Bonechiller (24 page)

Shouldn’t be long now.

A pickup truck whips past. I check my watch. I check to make sure I’ve got my cell phone in my backpack. Then I check my guts for the hundredth time.

Do I stay, or do I go? Fight or flight?

But my brain keeps stalling. I hiked all the way up here ready to leave. Now that I’m here, I really don’t know.

It’s just—I’m sick of running. Leaving everything and everybody behind. Starting over again, just when I think I’ve found something worth staying put for.

Something like Ash. I know what she’d say—flight is not an option. But she doesn’t know what it’s like to have that thing inside your head. Its poison in your veins.

The last couple days I’ve held back from touching her, knowing I’d give her the shivers.

“Must be like kissing a snowman,” I said when she pulled me in close.

I could see the worry shading her eyes even as she smiled. “More like licking a Danny-flavored Popsicle.”

Ash is fearless. Unbeaten. We could have been something.

I squint into the blowing snow, searching for the Greyhound. The road is still empty.

Dad’s going to be pissed. I’ll call him from the bus, or when I get to Toronto. Aunt Karen is always saying I can come stay anytime.

But Dad will think I’m abandoning him, taking off like this. Three days till Christmas too. The worst time of year for us, when everything reminds us of Mom and missing her eats us alive. Only way we get through it is together.

I’ve got to come up with something to tell him—anything to keep him from dragging me back here.

Fight or flight?

Flight worked for Mason, kept him alive.

I remember how it felt, the night in the clearing out in the bluffs as we watched the beast emerge from its tunnel. That insane urge to rise from our hiding spot, to stand and give myself up. Like it was calling, and I couldn’t help but answer.

Mason talked about the whispers.
Soon, you’ll hear them
. Right now the beast seems to be focused on Howie. But when it’s done with him, I’m next. Even now, in the light of
day, I feel the pull of something. Like a lake current trying to draw me back to shore. I can still resist it, but what happens when night falls and the beast wakes?

Poor Howie. Never caught a break his whole life, so scared of his own shadow he’s got a restraining order against it. Now he’s lying in the hospital.

And what’s ripping me apart is that I know what’s happening to him right now. Inside his head.

He’s in the beast’s world. Trapped there. Dreaming its dreams. Can’t wake up. Can’t escape.

I can see him, too scared to jump off the edge of the cliff and wake up. Too weak to tear himself free of the nightmare. Before, I was there to give him a push, show him the way. Now he’s alone.

I watch the highway. Where’s the bus? Come on, already.

But I’m so tired of running. Drifting from town to dreary town. If Dad stays still too long, the past crowds in on him. Eats him up.

But there’s nowhere we can run that’s far enough. No place we can hide it won’t find us. Even here, at the end of the world. Nightmares always track you down.

Get on the bus. Don’t look back. Looking back is lethal.

Through the blowing snow, I see the Greyhound coming down the hill.

I grab my pack, startled by the sudden appearance of the bus. Guess I was beginning to doubt it would ever come.

This is it. Stay or go?

If I leave now, Howie’s dead. That’s a fact.

There’s no cure for this thing we’ve got. And by Howie’s calculations, I can count the time we have left in hours. But what good is me dying with him going to do?

I stand on the shoulder of the highway, watching the bus approach.

Pike wants to kill it. Kill a predator that’s survived a thousand years without a scratch.

I go to step out on the road and cross.

Do it! Do it.

But my feet aren’t moving.

I can’t leave Howie locked in that nightmare. I know what it’s like to be left behind. Can’t do that to him.

And who’s next, after I take off? Pike? Ash?

She’s been trying to show me how to fight. But I’m no scrapper. What I really got from her, what stuck with me, is her
drive
. There’s no quit in her. Flight is not an option.

The bus pulls up in front of the store, idling.

Last chance.

Some things you can’t escape by running. However this is going to end, it ends here and now.

I stay on the shoulder until the Greyhound pulls away. It goes down the snow-blown highway, between endless white fields.

I let out a deep sigh. But I’m not sorry.

I turn from the highway and the bus shrinking in the distance. It’ll be a hike back to the marina. Give me time to psych myself up—to grow some balls, as Pike would put it.

Where I’m headed, I’m going to need them.

Back into the nightmare to get Howie.

“Where have you been?” Dad asks as I sneak into the house with my backpack.

“Just out.”

He’s sitting at the kitchen table with his toolbox, working on a blender.

“Where’d you find that?” I ask.

“I’m just fixing it for somebody.”

I notice a couple empty beer bottles on the table. Nothing strange about that. But there’s red lipstick on the mouth of one.

“Somebody
who
?” I ask, knowing already.

Dad pretends not to hear. But then he sees me picking up the lipsticked empty.

“The woman from the Red and White.”

“Andrea?”

“I believe that’s her name,” he says, shuffling parts around.

“So. You like her?”

Even with doom and panic creeping up on me, I can’t help a small grin.

Andrea won’t give up. First, it was bringing over the blinking midget Christmas tree. Then, a casserole and a lasagna. Nice tries, but they got her nothing more than a grunted “You shouldn’t have done that.” But this is genius. The way to Dad’s heart—get him to fix stuff. He’s a born fixer. So that got her in the door, even got her a beer.

Dad gestures at my backpack. “What’s all that?”

Think fast. “The gym. I was working out.”

“Well, your friends have been calling. What’s wrong with your cell?”

“Battery must have died.”

Really, I just turned it off. I was planning a clean getaway and didn’t want anybody talking me out of it.

Dad grabs a paper towel to wipe some grease off his hands. “I hear Howie’s back in the hospital.”

“Yeah.”

“Poor kid. You think it’s serious?”

Dead serious. “Don’t know.”

“How
you
feeling?” Dad frowns. “You look beat.”

“Uh, yeah. Intense workout.”

“You’re really pale.” Dad presses the back of his hand to my forehead. I’m not quick enough pulling away. A startled look flashes in his eyes. “You’re freezing.”

I step back. “It’s like thirty below out there. I’m fine, just got to warm up.”

“I’ll turn up the heat.”

“No!” I say, way too loud. I’m already baking in here. “I mean, I’ll put on a sweater or something. Don’t worry about it.”

But worrying is what Dad does best.

“Okay,” he says. “But watch out, eh? Maybe there’s something going around.”

Right. Something with eight-inch teeth and a taste for teenagers.

I start down the hall to my room.

“I’m gonna heat up some meat loaf,” he says. “Want some?”

“Did you make it?”

“No. She did.”

“Sounds good, then.” I head for my room. “But I’m just going to take a nap first.”

Andrea’s wearing him down. It’s funny, here’s Dad finally showing some signs of life, and here’s me showing signs of death.

Not so funny.

I close my door, crack the window open and strip down to my boxers and T-shirt.

Outside, the late afternoon is starting its deep blue fade into night. I take in a deep breath to cool my lungs.

This is it.

If you try real hard to fall asleep, it ain’t gonna happen. But I am deliriously drowsy.

I stretch out on top of the covers. The only light comes from the blue of the winter sunset. Blue like the glow in the beast’s cave.

Deep breaths. I try to slow my heart, making an effort to release the tension in my muscles.

I give it ten minutes. Lying still. Breathing easy. And another ten.

No good. I’m weak with exhaustion, but my brain just won’t let go and fade to black. Maybe because it knows what’s waiting when it does.

Giving up, I open my eyes—

And see myself reflected in the ceiling above. I gasp. The water-stained ceiling is now a mirrored surface. I sit up, blinking in confusion. The whole place is mirrored—walls, floor, my bedroom door.

I go to swing out of bed. The desk, the lamp and the pile of school books all shine with a metallic silver smoothness. The bed under me too. I touch the sheets, the reflected image of my hand meeting the real thing. I half expect the sheet to crinkle up like tinfoil. But it still feels soft.

Any move I make is thrown back at me from every surface in the room.

I’m in the dream. On the beast’s turf.

And I remember why. I’m here for Howie.

Move fast! Before it catches my scent. If it hasn’t already.

I look out the window. The world outside is still caught in a blue twilight. The Cove is the same. Snow and ice, and skeleton trees.

I brace myself with a breath of frosty air. Then I call out: “Howie!” My voice carries over the empty landscape. No answer. This dreamscape is as stiff and lifeless as an unshaken snow globe.

He’s gotta be here somewhere. We shared the nightmare before, and I found him. So I can find him again.

I hope.

Pulling my head back in, I listen hard. There’s a hush of sound, like a breeze drafting through the house. But it’s something more—

Whispers. Coming from somewhere on the other side of my bedroom door.

I go over to it, keeping my eyes on the knob so I won’t get distracted by the images bouncing back at me from every direction, imitating every little move I make. Reflections of reflections.

The door opens on a hall of mirrors lit by winter blue. The whispering rises. Too many voices talking at the same time.

“Howie!”

Nothing.

“It’s me. Danny.”

Moving into the hallway, I make the mistake of looking down. The floor seems to drop out from under me, with nothing solid to support me but my own reflection.

I take a step, watching the sole of my bare left foot meet its twin rising up on the flipside. I get the weirdest sensation that I won’t fall as long as I have the reversed images of my own feet to walk on.

I take baby steps while the whispers rise and fall as if they’re wandering the house. Searching.

“Howie!”

The murmur goes quiet. Something heard me. Then it hits me—maybe
I’m
what the voices are searching for.

I look up from my strange balancing act to see steam pouring out of the open bathroom door ahead. I glance in. The condensation has fogged up the silvered walls. Something’s been scribbled in the steam.

DANNYBOY DANNYBOY DANNYBOY DANNYBOY DANNYBOY.

Over and over, in rows reaching from floor to ceiling.

What Mom called me.

I forget to breathe. The beast has been dissecting my memories, finding out where it hurts.

I force myself to break away.

But there’s nowhere I can look that I don’t see myself looking back, wide-eyed and desperate. These mirrors are like the beast’s eyes. If I stare into them too deep, or stay in here too long, they’ll swallow me up.

Focus!

This dead silence is electric, like the moment between the flash of lightning and the thunder.

If I was Howie, where would I hide? He’s just too good at hiding out, been doing it half his life. So the only way I’ll find him is if he comes to me.

“Howie!”

As I step into the living room, the silver surfaces trick me with my own reflections staring back.

There! Something moving in the corner. I swing around and find a girl, maybe thirteen, in pink pajamas. She’s hunched over, hugging herself. Her eyes lock on to mine. The girl’s lips move, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. Whispers.

I step closer, straining to hear. Then I realize she’s standing
inside
the wall. I see my own reflection behind her. There’s two of me but only one of her. She’s trapped in the wall.

Her lips move again, her voice barely a whimper: “Show me. Show me the way out.”

And she reaches her hand to me, as if I’m going to take it and lead the way.

I can’t help flinching back, scared what might happen if she touched me.

She’s one of
them
. The missing.

“Show me.”

“I don’t … I can’t.”

Then I catch more movement. Over there, staring out from the silvered curtains, two guys lean together. They look familiar. Where have I seen them? Then it comes to me. Their pictures were in the
Examiner
archives. Runaway brothers from half a century ago.

“Take us with you,” the older brother’s voice echoes, calling from a deep place.

Every second, more kids rush into the living room, racing along the walls. I jump when I see an Indian girl appear beneath my feet, staring up like she’s looking through a glass-lidded coffin. She’s got on an animal-hide dress and speaks in a language that sounds something like Ash’s Ojibwa.