by Rysa Walker
It’s getting close to dark, so Tucker grabs his flashlight from the console between the seats, and Daisy and Chase follow him around the side of the house. They’re all walking quietly, almost on tiptoes. Daisy flashes back to pretty much every Scooby-Doo episode and fights off a nervous laugh.
They approach the two low wooden steps that lead up to a platform that’s too small to be called a deck but a bit larger than a stoop. The orange cat Daisy saw earlier is perched on the railing. It arches its back and hisses as soon as their feet touch the bottom step, then bolts toward the large oak in the backyard.
Tucker shines the light through the window into the kitchen. Chase’s prediction is correct. Martha’s body is still there.
“She’s not in the oven anymore,” Chase says.
“Yeah. I…um…had to make sure the gas was fully off. Anyway, I couldn’t just leave her in that position. I took pictures first.” Tucker’s voice sounds a little guilty as he says this, so Daisy suspects he broke some sort of rule by moving the old woman’s body. But it hardly seems relevant in the face of everything going on.
She reaches out and squeezes his arm. “We should go.”
Tucker nods, and they turn to leave, but the flashlight reflects back from the refrigerator. He stops, scanning the beam across the words near the center.
STOP XYLEVA
“That’s…different,” Tucker says. “It said something about Raum before.”
Chase nods. “Raum lies. And something about him getting that from his mother.”
“Yeah. Anybody know who Raum is? And for that matter, who the hell is Xyleva?”
“I don’t think it’s a who,” Daisy says. “Xyleva, I mean. I don’t know about Raum, aside from seeing the word when I was here. But Xyleva is a drug. For depression, I think. I’ve…seen commercials.”
Daisy can’t quite bring herself to add that half a bottle of Xyleva is in the drawer by her bed. Tucker will think she’s weak, that she needed a crutch. He got by without drugs when his parents died. So did Dani.
And the stupid poltergeist or spirit or whatever that’s writing these messages clearly needs a better source of information. She did stop Xyleva, nearly six months ago.
“We should go,” she repeats. “I need to get back to the theater.”
Tucker nods, and they both turn to leave. But Chase is now parked on the top step, facing the oak tree in the corner of Martha Yarn’s backyard.
“Chase?” Tucker says. “You coming, buddy?”
The boy doesn’t answer. It’s almost as if he’s been frozen in place. His hands are propped on his knees and clasped into loose fists with his thumbs on top. The only thing moving is his eyes. They jerk about erratically, without blinking, landing on various points near his hands. Oh, and his thumbs. They move, too, almost as if he’s texting.
Tucker repeats the kid’s name and then glances over at Daisy. “It kind of looks like he’s watching something on a device…a phone or tablet.”
Daisy nods, but she’s thinking that Chase’s expression also reminds her of the scene in A Clockwork Orange, where Alex’s eyes are held open as he’s being programmed.
“More like he’s playing a game. On a hand…held…” She stops. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Music.”
Tucker shakes his head. “What sort of music?”
She thinks for a moment trying to place the tune. “The tinny kind. A bit like…” There’s an odd tickling sensation at the front of her brain, and she struggles to grasp the train of thought. “I don’t know. Maybe like an ice cream truck.”
She’s pretty sure it’s not ice-cream-truck music. That’s just the only image she could come up with. It is connected to a vehicle, though. There’s sort of a slide whistle noise, and it brings with it a memory of the smell of chocolate, which could be why she was reminded of ice cream. And then even that sliver of thought is gone.
“It doesn’t matter.” She crouches in front of the boy, running her hand between his face and whatever he’s watching. “Chase?”
His eyes continue to twitch, unblinking, as they stare straight through her hand at something neither she nor Tucker can see.
And then Daisy is hit by a wave of déjà vu so powerful that it feels like a physical force. She takes an awkward step backward from her crouched position and lands on her ass, so hard that her teeth sink into the side of her tongue.
Aside from the sharp physical pang of her injured tongue, the feeling is almost identical to the one that hit her on the sidewalk earlier in the day. She’s not in restraints this time, but the sense of hopelessness and helplessness is almost overwhelming.
The memory—and it really does feel like a memory—fades quickly, though, just as it did before.
What remains is the knowledge that she’s seen Chase in this exact position. In the corner. Sitting in the chair by the window, wearing orange sneakers, staring down at a tablet that isn’t even charged. He wasn’t like that all the time. Chase had good days, and on those days, they’d sit and talk. Sometimes about movies and books. Sometimes about other things. Most days, however, well over half the time she’d known him, Chase sat in the chair, silent and unmoving except for his thumbs, which traced an unending pattern along the bottom of a tablet that wasn’t even charged, and his eyes, which traveled incessantly across the blank, black screen, tracking things no one else could see.
Five
BEN
Steam and acrid clouds of Axe body spray fill the locker room as Ben steps into the hot water streaming from the rusted showerhead and closes his eyes. Outside the stall, someone snaps a towel, followed by laughter and a string of taunts, mostly about who has screwed whose mother, sister, or girlfriend. This is one thing he will not miss. A voice in his head says he outgrew these games long ago. On days like this, when he aches from every pore, his body says it has outgrown not just locker room games, but football, too.
Practice was god awful. Even knowing Chase was safe with Julie Kennedy, Ben hadn’t been able to focus, and after several bad reads off the QB, the coach had told him to take the bench. Part of it was probably lack of sleep. On two separate occasions, he ran to block someone he clearly saw in front of him only to lunge forward and grab nothing but air.
About forty-five minutes into practice, Principal Snyder came slithering out of the building and whispered something to Coach Willis, who then pulled Aric Conner aside. Aric’s face was ghostly white when he followed Snyder back into the school. Chad Voorhees, who was closer than Ben, overheard a bit of their conversation and said he thought there was a death in Aric’s family.
A few minutes after that, Coach Willis stalked off the field, saying he was disgusted with the lot of them. That they were hopeless. Some of the team said they should keep practicing, claiming it was a test to see who was really committed, but most of the guys just headed to the showers. Pretty much all of them had plans tonight. Might as well make the best of Coach calling practice early. The only reward the suck-ups remaining on the field were likely to get was a cold shower because the hot water never holds out for the entire team. Ben knows that for a fact, because there have been plenty of days when he waited for most of the others to leave, reluctant to display the patchwork quilt of bruises on his back. Some could be passed off as football injuries. Others, not so much, and he suspects that’s the case today. But he’s too tired to give a damn what his teammates think and too sore to deal with a chilly shower. He’d skip it altogether if not for the fact that he needs to stop by and talk to Marybeth on his way to pick up Chase, and she’d wrinkle her nose and kick him out instantly if he showed up grungy.
The temperature goes from blissfully hot to pure ice, almost as if the water heater read his mind. Ben jumps back, colliding with the wall behind him, which is as inexplicably cold as the water pouring from the spigot. Stranger still, everyone else in the locker room has gone quiet. All he hears is the spray of frigid water against the cement floor at his feet.
The shower room is engulfed in steam so thick that Ben can barely make out the sickly green cinder blocks of the now-empty stalls. He turns off the water, and the locker room falls utterly, oppressively silent.
“Hello?”
No answer. How could everyone have cleared out that quickly?
Although, maybe not everyone. Ben squints, trying to focus through the fog on someone off to his left. The figure isn’t moving. It’s slumped against the wall, arms extended.
“Hello?” he repeats, moving forward a few steps. He can now tell it’s a man. Naked, and not old, but definitely not young enough to be one of his teammates. There’s a hint of middle-aged flab at the waist and along the man’s outstretched arms, which are chained to the wall on either side.
“Coach?” Ben asks, even though he’s instantly certain that’s wrong. This guy is thinner. He still has all of his hair, too. The man’s back heaves, and even though his breathing is strained, Ben’s relieved that he’s alive.
A screech of metal on metal fills the room. Ben takes another step forward, and at the same instant, the fog clears, revealing a second person in the room, on the opposite side of the chained man. The new guy’s face is shaded by a black fedora, but it can’t hide the ropes of scar tissue extending down his neck.
He’s seen this man before. And he’s definitely seen the glove on his right hand. Four wicked blades protrude from the fingertips.
Ben huffs, realizing he’s been had. This is way beyond anything he’d have thought his teammates capable of, but someone seems intent on getting full Halloween mileage from his expensive new Freddy Krueger costume.
“Okay. Yeah. You got me good.” Ben reaches out, not sure if he’s going to rip off the mask or punch the guy. But Old Dreamweaver also raises his hand and steps toward the chained man, now fully awake.
Fully awake and eerily familiar.
Ben’s first thought is that it’s his dad, but Ralph Rey hasn’t looked this good in twenty years, if ever. No, the face looks much more like the one Ben shaves each morning. Just older and terrified.
The man screams, the voice also oddly like his own, as pseudo-Krueger lunges forward. Ben expects to see the knives retract when they hit the man’s back—they can’t actually be real—but they slice cleanly into his flesh, once, twice. Blood spray fills the air, along with the captive man’s screams, as his body jerks away, testing the limits of the bonds holding him to the wall.
Ben grabs for the attacker’s arm and then stops cold.
Krueger is gone. The glove is now on his own hand as it again swipes at the chained man’s back. Ben falls onto the floor and scurries backward, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the bloodied corpse—because he’s quite certain it is now a corpse. The glove comes with him, however, trailing blood, and he screams again.
“Ben. Ben! What the fuck, man?” Rough hands shake him, digging into his shoulder. “Ben. Snap out of it!”
He opens his eyes. People are staring at him—some amused, some concerned. For a moment, he can’t recognize any of their faces. Cold water continues to gush into the shower stall. He’s naked, and the floor beneath him is icy, but the hand attached to his arm is just a hand. There’s no blood. No corpse. No Freddy-fucking-Krueger.
Chad lets go of his shoulder and asks in a low voice, “What’s going on? You get hold of some bad shit?”
Ben still can’t find his voice. He just shakes his head and takes the towel Chad hands him.
“Come on, then. Let’s get you up, bro.” He turns around to face the others. “Show’s over. Give him some privacy.” One by one, the others go back to their business.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Ben wraps the towel around his waist and heads toward the lockers. “I’m fine. Must’ve dozed off. Didn’t sleep so well last night.”
“Your dad again?”
Ben blinks. He’s about to deny it, but Chad rolls his eyes.
“We can all see the bruises, man. You didn’t get those during practice. Can’t keep a secret in Haddonwood.”
“It’s not a problem,” Ben says, snatching clothes from his locker.
“All I’m saying,” Chad continues, “is if you need some help, ask for it. I have a nine millimeter and a shovel. I think Ralph Rey is a lot like that Dixie Chicks song about Earl. Nobody’s gonna miss him much if he just disappears.”
Ben snorts. “Thanks. I’ll take that into consideration.”
“Right now, though, get your ass in gear. We’re drawing to see who gets to visit the Grimshaw house tonight.”
“Wonderful,” Ben replies without even a hint of enthusiasm.
Ben is pulling on his blue-and-yellow Howlers tee when Chad comes back in, holding his scuffed football helmet out in front of him. He pauses in the middle of the room and raises the helmet like a trophy.
“Gentlemen. Behold.” A chorus of yelps and knee-drumming fills the room, and he continues. “We will now begin the drawing of lots…an ancient Haddonwood tradition.”
Ben thinks ancient is probably an exaggeration. But it’s apparently been around for at least a few generations.
“You guys know the drill.” Chad shakes the helmet and tips it slightly so that everyone can see. “Inside are exactly seventeen pieces of paper. All are folded and all are blank…except for one. Whoever draws the paper with the black dot must deliver our tribute to the Grimshaw house tonight or else be forever branded a fucking coward.”
This is the fourth year Ben has taken part in the drawing of lots, and every time he reaches into the helmet, he thinks of the short story they read in lit class a few years back, where this small town has an annual lottery. Not the kind where you buy a ticket and someone wins a million bucks or whatever. In this case, you’re forced to take a ticket, and if you’re the one who draws that black dot, your neighbors kill your ass. He suspects that if he researched the origins of the ancient Grimshaw lottery, he’d find that this tradition started right around the time that story was added to the high school curriculum.
“Here we go,” Chad says, passing the helmet around. “No one peeks until everyone has drawn.”
Ben takes a piece of paper along with his teammates. When everyone else has drawn, Chad takes his helmet back, draws the remaining square, and looks around. “Let’s do this.”
Ben stares down at the paper in his hand. It’s plain cardstock, offering no clue as to what’s inside. He has a bad feeling, though, and when he unfolds the paper, he’s stunned and relieved to see that the slip is unmarked. But then he blinks, and the blot he’d expected to see gradually appears. He blinks again, hoping it will disappear, but no such luck.
A chorus of who got it goes around the room. For a second, Ben lets them wonder, then says, “Looks like I’m the lucky one.”
The others exchange a look. Chad crosses over to Ben and nods toward the door.
Once they’re in the hallway, he says, “I’ll go. The others won’t mind.”
“What? No. I drew the damn thing.”
Chad looks uncomfortable, but he doesn’t back down. “With everything going on at home and what happened today, I thought maybe you’d rather just sit this one out.”
Ben feels anger bubbling up, and his fists curl into balls at his sides. “I’m not a fucking coward.”
Chad looks down and takes a step back, raising his hands in surrender. “Never said you were. If you don’t want me to go instead of you, maybe we could redraw. I’m sure the others won’t care.”
Ben doubts that’s true. If he doesn’t go, the word will spread all over the bonfire before the first beer has been ingested.
“It’s just a house,” he says.
Chad laughs, but there’s a nervous undertone. “Fine man. Suit yourself. Just don’t forget the candle. No point in going if the candle isn’t lit. And…don’t let it go out.”
Ben shakes his head in amazement. “You really believe this shit?”
Chad’s face reddens slightly. “I dre
w the lot two years back, remember? Couldn’t drive yet, so my cousin Jess went with me. That place messes with your head, Ben. Whatever bad stuff you’ve got rolling around inside your mind feels all too real when you’re up there. Jess felt the same way. Said if I’d taken ten seconds longer, he’d have driven back without me.”
And now Ben feels pretty rotten about getting mad. A moment ago, he’d resented Chad for taking pity on him, for thinking that he’d be scared of a stupid house. But apparently Chad is also scared of that stupid house and was a good enough friend that he’d been willing to face it again in order to spare him.
He wasn’t going to let Chad do that, partly because not everyone would be as nice about him backing out, and partly because he now feels like it’s a personal challenge being tossed down to him by the rotting hulk of a house up on the hill. Or maybe from the whole damn universe.
“Thanks, man. Really. But I’m heading out. I’ve got a pumpkin to buy.”
When he reaches the parking lot, he’s surprised to see Luke Randall’s Silverado parked next to his truck. His wife drives a shiny new Acura—only the best for Carly, even though Ben’s pretty sure she’s never worked a day in her life—but Luke’s still in the battered old Silverado. Ben had helped him mow lawns to buy that truck the summer before Luke turned sixteen, and Luke had returned the favor two years later to help buy Ben’s rust bucket. Ben felt like he’d gotten the better end of the bargain, since he’d had a ride anywhere he wanted to go during his freshman and sophomore years.
Luke gets out as he approaches, and Ben smiles. He hasn’t seen Luke in nearly a month. The guy doesn’t look so good, though. He’d played both basketball and football in school, and he’s managed to stay in decent shape. But he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week.
“Man, fatherhood does not agree with you,” he says, clapping Luke on the shoulder. “You look like shit.”
Luke laughs half-heartedly. “Hey, at least I have an excuse.”