Part 18 (1/2)

”Coop, thank G.o.d.”

He sounded glad to talk to me. What was up with that?

”Listen, I have something to tell you.” I cupped my hand around the receiver. Even though I was still in my old room, I didn't want to chance waking up my father. Explaining all this weirdness to him-a man who thought the answer to any problem could be found in a book-would only make things worse. ”Don't let Mom drink that wine-you know, the wine. Sam's special c.r.a.p. There's something in there that's a I don't know, making her act the way she is.” I wanted to tell him about the journal and the grapes, but I figured if he hadn't believed me before, he really wasn't going to believe me now, not until I could show him the journal.

”I can't do that,” Faulkner said, and his voice shook on the last two words, shook like San Francisco after an earthquake. ”It's a”

The phone hummed. ”What? It's what?”

He started to breathe heavily, and I wasn't sure, but I think he might have been crying. ”It's too late, Cooper. Oh, man it's too late. For all of us.”

Then the phone went dead. And Faulkner was gone.

Empty.

The StepScrooge Sam mansion stood empty in a way that went beyond no people being there. The rooms echoed. They smelled musty, as if- As if the well had been here.

Night hung heavy behind me, our street silent as a tomb. I could feel the ticking of a mental clock. I had only until my birthday to get rid of this thing if I wanted to live. And if there was any chance Megan was still alive, I had just that long to find her.

I stepped inside, flicked on the lights, and started to look for my brother. Except even with all the lights on, the house still felt dark. Heavy. Ominous. ”Faulkner? Hey, Faulk. Don't play any games, dude. It's not funny.”

But there was no answer.

”Faulkner!”

I opened every door, dread multiplying with each k.n.o.b I turned. But he wasn't behind any of the six-panel oak doors. He wasn't in the kitchen. The bathroom. The laundry room. I stopped at the entrance to the bas.e.m.e.nt and decided to hold that for later. Instead, I turned to make my way upstairs.

And stopped. Swallowed my breath.

One of the well's evil vine men. Waiting for me at the top of the stairs.

If this thing was now outside the woods and inside the house, it must mean the creature had gotten stronger. Because the day was getting closer for the sacrifice? Because the thing was getting more anxious? Either way, it didn't look good for me.

My legs nearly went out from under me, but I grabbed the banister and told myself it was just a bunch of sticks. I could take a bunch of sticks. I could beat this thing. I had to.

Because this wasn't just about me anymore or saving my own skin.

It was about Megan. And Faulkner. And my mother.

”You don't scare me!” I screamed. I could lie to it and myself.

The vine-and-twig man opened its stick mouth and laughed.

”I'm coming up there!” I swiped one of my mother's megasize candlesticks from the hall table, then started up the stairs. Still holding on to the banister, because if I didn't, my legs weren't going to climb.

The thing waved its arms and clapped its hands, like a baseball catcher waiting for me to send him a fastball.

Were there others in the house?

Oh G.o.d, what if there were a hundred? What if it had gotten the whole d.a.m.ned vineyard to turn into those things and they had taken over the whole house and they were coming to get me and take me back to the well and I was going to die before I could rescue Megan and find Faulkner and- Get a grip, Cooper. Get a grip or you will die.

At the top of the stairs, the vine-and-stick man rocked on its heels and kept swinging its arms, laughing some more. Waiting. Like this was the funniest, most entertaining thing to happen in weeks.

Like it was all a game.

I raised the candlestick higher-that sucker was heavy, made of some kind of metal that needed polis.h.i.+ng all the time-and picked up the pace. Five steps away now. Four. I could see its eyes were made of grapes-grapes so s.h.i.+ny, they almost had irises in them. When I was three steps away, it crouched, then pointed to its chin, as if saying, Go ahead, take your best shot.

When I'd been five, my father had signed me up for Little League. I had hated him for doing it. He'd dragged me down to practice, kicking and screaming.

But once I was there, I found out I liked baseball. I made some friends-Joey and Mike, for starters-and stuck with the league until high school. I had a h.e.l.l of a batting average and a pretty decent pitching arm. Coach Harding had already talked to me about trying out this spring for the varsity baseball team at Maple Valley High.

I knew that.

I didn't think the vine guy did.

And I wasn't in a sharing kind of mood right now. When I was one step away, I paused, s.h.i.+fted my feet to widen my stance, then let go of the banister. I waited until the stick guy started laughing again. G.o.d, I hated that laugh, and I let that hate boil into a fury that I could control, a rage that I could feel travel down my arm, burn into my fist.

I curled my grip tightly around the makes.h.i.+ft bat, raised it onto my shoulder, then swung, hard and even. ”Shut up!”

The candlestick bat connected with the side of its head, smacking into the twig figure, solid enough to kill a guy. Its nature head exploded into pieces, bursting like a cartoon sun, and it stumbled back. I started to move forward, to finish the job, when the pieces of its head began to lift up from the floor and started to swirl in a circle, then-to my horror-knit themselves back together.

It laughed again and said something I couldn't understand. Even though the words had made no sense to me, I knew what they had meant. It could have been speaking Mandarin and it wouldn't have mattered, because its words were spoken in the language of the playground.

The roar of a bully. The taunting you-think-that-hurt dare.

It started toward me again and I raised the candlestick and swung harder this time.

”Get back!”

Again, its head erupted in a starburst, then zipped back together, as if it was the Road Runner, down for only a second.

”Get away, you freak!” I took another swing and another, this time hitting it in the legs and the arms, but then at one point the candlestick just went through its legs. I took a step back, stunned. ”What the h.e.l.l?”

It laughed again, then reached forward and swung at my head with the branches of its arms. I ducked. It swung again, this time lower, faster. Faster than me.

The blow hit me squarely in the gut, blasting my breath out of my lungs and sending me flying down the stairs, somersaulting like an Olympic gymnast, except with a dismount that sent me landing on my wrist.

I screamed. The twig thing yowled and danced at the top of the stairs.

I cradled my wrist against my chest and tested it, gingerly moving it back and forth. It hurt like h.e.l.l, but it moved, so it wasn't broken. A sprain. A bad one. Either way, I didn't have time for the pain.

I needed a way past that thing to make sure my brother wasn't upstairs somewhere, trapped. I picked up the candlestick again, in my other hand, and realized there was no way I could hit it using my left arm. For one, my lefty batting average was zero. For another, hitting the thing hadn't gotten me anywhere. This one didn't have the green webbing that had coated my school desk and my computer, but it had the regeneration abilities of a starfish on steroids.

Then I saw what had been sitting next to the candlestick on the hall table and knew another way to take out a vine man. I ran back upstairs again.

It was still laughing when I reached the top of the steps. I stood in front of it, raised the candlestick again.

”Yeah, real funny, isn't it? Everyone wants to be Jon Stewart. Why not try torch singer for a career!” Then with my right hand, I flicked my mother's Bic lighter. I brought the candlestick together with the lighter, then thrust both at the vine-and-twig guy. My wrist screamed in agony, but not as loudly as the stick man did.

Because I knew one other thing this vine guy didn't know.