And then he’d shoved him and sent Auguste down, down, down, into this fetid pit. To pay the price the land had demanded.
Auguste screamed and buried his head in the dirt, but still the memories came. He begged for peace, sinking his fingers into the earth, pleading with it to free him from the images, but no, they replayed again and again, a warning.
Because today he had dared to think of himself. He had been selfish instead of selfless. He had gotten impatient and crawled to the top, thinking he could take a peek, just one look at what he would have in a few short days-
And the land had swooped in with a reminder, like the backhanded slaps his father had given him when he’d stolen a cookie before dinner. Remember why you are here and how you got here.
And who made you pay this price.
Oh, he remembered. God help him, yes, he remembered. And that was his personal pain, the agony that seeped the strength from his bones.
He’d been fifteen.
In love with Amelia Wescott, the stable master’s daughter, who’d lived then in a little cottage at the back of the vineyard.
And completely, utterly unaware of the sinister gift that lurked within the vines that curled around the well. He didn’t know when Gerard had found the grapes or if he’d been led here, called by the same siren song that Auguste later used to draw in the others. All he’d seen in those days was his twin brother acting different. Acting odd.
Acting … violent.
Their father, Edmond, ignoring it all. Trying to cultivate the wild vineyard he had purchased less than a year before. Reaping his profits, then turning around to spend them on more. More women to replace the wife he’d lost weeks after they had moved there, as if that could have filled the hole in his heart. More house to hold the things he had bought. More of everything but time for his sons.
One of whom was busy trying to kill the other. While the land, the precious land treasured by Edmond Jumel, helped.
The creature crawled deeper into the depths of his hovel, seeking darkness, escape. But there was no getting away from his memories, not now.
The vines reached out and grabbed him, holding him in place, just as they had all those years ago. The earth rose up and blanketed his body until he became one with the dank, moist, loamy surface below him. The smell invaded his nostrils; particles drifted into his ears, then down his throat, gagging him.
You will remember, Auguste. You must.
Why? he asked-no, begged.
Because this is what you must do to Cooper. It’s time the chosen one took your place.
And so he suffered the agony again, the memory replaying it as real as the day it had happened.
He’d been in the stables, about to mount one of the horses and ride over to Amelia’s house, his mind only on seeing her blue eyes again, holding her to his chest, knowing the sweet taste of her lips. One foot in the stirrup, one leg rising to swing over the saddle, when he’d been yanked back, onto the hard wooden floor of the barn, then out onto the lawn before he could react.
He’d looked up into a face he recognized and eyes he didn’t. “Gerard! What are you doing? Release me!”
Gerard grunted and started to move faster.
Auguste scratched and fought, dug in his heels, tried to twist away, but Gerard kept going, his strength superhuman. They reached the woods, and the fear crawled up Auguste’s throat and escaped in a scream that no one heard. He reached for a tree, held tightly, and then-
Gerard said something Auguste couldn’t understand, and the tree bent down, as if bowing to Gerard’s will, and Auguste’s grip slid off. Gerard started running, not caring that his brother banged along at his feet like a sack of potatoes. Every tree root, every rock Auguste reached for, became as supple as a blade of grass.
“Gerard, stop! Please, I beg of you, stop!”
The odd language continued, and so did his brother’s furious pace. He had become something other than himself, something with a sinister heart. Auguste could feel it telegraphed in the way his brother ran, the sounds he made, the stony determination in his face. Auguste begged, screamed, cried, to no avail.
And then they reached the well.
Gerard dragged Auguste up by the hair, planting him on the ledge like a sacrifice. Auguste twisted to the right, his riding boots digging for purchase against the soft earth, and then he could feel Gerard’s grip loosening, and he thought, Run now, run-
Suddenly the vines that curled around the well began to move and grow, like fingers reaching up. Reaching for him.
He opened his mouth to scream again, but before a sound escaped, the vines leaped forward and pinned him in place. One vine curled its grip around his throat and pressed until his windpipe was nearly flattened. Dots swam in front of his eyes and he knew, he knew …
He was going to die.
“You are the gift,” Gerard whispered in his ear. “The gift he has been waiting for.”
What was Gerard talking about? What did he mean?
“You must stay here, brother, and wait for the next one. He will come, at the ordained time, and then you will be free. This is the price Father paid when he bought the land, and now you, Auguste, must pay it for our family. If you don’t stay here, this land will die. And all who live on it will die, too.”
Auguste’s eyes widened and his heart clenched as tightly as his windpipe.
Gerard nodded. “Yes, even her.”
Amelia.
“You’re insane,” he whispered. But a part of him heard the truth in Gerard’s words. There had been whispers in town among the workers, about why such luscious, profitable grapes grew on this inhospitable land, why the rains fell on these acres and not others. Why the previous owners had had so many years of wealth, but then the old man who lived here had gone insane and sold the land to Edmond for pennies on the dollar. The land was cursed, some said. Blessed, others said.
Magic, his father said.
“No, I’m not.” Gerard shook his head, his eyes shining in the moonlight above. “I’ve drunk from this vine, and I know the truth now. This land has to have its sacrifice to continue giving its gift of riches and life.”
“Sac-sacrifice?” Auguste tried to scramble back, but there was nowhere to go. The vines held fast, held him against the well.
“You, my brother.” Gerard picked up Auguste’s feet and turned his brother around until he was bent over the yawning ink-black cavity of the well. Auguste inhaled a smell unlike any other.
The smell of death.
“This is a gift,” Gerard insisted, just before giving his brother the final shove into the depths of the well. He screamed an apology-a cascade of apologies-but it was too late. The choices had been made. The gift given.
But it was a gift Auguste hadn’t asked for. Or wanted.
One Auguste had now waited two hundred years to give to someone else.
I didn’t bother to sleep after I got home from the police station. When Sam got called to the hospital, I headed into the woods. I shouted down the well several times.
Nothing.
I slept in the abandoned house that night, hoping Megan might show up there, but she never did.
A few minutes before seven the next morning, I sneaked back into the house and up to my room. Just in time for Sam to knock on my door. “I’m driving you to school. You have twenty minutes.”
“Good morning to you, too.” Jerk.
As I got ready, I wondered why he wanted to keep such a tight leash on me. It wasn’t all that unusual for him to be helicopter stepdad, hovering over my every move, but these were different circumstances. He’d come down on me extra hard yesterday when he’d handed me a list of chores that would have kept me too busy to do more than breathe. Why? So I wouldn’t have time to look for Megan?
Did he think I was involved?
Or…
Was he somehow involved?
This was his land, after all. His vineyard. His woods.
Plus, he seemed to hold a special kind of h
atred toward me, one I’d never really understood. I’d always figured it was because he didn’t like the three-for-one package of kids that had come with my mom.
Could he have something to do with that thing in the well? If that was so, then why wasn’t he the one tossing me down there? Why my mother?
That was the part I couldn’t get my head around. Sam didn’t like me and he had these establish-the-dominant-role issues, but he hadn’t done anything homicidal. That had been all my mother’s doing. Still …
The whole thing bugged me.
I slung my backpack over my shoulder and took one last look out the window. Somewhere in those woods was the well. And maybe Megan. One way or another, I was going to find her.
Sam didn’t say a word when I got in the car. He put the Beamer in drive and squealed out of the driveway.
“Where was Mom this morning?” I asked.
“Grocery store.”
“Oh.” We stopped at a light and waited for a pudgy crossing guard to wave some Dora-toting kindergartners across the street. I shifted in my seat and tried to think of a good way to ask the next question. Didn’t find one. So I just opened my mouth and let her fly. “What’s that well in the woods for? Like, water or something?”
Sam had been about to step on the gas. He stomped on the brake instead. The car behind him laid on the horn. “Don’t go near that thing. It’s old. Probably dangerous.”
“It, ah, looks pretty cool.”
“I said don’t go near it. It’s Jumel property.” His voice was harsh, cold. He gunned the car and the Beamer leaped forward, nearly hitting the crossing guard as she stepped off the curb again. She waved her little red stop sign at Sam, but he was already blocks away.
“But-“
Sam swiveled his gaze toward me. “Don’t argue with me, Cooper. Or I’ll be sure you regret it.”
He stared at me, eyes like laser beams of fury. I could have cut the tension in the car with a chain saw.
I put up my hands and sat back. “Cool.”
“Oh, and just so you know, Paolo came back.” Sam cut his gaze to the left as he turned the car.
“Really?”
“I had to fire him for missing all that work, but yeah. He’s fine.”
If that was so, what the hell had been in that hat? Whose skull had that been? If not Paolo’s, whose?
Sam skidded to a stop in front of my school. I got out, but before I could shut the door, he leaned toward me. “I’ll be back to pick you up at the end of the day. You be here. On time.”
“Don’t you have to work?”
A smile curved across his face. “I’m working at home today.” Then he was gone, tires squealing.
That had been weird. Not only was Sam keeping his thumb on me today, but he’d also freaked when I’d mentioned the well. Barred me from going anywhere near the thing. Because he knew about what was in there?
He had to. He’d lived there all his life. If he knew, then did he also know what was going on? And was his warning a way of protecting me-
Or keeping me from finding Megan?
By English class, I still didn’t have a clue. I tossed and turned the encounter around in my mind and got nothing. Sam had a regular raging attitude, so I couldn’t be sure if it was that or if he had something else going on.
I dropped into my seat, plopped my books onto the floor, and propped my feet on Joey’s chair. Joey turned around and stared at me. “What are you doing here, dude?”
I shrugged. “I’m a masochist. I like being beaten up by Shakespeare.”
Joey leaned in closer. “People think you killed her, man. You need to lie low.”
How could people think I had anything to do with Megan’s disappearance? Didn’t they know how I felt about her? How close we’d been for years, even before we’d started dating? Or was I just getting the auto had-to-be-the-boyfriend guilt-by-association thing?
“Joey, I didn’t do anything,” I whispered. “I don’t know where Megan is.”
The rest of the class filed in. People shifted away from me, sitting a row back, a row ahead. Whispers started, carrying around the room like a wave. Drue Macy glared at me and huddled in a corner with her female coven.
Mike hurried in just before the bell rang and slid into the chair beside mine. “Coop, you can tell me. Did you do it?”
“No! What is wrong with you guys?”
Mike shrugged. “Hey, I’m just going by what my dad said. Plus, it’s all over school.”
“Whatever is `all over school,”’ I parroted back with air quotes, “is not true. I had nothing to do with Megan’s disappearance.
But I was lying. To them. To myself. I was the whole reason she was gone. I’d been the one to knock on her door Sunday afternoon. I’d been the one to ask her for help. I’d let her go with me to that well.
If I’d just kept my mouth shut-
She’d be sitting here right now, and none of this would be happening.
I shifted in my seat. Wished the day was over already so I could duck out of here and get back to the only thing that mattered: finding Megan.
“Sorry, Coop,” Mike said after a while. “I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’d never do anything to Megan. Forget my dad, too. He’s a jerk.”
“Thanks.” It felt good to have someone in my corner. Behind me, the Drue witch-hunt kept up its whispering and pointing. Probably plotting a way to hang me after lunch.
“Plus, I know what it’s like to have people think crap about you that you don’t have any control over,” said Mike. His face was as serious as a judge’s for a second, and I knew he was talking about his father. Then Joey turned around, and Mike slipped on the goofy grin again. “Yo, moron. What do you call a blonde with a brain?”
“An endangered species?” Joey said, then laughed.
“Mr. Ring,” my father thundered, glaring at Mike. “And Mr. Deluca. Do you two have something you’d like to share with the class?”
“Uh … no.” Joey slinked down in his seat as if he could disappear.
“Good. Then open up to act five, scene one.”
A mass groan ran through the class. “We’re still reading this play?” Joey asked. “Why doesn’t Hamlet kill himself already?”
“Because he wants to torture you just a little more, Mr. Deluca,” my father deadpanned. “Why don’t you read the part of First Clown?”
“Do I get to beep my nose?”
My father ignored him and assigned the other parts. Mike as Second Clown, Richard Evard as Horatio, andsurprise, surprise-me as Hamlet. I vowed never to speak up in my father’s class ever again.
I tuned everything out while people started reading their lines. My gaze went to the window, my mind on the woods two miles away. I didn’t even notice it was my turn until my father said, “Enter Hamlet,” twice.
“Sorry.” I cleared my throat, flipped forward a couple pages, and started to read. I was cool, until I got to the part where Hamlet picks up the skull.
Then I was back in the woods, holding that other skull, the one that could have been Paolo’s. But it wasn’t, if Sam was telling the truth. The words swam in front of my eyes, and it took a good thirty seconds before I could get my mouth moving again. “That skull had a tongue in it,” I read, “and could sing once! how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?”
Images of Paolo sprang to mind, of his crooked smile and his hat-
Oh God, that hat-
I looked down at my desk, relieved nothing green was marching across the top. I needed to get out of here. I swore, this day was never going to end.
Richard sat up in his chair and straightened his glasses. “It might, my lord.” I read the response line, something about a courtier that I didn’t get. I read more lines with words like chapless and mazzard that made no sense, my mind on Megan. We went on like that,
with me tuning out for several minutes, until Joey piped up with a First Clown line again.
“One that was a woman, sir,” he said, pausing to turn and look over his shoulder at me. “But, rest her soul, she’s dead.”
Several people started whispering. A few snickered. Drue let out a gasp.
I wanted to sink into the floor. But my father stood at the front of the classroom, looking at me and waiting for the next line. His face had that pinched look, as if he’d started this and wished he hadn’t. Yeah, thanks, Dad. I did my part and tried to ignore everyone, ending with the line that asks the clown how long he’d been a grave maker.
But it got worse.
The clown, a.k.a. Joey, started in on lines about why Hamlet had been sent away by his mother and stepfather. “Why, because a’ was mad,” Joey said, then added a little cackling laugh. “A’ shall recover his wits there; or if a’ do not, ‘tis no great matter here.”
A few more lines, and then we were back to dead bodies, with me reading a piece asking the clown how long it took a man to rot. Not long, I wanted to say, when there was a flesh-eating creature waiting to lick its bones clean.
Then I was holding another imaginary skull, this time of Hamlet’s court jester, Yorick. But in my head, I was seeing Paolo’s skull again, and my deepest fears were telling me in a few days I might be seeing Megan’s skull, and no way could I take that. I was reading, and trying to hold on to my sanity, until I got to “Here hung those lips I have kissed I know not how oft.”
That was it. My breaking point. My throat cut off. I shook my head.
The whole class went silent. Waiting for me to belt out a confession? For me to break down crying? I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
Then I heard it. The laughter, carrying on the breeze coming through the open window. Better hurry, Cooper. Megan misses you. I think she’s been crying.
Megan-alive? At first I was excited, and then dread hit when I realized what that voice meant-and where she had to be.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up.
My father was there. He gave me a single nod. “I think that’s enough Hamlet for today. Take out your grammar books, please.”
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