“ . . . see anything?”
“I can see enough to know they didn’t jump down into that gully.
Prob’ly they took to the woods.”
“We could get the dogs.”
“I don’t know. Sheriff said the girl was from the Dream Center.
That means no shoes, unless she got some someplace, and no shoes means no woods.”
“She still coulda gone in the woods without shoes.”
“Yeah, and she’d a poked her foot on a stick or gotten a sand burr and we’da heard her boo-hooin’ by now.”
Under the bridge, Christine frowns and wrinkles her nose at this assessment of her character.
Caleb smiles at her.
“Where’d they go then?” the voices continue. “Maybe they took off down the street?”
A new voice enters the conversation now, this one deeper. Caleb thinks this is the sheriff, but he can’t be sure:
“They’re under this here bridge.”
It’s a statement of dead certainty. Caleb’s heart sinks.
“I dunno . . . ”
“That’s right, ya don’t,” says the sheriff, “but I do.”
“Maybe we should call and ask him.”
The voices are silent for a minute. Caleb and Christine look at each other. Even though the night is warm, she’s shivering. Caleb puts his arms around her and pulls her to him. She keeps shivering, however, as the voices resume.
“He doesn’t much like to be disturbed.”
“He won’t like that we lost them either.”
“Yer right there.”
“Shut up now and let me think,” the deep voice says.
A moment passes, then one of the other voices says: “Look at those rocks down there. No way they’d have jumped. That’s a sure way to bust an ankle.”
“Shut up,” the deep voice repeats. The other two comply.
Caleb is getting antsy. Panic grips him. If they don’t get out soon, they might not get out at all. The certainty of that thought almost knocks the wind out of him. He looks at Christine. She nods. She knows it too.
From above, there are voices too quiet to be heard, then:
“Shine your light on that side. You shine yours under there. They come out either side, you shoot. Got it?”
Grumbles of reply, and a ray of light reappears just in front of Caleb and Christine along with a twin at the far end of the bridge’s shadow.
They look at each other, and Christine’s eyes say:
This isn’t good. What do we do?
There’s a scrambling sound at the far side of the bridge, and suddenly it’s too late to make a plan, too late to escape.
First one sleepwalker leaps down to the riverbed from above, landing as gracefully as a puma. Another follows, then another. They walk abreast, slowly. Because there’s no hurry. If Caleb and Christine step out from under the bridge, they’ll be shot. If not, the sleepwalkers will have them.
“Caleb . . . ” whispers Christine.
“I’m thinking.”
What do we do . . . ? Maybe the cops aren’t great shots, he thinks.
Maybe we make a break for it.
The deep voice from above comes booming:
“I’m three-time national shooting champion with the .38 revolver, kids, just in case yer wondering.”
As if Caleb had spoken aloud.
The sleepwalkers come.
Caleb yanks Christine to him by the arm, so hard she nearly falls over, cups his hand to her ear, and whispers. “What I’m about to say, we have to do now. No arguments, no second thoughts. You run past the sleepers to the right. I’ll hold them back for as long as I can.
There’s only one cop on that side of the bridge, I’m pretty sure the sheriff and the other one are over here. Come out from under the bridge like you’re one of them, slowly. When you’ve gone like fifteen steps, sprint down the riverbed, and I’ll have your back. Go!”
He gives her a little push.
“But,” she says, her eyes pleading.
“GO!” he says, and she does.
It’s a play right out of backyard football, and not a very inventive one either. Christine streaks to the river’s edge, where dry sand pokes up in enough places to allow real running, and she takes off toward the far side of the bridge. Caleb runs along next to her as her blocker.
Though their eyes are closed, the sleepers turn toward them like plants to sunlight, all three at once. The nearest one springs at them, but is caught up in the deeper water and slows just enough to allow them past. The second one finds footing on a dry rock and makes a much more effective lunge. Just as it leaps, Caleb sees a piece of driftwood protruding from the water so close it’s almost in his hand. He snatches it up and swings it all in one motion. If the stick were stuck in the mud, things might have worked out quite differently, but as it happens, Caleb pulls it free at just in time and catches the creature (this one a handsome boy of about seventeen) just under the left side of his jaw. The stick snaps, but the force knocks the sleepwalker off balance and back into the water. Caleb looks up and sees Christine. She’s made it almost to the far side of the bridge.
A voice from above: “What’s going on down there?”
Someone answers, but Caleb can’t tell who.
The final sleepwalker has made it onto a sandbar and is racing across it, straight for Christine. Caleb feels sick to his stomach suddenly. She’s not going to make it. Caleb’s bogged down in water, and as hard as he pushes his legs, his speed is no match for the preternatural thing now that it’s running on dry land.
And then he sees it. Maybe his eyes finally adjust to the dark or maybe it’s something else, but he finally sees the path and he goes. He springs ahead on a series of dry rocks, and then he’s on a sandbar of his own. It intersects with the sandbar on which the sleepwalker runs, fast approaching Christine.
If he can just make it . . .
His legs pump ferociously, but he knows he can’t possibly get there in time; the thing is still too fast.
But somehow, he finds a burst of speed, and just as Christine reaches the line where the river runs into the moonlight, Caleb tackles the sleepwalker from behind with all his force. He clearly hears the crunch as one of the thing’s bones breaks, and they both tumble into the water.
In the next instant, Caleb is on his feet, desperate to rejoin the world from the half death of submersion. For a terrifying instant, he can’t hear, he can’t see. And then he can, and he smiles at the sight:
Christine is walking out the other side of the bridge slowly, like a sleepwalker, like one of them.
“What’s happening on your side?” a voice comes from the far side of the bridge, and from the near side, the one Christine is walking out from, he hears:
“Nothing, all I can see is one of ours.”
Caleb smiles. It’s working.
His smile abruptly fades, however, because the other two sleepers are coming for him, and they look pissed.
He widens his stance. They may take him, but they won’t catch her. He’ll make sure of that; or die trying.
Both sleepwalkers are on the sandbar now, walking, creeping, slowly. One is the handsome one. The other is shorter. Something about him looks familiar, but under the dark of the bridge . . .
Suddenly, he glances over, afraid that the third one might be pursuing Christine. Instead, he sees it floating in the water in a halo of blood. Head must’ve struck a rock on the way down. Caleb bites his lip. That one was a girl.
Now, the others are on him. The closer of the two lunges and grabs his injured arm. Suddenly Caleb’s whole body feels hot as his fractured wrist is wrenched in the tight grip. He punches the thing with all his might with the other hand, and manages to open a gash on its face. But the blows don’t slow it at all. If the demon even registers pain, it’s going to take a lot more than that to phase it. And speaking of pain—now it twists his arm even harder. Tears come to Caleb’s eyes despite his effort to squelch them, and he’s f
orced to his knees.
The other one brushes past Caleb to pursue Christine, but he manages to free himself just enough to kick its legs out from under it. The boy/monster turns back to him, silhouetted against the moonlit creek, and grabs him by the neck with a grip of steel. The other one grabs both his arms and pulls them behind him so hard he knows for sure that his shoulder tendons are ripping. He fights his best, but they slowly drag him into deeper water. He knows this is the end, but his only thoughts are of Christine.
A loud splashing then the sound of swift footfalls means she’s making her break. God, help her.
Voices above: “Shit, I thought this one was one of ours, but I think it was the girl.”
“Then shoot it, ya imbecile, shoot!”
And gunfire does ring out, but Caleb is able to see out of the corner of his eye that the shots are just harmless blips in the water, all falling short.
Run, he thinks, run fast.
Then he’s under.
Water rushing past, cold, pulling him downstream toward Christine. The cold is wicking his will to fight, but he still does, and his foot finds a rock to push against on the muddy, slippery bottom, and for a second he surfaces, and the moonlight is just right for him to see what he had missed before, or denied before, the familiar one, the one who’s killing him is— “Bean?”
The sleeping face is a mask of stillness, but hands are busy pushing him back under.
Into the pull of the current. Into the dark.
And this time there’s nothing to push up against. His feet rake helplessly against the slick, black mud. The water steals his breath.
This really is the end.
He jerks his head back and forth, fights with his whole body to wriggle out of those hands.
And somehow, he does.
He surfaces.
“BEAN!” he screams with his only breath, his last breath, before he’s under again.
And now he barely fights, because he can’t. All his effort has been consolidated into one primal scream in the center of his brain. A silent scream. The one that comes from gaping mouths in hospital beds. The last scream, the one that nobody hears but God. Then the scream spreads, and it’s coming from every cell in his body.
I’m dying.
I’m dying.
I’m dying.
And with the last trickle of breath in his lungs, the breath that might have kept him alive an instant longer, he sighs the word:
“Bean.”
But the sound is just a gurgle.
Now there’s just the cold.
But something’s different. Something’s changed.
In the all-encompassing, maddening tingling of his body, the sense of touch is a foreign language. But he can feel enough to know that the hands aren’t on him anymore.
And he pushes against the mud bottom with quivering arms, into the world of sound, into the world of light. And in that world, against the backdrop of the moonlit river, he sees two gowned figures, struggling. One has the other pinned to the ground, and as Caleb fights to get to his feet, he sees the figure on top groping with one free hand. The free hand finds a large rock. The figure rears back. The rock hangs in the air for an instant, held aloft, then comes down like a hammer. And the struggle is over.
Caleb approaches. His whole body is quivering. He doesn’t know how close he came to dying, but he knows if he has to fight again, he will fail. He skirts the figure, the victor—for the other is now limp, and even in the scant light Caleb can see the crater where his face used to be. He walks around until the moonlight falls right, illuminating the victorious sleepwalker’s face, so he can be certain.
“Bean,” he says, his voice tremulous.
Bean smiles big, and lets out a laugh that turns into a rattling cough.
“I was having the nicest dream, before you woke me up a minute ago. I was back home, and . . . surfing. At sunset. Nobody else was out there, just me and the seagulls.”
Bean rises from the body of the sleepwalker on which he was kneeling, blinking tears away from his good eye, and lets the rock fall out of his hand.
“Come here,” he says.
Caleb does.
Bean reaches over and touches his face. “I’m not gay or anything,” he says. “I just want to make sure it’s really you. I’m blind as a freakin’ bat, man.”
“It’s me,” says Caleb.
Bean nods. “Now take off your shirt.”
“What?” Caleb says.
“Take it off, you homophobic bastard. We don’t have time. Take it off.”
Caleb does.
“Give it to me.”
Bean puts the shirt on over his robe.
“Look, Caleb,” he says, “one thing I wanted to tell you. I don’t really think your idea of going to Africa is stupid. I think it’s . . . it’s pretty cool of you.”
“Thanks,” says Caleb, but his mind is on other things, like why Bean wanted his shirt, like what’s going on, “What—?”
“Now point me toward the side of the bridge. Not the way Christine went, the other way.”
“Why?” says Caleb. “And if you were just dreaming, how do you know Christine is here? And if you’re blind—”
“There’s no time to explain, man,” says Bean, with a small, sad shake of his head. “I’m handicapped now, you gotta do what I say, now point me.”
Caleb does.
“Now go help Christine,” Bean says, and he takes off running.
“What?” says Caleb. Maybe the near drowning deprived his brain of oxygen because he has no idea what’s going on.
“GO!” yells Bean over his shoulder. He trips over a rock, going ass-over-teakettle into the water, then he’s back on his feet, still sprinting recklessly.
Grudgingly, Caleb obeys. He jogs in the opposite direction, in the direction Christine disappeared, but he keeps looking back at Bean. He’s about to cross into the moonlight when the first shots ring out.
The deep voice above: “The boy’s on this side. Forget the girl, we’ll get her later.”
Caleb looks over his shoulder.
He sees a nightscape, black shadow with blue water and rocks, and beyond the bridge he sees Bean take the first shot and keep running for a few yards until the second one hits him, then the third, then the fourth.
Caleb stops dead in his tracks. He can’t leave Bean again! He has to help him, has to do something.
Shots sound again and again. Bean is on his knees. Bean is dying, again.
Caleb takes two splashing steps toward his fallen friend, horror and sadness lashing through his heart.
But it’s already too late to help him, and Caleb knows it. Bean is dying, and if Caleb doesn’t get away, he’ll have died for nothing.
He knows what he has to do. Now he’s running, but not toward Bean. He breaks into the moonlight on a sandy part of the bank and runs at full stride, not looking back, not slowing, just flying.
If Bean dies, it won’t be for nothing, he swears it.
After a while the gunshots stop, but the pounding of his footfalls beats on.
Chapter Fifteen
IN A THICK PATCH OF FOREST perhaps fifty feet behind the trailer that serves as Hudsonville’s sheriff ’s office sits a squat, cinderblock building. There is no sign on the door and there are no windows. The exterior was painted a nauseating green color once, but the paint has all but peeled off by now, exposing the dreary gray of the block beneath. Inside, Janet Faris, the deputy with the big hair, is watching Wheel of Fortune. She likes Wheel of Fortune because it makes her feel smart. Right now, she’s way smarter than this jackass on the screen, some accountant from Utah.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover!” Janet shouts. “Don’t judge a book by its cover! Don’t judge a—”
And the smattering of pixels on the TV says: “Uh, I’d like to buy a vowel.”
“Aaaw, you’re stupid! He is so stupid, isn’t he? I had that one! I had it! It’s going to be ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ you jus
t wait and see.”
“I bet you’re right,” says Ron Bent from where he’s pacing behind the steel bars.
Getting himself behind bars is one of the few things he seems to be very good at indeed.
“You’re a smart gal, Janet, no doubt about it,” he says. “Almost as smart as you are pretty.”
Janet turns to him, batting her eyelashes. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Ron. You ever heard that?”
“I guess I have.”
“Never a truer word spoken,” she says.
The building is lit by a single flickering neon light. The only other illumination is the uncertain glow of the television. Maybe it’s something about the shifting light, or the smell of the place—or maybe it’s something else altogether, but Ron’s stomach is in a knot. He could puke at any second. And Ron Bent is prone to a lot of things, but getting sick isn’t one of them. He has to get out of here. Now.
Lord,
I feel you calling me;
I feel it so much it hurts.
I don’t know what I can do
For that boy they kidnapped,
But I know I should be doing something.
I’ve always felt I should be doing something,
And I know we’re getting close
To the secret,
And to Keisha.
Use me.
Wield me like a sword if that’s your will.
I want to be worth something to you,
Finally.
I want to do something right.
Work through me.
Get me out.
Show me the way,
And I’ll follow.
“Awww,” bawls Janet. “I should be on this show! You hear all these nincompoops! I’m smarter than all of them combined!”
“I noticed that right off,” Ron says.
He looks at Janet sitting there a few yards away squinting at Pat Sajak and wonders how many hours this relic of a woman has spent just like that: reclined in that chair, talking to the TV all by herself, alone, forgotten. And maybe, just maybe, he sees a path. It’s not a glorious path, not at all, but it just might lead out of here.
“Forgive me for saying so, but I don’t think that old boss of yours knows just how smart you are either.”
“You’re damned right about that,” she says, watching a commercial for hairspray. “I been working here for seven years, and he only lets me answer phones and guard the prisoners. That’s it. I went through training. I could be doing a lot of crimnal investigations.”
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