by Ronald Malfi
“A dispatcher,” Scott and I said at the same time.
“Yeah. So the person staying at home base can have one of the walkie-talkies.”
“Who gets the other one?” I asked. “We’ve only got two.”
“My sister has some toy ones at home,” Peter said. “They work just like real walkie-talkies, though maybe they don’t go as far.”
“You can bring those tomorrow,” Adrian said.
“So who stays back at home base?” I said.
“Do we have to call it ‘home base’?” Michael groaned. “Can’t we come up with something cooler? Like Zanzibar Outpost or Ice Station Zero or something like that?”
“What about Echo Base?” Peter suggested.
Michael’s bright eyes widened. “Yes! That’s perfect.”
“What’s Echo Base?” Adrian asked.
We all gaped at him.
“It’s the Rebel Alliance’s base on Hoth,” Peter explained. When Adrian’s confounded expression didn’t change, he added, “From The Empire Strikes Back.”
“Oh,” Adrian said, and it was obvious he didn’t know what Peter was talking about.
“It’s the second Star Wars movie,” I said. “Haven’t you ever seen it?”
Adrian shook his head.
“Holy shit, this is a travesty,” Michael wailed. “I don’t believe it.”
“Have you ever even heard of Star Wars?” Peter said.
“Sure,” Adrian said. “It’s spaceships and stuff, right?”
“Good Lord.” Michael moaned, holding his stomach. “The boy’s a caveman.”
“It’s cool,” I told Adrian. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got all three on videotape. You can come over and watch them sometime.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Michael blurted, “Darth Vader is Luke’s fa—”
“Shut up!” Peter, Scott, and I shouted. Then we all laughed.
Adrian stared at us as if we’d lost our minds.
“So Echo Base it is,” Scott said. “Who stays at the base first?”
I grabbed a longish twig off the ground, broke it into five pieces of varying sizes, then tucked the pieces into one fist so that just the tips of the sticks poked out. “Shortest stick stays back.”
They each picked a stick, leaving one in my palm. Peter had drawn the shortest. Adrian gave him one of the walkie-talkies.
“There’s one last thing,” Adrian said. “I came up with jobs for everyone, too. Something we can do on our own when we’re not down here in the woods.”
Michael looked skeptical. “Jobs?”
“Yeah,” Adrian said. “Like, Michael, you’ll be the listening tower.”
“Ironic title for a guy who never listens,” Peter joked.
Michael shot him a look, then turned to Adrian. “So what do I do?”
“Keep an ear out around town and at school for anything that sounds suspicious.”
“Like if I overhear someone talking about a stranger they saw at the park or something?”
Adrian nodded. “Exactly. And you’re good at talking to people, so maybe you can get them to tell you stuff, if you think it’s important. But that’s not all. You should come up with a list of possible suspects.”
“Oh, man,” Michael said, chomping at the bit, “how do I do that?”
“Deduction,” said Adrian. “Based on what you hear, you keep a list of potential suspects. When you have enough names on it, we’ll review it and see if we can add any names or maybe take some away. Then we can narrow it down to a few realistic suspects.”
“What about me?” said Scott.
“You’re the weapons guy.” He addressed us all now. “We have to be safe, to be able to protect ourselves. We’ll need weapons.”
“Yes,” Scott trumpeted. “That’s what I’ve been screaming about for months.”
Adrian nodded. “If we’re gonna hunt down a serial killer, we’re gonna need more than walkie-talkies and headphones.”
“What kind of weapons are we talking about?” I said.
“That’s up to Scott,” said Adrian.
“Blowtorches and chain saws for everyone,” Scott said, grinning from ear to ear.
“What’s my job?” asked Peter.
“Make a list of all the possible places in town where the killer could hide,” Adrian said. “Dangerous places, too, where we might stand a chance of running into him.”
“That’s a lot of places,” Peter said. “You’re talking about the whole city or just the local neighborhoods?”
“At least within the perimeter where the kids have gone missing,” Adrian said. “We need to pinpoint the locations where they disappeared as best we can and search around those areas.”
“How do we do that? The newspapers don’t give specifics.”
Adrian turned to me.
Oh, boy, I thought.
“That’ll be Angie’s job,” he said.
“Is it?” I retorted.
“You need to keep talking to your dad and get details about the missing kids that haven’t been in the newspapers,” he said. “If we can find out the specific places where the other kids went missing, it could help narrow down our search.”
“I’m not sure the cops even know where they disappeared. No one saw anything. There aren’t any clues.”
“As far as we know,” Adrian said.
“Yeah,” Scott chimed in.
“Don’t you think the police have already searched those places?” I said. “And besides, my dad’s not gonna tell me anything that wasn’t already on the news.”
“Lazy bastard,” Michael said. “We all got jobs, Mazzone.”
“I’m not being lazy. I’m just saying I don’t know how you guys expect me to—”
“Big fat lazy jerk,” Michael continued. The others were grinning along with him. “You don’t hear me bitching about my job, do you?”
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll see what else I can find out.” I looked to Adrian. “What are you gonna do?”
“Bring the killer out of hiding.”
“Whoa,” said Scott. “How you gonna do that?”
“Well, I’ve got an idea, but I’m still working it out in my head.” He rubbed his chin. “Lastly, we need to establish a rendezvous point.”
Peter looked around. “I thought this was the rendezvous point.”
“No, this is home base.”
“Echo Base,” Michael corrected him.
Adrian shrugged. “Whatever it’s called, we need a separate rendezvous point. It has to be a place we all know to go if Echo Base is compromised. Like if someone is following us and we don’t want to lead them back here.”
“Or if we’re attacked and we have to meet up someplace else,” Scott added.
“Then it should be out in the open,” Michael said. “Some place safe.”
“But close to Echo Base, too,” Peter said. “Our stuff’s here. We’ll need to protect it.”
“The park,” I suggested. For Adrian’s sake, I pointed due east through the trees. “December Park is straight through there on the other side of the woods.”
“That’s perfect,” Peter agreed.
“There’s a big tree beside the baseball diamond,” Michael said. “It’s right in the middle of the park.”
“That might be too out in the open,” Scott said. “What about the underpass?”
“Underpass?” Adrian said.
“It’s at the far end of December Park under Solomon’s Bend Road,” Scott said. “It’s like a big tunnel with a cobblestone road running through it that goes right out to Solomon’s Field.”
“Okay, good,” said Adrian. He put his backpack on. “So, are we ready to start searching these woods?”
Michael clapped. “Let’s do it!”
We searched until dusk fell upon the woods like a dreadful shadow. The woods darkened and grew colder, and our respiration exited our throats in visible clouds. I stomped through my section of the Dead Woods in silence while examinin
g every bit of ground. When the foliage became too thick, I bent down and sifted through it.
Occasionally I heard the distant laughter of Scott or Michael searching in their own remote parts of Satan’s Forest or Peter back at Echo Base fumbling with the dynamo-powered radio and singing off-key with the songs.
And of course, we found nothing.
“It’s getting dark,” Adrian said, coming toward me through the trees. We both glanced at the darkening sky through the interlocked boughs of the high trees. “We should probably round up the others and call it a night.”
I had been given the second walkie-talkie. I unhooked it from my belt and keyed it now. “Hot Stuff to Big Red. Come in, Big Red. Over.”
Peter’s voice came over the static-laden radio: “Who the hell is Hot Stuff?”
“You gotta say ‘over’ when you’re done talking, Big Red,” I told him. “Over.”
“You’re a dickhead. Over.”
I laughed. “Heading back to Echo Base, Big Red. We’re calling it a night. Over.”
“About time. I’m starving. Over.”
Fifteen minutes later, after all our stuff was packed and we had wheeled our bikes up the embankment and onto Counterpoint Lane, thunder rumbled. We each cast a wary glance at the darkening sky. Before us, light traffic shushed through the intersection of Point and Counterpoint. We waited for a break in traffic, then sped across the intersection, back down the ravine on the other side of the street, and headed out toward Governor Highway and home.
We parted ways at our respective streets until it was just Adrian and me coasting down Haven. I slowed my pace as we hooked the corner onto Worth, the lights of the houses along the block looking yellow and warm and welcoming. Except for Adrian’s house.
We coasted up his driveway, and I skidded to a stop beside Adrian’s front porch. He climbed off my bike, his hair sticking up at random angles, his glasses askew on his face. We had beaten the thunderstorm home, though not by much; large raindrops began to fall, leaving darkened asterisks on the driveway.
“Is anyone home?” I asked him.
He glanced over his shoulder at his darkened home. “I guess. Sometimes Mom keeps the lights off.”
What a head case, I thought.
“You know, I was thinking,” I said. “We shouldn’t limit our search to the woods. We should look around where you found that locket, too. Just because her body was found down there doesn’t mean that’s where the Piper got her.”
“Yeah. That’s a really good idea. Did you get that from your dad?”
“What do you mean?”
“A talent for investigating things,” he said.
“I don’t know. It just seems to make sense, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does.”
“You want to come over and watch Star Wars with me?”
Adrian glanced at his house again. When he looked back at me, I saw storm clouds in his eyes. “Not tonight. I should get home.” He readjusted the straps of his backpack, still staring at me. “It’s not a monster or anything who killed that girl and took the other kids. Not like your friends were saying.”
“Of course not,” I said. “They were only joking.”
“Because it’s a man, and he’s very careful and very smart, and that makes him dangerous.”
“Okay . . .”
“We shouldn’t pretend like he’s some bogeyman. We shouldn’t let our guard down like that.”
“Like I said, they were just joking around. They know it’s some guy. Of course it is.”
“Good. Because men are more dangerous than monsters.” Then, wholly unexpectedly, Adrian said, “You’re a putrid fart nose, Angie.”
I blinked at him. “Uh, what?”
His face instantly reddened. “Um . . . I mean, you and your friends and all that name-calling . . .”
But then I understood. And laughed. In his own awkward way, Adrian was telling me he trusted me and that I was his friend. “Oh, okay, I get it. But putrid fart nose? That’s the best you’ve got in you?”
Adrian made a sour little face that sent me laughing again.
“You should take lessons from Michael. He can come up with some whoppers.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And what’s a Gorbachev’s wife, anyway?”
I laughed even harder. I couldn’t stop.
Soon Adrian was laughing, too.
Later that night as I lay in bed staring at the darkened ceiling of my bedroom while Bruce Springsteen issued softly out of my Walkman headphones, I thought about Adrian’s obsession. It had begun mysteriously with him asking more and more questions about the Cole girl. That was explained away after he told me about the heart-shaped locket.
But now there was a new obsession: finding the killer. His interest seemed different than the rest of ours. More intense. My friends and I were doing it for fun; Adrian had another agenda. I kept seeing Adrian’s determined face from earlier that day and those storm clouds roiling in his eyes. Because it’s a man, and he’s very careful and very smart, and that makes him dangerous.
I wondered what darkness clouded Adrian Gardiner’s soul.
Chapter Eleven
The Nightmare
For the first time since Charles’s death, I suffered a nightmare of such vivid, visceral proportion that it would cling to my psyche for days to come. It was dark. I was lying in the dirt in Satan’s Forest surrounded by my friends while a smoky mist crept over us. I saw the moon through the trees, and I breathed in the scents of the woods and distant cigarette smoke and the even more distant dead fish smell of the Chesapeake on the far side of the wooded peninsula.
Angry winds bullied the trees and whipped up whirlwinds of dead leaves and gritty debris off the ground. I felt the wind, probing and unforgiving, its icy fibrils veining across my sweaty flesh beneath the layers of my clothes, which ballooned out from my body as if they had been pumped full of hot air.
Then the ground began to vibrate. Subtly at first but it amplified with increasing and frightening speed. Trees trembled. I sat up off the ground, my bones shaking loose in my flesh. Looking around, I expected to find my friends gone, but they weren’t. They were scattered around me and sitting up as well, staring at the trees as their branches shook apart high above us.
Someone said something. I opened my mouth to scream but succeeded only in emitting a high-pitched keening that caused the lenses of Adrian’s glasses to fracture and explode. Behind the shattered lenses, Adrian’s eyes were missing. Bloody pits gaped back at me, black gore drooling down his cheeks from his eye sockets. His flesh purpled to the color of carbon paper. Graphite-colored veins bulged in his neck.
Then Adrian vanished into the ground fog. It was as if a large hole had opened up in the ground directly beneath him, swallowing him whole. Even the fog on the ground whirlpooled around the unseen hole like water going down a drain.
Beside me, Peter shrieked. It sounded many octaves too deep, like a record played at the wrong speed. I turned and saw that his normally full cheeks were sunken and jaundiced, networked with burst blood vessels. His eye sockets widened until his eyeballs jostled loosely in the expanding divots. Dark red fluid dribbled out of one nostril. I opened my mouth to speak his name but managed only a foghorn sound that blended with the increasing vibration radiating through the ground. Then Peter was sucked into the ground, too.
Michael shouted across the clearing. The mist parted, and I saw his blazing white face twisted in agony, his crystal blue eyes straining in his skull, his mouth stretched so wide I could see the flesh beginning to tear. Before I could attempt to speak to him, he disappeared through a hole in the ground.
To my left, Scott’s countenance was distorted into idiot madness. He produced his butterfly knife, then drove the blade into the soft white flesh of his forearm. Blood spurted out, incongruous in its greenness, and oozed in slimy ropes to the mist-shrouded ground. When he looked at me, he was no longer Scott but the awful Dennis Foley, the haunted boy who had opened up his arm w
ith a scalpel in biology class freshman year. Foley’s yellow eyes blazed as a hideous grin stretched across the lower half of his face. The greenish blood steamed and bubbled out of his wound like lava. But then it was Scott again. Just as he lifted the knife out of the wound and brought it up to his neck, he dropped through the earth just as the others had.
I stood and prepared to run, but just as I took that first step, something gripped my right ankle and yanked. The force sent me sprawling forward while my ears echoed with the horrific sound of my bones not only breaking but actually coming apart—a sound like rubber bands snapping overlaid with the crunching of gravel beneath heavy truck tires.
On my stomach and pawing at the ground, I managed to look behind me in time to see my entire foot and lower half of my leg pulled through the fog and into a gaping wound in the earth. The serrated maw at the end of my severed thigh trailed ribbons of flesh and the wormlike, rubbery tubes of my arteries. A whitish knob of bone protruded from the center of the mess.
And that was when the earth opened up beneath me.
Chapter Twelve
The Ghosts of Lost Children
We spent the remainder of that winter among the headless concrete statues of the Dead Woods. On the coldest days, some sparkling with snow or raining icy pellets onto the dull pavement of the city streets, one of us would bring a thermos of hot chocolate to share, and once I brought some of my grandmother’s escarole soup. (My friends examined the seaweed-like ribbons of escarole with skepticism bordering on distrust, but then they tasted the soup, and their eyes lit up.)
A heavy snowfall buried the city near the end of February. We got a few days off from school, a rare event, and since there was no searching that could be done, we went sledding in December Park, had snowball fights with Sasha Tamblin and the Lambeth twins at Solomon’s Field, and Michael peed Nathan Keener’s name in the snow in front of Principal Unglesbee’s house.