HEX (29 page)

Okay, kiddo, here we are,
Steve thought. It was a peculiar moment, and it felt as if a balance had been struck. Here they were, finally alone: he and his eldest, he and his boy. As if both of them had been waiting for this for a long time—not only since that strange night a few days back, when Tyler had followed him outside on bare feet, and not even since that fight about Laurie early in October, but longer, much longer. Steve had brought his son back from a faraway place in the darkness, and he knew that what was waiting to be dragged out into daylight would not be good, yet the feeling that prevailed right now was that of deep, overwhelming love.

He made Tyler drink. The boy spilled some of the water on his gray sweatpants, wiped it off, and wept silently for a long time. Steve held him close until he eventually calmed down. Then he had him drink some more and said cautiously, “It's pretty bad, huh?”

Tyler nodded with pale, wet cheeks. It took at least a couple of minutes before he was finally able to speak. When he was ready, three weak, imploring words dropped from his lips: “Help me, Dad.”

And Steve swore that he would do everything he could to help him, literally everything.

*   *   *

AN HOUR LATER,
just before Jocelyn and Matt were due to come home with the horses and plenty of questions, Steve and Tyler took the Toyota and drove out of town on Route 293, then took 9W through Black Rock Forest. As soon as they crossed the pass and descended into the valley, a feeling came over Steve that they were in forbidden territory, and he had to suppress the urge to keep looking in his rearview mirror to see if they were being followed. Ridiculous, but it was there nonetheless, and he wasn't able to shake it.

They didn't say a word during the entire ride.

They drove along the Hudson and into Newburgh, parked near the Washington's Headquarters historic site, and found a bar in the center of town with few people and lots of dark corners. Steve ordered two root beers and asked for the Wi-Fi code. It took him twenty minutes to read through a selection of the reports on Tyler's website and to watch his videos, with increasing dismay—and, he had to admit, silent admiration. None of them were as shocking as the images he had seen at home—thank God those weren't online—but each and every one contained spectacular and highly incriminating material, to say the least. Then he made Tyler erase it all and leave no trace. The boy gratefully set to work.

Watching his son and drinking his root beer, Steve came back to himself with a shock.
Don't you see what a dangerous game you're playing? You're destroying evidence. More importantly, you're renouncing the morality that you and Jocelyn have always placed such a high value on. I hope you're fully aware that you're offering Tyler an escape from a sordid game that he was a major player in.

But hadn't Tyler been punished enough already, being forced to witness the atrocity committed by his so-called friends? He had had to come face-to-face with the consequences of his stupidity. Tyler had gone through hell and back in the past twenty-four hours. A fit like that didn't come out of nowhere. He hadn't even been able to summon the courage to check the HEXApp for Katherine's whereabouts, afraid that Armageddon might have hit the town. When Steve had assured him that nothing unusual had been reported, and that the witch had resumed her normal pattern after the stoning, the relief in Tyler's eyes had been overwhelming.

“I'll have to report this. You understand that, don't you?” Steve finally said, breaking a long, painful silence after Tyler had told him his story.

Tyler nodded slowly, afraid.

“This has gone from bad to worse. People are going to get killed if your friends continue down this path. I can't bear that responsibility.”

Tyler said he understood.

“This isn't your fault, okay? That Jaydon has totally lost it—he needs help. Someone's got to put an end to this.” As he said this, he realized that he had been speaking mostly to himself, trying to justify the plan that was slowly dawning on him. He shook his head with doubtful certainty. “No. Not your fault.”

“I just don't get it,” Tyler said. “I mean, Burak's part in this. Jaydon's nuts and Justin's just a jerk, but Burak … he used to be cool.”

“Well, he finally snapped,” Steve said, more forcefully than he intended. “You know that's what Black Spring does to some people.”

But that didn't seem to sink in with Tyler. He finally looked up at his dad. “I'm scared for what's gonna happen to him.”

The truth was that Steve was terrified of what lay in store for all of these boys. Something had to happen, that much was obvious. They had broken all the laws of the Emergency Decree; they had caused Fletcher's death and had jeopardized the lives of everyone in Black Spring. Maybe Doodletown really was the kind of shock therapy they needed to make them see what the hell they had been doing … although in his heart of hearts, Steve feared Doodletown wouldn't be the end of it. Tyler's part alone was enough to put him in Doodletown. If the images of the stoning were not handled with the utmost care, it might well lead to a popular insurrection.

A chill suddenly gripped him.
Those fucking idiots don't deserve any better than to take full blame for their imbecility. What Tyler did, he did out of idealism. Should he be punished for that?
Steve's mouth went dry when he found himself remembering his own suicidal thoughts in the Thai beach bungalow so long ago, during Jocelyn's first pregnancy. That's what Doodletown must be like. And then he remembered Tyler's infinitely fragile, begging eyes:
Help me, Dad.

Steve had made his decision. And now, while his son was destroying the result of months of effort, and Steve couldn't help but feel that they were blowing a unique opportunity to actually make progress—that in fact they were driving Black Spring back into the seventeenth century—a persistent doubt kept gnawing at him, a doubt about whether he was doing the right thing.

“Okay, done,” Tyler said.

“Is it completely gone?”

“Yeah.”

“Everything?” Steve was looking for more confirmation.

“Yeah. All content has been deleted and I've cancelled the URL.”

“And it can never be retrieved?”

“Not exactly. The address will be in quarantine for thirty days. In case I wanted to restore it, or whatever. But the domain registration is anonymous, so no one can see my details. Unless they call in the law.” Tyler hesitated. “You don't think they're going to go that far, right?”

Don't be so sure,
Steve thought.
What if they get West Point involved?
But even then, chances were slim that Tyler would be picked up, he figured. If Jaydon was arrested, he'd rat on him, that much was certain. Maybe the other two would corroborate Jaydon's story, although they were more likely to keep their mouths shut about the part they played in Tyler's project, afraid of further consequences if they were found out. So it would all boil down to a single accusation by a deranged perpetrator who had been driven into a corner, and even in Black Spring they knew that desperate needs led to desperate deeds.

You've set off on a road full of pitfalls, Steve, with no way of knowing what the consequences might be. Maybe this kind of intervention isn't going to help Tyler at all—did that ever occur to you?

Oh, fuck off. No way am I going to send my son to Doodletown. Over my dead body.

“So can they uncover the history in any other way?” he asked. “I don't know, automatic backups or something?”

“Only through Mike.”

“Who's Mike?”

“Classmate. From Highland Falls. He builds websites and has his own server. He let me put my site on his server for a crate of beer.”

“So you let somebody from outside…”

Tyler shrugged. “What the hell does he care? He thinks it's some kind of private collection of all my YouTube vlogs. Which it was in the beginning, because that's how I got started, just to bore Mike and keep him from poking around in my shit.”

Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he saw that Tyler had picked up his phone and was tapping the screen with his thumbs. “What are you doing?”

“I'm texting him. I know the guy. For another crate of beer, he'll get rid of all the backups today.”

Next, Steve made Tyler erase his browser history on both his laptop and his iPhone, as well as his chat conversations and the entire folder of video clips and Word docs that had anything to do with his project. The GoPro memory card was last. Only the video of the stoning was left on his desktop.

Steve rubbed his cheeks, making a chafing sound, and suddenly got worried. “Do the other guys still have material on their computers or phones?”

Tyler shook his head. “The agreement was that we would only log in outside of town. I think everybody did it at school or in the library. We think the iPhones HEX distributed last year are bugged with keyloggers, so we decided to ban their use for the project.”

Steve looked at him, all at sea, and Tyler produced a faint smile. “A keylogger is like an app that allows you to see what's happening on a computer or phone from a distance. It passes on all the keystrokes so you can see exactly what websites someone is visiting. Way handy if you want to find out if somebody's cheating on you.”

“Right. So you're sure there's nothing else? They're going to search everything; I want you to be well aware of that.”

“Jaydon took a picture of…” He made a curvy gesture and looked away with embarrassment. “You know, what I told you about. You have to tell them that, Dad. They should take his phone away immediately if they're going to arrest him. But that's it, as far as I know.”

Let's just hope you're right.
“Anything else?”

Tyler thought for a minute and shook his head. “Oh, wait!” He turned red and began searching his phone. Steve half watched what he was doing and noted that, curiously enough, he was paging through his sound files. He clicked on one.

“Do I want to know what this is?” Steve asked.

Tyler shook his head and looked at the file with regret and disgust. Then, with two taps of his thumb, it was gone.

Steve settled the tab and soon they were walking along the Hudson, heads pulled into their collars and hands in their pockets. They sauntered all the way past the yacht basin to the enormous pillar that was part of the Hamilton Fish Bridge. They paused below the bridge and stared at its reflection, a glistening orange in the black water. The northeast wind tugged at their hair and their clothes as if it were trying to drive them back to Black Spring. But the river flowed farther, away from the darkness that surrounded them. Past the city it emptied into the New York Bight, and beyond that into the Atlantic Ocean where, much farther east, the new light would always break sooner than up in the hills where they belonged.

“Tomorrow, you're going to talk to Lawrence,” Steve said. This was the last piece of the puzzle, and if that fell into place they had at least a chance. “You trust Lawrence, right? You're going to tell him what we did and that no matter what happens, he has to keep his mouth shut and stick with our story. Make it clear to him that this is the only way he can get out of this unharmed. If Jaydon blabs, they'll question you both. Is Lawrence up to it, you think?”

Tyler shrugged.

“And you. Are you up to it?”

He nodded slowly. He looked like a convict on death row being asked if he could handle his last walk to the scaffold. Steve put his arm around him and felt a shock run through Tyler's body.

“No one will have to know,” he said. “Only you and me.”

The boy stared with dark-rimmed eyes at a gravel barge that was making its way steadily down the river with a soft rumble of the engine. Steve understood that not only was Tyler afraid, but he was also plagued by guilt. The boy had character. Steve knew few people with as strong a sense of justice as Tyler. He well remembered how proudly Tyler had looked at him when he stood up for his ideals at the All Hallows Council meeting. And suddenly he realized that he might easily be burdening his son with something he'd never be able to come to terms with.

He's gonna have to,
Steve thought.
There's no alternative. Maybe it'll haunt him for a while, but it will pass, like all things pass in the end.

The surge caused by the barge had reached the pillar and sloshed against the boulders with white-crested waves. Steve was suddenly angry at himself for having such misgivings. He'd protected Tyler out of love. Parents loved their children and protected them at any cost. Hadn't Tyler himself asked him the question not long ago for his blog: Who would Steve save, his own child or a village in Sudan?

Of course you saved your own child. That's what love was.

“Okay,” Tyler said eventually. He shivered, and Steve pulled him close and rubbed him to warm him up.

“Good. Be strong, son, and everything will be all right. You didn't deserve this.”

“Are you going to tell Mom?”

“No.” The thought hadn't even occurred to Steve until that moment, but it felt like the right thing to do. “This is just between you and me.”

Tyler nodded. “Okay.” He was silent for a few seconds, then he quietly added, “Thanks, Dad.”

They stood there and watched the cold, dark water flow past them. It was a moment with his oldest son that Steve would never forget. Suddenly he wished with all his heart that they could step onto a barge together, leave Black Spring behind, and just follow the current, past the New York harbors and into the new dawn. That's where things would assume their true form. In a flash of déjà vu, he heard Matt's sarcastic laugh:
Yes, Dad. Who would you save, Tyler or me?
Steve had given the obvious answer that evening, and Tyler had faultlessly sensed that he was being politically correct. The truth was that it made you feel uncomfortable if you really preferred one of your children over the other. Steve had treated enough parents at New York Med to know that it was a perfectly natural thing, but when you were forced to look into that mirror yourself, it became downright embarrassing.