The Boys Are Back in Town

by Christopher Golden

  “Like?” Kyle asked.

  The knife felt suddenly heavy in Will's hand and he glanced at it, then back at Kyle. “Oh, come on!”

  Kyle narrowed his eyes. “You guys had to kill that frog.”

  Will sighed. “Look, I have no response to this. And no time for it, either. Does the spell require blood? Yeah. But remember how, in order to curse Dori, we needed her blood? This spell requires mine. And a lot of it. Blood, faith, some chanting, and a little artistic skill. All I need from you is some chanting, the holding of the book and the flashlight, some bandages, and then, if it all works, I need you to watch over the circle, make sure nobody fucks with it.”

  The kid liked to come off as tough but Will saw the hurt in his eyes and instantly regretted getting so harsh with him. But the regret did not last long. There was no room here for regrets, nor for apologies. Later, if it all worked, there would be more than enough time for that.

  “Look, Kyle, I need your help. Do I have it or not? Seriously. In or out?”

  The boy was thin and sort of gawky, his short orange hair like a marquee that read fuck-with-me, and yet somehow he had managed to overcome that and have a fairly harmless high school career. At least from what Will had been able to decipher. Kyle Brody did not rattle easily.

  “Let me get those bandages now. Maybe some disinfectant.”

  Will nodded. “That'd be great.”

  Flashlight in hand, he disappeared back inside the house, leaving Will alone on the patio. The moon and stars provided enough light for him to see by even without the flashlight, and when he turned toward that door beneath the porch, he felt the pull of his childhood drawing him toward it. The past was magnetic and it had a magic all its own. He walked to that five-foot-high door with his pulse thumping in his ears, his breathing too loud in his head. The rest of the house had been transformed completely, new flesh built up around the skeleton of his boyhood home.

  But this . . . this was like stepping back through time without the use of any magic other than memory.

  “Wow,” he whispered breathlessly.

  Will tucked the book under his arm and reached for the handle. He'd actually tried to open the door before he noticed the lock and remembered Kyle's talking about it. He placed his hand upon the wood of the door, feeling the paint under his fingertips. How many times had he painted this door himself? Three? Four? The shade was different now, lighter, but in the nighttime, he could barely tell.

  Kyle appeared suddenly at his side. Will had not heard him come down the stairs, but now he moved so that the kid could fit the key into the lock. He did not say a word as the door swung open. The flashlight splashed yellow illumination inside the storage area underneath the porch, and he saw trash cans and a rusty bicycle, an old dirt bike and a lawn mower, broken patio furniture that Mr. Brody likely hoped to fix someday, and the glass storm door that would replace the screen at the front of the house when the weather turned cold.

  With a soft chuckle, Will shut his eyes tightly and opened them again. His vision adjusted and he saw that there was no dirt bike. That had been an image dredged up from his own mind, a view into the past. It was an old exercise bike that had been relegated to dusty obscurity. Behind the storm door was a metal bed frame, its pieces leaning against the wall, taking up too much space.

  “Look familiar?” Kyle asked.

  “Like I was here yesterday,” Will replied, barely conscious of having spoken.

  “We'll have to make some room, I think. How big does this circle have to be?”

  Will caught his breath and shook himself from his reverie. It was startling to be here and he felt a surge of warmth in his chest. But much of that good feeling would be lost if he did not defend it. It could be warped, twisted . . . he could be twisted, just like the past.

  “Five feet in diameter.”

  Kyle had his hands on his hips, glancing around and nodding. “We can't move anything out or it'll be noticed. We'll just have to make room.”

  He went to the rusty bicycle and lifted it, began to shove it along one wall. A moment later, Will went to the broken patio furniture and started to drag it out of the way. At the center of that cramped, low-ceilinged storage space, Kyle reached the single, bare bulb that hung from a beam, grabbed the small chain attached to it, and clicked the light on.

  “All right,” Will said. “Let's get to work.”

  SURREAL. That was the one word that kept echoing in the back of Kyle's mind. What the fuck am I doing down here? The truth was he did not know the answer to that question. If he wanted to tell this story later, how would he convince any of his friends that it wasn't completely fucking stupid to let some guy he didn't know get him into the storage space under the porch with a goddamned butcher knife in his hand? It was crazy. He was lucid enough to know that. Even if he told them about the note and the book and all of that, they would wonder if he'd somehow gotten brain damage overnight.

  But none of them had touched that book, felt the weight of Dark Gifts in their hands. None of them had looked into Will James's eyes and known, just known, that it was all true.

  Yet, even with all of that, there was still a part of him that had detached itself from the proceedings, mentally protesting in the same way he was certain his friends would. In some way, this was all like a dream to him. An exceedingly strange and unnerving dream.

  Right up until Will placed the blade of the carving knife against his palm, resting it there and staring at it with obvious trepidation. The bare bulb under the porch gleamed off of the stainless steel. Will took several long breaths and then lowered his head.

  “Shit. I don't know if I can do this.”

  Kyle blinked, shifted on his perch atop an old patio chair, and it felt to him as though he had just woken up. He glanced at the book and the flashlight at his feet and he started to get up.

  “Maybe you shouldn't,” he suggested. “I mean, what if . . . you know, what if it doesn't work?” All of a sudden he wanted nothing more than to have this guy out of his house, to get Will James out of his life, on his way, and never have to deal with any of this insane bullshit again. He wanted to pretend he wasn't curious, that the book and the note and Will's story wouldn't haunt him forever.

  But he knew it would only be pretending.

  So when Will shook his head, took a deep breath to steel himself, and drew the blade across his palm, Kyle did not try to stop him. He only watched, and wondered if he was going to have to take the guy to the hospital, or if he would be able to drive himself with one of his hands sliced open like that.

  Will hissed loudly, lips pulled back from his teeth, eyes clenched shut. Blood welled up from the slashed skin immediately, beginning to pool in the cup of his hand.

  “Get the flashlight over here,” he groaned.

  Kyle was breathless, his eyes locked on the knife, on the cut, entranced. But when he looked up to see Will staring at him, that got him moving again. He had put a scrap of paper in Dark Gifts to mark the page and now he grabbed both book and flashlight and brought them over. He opened the book to the page Will wanted. It was cold there, under the porch, but the book was as warm as living flesh in his hands, and impossibly light. He propped the book on the floor and held it at an angle so that Will could see it clearly, and then he clicked on the flashlight, the bright illumination washing away any shadows thrown by the single bulb.

  On that page was a drawing of a circle with arcing lines within it, and the strangest symbols sketched at what appeared to be strategic locations inside that design. It made no sense at all to Kyle, but now that he had a clear view of it, Will bent to his work, crouching over the concrete floor of the storage area and beginning to re-create the circular design, drawing with his own blood.

  The copper smell of it filled the cramped space. Kyle felt a little sick, and shivered as he watched. Will sat on his haunches, holding up his left hand and squeezing it over the floor, letting a steady flow of blood trickle onto the concrete, then using his right index fing
er to smear the blood, sketching out the circle, making certain it conformed to the image in the book.

  The slice in his palm was deep. It took nearly ten full minutes to paint that design on the concrete—ten minutes in which Will had to stop from time to time and open his hand, causing fresh blood to flow again—and he did not stop until it was done. Despite the chill under the porch, Will was sweating, and Kyle wondered if he might pass out.

  When the design was done Will stood up as best he could, bent slightly to keep from knocking his head on a beam, and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths. Gritting his teeth, he smeared disinfectant onto the white gauze pad Kyle had given him, then taped the gauze over the slice in his palm. His left fist was closed now, and he knocked it lightly against his hip, as though that might make the pain go away.

  Will didn't wait for the blood to dry. He stepped into the center of the circle and sat in one smooth, swift motion, obviously trying not to smear the symbols he had drawn. For several seconds he only sat there, gently nodding to himself the way Kyle had seen some of his friends do when they were drunk or high.

  Then Will looked over at him. “I have no idea how long I'll appear to be gone. It could be seconds. Hours. Weeks. I don't have a clue.”

  If you even go anywhere, Kyle thought. But that wasn't what he said. “I can't stay down here all that—”

  “I know you can't. But you can try to keep your father out of here. Make sure the place is locked and that no one gets in but you.”

  They stared at one another, Kyle suddenly keenly aware of how loud his breathing sounded in that cramped space. Then he nodded. Will gestured toward the book.

  “Read it with me. I'll correct your . . .” he hissed lightly, clutching his left fist against his chest and rocking a bit. “Sorry. I need stitches, I think. Or a healing spell.” Will laughed and winced at the same time. “What an idiot.”

  He focused on Kyle again. “I'll correct your pronunciation.”

  And he did. Kyle had to creep around, head ducked, and position himself so that he was outside the circle but could still make out the words written on the yellowed page of that terrible book. It chilled him to be so close to Will. The scent of blood was even stronger, and a dark fear began to coalesce in his mind around the idea that if it worked, somehow he could be drawn in as well. Pulled into the past. Trapped there.

  They began to read together and when Kyle fumbled over one of the guttural, foreign words, Will helped him until they had it correctly. An ugly, unpleasant thought formed in his mind, that this was not any human language at all, but he was no linguistics expert and he knew how foolish that was. There were hundreds of languages he would not even begin to recognize.

  Kyle felt hollow and afraid and oddly fragile, as though a single blow would shatter him. It grew warm, and soon he, too, was sweating. Several minutes after they had begun he finally repeated the spell all the way through without making a mistake, and Will immediately went into it again, pulling Kyle along with the momentum of words. Kyle was completely focused, wanting only to get out of there now, wanting to do it correctly just to have it over with, one way or another.

  He concentrated on forming the words, on his voice, on clutching one of the posts that supported the porch above, holding himself away from the circle, just in case. The skin on the back of his neck prickled, and though he was still sweating he felt a sudden chill pass through him. The light from the flash and the overhead bulb seemed to dim, the shadows to thicken, but so intent was he upon his task that Kyle only narrowed his gaze to make certain he did not foul up the words.

  At first he did not even notice the way Will's voice seemed to dim with the lights, and then to fade. It was not until it had dropped off almost to a whisper that Kyle became aware of the change. By the time he turned away from the page to look, Will James was little more than a ghostly apparition.

  Then he vanished.

  All the strength went out of Kyle and he crumbled to the ground. His knee touched the edge of the bloody circle, now dried to brown, and he pulled it back as though stung. He stared at the circle with wide eyes, a light yet impossible breeze moving across his skin as though rushing to fill the space Will James had occupied only a moment before.

  WILL DREAMS OF FALLING, air rushing past him, limbs flailing as he tumbles end over end, stomach and fists clenched to prepare for an impact that never comes. Now he cannot breathe. He is falling still, but upward now, and though he knows his eyes are closed he sees stars. Red stars, like crimson tears, or bloody pinholes in the night sky. His lungs burn with the need for air, falling up. . . .

  October, Senior Year . . .

  His eyes snapped open and he inhaled, pulling air greedily into his lungs. Will shuddered as he drew another gasping breath. His hands shook as he reached out to steady himself, and only then did he become aware of his surroundings. Pain seared his palm as his fingers touched grass and cool earth. He recoiled from both the pain and from this abrupt attack on his expectations. There had been concrete under him.

  Where . . .

  Grass and cool earth, and a sheen of dew upon the grass.

  Will was no longer in the storage area beneath the back porch of his childhood home. His right hand rose, shaking, to cover his face, and he scraped his palm along the roughness of his chin, staring through splayed fingers at the landscape that surrounded him. In every direction he saw old tombstones, marble and granite grave markers upon which were engraved familiar names. Morrell. Ouellette. Rice. Snowden. At the center of the field of stones was a single statue rising above the rest of the markers, an angel with its face tucked beneath one wing as if in shame, or in mourning. Though he could not see it from here, he knew that the name embossed upon the base of that memorial would be Franzini.

  He knew this place.

  Trees lined the cemetery on three sides; a wrought-iron fence completed the boundary, separating the cemetery from Cherry Street. The fence had never made any sense to him, however, for the arched entrance had no gate. Anyone could enter. Will had been here a hundred times. The cemetery wasn't far from Caitlyn's house.

  You've got to be kidding me.

  A rush of disorientation went through him and his stomach lurched. His entire body spasmed and he dropped to his knees, vomit burning his throat as he threw up on the grass. Chills went through him and he shuddered, then sat back and dragged his arm across his mouth.

  The tape holding the gauze on his left hand came off and the pad fell away. The long, bloody gash there seemed to wink at him. First things first, he thought, trying to collect himself. In the time they spent exploring Dark Gifts, he and Brian had found different interests to focus on. One of the things that Will had been drawn to was healing. Wincing at the pain, he clasped his hands together as if in prayer and muttered the only spell in Gaudet's book that had been written in Latin. He wondered if there was significance in that. When he took his right hand away there was no blood, but his left palm was bisected by a long white scar.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, taking a steadying breath. He blinked as he glanced around again, trying to fight a new surge of disorientation.

  It's real, he thought. I forgot. I forgot what it was like.

  Will had believed that the spell would work—if he had not believed, then nothing at all would have happened—but he had forgotten the power of real magic. Serious magic. Back in the days when he and Brian had been dabbling with fire and levitation and Will's little healing trick, even when they had cursed Dori, they had never done anything of this magnitude.

  “Back . . . back in time,” he whispered, and a light, lilting laugh issued from his lips so abruptly that it surprised even him. In those few moments, he felt more than a little crazy. His hands fluttered around as though trying to find something solid to hold on to. His stomach lurched again and he held his breath, starting to rock forward but fighting the nausea. After a moment it passed, and he took a few steadying breaths.

  A battered white van rattled by on Cherry Street
with ladders clamped to the roof and a sign on the door that he could not make out from this distance, even as it passed beneath a streetlight. But Will didn't need to read it. He had seen the van plenty of times growing up. The sign on the door said Murphy Bros. Painting Services and it belonged to a bearded, beer-drinking guy who lived with his wife and baby daughter a few doors down from Caitlyn's.

  That same mad laughter bubbled up inside him again. “Holy shit,” he repeated. That van was a piece of his past, but what solidified the truth in his mind was the streetlights. These days they were all covered with a thick plastic shielding, but when he had been a kid in Eastborough they were metal domes with bare bulbs inside. Mike Lebo had once slept over Will's house, and the two boys had taken out every streetlight on Parmenter with a slingshot.

  I'm here, Will thought.

  But then he frowned and glanced around. But why here? The part of him that had no doubt about the reality of all of this had expected to open his eyes and be under the porch of his own house, eleven years earlier. That had been what he had visualized, just as the spell had instructed. Time and place. October, senior year, the night before Mike Lebo was to die.

  Will stood slowly, a hand gingerly pressed to his stomach, hoping the nausea was really gone. He glanced around, orienting himself. It had been so many years since he had been here, but in moments the geography began to assert itself in his mind. The paths that led through to Brian's street, the distance to Caitlyn's house and the houses he would pass, and how long it would take him to walk to his own home from here.

  Home, he thought. The word resonated within him in a way he had never expected. Before all of the horrors that had happened to him over the past couple of days, Will had been happy with his life. But this place, this time—right until the day he died, these streets and the feeling in the air here would be the definition of home. He tried to picture his parents eleven years younger and in the living room on Parmenter Road, right now, watching Seinfeld. Or Ashleigh sprawled on the floor in her bedroom, doing homework. That was home.