Neverworld Wake

by Marisha Pessl

  Whitley glanced up, uneasy. “Maybe Wednesday?”

  “Stop lying,” said Martha.

  “I’m not.”

  “Your story would have worked, if not for one little problem.”

  “What?”

  “I had Jim’s guitar.”

  We stared at her.

  “He lent it to me so I could practice my song for Spring Vespers. I had it in my room for two weeks. They made the announcement Jim was missing Thursday morning. Late Thursday night, I returned the guitar to his room. That means only one thing. You knew Jim was missing when you put the drugs in his guitar.” Martha looked at Wit, her face implacable. “You saw his disappearance as an opportunity to get out of the mess you’d made. You set him up.”

  Whitley glared at her.

  “The night he died?” I asked, my voice breaking. “Were you with him at the quarry?”

  “No.” Whitley shook her head. “I swear. I swear, Bee. I loved him as much as anybody.” As she said this, she began to cry. “Okay, fine. I set him up. I put the stash in his room. I was scared. I thought he’d already gone to the administration and told them I was the White Rabbit. I did it to save myself. It was awful. But I had nothing to do with his death, I swear to God.” She stared at me, her eyes red. “You have to believe me.”

  Abruptly, there was loud pounding on the door.

  “Cannon Beecham, you in there?”

  It was Moses.

  “Please,” Wit whimpered. “I didn’t know anything about Jim’s death. I still don’t, I swear on—”

  “Open up now. I got police with me.”

  “This is Warwick Police! You’re trespassing on private grounds.”

  The door rattled but didn’t budge.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Martha.

  As the pounding continued, we sprinted to the opposite side of the pool, Whitley struggling to her feet and heading after us. There were bleachers. Girls’ and boys’ locker rooms.

  No way out.

  I was about to suggest we surrender and spend the rest of the wake at the police station, when Cannon grabbed the lifeguard chair and, spinning, launched it at the wall of windows. The glass only cracked.

  “Open this door!”

  Cannon picked up the chair again, hitting the wall a second time. I could see officers swarming outside. They were wielding flood flashlights. Another smash of the chair. Suddenly the glass shattered all at once. The five of us took off running, whooping and shouting at the top of our lungs, out into the night, exploding past the officers, their flashlights blinding us.

  “Police! We command you to freeze!”

  “Warriors!” whooped Kipling.

  “Go to hell and back again!”

  Somewhere behind me, Kip was howling. Whitley too. Cannon was singing. I ran blindly, weird, strung-out laughter hiccupping out of me as I willed the dark to swallow me. I could see one of the officers drawing his gun. I half expected him to shoot me out of sheer terror, thinking this was the beginning of some zombie apocalypse. I headed for the darkest part of the field, forcing my legs to go faster and faster, lungs tightening in pain, rain pummeling me. When I glanced back, I could see flashing red and blue police lights, figures swarming the aquatic center.

  No one had followed me. I was alone.

  I slowed to a jog, then a walk, rain needling my face. I realized I’d reached the edge of the woods. I crossed onto a hiking trail and headed down it. Soon my mind quieted and I was aware only of my footsteps and the mud. It was everywhere, gelatinous and black as tar.

  Jim.

  It was so dark, I could almost feel him here, strolling beside me.

  I wanted so badly to scream at him, to demand the truth. Why so many secrets? Jim was the painting I’d always thought was a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. As it turned out, there were countless versions of the same work floating around, smaller watercolors and rudimentary pencil sketches, cheap poster reprints selling for ninety-nine cents in an airport gift shop. True, none of them had the beauty and detail of my painting, but they still depicted the same scene and thus rendered it a little less special. Vida had her version. Mr. Joshua his. Whitley hers. Even Martha—there had been something disconcerting about the way she’d announced it: I had Jim’s guitar. Her feelings for Jim seemed to rise to the surface strong and strange, barely controlled, before sinking back into the depths.

  The rain fell harder, thunder growling.

  I walked on. Now and then, with a wave of revulsion, I swore I caught a glimpse of the Keeper, dressed in his gardener’s slicker, hiking between the trees, but every time I stopped, my heart pounding, staring into the woods to be sure, there was no one.

  Soon I could feel the leaden pull of the Neverworld taking hold, the now-familiar tingling grip starting at my feet, crawling up my shins.

  The path had taken me to a clearing where there was strong wind and giant fallen trees all over the ground. Squinting, I saw a hulking oak teetering a few yards in front of me. Suddenly it fell with a deafening crack, the entire forest echoing with the sound.

  I froze in alarm.

  Another crack rang out right beside me. Turning, I realized it was another oak coming loose. I tried to move out of the way, only to realize my feet were stuck in the cementlike mud. I managed to wrench them free, blindly throwing myself forward as the tree thundered to the ground, missing me by inches, branches shaking and snapping, whipping my head.

  What was happening?

  I lifted my head and crawled away, tried to take another step but fell facedown in the mud.

  The Neverworld blackout was descending. The end of the eleven point two hours had come. I managed to roll onto my back, gasping as I blinked up at the sky, the rain. It felt like being buried alive under the weight of a million poured coins, my body sinking deeper and deeper into mud. Soon I would feel my limbs breaking apart and dissolving.

  Another tree began to tear loose a few feet away.

  My final thought was panic: panic that I was going to die here with no solution to the mystery. The confessions of Vida Joshua and Whitley had solved nothing. Would I ever know what really had happened to Jim? How could I win the vote and get back to life?

  At that moment, I realized a dark figure was standing over me with a cruel expression.

  The Keeper.

  “In the dark there grows a tree. A castle tower shelters thee. When will I stop, when will I see? There is no poison but for me.”

  I screamed as the oak tree fell on top of me and everything went black.

  I woke up, gasping, in the backseat of the Jaguar, Martha and Kip beside me.

  My heart was still pounding from the massive tree collapsing on me, the swamplike mud, the sudden appearance of the Keeper, the insidious rhyme he’d recited.

  I felt nauseous, but there was no time to think. Martha and Kipling were scrambling out of the car, running toward the house. I took off after them. Like me, they seemed worried that Whitley wouldn’t be there anymore; that, humiliated by the revelation that she had long been the White Rabbit, maybe even scared that we’d hold her accountable for Jim’s death, she’d fled.

  Instead, we found her sitting with Cannon in the kitchen. I could see from their mutually subdued demeanors that they’d been having an intense conversation, perhaps even arguing.

  Whitley looked red-faced and sullen. There was a hint of relief on her face.

  “Whitley has something to tell you,” announced Cannon.

  She glanced up with a feeble smile. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did to Jim. To the other students. For lying to all of you. It was disgusting. And stupid. It could have ruined my life. It almost did. But I swear with every fiber of my being I had nothing to do with Jim’s death. I understand you might not believe me now. But we will find out what happened to him that night, and you�
�ll know I’m innocent.”

  Kipling and Martha, studying her, seemed to accept this. They nodded. I nodded too.

  And yet, considering she’d lied to us for so long, I had to remind myself Wit was still capable of lying. Though I couldn’t imagine her plotting to harm Jim, I also couldn’t ignore what she was capable of in a rage, or the fact that she now had a motive. If Whitley had believed that Jim was going to expose her secret—that the administration and, most seriously of all, the Linda, were going to find out the terrible thing she’d been doing—it wasn’t outrageous to think she would have done anything to prevent that from happening.

  Abruptly, I was aware of everyone staring at me.

  “What?” I blurted.

  “We were wondering what you thought of Vida’s confession,” said Martha.

  I shrugged. “I think I believe her.”

  “Me too,” said Kipling with a wry smile. “A girl like Vida can’t lie very well. How many times did she call Jim a genius? I’m surprised she didn’t suggest he’d risen from the dead, like Jesus.” He looked at me. “You know I loved Jim to pieces. But the way he collected admirers could get a little old. His ego, bless his soul, could be an insatiable baby.”

  “He didn’t do it on purpose,” I said. “People were drawn to him.”

  “ ‘Didn’t do it on purpose,’ ” said Kipling. “Sure. That’s like me holdin’ up an iron rod in a football field during a storm and sayin’ it’s not my fault I got struck by lightning.”

  “She was especially impressed by Jim’s lyrics for his musical,” said Martha.

  “Right. The sudden blast of brilliance. That was somethin’. ’Member how he had nothin’ written for weeks ’cept a few bad rhymes straight out of MC Hammer? He kept complainin’ that he was finished, dried up—torturin’ us all, pretty much. Then, out of the blue, a masterpiece.” Kipling waved his hand in the air, a drowsy gesture. “Strands of lyrics like pearls. One after the other. All about the immense pain of being young and alive.”

  “Those lyrics were amazing,” said Whitley.

  “The performance at Spring Vespers was a hit,” said Cannon thoughtfully, interlacing his fingers. “The New York producer Mr. Joshua arranged loved the demo. Jim’s destiny was teed up, on the brink, like he always wanted. So what happened?”

  “Life,” said Kipling dryly.

  “Or,” said Martha, “it had something to do with that ride from Vida Joshua.” She gnawed a thumbnail. “I’m wondering if we can track down that shopping center.”

  “All Vida gave us to go on was a pet store and a fast-food restaurant,” said Wit.

  “When was the last time you talked to Jim?” Martha asked me suddenly, squinting.

  “Tuesday afternoon.” I cleared my throat. “The second night of Vespers. I confronted him about lying to me about the infirmary.”

  “So you didn’t speak to Jim at all the next day? The day he died?”

  I shook my head.

  No one said anything, all of them doubtlessly thinking how tragic it must have been for me, for that argument about Vida Joshua to be our last conversation.

  The truth was, Wednesday I’d exiled myself to Marksman Library, hiding out in the fourth-floor attic stacks in the History of South America section, which was seldom visited by students. It reeked of mildew and served as a shadowy breeding ground for a range of freakishly large moths. All day I sat hunched over my European history and English literature textbooks in front of the lone window with the dirty glass, Beats headphones blasting the soundtrack to Suicide Squad in my ears, forcing myself to focus on the French Revolution and World War II and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I kept my cell phone off all day because I didn’t want to deal with Jim. The only time I exposed myself to the rest of campus was during my four-minute walk between the library and my room in Creston Hall around eleven o’clock.

  I waited until I’d put on my pajamas and climbed into bed at midnight before turning on my cell, whereupon I was hit by the torrent of texts. A few were from Kipling, Cannon, and Wit. Twenty-seven others were from Jim. They’d started at eight that morning, messages ranging from ? to come on to why are u bein like this to desperate voice mails, his mood ranging from teasing to despair to anger, all of which sounded crazy and heartbreaking the more I replayed them.

  Call me.

  Call me Bumblebee.

  We need to talk.

  If you have any love left in your heart, call me.

  Why are you doing this?

  I need you. You know how I need you to survive.

  I hate you. I hate you so much. Because I love you.

  Don’t do this.

  I’m going to the quarry. Meet me.

  That was the last text I ever got from him. Received at 11:29 p.m.

  I deleted it. I deleted all of them.

  When they found Jim dead, two days later, I expected the police to ask me about his texts. I’d tell them I’d remained in my room all night.

  But they never did ask. No one ever even questioned me.

  I was tempted to tell them that I knew Jim was going to Vulcan Quarry. But what if they didn’t believe I’d stayed in my dorm all night?

  I’d be damned to the Neverworld forever. I’d have no chance—none—of ever making it out of here alive.

  “What if we went to the police now?” whispered Cannon.

  “What?” asked Whitley.

  “What if we went to speak to the Warwick police about Jim? We could get our hands on his case file. They have to have pulled his cell phone records. We get our hands on those reports. We’ll know a lot about his final days—where he went and who he was with.”

  “The police never came up with anything substantial to make them think Jim’s death was anything but suicide,” said Martha.

  “Unless the school forced them to cover up what they found,” said Whitley.

  “Or his family,” added Kipling. “If Edgar Mason thought somethin’ damnin’ was about to come out about his beloved dead son? The apple of his eye? He’d do anythin’ to stop it from gettin’ out. Remember the safe house?”

  We said nothing, all of us thinking back.

  Christmas break, senior year, Jim invited us to his family home in Water Mill, and we were shocked by the extreme security measures his family had adopted as totally routine.

  Edgar Mason had always been paranoid. Hoover, Jim called his dad, a not-exactly-joking reference to J. Edgar Hoover, the fanatical wiretapping founder of the FBI. For years, Edgar Mason had employed a private security firm called Torchlight to safeguard his family, which meant for the entirely of Jim’s life, two armed ex–Navy SEALs silently tailed him and every other member of his family when they left the house.

  The Christmas visit revealed a new level of Edgar’s obsession. Every inch of the Masons’ many houses around the world was being recorded in HD, the feeds playing in a basement control room called the Eye. There was a cybersecurity team on staff in Washington, D.C., who monitored the family’s servers twenty-four hours a day.

  Then there was the safe house.

  “For home invasions, terrorist attacks, and Zero Days,” Jim said, pointing out the black bunker peering out, crocodile-like, over the hill on the edge of the property. “It has power generators, independent water supplies, a secure phone line that can call the director of Homeland Security in three seconds. When the end of the world happens, let’s meet here.”

  The smile fell from his face, the lonely implications of such a structure hardly lost on him. He seemed reluctant to say more. After all, his dad’s obsession with safety had everything to do with him. Edgar Mason had always been careful, but it was apparently Jim’s boating accident the summer before senior year that had triggered this new level of mania.

  “I say we go over there,” said Cannon. “Ask around. See what the police know.”

  “
Or are trying to forget,” said Whitley.

  “Bee?” prompted Martha.

  Everyone turned, waiting for me to weigh in.

  I stared back.

  Taking a look inside Jim’s police file could mean his final texts to me would come to light. I’d have a lot to explain. But what else was in that file?

  The decision was really no decision at all.

  “Can I help you?” asked the police officer. POLK read his name tag.

  “We’d like to speak to Detective Calhoun,” Whitley said sweetly.

  Calhoun had been the lead investigator on Jim’s case. He’d given the few public statements and briefings. We had decided it was easy enough to start with him, with his thick gray beard and rodent eyes, his wan blinks at the news cameras as a gaudy rash of embarrassment seeped across his neck. One sensed he wanted nothing more than to get away from the glare of such a high-profile case and go back to working petty crimes like public bench vandalism.

  “What do you want with Calhoun?” demanded another officer, now approaching. His name tag read MCANDRESS.

  “We wanted to ask him about a case he worked on,” said Martha.

  “Which one?”

  “The death of Jim Mason,” I said.

  “That case is closed,” said a third officer.

  After ten more minutes of hostile questioning—they seemed wary of outsiders—we made it to Calhoun’s office, finding the man in question marooned behind a desk piled high with papers, like a giant bullfrog hiding in a bog.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected—maybe that movie scene where the grizzled old detective, asked about the cold case still haunting him after All These Years, begins to talk and talk.

  Instead, Detective Calhoun was a concrete wall.

  “Mason case was solved. Suicide,” he belched.

  “What made you rule suicide?” Martha asked, frowning. “Usually with suicides there’s a ritual or preparation before the act. A note left behind. Glasses removed, as well as shoes and socks. Was there any sign of that with Jim?”