“But go where? How do I get out?”
“I dunno. Where you came in, maybe?”
“Come with me,” Teddy pleaded.
Albert smiled. “You go. This time I’ll try to hold them off, buddy.” He stooped and picked up a rock. “You’re almost out of time,” Albert said, watching the branch in the river out of the corner of his eye.
“I’m staying,” Teddy said defiantly.
Albert threw the rock. It sailed into the water and hit the branch.
Teddy cringed as he saw the branch writhe, at first curling up like an injured snake, then exposing more of its length, twisting up from under the water. It was huge, and there were more arms than just the one that crawled to the shore.
“A few seconds,” Albert said. “That’s all the time I can buy you.”
Watching the water churn, Teddy saw dozens of grasping wooden claws erupt from the surface of the river. They stretched out like tentacles, reaching for him and Albert.
Teddy turned to flee, grabbing Albert to drag him along. At first he thought Albert was resisting him, but then he saw that his companion was actually being pulled into the river by the spindly wooden hands. Within seconds, his feet and thick calves were submerged.
“I don’t want you to see this,” Albert moaned.
As Albert slid into the water, the skin on his arms and legs began to contort and bloat. His face turned purple as the woody fingers of the serpentine branches slid up over his shoulders to pull him down. He fought to keep his head above the water, but it didn’t matter—he was drowning before Teddy’s eyes, just as he had thirty years ago.
A wet gurgle erupted from his swollen mouth.
“Go-oooo!”
Horrified, Teddy turned and ran.
CHAPTER 26
As Teddy fought his way through the wind, he felt a dull ache in the pit of his stomach. Watching Albert drown was perhaps the worst thing he’d ever seen. He felt awful leaving him, and he had to remind himself that the chubby boy was part of the reason he was here. Still, the image of his swollen face replayed in his head, over and over.
But Albert was gone, and Teddy again forced himself to focus on his own escape. If his theory was correct that the geography here mirrored Richland, the A-house and the window back to the real world would be downriver from Walter’s construction site and inland less than a mile.
But the sandstorm was growing stronger, pushing him sideways as he trudged on. He tasted grit on his tongue and felt it in his ears.
After a few minutes in the blinding dust, he wasn’t sure he was going straight anymore. With nothing in sight for reference, he wondered if he was actually wandering farther from the window rather than closer. He was also getting tired.
He stopped for a moment and shielded his eyes from the hot, stinging sand. He desperately needed to rest and gather his strength. But as he stood there, a huge tumbleweed broadsided him, lashing his skin with thorns and tossing him head over heels.
He landed flat on the ground, and sand immediately began pouring over his face and limbs as though it was trying to bury him. Teddy fought to his knees and crawled forward, feeling for any kind of protection from the howling wind and sand.
It seemed hopeless until Teddy felt a hard, downward-sloping surface beneath him. He scooted forward and slid down into a concrete ditch about two feet deep with a flat bottom.
Thankfully, he was out of the wind, and the dust seemed to be mostly blowing over the top of the ditch. But his legs still ached from fighting through the sand, and he was tired from constantly running away from the horrors of the dim world. He started to lie down, hoping to rest for a few minutes.
“Don’t do that here,” a voice said.
Through the gusting sand at the edge of the ditch above him, Teddy saw a vague face. “Who’s there?” he asked.
“It’s me.”
“Me who?”
“Lawrence,” the face said, and a large hand reached down to Teddy from out of the storm. “I gotta take you back to the tree,” he said matter-of-factly.
“No way,” Teddy replied. “You’ll have to drag me there.”
“I know you’re hot and tired,” Lawrence said, leaning down toward Teddy. “Your muscles are sore. You want to lie down and rest. Just for a minute, you’re telling yourself. But you won’t get up. The sand is already covering you.”
It was eerie how Lawrence knew what he was thinking. And the sand was inching over his shoes again. Teddy struggled to his weary feet, swaying in the ditch. “I can still walk.”
“You’ll never find your way out of the desert.” There was no mocking or irony in his voice. In fact, he sounded emotionless to Teddy, like a weary robot. It was as though he had almost no energy at all.
“I’ll take my chances,” Teddy said.
“No. Look around you. The sand and wind will scour your flesh until all that’s left of you is polished white bone. You don’t want that.”
Despite his brave statements, Teddy knew Lawrence was right. He was hopelessly lost. The hot wind still tore at his exposed skin, and he spat sand with every dry breath. He was sweating too, losing precious water.
“C’mon,” Lawrence said. “This is a lonely spot to end up. Trust me. I know.”
“This is your place,” Teddy realized aloud.
Lawrence ignored the statement. “Come be with us now,” he said.
Teddy reached out to Lawrence. The boy’s hand was strangely cold in the hot air. But you’re all dead, Teddy thought as Lawrence hauled him up out of the ditch.
“How did you end up out here?” he asked.
“I was hunting lizards when the dust storm hit,” Lawrence said quietly, “way out past the gas station at the end of Saint Street. I fought my way back to here, but I didn’t know how far I had to go, and it was so hot. I saw Sloot. Don’t know how he got there, but he told me the ditch would give me shelter. He even got in first—said we’d walk out of the desert together when the storm passed. But once I got in the ditch, I never got out. I still wonder sometimes how far I had to go.”
Lawrence looked out into the storm. “C’mon, let’s get moving.”
He led Teddy into the wind by the hand. Teddy stumbled along behind, too exhausted to argue.
They trudged in silence for a while before Teddy asked, “How do you know where we’re going?”
“I’ve been here a long time,” Lawrence said.
“It all looks the same to me,” Teddy said.
“The wind always comes from the same direction.”
“Where?”
“Everything radiates out from the tree,” Lawrence explained, pointing ahead. “And you have to walk straight into a storm to get to its center.”
CHAPTER 27
As they trudged along with their heads bowed in the wind, Teddy asked, “How did others get here, like Oliver?”
Lawrence didn’t answer, but simply pointed ahead where a shadow rose in the dust. The tree, Teddy thought at first, but the shadow was too straight, too square.
They walked closer, and Teddy saw that it was a brick chimney with no house attached to it. Some of the bricks were missing, and tree roots ran through the holes. Others had partially crumbled from age. It towered into the air until Teddy could not see the top. At the bottom, a fireplace yawned open large enough for a boy to walk into.
Teddy stepped to it and ducked his head to look up the shaft.
“Don’t go in,” Lawrence warned. “Go around.”
“Why?”
“This is where Oliver came through ten years ago.”
“The chimney?”
“Yep. He was stuck in there. We heard him hollering when he arrived, and we had to come pull him out.”
“You rescued him?”
“Well, we had to take him to the tree.”
“Right. Of course.” Teddy frowned and walked around the chimney. To his surprise, another chimney stood behind it. Yet another was visible in the dust beyond the second one.
He turned back around to face the first chimney and suddenly found himself in a forest of chimneys. There were brick walls behind him where the desert had been seconds earlier. In fact, he could see nothing but walls. He slid around a corner and walked a few paces, trying to back-track, but he couldn’t tell one wall from the next.
“Lawrence?” he called out, but there was no answer.
Teddy kept moving, but the chimneys were getting closer together. Some nearly touched each other, and he had to squeeze through the space between them.
“Lawrence? Somebody? Help!”
The walls were so close together now that they touched at the corners, and Teddy couldn’t see between them anymore. He stood in a square, surrounded on four sides by the chimneys, and the only light he could see was a dim speck straight above him. It was almost like he was inside a single chimney, and the walls were still closing in.
Teddy felt the rough bricks wedge against his body, starting to squeeze him like a vise. The air smelled of old soot. Lawrence had led him into a trap—right into Oliver’s personal nightmare.
The sycamore roots that wound through the holes in the brick tickled Teddy’s bare skin, teasing him as if they were waiting for him to succumb. The tree didn’t need to attack now—it could simply wait for him to die. He wondered how long it would take wedged in an old chimney. Hours? Days?
While Teddy waited for death to take him, something small and black dropped in front of his face and dangled from a thin line. It stopped and swung back and forth in the narrow space between his head and the brick.
A spider? Teddy thought.
He squirmed as the spider rotated and slowly unfolded spindly legs, revealing a bright red hourglass-shaped mark on its belly.
A black widow!
The spider was only inches from him now. Teddy could see the twin fangs and the spinneret with which it would wrap up his face after it injected poison into him. He struggled against the bricks, scraping his elbows and knuckles, desperately trying to climb, but it was no use. He wondered if it would bite his nose, which was closest, or crawl up his cheek and sink its fangs into his eyeball.
As if in answer, the black widow launched itself and landed on his upper lip.
There was no more time to think. Teddy opened his mouth and sucked a sudden breath, pulling the spider straight in. Before the spider could react, he clamped his mouth shut, shoved it to one side with his tongue, and bit down.
Teddy felt the spider snap like a juicy kernel of corn between his teeth. His stomach lurched, and he had to fight to keep from vomiting. But he felt no sting in his mouth. The horrid little thing hadn’t been able to bite him first.
He spat the legs and runny remains of the spider’s body against the brick in front of him, and when the queasy feeling began to pass, he grinned. He wasn’t so helpless after all.
CHAPTER 28
Teddy’s heart was still thumping hard when he felt a tug on his ankle. Then something grabbed both of his feet and yanked. He came unstuck from the chimney and slid down between the crushing walls, landing on his rump in a huge, open fireplace.
Lawrence dragged him out by the legs, dropping him in the sand. “I told you not to go in,” he said.
“I didn’t,” Teddy gasped, bending at the waist and spitting more spider parts on the ground. “I went around.”
“All the way around.” Lawrence sighed in frustration. It was the first sign of emotion the zombielike boy had shown, as though being forced to help Teddy had given him some energy.
“You look a little queasy,” Lawrence commented.
“Just something I ate.” Teddy coughed.
Lawrence helped him up, and Teddy now saw where the forest of chimneys began and ended. They began to hike around the entire bunch, keeping well clear of even the chimneys on the outer edge to avoid being sucked in again.
“How did Oliver get stuck?” Teddy asked as they walked.
“His parents were at a church talking about getting divorced. I guess neither of them wanted to keep him. When he heard them arguing about who would have to take him, he hid up inside an old chimney in a boarded-up room the church didn’t use anymore. Oliver said he didn’t want them to find him, ever. Guess it worked.”
“What about Joey?”
In response, Lawrence pointed ahead of them again.
Through the blowing dust, Teddy could see a huge wall coming into view. As they approached, he realized that it was made of intertwined roots, like a giant woven basket. It was high enough that the top of it faded into the dust over their heads, and it ran to their right and left until it disappeared in the distance, blocking their way completely.
“What’s that?”
Lawrence pointed to the base of the wall, where a broken place in the roots revealed a black hole. “It’s a crawl space.”
“That’s Joey’s place?”
Lawrence nodded. “His dog liked to squeeze under a neighbor’s house through a hole in the lattice. When it went missing for two days, Joey went looking for it. He never came home.”
“He crawled under the house?”
“Yep.”
“What happened to him?”
“We don’t know. He won’t talk about it. Doesn’t talk much at all, really. He’s a quiet kid anyway, and the tree drained him down pretty low as soon as he got here. It’s getting hungrier, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know, actually,” Teddy said. “All of this getting eaten by a plant stuff is new to me.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Sorry.”
“Okay, then . . . ,” Teddy said, trying to sound confident in the face of yet another dreadful-looking obstacle, “how do we get around this thing?”
“We don’t,” Lawrence answered. “That would take too long.”
“So what do we do?”
Lawrence pointed at the dark hole. “We go under.”
“What?” Teddy exclaimed. “No way! We don’t even know what’s under there. Do you know how creepy the last place I got trapped was?”
“Come on. It’s not getting any less creepy while we wait.”
Teddy eyed the crawl space suspiciously. After the claustrophobia of the chimney, crawling into a dark hole with a dead kid was the last thing he wanted to do. On the other hand, Lawrence had almost told a joke. My guide is perking up, Teddy thought. And besides, he had no choice.
Lawrence went first—otherwise Teddy might not have been able to make himself go in at all. He pulled out his flashlight and shined it ahead as they squeezed through the opening and began to belly-crawl like army commandoes.
The low ceiling was a rat’s nest of tangled roots, and Teddy’s backpack snagged on it almost immediately. It slid off as though the roots overhead were trying to rip it away from him. He rolled over and caught it by one strap, wrestling it back.
“Hurry up,” Lawrence called back to him.
“Coming,” Teddy said, pushing his pack in front of him along the ground.
They hadn’t gone far when the flashlight beam illuminated a dark, furry lump—some kind of animal. It appeared to be sleeping. Lawrence crawled over to it.
“Don’t wake it up, whatever it is,” Teddy whispered.
“It’s a dog,” Lawrence said.
“Some sort of rabid, monster attack dog?”
“No. Just a dog.”
Teddy eased forward to join him. It was a normal dog—an Australian cattle dog, from the look of it. It didn’t move.
“Sleeping?” Teddy said hopefully.
“Dead,” Lawrence replied. “This is Joey’s dog.”
Teddy had heard of animals crawling into dark places to die, but the dog looked young and, with the exception of being dead, perfectly healthy.
“Look here,” Lawrence said. He pointed to the dog’s face, which was curled in a permanent grimace. Tiny bloodstains trailed from two small holes in the dog’s snout. “What do you suppose those wounds are?”
“Don’t know,” Teddy said. “And not sure I want to. How much farther?”
“Don’t know.”
“I think we should get going, and—”
Teddy froze mid-sentence, interrupted by a rattling sound, like a maraca shaken too fast. It was recognizable even to a boy who wasn’t from the desert, and it chilled him to the bone.
CHAPTER 29
Teddy flicked the flashlight beam up. The rattlesnake was coiled less than a foot from him, its thin tongue licking the air. Its beehive-shaped rattle rose behind it, vibrating back and forth.
Lawrence lay on his belly, still as a stone.
“Don’t move,” Teddy breathed—if they even twitched, it would strike Lawrence, who was closer. It occurred to Teddy that if the rattler got Lawrence, he would be rid of the boy taking him to the tree. But it didn’t seem right.
Teddy was still holding his backpack in front of him, and an idea occurred to him. He shoved the pack suddenly with both arms, flinging it between the rattler and Lawrence.
The snake struck, and its fangs sank into the thick fabric on the inside of the pack’s open pocket. Before the snake could shake loose, Teddy leaped on his backpack. He pinned the squirming reptile underneath. The rattler coiled angrily, twisting most of its long body into the pocket to join its trapped head. Teddy grabbed its tail, stuffing it in behind the body, then he yanked the zipper closed.
With the snake contained, Teddy rolled onto his back and shuddered, wiping sweat from his brow. “It’s more scared of you than you are of it,” Teddy explained to Lawrence, panting.
“I wasn’t scared,” Lawrence said. “It can’t kill me.”
“What?” Teddy exclaimed. “You were never in any danger?”
Lawrence nodded. “Right. It’s Joey’s death, not mine. But be careful—I figure everything here can kill you. And if I don’t get you to the tree in one piece, it might drain me instead. I ain’t got much life left.”
Lawrence sounded stern, and it seemed to Teddy like he was speaking loudly on purpose, trying to be overheard. But then his rigid face softened for a moment, and he whispered, “But, hey, thanks anyway for trying to save me.”
The Dead Boys Page 8