.” She got closer. Four feet away. Three feet. Now I could see her eyes and read the scary gla.s.siness, the almost hypnotic trance.

The one I knew. Too well.

This wasn't the mom who would save me. This wasn't the mom who would tuck me into bed at night. This wasn't the mom who wanted to give me a cookie and a kiss on the cheek.

This was the mom who wanted to kill me.

My vision blurred and I shook my head, swallowing the bitter taste of betrayal. I found the sense to back up, to keep the s.p.a.ce between us far enough that she couldn't touch me. Beneath my feet, I heard a crunch, felt the curl of the well's vines tickle at my ankles. I sidestepped, but they kept pace with me. Penned to the right and the left, and my mother in front of me.

And behind me, I felt the creature watching with its universal eye. Watching, waiting. With Megan somewhere down there, trapped and terrified.

”Come with me, Cooper.” My mother put out her hand, as gently as she used to when I was a kid and she wanted me to get in the car or cross the street with her. ”I'd like to introduce you to a friend.”

Laughter carried on the wind. At my feet, the vines held their ground, as if waiting for orders.

”No.” I shook my head some more and kept backing up, even though I couldn't see her anymore because I was crying. ”No, Mom. No.”

”You have to, Cooper.” She advanced on me, her voice sterner now. No nonsense. The tone that used to tell me to mind my manners and not talk back. As my mother moved, the green vines twisted in and around her feet, but not as if they were catching her-more as though they were becoming part of her. She went on moving and talking, not even noticing. ”You have to come. Now.”

The chill in her voice and the flatness of her eyes had me seriously freaked. But it was the way the slimy vines of the well had become one with my mother that sent my terror meter over the edge. ”Mom, stop, please. Please, please just stop.”

She paused midstep, and for a second, that stupid bird of hope took flight in my chest again. ”I wish I could,” she said, her voice softer, as if there was a battle inside her and this was the voice of the real mom, trying to get out-but then her eyes glittered again, and I knew the battle was being lost. ”But he needs you, Cooper. He needs you bad.”

Then she lunged for me, both arms out like some twisted kind of hug. Come to Mama.

So I can kill you.

I spun on my heel, rubber soles slipping on the gra.s.s and knocking me to the ground. I pushed off with my hands, feeling the whisper of my mother's grip against the back of my head as I gained traction and put distance between us. I didn't look back; I didn't stop. I ran.

As if my life depended on it, because it was no freakin' cliche.

As I left the yard and headed into the woods, I heard a scream so high-pitched, it pierced my skull like an ice pick. For a second I thought it was Megan, and then I realized the sound had come from behind me and was the kind of scream that spelled seriously p.i.s.sed off.

The sound rolled like a wave, then grew louder. I wheeled around and saw my mother, hauling b.u.t.t across the lawn as though someone had set fire to her feet. The well's slimy web minions kept pace beside her, their range growing and spreading, as if searching the lawn for any trace of me. Any minute, she would reach me, and I had no doubt what she would do with me when she found me.