Into the Woods (Anomaly Hunters, Book One)

by J. S. Volpe

  Chapter 26

  End of the Line

  Calvin sprinted through the woods toward Mr. May’s house, trees and bushes blurring by, his sneaker soles pounding on the dirt, his backpack with its load of books and notebooks jouncing on his back. He had hurried straight here the moment school let out. He knew he had only a limited amount of time before he had to hurry home and pretend he had been in his bedroom all afternoon, and he meant to spend as much of that time at Mr. May’s house as he could.

  He wished he could have ditched school altogether and spent the whole day at Mr. May’s. As it was, he barely heard a word any of his teachers or classmates had said. He had been too busy mulling over every aspect of the Emily situation, everything from Firebird’s suicide to the incident at Roger Grey’s last night. He had even spent most of seventh period study hall compiling a list of everyone who was known to have seen a vision in or near the woods, and then looking for any commonalities among them.

  What did he need school for anyway? He knew now what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to be an anomaly investigator like Mr. May.

  He could see it all so clearly: Mr. May would be his mentor, his intellectual and spiritual father, instructing him in the ways of the anomaly hunter. And Cynthia would be there too, his fellow anomaly-hunter-in-training, at least until they were ready to strike out on their own and trot the globe together in search of mysteries and weirdness.

  Calvin couldn’t help grinning at the thought. He finally felt as if his existence had a purpose, a direction. He could see his future stretching out ahead of him, straight and true…

  When he bounded out of the woods and onto the wide, rolling lawn of the May estate, his steps slowed to a walk and his grin faltered. The front door was ajar. He could see a dark swath of the house’s interior through the crack.

  Calvin looked all around as he crossed the lawn, but saw no one anywhere. His gaze returned to the open door. He was close enough now to make out the rectangular shape of one of the dorky bucolic paintings on the hallway wall. He kept expecting the door to swing wide and Mr. May to hobble out with his cane, but the sliver of hallway remained dark and silent and still.

  He ascended the front steps, then paused on the porch, listening. He heard the woods stirring softly in the breeze. He heard birds chirping. He heard the in-and-out of his own breath, which was deep and ragged from his run. He heard nothing from inside the house.

  “Mr. May?” he called. He was pleased at how strong and sure his voice was. He didn’t sound worried at all.

  There was no answer.

  He began to fear that someone had broken in. Maybe Roger Grey. Maybe Grey had somehow figured out that Mr. May had been the organizer of last night’s home invasion, and come here for revenge.

  Then again, the door didn’t look like it had been forced. The lock was undamaged. Maybe Mr. May simply hadn’t shut it firmly enough.

  Maybe.

  Calvin crossed the porch, his steps resounding hollowly on the wooden boards. As he neared the open door, he smelled the usual odors of Mr. May’s house—furniture polish, old leather—but he also caught a whiff of a sharp, unpleasant scent. Urine.

  “Mr. May,” he called again. And this time his voice was high and scared.

  His heart was pounding as he pushed on the door. It opened six inches and then stopped, blocked by something inside. But it had opened far enough to reveal the silver handle of Mr. May’s cane on the burgundy carpet, and next to it, one wrinkled and immobile hand.

  “Mr. May!” This time his call was met by a barely audible moan from behind the door.

  Calvin pushed against the door hard enough to overcome the resistance of whatever was blocking it. There was a heavy, complex rustle from inside, and the hand began to slide across the carpet, a sight that made Calvin wince. As soon as the door was wide enough for him to pass through, he stopped pushing then wriggled inside.

  Mr. May lay on the floor, the top half of his cane beside him, its end splintered. The bottom half must be underneath him. His face was pale and waxy. His eyes rolled behind half-shut lids. His mouth hung open and a line of drool connected his lower lip to the carpet. The crotch of his trousers and the carpet beneath it were dark and wet. The stench of urine was overpowering. It didn’t look like he had been attacked. There were no visible injuries, no blood, no signs of a struggle. This looked more like a heart attack, or something of that sort.

  Calvin knelt beside Mr. May and gently shook his shoulder.

  “Mr. May! Can you hear me?”

  The eyelids fluttered. Another, fainter moan rose up.

  Calvin sprang to his feet, got out his phone—nearly dropping it twice in his panic—and called 911. After calmly listening to Calvin’s frantic outpouring and asking a few questions, the dispatcher told him an ambulance would be there shortly and advised him not to try to move Mr. May.

  While he had been talking to the dispatcher, Calvin had turned away from Mr. May out of the probably silly notion that Mr. May wouldn’t want to overhear himself being talked about. Now Calvin heard Mr. May’s weak, rasping voice behind him: “Emlee…”

  Calvin looked back. Mr. May’s eyes had opened fully and were fixed on him. His jaw opened and closed in short jerks as if he couldn’t remember how to use it properly.

  Calvin stuffed his phone back into his pocket and knelt down next to Mr. May again.

  “The ambulance is on its way,” Calvin said. He was trying to make his voice sound upbeat and reassuring, but it came out quavering and half-hysterical. “They didn’t say exactly how long it would be, but—”

  “Emlee…”

  “What? Emily?”

  “Vile…” Mr. May said.

  “Vile? What’s vile?”

  Mr. May’s tongue swabbed at his lips then sank back into his mouth.

  “Pain…” he said.

  “You’re in pain?”

  Mr. May grunted. He almost sounded angry.

  “Paining,” he said.

  Calvin frowned, and was about to tell him he didn’t understand. But then he did understand.

  “Painting? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Mr. May nodded. “Paining…” His eyes closed and his head lolled to one side as if he no longer had the strength to hold it upright. “Emlee…”

  Calvin shook his head. “What about Emily?”

  Mr. May didn’t move, except for the faint rise and fall of his chest. Too faint, Calvin thought. Calvin didn’t think Mr. May would say anything else for now, but then the thin lips twitched, drew back, painstakingly shaped words.

  “Vile…” he said.

  Back to that again. And it still made no sense.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Calvin said.

  “Vile…paining…binded…”

  “What?”

  “Safe. All…safe…”

  “Mr. May, I—”

  Through what must have been a supreme effort of will, Mr. May opened his eyes and lifted his head a couple of inches off the floor. He fixed his eyes on Calvin’s.

  “Bromst…her…” he said through teeth that were gritted against the pain this effort was costing him. “Took…care…” The effort was too much; the head dropped back to the carpet. He kept his eyes locked on Calvin’s, though. “Took…care…”

  Calvin shook his head, the motion dislodging one of the tears that had built up in his eyes. It shot down his cheek and dripped onto the carpet. He wanted to ask who the “her” was and what “bromst” meant, but he was afraid to speak lest he miss anything else Mr. May said.

  The old man smiled.

  “Yours…now…” The words were barely audible. “For…Emlee…”

  Calvin shook his head again. “Mine? What’s mine?”

  Mr. May’s eyes drifted slightly to the right of Calvin’s face. At first Calvin thought that Mr. May was looking at something over his shoulder, but then he realized that the mouth and lips had stopped moving, and the slow, silent rise and fall of M
r. May’s chest had ceased.

  “Mr. May! Mr. May!” Calvin gave the old man’s bony shoulder a shake. Mr. May’s body moved in a horribly reactive way. The head wobbled like a ragdoll’s. The unfocused eyes swung back and forth across the ceiling.

  Calvin moved his hands to the center of Mr. May’s chest, ready to perform CPR as he had seen done a thousand times on TV. But his hands froze atop the rumpled suit jacket. He didn’t know exactly where to place them. He had horrible images of his pumping hands shattering the old man’s fragile ribcage and driving splintered bit of ribs into the heart and lungs.

  Calvin shot to his feet, his hands raised uselessly before him. He looked up and down the hallway as if he might find something there that would give him instructions.

  “I don’t know what to do!” he wailed, hating the whiny sound of his voice but unable to modulate it. “I don’t know what to do!”

  He heard sirens coming down Oaks Road. The sound calmed him a little. He looked down at Mr. May’s body. The old man hadn’t moved or changed one bit, but perhaps the paramedics could change that. It wasn’t too late. He had heard of people being resuscitated many long minutes after the heart had stopped.

  Tires squealed as the ambulance veered off Oaks Road and onto Mr. May’s long driveway. The roar of the engine echoed up the corridor of trees.

  Calvin wiped the tears off his face and peeked out the doorway just in time to see the ambulance shoot from the woods and screech to a halt at the end of the driveway, leaving black tire marks on the concrete. Two paramedics leaped out and raced up to the house.

  “Who needs help?” asked one of the paramedics.

  “In here.” Calvin showed them.

  The next few minutes were a blur of activity as the paramedics tried to get Mr. May breathing again and bombarded Calvin with questions about what had happened and about Mr. May’s medical history, virtually none of which Calvin could answer. Nothing the paramedics did produced the slightest response in the body on the floor.

  A May cop arrived. It wasn’t a cop Calvin had ever seen before. The cop asked Calvin a lot of questions, then took down his phone number and told him he could go. The paramedics had already left in the ambulance.

  As Calvin trudged toward the driveway, he heard Cynthia’s voice call out, “Calvin!”

  He looked up and saw her hurrying toward him across the lawn, her red hair flying.

  “What happened?” she asked when she reached him. “I heard the ambulance. I tried to get away as soon as I could, but—” Her words stopped dead when she looked over his shoulder and saw the sheet-shrouded form through the open doorway. “Oh, God.”

  “He died,” Calvin said with a sob. “Right in front of me. I couldn’t do anything. I just…just watched him. He just…he was…” He couldn’t talk anymore. He hung his head. There were still bits of leaves caught in his shoelaces from his eager run through the woods earlier.

  Cynthia put her arms around him and held him close. A moment later his own arms rose up and returned the embrace. They held each other in silence for a while. At the end of the driveway the cop watched them as he radioed for the coroner.

  “What’re we gonna do now?” Calvin said. He drew away from her and looked her in the face. “What’s gonna happen? With Emily. With the Collection. With everything.”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

  Chapter 27

  The Golden Key

  1

  Calvin was horrified to see himself in the bathroom mirror as he brushed his teeth the next morning. His face was pale and puffy, and there were purple bags under his bloodshot eyes. Which wasn’t surprising, considering he had barely slept a wink all night. He had lain there for hours in the silent darkness, replaying Mr. May’s death over and over and wondering if there were something more he could have done. When sleep came, it was brief and fitful and full of nightmares about slack, dead faces gaping at him from shadowy corners, about imminent disasters he was helpless to stop, about wandering lost through dark empty rooms the size of warehouses.

  He didn’t know how he was going to make it through eight interminable hours of school. The only thing he had to look forward to was talking with Cynthia. Before they parted late yesterday afternoon he had promised to call her after school today so they could discuss their next move. Or whether they should even bother with a next move. Calvin wasn’t sure anymore.

  His dad’s “Bad to the Bone” ringtone jangled in the kitchen. Calvin paused to listen, the toothbrush jutting from his mouth, a froth of blue-white foam on his lips. He heard the clunk of a coffee mug being set on the table, then the creak of a chair. Then his dad said, “Hello?” A pause. “Hey, Steve. What’s up?”

  Calvin rolled his eyes and resumed brushing. It was only dad’s buddy and golf partner, Steve Krezchek, the stupid lawyer and son of the stupid police chief.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” his dad said in a high, surprised voice.

  Calvin stopped brushing again and leaned toward the half-closed bathroom door, listening.

  “But…but…” It seemed that Mark Beckerman was actually at a loss for words. Calvin almost smiled. He wished he could hear what Krezchek was saying.

  “Yes, I understand that,” Mark said. “But why Calvin? It makes no sense.”

  Calvin stiffened and stared wide-eyed at his reflection. A blob of toothpaste foam slid down his lower lip and dangled off the bottom edge on a rope of bluish saliva, ready to drop onto his shirt. He saw it, watched the rope slowly elongate, but made no move to stop it. If he moved, made noise, he might miss what his dad said next. His suddenly felt as nervous and rubbery-stomached as he had before the break-in at Roger Grey’s the other night.

  Wait, was that what this was about? Was Grey suing them or something? The cops had told Calvin and the others that Grey wasn’t going to press charges, but that didn’t preclude a lawsuit, did it? Oh, God, that had to be it! Calvin could think of no other reason a lawyer would call to talk about him.

  “It’s insane!” Mark said. “It’s…well, yeah. Of course. But it’s still just…crazy.”

  The rope snapped. The toothpaste plopped onto his shirt.

  After a long pause Mark said, “Yeah. We’ll be there. See you soon.”

  He hung up. Calvin quickly finished brushing his teeth, wiped the toothpaste off his shirt, and left the bathroom. His father was sitting in the living room, waiting for him.

  “Calvin, come here,” Mark said. He was trying to sound strong and fatherly, but his eyes were full of confusion. “We need to talk.”

  “But I have to get ready for school.”

  Mark shook his head. “Forget school. I’ll call them later, tell them you won’t be in.”

  Calvin’s heart was pumping madly now. Forget school? He had never heard his dad say something like that before. This was serious.

  “Sit down,” Mark said, motioning at the sofa. Calvin sat. Mark opened his mouth to speak, shut it, frowned. He couldn’t seem to figure out what to say.

  “Who was that on the phone?” Calvin asked. He knew who it had been, of course, but he figured this would give his dad a place to start.

  “Oh. That was Steve. Steve Krezchek. He—he had some important news.” Mark grimaced and ran a palm over his blond crew cut. If Calvin hadn’t been so full of anxiety, he would have enjoyed the sight of his father acting so uncharacteristically rattled. “Well, you know that Steve’s an attorney, and, um…” Mark gave Calvin a sidelong look. “Did you know Robert May?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Did you know him very well?”

  “I don’t know. Sort of. I just met him a few days ago.” Calvin shrugged. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Well, he, um, apparently he passed away yesterday. It looks like he had a stroke.”

  “Oh. A stroke…” So that was what it had been.

  “It turns out, um, he left some things to you. In his will. Well, actua
lly it’s a trust. He was one of Steve’s clients.”

  “He left me something?” He wondered if it included anything from the Collection. His dreads and sorrows were washed away in a flood of excitement. Then he felt a stab of guilt for feeling excited about profiting from Mr. May’s death. Great. Yet another twist of the emotional corkscrew. He noticed that his father had fallen silent and was looking confused again.

  “What things?” Calvin asked.

  Mark opened his mouth to reply, then looked at his watch. He stood up.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re supposed to meet Steve in ten minutes. He’ll tell us all the details.”

  2

  Ten minutes later Calvin and Mark sat in big leather chairs facing a well-polished, conspicuously uncluttered cherrywood desk behind which, in an even bigger leather chair, sat Stephen Krezchek. He was a slim fortyish man with a long nose, a jutting chin, and a head of brown hair that was starting to turn the same shade of gray as his father’s.

  “As I told Mark,” Krezchek said, “Mr. May named you as one of the beneficiaries in his trust. In fact, he just called me out to his house yesterday afternoon to amend the trust. I can’t help but wonder if he somehow knew what was going to happen.”

  Calvin couldn’t wait any longer. “What about the Collection?” he blurted out.

  Krezchek pursed his lips and flipped through the pages of a binder that lay open on the desktop before him. “I don’t recall anything about a collection…”

  Calvin was stunned. If Mr. May hadn’t left the Collection to anyone, what would become of it? Would it be thrown out? Calvin pictured a swarm of burly, uncaring workmen hurling seven-headed rattlesnakes and coffins and giant footprint castings into a huge industrial dumpster on the May house lawn. But, no. That couldn’t be right. Mr. May would have known better than to leave his life’s work unaccounted for in the trust. He must have called it something else.

  “No,” Krezchek said, settling back in his chair. “No collection is mentioned. But whatever it is you’re referring to is no doubt included in one of the properties.”

  “Properties? What do you mean?”

  “Heh. Well, I’ll spare you the legalese and just give it to you straight.” He cleared his throat, glanced at Mark, and said, “You are named as the recipient of the property—the house and land—on Oaks Road, including, with a few exceptions, the contents of the house, as well as the sum of one million dollars.”