Taking a deep breath, Teddy pushed the door. It squeaked open, and he grimaced as a dry heat wafted out. It seemed hotter in the trailer than it was outside in the sun.
“Hello?” he called just to be sure nobody was home. When he again received no answer, he took another deep breath and slipped inside.
It was stuffy in the trailer, and all of the blinds were closed. The only furniture in the front room was a ratty old couch—the sort that looked like it would have stale corn chips buried in the cushions. It sat across from an old big-screen TV that took up an entire wall.
Teddy gave the room a long look. He still wasn’t sure what he was searching for, but felt he’d know it when he saw it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t in the front room.
“Hello? Mr. Mulligan?” Teddy called again. The place was small—he could see all the way to the other end. It would only take a few more steps to get a quick peek in the other rooms, so he started down the short hallway to the back of the trailer.
The bedroom on the left had a pair of long, narrow work boots sitting on the floor—clearly not a kid’s shoes—so Teddy continued down the hall. He walked nervously past two doors, one of which opened into a bathroom. The other was a utility closet.
When he reached the final room at the rear, he looked around, puzzled. It seemed to be an office, and there was no kid’s bedroom.
Actually, the office was no more than a room with a dresser that had a stack of papers piled on top and a cheap folding chair in front of it. But it occurred to Teddy that there still might be clues here.
Every dad has photo albums, he thought. And in such a small trailer, any albums with pictures of Mulligan’s son would have to be in this room.
Teddy started with the top drawer. There he found an old, rusty folding knife and a tattered junior-high yearbook from 1980 sitting in a cardboard box. He picked up the knife and turned it over, examining the blade. Albert had said Henry carried a knife, but the one Teddy held looked far too old.
Next, he took the yearbook out and flipped through each grade to find Mr. Mulligan’s teenage photo from three decades ago. It turned up in the eighth-grade section. Teddy expected that Mr. Mulligan’s picture would look a bit like the boy he’d hit with the rock at the river.
But Teddy was wrong—the photo looked exactly like him.
Henry Mulligan’s sneering face was surrounded by long, stringy hair and marred by exactly the same acne. He was even wearing the same muscle shirt. A chill ran up Teddy’s spine as he remembered how the forty-year-old repairman had a pockmarked complexion and an old scar above his green eyes.
As Teddy’s heart raced, the yearbook shook in his nervous hands. He’d come looking for answers and he’d found one, but not one anyone could believe, even him. The boy he’d hit with a rock and his repairman were the same person!
He picked up Mulligan’s rusty knife again, and with an ache in the pit of his stomach, he realized that it was the same knife the young bully had used to terrorize kids thirty years ago.
Then Teddy had an even more disturbing thought.
He turned back to the seventh-graders in the thirty-year-old yearbook. By now he had a creeping feeling that he should get out of the trailer soon, but he had to check one last thing.
On page ten in the seventh-grade section, he found what he was looking for. A chubby boy in the first row of the old photos grinned up at him with a familiar squinchyeyed smile.
It was Albert Barker.
CHAPTER 13
At first, Teddy refused to believe it. But there was a memorial page for Albert, the kind schools include in the back of the yearbook when a student dies during the year. It named his favorite movie as Star Wars, and it had pictures of him goofing around at the school in his old bell-bottom jeans. There was also a short, photocopied newspaper article listing him as missing.
On the facing page there was a photo of a ceremony at the cemetery Teddy and his mom had passed coming into town. It showed a row of stone markers, one of them with Albert’s name on it and flowers on the ground below.
As Teddy stared at the picture, still in disbelief, he heard the unmistakable crunching sound of tires on gravel outside. He ran for the door, but it was too late.
An old Ford pickup rolled to a stop directly in front of the porch. Through the window in the front door, Teddy saw Henry Mulligan step out of the truck. It was the same Henry he’d hit two days earlier with a rock, only grown up—the same man who’d found tree roots in his air conditioner’s pipes.
Henry stomped toward the front porch, but stopped when he saw the bicycle in his yard. He frowned and took a shiny new folding knife out of his pocket. With a quick flick of his wrist, he flipped open the blade. “Someone there?” he called as he stepped up onto the porch. “Somebody’s gonna get stuck if they ain’t careful,” he added.
His heart pounding, Teddy ducked into the coat closet, hoping that Henry would pass by so he could make a run for it. As he heard Henry enter the trailer, he realized he was still holding Henry’s rusty old knife. He couldn’t drop it, for fear it would make a sound, so he stuffed it in his pocket. But as he did, it hit the hard plastic nozzle of the little weed killer bottle and made a clicking sound.
“Aha!” Henry said, and he grabbed the handle of the closet door.
Teddy didn’t have a plan, but he was dead certain he was about to be stabbed. So when the door flew open he did the only thing he could think to do—he sprayed weed killer in Henry Mulligan’s face.
CHAPTER 14
It didn’t take long to reach the cemetery. It was only a mile up the road from Desert Oasis, and Teddy’s adrenalin was pumping.
I’ve taken on the town bully twice, he thought as he pedaled. And I survived both times.
But he didn’t feel proud—just terrified and a bit guilty. Fortunately, Henry Mulligan hadn’t gotten a good look at him. Teddy was sure of that. Henry had gone straight to the floor with his hands over his eyes, yelling, “Whoever you are, you’re dead!”
As Teddy rode through the cemetery gates, he looked for the row of lonely headstones he saw in the ceremony photo in the yearbook. He was pretty sure he could recognize it, because he’d noticed there were no spaces in front of the stones for graves—they were missing persons memorials only.
He found the distinctively narrow row near the back of the lot. Names were carved in the face of the granite monuments along with the dates each person was born and disappeared.
Teddy walked his bike along the row, looking for Albert’s stone. Most of the missing were adults, so the dates on one stone caught Teddy’s eye:LAWRENCE COX 1948-1960
Lawrence Cox had been twelve years old when he’d gone missing. Just like Teddy.
As he continued along the row, Teddy paid more attention to the dates. He was surprised to find two more twelve-year-olds.
OLIVER STRAND 1988-2000
JOEY LANDI 1978-1990
Not only were all three of the kids twelve, they were all boys like him. Teddy glanced over his shoulder nervously, suddenly wondering if it was a good idea to be wandering alone in the graveyard. He looked around for threatening trees, but all he saw were rows of small, well-trimmed saplings.
Teddy quickly moved on, and, a few steps later, he found what he was looking for:ALBERT BARKER 1968-1980
As he feared, Albert was also twelve years old when he disappeared thirty years ago—exactly the age he’d appeared to be when Teddy met him by the river just two days earlier.
For a full minute, Teddy stood motionless in front of the stone, his logic struggling with the clues in front of him, arguing against the impossible conclusions they led to. Then he glanced to his left at the next stone over:WALTER FICK 1958-1970
Teddy knelt down beside it and ran his hand across the carved surface. He hadn’t known the last name of the crazy boy named Walter he’d met at the construction site, but now he had the queasy feeling that it must have been Fick. And according to the stone, twelve-year-old Walter Fick had disappeared forty
years ago, the year Lynwood Court was built and exactly ten years before Albert.
There were a few more stones Teddy hadn’t seen yet. He almost didn’t want to look, but he needed to see if there was one more name that he knew.
He found it at the end of the row, an old, weather-beaten rock with the name chipped out. Its ragged inscription read:EUGENE SLOOT 1938-1950
In the quiet of the cemetery, Teddy whispered the one conclusion even his logic couldn’t deny: “I’ve been hanging out with dead boys.”
CHAPTER 15
As Teddy biked home, he tried to sort through the nightmarish clues he’d uncovered. The boys’ memorial stones were scattered at random among other names and different ages, but the pattern was clear: Each boy had been twelve years old when he went missing, and the boys had vanished at ten-year intervals.
This last realization made Teddy skid to a stop in the middle of the street as he was struck by a horrific theory. He himself had been born in 1998, and it was now 2010—he was twelve, and it had been exactly ten years since the last disappearance.
I’m next, he thought.
When Teddy arrived home, dripping sweat from the heat and the terror of his discovery, his mom met him at the back door. He almost started to tell her everything he’d found out, but she spoke first.
“Teddy, there’s a police officer here.”
Teddy froze. “What for?” he replied as though it shouldn’t mean anything to him.
“He said you might know,” his mother continued, sounding suspicious. “Come with me.”
Teddy followed his mom through the house to the foyer, where he peeked out from behind her. There on the porch stood Officer Barnes.
“Hello, Teddy. How are you?” Barnes smiled. Even though it was one hundred degrees outside, he was wearing his dark blue shirt and long blue pants.
“Hot,” Teddy replied.
“And it might get hotter too,” Barnes said, pulling out his notebook. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“About what?”
“I mentioned to your mom that we met over at Lynwood Court yesterday. Told her it was no big deal and how, being new in town, you had just gotten lost.”
“Thanks,” Teddy answered, unsure of what else to say.
“But now I’d like to talk about the Desert Oasis trailer park. You know the place?”
“It’s on the way into town, right?” Teddy’s mom chimed in.
Barnes grimaced. “I actually wanted to know if Teddy knew. You been up there lately, Teddy?”
Teddy didn’t want to lie. “I was at the cemetery near there, if that’s what you mean.”
His mom cocked her head in surprise.
“A man in the park described a blue bicycle near his trailer, a bike a lot like the one I’ve seen you riding. His name is Mulligan. You know him?”
“That sounds familiar,” Teddy’s mom interrupted. “Wasn’t that the name of the air-conditioner repairman?”
Barnes groaned. “I really want to hear this from Teddy, Ms. Matthews,” he said. “Is that your repairman, Teddy?”
“Yeah, I think that was his name.”
“Okay,” Barnes said, scribbling in his book. “Any reason for you to be at his trailer? Maybe you wanted to talk to him? Possibly checked inside to see if he was home?”
Teddy didn’t take the bait. “No. No good reason.”
Barnes turned to his mom. “Is Teddy unsupervised all day, Ms. Matthews?” he asked.
“He’s a good boy,” she replied quickly. Teddy could tell she didn’t like the question.
“All right,” Barnes said amiably. “Just looking for witnesses. Mr. Mulligan was assaulted by someone he found in his trailer. He didn’t get a good look at the guy, but thought he was young. He said that the suspect had rummaged his office and that he was missing a knife he’d had since he was a teenager.”
Teddy stiffened, realizing that Mulligan’s old knife was still in his pocket.
“Teddy doesn’t carry knives,” his mom said.
“Assault during the course of a burglary is very serious,” Barnes continued, “so we’re investigating. But Mr. Mulligan is not the most reliable person I know, either.” Barnes snapped his notebook closed. “He could have gotten it wrong.”
“Is that all?” Teddy’s mom asked.
“Can I talk to Teddy privately for a moment?” Barnes requested.
She looked at Teddy, and he nodded that it was okay. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she said, and she went into the house.
Barnes walked Teddy down to his patrol car. “I checked on that name you mentioned—Walter. A boy named Walter Fick went missing in 1970, which matches up with the date that Lynwood Court was a construction zone.”
“How do you know that?”
“Investigation. I’m a policeman, remember? But Walter was supposed to have disappeared near Davidson Avenue.”
“No, it was at the building site,” Teddy said before he could stop himself.
“Well, that’s unlikely,” Barnes said. “But interesting.”
“What do you know about Albert Barker or Eugene Sloot?” Teddy blurted out.
Barnes quickly noted the names in his book. “Nothing yet,” he said, “but I will.” He opened the patrol car door, slid inside, and began entering the names into a portable computer. “You’re a curious kid, aren’t you?”
“Not usually,” Teddy replied.
“I don’t know what to make of you, Teddy,” Barnes continued as he tapped away on the computer. “You’re new in town, you seem nice, but both times I’ve run into you, you’ve been involved in something . . . odd.” He finished typing. “Okay, here’s Eugene Sloot. Old case—not much on him.”
“He went up the tree next door and never came down,” Teddy said.
“Wow. You’re right about it being next door. But it says his father reported that he ran away.”
“Maybe that’s where he ran.”
“It’s not likely he’s been up there for sixty years. Tell me more about Albert Barker,” Barnes said, clicking the computer to another screen.
“He went into the river.”
Barnes pulled up computer images of Albert’s old file. “Whoa. Sorry, Teddy. It says Albert was at a movie the day he vanished. He disappeared from the Uptown Theater.”
“No, he didn’t. He went to the river on his bike.”
“I just pulled the old report. His mother told police he would never have missed that movie—he went to see it the first day it came out.”
“The Empire Strikes Back?” Teddy asked.
Barnes looked at Teddy and raised an eyebrow. “That’s right. How’d you know?”
“He loved Star Wars, and Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, the year he disappeared.”
“That doesn’t explain why he’d be at the river.”
“He might miss a movie if he got chased off by bullies,” Teddy continued. “Were there any witnesses that saw him inside the theater that day?”
Barnes carefully jotted down notes in his book as Teddy spoke. “The river, eh? They never checked down there.”
“Maybe that’s why they didn’t find him,” Teddy said.
“Okay, then. Why would he be in the river?”
“What if the bully followed him and he got scared? And what if he jumped in to get away because maybe a bully wouldn’t follow him into the water?”
“That’s a lot of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes.’ You got a name for your theoretical bully?” Barnes held his pen ready.
Teddy hesitated. He couldn’t say it. Barnes already suspected he’d broken into Mulligan’s trailer, and he probably didn’t need much more to make an arrest. “You don’t believe any of this anyway,” Teddy said.
Barnes looked Teddy straight in the eye. “Help me believe, Teddy.”
“Did you notice that those boys were all twelve and disappeared exactly at the end of a decade?”
Barnes turned back to his computer and checked the screen, then double-check
ed as he scratched his chin in thought. “Nobody has ever connected these disappearances. What are you onto here?”
“I don’t know,” Teddy sighed.
“Neither do I. Kids go missing all the time, and it’s probably nothing more than an extremely disturbing coincidence. But I’m interested. What else can you tell me?”
“I can tell you that I’m twelve, and it’s the end of the decade right now.”
“I see,” Barnes said. “Anything else?”
Teddy thought hard. It was tempting to keep talking, to tell Barnes everything, but what could he say? That he stole a knife from the bully he’d hit with a rock thirty years ago? That a tree tried to devour him?
He glanced at the sycamore above them, suddenly afraid that it was listening. “No,” he mumbled.
“Tell you what,” Barnes said as he leaned out of the car to hand Teddy a business card. “I’m going to go do some more poking around. If you think of anything else, anything at all, don’t hesitate to call my cell phone, instead of nine-one-one, okay?”
“Okay.
“And whatever you do, stay out of other people’s houses.”
But Teddy wasn’t listening anymore. Mulligan’s house was where I found all of the clues, he realized. He looked past the sycamore at the A-house, then back at the tree. It almost seemed like the tree was standing guard. Like it wants to keep me away from the house, he thought.
“Teddy?” Barnes said, snapping his fingers. “Did you hear me?”
“Right,” Teddy said, nodding and giving Barnes the fake smile he’d learned from his mother. “Stay out of other houses.”
CHAPTER 16
Once his mom went to bed that night, Teddy snuck out the front door with a backpack full of equipment for his journey into the A-house.
Mulligan’s knife was still in his pocket, while his pack held the hatchet and weed killer from the garage and a crowbar to pry his way into the A-house. He packed a portable 500-watt halogen light capable of illuminating entire rooms in the dark home, and, to be safe, a smaller flashlight. A compass and a cell phone seemed like good ideas too, as did a few granola bars. Finally, Teddy threw in a long rope— he hadn’t forgotten his harrowing fall from the tall tree.
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