“Still breathing,” I say.
He spits into a nearby drift and climbs the steps into his trailer. “Not for long. You smell ripe.”
I smell ripe? The stink coming off this guy makes my eyes water.
“Can I talk to you a second?” I ask.
There’s a clatter of metal from inside, then the grind of a motor.
“Won’t do any good,” he calls back.
The dogs bump me as they go in.
Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea. But I came this far. “I just wanted to ask you—”
“What?” he snaps. “Get in here or get lost. In or out. I don’t talk through walls.”
I step into the dim interior, where it smells like something was left to rot.
“Lunchtime.” Mason sticks a can of dog food under the mechanical opener. He grabs a hubcap from a teetering stack on the counter and plops the contents onto it, then sets the cap on the floor for his mutts. He does this a few more times, until everybody’s happily gorging themselves. The rotting remains of past meals are shoved against the wall.
He grabs a couple paper plates and cracks two more cans. The dog food glorps out onto the plates.
“So,” he says. “Turkey Delight or Liver Feast?”
It takes me a second to realize he’s offering me a choice. “No, I’m good.” I hold back a gag. “I had a few Milk-Bones on the way over.”
That’s supposed to be funny, but he only frowns like I’m the unstable one here.
“More for me.” He tosses his sunglasses on the counter and grabs a fork.
Mason sits on a stack of four mattresses that takes up the end of the trailer. A TV rests against the wall at the foot of the bed, like he warms his feet on it at night. CNN is on, covering some war.
“The other day, when we were talking …,” I begin. “You know, about the local wildlife? You said something took your best friend, back when you were a kid. What did you mean by that?”
He chews, watching troops in some bombed-out hellhole.
Is he even listening?
Then he sets his fork down and rolls up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. He bares his biceps and the big faded tattoo of a fancy cross he’s got inked there.
“See that?”
“Yeah. Nice cross.”
“It’s a Celtic cross. A ward, a protection,” he snaps, eyes intense. “I gave myself God’s mark so the Devil couldn’t claim me.”
“Right,” I mutter. We just took a sharp turn into crazy-town.
“Take a close look. Do you see?”
“Yeah, sure.” I glance at it and nod.
“No, you don’t. Look into the eye of the cross.”
I’m getting this creepy feeling, like he’s trying to hypnotize me or something—Stare at the eye, you’re getting sleepy …
But all that’s there in the center is a clear patch of uninked and wrinkly skin. Nothing more than—
In the middle of the eye is a small blue dot.
Just like the one on the back of my right hand. Like the one on Howie’s neck.
“You got stung? When?”
He scratches deep in his beard with the fork, then digs into the dog food.
“Fifty, fifty-one years ago.”
His mark looks as fresh as mine.
“But how? I mean, I thought if you got bit then it took you. Like you said it took your friend.”
Mason considers a chunk of Liver Feast on his fork, a distant look in his eyes. Then he fills his face with it.
“Rod McLean,” he mumbles. “We were playing a little night shinny out on the ice, by the light of the moon. I was up a couple goals when his slap shot knocked one of the tin cans we were using for goalposts flying. So he skated off to find the puck, and I got the cans set up again. Then I heard Rod shout. Thought he was just horsing at first. I skated over toward the sound of his voice. And then I saw it.”
He licks his fork clean, remembering.
“The demon had him flat on his back on the ice, holding him there. It looked like something the Devil had bred in his zoo of damned souls. Rod was out cold. Dead, for all I could tell. I held my hockey stick ready to swing when the demon looked my way. Then it was on me.”
Mason holds his arm out, showing his cross and the blue dot in the eye.
“Got me right through my winter coat. Knocked me out. When I came to, Rod was shaking me awake. The demon was gone. Didn’t know why we were still breathing. Rod, he got sick a few days later. Me too, only not as bad.”
“What happened to him? Your friend?”
“Rod got sick. Then he got better, for a while. The doctors thought it was tetanus, or blood poisoning. But they couldn’t explain why he had ice in his veins, why he was so cold but not shivering. They gave him drugs for it, thought he was getting better. But the demon got inside his head. Got in mine too. You know what I’m talking about. The whispers. Voices so close, like somebody’s breathing the words in your ear. But nobody’s there.”
He stares at me for a moment. “Not yet, eh? Soon, you’ll hear them.”
I get this shiver, like a spider crawling down my spine.
“Rod was a tough kid, but he couldn’t take it. And one night, in the middle of a January cold snap, he took off. He shared a room with his little brother. The brother told me later the last thing he heard Rod say was ‘I’m coming. I’m coming.’ Like he was answering someone calling him.”
Mason throws his empty cans onto the pile on the floor.
“And?” I ask.
“And nothing. Storytime’s over.” He stands up. “Get the hell out.”
He waves at me like I’m a mosquito. I start backing out of the trailer. “What about Rod?”
“They never found a trace of him.” Mason hustles his dogs out along with me. “Come on,” he tells them. “We’ve got work to do.”
I step back into the fresh air.
“I don’t get it,” I say as he follows me out into the snow. “You’re still here. You survived. How come?”
His huskies watch him like they’re waiting for the answer with me.
“What did you do?”
“I ran,” he says. “Rod was gone, and I knew where. Knew he wasn’t coming back. When I started hearing the whispers, I knew there was no fighting it. I was next. So, I ran as far as I could. Ended up in Toronto. Far enough. I still had the ice in my veins, still had the chill. But the whispers went away. And the dreams.”
Mason looks at the frozen lake, where ghost squalls of windblown snow chase each other.
“Came back here three years later, with the new cross on my arm for protection. Thought maybe I’d imagined it all. But Rod was still gone. And when winter came that year, the dreams came with it. Only not like before. I could feel the demon sniffing around me in the dreams, feel it watching. But something was changed inside me. And it didn’t want me anymore.”
“Why? What changed?”
“I changed. I wasn’t a kid anymore. It only takes them young.”
“Why?” I feel like I’m on the brink of some discovery.
“How the hell do I know? God works in mysterious ways—so does the Devil. All I know is the demon leaves me alone now. I don’t have what it needs. But you do.”
A shiver spider-crawls down my back.
Mason walks away with his dog posse.
“Run while you still can,” he calls back. “Like I did. Before it’s too late.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
There’s no answer on Howie’s cell, or at his home number.
Got to see what he makes of Mason’s story. Maybe with this new info he’ll come up with something.
Back at the marina house, I pace around my room and keep trying his cell. Maybe there’s a tiny bit of hope. Mason found a way to escape his death sentence. So it can be done.
I slouch back in my chair. Ash called me late last night, checking on me. She wanted to brainstorm, figure out a plan. But I was too freaked to focus.
“You never get scared?” I a
sked her.
She’s always so cool, even after what we saw down in the cave, after she’d seen the beast with her own eyes.
“Sure. But you can’t let it show. Life’s a fight, Danny. You let them see you’re scared, you’ve already lost. You got to eat the fear. Never let them see where it hurts.”
Right there is the whole history of Ash. Why she’s unbeaten.
My phone rings, startling me. The screen says Unknown Caller.
“Hello?”
“Danny, it’s Pike.”
“Hey, man. I’ve been trying to get Howie. What’s—”
“I’m calling from the hospital,” Pike says. “It’s Howie. We couldn’t wake him up. Doctor says it’s some kind of coma. They think it might be a relapse, from the hypothermia. But they don’t know what’s really going on. You should see him—his lips have gone blue.”
“I just talked to him on the phone this morning,” I tell Pike. “He didn’t sound so bad.”
“I found him on the floor in his room, unconscious. I couldn’t get him to wake up. Man, I don’t know what to do.”
I’ve never heard Pike sound like this. Helpless. The flicker of hope I was feeling a minute ago has been snuffed out.
“Keep an eye on him,” I say. “In case he tries to run away. You know.”
“Right. I know. I’ll be watching him close. But we gotta think of something.”
“Like what?”
“Like how do we kill that thing?”
This thing has been around for a thousand years! How do you kill the unkillable?
“I gotta go,” Pike says. “I’m not letting him out of my sight.” He hangs up.
I stand staring at the phone. We’re screwed! We’re dead!
That thing is so deep inside our heads. It owns us.
Mason told me—I smell ripe. We’re both ripe, me and Howie.
Our time’s up.
Mason’s a nut, but he’s also the only one who ever escaped that thing. Run, he said. While you still can.
Something tells me it’s too late for Howie.
So, sick with fear, I do the only thing I can.
TWENTY-NINE
Sitting on a stump in the trash-strewn field by Highway 11, I watch the sparse traffic speed through this big stretch of nothing toward Toronto. Across the road is the Last Stop Convenience Store. The Greyhound bus stops there twice a day.
Shouldn’t be long now.
A pickup truck whips past. I check my watch. I check to make sure I’ve got my cell phone in my backpack. Then I check my guts for the hundredth time.
Do I stay, or do I go? Fight or flight?
But my brain keeps stalling. I hiked all the way up here ready to leave. Now that I’m here, I really don’t know.
It’s just—I’m sick of running. Leaving everything and everybody behind. Starting over again, just when I think I’ve found something worth staying put for.
Something like Ash. I know what she’d say—flight is not an option. But she doesn’t know what it’s like to have that thing inside your head. Its poison in your veins.
The last couple days I’ve held back from touching her, knowing I’d give her the shivers.
“Must be like kissing a snowman,” I said when she pulled me in close.
I could see the worry shading her eyes even as she smiled. “More like licking a Danny-flavored Popsicle.”
Ash is fearless. Unbeaten. We could have been something.
I squint into the blowing snow, searching for the Greyhound. The road is still empty.
Dad’s going to be pissed. I’ll call him from the bus, or when I get to Toronto. Aunt Karen is always saying I can come stay anytime.
But Dad will think I’m abandoning him, taking off like this. Three days till Christmas too. The worst time of year for us, when everything reminds us of Mom and missing her eats us alive. Only way we get through it is together.
I’ve got to come up with something to tell him—anything to keep him from dragging me back here.
Fight or flight?
Flight worked for Mason, kept him alive.
I remember how it felt, the night in the clearing out in the bluffs as we watched the beast emerge from its tunnel. That insane urge to rise from our hiding spot, to stand and give myself up. Like it was calling, and I couldn’t help but answer.
Mason talked about the whispers. Soon, you’ll hear them. Right now the beast seems to be focused on Howie. But when it’s done with him, I’m next. Even now, in the light of day, I feel the pull of something. Like a lake current trying to draw me back to shore. I can still resist it, but what happens when night falls and the beast wakes?
Poor Howie. Never caught a break his whole life, so scared of his own shadow he’s got a restraining order against it. Now he’s lying in the hospital.
And what’s ripping me apart is that I know what’s happening to him right now. Inside his head.
He’s in the beast’s world. Trapped there. Dreaming its dreams. Can’t wake up. Can’t escape.
I can see him, too scared to jump off the edge of the cliff and wake up. Too weak to tear himself free of the nightmare. Before, I was there to give him a push, show him the way. Now he’s alone.
I watch the highway. Where’s the bus? Come on, already.
But I’m so tired of running. Drifting from town to dreary town. If Dad stays still too long, the past crowds in on him. Eats him up.
But there’s nowhere we can run that’s far enough. No place we can hide it won’t find us. Even here, at the end of the world. Nightmares always track you down.
Get on the bus. Don’t look back. Looking back is lethal.
Through the blowing snow, I see the Greyhound coming down the hill.
I grab my pack, startled by the sudden appearance of the bus. Guess I was beginning to doubt it would ever come.
This is it. Stay or go?
If I leave now, Howie’s dead. That’s a fact.
There’s no cure for this thing we’ve got. And by Howie’s calculations, I can count the time we have left in hours. But what good is me dying with him going to do?
I stand on the shoulder of the highway, watching the bus approach.
Pike wants to kill it. Kill a predator that’s survived a thousand years without a scratch.
I go to step out on the road and cross.
Do it! Do it.
But my feet aren’t moving.
I can’t leave Howie locked in that nightmare. I know what it’s like to be left behind. Can’t do that to him.
And who’s next, after I take off? Pike? Ash?
She’s been trying to show me how to fight. But I’m no scrapper. What I really got from her, what stuck with me, is her drive. There’s no quit in her. Flight is not an option.
The bus pulls up in front of the store, idling.
Last chance.
Some things you can’t escape by running. However this is going to end, it ends here and now.
I stay on the shoulder until the Greyhound pulls away. It goes down the snow-blown highway, between endless white fields.
I let out a deep sigh. But I’m not sorry.
I turn from the highway and the bus shrinking in the distance. It’ll be a hike back to the marina. Give me time to psych myself up—to grow some balls, as Pike would put it.
Where I’m headed, I’m going to need them.
Back into the nightmare to get Howie.
THIRTY
“Where have you been?” Dad asks as I sneak into the house with my backpack.
“Just out.”
He’s sitting at the kitchen table with his toolbox, working on a blender.
“Where’d you find that?” I ask.
“I’m just fixing it for somebody.”
I notice a couple empty beer bottles on the table. Nothing strange about that. But there’s red lipstick on the mouth of one.
“Somebody who?” I ask, knowing already.
Dad pretends not to hear. But then he sees me picking up
the lipsticked empty.
“The woman from the Red and White.”
“Andrea?”
“I believe that’s her name,” he says, shuffling parts around.
“So. You like her?”
Even with doom and panic creeping up on me, I can’t help a small grin.
Andrea won’t give up. First, it was bringing over the blinking midget Christmas tree. Then, a casserole and a lasagna. Nice tries, but they got her nothing more than a grunted “You shouldn’t have done that.” But this is genius. The way to Dad’s heart—get him to fix stuff. He’s a born fixer. So that got her in the door, even got her a beer.
Dad gestures at my backpack. “What’s all that?”
Think fast. “The gym. I was working out.”
“Well, your friends have been calling. What’s wrong with your cell?”
“Battery must have died.”
Really, I just turned it off. I was planning a clean getaway and didn’t want anybody talking me out of it.
Dad grabs a paper towel to wipe some grease off his hands. “I hear Howie’s back in the hospital.”
“Yeah.”
“Poor kid. You think it’s serious?”
Dead serious. “Don’t know.”
“How you feeling?” Dad frowns. “You look beat.”
“Uh, yeah. Intense workout.”
“You’re really pale.” Dad presses the back of his hand to my forehead. I’m not quick enough pulling away. A startled look flashes in his eyes. “You’re freezing.”
I step back. “It’s like thirty below out there. I’m fine, just got to warm up.”
“I’ll turn up the heat.”
“No!” I say, way too loud. I’m already baking in here. “I mean, I’ll put on a sweater or something. Don’t worry about it.”
But worrying is what Dad does best.
“Okay,” he says. “But watch out, eh? Maybe there’s something going around.”
Right. Something with eight-inch teeth and a taste for teenagers.
I start down the hall to my room.
“I’m gonna heat up some meat loaf,” he says. “Want some?”
“Did you make it?”
“No. She did.”
“Sounds good, then.” I head for my room. “But I’m just going to take a nap first.”
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