The Dead Boys (16 page)

He was surprised to see vague images in the darkness that grew clearer the longer he stared—a distant moonlit river, rows of split-level homes, and the empty desert beyond. Clearest of all was Officer Barnes standing below, leaning against the trunk of the oversized sycamore.

The scene became familiar and vivid, not nightmarish and dust-blurred like the exaggerated world of the tree. And Teddy remembered that this was one of the ways the sycamore had tried to bring him
into
the world.

It's not a mouth,
he realized.
It's a door!

With this thought, he found his strength, and Teddy set his feet against a branch to launch himself into the hole. But he was still tied to the tree above, and there wasn't enough rope for him to fully enter the yawning darkness. He held the dripping rim of the opening and felt desperately in his pocket for Mulligan's knife.

It was still there, so Teddy pulled it out to slash at the rope. At the same time, two massive branches bent in his direction, straining against their own rigidity. They zeroed in on him, like thirty-foot hammers coming down on a nail.

Teddy sawed madly at the rope with the last of his strength. As it finally gave way, the monstrous sycamore gave a high-pitched squeal and Teddy plunged into the hollow of the screaming tree.

Through the hole in the sycamore Teddy fell, tumbling from branch to branch in the clear, moonlit night. The branches did not let him down gently this time. Instead, they bashed and pounded him as though he was a piñata.

Just when Teddy thought the branches would beat him to death, he dropped free of the tree. He fell unhindered for a moment, then Officer Barnes was there, positioned below to break Teddy's fall. Teddy plowed into the policeman's arms and chest, and they both sprawled out on the ground from the impact.

Teddy's cheeks stung where they'd been whipped by small branches, his left arm hurt badly after hitting a thicker limb, and the wound in his leg had been torn open again. There would be dozens of bruises too, in various places. But more than anything, he was exhausted. He looked up at Barnes, who was kneeling over him, and murmured, “Thank you.” Then he closed his eyes and let himself fade into unconsciousness.

“You're awake,” Barnes said as Teddy opened his eyes to daylight streaming in through his hospital window. “And I have good news and bad news.”

Teddy turned his head to find the familiar cop sitting in a chair beside his adjustable bed with several empty coffee cups beside him. It was clear he'd been waiting there for hours.

“You're going to be okay.” Barnes continued. “That's the good news. We got you some first aid for that nasty cut on your leg, some fluids for your dehydration—which was a bit strange—and that sprained arm isn't broken. You can leave anytime. The bad news is that your next stop is the police station to talk about breaking into that abandoned house, among other things.”

“I know where they are,” Teddy said.

“Who?”

“The dead boys. I found them.”

“Teddy, from the blood we discovered in the attic, I think all you
found
was a sharp stick. You passed out from loss of blood. Somehow you recovered enough to drag yourself out the attic window and fall through the tree. You're just lucky your mom woke up and called me to report you missing. I was just walking around the house's yard when I heard you bouncing through the branches.”

Teddy shook his head. Barnes had it all wrong.

“And after you fell, this is what
I found
,” Barnes continued, holding up Henry Mulligan's knife.

Teddy shifted uncomfortably in the hospital bed. “Am I going to jail?” He asked.

Barnes opened his notebook and clicked out his pen. “Did you do it?”

Teddy slumped into his pillow. He nodded, mumbling “yes,” and Barnes wrote it down.

Two hours later, Teddy was riding through the center of Richland in a police cruiser for the second time in three days. Being alive was some consolation, but now he'd be going to juvenile hall. There would probably be rough kids there, he thought, but at least they wouldn't be dead.

As they passed Malley's Pharmacy, he looked out the window at a row of boxy homes that all looked alike and an old church with a huge, crumbling chimney.

“Stop!” Teddy yelled suddenly. “That's it!”

Barnes pulled over. “What? What's wrong?”

“That's where Oliver went.”

“Oliver who?”

“Oliver Strand.”

“The boy who disappeared in 2000?” Barnes asked.

“Do me this one favor,” Teddy begged. “Remember all the stuff I knew about Albert and Walter?”

“Yes.”

“Please. I'll tell you exactly why I went into Mr. Mulligan's trailer and the A-house if you just come inside with me for a minute.”

“Okay, Teddy.” Barnes sighed. “One minute.”

Inside the church, Teddy immediately recognized the huge brick fireplace. His heart began to pound again.

“I'm indulging you here, Teddy,” Barnes said. The officer got down on his back and scooted into the fireplace, shining his flashlight up the chimney. “Personally, I think this is ridicu—”

There was a moment of silence as Teddy waited for Barnes to finish grumbling. But suddenly the officer cried out instead, “Teddy, I need your help!”

“What?”

“There's a boy stuck in the chimney!”

The next few minutes were a blur. Barnes was shouting orders and thrusting the flashlight into Teddy's hands. The frantic officer rushed down the hall with the pastor to call an ambulance and find hedge shears.

While he waited, Teddy stuck his head into the fireplace and shone the flashlight up. He could just make out a pair of feet dangling about five feet above him. He could also see a maze of old tree roots that had grown through the broken chimney and were wrapped around the legs.

Then Barnes pushed him aside and dove in with the shears. Moments later, the body broke loose and fell into the open fireplace.

Teddy watched as Barnes knelt over Oliver. He looked pale and weak, but impossibly alive. He was still twelve, just as he'd been when the tree's roots had found him trapped in the chimney a decade ago and kept him suspended in a perverse half-life.

“This can't be Oliver Strand,” Barnes said. “He disappeared ten years ago.”

“It can't be,” Teddy said, “but it is. And we shouldn't stay here very long, because I know where the rest are too.”

Once the ambulance arrived, Barnes and Teddy left Oliver to the medics with as little explanation as possible and quickly climbed back into the patrol car.

They raced through the streets of Richland. This time, Teddy sat in the front seat, holding the borrowed shears on his lap.

“There!” Teddy pointed to a house on Catskill Street with a crawl space underneath. “Tell them to bring rattler antivenom.” Barnes no longer questioned him, and when more medics arrived to attend to a groggy Joey, he and Teddy took off in his patrol car again, this time headed for Lynwood Court.

Emergency crews Barnes had called on his radio were already digging like mad, and within minutes they recovered Walter from the ground between the houses where the sewer trench had been installed forty years earlier. When he came up, he was filthy, stinky, and spitting dirt, but very much alive.

“Hey, Scaredy,” Walter whispered, choking out mouthful of sand and a gritty chuckle.

At the river, Barnes put a hand on Teddy's shoulder as they watched the police divers Barnes had called plunge into the water.

“It's been thirty years.” Barnes said. “The water will have washed Albert away.”

“The others made it,” Teddy said, though he had the same worry.

Moments later, a police diver floated up with Albert in his arms. As soon as the chubby boy hit the air, Teddy heard him take a gasping breath.

Teddy rushed to the water's edge to meet him as they dragged him ashore.

Albert looked up and him, wet and weary, and mustered a smile that made his eyes squinch up. “I told you I wasn't totally dead,” he said weakly.

“Hey, man, thanks for saving me in there,” Teddy said.

“Are you kidding?” Albert chuckled. “Of course. I'm your friend, right?”

Before Teddy could answer, the medics rushed in and whisked Albert away.

They hurried out into the desert next. Teddy was excited to talk to Lawrence, to celebrate their escape, and to thank the tall boy for helping him.

Two hours later, they found him under a layer of desert sand in his ditch. He was lying on his side, still curled up against the dust storm from fifty years ago. But the roots that once held him had dried out and retreated, no longer interested in Lawrence for energy.

Teddy sat down beside him, and the rest of the search party stepped away to give him a private moment.

“I want to thank you for helping me,” Teddy said at length as he stared out over the desert. Lawrence had made it to within one hundred yards of the gas station at the end of Saint Street before he'd given up. “You were right. This is a lonely place.”

Teddy got no answer. Lawrence's body had been scoured by the wind and sand, and all that was left was polished white bone. There was no life in him anymore.

If only Lawrence had known how close he was
, Teddy thought.
If only Sloot hadn't encouraged him to lie down and rest. If only the tree hadn't sucked him completely dry.

Sloot was the final piece of the puzzle, but Teddy had a pretty good idea of where he was. Within half an hour, they were back at the tree. On the way over, Barnes had called in a tree trimmer, and now Teddy stood with him in the bucket of a mechanical lift as it rose toward the tree's giant knothole.

When they got close enough, they both saw him.

Sloot was sitting inside the hole, his back propped against the inner wall, knees drawn up to his chest. A rotted baseball cap sat atop his head. He was emaciated, a mere shell of the boy he'd been on the other side. There were no roots or branches wrapped around him. Instead, his back, arms, and legs had fused with the wood—he was being absorbed directly into the heart of the tree.

As Teddy and Barnes both starred in horror, Sloot's body twitched.

“It's draining him right now!” Teddy exclaimed. “He's dying!”

Barnes leaned out of the bucket, but he couldn't maneuver his large body into the hole to make a grab for Sloot. “I can't reach!” he said.

Teddy gritted his teeth. “I'll try.”

Barnes held Teddy's legs while he leaned out of the bucket to grab Sloot. He was halfway into the hole when he felt the edges of the opening clamping down on his chest.