HEX (14 page)

In a flash, Katherine was bending over her. Griselda's body jolted from the sudden chill and she fell over backward with a scream, landing in the muddy streambed in almost exactly the same way she had smacked down onto the kitchen linoleum earlier in the day. Fear washed over her in gray waves and mixed with the rain as she was forced to look into that mutilated face, the stitches set into the dead skin like a black zipper over blind eyes, and she scrambled backward, clawing the mud with her hands in the face of her own death …

And lay still.

The woman with the sewn-up eyes hadn't moved at all.

Griselda raised herself on her elbows and listened to her heart pounding erratically in her temples. She began to feel woozy, as if she were floating. Katherine van Wyler was still standing farther up in the streambed, a dark, dripping idol padlocked in chains in the last gloomy light of day. For a moment, Griselda feared she was going to faint, but the thought of waking up in the dark, in the domain of her goddess, gave her enough strength to turn over, scramble to her feet, and take to her heels, without so much as a word of good-bye.

The offering, in the form of a cleanly licked and rain-soaked paper plate, was left lying in the streambed. Much later that evening, when the Black Rock Witch moved, she accidentally stepped on it.

 

NINE

IN THE THREE
weeks following the lamppost test, the boys from
Open Your Eyes: Preachings from the Witch's Nest
made solid progress in their mission to gather so much scientific evidence that they could make Black Spring go not only mainstream but immediately viral as well. During those three weeks, the wedge between Tyler Grant and Jaydon Holst also became painfully evident. It had always been there, of course—Jaydon had been unpredictable since childhood, and dangerous—but it had lain dormant, like an underground fossil now finally exposed by the inevitable quirks of fate.

What started it was the October 15 message on the
OYE
website:

Next step: the #double-dare whisper test

Posted 01:29
P.M.
by Tyler Grant

The whisper test wasn't the first experiment after the collision Tyler had had with his dad over Laurie. That had been their fiercest quarrel in ages—in fact, he couldn't remember them ever having had a more violent clash. Tyler and Steve hardly ever got into fights, just as Matt and Jocelyn rarely did. It had rattled them both so deeply that it had affected the other family members as well. The next afternoon, Tyler had come to help his dad and Matt in the stable, and as he passed Steve a bale of hay they exchanged a glance that signaled the end of the rift between them. This particular hatchet had been buried, but the pressure in Tyler's chest had remained. He hadn't been able to tell his dad all his plans, of course, but it stung him that Steve hadn't approved of the things he
had
told him.

In the days that followed, he had mostly avoided his parents. Once his community service work was finished, he stayed away from home longer after school, eating at Laurie's or with friends in Newburgh. He spent his afternoons roaming aimlessly through the city or logging onto the free Wi-Fi at Starbucks to work on
OYE
. Until now, he had always done this from the comfort of his bedroom with the Wi-Fi disconnected while his parents slept, then put it online away from the watchful eye of HEX at school the next day, but now he felt he needed to be even more careful. Maybe he was being paranoid, but it was out of his control. Laurie had asked what was going on and Tyler had inadvertently pushed her away, creating tension between them. He found he didn't feel much enthusiasm for getting it on with her, either, something they usually did well and at length. It didn't feel right; the lie rose like a wall between them.

And at the end of the day, racing back home up the road that wound between the large homes of Cornwall on his Diamondback Joker, Tyler thought about what awaited him at the end of the tunnel of trees. He was becoming increasingly aware that he'd be going down this road in the dark for the rest of his life. Maybe the people behind those windows were watching him go by and seeing a healthy American boy on his way home after a long day. A boy in a free country, almost done with school, who would spread his wings and chase his dreams. And no one, no one knew what was going on just a few miles down the road. No one knew that this boy would remain in the dark forever.

More than anything, it proved that something had to change. Tyler didn't want to be that boy.

The results of the Ray-Ban experiment raised new questions, as all scientific problems do. Tyler had uploaded the raw footage onto the
OYE
website in order to avoid future accusations of a hoax, but as an introduction he also edited a short video in the style of TylerFlow95. Here we go:

*   *   *

WE SEE A
group of boys surrounding the Black Rock Witch at a safe distance in the alley behind the Market & Deli. Tyler has put “Brooklyn's Finest” by Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. under the video and overlaid the images with a black-and-white grunge layer, so the whole thing looks more like a hip-hop video clip. Using one of Grim's grabber sticks from community service, they push Burak's Ray-Bans underneath the witch's headscarf. The glasses balance on the bridge of her nose, slightly askew, but one more push, and for the first time in three hundred fifty years Katherine van Wyler is wearing a trendy, expensive accessory to go with her iron chains. “Who's my bitch now?” Burak raps, and the boys break and pop as Jay-Z and B.I.G. assure us: “Take that witcha, hit ya, back split ya…”

Of course, there's a lot of the usual jokes, but let's jump to the shot in which Katherine is moving farther back into the alley behind the supermarket and the boys are hurrying after her. Once they turn the corner, the witch is gone, but then the boys find what they're really after: Burak's Ray-Bans. Or what's left of them. Amazed, excited shouts as the camera jerks and zooms in on the asphalt and Tyler says, “Careful, don't touch them.…”

The Ray-Bans appear to have melted away—there's no other way of describing it. One of the lenses is cracked; the other is wavy like softened plastic after it's been heated. The glass is held in place by burned, bubbly, molten plastic, one arm of the frames jutting out of the remains like an antenna. You can still see the Ray-Ban logo. And there's something else: a black, crusty, layered substance that is clearly gooed
onto
the frames and is not part of the actual construction. It has the texture of insulation material bulging from a crack in a plastered wall. “Jesus, what is that?” someone asks. “God, it stinks!” another shouts. We see Tyler putting his hand into a freezer bag and picking up the glasses. “They're still hot…” he says breathlessly. The glasses stick to the asphalt and make a popping noise as they tear free. Then Tyler holds the evidence up to the camera and declares, “This is a historic moment.”

The next shot is a cabinet in a chemistry classroom:
James I. O'Neill High School, Highland Falls,
reads the subtitle. Lawrence VanderMeer and Tyler, the cameraman, are hanging on the lab assistant's every word. He's a dapper, gray-haired guy with tobacco-stained fingers, and he's examining the remains of the Ray-Bans under his microscope. “So you really don't know?” Tyler repeats, excited because that's exactly what he had hoped for, but still visibly disappointed, as if he had actually … well, expected
something
. The lab assistant turns off the light and says briskly, “Be damned if I know what it is. It's too badly burned to identify. Given the smell there's probably some sulfur in it, but the structure seems more organic. But, guys … what on earth did you
do
to those glasses? To get glass to melt you need a temperature of fourteen hundred degrees. But the plastic arm is still intact, you see? And that's impossible. Because if the glasses had cooled off that quickly, the second lens would have cracked as well.”

OMG, 1400 degrees! Is it possible that the Black Rock Witch uses so much energy to manifest that she reaches temperatures that high? Is this some unknown, supernatural phenomenon? And what about that burned-on goop? Sulfur, but with an organic structure, says Mr. Mason at O'Neill High. Of course, we couldn't tell him our theory, but—drumroll, please—could we have found the first tangible evidence of the existence of
ECTOPLASM
???

For the uneducated among us: “Ectoplasm” is a term coined by French physiologist Charles Richet for a substance that can be exteriorized or projected by a medium or by spiritual energy (says Wikipedia). We've all seen photos of tripping mediums barfing up this gross cloud of mashed potatoes. Usually the mediums were fakes and it
was
mashed potatoes, which is exactly why the existence of ectoplasm has not been recognized by science. But even so, ectoplasm has been connected with ghosts ever since, like, the first ghost was seen. Even today, when that chick with the milkshake in her throat shows up in
The Grudge,
she appears as this puffy cloud in the upper corner of the bedroom. And in
The Blair Witch Project,
there's this “blue jelly” stuff all over the illiterate hippie's backpack the night before the witch gets him.

I mean, we don't want to jump to conclusions, but holy shit, this is exciting! This requires a thorough scientific investigation. We at
OYE
will carefully store the evidence in our archives for National Geographic to pick up. NG: you can get it for free from Tyler's house, in exchange for a new pair of sunglasses (Ray-Ban, says Burak, preferably the type rb8029K Aviator Ultra, the limited edition).

*   *   *

AGAINST ALL EXPECTATIONS,
they almost screwed up the whisper test. That was because the opportunity arose more or less accidentally, before they were able to weigh the options and discuss them at length. Looking back, Tyler decided that even if they had been given enough time, it still would have been one hell of a big risk. But sometimes science took place in the crater of an erupting volcano and there was nothing you could do about that.

That Sunday afternoon, Tyler had decided to go for a walk with Lawrence and Fletcher in the woods behind their house. The trees cast blazing colors across the sodden paths and shone with extraordinary brightness in anticipation of the end of the month, when they would fade and drop their leaves. When the path veered sharply to the left and went up the hill to the outlook point, the boys instinctively followed Philosopher's Creek, which was out of reach of the hidden cams that projected the entire Mount Misery trail system onto HEX's monitors.

Lawrence and Tyler were strolling along, casually discussing the practical details of the whisper test, when Fletcher suddenly strained against his leash and began to growl, ears cocked.

Tyler wrapped the leash twice around his wrist and braced himself.

In the distance, they heard excited voices and something stirred in the foliage. Suddenly Fletcher began barking wildly. Tyler and Lawrence exchanged startled glances and hurried after Fletcher to the place where there was a split in the soggy streambed, with the creek branching off and the surrounding slopes growing narrower. Burak, Jaydon, and Justin were on the left bank with the Black Rock Witch in their midst. They were poking her body with long branches. When they heard the dog, Burak and Justin looked over their shoulders and raised their hands, grinning broadly.

“Jesus,” Tyler muttered. “Easy, Fletcher. Down!” He tugged on the leash and pushed it into Lawrence's hand. “Hold on to him and don't come any closer, or he'll freak.”

Lawrence nodded and Tyler ran to the others. “What the hell are you doing? Cut it out!”

“Well, if it isn't our fearless leader,” Justin laughed. “We're doing scientific research. We're proving she's made of solid matter.”

“And she is. Look,” Jaydon said, and with unnecessary roughness he jabbed the witch in the shoulder with the tip of his stick. Katherine tottered and turned her head slowly to where she had been stung, but she didn't move from her spot.

Tyler was disgusted. They were mocking the witch. Sure,
he
may have been the one to come up with the idea for the lamppost test, but that was just a prank gone wrong. Mocking the witch was a no-go; you didn't need an Emergency Decree to figure that out. What Jaydon was doing shocked Tyler. Jaydon had embarked on a slippery slope that would take him irrevocably to the abyss.

“Cut it out,” Tyler said again, and he pushed Jaydon's arm hard, more confidently than he felt.

Jaydon's glance froze and grew dark. He lowered the stick and turned around, two years older and a head taller than Tyler, and spoiling for a confrontation. Tyler felt his heart pounding in his throat, but he didn't back away. “Dude, you're sick, baiting her like that. I don't want you fucking around with our research. You'll blow our cover.”

“That dog of yours; he's the one who's gonna blow your cover,” Jaydon said. Tyler saw something in his eyes he didn't like at all, something that frightened him, something that had been smoldering within Jaydon since the day his father had left to meet his ill-fated death. Behind them, Fletcher started barking again and Lawrence was on his knees, trying to keep him calm.

“We agreed we'd only do experiments together, and only in ways that help our research. The Council meeting is next week, and you'll fuck up our chances for free Internet and privacy if they see you messing around like this.” Tyler licked his lips nervously, then decided to take it one step further. “Get your act together, or you're out of
OYE
.”

“And who made you boss all of a sudden?” Jaydon said, moving in closer.

“Um … we did?” Lawrence intervened, and Tyler closed his eyes in prayerful thanks.