“Make your call.”
“I’m not calling him,” said Kellen. “I’m not giving him what he wants.”
“Suit yourself.” Campbell cuffed Kellen again and led him back out into the main station.
Kellen saw another pair of familiar faces waiting for him.
“Benny?”
Eddie Bennett glanced over his shoulder. He had tears in his eyes. From the look of him, Kellen guessed he had been crying awhile. Bennett opened his mouth to speak. “Winst—”
“Don’t talk to him,” Bennett’s father said before wheeling on Kellen. “You’re the reason he’s in this mess. Honestly, what the devil were you boys thinking?”
“Mess?” said Kellen. “What’s he talking about, Hullinger?”
The sheriff took back custody of Kellen. “You tell me.”
Kellen watched Bennett’s father push his son down a different hall, bound for the main entrance. What could have made Bennett cry like that?
Kellen kept his mouth shut.
Sheriff Hullinger led Kellen past the booking station, the two of them bound for another door in the back corner.
Kellen tensed. He knew where that door led. The jail had hosted a lock-in when they unveiled the new building a few years back. Kellen remembered staying overnight with a few of his friends. It had been kind of fun at the time. But even then, he felt a little too old for such things.
Now he didn’t have a choice.
They walked through the door and entered the jailhouse. The room wasn’t huge as far as jails went; only eight cells—four on either side of the row. The cells housed a lone inmate who looked up when he heard the approaching footsteps.
Kellen paused. “Owens?”
“Hey…” Owens’s head drooped.
The sheriff tugged Kellen’s arm and walked him to the cell opposite Owens. The metal door opened soundlessly on its well-greased hinges. “Turn around.”
Kellen did so confidently, despite the creeping doubt he felt.
The sheriff unlocked his cuffs and pocketed them. Then he closed the door.
The sound couldn’t have been very loud; Kellen knew that to be true. It still made him wince when the lock clicked home. Kellen looked at Owens again, then the sheriff.
“Dick…” Kellen heard his own voice shake. “What’s going on? Where is my dad? Why am I in here? Why is Owens here?”
Sheriff Hullinger fidgeted.
It’s not a joke. Kellen felt like he might yack all over again.
“Your dad’s not coming for you,” said the sheriff. “Said you got yourself in this mess, you get yourself out. He wanted me to tell you that. And I think you know the reason you’re here. If not, well—” The sheriff rapped a meaty knuckle against the bars. “You’re gonna have plenty of time to think about it.”
The sheriff turned away from Kellen’s cell and went to Owens’. “All right, boy. Come on, now.” He unlocked the door. “Your daddy’s coming for you.”
Owens didn’t move.
The sheriff kicked his bunk. “Come on, boy. I said get up.”
Owens looked up at Hullinger, his eyes pleading. “Can I stay here? My dad…he’s going to kill me when he finds out.”
“Yeah, well, you should’ve thought about that before, huh? Now let’s go.”
Owens took his time leaving, hustled along only by Sheriff Hullinger’s taunts.
Kellen watched them walk up the row and exit. The sheriff closed the door and its echo shuddered up the cellblock. Kellen knew what it signified. He looked around his cell, the others down his row, even the one Owens had vacated. Emptiness.
Your dad’s not coming for you…wanted me to tell you that.
The echo died off and left Kellen in complete silence.
It was just a prank. Kellen’s conscience could refute the lie no longer.
He fell down hard onto the cold metal bunk. The sound it made comforted him for a moment. Then it, too, abandoned him.
LENNY
Lenny listened to the bus engine’s hum. His eyelids felt heavy. He rubbed the sleep from them, and sat up. Not goin’ back. I’m done bein’ afraid.
Yawning, he spun out of his fishnet hammock, strung between the wall and bunk that Ellie occupied. In the near complete darkness, he saw she shared the bed with Allambee, their ankles shackled together in case the boy attempted escape.
Henry snored contentedly in the other bunk, his arm draped over Chidi.
The bare floor felt surprisingly warm, unlike the stone floors of Crayfish Cavern. Lenny slunk around Racer, sleeping in the aisle, and eased open the sliding door. Soundlessly, he slipped into the main cabin.
Night lingered outside the bus without the slightest trace of the coming dawn.
Lenny scowled as he passed the bathroom and captain’s quarters. Oscar had seized the cramped room from the moment they began their journey. Lenny hadn’t much need for its size. The principal of the matter bothered him more. He had earned rights to that room. Oscar had yet to earn anything in his life.
Blue track lights illuminated the aisle way to the front of the bus. Lenny followed them.
Paulo sat in the driver’s seat, crooning to a Latin love ballad on the radio as he drove down I-65 south. He stopped upon seeing his disheveled captain.
“Nightmare again, huh? You get used to them growing up in the slums of New Pearlaya…” Paulo clucked his tongue. “My mother used to say dreams lost their power when one spoke them out loud.”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Fine, but can you at least talk about something? I still have awhile to drive, and I’ve been nodding off with no one to keep me awake.”
Lenny avoided the question by looking out the massive front window. The headlights illuminated nothing but endless pavement. Lenny cleared his throat. “So we’re all surrounded by shadows. They—”
“Wait—” said Paulo. “I’m in the dream too?”
“Ya wanna hear about it or not?”
“I do. Keep going.”
“The shadows take us one at a time. Racer’s first to go. Just one second he’s there, then bam! He disappears in the dark…almost like he escaped or something. The next time I see him, he’s lyin’ in some cornfield with his throat cut, starin’ up at me like he’s wonderin’ what happened to him.”
“Tough break for a pup.”
“The rest of us make it to the water,” Lenny continued. “We’re swimmin’ along when a weighted net pulls Ellie down.”
Paulo tightened his grip on the steering wheel. His jaw clenched. “Who did it?”
Lenny shrugged. “She calls out for ya and so ya go back to help. That’s when these bright streams of light lash outta the darkness.”
“Jelly whips?”
Lenny nodded. “’Cept I can’t see who’s holdin’ onto ’em. Anyhow, ya fight back.”
“You bet I do.”
“Ya keep ’em at bay awhile, but then one of ’em swims up from behind and…well…”
Paulo looked away from the road. “What?”
Lenny shrugged.
“I die?” Paulo’s voice rose. “Why didn’t you come help?”
“Too scared. Tryin’ to swim away and save my own skin. Even though I know Pop would be ashamed of me and all of ya need help, I just keep goin’.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. So how does it end? You get away?”
Lenny shook his head. “I look back to see if anyone’s followin’ me. The shadow that killed ya is right on my tail…’cept now I can see teeth. Big ones, white and blood-stained, grinnin’ at me.”
“Nomad or Orc?”
“Couldn’t tell. Always wake up just before they clamp down.”
Paulo asked no more questions.
Lenny sighed. For a long while, they sat in silence with only the soft padding of pavement beneath the bus wheels to disturb it.
“Anyone else been up since I went to bed?” Lenny asked.
“Chidi. Say what you will about Henry, but he’s a
smart hire, if only to get her thrown in with the deal. The girl’s a translating machine. Said to tell you she finished a quarter of one notebook.”
“That’s it? I counted four in that bag we lifted off Zymon! Did she at least find out who they belonged to?”
Paulo nodded. “She’s pretty sure they’re Marisa’s. Figured you wouldn’t be happy, but Chidi said she needs more time unless you know more languages than she does.”
Lenny snorted. “What’d she do with them?”
“Table.”
Lenny glanced to the darkened cabin behind them. “Flip the lights up, will ya?”
Paulo leaned forward to toggle a switch. Then he resumed his singing as the recessed cabin lights flickered on.
It had been three weeks and a day since they began their search, yet still Lenny paused to take in the opulence around him. The walls shone of polished mahogany, and the swirl of molded colors in the granite countertops resembled the stony surroundings of Crayfish Cavern. The u-shaped leather couches begged Lenny to sit on them, as did the plush chairs at the kitchen’s bar.
Lenny first went to the fridge. Food, blessed food, stocked top to bottom and, unlike back home, he took what he desired. He made himself a heaping tuna sandwich and drowned it in mustard. He saw cans of a dark liquid Ellie called soda. Lenny snagged two of them and took everything to the small nook around a dining table.
There he found four different colored notebooks. Taking a bite of his sandwich, he opened the purple one first, and found a confusing collage of language.
One line written in English listed an aquarium outside Atlanta, Georgia. In the same sentence, Marisa switched to writing in a different language, but cited Genoa, Italy.
Lenny saw nothing written like any normal person might; vertical lines had instead been written in random areas while others went horizontal. Some sentences cut through others like she wanted to create a word search puzzle. Marisa had covered each page, front and back, in scribbled handwriting with hardly any space left vacant.
Lenny came across a piece of notepaper Chidi had used to translate what bits she could. Question marks sprawled over the page listing Dryback cities. He reviewed the list several times as he drank down a soda and found one area cited more than any other.
The Indianapolis Zoo…What’s so special about it?
“Hey, Cap!” Paulo called back to him. “I’m going to pull over here. We’re about an hour away, but I figure I’ll get some rest before we go hunting.”
“Fine,” Lenny said.
Paulo pulled into a rest stop just outside Lafayette, Indiana. He parked alongside a slew of semis, killed the engine, and snored in his chair no more than a minute later.
Lenny polished off his sandwich and continued to review Chidi’s notations.
Her second list had various aquarium measurements; the number of gallons of water per tank, chemicals used, and marine species at each location.
None of it made any real sense.
He picked another of Marisa’s notebooks—one with a green cover—and flipped it open. Each page was covered in life-like and hand-drawn artwork, shaded in varying strokes of grey pencil. Lenny lingered on a portrait of a whale shark, the largest fish on the planet. White spots dotted its darker backside like an old movie theatre’s marquee of lights. The next page showed a polar bear swatting one of its front paws.
Lenny pored over each breathtaking detail.
Pinnipeds outnumbered Marisa’s other drawings by far; Sea Lions with long necks and flippers, a Hooded Seal with what looked like a red balloon attached to the end of its nose, and hulking Elephant Seals with trunk-like noses. Lenny even found a drawing of a miniature, fat Ringed Seal with its mouth open.
He looks familiar. Lenny smirked. He turned to the next page. A single glance made him drop the notebook.
Marisa had captured the man’s image perfectly. The portrait of Declan Dolan seemed to watch his son, even from the floor, his face set in usual sternness and his fixed stare ever watchful.
Lenny picked the notebook back up. He scoured the page for any bit of text, a date of completion, even artist initials. The portrait gave Lenny no answers, much like Declan seldom did in real life.
Lenny flipped through the other pages and notebooks with newfound energy for any other traces of his father. An hour came and went, along with the sunrise, but Lenny made no progress. Any secrets Marisa had, she kept safely hidden in the journals by a code Lenny could not hope to unravel on his own.
She had not hidden all though.
Lenny switched to the blue notebook, the only one with blank pages. The last entry held a drawing of an octopus with its tentacles sprawling forward to help explore its way down the rock face. Marisa had shaded a box above the creature. Peeking out the left side, Lenny saw a curvy bump.
He held the picture up to the light. “Hell’s Bells and Buckets of Blood!” he swore. It’s me!
The bump peeking around the box edge smacked of his facial outline. Marisa had even captured his stubby fingers gripping the placard when he had leaned out for a better view.
She knew I was there the whole time…
Lenny heard the others beginning to rouse. He tore both pictures out of their notebooks without a second thought, though he took great care in folding the picture of Declan, and placed them in his pocket. Then he grabbed a lighter before leaving the table and stormed up the aisle.
Lenny lit the picture of himself on fire the moment he stepped off the bus. He threw it on the ground, willed the paper to curl and blacken, and waited until every shred of his misstep burned away into ash. He could not burn away the memory she had seen him though.
Ya won’t see me comin’ next time, Bourgeois.
Lenny boarded the bus.
GARRETT
“Mom, we talked about this…” Garrett gave Cristina a final squeeze in the hope she would pick up on the signal to release him before the bus arrived.
She didn’t. Not when the bus stopped at the end of their drive, not even when the crotchety old farmer-turned-bus driver, Lester Pate, honked the horn. Garrett squirmed free of her when Lester gunned the engine.
Garrett ran down the graveled drive before his mom could stop him again. The bus lurched forward the moment his stepped on.
“Bye, honey!” She called after him. “I love you!”
“Cute…” Lester said, his voice gnarled and grumpy. He spit brown chew into the empty plastic soda bottle at his side. “I don’t care if you did almost drown, Weaver. I got a schedule to keep. You see that white line there?”
Garrett saw it at the top of the landing. “You mean the one I’m supposed to stand behind while the bus is in—”
“Get behind it!”
I am behind it. Garrett debated telling him. Just on the opposite side.
He thought better of it when Lester slowed the bus.
If he kicks me off, Mom will take it as a sign I should’ve stayed home.
Garrett bit his tongue and kept moving down the aisle. The kindergartners, 1st, and 2nd graders in the front rows kept eerily quiet this morning as he passed. Even the 7th grade bully of the bus, Pete Rousey, wouldn’t look at Garrett when he took the opposite seat in the last row.
Cccrrrrreeeeeaaaakkkkkk went the leather seat as Pete failed in his subtle attempt at scooching closer to the window.
“Relax, Rousey,” Garrett said. “I’m not dead.”
Pete flinched at hearing his name called. “I heard you were…”
“You heard wrong.”
“Wh-what about Kellen Winstel? My sister said you drowned each other. She was in study hall and saw the EMTs wheel him out. She said his skin looked blue all over.”
Did she tell you my legs turned black and white? Garrett stayed silent.
Pete didn’t bother waiting for the bus to make its next stop before moving a few rows up.
Garrett would have chalked it up as a perk until he heard the beginnings of whispers. By the time the bus reached the elementary sch
ool drop off, he had overheard more than a few rumors. His favorite being that he must be a zombie. How else could he have survived? And as for Kellen, the elementary students logically concluded that Garrett, the newly turned undead, had eaten his corpse.
Lester eased the bus into park then yanked the lever to open the doors. “All right, hurry it up!”
The rows of K through 6th grade students emptied amidst a growing line of middle schoolers and a handful of freshman waiting outside to board. Once the last child stepped off, the older students trudged up the steps and spaced out into the newly vacated seats for more legroom.
Garrett noticed they, too, kept their distance from him. This might work out better than I thought.
A ruddy-faced senior of unchecked gluttony staggered on last.
Garrett grinned. He had first met Johnny Hickey in 7th grade when the two elementary schools combined. Since their peers considered them unpopular, Garrett and Johnny had naturally gravitated toward one another. It also helped that Garrett occasionally helped himself to the contents of Johnny’s lunch bags. Inside those blessed totes, Johnny’s mother packed doughnuts, candy bars, and sodas; solid gold since the school board had outlawed sweets and marked combating obesity as a must-fix.
Lester slammed the door closed and threw the bus in reverse.
Johnny would have stumbled down the row had his girth not held him in check between the seats. He twisted and turned his way through the tight aisle in a race to see if he could make it to the back before Lester arrived at the high school fifteen minutes away.
Garrett helped his friend through the last couple rows by pulling him.
Johnny fell into the seat and wiped his sweaty forehead. “Whew! Thanks bro!”
“Heya, Hickey. I see you got my text.”
“Yeah.” Johnny dabbed sweat off his brow. “All right so I’m here. What’s so important that you had to come back today? I’d be milking your situation like crazy!”
“Who says I’m not?”
“But…you’re here…”
“Look, everyone thought I was dead—including you, right?” Garrett asked. “I mean, you wanted your mom to drive you to my house last night so you could check on me.”
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