Chapter Four
“Come on, Cameron, I’ve got an idea,” I told him.
We picked our way back to the louvered window and I stuck the metal pipe in between the slats, real close to one edge where the nails were. Then I pulled.
The nails made a horribly loud squealing noise when they pulled out of the wood, and I stopped, my heart pounding. It was so loud I was sure somebody down below would hear it and come find us.
“What’s wrong? Why’d you stop?” Cameron asked.
“It’s too loud. Somebody’s bound to hear the noise,” I whispered.
“Well pull slower then, but we have to get that window open, dude. There’s no other way out and we got no time to look for one,” he pointed out.
I know good sense when I hear it, so I bit my tongue and yanked hard on the bar. The nails came squealing out of the window frame, and before long I had one end of the board free. Cameron grabbed it and twisted it loose on the other side, and then he set it down carefully. The nails were making enough racket without dropping pieces of wood on the floor.
We yanked off six more louvers as fast as the walrus opened oysters, and then we had a space plenty big enough for us to fit through. I gave it one more wary look to make sure there was nobody around outside before I tore the screen loose. I didn’t care about fixing it later; I just punched a hole in it with the metal pipe and then ripped it the rest of the way open the best I could.
It was maybe ten feet to the ground, but that couldn’t be helped. I put my feet through first and then my body, till I was standing on the outside of the windowsill.
It looked a lot farther down than it really was. Maybe that’s just because I don’t like heights very much, but this time I didn’t have any choice. I took a deep breath and jumped.
With my eyes shut.
It kinda hurt when I landed, but I was ready for that. I dropped and rolled to take some of the force off my feet, so that helped. As long as I didn’t twist an ankle I was good to go.
The first thing I did when I got outside was to slick myself right up against the wall of the building and look around to see if anybody had noticed me jumping out of the window.
I didn’t see or hear anything unusual, so I relaxed just a tiny bit. To tell the truth, it felt so good to be out in the cool air after nearly roasting to death in that attic, it was hard to think of anything else. I took deep breaths and just gloried in it for a whole ten seconds before I remembered we weren’t out of the woods just yet.
I waved to Cameron to come on down, which he did. He didn’t land quite as well as I did and ended up tearing a hole in the knee of his jeans and skinning his left palm. I knew it had to hurt, but he joined me against the wall without saying anything about it.
“You okay, bud?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m good. Just stings a little, that’s all,” he said. He took his shirt tail and pressed it against his palm so it would quit bleeding.
The dark blue Blazer was parked maybe twenty feet away at the corner of the building we were next to, and that gave me an idea.
We slid along the wall as smooth as a melted Mars bar, till we got up close beside the car. Then I stealthily reached up and grabbed the door handle, and when I tried it I found that it was unlocked.
I motioned for Cameron to get in, and then I slipped into the driver’s seat behind him and shut the door without slamming it. Those dark-tinted windows helped a lot now, since it meant nobody could see us inside unless they came really close.
There was an insurance card clipped on the dashboard that said the Blazer belonged to somebody named Janelle Parker from West Memphis. I’d never heard of her, but you never could tell when it might turn out to be a useful little tidbit of information.
It was more than I’d dared to hope for, but this time the keys were sitting in the cup holder on the console. Whoever drove the Blazer last time wasn’t as careful as he should have been. Maybe he didn’t think there was any reason to be careful about leaving the keys lying around, not this far back in the woods and with me and Cameron locked up tight.
Good enough. I picked them up, a little nervous. Every vehicle handles a little bit different, and I’d never tried to drive anything this big and bulky before. So yeah, honestly I was more than a little nervous. Cameron looked at me skeptically.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” he finally asked.
“Sure, I can drive just fine,” I promised. He didn’t look like he was totally convinced, but he didn’t say anything else about it. We were both barefooted, and I’m sure he didn’t want to try to run off through the woods like that. I know I didn’t. I remembered what it felt like the last time.
I stuck the key in the ignition and started the engine. It was a quiet one, thankfully, so I was pretty sure nobody could hear it. I pulled the door shut real slow till I felt the lock click, and then I put the Blazer in reverse and backed up till I had enough room to clear the corner of the building. The brakes were touchier than I was used to and I skidded on gravel when I tried to stop too fast. Stupid greenhorn trick, that was, and I glanced at Cameron to see if he noticed.
He didn’t seem to be paying any attention, so I put the Blazer in drive and headed out of there. I didn’t drive too fast and I was careful not to do anything else to attract attention. The whole place looked emptier than a bum’s billfold, but I still had that creepy feeling of being watched. You know how you can always tell when somebody’s eyes are on you. It felt like that.
Maybe I was imagining things.
But then again, maybe not. We got to the gate where the camp ended and the dirt road began, and Cameron had to get out and open it. It was one of those big aluminum cattle gates and it wasn’t locked, just held shut with a twist of yellow nylon rope to keep it from blowing open in the wind.
But anyway, somebody must have been watching us, because while Cameron was fumbling with the gate I heard a shout somewhere behind us. The game was up!
Cameron heard it too, and he didn’t waste any more time trying to be quiet. He hauled off and kicked the gate open the rest of the way, then ran for the passenger side door.
He jumped in, and I spun gravel and sideswiped the gate on the way out. It hadn’t finished opening all the way and I didn’t have time to keep from hitting it. I heard metal screeching, and it left two or three long ugly scratches along the side of the Blazer.
“Go! Go!” Cameron yelled.
“I’m going!” I yelled right back.
To tell you the truth, I was terrified. Driving Justin’s truck on back roads was slow and easy and he was always there to help me if I needed it. This was nothing like that. In fact, this was a nightmare. The pine trees were crowded close on both sides of the road, and there were deep ditches I was pretty sure I couldn’t get out of if I slid into one. So I gripped the steering wheel tight in both hands and kept my eyes glued to the road, trying to keep from killing both of us.
Cameron didn’t seem like he was worried about my driving, though. He had his window down and was looking behind us.
“Uh-oh. Here they come,” he said. That was the last thing I wanted to hear, but there was nothing I could do about it right then except keep driving. I thought I was getting the hang of the Blazer by then, but learning how to drive while you’re flying down a dirt road in the mountains with a pack of wolves hot on your tailpipe is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Try it yourself sometime if you don’t believe me.
I had no idea where I was going, but the road snaked on through the woods with no turns or forks in sight, so I didn’t have much chance to get lost. There were sometimes side roads that branched off, but they were all weedy and overgrown and I knew better than to turn off onto any of them. That wouldn’t do anything but get us caught when we hit a dead end or a fallen log or a wash-out or anything else that blocked the way. If a road looks like nobody ever uses it, then that probably means it doesn’t lead anywhere. I was also afraid of getting lost and driving in circles. The s
martest thing to do was to keep on straight ahead.
I hoped.
The roads were dry as dust, and the Blazer kicked up so much dirt behind us that I guess it was choking the wolves to death. They dropped back a pretty good distance, so much that we even lost sight of them for a few minutes now and then around curves and over hills. That was good, sort of, even though I knew we’d never lose them that way. The dust cloud would always show them which way we went.
After a while we crested a little ridge and came to a T in the road that looked an awful lot like the one I saw yesterday when I was on foot. In fact I was ninety-nine percent sure it was the same one. If it was, then I needed to turn left to get to the highway.
I didn’t have much time to think about it, but for some reason I turned right this time instead. I’m not sure why. The wolves were out of sight behind us, so maybe I was hoping they’d take the wrong fork when they came to that place. They had to know where the highway was, and they had to be pretty sure I knew. They’d probably guess that’s where I was headed. The new road also had more gravel and less dirt than the one we just came from, so we wouldn’t kick up near as much of a dust cloud as we had been. It was a slim hope, but it was better than none at all.
I turned too fast and the Blazer fishtailed on the gravel and I almost lost control and hit the ditch. I had to slam on the brakes and almost stop before I dared go on.
Cameron’s eyes were big as dinner plates and my hands were shaking from the close call, but there was nothing we could do except to keep going.
I drove slower for a while, partly so we’d kick up less dust and partly to settle my nerves after that almost-wreck. The wolves never did catch up with us again after that, and I almost dared to hope we’d lost them by turning this way.
After what seemed like a long time we started passing houses once in a while. Then all of a sudden the road turned to pavement, and that was even better. No more dust trail or tire tracks to give us away to anybody who might be following us, and we could go faster, too.
Several miles later we came to a bridge, and just upstream I recognized the little beach where the people in the pickup truck had been parked yesterday afternoon when I floated by in that leaky tube. It seemed like a month ago.
I knew where I was, then. This was the Caddo River again, and all I needed to do was head south on the highway that ran beside it. So that’s what I did, and within another ten minutes we were back in Glenwood.
At first it was hard for me to believe it had been that easy, but I wasn’t dumb enough to think it was over yet. I was sure the wolves wouldn’t give up that soon. They had to have another trick or two up their nasty little sleeves, and that’s what worried me. Not knowing what might happen is always the hardest part of any bad situation, you know.
But the Blazer was running low on gas, and I didn’t really have a driver’s license anyway, and all we had was three bucks in change that Cameron found in the ashtray. That wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to get back home, that’s for sure. Not to mention the fact that we were driving a stolen car, sort of. I hoped it might get us another ten or twenty miles down the road so we’d be harder to find, but after that I didn’t know what we’d do.
“We’ve got to ditch this car, dude,” Cameron said.
“What, you mean like right now? How come? I think we lost them back there on the dirt road, at least for a while,” I told him. He was already shaking his head before I even finished.
“Not for long we didn’t. This is my mom’s car. It’s got OnStar and she’ll find out exactly where we are as soon as she gets a chance to call them. She doesn’t have cell service up in the mountains but she will as soon as she gets closer to town,” he said.
I sighed. I knew it had been too easy. No wonder they hadn’t followed us harder.
Cameron popped open the glove box and rooted around a few seconds until he pulled out a red mp3 player and a set of ear buds, then slipped them in his pocket.
“Might as well take this, you know. It’s mine anyway,” he said.
Just then the engine died. I guess Cameron’s mom must have reached a place where her cell phone worked, and she called OnStar and had them kill the motor. It also meant she knew exactly where we were, and the wolves would be right on top of us in a matter of minutes.
The Blazer was still rolling, so I turned the wheel and managed to pull into a parking slot in front of the Diamond Bank. It was closed and we were the only car in the parking lot. Nobody could possibly overlook us if they drove by on the highway. I wished we could have found a place where we didn’t stick out like a bug on a plate, but oh well. I tested the engine again just to make sure, and it was deader than road kill.
We were in a pretty tight spot, but in spite of everything I actually felt pretty cocky for pulling off my third great escape in two days. I remembered Laura calling me a slippery little fish back at the deer camp, and I wished I could have been there to see the look on her face when she found my room empty. I smiled a little, just imagining it. They didn’t know who they were dealing with!
Yeah, I was really thinking stuff like that at the time, much as it embarrasses me to admit it now. I hope I’m not that full of myself all the time.
But busting out was one thing, and staying that way was a whole ‘nother matter. So far I hadn’t done too well at that half of the problem. That was enough to knock me back down to reality, when I thought about it.
We jumped out of the car, but instead of hightailing it away from there, Cameron yanked open the back door and started digging through the trash in the back seat.
“What are you doing, boy? We’ve got to get away from here!” I said.
“We’ve got to find the journal and the maps first. I know they’re in here somewhere. I almost forgot about it, but we can’t leave without them,” he said.
He might as well have been speaking Greek for all I knew, but there was no time to ask questions or fight about it.
Sometimes you have to just trust people, you know. It’s not always easy and you can’t always have a reason for it. Cameron knew the danger as well as I did, so if there was something in the back seat so important that he was willing to risk getting caught just to find it, then I had to believe it was worth it, too. I opened the door on my side and started digging.
The Blazer was full of junk, and most of it was just trash. Nobody saves McDonald’s bags for any good reason that I can think of. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to be looking for, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t burger wrappers.
I couldn’t pay attention like I should have, because I kept wanting to look at the highway to see if anybody was slowing down. Nobody did, but I was antsy anyway. We probably had at least five minutes or so before the wolves could possibly get there, but you never knew for sure. I wanted to get gone.
I don’t like piggy people who fill up their cars like trash cans. It makes it stink inside and it’s just nasty. The Blazer was like that, and more than once I wanted to hold my nose while I dug through there. Somebody had left half a cheeseburger on the seat, and it had been there so long it was dried out like a piece of wood. I almost hurled when I came across that little jewel.
It seemed like it took forever, but really it couldn’t have been more than a minute or so before I found a US Geological Survey section map for southern Montgomery County with several spots marked on it in red ink and others in pencil. It looked like the red ones had been pencil to start with, and then marked over with a red pen later on. I couldn’t make hide nor hair of what it was supposed to mean or why those particular spots were marked. They all looked like they were out in the middle of nowhere to me.
There were two other section maps rolled up with the first one, and they were marked with those same pencil scribbles in various places, but no red marks. I didn’t take the time to look any closer.
I know how to read section maps because Justin uses them a lot when he has to go out and do field work. Oil wells don’t always ha
ve nice neat addresses on streets, and sometimes you have to use topographical maps to find them instead. He used to take me with him now and then and he taught me how to read his maps so I could give him directions. I never really thought much about it before, but now I was glad I learned.
“Hey Cameron, is this what you’re looking for?” I asked him, holding up the first section map.
“Yeah, that’s it! We have to find the journal too, though,” he said.
I folded up the maps and stuck them in my front pocket. They made a big bulky wad of paper, but it was still better than carrying them.
Right under the maps there was a school notebook with some writing in it that I didn’t have time to read, but I grabbed that too without even asking Cameron if it was important.
Then I found what had to be the journal. It was a very old-looking book with crumbly pages which was shoved down there next to the rotten cheeseburger in the middle of the seat. It was bound in cracked brown leather, and it was partly burnt on one of the bottom corners. Cameron saw it at the same time I did and snatched it up.
Then he brushed aside some trash on the floorboard and grabbed a skateboard out from underneath it.
“Have you got anything else in there you want to take?” I asked, with just a touch of irritation.
“Nah, that’s all, dude. It’s just this was expensive and I didn’t want to leave it. But let’s get out of here,” he said, slamming the back door.
I made sure to lock the doors before we left, and then I threw the keys into some thick azalea bushes in front of the bank. A storm drain would have been even better, but I didn’t see one handy. The more time they wasted dealing with the Blazer, the better.
“Come on, dude. We don’t have time for all that,” Cameron said, looking out at the highway behind us. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes since we parked the Blazer, but he was acting scared and I can’t say I blamed him.
“All right, let’s go,” I agreed.
We took off at a fast run, getting behind the bank first and then crossing through some trees until we came to another street. I still didn’t feel safe, so we kept going for quite a while, even ducking through back yards and alleys when we had to, to help stay out of sight. We got barked at by several dogs, but that was about it.
“Dang, this thing gets heavy after a while,” Cameron said, setting his skateboard down on the pavement. We were walking down a narrow alley between two buildings where nobody was likely to see us, and it seemed like a good place to stop and rest. He was a little out of breath from running, but then so was I.
“Yeah, let’s take a break for a few minutes. I think we’re safe here,” I said. He sat down on his board, and I found an old plastic milk crate to sit on. The alley was full of crud like that, so it wasn’t hard to find something.
“So what now?” Cameron asked after a while.
“We need to find a phone so I can call my uncle. He’ll come get us and then we can figure out what to do once we’re safe away from here,” I told him.
“You’re sure he’d come?” Cameron asked.
“Yeah, I live with him. He wouldn’t let me down,” I said confidently.
“You must be Zach, then,” he said. That’s when I suddenly remembered I’d never actually told him who I was. There hadn’t been time.
“Uh, yeah. That’s me. How’d you know?” I asked.
“Aw, I’ve been around awhile. I hear things. I’m Cameron Parker, by the way,” he said, sticking his hand out. I shook it because it would have been rude not to, but I couldn’t help wondering about him anyway, now that I had time to think about it. His mother was the one who owned the Blazer, which meant she was either a loup-garou herself or else she was in cahoots with them some kind of way. So what did that mean about Cameron, then?
I think I would have had a hard time trusting him, except for one thing. I knew he’d been locked up at the deer camp, the same way I was. I’d seen the way Laura slapped him and I’d heard the way she talked to him. After all that, it was hard for me to believe he was just a mole-rat. And like I said, sometimes you just have to trust people, even when it’s hard.
Still, I couldn’t help glancing at his fingernails just to make sure. He noticed, and held them up so I could see better. They were normal, just like mine.
“Nope, they never changed me yet,” he said, half smiling. I was embarrassed that he caught me looking, but at least he seemed to think it was funny instead of getting mad at me.
“You seem like you know a lot of things,” I finally said, lamely. I wasn’t sure what else to say. Cameron just shrugged.
“I know what I know, that’s all,” he said. It was a cryptic thing to say, and I didn’t feel like leaving it at that. In spite of what I said about trusting him, I had to know more.
“Then tell me what this is all about, if you can,” I asked.
“That would be a long story, dude,” he said.
“I’ve got nothing better to do than listen,” I pointed out.
“Well. . . true ‘nuff. I’m your third cousin, to start with. That’s why I know some of the things I know. My grandpa and yours were brothers,” he said matter-of-factly.
There didn’t seem to be a lot I could say about that right then, but you can bet I tucked it away in the back of my mind to think about later.
“All right. I guess that explains how you got hooked up with the wolves and why you know some stuff about me. But why’d they have you locked up, and what do they want with me?” I asked. Those were the things I really wanted to hear about.
“Oh, I know what they want you for. They think you know where the Sweet Spring is,” he said. That didn’t do anything but confuse me even more.
“Laura said it was because they wanted me to become a loup-garou after all,” I said.
“Well. . . maybe that too, but that’s not the main reason. She was probably just telling you something she thought you’d believe until she decided how much to trust you. Laura’s really good at messing with your head, you know. You can’t trust anything she says,” he said.
None of that surprised me. I already knew better than to believe anything Laura said. But I didn’t care about that; I wanted to hear more about the Sweet Spring, whatever that was.
“Okay, so what’s the Sweet Spring?” I asked, getting right to the point.
Cameron looked at me curiously for a few seconds.
“You really don’t know, do you?” he finally said, shaking his head.
“Nope, I’m afraid not,” I told him.
“Hmm. . . Well, I guess it would be hard to swallow all at once, if you didn’t know anything,” he said, half to himself, “But never mind. They’ve been trying to find that spring for years and years. I don’t know exactly what it does, but it’s important because there’s a prophecy or something about it. They say one of the boys in the seventh generation is supposed to use it to break the curse. That’s either me or you, and- “ he said.
“Whoa, slow down a minute. Seventh generation of what? And who says all that?” I asked. I felt like the ground had opened up at my feet and left me standing on the edge of a deep ocean of weirdness.
“You don’t even know about that?” he asked, like he couldn’t believe it. It made me feel stupid, and I hate feeling that way.
“No, I guess I don’t. Tell me,” I said, trying to be polite. Cameron shrugged again in that way he does.
“All right, Zach. There’s not really that much more to tell anyway. A long time ago, a man named Daniel Trewick figured out how to become the first loup-garou, or at least the first one in our family. I’m not real sure about that part. But he always said one of his great-great-great-great grandsons would either break the curse or renew it, whatever that means. That’s seven generations. He also said the Curse-Breaker would have a mark on him so they’d know which boy it was,” he said.
“What was the mark?” I whispered.
“Bright blue eyes, just like yours and min
e,” he said, with a laugh that didn’t sound like he thought it was very funny.
“But that’s stupid. Anybody could have blue eyes,” I objected.
“You try telling them that. They won’t listen, I promise you,” he said.
“Anyway, there are only two of us who fit the bill, just me and you,” he went on.
“How do you know all this?” I asked him for the second time. I’d never heard anything remotely like it in my life. I used to think my parents never told me anything when I was younger, but I never imagined how much they didn’t tell me.
“Well, if you hadn’t run away then you’d know at least that much yourself. That’s something everybody in the family has to learn. You can read more about it in the journal sometime if you really want to,” he said.
“Okay then, go on,” I said.
“Anyway, they never could make up their minds which one of us it was. Everybody was already real suspicious of you and why you didn’t want to be like everybody else, and then when you ran away that clinched it. They were all sure you must be the Curse-Breaker. It took the heat off me a little bit, and for a while they forgot about everything else except trying to find you and stop you from wrecking things. That’s why they wouldn’t give up till they had you. You did an awful good job of hiding, I have to say. We like to have never found you,” he said.
“You helped them?” I accused.
“Well, yeah, I kinda had to, you know. They would have started looking at me funny again if I hadn’t. Just because they were sure you were the one didn’t mean they forgot I was a suspect, too,” he pointed out.
“Well, yeah, I can see that. So what happened next?” I asked.
“Oh, I got careless, said some things I shouldn’t have, did some things I was stupid to have done. Made them wonder. And then they finally did catch you and found out you didn’t seem to have a clue what was up, so then they started getting all narrow-eyed and suspicious about me again. They couldn’t decide which one of us it was, so they locked us both up just to make sure. They don’t take chances about stuff like that, Zach,” he said quietly.
I chewed on all that for a while. Cameron didn’t seem like he wanted to add anything else to what he’d already said, but there was one more thing I had to know.
“So why’d you help me then?” I finally asked, just as quietly.
“Well, why’d you help me, when you didn’t know who I was or why I was there? You took a chance on getting caught and maybe worse, just for me. I’ve had to live my whole life being looked at like I was a stray dog that might turn and bite somebody any minute, ‘cause they all wondered if I was the Curse-Breaker. Even my mom looks at me that way. She thinks I don’t see it, but I do. I’m tired of it, Zach. I just want to be normal for a while, if I can be, and you’re the first person I can remember who ever treated me that way,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I knew exactly what he was talking about and how he felt. He felt rejected. He knew more about the reasons behind it than I ever did, but I guess that doesn’t make it hurt any less. There’s no reason good enough to excuse it, and nothing anybody can say to fill up that empty spot. I knew it all too well.
But I thought I understood him now.
So I didn’t say anything, just clapped him on the right shoulder and left it at that. Sometimes you say the most when you say the least.
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