“Well done, Tara!” he said. “That’s the very place I wrote about! I enlisted the help of a couple of grad students, and the Blackstreets allowed us to study—”
“Did you say Blackstreets?” I interrupted.
“Yes, the Blackstreet family has owned that land for centuries. In any case, the artifact you describe as a well is very old, much older than the walls. If you examine the stonework, it’s quite different. It served some sort of religious purpose for the native people here. It’s not a well, though. It’s a fire pit of some kind.”
“But in 1656, something very ugly happened on that spot. That winter, everyone in this part of the country was starving. Five members of a local tribe raided a settlement nearby. They stole food, and they also killed and scalped eight settlers who were taking over their hunting grounds. Can you guess what happened next?”
“The settlers fought back?”
“Yes, but not against the native peoples. There was someone they hated more. The settlers referred to them as the Outcasts. They were families who had come to the New World on the same ships as the Puritan settlers. But they weren’t Puritan. They weren’t even British.
“Crossing the Atlantic, the Puritans weren’t particular about who came with them, as long as they could pay their way. But the Puritans nurtured a deep, religion-fueled hatred of these people even as they accepted their money.”
“Who were they?”
“Ah, now that’s very interesting. Some scholars think they might be related to the Roma people, who used to be called Gypsies. I think they might have been Zoroastrians, perhaps from Persia— modern Iran. The Puritans would have considered that religion and its practices not just wrong, but an insult to God.”
“The Puritans were pretty hard core, weren’t they?” I asked.
“That’s one way to put it. The Puritans quickly turned on these people when they settled in this area, forcing them to live apart. That wasn’t enough, though. We’re talking about a time when some Christian religions believed that heresy should be punished by death. The Puritans bided their time, for generations. But when the Indians killed those settlers, they saw an opportunity.”
“First of all they raided the Outcast settlement and rounded up all the men. Then they announced a trial on charges of heresy and witchcraft.”
“That’s bogus. They couldn’t just lie about them and then kill them.”
“A very intelligent response, Nick. The Puritans did not want to be accused of a lynching. So they took advantage of the local anger about the Indian raid. At a key moment in the trial, a band of settlers disguised as Indians descended on the Outcasts. The onlookers pretended to be horrified. But they didn’t lift a finger to help and, of course, were never threatened themselves.
“First, the accused were held down and skinned. Alive. It’s said that the screaming could be heard a mile away. Next, they were strung from the trees by their necks until they strangled.”
I could hear the screaming from my dreams.
“Then the skinned bodies of the hanged were cut down and thrown into the fire pit. Wood was thrown on top of them and set aflame. It’s said the column of flame rose as high as the trees.”
I saw the fire from my dream.
“The point was to kill them in a way that made it look like the Indians did it. Before the bodies of the hanged were burned, some of the settlers took . . . souvenirs. Scalps, ears, teeth, pieces of skin. There are even reports that one of the Outcasts, a sort of leader, was cannibalized.”
As Dr. Smythe spoke, I felt anger rising inside me. Not just my own anger, but someone else’s. A powerful bitterness that raged for revenge. The coldness came over me, and my chest burned. Then I heard a deep voice mutter strange words from my mouth. Tara gasped, and Dr. Smythe shrank back in his chair and stared at me as if I had two heads.
“Do you know what you just said?”
“That was my voice?”
“Not your voice, but coming from your mouth, in a language very few people know today. You said, ‘We return from death to bring death!’”
A language very few people know. I thought about the marks on my chest. It was worth a try. “Dr. Smythe,” I said, lifting my shirt, “do these marks mean anything to you?”
He looked confused for a moment, then his eyes grew wide. “God save us!” he whispered. “It says, ‘Skin for Skin.’”
Tara grabbed my arm.
“There’s something else though,” Lester said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s backward. As if it had been written by someone inside you.”
18
None of us knew what to say next. Finally Dr. Smythe stood up. “Nick, Tara, I need to get going. I have an evening class to teach. If I can help either one of you—Tara, you have my number.”
After he left, I told Tara I thought Luke Todd had been right. Al had used him. And now Al was somehow using me—my skin—to get into the world and take revenge.
“The problem,” I said, “is that I don’t know how to fight him. How do you fight someone who is inside of you?”
Tara’s face clouded over.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to hang myself.”
Her eyes teared up and she hugged me, hard. “You’ve got that right,” she said.
“Tara, the only times I’ve seen Al outside of me have been in the woods. I need to go there.”
“Absolutely not! That place belongs to him. It’s evil!”
I took her hands. “What do we want to happen?”
“We want Al to leave you alone!”
“What about the rest of the world? If Al gets into the world, through me . . . Tara, you can’t imagine how crazy angry he is.”
“Nick, we save you first. What was it Sister Marie said about Luke wanting to save the world?”
“Al will hurt people. I think he already has.”
When someone attacks you, you have two choices. You can fight back, or you can just hope the attacker will go away. Al wasn’t going away. I had to do something.
Just then Tara’s cell phone rang. (Alicia Keys, “No One.”) “That was Zach,” she said when she was finished. “John Stenson died.”
It was so strange. Three days ago I’d felt this guy’s fist in my stomach. Now he was gone from this world. But Tara had a more immediate concern.
“Nick, you’re a murder suspect now. They’ll arrest you.”
One more reason to head for the woods. They wouldn’t look for me there. But first there was something I needed at home.
I asked Tara if she’d drive me there. Some serious weather was moving in. It was 5:30 P.M. and people already had all their lights on. As Tara dropped me off she said, “Come to the library first thing in the morning. We’ll figure something out. Together.”
“OK,” I lied. I hoped she’d forgive me.
19
Mom was in the kitchen. “I’ve got lasagna in the oven,” she said, as she filled her glass from the wine bottle. “Should be ready in half an hour.” She turned toward the living room, where the TV was already on. “Where’s the cat?”
“Mom,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
She stopped and looked surprised. “Sorry? For what?”
“For causing you all these problems. And I’m sorry—Toby got hit by a car and I buried him. I was afraid to tell you. Thanks for standing up to the sheriff.”
She set down her glass. “Nick, you’re my only son. I love you. Even if you had done something— and I know you didn’t—even so, I’d love you.” She walked across the kitchen and we hugged.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “Everything will be OK.” Was that another lie?
Mom headed toward the TV. I grabbed what I needed from my room. My hand was on the back door when I heard a knock at the front, then voices.
“Ma’am . . . warrant . . . murder.”
The sheriff worked fast. I didn’t wait for the end of the conversation.
Outside, the wind was swirling. There wer
e occasional flashes in the sky. No thunder yet, but a storm was definitely approaching. I dodged between houses. At one point, I ducked behind a hedge when I saw a police cruiser drive by very slowly. In ten minutes I was in the woods.
All around me the tree branches were waving. The wind came in long sighs, while the leaves scraped against each other. I started to hear thunder in the distance.
I could feel a kind of storm brewing inside me as well. Al was wide awake, and he grew stronger as I approached the clearing. His fantasies of revenge played like a widescreen movie in my head: scenes of torture I could never have invented, blood and screams and fire.
As I neared the clearing, the coldness set in. I felt the magnetic pull of the well. The storm’s strength grew along with Al’s. Rain started to spit, and jagged lightning streaked the sky. Thunder cracked.
I was ten feet from the well when Al’s hands appeared at the rim. I watched in horror as a naked, seven-foot-tall man, glowing red, climbed out of the well. He stood before me, his arms folded, laughing. He was hairless, his entire body charred and blistered. His features were twisted and sagging as if they had melted and refrozen. He was no Outcast. He was the king of hell.
Al said nothing, but as I watched he glowed a brighter and brighter red, like molten metal. The raindrops hissed and steamed as they fell on him. And the brighter he became, the colder I felt, colder than ever before. I was shivering uncontrollably in the pelting rain. My face was burning and my chest felt heavy and sore as if I’d been beaten.
20
Dammit, Nick, what do you think you’re doing?” a female voice boomed. How long had I been standing in the clearing? The storm was gone. It was dark. I felt incredibly tired. Emptied. But I could still think. Tara, my mind told me.
I was able to turn, slowly. Zach was behind her.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
They had brought a blanket. Tara was putting it around my shoulders when suddenly she stared past me and gasped. “Zach!”
I didn’t have to wonder what she saw. I could feel Al approaching. As he stepped forward, Tara screamed. And then, literally, all hell broke loose.
There was a roaring, crackling sound, and the smell of burning meat. Flames shot up from the well and, one by one, thirty men climbed out. They were on fire. Many were missing ears or hands or scalps. Their necks were mangled, and they screamed in pain and anger as they formed a circle around the clearing.
Then, at a signal from Al, the circle began to close. The flames in the well rose higher as the burning corpses got closer. Al stood outside the circle now, laughing in triumph.
As the circle of fiery men closed in on us, an odd, sad thought passed through my head. Since this whole skin thing started, my life had actually gotten better in some ways. I’d stood up to Stenson. Emma—yeah, she could be a pain, but she cared about me. In Tara, for the first time, I had a real friend. And tonight I realized that Mom really saw me, and loved me. Does this happen to everyone, that they notice the good things in their lives just before they’re about to lose them?
We all retreated toward the well as the heat from the dead men and the stench of their smoldering bodies became unbearable. Is there any death more horrible than burning? People have been known to leap from flaming skyscrapers to avoid fire.
The Outcasts were just about on top of us when we all heard a deafening explosion. It came from a shotgun. A shotgun wielded by Butch Blackstreet. The noise got the attention of Al and his ghouls, who stopped advancing.
“What the hell is going on here?” Blackstreet yelled.
No one said a word. Blackstreet looked confused. “I get a call that my woods are burning and . . .”
He spotted me through the flames. “Barry!” he roared. “What are you doing here?”
I didn’t say anything. But Al took a step past me toward Blackstreet. And another.
“You’re trespassing!” the assistant principal shouted. “Setting fires on my property!” He raised his shotgun.
But as he looked to aim, Blackstreet stopped midposition. He finally seemed to take in the horror before him. His jaw gaped open. “What the hell—?”
Before Blackstreet could run away, Al signaled the fiery corpses. They broke their circle and wheeled around the terrified man.
Blackstreet fired his gun. His bullets ripped through the dead men’s flesh, but they kept coming toward him. In an instant he was swarmed by burning corpses. They clawed at his body and grabbed for his throat.
Yesterday, I—or Al inside me—would have fantasized about a sight like this. But now, watching my revenge play out, the rush was gone. I felt no anger at all. What happened in 1656 wasn’t Blackstreet’s fault. Now I felt his pain and fear wash over me.
That’s when a voice, loud enough to carry over the Outcasts’ cries, stopped everything. It was mine.
“Stop!”
The Outcasts, who had been intent on slaughtering Blackstreet, turned to look at me. Al turned too. I heard Tara behind me: “Nick! Don’t!”
I looked at her, and she must have seen something in my face. In the next second, she was at my side, and Zach at hers.
I reached into my pocket to retrieve what I’d gone home to get: Emma’s holy water. I opened it, splashed some on all three of us and took a step toward Al. What did I have to lose?
“You use people,” I said. “You make people hate each other until they kill. Why?”
Al laughed, and without speaking, signaled his ghouls to attack. But nothing happened. The Outcasts stood quietly, watching him.
“You didn’t help these men,” I said to Al. “You caused the hate that killed them! And now you’re using their hate to cause more killing!”
I faced the Outcasts: “Is this your boss? He doesn’t care about you. Your families cared about you. You cared about each other. He only cares about pain!”
With an ear-splitting war cry, Al ordered his slaves to advance. And they came. But it was Al they were after. As they surrounded him, I saw Blackstreet run off into the woods. The men danced around Al, closer and closer, like a flaming saw.
He roared in pain as they hooked their fingers in his eyes and tore off his flesh. He bellowed curses as they lifted him over their heads and carried him toward the pit. Just before they threw him in, Al looked straight at me and pointed his finger. As if to say, “I know who you are. This isn’t over.”
Then he was gone. The fire in the well followed him. And one by one, like candle flames, the burning Outcasts flickered out. Thirty innocent men had been abused in life and used in death. Now their souls were finally free.
21
The next voice I heard was Tara’s, “Nick!” She was crying.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“Your skin, Nick. It’s clear! Zach, look!”
Tara, Zach, and I didn’t know what to say. We hugged each other close and then started our walk home. The first light of morning was turning the blackness to gray. We were near the edge of the woods when we saw flashlight beams and heard dogs barking. They were police dogs, and a search party led by Sheriff Brady wasn’t far behind.
There never was a murder charge, as it turned out. There really wasn’t any evidence. Traces of blood in my closet “were compatible” with Jack Stenson’s. But the bloody fingerprints they found in his room weren’t mine. The prints in Stenson’s room also matched prints found at Father Remy’s house in Baytown. The police had decided that the fire that killed the priest was arson.
They’re still looking for a suspect in both crimes. I don’t think they’ll find him in this world.
After my suspension, I went back to school.
Blackstreet was on a “leave of absence,” so the principal accepted my written plan for staying out of trouble. Stevie Furman had transferred to Saint Philomena.
I wrote a letter to Sister Marie. I wasn’t specific, but I thanked her for her time and advice, and told her I would pray for her and Luke.
While Emma might have believed what
happened if I told her, I only thanked her for the holy water. I was sure it was important in clearing up my complexion, I said.
Mom seems happier lately. We’re getting along OK. She’s happy about my new job helping at the library after school.
I haven’t had any nightmares since that night in the woods, but I haven’t gone back to the clearing. I don’t think Al is dead. I don’t think evil is ever dead. But neither is good. I just hope goodness will always be ready and willing to fight. I know Al will.
Everything’s fine in Bridgewater. Really . . .
Or is it?
Look for these other titles from the
Night Fall collection.
MESSAGES FROM BEYOND
Some guy named Ethan Davis has been texting Cassie. He seems to know all about her—but she can’t place him. He’s not in Bridgewater High’s yearbook either. Cassie thinks one of her friends is punking her. But she can’t ignore the strange coincidences—like how Ethan looks just like the guy in her nightmares.
Cassie’s search for Ethan leads her to a shocking discovery—and a struggle for her life. Will Cassie be able to break free from her mysterious stalker?
THAW
A July storm caused a major power outage in Bridgewater. Now a research project at the Institute for Cryogenic Experimentation has been ruined, and the thawed-out bodies of twenty-seven federal inmates are missing.
At first, Dani Kraft didn’t think much of the breaking news. But after her best friend Jake disappears, a mysterious visitor connects the dots for Dani. Jake has been taken in by an infamous cult leader. To get him back, Dani must enter a dangerous, alternate reality where a defrosted cult leader is beginning to act like some kind of god.
Skin (Night Fall ™) Page 5