"It's not my brother ... go back ... not my brother," Justin was saying, though I was unclear on how he knew that.
"It's alive," another girl added, and I hoped to God it wasn't the cops. Chief Rye would not likely share anything further with me if he found me out here partying with the underworld again. A flashlight beam shined in all our faces, so I couldn't see who it was until he was almost on top of us. I should have guessed.
Richardson stopped in front of Justin, who was swaying dangerously.
"Oh my God, Bo. You scared the life out of me."
"Return my texts and e-mails, and I won't have to chase you down." He clapped Justin on the back of the neck and pulled him close. Justin embraced the guy, who was tall and strappy and lean—typical army recruit. I was actually shocked. I expected someone a lot bigger. His eyes were big and black, but sad. He made an attempt at a smile.
"Jeezus, this place has changed. Used to be a boon hangout." He kept his arm around Justin, talking to everyone as we made our way back to the rock pile. "Only, back then, we hung out on the north side of the field and this side was water moccasin heaven. Amazing how a few northeast storms will change things. And back then, we had more trees. I know a guy, says he was out here the night the lightning struck in ... what? Thirty-five places?"
We reached the rocks, but Justin didn't sit down this time. The kids were riveted, and the girl with all the questions finally asked, "What does he say happened?"
"He usually doesn't. He sits in the house taking meals through a straw. It blew all his teeth out. Now, there's one rumor that's probably true. Anyway..."
I heard some whispers behind me, to the effect of "Who is this guy?" It seemed Justin's relationship with Bo was separate from his school friendships.
"What's up with you?" Richardson asked him, holding the back of Justin's neck and kind of pulling him backwards, away from him. "You look like shit. I never expected you to turn into the stellar athlete Matt is, but what is this I hear blowin' on a breeze? You're not turning into a junkie. No way, my man."
"No ... it's complicated." Justin kind of collapsed into a sit at the edge of a rock, and Bo sat beside him, his arm glued around Justin's shoulder. "Sorry. You just scared the hell out of me, that's all. I thought you were Chris."
"You thought I was who?" Bo did a double take, checking the path where he came from, then eyeing Justin suspiciously.
"Never mind ... long story," Justin said.
"I ain't got time for long stories." Bo looked around at the crowd, finally making an introduction. "Hi. I'm Bo, Darla Richardson's brother. I used to party down here, too. You mind if I give you some advice?"
Nobody said anything.
"This is a place you should come on, like, the Fourth of July. And maybe Memorial Day. That's it. Get a job. Go ring up a cash register somewhere. If you're old enough to smoke weed and get laid, you're too old to be saying to your old lady, 'Ma, can I have twenty bucks to go out?' Get. A job."
Bo hadn't changed much in his speech-giving ability since Adams had written about him. He made me smile. I listened through the silence to see if RayAnn was chortling, but it was deadly quiet.
"Now buzz on out of here. All of you. I gotta talk to Justin in private."
They all moved away, hot insult and disappointment ringing through the air, but nobody crossed him. I guess you don't cross a dead girl's brother, not with rumors flying that Justin knew her pretty well. To my amazement, Justin grabbed the leg of my jeans, pulling me closer to him.
"This is, uh, Mike," he said, sounding half dead all of a sudden. "And his girlfriend, who doesn't like us much..."
Bo reached up and shook my hand, looking me in the eye with a gaze that had lost most of its hardness. He looked like a normal guy. A sad, normal guy.
"Mike's a writer. He's from Indiana," Justin said. "He's my new hero."
"Let's call it a mutual admiration club," I said, shuffling slightly, but Justin wouldn't let go of my pant leg.
Richardson shook RayAnn's hand, looking warily at me.
"You're not supplying him, I hope," he said. "What's with the dark shades?"
"I'm ... visually impaired," I said.
"You look like a drug runner."
"Nope. Never touch the stuff."
"And you, you look like you're about fourteen years old."
"Nope," RayAnn said glibly, and I rolled my eyes. "We write for a newspaper. Visiting from out of town."
"You're not here about my sister," Bo said with dread.
Justin still didn't let go of my pant leg. "They're writing about my brother."
Richardson looked back and forth from RayAnn to me and finally laughed, with something like impatience. I could imagine that Chris Creed would be the last thing on his mind right now.
"I don't want no newspaper people around while I'm talking to you," Richardson said, and I shifted into emergency gear. I wasn't leaving.
I turned to RayAnn and said in her ear, "Why don't you go down to the station and see if Rye left us any updates?"
She pulled back and looked at me, stricken. She glanced down at a suddenly very deflated Justin and a complete stranger. She looked all around at these woods.
"Go," I encouraged her, ignoring my own nervous feeling. "Grab some street interviews."
I pulled my cell out of my pocket and held it up with a shrug. "You got yours."
She finally backed away with uncertainty. I didn't even want to risk walking her back to the car, though I wasn't quite sure what I expected to get from this. I needed a tradeoff.
I toed Justin's sneaker, and he read my mind. "Mary Ellen!"
She was walking away with a bag of chips and a six-pack under her arm. "Walk RayAnn back to the car and don't let anything happen to her."
Mary Ellen swept an arm around RayAnn's shoulders, and they took off together. I gripped my cell phone and forced my mouth to open.
"I'm a reporter, but I'm not right now, okay? I'm just Justin's friend. See? No pens, no paper, no recorders."
"What are you guys doing, being friends?" Richardson asked warily. It must have looked like a strange mix.
Justin sighed. "It's a long story. He's from a family like mine, with a mom like mine. He relates to Chris totally, so he's ... filling in a brotherly gap for me."
Richardson blew past it with a shrug, saying, "I got nothing to say that's private, but I don't want you flippin' in front of your fan base. I can't stay long. My mom is flippin' with guilt right now, and if I don't get back to her, she's gonna be next to wander into the Promised Land. Listen. All I want to say is this is not your fault."
I sat in the lawn chair as Justin finally let go of my pants to sink his eyes into the balls of his hands, elbows on his knees.
"Honestly," Bo went on. "A couple of Danny's better friends were at the house tonight, visiting Mom and the kids, waiting for me. They said you haven't felt right about her being gone, you felt it wasn't something good, and you felt you should have looked out for her better. I guess a lot of people thought something was amiss. I mean, the neighborhood ain't the same without her mouth going off every five seconds. If I ever thought you would take it so seriously, I would never, ever have asked you to look out for Darla."
"I'm obsessive sometimes," he said mysteriously, alluding to his recent diagnosis but not mentioning it outright. I didn't suppose that Bo needed to hear it right now.
"It was just ... a saying. Because she was so ape shit all the time. I said the same thing to, like, ten different people. You were the only one who took it that seriously."
"I take everything too seriously," Justin continued. "But I'm getting over it ... hopefully."
"Well, I appreciated that and all. I felt okay, you texting me every couple weeks, telling me what she was up to. It was never anything good, but if I expected you to be able to control my wild-ass sister, I would have asked you to do something about it. Did you ever hear me saying anything but 'Thanks, man'?"
Justin kept staring across the f
ield, probably at the place where that trail came out, where people had seen lights. Bo jostled him around.
"And what's all this I'm hearing? You picked up a hefty drug habit lately?"
The way Bo said it, I wondered for the first time if the two things were related. I had no clue what Justin knew about Darla's death, and I didn't think Bo was putting the two things together. But there being a relationship between the two things was just a sudden gut instinct. I watched Justin stare at the ground, his hands on his chin.
"I-I don't know," Justin stammered. "I was in rehab, past two weeks. I'm going back. I just came home for ... you and her."
"So, look. I know you had gotten friendly with Danny, but my feeling? Go to Darla's service now that you're here, and after that, you gotta go back to rehab and let go of the situation. Look at what you're doing to yourself! This is hard to say, her being my sister. But am I surprised?" He stood up, paced a few steps in front of us, staring at the water. "Darla's been twice in juvie, once in rehab, and she terminated a pregnancy when she was fifteen. She had three car accidents in two different cars since she started driving a year ago. Did I really expect my sister to live past the age of twenty? Not unless she calmed down, quit using, and really decided to change her life. I was off by a year. She was on a suicide mission. Somehow, she sucked Danny into following after her."
Justin raised his head but simply stared, zombified.
"I don't know when Danny's funeral is yet. But I only got three days' leave this time, and with Adams having to untangle his life to get here, my family agreed to have Darla's memorial service Monday morning," he said. "After that, go back. It had nothing to do with you, Justin."
I cleared my throat uncomfortably. "Um, I don't think Justin was aware of Danny's death before now."
Bo turned, staring. "Where have you been all day? With your head in the sand?"
"Out here," he muttered. "Where ... what happened?"
"Your friends didn't tell you? It's been all over the news."
"My friends don't watch the news."
"Get. A. Job," Bo repeated. "You're all dangerous. Danny was found dead out in Las Vegas." He turned and sat down again, tossing his arm around Justin's shoulders. "He wrote a long, long note to his folks and brother that never got mailed, and supposedly it said that Darla committed suicide, and he was wiped out, blaming himself, and he jumped off a balcony at—" He said the name of a big casino.
"A better kid was never born than Danny Burden. My sister, dude, she started this. It's hard saying, but you know I always tell the truth, right? I believe what Danny wrote down. We all do."
"So ... who buried her?" Justin asked, gazing off in a zombified way.
"I'm figuring that out. Your cousins, Mack and Ozone, claim to know nothing about it, but it just smells like the Brownie's Mafia, a half-assed job with the best of intentions, okay? It was probably started by somebody who believed Danny would get blamed, trying to help out, that's all. However, the Brownie's Mafia lives down by me. They're a lot closer to my family than the Burdens. They wouldn't have done it unless somebody paid them to take a risk like that. I'll figure it out. Don't worry."
"So ... when did Danny, um..." Justin asked.
"Just a few days after Darla."
Justin shut his eyes, his breath rolling out. "That's why I never heard from him. I sensed it was something awful. I always sensed it."
"Well, now you know. It's done. There was nothing you could have done to stop it. People make their own choices, and sometimes those choices suck. If I could bring either of those two kids back, I would. But I can't. So, we're gonna go forward. You're gonna get back to yourself. Quit with all this shit about bringing your brother back. I'm sure it's a great distraction from whatever you were sensing about Danny and Darla."
"My brother has nothing to do with this," he said, and I was surprised at how much conviction he could bring forth without his fan base there to believe in him like he was Peter Pan. "And he is coming back."
"I don't doubt it," Bo said with a shrug. "He'll get his act together, realizing your mom is not King Kong and the people here are just your normal, small-town butt-wads. As soon as he's been to enough places to see that places are all the same, he'll show up."
I didn't agree that all places were the same. I thought Steepleton was more ominous, and maybe if Bo stuck around for some extended leave, he would feel it, too.
I was staring down at the ground when I felt the energy around me pierce through with something not good. There was no sound. I realized Justin had stood up without making any noise at all. He was looking over the top of my head at the spot he could never stop looking toward.
"In fact ... he's here," he breathed.
I turned, scanned, and this time the break in the woods wasn't hard to find. It was drumming silently with orange light, like light from a dozen orange bulbs that weren't screwed in tight enough. A mist had risen over the puddles, so I couldn't tell if it was coming from the ground or above it. For a moment I saw what made the most sense given the shape and the mist and the orange: A lantern slowly swinging back and forth ...
No, I told myself, but unfortunately my brain had another brain for company...
"Chris?" Justin jumped practically over the top of me and ran, shouting, "Chris? Chris!"
NINETEEN
BO JUMPED AFTER HIM, and I managed to catch Bo by the back of the jacket, almost pulling myself to the ground.
"I need to come," I said, and he seemed torn.
"Snakes around there," he muttered. Then, "What the bloody hell is that light?"
Bo moved pretty quickly without running, and I just fell into his footsteps, listening to each heavy step a split second before aiming my foot in the same place. He had a flashlight and military boots on that could ground down a snake, and I tried to focus on that rather than what if water moccasins could fling themselves up my pant legs.
After a day of sun, the path to Justin was more mucky than watery, and the mist was invisible when we were right on top of it. Bo slowed about halfway across the muddy swamp land, saying, "Is he crazy, or does he really have some reason to think that his brother's over there?"
"Well..." I was out of breath, hardly knew where to start to a guy whose sister had just died. "Some of the kids have been seeing strange lights over there."
"Say no more," he muttered, pulling me up beside him and shining a flashlight beam on the ground. "They got some episode of Night of the Living Dead going on, no doubt. It's one reason I was glad to get out of town. Me, Adams, and Ali ... we're trying to believe the guy's alive, but all the younger dudes were coming into high school, making Chris out to be the Jersey Devil's latest sidekick. That is so not cool for Justin and Matt."
Bo threw the flashlight into my hand and sprinted ahead of me by the light of the moon. "Justin! Don't touch that, man! Don't go any farther!"
I could make out the two of them ahead of me, but no flashing lights.
Justin was calling, "Chris! Chris!" into the dark woods, but Bo had him by the hood of his sweatshirt and wouldn't let him go into them. I tripped into a pile of bricks at my feet, shining the light onto them, deciding they were part of a foundation that went maybe ten feet in either direction and was in tatters, with bricks maybe five layers high in some places and only two in others. Inside the foundation was mucky water, like a stone floor was keeping water in it, with watery plants and murky rivers and bricks. I thought I saw something slither away from the light, and my stomach flip-flopped.
"Follow the trail around to your right," Bo was saying. I stepped back onto higher, firmer ground, found the path with the light, and simply put one foot in front of the other while they argued.
"...know it was him!" Justin was saying. "He just didn't come out because of you guys! He heard you—"
"Yo, Chris!" Bo hollered. "It's just me. Your old pal Richardson. C'mon out of there."
I sighed silently, thinking how Bo did not need this. As I finally came up to them, they were s
niffing the air.
"What the hell is that smell?" Justin asked.
"Something ... burning," Richardson answered.
Something did smell scorchy, but it was hard to separate it from the smell of standing water, which was putrid.
"It's a lantern!" Justin guessed. "He was swinging it, but kind of low to the ground."
"Nobody was swinging a lantern, Justin," Bo said impatiently. "That's the mist. It can fool you."
I said nothing, letting him go on with what seemed to be the most sanity of the three of us. "If anyone was out here, they'd have a good old American flashlight. What the hell century are you in?"
Justin sniffed the air again and groaned, as the smell itself was kind of painful. Dead bodies? I had no idea what death smelled like, but it couldn't be much worse.
"So, what's burning?" Justin finally countered. "Flashlights don't make a smell. Maybe it's, you know, a Coleman lantern ... one of those camping-out things."
"Dunno," Bo said, staring into the dark woods, looking for lights. "But I ain't going in those woods. On this side of the field, they're half underwater. You stick your foot on what looks like solid ground, you sink up to your knee, and a water moccasin bites you in the kneecap. And I just saw a water moc slithering through that disgusting foundation behind us."
Justin took the flashlight from me and shined it on the flooding inside the bricks. His voice was tight when he said, "Lydee tries to tell people this is the foundation of the Jersey Devil house."
The silence hung thick. None of us was going to repeat that story aloud. The Jersey Devil dines on chickens, house pets, and occasionally a small child in the Pine Barrens, if you listen to some. It leaves tracks in the woods and lurks in pine trees, staring down at you with red eyes when you walk 254 back here alone. One week in 1908, there were so many Jersey Devil sightings across South Jersey that schools and all industry closed for a day.
And now Christopher Creed hangs out down here with the Jersey Devil, tale compliments of Kobe Lydee.