The Creek

by Jennifer L. Holm

  Silence.

  “Teddy!” she shouted. “This isn’t funny!”

  Her only response was chirping birds. Teddy wouldn’t wander away for no reason at all, would he? Maybe he was going to the bathroom—yes, that was it!

  “Teddy!”

  But what if something bad had happened? She should never have left him alone! She took off into the brush, running blindly through the woods, the nails falling from her pockets to the forest floor, scattering.

  She circled the clearing, calling frantically, her eyes scanning the ground, the trees, the weeds.

  And then she saw it. A red tennis sneaker sticking out of the brush.

  But Teddy’s sneaker, Penny thought shakily, was white, not red, and the edge of the sneaker poking out of the brush was definitely red. A bright sort of red. A weird splotchy red.

  She took a step closer.

  Blood red.

  She was running through the woods, tree branches slapping her face, her heart pounding. It was just like her nightmare, except that it was worse than anything she had ever imagined.

  Teddy was lying in the woods, maybe even dying. She had tried to get the trap off by sheer force, but in the end had run back to where they had dumped the tools and gotten the wrench. When the trap had finally sprung open, the sudden release of pressure had caused Teddy to buck wildly, like a corpse come to life, shrieking in pain.

  And now he was back there—unconscious, hurt, and alone!—while she ran to get help.

  What if Caleb was still in the woods somewhere? The very thought caused her breath to catch, her heart to thump hard against her ribs. She heard a crackling sound behind her and looked back—and slammed right into someone, knocking herself to the ground.

  “Whoa!” Zachary said, stumbling back and falling, a paper bag dropping from his hand.

  “Teddy …,” she gasped, her voice a squeak.

  Zachary stood up leisurely, brushing himself off. “What’s the hurry? Are the guys already at the fort?”

  “Teddy!” she wailed, feeling her chest go painfully tight.

  “Penny?” Zachary asked, wide-eyed.

  She gasped, trying to catch her breath, desperation rising in her. Teddy was back there in the woods and she couldn’t even help him!

  Zachary scrambled around the forest floor desperately. “Here,” he said, shaking the paper bag, sending newly bought sandpaper flying. He pushed the empty bag into her hands. “Here.”

  Penny breathed in and out of the paper bag and felt her lungs cooperate.

  Zachary hunkered down in front of her. “You okay?”

  “Teddy’s hurt,” she said at last, still feeling lightheaded.

  “Where?”

  “Follow me,” she said, willing herself to stand up.

  Teddy was lying right where Penny had left him, his foot mangled-looking.

  “Holy cow!” Zachary blurted out.

  Penny started to shake, just looking at her little brother. He was so still and pale, his face white as ash. He looked dead, like Mr. Cat.

  “Penny!” Zachary shouted.

  She stared at him numbly.

  “Come on!” Zachary urged her. “Take his shoulders.”

  “What?” Penny asked dully.

  Zachary lifted Teddy’s hips gently. “His shoulders, Penny! We have to get him help!”

  Something in his voice shook her, and she snapped into action.

  As they carried him out of the woods, cradled between the two of them, Teddy mumbled one word from his bloodless lips, a word that almost made Penny drop her little brother.

  “Caleb,” he whispered.

  “I saw him, standing over me, in the woods,” Teddy said, his voice shaking with remembered fear.

  The kids were arrayed around the hospital bed, in a stark room in the pediatric ward.Teddy was wearing hospital pajamas, the thin bedsheets tucked around his waist. He seemed so broken, lying in the bed, swathed in wires and tubes.

  Zacharv and Penny had carried Teddy all the way to the Schuylers’ house, right into the kitchen. Old Mrs. Schuyler had dropped the pie she was holding when she saw Penny and Zachary standing there, swaying and white-faced, Teddy suspended between them. Penny hadn’t uttered a word the whole way to the hospital. She’d just sat in the backseat of Mrs. Schuyler’s car, Teddy’s head cradled on her lap.

  “Did he say anything?” Zachary asked, a worried expression on his face.

  “I heard someone say, ‘Hey kid, what are you doing with my trap?’”

  Zachary pressed him. “But was it Caleb?”

  “I’m not sure,” Teddy whispered, his face pale. “But it had to be him,” he added, as if trying to convince himself. “There was a trail blaze on the tree! A lightning bolt! That’s what I was looking at when I stepped in the trap.”

  The kids nodded grimly. They had all gone back to the spot and seen the freshly carved lightning bolt on the tree, so new the exposed wood was still green.

  The antiseptic hospital smell of the room invaded Penny’s nose. She went to the window and looked out at the beautiful sunny day, the sky blue and bright. It was all her fault, she thought. She should never have left Teddy alone in the woods. She had overheard her parents talking in the hospital corridor. Her mother had just wept and wept and wept. “I should’ve listened to you about Caleb,” her mother had said in an agonized voice to her father.

  “How’s your foot?” Benji asked.

  Teddy’s foot, suspended above the bed in a sling, was wrapped in a plaster cast. Teddy winced. “It’s broken. I’m gonna have the cast on for at least six weeks, Dad said, and maybe even longer. And I have to use crutches. This is gonna ruin my summer.”

  “That’s a pain,” Benji said.

  “Did you tell the police you saw Caleb?” Oren asked quietly.

  Teddy bit his lip, saying nothing.

  “Police? Why bother?” Mac snorted. “They can’t do anything.”

  Penny knew that Mac was right. Officer Cox and a young cherub-faced recruit fresh out of the academy had questioned Teddy the day before. She had heard the police telling her parents that there was nothing out of the ordinary, that the trap had been a run-of-the-mill animal trap that you could pick up at any hunting store. A very popular model, in fact.

  “Good for foxes,” the young police officer had said, as if he’d set a few himself.

  “It’s illegal to set traps back there out of season, but a lot of the local hunters do anyway, and there’s just too much land to cover. If you have any idea who might have set it, I can look into it, but otherwise the best thing to do is just keep your kids out of the woods,” Officer Cox had suggested. “Best thing really.”

  A nurse poked her head into the doorway. “Visiting hours end in five minutes,” she said sternly.

  “Okay,” Mac said, with a false cheery smile. The door swung shut, and he muttered, “Witch.”

  Penny’s head spun. The rat. The guts. Mr. Cat. The fire. And now Teddy. There was no question in her mind anymore. It was all so clear. Caleb was after her family. After her. Something in her hardened, resolved.

  “He’ll never stop. Nobody’s ever gonna stop him. Not the police, not our parents. Who’s gonna be next?” Penny demanded, her voice rising sharply.

  No one said anything.

  Clutching his sheet as if it would protect him, Teddy whispered in a low voice, “The nurse said they were gonna let me out the day after tomorrow.”

  “Yeah?” Benji said.

  Teddy nodded seriously. “But I’m thinking maybe I’ll stay here.”

  “How’sTeddy?” Benji asked several days later.

  Penny and Benji were biking home from the convenience store. It was early afternoon, and the sun beat down on them in hot, stifling waves. The bike ride to the convenience store had felt twice as long in this heat. They were both soaked through with sweat.

  Mac was at the dentist, and Oren had to mow the lawn now that his dad had moved out of the house, and nobody knew where Zachary was,
probably being tortured by his mother in one of her “Bible groups.”

  “He’s getting pretty good with the crutches,” Penny said. They had let Teddy come home from the hospital after two days of observation. “He really wants to do the bike competition, but he doesn’t get that cast off for a while.”

  Mr. Schuyler had organized a bike-decorating competition for the Fourth, and it was just a few days away now.

  “Maybe he can, like, decorate it, and you can ride it for him,” Benji suggested.

  “That’s a good idea,” she said.

  What she didn’t say was how weak and pale Teddy still was, or how his nightmares had gotten worse, that a night didn’t go by that he didn’t wake up screaming that Caleb was going to get him. Not that she was sleeping all that well herself.

  They stopped their bikes on the bridge at the base of Lark Hill, contemplating the steep slope, a hard ride even in cool weather.

  “Let’s take a break,” Benji suggested.

  Penny walked to the side of the bridge and looked down at the creek. Part of her couldn’t bear to look down at the rocky creek bed because it reminded her of Mr. Cat. Where was his body? she wondered. What had Caleb done with it?

  The creek was dry as a bone, studded with big, smooth rocks and old trash. A rubber tire. An aluminum can. Penny leaned over and could just see one black motorcycle boot almost directly below her. She waved at Benji to come over.

  “What—?” Benji started to ask, but then stopped when Penny held a finger to her lips.

  They leaned over the edge to listen to the voices echoing from beneath the bridge. For a moment she didn’t catch anything, and then she heard a satisfied laugh.

  “Yo, Caleb, this is good stuff,” Doug Coles said, his voice sounding a little funny, sort of squeaky, like Mickey Mouse.

  A pause, and then a gravelly-sounding voice said, “Best there is, right now.”

  “Man, I’ll have no problem moving this stuff,” Doug said, inhaling deeply.

  The sweet smell of pot wafted up.

  “Don’t smoke it all,” Caleb said, an edge to his voice.

  “How much you got?”

  “Enough.”

  “Cool. Everyone should be in a partying mood, the Fourth and all. Same plan?” Doug asked.

  Caleb grunted in agreement. “I’m outta here.”

  The sound of Caleb climbing the incline toward the top of the bridge shook them, and Penny and Benji ran to their bikes and pedaled away hard, up the hill, never looking back.

  They never saw Caleb Devlin turn to stare at their departing figures.

  “So what?” Mac said, slamming the hockey puck across the table to Zachary, who missed. “So he’s dealing drugs? Big surprise. He’s moving up.”

  They were playing air hockey in Mac’s basement, where his mother had banished them all so that she could get ready for her date in peace. The washing machine was also in the basement, so the whole room smelled of dirty socks and washing detergent and mildew.

  “Who cares,” Oren seconded, with such a Mac-like gesture that Penny blinked in surprise.

  Mac slammed the puck into the goal. “Six-nothing!” he crowed to Zachary. “You suck.”

  Zachary flushed darkly.

  Benji shared a frustrated look with Penny. They had rushed over to tell the boys their news, and this was not the reaction they had expected. “We just thought you guys would want to know, is all.”

  The humming sound of the table rose in the room.

  “But the thing is, he’s kind of on parole now. From the juvie home,” Zachary said carefully.

  “Because of his mom?” Penny asked.

  “Yeah,” Zachary said. “And if he got caught with drugs on him …” he added suggestively.

  Mac’s eyebrows went up. He turned and looked at Zachary. “They’d send him back,” he said in dawning comprehension.

  Zachary grinned.

  Zachary still had his lame moments, but he was a lot cooler than he used to be—rescuing Teddy in the woods, and now this. The boys must be rubbing off on him, Penny decided.

  “So what’s the plan?” Penny asked excitedly.

  Everyone turned to Mac.

  Mac thought for a moment. “We have to somehow tell the cops. And get them to show up while he has the drugs in the house. That way they can bust him.”

  “Who’s gonna call the cops?” Penny asked, worried.

  “Count me out,” Mac said.

  “Yeah, they’ll definitely recognize your voice,” Benji said snidely.

  Mac narrowed his eyes.

  “I’ll do it,” Zachary said eagerly.

  “You will?” Penny asked.

  “I’ll call from the pay phone and muffle my voice. Like they do on TV.”

  “Like an anonymous call?” Penny said.

  “Sure,” Zachary said.

  “It just might work,” Mac said approvingly.

  The next evening a police cruiser drove down the block, interrupting the kids’ Softball game in the cul-de-sac. The cruiser parked in front of the Devlins’ house, causing the watching parents to raise their eyebrows.

  “Looks like trouble,” Mr. Schuyler said, with a low whistle.

  Penny nodded silently, her eyes fixed on Officer Cox.

  Officer Cox stepped out of the cruiser and hiked up his pants, looking around as if suddenly noticing how everyone was watching him.

  Mrs. Bukvic, who had been gossiping with the other mothers, stood up and walked over to Officer Cox, her features set in a determined expression.

  Penny couldn’t hear what Mrs. Bukvic was saying to Officer Cox, but she did catch “Buster” several times. Mrs. Bukvic’s voice went up a pitch whenever she said her missing pet’s name.

  Finally Officer Cox shrugged off the angry Mrs. Bukvic, walked up to the Devlins’ front door, and knocked. Mr. Devlin answered on the second knock. The front door was out of earshot, but they could see Officer Cox speaking to Mr. Devlin, and after a moment Mr. Devlin nodded and stepped aside to let Officer Cox into the house.

  Nearly an hour later, the game over, the kids went into a huddle at the curb, where Mr. Schuyler was sitting, drinking a beer. Most of the parents had drifted away.

  “He’s been in there a long time,” Penny said in a worried voice.

  Mac banged a metal bat against the curb. “I’m sure he hid it pretty well.”

  Penny stared hard at the house. “I wonder which room is his?” What did it look like? she thought. Did he bring girls up there?

  “It’s gonna work,” Benji said. “I can feel it.”

  “Anyone want a piece of gum?” Zachary asked, all nervous excitement.

  The screen door suddenly opened, and Officer Cox stepped out onto the porch.

  “Hey,” Mac said. “Where’s Caleb? Why isn’t he hauling out Caleb?”

  “There he is!” Penny said urgently.

  Caleb stepped out with his father. Mr. Devlin gave Officer Cox a short handshake, and then put his arm around Caleb’s shoulders.

  “Sorry about that,” Officer Cox said loudly, walking toward his patrol car.

  Mr. Devlin just nodded. “No problem.”

  “You folks have a good evening, okay?” Officer Cox said.

  “We’ll try,” Caleb said, shooting a hard, knowing look at the kids huddled at the curb. His eyes flicked over the group, settling on Penny’s shocked face.

  And then he winked.

  CHAPTER 10

  I‘m telling you, he looked right at me. He knows we were the ones who called the cops!” Penny said, pacing back and forth.

  It was the next morning, and Penny and the boys were in Teddy’s bedroom, rehashing their abysmal failure of the previous evening. Teddy, reclining on his bed like a pasha, his foot propped up on a pillow, was looking a little pale as they recounted the events.

  “He doesn’t know,” Mac scoffed.

  “What are you guys doing?” Penny’s mom called through the door in a suspicious voice. “It’s too quiet in the
re.”

  “Nothing,” Penny said. “It’s secret. No moms allowed.”

  “This mom is always allowed. Open up.”

  Penny reluctantly opened the door.

  Her mother stood there, a no-nonsense look on her face. “Listen, I’m taking the baby and running over to the dry cleaner’s and then meeting Mrs. Loew for lunch. If you need anything, go over to the Schuylers’ house. And under no circumstances are any of you kids to go into those woods, you got me? Caleb is a dangerous boy.” She looked hard at Penny in particular. “Got it?”

  “Keep the doors locked, and Penny, use your own key. Leave the spare one under the rock where it’s supposed to be,” her mother added.

  “Sure,” Penny said.

  The door closed, and the kids looked at one another.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Oren said.

  Penny heard the minivan back out and drive away. A few moments later, she heard screeching tires. Had her mom come back? She got up and walked over to the window, peering through the curtains her mother had sewn herself when they first moved in. Teddy’s room faced onto the street, with a clear view of the Bukvics’ driveway.

  The very same driveway where a red Trans Am was now parked.

  Penny watched as the driver’s door of the Trans Am opened and a bare arm holding a cigarette tapped ash on the driveway. Caleb unfolded his long lean figure and got out of the car. Then he slammed the car door shut and walked up to the Bukvics’ front door, opening it casually and walking right in, as if he’d done it a hundred times.

  Penny blinked. She couldn’t believe what she’d just seen! Maybe it was a mirage or a hallucination or something.

  Except the Trans Am was still parked right there in the driveway.

  And then the front door opened and Caleb stepped out, Amy Bukvic draped on his arm.

  “You guys,” Penny said in a shaky voice.

  Teddy looked up, alarmed by the tone of his sister’s voice. “What?”

  “Just come here,” she said to the others.

  She pointed out the window. The boys gathered around, looking out.