The Boys Are Back in Town

by Christopher Golden

  In the tree fort, the elder Will ran his fingers over the bump on his nose where it had been broken. The bump had appeared there at the very same moment when Young Will's nose had been shattered.

  The Buick belonged to Brian Schnell, bought with money he'd taken from his savings account without his parents' approval or knowledge. The title was in his name, after all, and no, he hadn't registered it yet. How they would explain the stolen license plate was something Will hadn't had time to address, but as he sat in the tree fort, the pain in his chest beginning to diminish, a new memory began to form in his mind as though bursting through a splintering eggshell.

  “I found it on the side of the road, Officer,” he remembered telling the cops, blinking away the blue lights even as he wiped a streak of blood from beneath his broken nose. “Brian wanted to wait to register it until Monday, after he told his parents, but I found this license plate and I figured what the hell, let's take it out for a ride. I know we shouldn't have, but—”

  And in his mind's eye, Will could recall exactly what the cop said next.

  “Looks like it was a good thing you did.”

  Will smiled there in the tree fort, proud of the kid . . . proud of himself. More lights were flashing now, red and white, as two ambulances arrived. Neighbors had come out of their homes and were standing in their front yards watching as the EMTs removed the unconscious form of Nick Acosta from his father's Jetta. Not so terrifying now, he was just a broken, bloody teenager and a big question mark for Will.

  “Do you think Tess will testify?” Brian asked, fingers still gingerly exploring his side.

  “I don't know. But with Ashleigh and me and you—you know what I mean, the guys—they've got an airtight case.”

  “So it's pretty much done,” Brian said.

  Something about his tone unnerved Will, who slid around to put his back against the wall of the tree house, letting the exhaustion in his muscles take over at last. He studied Brian's face in the gloom.

  “What's on your mind, Bri?”

  The other man drew his palm over his ragged goatee. His sickly pallor, even in that blue light, suddenly seemed not entirely due to his cracked ribs. His eyelids fluttered and then he stared right at Will and the tree house seemed very small.

  “The memories . . . it's happening to you, right? New ones are slipping in. You kept saying it was like a deck of cards shuffling in your head, but now new cards keep getting added.”

  Will nodded grimly. “We're adding them.” He touched the bump on the bridge of his nose again. “My nose wasn't broken before. And all of this . . . with Nick and Tess . . . I've got two sets of memories of it. One's mine and one's his.” It was strange to refer to his younger self in the third person, but Will was certain that Brian would know precisely what he meant. “And at the same time, other memories are changing slowly, fading, being replaced.”

  Brian nodded. “Exactly. For instance, I know Nick recovers. And I know he ends up in jail. I sort of remember the trial, at least some of it.”

  Will could feel it, too. They both testified. The stare of the judge as he spoke each word had felt like a terrible weight because even though the vital facts were all true, there were things they were all hiding. Tess had broken down in tears on the stand, but she had told her story. Will remembered Mr. and Mrs. Acosta sitting in the courtroom and how he hadn't wanted to look at them.

  “So do I.” A tentative smile teased the edges of his mouth. “But I don't remember seeing us—the older us—again. So I guess it's time to go home. Back where we belong.”

  Car doors slammed out in the street and he peered out the tree house window. There was no sign of Ashleigh and their younger counterparts; a tow truck had arrived to drag Nick's Jetta away. When Will glanced back at Brian and saw the sickly look on his friend's face, any trace of well-being he had been feeling evaporated.

  “What?” Will demanded.

  Brian's eyes were downcast. “I did the spell to get back here days after you had already gone. I've got those few days of memory that you don't have. Something's been shuffled into the deck that wasn't there before, a new memory.” He lifted his gaze to stare at Will. “We're not the only ones who are changing things. And they're not only changing here.”

  “What is it, Brian? What's the new memory?”

  “A couple of days after you left. I can remember it now, but it wasn't there before, Will.”

  “What wasn't, damn it!”

  Brian flinched. “The family that lives in your old house on Parmenter. There was a . . . a massacre there. Someone broke into the house, killed the parents. I remember seeing it on the news the day after the night at Papillon. The kid, Kyle—one of his friends was murdered, too, but the kid was the only survivor. Stabbed and beaten. In a coma, they said. The police found all kinds of symbols in blood in the room under the house and there was talk of Satanic rituals, shit like that.”

  Pressure built up in Will's temples and at the center of his forehead. He put a hand to his head and let out a long, shuddering breath. “Fuck,” he whispered. “Oh, fucking hell.” He had gotten Kyle's parents and best friend killed, and the kid was in a coma. Depending on his wounds, he might never wake up.

  Will looked up at Brian. “We have to assume the circle I made is gone. And if mine's obliterated, it stands to reason they got to yours.”

  “They?”

  “Well, if Nick was the one who pushed Lebo out in front of us Saturday night, somebody else had to be behind the wheel of the other car. The one that would have hit him if we hadn't been there.”

  Brian shifted uncomfortably, groaning as he pressed one hand against his side. “Shit, I guess I just figured it was magic.”

  “I did, too, but you saw Nick. Someone knew we were here, in this time, and went forward to our time to take Kyle out, making sure even if I figured out how to get back that I wouldn't have a way to do it. I left the door open. Somebody's got enough skill to jump into the future and close it, and probably come back again without much trouble. Does Nick look like he's capable of that kind of magic?”

  “No. No, I guess he doesn't. But this isn't the end of the world, Will. I mean, we know where the Gaudet book is. We have your younger, more arrogant self get it for us, undo the spell he put on it, and we can figure out a way to go forward from here. It should work. If we go back early enough, we can get there before this kid and his family are killed.”

  Will shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus, when does this end?”

  With a long sigh Brian glanced out the window. “I don't know, Will. But we don't have much choice. We have to try. Otherwise we're stuck here, and that isn't going to work. We have to go back.”

  “All right,” Will said with a grim nod. “But we can't leave yet.”

  Brian frowned, eyebrows knitting. “Why not?”

  Will's throat was dry again and he licked his lips to moisten them. Gruesome images flitted through his mind and he drew his knees up under him and covered his face a moment, as though he might screen them out.

  “We couldn't save Mike and we couldn't stop what happened to Tess, but at least we got the fucker. Nick's going to jail. We both remember it that way, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Brian agreed.

  “Then how come I still remember Bonnie Winter's murder?”

  CUT THE CARDS. Shuffle the deck. Slip in a few wild cards.

  On Saturday at eleven o'clock in the morning Will James found himself in the bleachers at Cougar Stadium, watching a football game he had seen before. He clasped both hands around his Styrofoam coffee cup and blew through the tear he had made in the lid, trying to cool it down. Memories crashed in waves across his mind, more in conflict than ever.

  Eleven years ago: He had watched this game with his friends, barely paying attention, eating too much junk and looking forward to the dance that night and the riotous sex he expected to have afterward. The sight of Caitlyn in her cheerleader's uniform did nothing to distract him from these thoughts. Mike Lebo had be
en a second-string defenseman in that game, and he'd made a sack on the Natick High quarterback that got them all on their feet. Ashleigh had screamed her voice hoarse. Now Will could barely hold on to this memory. It was as vague and insubstantial as a dream, half-remembered.

  Eleven years ago: A week after Mike Lebo's tragic death, the game had gone on. There had been talk of canceling the entire slate of Homecoming weekend events, but after Principal Chadbourne met with the senior class officers and most of the teachers, he decided to forge ahead. The Cougars had played in Lebo's memory. Nick Acosta, one of their best running backs, had scored the deciding touchdown and dedicated it to Lebo. Even this memory was fading, merging with new ones that had taken its place.

  Eleven years ago . . . and now: Lebo was dead. Nick was in the hospital with a police guard, under arrest on charges of rape and aggravated assault. The Homecoming Queen had been his primary victim and would not be riding in any parade. Word had only just begun to circulate, in whispers. Will's mind was filled with two sets of memories, all unspooling moment by moment as he watched the game. His teenage self and Young Brian sat with Ashleigh and Eric, but their cheering was halfhearted. Eric didn't have a fucking clue what was really going on, but he knew about Nick and Tess, and he was as somber as the others. They were preoccupied, too, keeping an eye on the players, on the cheerleaders, and on the crowd as well.

  It wasn't over. Not yet.

  A week ago . . . and eleven years from now: Will had sat, and would sit, at the Homecoming football game during the weekend-long celebration of his ten-year high school reunion. It was in the distant future, and yet it was the beginning of all of this. Poor, doomed Kyle Brody would approach him with a note. Two words. Two fucking words that had haunted him every waking moment since he had read them.

  Don't forget.

  But there was just too damned much to remember, too many conflicting images and emotions, and so much of it was slipping through his mind like sand through his fingers.

  Will took a sip of his coffee, barely registering how bitter and stale it was. He dragged a hand across his face, stubble against his palm, and took a deep breath, trying to shake it off, to focus his mind. He stood on the grass beside the bleachers on the Cougars' side of the field, near the place where during night games kids would sneak under the bleachers to drink and get high or spend a little private groping time. Not so much of that kind of thing during the day, but it still happened. Will ignored them, just as he ignored the blaring, off-key clatter of the Cougar band in the front row of the bleachers, the whistle of the referees, the clack of helmet against helmet, even the numbers on the scoreboard.

  From time to time his gaze would drift to a spot diagonally across the field, where Brian stood vigilant on the visitors' side. But for the most part, Will's focus was on the girls. On the cheerleaders.

  On Bonnie Winter.

  Her smile was broad and genuine as she belted out the call-and-response cheer of the moment, her auburn hair flying in her face. Will tried not to think of her pale corpse lying in the autumn leaves, ants crawling on her flesh, but that was one image he could not seem to banish.

  Bonnie wasn't alone out there. Will couldn't remember the last names of a couple of the girls, but most of them he knew very well. Or had known, once upon a time. Bonnie. Lolly. Pix. Kelly. And Caitlyn, of course.

  God, she was beautiful, he thought as he watched her miss a cue, then twirl into a circle with the other girls, trying to catch up. She laughed, her cheeks flushed from the cold air and the exertion of the cheer routine. The skirt was short and her legs so slender and toned. Her blue eyes sparkled, and her golden hair seemed to glow in the sunshine.

  Will knew he still loved her, but just as certainly he knew he loved what she had been to him then, not what she became. This, what they had had in these last days of another age, had been everything he'd hoped for. But it had faded along with everything else from this time in his life. Being with Caitlyn then was part of what made him the person he had become, but it had taken him a long time to realize that his relationship was a relic, an artifact of the past.

  Now, looking at her, a hard truth struck him. Caitlyn had never loved him the way he had loved her. This was not self-pity, but simple fact. And he was surprised at how OK he was with that.

  It was a long time ago, he thought. Even seeing her right in front of him, breathing the same air he had breathed on those perfect days, he had the perspective of that distance in a way he had never had before.

  The coffee cup was still warm in his hands, but the way the sun was moving across the sky he was no longer in the shadow of the bleachers, so some of the chill of that October day was burning off. His back had even begun to feel pleasantly warm. On the field, Tim Friel faded back for a pass, but the Eastborough High line completely fell apart. The Natick defensemen rushed Tim; the way he glanced around, it was obvious he knew he wasn't going to get the pass off. The quarterback ran right. Joe Rosenthal blocked for him and Tim danced out of the way of another defensive back who slipped through, but then he was out on his own, sprinting full tilt down the field. Natick uniforms were closing in on him, in hot pursuit, but Tim had taken them by surprise, and he was fast. Very fast.

  The bleachers exploded with cheers. Will found himself shouting and whistling along with everyone else, his coffee cup the only thing keeping him from applauding. He only allowed himself a moment's distraction before returning to the grim purpose that kept him stationed there at the edge of the field. His gaze drifted over the cheerleaders but this time he did not linger on Bonnie or Caitlyn. Instead he studied the crowd on the opposite side, then turned to gaze up into the bleachers over his right shoulder. He searched the crowd for anything out of the ordinary. People were jumping up and down, waving their arms in triumph, and hugging each other. The Cougars had taken the lead, and the students, parents, teachers, and graduates of Eastborough High were celebrating.

  All but one.

  At the front of the bleachers, Danny Plumer leaned against the railing, surrounded by people in motion. Danny was quite still. He did not cheer or whistle or applaud. Instead his focus remained on a fixed point on the field, a kind of distant, forlorn look on his face.

  It sent a jolt through Will, seeing Danny like that. Could he have been that wrong? First Nick, and now Danny as well? His bud? How could he have spent as much time with these guys as he had, believed them to be his friends, and not seen what they really were?

  A deep melancholy enveloped Will as he stared at Danny. The crowd settled back down as the Cougars kicked off to Natick and the game got under way again, but Danny only stood there watching the cheerleaders.

  The cheerleaders.

  Relief flooded through Will as he glanced over at the girls as they shook their pompoms through another routine. Danny was just watching the cheerleaders. Who could blame him? Will glanced out at the field, where Caitlyn dropped her pompoms and took a running start, then vaulted into a handspring and landed on her feet again, just in time to punctuate a loud shout of “Cougars!” from the whole cheer squad. Out in front, Dori Schnell planted her hands on her hips and led off the next cheer, voice carrying. She swung her arms in tight choreography but never participated in any of the groundwork. No splits, no somersaults, no acrobatics at all. Her left leg had never healed right after her accident.

  As he watched her, Will felt sadness and guilt envelop him. A long time ago he had used magic to make himself forget. Magic had frightened him, and with good reason. But he had been even more significantly motivated by his guilt, by not wanting to have to feel the weight upon his heart every time he saw Dori, and the little limp in her step. Only now did he realize what a coward he had been. He had earned his guilt. And now he knew that in a way he needed to feel every bit of the sorrow it brought.

  Still, she was a part of the cheer squad. The girls all wore bright smiles and their routine had an infectious exuberance. Will enjoyed the show. Sure, watching beautiful girls in motion had its own rewar
ds, but it was more than that. Much as he and the guys often joked about appreciating the talent involved, there was more than a little truth behind the humor.

  Reluctantly, Will tore his gaze from the cheerleaders and once more looked up at Danny, whose expression had not changed.

  Will frowned, eyes narrowing. Quickly he glanced back and forth between Danny and the cheer squad. Lolly did a handspring that took her all the way to the far end of the lineup, but Danny's gaze did not follow her. His attention was straight ahead, at the girl on the squad's other flank.

  Bonnie.

  The coffee cup dropped from Will's hands and he was in motion before it hit the grass. He went up the metal side stairs that led to the walkway at the bottom of the bleachers, plunging into the constant flow of people coming down to use the bathroom or visit the concession stand, or headed back up to their seats. A fortyish guy with a tray of hot dogs and sodas bumped him, sloshing ice and Coke onto the dogs and onto Will, who apologized and pushed past the man, ignoring the cursing that followed him.

  He had wondered why Danny had not come up to sit with them. Now he feared that he knew.

  There were too many people on the walkway for him to move fast. He darted his head from side to side, trying to get a look at Danny, but in the thick of the throng, all he caught was a glimpse of dark hair, the vague impression of someone leaning against the railing.

  On the field, Natick High fumbled.

  Once more, the crowd erupted.

  Frustrated, heart racing, doubt and regret and disappointment rushing through him, Will lost his patience and began to shoulder people aside, muttering empty apologies. A hand grabbed his arm and he shook it off. All around him were broad smiles, victoriously upraised fists, applauding hands, and he maneuvered amongst them with a dreadful urgency.