by Ania Ahlborn
But that was the thing about Terry: he had a decent paying job. And ever since Stevie’s real dad had bailed, bills were hard to pay.
“I know you’re really interested in all this investigation stuff,” his mom was now saying, “but just sit tight.”
Stevie almost scoffed at her reasoning. Yeah. Sure. He wanted to go look for Jude because he was into “investigation stuff,” not because Jude was his only friend; a friend who very likely could have been lying dead in the forest somewhere.
“The police will find him,” she said. “He’ll be back by dinner.”
Except Stevie didn’t believe that for a second.
Jude Brighton was gone, like he’d never existed; vanished, as though he and Stevie hadn’t spent their entire lives stomping the pavement of Main Street and living their summers in those woods. To them, the ferns were landmarks. Each bend in Cedar Creek, a compass. If someone had chased Jude through those trees, he would have outrun them. If they had dragged him deep into the wilderness, he would have broken free.
2
* * *
STEVIE STAYED IN his room all day to make his mother happy. But his thoughts veered in different directions. What if Jude really had run off? Maybe he was sitting in some seedy diner a hundred miles away, divvying out what little cash he had stolen from Aunt Mandy’s purse, waiting on a bus to take him west toward Universal Studios. He’d always wanted to go there. Disneyland, he said, is for dumb-ass babies. Universal Studios is where they’ve got Jaws and the Psycho house. It’s cool. And when it came to Jude, cool was the golden rule.
Or it could have been that Jude was the next Max Larsen. Dunk had told the tale a dozen times, probably more. A kid goes into the forest and never comes out. Two weeks later, his body is discovered. Mangled. Half-eaten. Swelling up like a balloon. The cops called it an animal attack, but everyone knew it was the work of a madman. A psychopath as bad as Albert Fish, maybe worse. A cannibal who loved the taste of kids.
And the story was true. It was on Google and everything. Dunk had showed him. The adults hardly ever mentioned the Larsen kid, as if afraid that a single utterance of that long-lost boy’s name would bring evil out from the forest that surrounded the town. But all the kids knew the story. A dead boy found on the side of the road wasn’t a secret a place as small as Deer Valley could keep, especially not from the eager ears and dark imaginations of its youth.
Stevie found it weird that none of the adults ever talked about Max Larsen, as though not bringing him up would somehow erase him from the past. Once, having evoked the name while his mom grilled chicken legs on the backyard barbecue, he watched her expression shift from benevolent to shocked. Where did you hear that name? she demanded. Was it Duncan? Is your brother telling you stupid stories again? It had, in fact, been Dunk who had laid down the gruesome tale—a fable that big brothers impart on younger siblings in hopes of birthing a wellspring of perpetual nightmares. The first time Stevie had heard it, it had been just a story, something that had happened in the past and would never be repeated again. But now he couldn’t get Dunk’s word pictures out of his head; innocuous phrases made debilitating by what they referenced. Shredded beef. Buzzing flies. Cries. Dies. Dies.
· · ·
That night, unable to sit still and driving his mother nuts, Stevie went to a movie with Dunk. The outing was a result of their mother’s pleading, probably with some sort of bribe attached—because, unless she gave Dunk some kind of incentive, or unless Dunk was swatting at the back of Stevie’s head or telling him scary stories to keep him up at night, Duncan Clark hardly acknowledged his kid brother’s existence. And despite Stevie coming unstrung over Jude, it was nice to get out. He needed it. Because his stuttering, his word salad, his rhyming problem, were starting to creep back into his brain, and that was never good.
Duncan’s girlfriend, Annie, met them at the ValleyPlex. She was pretty, and didn’t seem to care that all Dunk ever wore was basketball stuff. She didn’t even mind his stupid haircut, which was shaved on the sides with a poof of longer hair flaring out at the top like a soft-serve swirl. He was dead-set on getting a design buzzed into his hair by the end of the summer. Their mom said no way, but as one of Olympia High’s star basketball players, Dunk was determined to have all eyes on him . . . especially Annie’s, which were as big and round as the bottoms of two soda cans, like a girl in one of those Japanese cartoons.
The ValleyPlex was a whopping two-screen cinema that could afford only one mainstream flick every three months. Screen two always played stuff Stevie hadn’t heard of but made his mom and Aunt Mandy sigh like they were in love: Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire, Say Anything . . . Whatever those were.
Inside the ValleyPlex, Stevie settled into his crummy seat—the armrest so wobbly he had to hold his drink between his knees. The cold of the cup roused phantom pain in the missing tips of the pointer and middle fingers of his right hand—both cut off at the first knuckle, ground to bits, the remnants floating around in a sewer somewhere. He curled his fingers into a fist to keep them warm and tried not to notice Dunk’s hand drifting across Annie’s leg and up her pleated skirt; tried to ignore it when she slouched and placed the empty tub of popcorn in her lap, Dunk’s right hand missing in action, his left tugging at his jeans as though his pants were suddenly way too tight. With popcorn now out of the question, Stevie tried to focus on the velociraptors—his favorite dinosaur—as they caused chaos all over Jurassic World. He almost forgot what was going on back home until Dunk kicked his sneaker as the credits rolled.
“Get your ass up,” he said.
By the time they reached the parking lot, Stevie was drowning in worry once more.
When they pulled into the driveway, Dunk flattened the same right hand he’d stuffed up Annie’s skirt against Stevie’s T-shirt to keep him where he was. “You didn’t see shit, did you, Sack?” Duncan gave Stevie a warning look, heavy with the promise of a brotherly beating if Stevie mentioned anything to their mom about Annie and her popcorn tub. Stevie grimaced both at the hand against his chest and his brother’s use of his least favorite nickname. Stephen Aaron Clark’s initials added up to a harmless S-A-C, until the k of his last name was tacked on to the end. That’s when Stevie became Sack, or Sackboy, or Ballsack, or Sack of Shit, or—when the threat of having his ass kicked came up—Hacky Sack.
“I just saw dinosaurs,” Stevie murmured. “J-just seesaw dinos . . .” He diverted his attention from his brother’s hand to the portable basketball hoop—nothing but a rusty rim and a crooked backboard inches from Dunk’s front bumper. Dunk’s future. His life.
Duncan appeared satisfied with Stevie’s answer and pulled his hand away. “You gonna go look for the Jewd tomorrow?” Sack was a shitty moniker, but Jude had Stevie beat in the unfortunate nickname category. Jude wasn’t Jewish, but that didn’t matter one iota to a guy like Duncan. Sack and the Jewd, like peas in a crappy pod.
Dunk’s question threw Stevie for a loop, not only because Terry and his mom had specifically forbidden him to aid in the search for his cousin, but also because he couldn’t remember the last time Dunk had asked him a question he actually expected Stevie to answer.
“Mom said I can’t,” he said.
“Mom.” Dunk rolled his eyes. “Because she’s someone who should be giving out life advice. But I guess it’s for the better.”
Stevie squinted at the scuffed-up knees of his jeans. He’d need a new pair soon. One squat too many and they were liable to bust like a birthday piñata. He only hoped it wouldn’t happen at school, in the cafeteria, where all the jerk-off fifth-graders would see it happen and never let him live it down. Once, a kid had tripped with his food tray and gotten mac and cheese all over the front of his shirt. It had looked a little like vomit, so that’s exactly what they called him all year long. Another kid had taken a tetherball to the face during recess, fallen backward, and wailed as blood spurted from his nose. That kid was henceforth dubbed Ballface Gusher. For how stupid the fifth-grad
ers were, they were pretty creative when it came to being total dicks, and the last thing Stevie needed was another clever nickname. He was already Sack at home; Schizo Steve-O, Stuttering Stevie, and Screws-Loose Magoose at school.
“For the better how?” Stevie asked.
“You know . . ,” Dunk said. Stevie kept his eyes diverted, but he could hear the smirk in his brother’s voice. “Nobody wants a loony running around the goddamn woods.” He pulled the keys out of the ignition and patted the steering wheel as if to thank his old Firebird for her service. It was a rusty heap, but Dunk loved that car. When he wasn’t shooting hoops or losing his hand up Annie’s skirt, he was nothing but a pair of legs, his top half swallowed by the engine compartment of his faithful steed. “Now get out,” he said, “and you better lock the door behind you or I’ll bust your goddamn face.”
Stevie crawled out of the car that smelled faintly of cigarettes, French fries, and sweat, hit the lock, and slammed the door shut behind him. Dunk retreated into the house while Stevie was left staring at Jude’s place directly next door to his own. All the windows were lit up, casting long, sorrowful rectangles across an unkempt lawn. But Aunt Mandy’s yard—no matter how weedy—wasn’t nearly as bad as their own. For the great Terry Marks had a taste for collecting random crap, and his junk had spread from the backyard to the side of the house—stuff he’d find at local wrecking yards and recycling plants that he wanted to fix up and sell because Idiots will buy anything off of the Internet. Except that Terry never posted anything online and a garage sale was out of the question, too much goddamn work. So the stacks of crap just kept piling up. But now, with Jude gone, Aunt Mandy’s house looked sadder than usual, possibly even more so than Stevie’s, despite The Tyrant’s overwhelming hoard.
Aunt Mandy’s single-story Craftsman had a sagging, moss-covered roof that Stevie’s mom swore would cave in and kill both her sister and nephew one day. All it would take was a bad storm, a high wind, some hail. But Aunt Mandy didn’t have the money to fix it, and Terry sure wasn’t going to climb up there and reinforce it out of the goodness of his heart. He couldn’t be bothered to look at the dishwasher in his own kitchen, after all.
The house’s paint job was just as bad as the roof; giant white strips of the stuff peeling from the clapboard siding like dirty old bandages that had lost their stick. Aunt Mandy’s once-preened rosebushes now grew in chaotic brambles of white, fuchsia, and pink. Not so long ago, she had toyed with the idea of joining the Oregon Rose Society. She talked of entering her flowers in competitions and dreamed of winning silk ribbons and shiny trophies that she could proudly display on her mantel for everyone to see. Stevie had pictured her standing up on a stage, holding a golden two-handled cup, beaming as wide as if she’d won the million-dollar jackpot, flashbulbs lighting up her face. Pop, POP! He’d even cleared off a spot for that very photograph on his bookshelf, sure of his aunt’s destiny. But after what happened to Uncle Scott, Aunt Mandy never bothered to clip another bloom. Both houses—his and Jude’s—had been built around the same time, but Stevie’s mom managed to keep theirs in decent shape. Meanwhile, grief ruled next door.
Standing in the dark, Stevie wanted to venture over to check on his aunt. Sometimes, when Terry took to his belt and Stevie’s mom went temporarily blind, he was sure he loved Aunt Mandy more than anyone. It was yet another thing that made Stevie angry when it came to Jude acting out. Sure, Jude was upset about losing his dad, but Aunt Mandy was just as hurt. What gave Jude the right to act like an idiot, to be disrespectful, to make his mother’s life more difficult than it already was? It would have been nice to live next door where there was no danger of being cornered by an angry man; where, regardless of tragedy, there was compassion. Openheartedness. Love. It was why Stevie hoped that Jude hadn’t run away. Because if he had, man was he stupid. Dumber than a bag of rocks.
A stray cat meandered across Aunt Amanda’s front lawn, stopping in a square of window light. It was sickly looking, just like all the strays around town, of which there were many. There were more cats than dogs, but that didn’t matter. It was a perfect reason for Stevie’s mom to deny him the pet he’d always wanted anyway. Deer Valley residents had a bad habit of letting their animals run wild. And then there was the expense: food and vet bills. The cat on Aunt Mandy’s lawn looked like it hadn’t seen either of those in a long time, if ever. Little more than skin and bone, its patchy fur hung off its frame like an oversized mink on a rich old lady’s feeble frame. Momentarily frozen, the animal met Stevie’s gaze, then broke its stasis to scratch an itch. A tuft of fur puffed out from where it stroked its coat, leaving a clump of orange and white on the brittle, dying grass.
Stevie wrinkled his nose and turned toward his own home. It was probably too late to visit Aunt Amanda tonight anyway; she was more than likely already in bed. That, and that cat made his skin crawl. He’d never been a fan of felines. Dunk said they had parasites; bugs that found their way into their owners’ brains, turning them into mindless slaves. No way he was getting close to that thing. It wasn’t worth the risk.
He made his way up onto his own porch one weary step at a time. He considered asking his mom to let him stay next door; a sleepover. Aunt Mandy would undoubtedly appreciate the company. Nights must have been hard, and Aunt Mandy shouldn’t be alone. Stevie would feel better if he were sleeping on her couch, just in case Jude did come home. But even if his mom considered the overnight, The Tyrant would never allow it. It was a power thing. He didn’t give half a damn about Stevie’s well-being, but when it came to being lenient, Terry was a dictator. This, however, was a special case. Maybe he’d make an exception, since Aunt Mandy’s house was just a few feet away.
But Stevie stopped just shy of his front door, catching movement from the corner of his eye. There was something out there, lurking around the side of the house near Terry’s piles of junk.
“J-Jude?” The name escaped his throat before he could tamp down his hope. And the thing was, when he spoke, whatever was hiding out in those shadows moved, crouching behind one of Terry’s many leaning towers of crap, as though waiting for Stevie to notice it; or just waiting for him to move on.
But Stevie was ten years old, and even if he had been a full-grown adult, he wouldn’t have been able to shrug off his curiosity. He tiptoed across the porch planks toward the side railing, not wanting to scare away that mysterious shifting shadow with a sudden move, all the while assuring himself that he was a grade-A idiot. The strays around here had been marked an official village problem. People talked about it at town meetings. Solutions were occasionally proposed in the weekly Deer Valley Gazette. Terry’s junk was the perfect spot for hiding. Just last summer, Stevie discovered a litter of kittens living along the interior of an old truck tire, hungry and soaked by the rain. Suddenly, even the boy who didn’t like cats was begging his mom to keep one, even if it was just outdoors. Those kittens were too cute to abandon. But The Tyrant put the kibosh on that possibility before Stevie’s mom ever had the chance to say no. He tossed those kittens into a rain-warped cardboard box, threw the box into the back of his truck, and that was the end of that. Stevie only hoped that his stepdad had taken them to the Humane Society and not dumped them off somewhere along the side of the road.
Then again, maybe he had, and that sad-looking feline in Aunt Amanda’s yard was one of the exiled. Stevie imagined it waiting all night for Terry to come outside. And when he did? Whoosh! A flying leap. Fwoomp! A perfect landing on The Tyrant’s stupid face. Hiss! Claws out, slashing at that ugly caterpillar ’stache. If Stevie bore witness to such an event, he’d adopt every stray cat in town, brain worms and all.
Deer Valley wasn’t just crawling with cats and the occasional dog. There were raccoons as well. Dunk nearly had his face torn off by one while playing basketball late one night.
And sometimes, while he didn’t like to admit it even to himself, Stevie saw things that probably weren’t there. Like the snakes that crawled out of the cracked plaster ceiling
above his bed. Or ants in the sugar bowl. Bugs coming out of electrical sockets. Shadow people standing in empty rooms, there one second, gone the next. Maybe that’s what he was seeing now—a whole lot of nothing.
All of that reasoning, however, escaped him as he crept to the balustrade, his dirty sneakers silent upon the old wooden boards. He slowly bent at the waist to get a better view of the side yard. Whatever was lurking out there had moved again, retreating farther back along the property.
“H-hello . . . ?”
A rusted-over truck fender—apparently a great thing to sell online, if you asked Terry the Online Entrepreneur—shifted among the mounds of stuff. It was the real deal; bigger than a cat or a raccoon. Stevie supposed it could have been a coyote, but those weren’t exactly known for being sneaky. And if it was a dog, he was pretty sure the thing would have shown itself by now. Either that or made a run for it, knocking over a bunch of junk and putting the whole neighborhood on red alert.
It wasn’t that he really cared what was hanging around out there. Why should he, to protect Terry’s gold mine of crap? But not allowed to search for Jude, he was buzzing with pent-up energy. He could at least investigate the noise along the side of the house. He threw a leg over the porch banister and hopped the two feet it took to get to the ground.
Something bumped against the dented-up fender again.
“Who’s there?” Nightmare, his mind replied. Prepare the Lord’s Prayer. Beware. Suddenly reminded of an episode of some news show he’d seen a while back, he hesitated. There was a possibility that it was a homeless person, like the one who had been living in a fancy city apartment, hidden above the closet and behind some secret hatch. Except that Deer Valley didn’t have much of a homeless population. Folks who couldn’t afford their own houses lived with people they knew. After Stevie’s dad had left them high and dry with no money to pay the gas bill, that winter had been horrible. When the lights finally got shut off, Stevie, Dunk, and his mom moved in with Aunt Mandy and Jude for a while.