The Well's End (7 page)

THE HALLWAYS HAVE NEVER SEEMED SO EMPTY. THE
lights are on, and they fill the place with a buzzing glare so bright that our footsteps have shadows. Some of the classrooms are lit as well, but all are empty. We check each anyway.

When someone tells you everyone's dead, it makes peeking your head into a room a terrifying thing. I find myself tiptoeing and have to mentally force myself to stop and put my heels on the linoleum. We scuffle our way past trophy cases and the Wall of Giving, a list of donor names on gold plaques—fourteen-karat gold plaques. I bend, involuntarily, to check out an old one:
SEBASTIAN AVERY, FOR HIS WONDERFUL DISCOVERY AND THE CURIOSITY THAT GUIDED HIM
. Dad used to talk about him, Avery, his favorite teacher from when he was a student here. A light goes out ahead, and I jump. “Sorry,” says Jo, her finger on a switch. It's Mr. Geller's classroom. I see the bloodstain still on the floor. Brayden is squatting like a tracker, staring at it.

“That's mine,” I say.

He looks up, flicking his hair out of the way. “Really?”

“Well, I made that come out of Rory Boddington's nose.”

Brayden smiles. “I don't blame you,” he says. “But I didn't think you had it in you.”

I'm not really in the mood for jokes or lighthearted conversation, so I can't help it when my voice goes steely and I say, “Sometimes people just push you too hard, you know?”

“I
do
know,” he responds, without a trace of jest or mockery. Beyond the cute birthmark beneath his eye, I feel like I can tell who he really is for the first time. I remember him being pushed at the party, him helping the injured boys and volunteering. Maybe, wherever he came from, he's a different boy, aloof and popular, but here, in this new and outsider place, maybe he's forced to be a little like me.

Brayden stands and looks into the empty room, his gaze careful, like he's looking for something specific. “Why are you so good at this?” I ask.

He turns to look at me, his deep brown eyes thoughtful. “I'm an Eagle Scout.”

I give a rueful chuckle, expecting him to admit he's joking or something, but he's already focused elsewhere, apparently being honest. More a nerd each second. And then he hushes me. He actually hushes me. He steps toward Geller's desk.

“Check this out.”

Jo rubs her pale arms, a nervous habit of hers, and is clearly eager to move on, but the tone of his voice has her curious. Brayden is bent over a cloth on the ground. A handkerchief. It's thick with red, a deep stain of blood.

“Oh, my gosh,” Jo cries, her voice literally echoing out the door down the empty hallway. She clamps her hands over her mouth, eyes wide.

I take her by the arm, knowing she's transferring everything she sees here to her imagination about her father's whereabouts and condition. “This doesn't mean anything, Jo,” I say, but what I'm really thinking of is Mrs. Applebaum's mouth, the blood dripping, and Devin coughing, hacking blood onto his chest.

Brayden kicks the handkerchief, then makes eye contact with Jo and holds it, his voice calm and reassuring. “Don't worry about this. It's from Rory, not Mr. Geller. You can tell by how it leaked onto the handkerchief in that weird pattern. It's a drip; if it were a cough, it would look more splattered.”

Jo pulls her hands across her forehead, grabbing her blond locks and pulling them behind her shoulders. She sucks air deep into her lungs and nods, even manages a smile that seems to bring some warmth back into her pale cheeks. “Got him good, didn't you, Mia?”

I laugh, each breath dissipating the pent-up nerves I have and steadying my hand. Brayden smiles, kindly—unnervingly adult of him—and says, “Let's get going. I didn't move here to spend all day in school.”

As we follow him out the door, I glance down at the blood on the handkerchief. I give it a kick, imagining Rory at that moment, and the handkerchief flips over. A splatter pattern. Jackson Pollock on a dark day. I peek to see if Jo's looking but she's not, which I'm grateful for, and hurry after them.

“So hold on, why Westbrook?” Jo asks Brayden out in the hallway, where we are starting to creep less and speak more normally. They walk side by side, and I notice that they're almost the same height. She tall, he average. His Sambas squeak along the floor, and he reaches behind himself to scratch his back. It's hard to imagine the chaos Devin spoke of.

Brayden glances over at her, shrugs. “My parents moved here. They found this enormous estate for sale and thought it would be a good retirement place. They love the country. I don't know—I wish they'd waited for me to graduate high school, but they didn't want to lose the property.”

Jo frowns, thinking. “Wait, you moved into Furbish Manor?”

“Yeah, their name is still up on the entrance to the drive.”

“Whoa, the Furbishes,” she goes on. “You must be rolling.”

The Furbishes were pillars of the community, early gold rush miners who hit it big, then bought the general store, took on real estate, cattle, and eventually built half the gas stations in the surrounding hundred miles. But about three years ago, their private jet crashed on the way to a family vacation, killing them all, every last Furbish. It was a huge local tragedy. I knew two of the kids; they went to the same elementary school as me. Their house, their estate, was hundreds of acres of prime forest, pasture and river. I knew that someone had snatched up the gas stations, but I didn't know anyone had bought the manor. Whoever did had to be worth millions.

“You think that we must be rich because we moved into a ghost house in the middle of nowhere?” he replies, his voice becoming heated. His ears go flush.

“No,” Jo says, “I just . . . I was surprised, that's all.”

“Me too,” I join in, backing her up. “It's a crazy place. My dad and I used to hike behind the estate and in their fields. I thought it would be turned into a museum or something.”

We walk almost to the end of the hallway. He doesn't answer for a while and then finally admits, “Yeah, it
is
a crazy place. We moved out here last week, and I basically spent every day roaming the house and the woods for hours on end. I've never had a backyard before.”

I try to picture him out in the woods behind the manor, backpack on, roving across trails and exploring the land. In the snow it must have been hard going. Lonely. I wonder what he thought of while he was out there.

“Do you like it here?” I ask.

He stares at me, his scar flashing white. “That's a weird question. This is all really messed up.”

I shake my head, trying to ignore the hallway. “No, I mean in Fenton and at Furbish.”

He's quiet. “Furbish isn't exactly the place I'd go for fun.”

We turn the corner, the infirmary in sight, and everything changes. I had just started to relax, to disbelieve, when we see the feet. We freeze, all three of us, rooted there staring at the blue socks and the khaki pants and the brown leather shoes pointed toward the ceiling, halfway out the infirmary door. I can't breathe, and I try to swallow this all away. Brayden crouches and steps forward like a fighter might, in a stance. I take Jo's hand, and we might as well be at a haunted house, clutching each other close, following Brayden slowly, waiting to scream.

Brayden stops suddenly and stands up, stunned. He's not even looking at the body, whoever it is. He's looking into the infirmary, his face turning pale. I move my eyes down to this man, this old man I don't recognize, whose face is marked with spots and lined with sagging skin. He's pissed his pants, and is nose is peeling, and his chapped lips are stained with blood. His legs are splayed haphazardly, twisted over each other. I take a breath and follow Brayden's gaze into the infirmary, then feel like I've been hit by a truck. The old man, his hair somehow plastered into a perfect part, is lying in the doorway because there's no more room.

Every chair, bed, desk, inch of floor is covered with bodies sprawled in various positions. No one moves. No monitors beep. Just bodies upon bodies. And the weird thing is that even in my horror, I realize something: I don't recognize anyone. They're all old people. Really old and withered people. As if a home of geriatrics were bused in to die. That's the last thought that flits through my head before Jo gags and vomits all over those brown leather shoes and then falls to her knees to try to clean it up with her scarf.

Brayden and I both move at the same time to help her up, and she gives in pretty easily. Apologizing, her eyes tearing. I can smell her puke, and it's making me nauseated. Who are these people? Where are the teachers? I don't understand. My hands begin to shake, and I tuck them into my armpits to keep them still. I have never seen a body before. Now I've seen thirty, forty. Now I've seen a graveyard.

“Hello?” a voice calls from up ahead, around the corner, down another hall. “Is someone there?” The voice is weak, frail. I'm reminded of that old commercial:
I've fallen, and I can't get up.

Jo and I look at each other, startled by the voice. We hurry on toward the sound.

“Hey, wait a sec,” Brayden shouts. But we ignore him, round the corner and there, on the ground, halfway down the hall and almost to the infirmary door, is a man, sprawled, looking at us, his face so wrinkled I can barely see his eyes. I don't recognize him, but after seeing the infirmary, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The thing is, when you see something like that, a broken human being, you don't keep running. I even put my hand to my mouth—I can't help it—and suddenly Brayden bumps into us. We're all sent falling, and it's Jo who lies face-to-face with the old man.

“Help?” he whispers.

This close, I think my first inclination was wrong; maybe I
have
seen this man before somewhere. I'm embarrassed to think that I ignored this guy for my first two years and now he's calling out for me. Maybe he was a janitor or something.

“Oh, God,” Jo says, her voice shaking.

“It's okay,” I say to her and to the old man. I take his hand, with its thin skin and heavy veins. “We'll get you help. Everything's going to be okay.”

“Mia,” Jo says, her voice weak. She has a hand on my ankle and is squeezing hard. “He's wearing my dad's tie. I bought that for him for Christmas.
That's my dad's tie!
”

I squint, take a closer look. It does seem similar to what Mr. Banner was wearing this morning, but I don't really remember.

“JoJo?”

I freeze; so does Jo. The old man used her nickname—there's only one person I've heard call her that.

“What did you call me?” she says, almost accusingly. The old man bends forward, his eyes rheumy and blank.

“Is that you, JoJo?”

She crawls forward, touches his face with a shaky hand. “Dad?” Her voice is so soft I can barely hear.

“No way,” I say, backing up. “Jo, no way.”

She turns to me, ignoring Brayden, her eyes melting in tears. She breathes deeply, sucking back snot. “Can you help me? I can't do this. Please, check his wallet or something.”

The old man is twitching, like he's having little convulsions. I don't know if I can do what she's asking. But Jo would do anything for me. She always has. I feel Brayden's hand on my back, gently encouraging me forward. So I grit my teeth and move, my eyes almost closed, and pull the leather wallet from his back pocket. Inside, there's a Colorado driver's license registered to Brett Banner. I feel ill and try to hold myself together for Jo. Biting my lip, I show her the license.

“What's going on?” Brayden asks finally, as if thinking now were the appropriate time for clarity. We don't answer him, just stare at this old husk of Jo's dad. His bloody mouth and wheezing chest.

“This is impossible,” I whisper to her, to myself. “Someone must be screwing with us.”

“JoJo, I think I hurt myself. I can't. I can't move. I can't really. Breathe.”

“Dad,” she says, steadying her voice, “this isn't funny.”

But she reaches out a tentative hand to his head, which is now empty of hair but for a small tuft around his ears, white as the snow outside. His head is covered in spots, and he's drooling into a small puddle. I wonder how long he's been here. This impostor, this old Brett Banner. This man who seems to have aged a lifetime in a day. I can't help but think of my own dad lying on the ground somewhere, calling my name. The hallway is quiet. He tried to get to the infirmary, just like all the others.

“Dad?” Jo asks. “Dad, tell me what happened.”

“JoJo. What's going on? I can't see. I can't . . . Where's your mother? Wait—don't touch me. You might get it.”

Mr. Banner closes his eyes and lays down his head. I'd say Jo's more scared than sad, and so am I. He seems to stop breathing, and I don't know whether I'm supposed to mourn or start CPR. But he's right—we might be exposed to whatever this is. Far too exposed already. I don't think we should be near him; it's too dangerous. I hate thinking like this, but I wrap my arms tighter around my friend to keep her from touching him again.

Brayden seems to get this, but still he moves to check for a pulse. His eyes flick up to Jo, then back down to the body.

“Jo, I don't know what to say.” He's doing better than I would. I'm surprised I can still stand. “He's gone.”

I feel her body begin to heave and choke on her own tears. I hold her close, my eyes glazed. Whatever happened to Mr. Banner must have happened to the other teachers. I think of the infirmary and the bodies piled within. All faculty members grown inexplicably old. I think of Devin, looking like an older version of himself. Holy crap, my body is itching to move, screaming at me to run the fuck away from here as fast as I can. I imagine the feel of his papery skin. I look at Mr. Banner; is it too late for us?