"Justin, don't listen to that garbage," I said.
He picked up a brick and hurled it into the watery foundation, and ripples curled outward. I imagined a skull floating to the top with the eyeballs still intact, and turned my face away as Justin started examining the trail with the flashlight.
"Any footprints?" Bo asked.
"My God. Lydee would have a field day with this," Justin said after a minute of flashing the light on the ground. He meant no footprints.
"Gimme that," Bo said, and took his flashlight back, shining it on the slithering water and then behind us in the woods. "Justin. There is nobody over here."
"So what made that light, then?"
"I ... don't know." Bo sounded tired and frustrated when he sighed. "It could be a lot more modern of a foundation, or it could be the foundation of a home that is as old as this foundation looks, but it could have been lived in twenty or thirty years ago, which would mean it had electricity. It could mean that we're standing near a shorted wire that's buried or something. We need to get out of here."
"Short wire—that's bullshit!" Justin kept it up. "To have any electricity, the place would have to be hooked up to the electric company. See any wires?"
He hollered his brother's name a few times, but it just echoed back to us. He turned defensive. "I've got e-mails from him!"
Yeah, two e-mails on his hard drive probably sitting ten feet from his mother. How badly did I want to see them? Badly. But I wasn't about to go running over there and have the woman accost me yet again.
"Justin, shhh. Look, I got family to take care of. And I don't have a lot of opinions on things like where dead people go, but I got this opinion: It's something electric making that light and that smell, and it's probably dangerous. There is nobody out here. Now let's go. I'm taking you home."
"So many people think he's dead," Justin said with a flicker of fear in his voice. Obviously he did battle with that possibility, but it was the closest to a confession he'd given us. "To know that he's not dead ... that's just something I need right now. I need something good in my life."
"Don't we all, buddy." Richardson patted his back. "Let's go."
We walked back across the field in silence, watching for shiny circles indicating a deep puddle. My feet were wet but my ankles stayed dry. Justin took one last longing look over his shoulder at the far-off, darkened path.
Bo said, "Pack up your gear."
I folded the lawn chairs, but Justin just stuck them in the brush, saying nobody came down here except himself and his friends—and his mom. And if she could take off with his medication, she could lug all this stuff home, too. I shook my head, watching him make a mountain of the torches and chairs and beer cans I heard being shoved into some bushes, and we walked back to the trail. I felt bad because I was slowing him down, but Justin walked along beside me, muttering something under his breath that was indistinguishable, obviously something to try to ease his anxiety. Bo, in his army boots, navigated back across the swampy area to get his car, and he planned to pick up Justin on the road side.
I watched him for a long way, waiting to see if the ground across the field was flickering with strange lights. Justin stood beside me, saying nothing, but I knew he was doing the same. Bo disappeared into the darkness, and the only stir was the far-off sound of his car engine. We walked to the road, and Bo was already waiting when we arrived ten minutes later.
I got in the back seat like I belonged there, and Bo took off with us. I figured I would ask to be dropped off in the center of town, where I might run into RayAnn, if nothing better came of it. At least I could see the house that Bo and Adams and Ali McDermott had spied on from Ali's bedroom nearly five years ago, catching their first glimpse of the real Justin Creed, at twelve, calmly flipping the bird to his mother through his bedroom wall.
TWENTY
IN THE CAR, JUSTIN GAVE Bo a massive review on quantum thought, and it seemed to me that his mouth was now on autopilot, just blathering to keep other thoughts at bay. He was going on about each of us being a life force, an energy force, and what we think is a big part of that energy. Bo looked tired but interested, maybe enjoying a moment of distraction himself.
"There's a guy in my bunk who believed in all that," Bo said. "He kept saying he was using his thought energy to get an early discharge. Early discharges are nearly impossible, but he had filled out an application to Stanford and got a full ride. One of those math brainiacs."
"Did he get his early discharge?" Justin asked.
Bo laughed uncomfortably. "Well, the fact that he walked into the commander's office with this letter and stood up for himself once a month for four months in a row might have had a lot to do with it. It's not every day that someone from our unit got accepted to Stanford."
"So, he got it," Justin said, sounding victorious.
"So, he stood up for himself," Bo half argued. "I dunno, Justin. I just don't want to see you get hurt, my man. Get your shit together. You stink like a cigarette factory right now. Then come talk to me about philosophy, okay?"
"I will get my act together," Justin promised. "And then I will get back to you. I got a lot to tell."
In the rearview mirror I found Bo's eyes, which looked distracted and puffy, and I thought it was really decent of him to have left his family to seek out the truth in the Justin rumors and try to help him out. He was as true to Adams's writing as I could fathom. However, I didn't think he was fully understanding Justin.
His "I got a lot to tell" had nothing to do with quantum thought and a lot to do with Darla, I sensed. I could not shake the feeling that he knew more than he was telling. There was so much the cops could not tell us, what with the scene having been secretly cleaned up. Awful thoughts started running through my head. Why had Justin suddenly dived into drugs around the same time that Darla disappeared? Could he have possibly been a witness? And the worst thoughts are often the ones that are hardest to resist; to ignore them is to tell yourself to ignore thoughts of a blue elephant. All you can think of is the blue elephant.
Could he have accidentally killed her, and Danny covered it up? I tried to think of Danny's suicide letter and how it might have been lacking in sincerity, which Chief Rye had suspected from the beginning. But without RayAnn beside me to bounce my thoughts off, my mind was all over the place. It was that fear more than any other that made me not respond badly when Justin turned to me with a sudden blast of ideas.
"C'mon in and meet my mom," he said, his tired grin charged with a sense of purpose. "I think we decided this morning that it would be good practice for you."
I responded more calmly than I might have if I weren't so distracted. "Nah. I'm honestly and truly phobic. There's no word in the Oxford Dictionary for 'matraphobia.' I've often thought of writing them a letter."
"All the more reason," Justin said. "If you had a fear of snakes, a shrink would tell you to handle a snake. The non-poisonous kind—well, she's nonpoisonous. I swear, she won't do anything to you."
"I gotta get back to RayAnn," I said.
He persisted. "Don't be a wimp. What are you afraid of? She's not going to bite you, I promise."
I was basically joking when I said, "I'll go in if Bo goes in." I meant that Bo was a burly guy who could knock her out if she started yelling and bossing us around, but I forgot about his tie to the Creeds.
"I am not going in there," he said. "That woman hates my guts to this day. Besides, I'm with you, Mike. I would not go in there with my entire unit. I'm trained as a sniper, which hopefully I will never need to be. But I can pick off a man at three hundred yards, given the right trap. Ladies, mothers especially, are beyond the scope of my power." He laughed, but in a distracted way.
That settled it.
At least, it did until Justin turned just as Bo pulled up to a curb. "Honestly, I want to do something good for you, Mike. I can cure you, I swear. Look. This is the last time you will ever see me. You're going back tomorrow morning, right? C'mon in."
Las
t time I'll see him. I put my hand on the door handle, feeling like I was about to attempt to push through a brick wall. But it was an autopilot move, and to distract myself from phobic willies, I addressed Bo.
"Listen ... I know you've got a lot on your plate right now. But I sold my last belonging to come out here and write about Justin's brother. If there's some good word you could put in for me with Adams ... Trying to get an interview with him is like trying to interview the Beatles. Right now, it's probably easier to get an interview with Paul McCartney, and, well, I'm not Rolling Stone "
Bo groaned, shaking his head. Justin nudged him pleadingly, or he might have simply said no.
"All I can tell you is this. Adams is a down-home guy, not looking to get his name in lights about Chris Creed. And the way he was muttering tonight—about agents and labels and tours—I don't think he's supposed to talk about his music until one of those important people says to open the floodgates. I got no power over any of that. But I'll tell ya what..."
He slapped Justin's hair affectionately. "Adams and I are going to Brownie's for a couple beers around eleven, just to get me out of my house. Ali might be there. If you happen to show up and sit on the other side of the bar and not come near us without being asked, I will mention to him who you are and let him choose for himself. But you have to promise: If he doesn't come to you, you won't invade. Does that work?"
"That works," I said, feeling more hopeful than I had all day. "Thanks, man."
I reached my hand up to him. It was awkward, to shake hands from a back seat to a front seat, and I don't know why I did it. But he shook with me, and a charge went up my arm, the same charge you might get if you shook hands with the lead in a Broadway show at the backstage door. I'd combed Adams's website probably fifty times over the years, and it can be pretty amazing, talking to people whom you've read about until they are legends.
Which is not to say that I was at all prepared to meet this next legend. I called RayAnn on my cell. I got her voice mail, which concerned me, but I left her a message: "It's nine fifty. Pick me up in fifteen minutes. No later ... I'm at the Creeds'." I handed the phone to Justin, who gave driving directions from the center of town.
I must have looked pretty stricken, because Justin was laughing at me.
I could not for the life of me put this scenario together in my head. He had a mother wicked enough to video his computer space so she could see the password changes on his keypad. She'd stopped me cold this afternoon. Yet he was walking into the house after being away for two weeks and had no fear that she would chain him to the radiator or sink her fangs into his head. I'd had a million nightmares of going home, and they always featured my mom in dragon ensemble of varying sorts, spewing forest fires at my head from years of pent-up outrage at being tricked by me and left powerless.
It made me watch Justin as he climbed the front steps, tiredly but fearlessly. I knew I was going for one reason only: I wanted to see him in action. That much was therapy, along with a chance to finally see these alleged e-mails from his brother. It was like I didn't have a choice.
The front door was unlocked, and he simply pushed it open, grinning at me over his shoulder. "My mom hasn't locked the front door since Chris left, thinking if he ever comes back, she wants him to be able to come right in... and get the enormous beating that's coming his way. I'm joking, I'm joking!" He grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and pulled me in behind him in case I was having second thoughts.
The lights were off in the living room, but he put one on, and I followed him down a half flight of stairs to the family room, where I could hear the television going softly. The ten o'clock news was on, some talk about the body found in Steepleton, which did nothing good for my nerves. I put myself in journalist mode, watching, detached, aloof.
The Mother Creed was sleeping on the couch, wearing a sweatshirt and shorts. I noticed this time how thin she was. I could see her knees, which were kind of knobby. Too thin. At one time, she had been a fighter pilot in the navy—muscles and more muscles. No more. She was sleep breathing deeply.
Justin grinned at me, then stood right over her and said in a normal tone of voice, which under the circumstances sounded like screaming, "Hi, Mom! I'm home!"
She barely stirred, said something unintelligible, and conked off again. Justin picked up her arm and let it drop to the couch, still grinning. He did it again for effect.
"Really scary, isn't she?" he asked.
Officer Hughes popped into my head saying that the Mother Creed never left the house after three. Definitely, that was now the start of cocktail hour, rather than after the kids are asleep, or even five o'clock. Alcoholism, I knew, doesn't get any better without help. If my own mother hadn't gotten help... What in hell had I done to the younger kids? I don't think Justin was aware of the measure of guilt that was coming my way. He was simply carrying on some nightly charade, which I could tell filled him with sadness, but he was handling it with aplomb, with humor, even, pulling her up to a sitting position by one arm. Her chin fell onto her chest and her breathing remained the same.
"Dangerous, eh?" he repeated.
I wasn't sure what five years could do to my mother; there was no timetable given by the counselors. But this was slightly more horrifying to watch than what I had at first imagined. My imagination had simply included Justin having to defend himself with chairs like a lion tamer. He climbed up onto the couch, straddled her until her body moved forward and he was sitting behind her, holding her upright with one arm around her ribs. He let go, and she flopped for ward. He wiggled down further, one leg on either side until her back leaned in to him.
"So, Mom. Who took out your contacts while I was gone?" He did some maneuver, pulling her eye sideways with one hand until something dropped into his other palm. He did the same to the other eye. He laid the two contacts on the end table beside him.
She muttered something. It was pathetic, awful, worse than hitting your mother, seeing one in a condition like this. No kid should have to see his mother like this. Mothers are huge.
He stood, pulling her up with him. She flopped into his side, half staggering, half being carried around the coffee table.
"Get her other arm," he told me.
I stood frozen. "Why ... don't you just let her sleep where she is?"
"Because I just took her contacts out. She has allergies and she'll wake up with her eyes on fire if I don't. But without them, she'll fall down the stairs on her way up to bed when she starts coming to. Believe me—it's happened."
Something shot through me, a desire to help, maybe—some twisted desire to return all the kind gestures that mothers try to make, regardless of how bad they can be at it. I broke through my wall, sending invisible bricks flying all over the stratosphere, as I put her arm over my shoulder and the two of us walked her up the stairs.
It was clunky, as I had no vision down as low as the stairs themselves. We turned at the living room, and I counted the next steps quickly as they came into view in frames. It was my usual trick for ascending in a hurry, but my tunnel vision was deepening the way it could when I was under stress. Eight steps, I thought.
It turned out to be seven, so I staggered into the upstairs corridor, almost flinging her over my head. She stirred slightly, slurring out, "You're not allowed t' bring friends...!" and she was out of it again.
It was a last-ditch effort to dish out orders, and Justin chuckled quietly, taking all of her weight to let me get ahold of myself. Suddenly I was chuckling, too. He was right about one thing. There was nothing to fear here. I'm not sure I would have wanted my mom to be reduced to this in order to rid her of power, but if it had happened, it would be a result of her choices, not mine.
We approached the bed and Justin threw back the blankets. She collapsed on her pillow, opening her eyes only once. As it was as black as pitch to me in that room, I lifted my glasses, if for no better reason than to get one last clear view of the Mother Creed without her power. Eyes reflect the light, and what l
ittle poured in from the hall allowed her and me to exchange glances. The chill it sent down my back was, fortunately, short-lived. Her eyes rolled almost as quickly as they had locked with mine, and she was asleep again. Justin made a big deal of tucking the blankets around her, which I suspected was not part of his nightly ritual but a drama-fest to drive home the idea that she was stone-cold dead to the world and nothing to be afraid of.
Still, I was almost catapulted out of the room by my own phobic energy, and before I could exit the house via the front door, Justin pulled me down into the family room once more.
"You want to see those e-mails, don't you? Your girlfriend isn't coming for another ten minutes at least."
That all of this could have taken less than three minutes was amazing to me. It had seemed like an eternity.
"Sure," I said, huffing, trying to sound like I wasn't.
He sat down at his computer and put a towel over his hands as he typed.
"What are you doing?" I whispered.
"Told ya. She put a hidden cam in this room somewhere to see what my passwords are. I'm changing my password."
I looked all around.
"Don't bother," he said, watching me look. "It's one of those cameras that's the size of a grape seed or something. I found a receipt for it about two months back. I was already suspicious and downloaded some spyware to see if anyone was using my terminal when I wasn't. She's got her own laptop, but the test came back: affirmative. After finding that receipt, I started putting a towel over my hands to change my passwords daily, and the spyware altered its message to the effect that someone was trying to use my terminal but was unable to."
"Good for you." I chuckled, starting to calm down, though I knew I wouldn't be totally calm until we were out of this house.
He found the e-mails, printed them out, and handed me the copies. I studied one as best as I could by moving over to the light.
It was from a CCRider. It read: "want 2 come 2 u. How mom? DON'T TELL HER don't tell anyone." The second was the same sender, only, "I let u know when I come. Look 4 me everywhere."