The Dead Boys (11 page)

As Teddy limped along, he began to notice a squishing sound with each footfall. Looking down, he saw that a trickle of brownish sludge was now running along the ground, and the air started to smell foul, like an outhouse.

This is a sewer trench
, he realized. He started to feel nauseated and picked up the pace, hoping to find a way out of the trench.

Just then, Teddy began to hear a banging sound, and he came to a wooden ladder hanging down the wall to his left.

Upon closer inspection, the ladder seemed to be made of entwined roots, but they did not appear to be a random tangle—there were distinct rungs leading up to the top of the trench.

Meanwhile, the banging continued somewhere above him. It sounded like a hammer frantically smacking a nail.

Teddy hesitated, unsure what to do. He was suspicious of the tree-root ladder, even with the scorpions still trailing him, but the smell was getting worse, and the trickle at his feet had grown now to a steady stream.

All at once, the hammering grew much louder and even wilder. The scorpions scattered to both sides of the trench, fleeing up the walls.

“Uh-oh,” Teddy said.

There was a low rumble, and he whipped the flashlight around, illuminating a huge wall of sewage barreling down the trench toward him.

Teddy leaped onto the root ladder and climbed like mad for the top of the trench as the wave roared past beneath him. The murky filth kept rising as he made his way up and each rung began to unravel beneath his foot as soon as he stepped on it.

Up and up he climbed as the rungs dissolved, and with a great heave, he pulled himself up over the edge just as the sewage crested the top of the trench.

Teddy crawled along the trench's edge, half-expecting to find himself in the middle of a sea of scorpions again. But they were gone. He was also surprised to find that he could see without the flashlight. It was dim, and there was no sign of a sun, but enough light was filtering through the blowing dust that he could shut the flashlight off and save the batteries.

Before him, the skeleton of a half-built home rose from the sand. But it looked all wrong.

The frame of the house was horribly distorted. Warped two-by-four boards curved up every few feet, arching into the air like a dead dinosaur's rib cage. A crooked staircase rose in one direction, then turned and came back down without ever reaching the next floor. And because the walls were not yet filled in, it was impossible to tell where rooms began and ended. A tilted porch jutted out from the front of the home like a lolling tongue.

Atop it all, perched on the cockeyed, unfinished archway over the porch, sat Walter. He grinned down at Teddy.

“Scaredy! You made it.”

Walter twirled a massive hammer as if it were a cheerleader's baton. Like the house, the hammer looked like something from a twisted cartoon—its narrow handle led to a mallet-shaped head the size of a cantaloupe. But when Walter fumbled and dropped it, it hit the porch floor with a very real crash. It splintered the wood, leaving a gaping hole.

“Whoops,” Walter said with a smirk.

The hammer gone, he hoisted a circular saw with jagged three-inch teeth and a long cord that trailed away to nowhere. He pulled the trigger and it roared to life, seemingly without any power source. Walter haphazardly sliced through a board next to him, and it fell away, punching another hole through the porch.

“Watch out!” Teddy called.

“Or what?” Walter said. “This?” He revved up the saw again and, without flinching, whacked off one of his own fingers.

“Walter!” Teddy gasped. “Your finger! It's . . .”

“What?” Walter shrugged. “C'mon, Scaredy, spit it out.”

“Don't you see? You . . . you cut it off!”

“Uh-oh,” he said, chuckling and inspecting the empty space above the stump of his newly missing left index finger. “Same thing happened the day I came here, you know.”

There should have been blood—plenty of blood—but there wasn't, and Walter didn't seem any worse off with one less finger. Teddy had to take a deep breath to calm himself.

“Where is here?”

“Don't you recognize it?” Walter said. “This is my
place
. Everybody here has a place, Teddy. You will too.”

Teddy shivered. “So I didn't just imagine the construction site from 1970,” he said. “I was
there
.”

Walter laughed. “Wasn't that fun?”

“You tried to lure me here that day,” Teddy said, suddenly angry. “You tried to get me to come to this awful place the same way you got here—through the sewer trench!”

“Awww, I thought we were pals.”

“You're not my friend,” Teddy said, as much to himself as to Walter.

“It's not just me,” Walter said. “Good ol' Sloot gave it a try too. Even your big-bellied buddy was working on you.”

“Albert?” Teddy breathed.

“Oh-ho-ho! I can't believe you're so naïve. He's the one who picked you out! I laughed my buns off watching him try to coax you into the river.”

Teddy glared upward, wondering how he could have been so stupid.

“C'mon, don't be mad,” Walter cooed. “We just want more friends.”

“So why didn't you stay?” Teddy said. “Something grabbed you in the trench.”

“My turn was up. You see, a new kid like you can visit our time at the place we crossed over, but you can only see what happened to each of us once, and only for a few minutes. Enough time for us to try to convince you to come over too. But nobody could get you to take the leap. Too chicken, I guess. Bawk-bawk-buh-kawwwwk!”

“Too smart,” Teddy said.

“So smart that you came here on your own?” Walter chided him. “Welcome.”

He revved up the saw again and cut through the wooden archway on which he was sitting. The entire arch collapsed and he fell to the porch, landing on his feet.

“Tah-dah!” Walter said, raising his arms in the air like an Olympic gymnast after a big dismount. “Enough chitchat. I'm supposed to bring you to the tree.”

He started toward Teddy with the toothy saw still clenched in one fist. Teddy backed away, wondering how he could fight someone who could cut off his own finger without feeling any pain.

Then he realized that Walter's finger had been gone since 1970.
That was only a replay
. But there was the punch Teddy had thrown in the dark when Sloot, Joey, and Oliver had jumped him.
I gave Oliver that bloody nose
, he thought.
The boys can be hurt here.

As he backed up, his foot felt the edge of the trench. It gave him an idea. Teddy waved his arms, pretending like he was fighting for balance to keep from falling in.

“Where you going?” Walter taunted. “Back into the sewer? Ick.” He charged at Teddy, the circular saw roaring, its cord dangling between Walter's legs.

“No,” Teddy snapped, suddenly crouching, more balanced and ready than he'd let on. “You are!”

In one swift motion, he dove and grabbed the saw's cord, yanking it taut between Walter's legs. Walter's foot hooked the cord, and he stumbled, plummeting into the sewer trench.

There was a sickening
crack
as Walter hit the floor of the trench, where the sludge had drained away. All was silent for a moment, but then Teddy heard something even more gut-wrenching—Walter's pleading voice.

He was no longer laughing. In fact, it sounded to Teddy like he was crying.

“Hellllp!” Walter begged. “I think my leg's broken. Please. I can't climb up—I hurt my finger. There's scorpions down here. I wanna go home.”

It was hard to listen. Teddy realized that Walter's pleas were what he must have said in 1970 on the day he disappeared—the dim world was replaying his disappearance.

But as sad as Walter's cries made him feel, Teddy knew he couldn't let him out. He was far too dangerous.

“I'll look for you when I get free,” he called down.

“I'm scared,” came Walter's shaky voice from below.

“I promise,” Teddy said, then he turned and walked away from the skeletal construction site.

As Teddy left, the frame of the house began to collapse, its timbers cracking like matchsticks and falling like dominoes. There was a series of tremendous crashes, then a strong wind carried in the desert sand to finish burying Walter completely.

It somehow seemed inevitable that Walter would be buried in this world as he had been in life, Teddy thought as he trudged on through the drifting sand. But he still felt the loss as strongly as he had the first time, and he had to force himself to concentrate on his own dire circumstances.

He hoped that the layout of the dim world mirrored that of the real Richland, even in a rough, bizarre way. If it did, he was walking in the general direction of the river from the construction site. And if he found the river, he could use it to locate the A-house again.

With no scorpions or dead boys chasing him, Teddy stopped for a moment to rummage through his backpack and see what else he had that might help. His compass didn't work, and the cell phone he'd packed blinked “no service.” It didn't surprise him, and besides, even if he got hold of someone, he could never explain where he was.

He ate a granola bar and walked on, watching ahead for the river. This version of Richland was an empty place. There didn't seem to be anything but desert wasteland between the A-house, Walter's construction site, and where he hoped to find the river.

As he walked, he puzzled over what Walter had said—how they each had a place here in this world.
If the construction site was Walter's,
Teddy thought,
then the river must be Albert's
. He wondered where his own might be.

After a few minutes, Teddy's theory of the river's location proved correct—the great waterway appeared in the distance like a ribbon of ink winding through the sand. Darkness rolled off of its surface like mist, casting shadows along the bank.
It's glowing black
, Teddy thought—the exact opposite of a river reflecting sunlight from its surface.

Drawing closer, he saw that the bare, sandy dirt gave way to gray, scrubby plants along the pebbly shore. Teddy stooped and picked up a rock—a potent weapon against other kids. Albert had seemed like the most harmless of the three boys, but perhaps it made him the most dangerous too.

“Albert?” he called. There was no response. The river just flowed past, eerily quiet for something so huge.

Teddy looked up and down the lonely bank, but there was no sign of the chubby boy. He hurled the rock into the water. The current quickly swept the ripples downstream, but Teddy saw a shape linger just beneath the surface. It was moving, but Teddy couldn't tell what it was.

The shape in the water began to grow—it was coming closer. Teddy saw what looked like an arm, long and thin. He could almost make out a bony hand.

“Albert?”

He set one foot near the edge of the bank for a better look. The river crawled up the shore toward him and flowed over his foot. Teddy felt its current tug at his pant leg.

Suddenly, a large figure burst from the water. It slammed full-force into Teddy and knocked him backward onto the sand-and-stone bank, landing directly on top of him.

Teddy groaned and stared up into a familiar dripping face.

“Don't go in the river,” Albert warned.