The Raven

  I texted Sarah back, hoping she wouldn’t try to read it while driving, and waited.

  I was not falling asleep this time. I put on some music, surfed the web, waited.

  Four minutes later, she called.

  “Ryan! Where have you been?”

  “Did you pull over?” Safety first. The last thing she needed to be doing was driving and talking on her phone. It was stressful enough knowing she was out there all alone.

  “Yeah, I pulled over. Don’t try to change the subject.”

  I explained everything as fast as I could, then asked her if she’d gotten my message and sent the vial.

  “It’s on the way. I even paid extra to make sure it arrives on Monday. You owe me.”

  She also said she’d thought about pulling an Alice in Wonderland and drinking whatever was inside, but when she twisted the top open she’d changed her mind.

  “Would have been fun shrinking down to the size of a water bottle, but whatever is in there doesn’t smell too good. More likely I’d have grown a third arm out of my forehead.”

  Thanks, Sarah, now all I can think about is my best friend with an arm sticking out of her face. Ghastly.

  I told her to watch the directions carefully, because there was a very specific place she had to park.

  “I know the place — it’s called the middle of nowhere,” she joked. “Can’t miss it.”

  Sarah laughed, then told me she was high–fiving the arm sticking out of her forehead, which she’d named Judith.

  She had to follow directions off the highway, down a two lane, onto a dirt road, and into just the right spot, where the road would rise before her:

  “Hopefully, when you get there, you’ll see a building shaped like the one in the picture.

  That’ll be the hideout for B and C.”

  Even saying it made me scratch my head. The hideout for B and C? If this mystery doesn’t solve itself, I didn’t know what we’re going to do.

  I told Sarah about dropping the note to Fitz, and she said she’d try to call when she arrived at the Spooksville Triangle, which she guessed would be in about an hour.

  Then she said she was going to let Judith drive, and hung up.

  Saturday, July 17, 12:25 a.m.

  An hour is a long time when you’ve had the kind of day I just had. I’m worried I’m going to fall asleep again. I’m going to dream of the Raven chasing me through the woods. He’s going to catch me, and when I finally see inside that dark hood of his, there will be a black claw sticking out of his head. The black claw will grab my face and lift me off the ground.

  Okay, I’m wide awake now. I don’t think there’s much chance of me getting any sleep tonight with a dream like that waiting for me.

  It’s past midnight. She should be getting into position.

  I have to remember to set my webcam to record again.

  I think I just fell asleep with my eyes open, because my head snapped back and I almost fell out of my chair.

  Come on, Sarah. Have a signal. Call me. Soon.

  Saturday, July 17, 12:35 a.m.

  It’s Sunday in Skeleton Creek, dark outside my window, and the world just changed in a flash.

  Everything is different now. I’m not sure if I’m sad, relieved, worried, or scared. Maybe I’m all those things at once.

  I’m going to relay this exactly as it happened, because there’s a real possibility I’ll be asked about it someday. I want to make sure I have it written down exactly as it occurred.

  Sarah called me from the Spooksville Triangle at 12:27 a.m. She was parked right where she needed to be, where the desolate road rose in front of her.

  “It’s freakin’ dark out here, Ryan,” she said. “If I turn off my headlights it’s pitch-black. How am I supposed to find a building if I can’t see it?”

  I thought about this for a second, then asked her if she had a flashlight.

  “Of course I have a flashlight. I’m a girl alone in the dark!”

  Right, of course she has a flashlight. So I asked her how she felt about getting out of the car and pointing the light along the sides of the road.

  “Did I mention the part about it being pitch–black and totally spooky out here?”

  “You did.”

  I wanted to tell her I’d ridden my mountain bike at night into the lair of the Raven. I wanted to tell her about the claw dream I’d imagined, about the grove and the tree and all the terrible, scary things in my life. But what good was that going to do? She had her own fears to face, and telling her about mine wouldn’t solve anything.

  And that’s when it happened.

  That’s when my old world came to an end and a new world began.

  “Ryan?” Sarah whispered. “Don’t you dare hang up.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You know that legend about the light that people see dancing over the rise in the road?”

  “I do. It’s the lady with the lamp, looking for her lost kid. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I just turned my headlights on. I don’t see a light. I see something else.”

  “What do you see?”

  There was a long pause as Sarah reached around and locked all the doors.

  “What’s going on, Sarah? Talk to me!”

  “He’s coming down the road.”

  I wanted to ask her who. But that would have been stupid. I knew who it was without her having to say.

  “Get out of there! Just drive!” I yelled.

  “I can’t move, Ryan. He’s coming for me.

  He’s coming down the hill on that shattered leg of his.”

  I yelled for her to start the car and drive, then realized how stupid yelling was. What if my parents heard me? It was after midnight and they were both sound sleepers. There was my door — closed — and their door, also closed. But I’d yelled pretty loudly.

  “I’m getting out of the car,” Sarah said.

  “Don’t worry. It’s all going to be okay.”

  I was on the verge of a total meltdown, whispering as loudly as I felt I could, “Get back in the car! Get out of there!”

  I heard the door open and shut. I heard footsteps on a dirt road.

  Sarah? What’s happening? Sarah!

  Was she possessed? Had she gone insane with fear?

  “Ryan,” she whispered.

  “Yeah?” My voice was trembling. I was sure Henry or the ghost or whatever had followed my friend halfway across the country had finally gotten her.

  But then she said something I didn’t expect.

  “The ghost of Old Joe Bush just died in my arms.”

  Sunday, July 17, 1:25 a.m.

  It’s funny how the mind works. An hour ago I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. Now I feel like I’ve downed five cups of coffee with a Red Bull chaser.

  Henry is dead.

  I had to write that down, just once, to make it real.

  And if Henry is dead, then so is the ghost of Old Joe Bush. There was never one without the other, and now both are laid to rest.

  Sarah videotaped the entire encounter, which she says was one of the most harrowing experiences of her life. Seeing him in the beams of her headlights, his figure coming up over the road, was almost more than she could take. She says she had her hand on the key but couldn’t bring herself to start the car up and drive straight ahead. There was a moment where she’d thought she could do it, drive over Henry and be done with it, but the moment passed.

  “Why?” I asked her. “Why didn’t you run when you saw him coming over the hill?”

  “Because he was reaching out to me, like before, at St. Mark’s. And I realized then that he wasn’t trying to reach out and grab me. He was trying to reach out and give me something. And there was something else. He was dying.”

  I asked her how she knew this and she said I would have known, too. He was moving so slowly, dragging his destroyed leg, wobbling down the hill. It was menacing in a ghostly sort of way, but she knew, deep down inside, that it
wasn’t a ghost at all. It was a man, a broken man.

  She said I’d need to watch the video for myself to see and hear all that had happened. It was just her way to show me, not tell me. It was the only way she knew how to share the really big moments in her life. I felt a little sad for her then, because I understood what she meant. I can never tell anyone how I really feel. I always have to write it down.

  And so I’ll write down how I feel right now, since I won’t be able to tell anyone tomorrow or the day after that or ever.

  I’m sad, if you want to know the truth. Sad that Henry wandered the country all alone, sick and broken. I’ve always had a problem with that sort of thing, people being all alone in the world, no matter how bad they are. In my darkest moments I imagine myself old and all alone, staring at a TV screen, wishing it would all just come to an end. My heart breaks just thinking about it.

  I’m also feeling a deep sense of relief. I now realize that sometimes you don’t know how stressed out you are until after it’s passed. After the bad person in your life is gone. After the bad test is over, after some giant badness moves off like a storm cloud. I didn’t know how scared I was until an hour ago when my fear died right along with the ghost of Old Joe Bush.

  He can’t get me anymore.

  And, more important, he can’t get Sarah anymore.

  He’s gone. They both are. The ghost of Old Joe Bush and Henry don’t have any power over me any longer.

  That part of my life is now in the past.

  It would have been nice if they hadn’t been replaced by the Raven, but I’ll take what progress I can get.

  I heard the same new sound in Sarah’s voice, too.

  “I know where the hideout for B and C is,” she said.

  “You’re driving and talking on the phone,” I said, ever the safety tzar of our lives.

  “It’s a dirt road after midnight. The only thing I’m going to hit is a cow.”

  “I feel sorry for the cow.”

  I asked her how she knew where the hideout was.

  “He showed me.”

  It appeared that in the end, Henry wanted the same thing we did: to follow the Apostle all the way to the end. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

  “He hasn’t been reaching out to grab me,” she said. “He’s been trying to give me a message. Wanna hear it?”

  I did, but the thought of Sarah talking on her cell phone and reading a note while driving down a dirt road was more than I could put up with.

  “WHOA, COW!” she screamed.

  Always with the jokes, this girl.

  She stopped the car at the deserted turn leading back to the highway and read from the note she’d found clutched between his dead fingers. It’s short, so it wasn’t very hard to write down in my journal. It was random, like he’d written a line, then waited a week to write the next — not so much a letter as a stream of unconnected thoughts.

  Here it is, as Sarah read it to me:

  It’s time to go, me and Old Joe.

  B and C is Bonnie and Clyde.

  Invoke the clause!

  I’m sorry for all he’s done.

  Sorrier than you know.

  Joe

  I’ve thought about what these words mean, and here are my conclusions:

  — First and foremost, Henry had lost or was losing his mind. The note starts out as if it’s Henry writing about him and the ghost of Old Joe Bush, and ends with Joe saying Henry is sorry. It’s not clear to me Henry knew who he was at the end. As we’d suspected, something about the trauma of all those years guarding the dredge and playing the part of a ghost had gotten lodged too deeply in his brain. The guilt of all his past sins exposed and the great fall that shattered his leg only served to deepen his madness. Old Joe Bush had his leg pulled through the gears, Henry shattered his own falling in the same dredge. My guess? He was bleeding inside, needed a doctor but wouldn’t turn himself in, and found his body and mind had turned against him. I think, in the end, he was neither Henry nor the ghost of Old Joe Bush. He was both.

  — I believe to this day that Henry was a liar and a thief, but I don’t believe he ever intended to kill anyone. He was responsible for the deaths of the Apostle and Dr. Watts, and he nearly got me killed. But I have personal experience with this guy, and I’m telling you, they were all accidents. The biggest problem Henry had was being sold out to the Crossbones, which made him do things he wasn’t wired to do. I think he tried to scare people into doing what he needed them to do because he didn’t have it in him to kill in cold blood.

  — I think Henry was trying to help us as atonement for all his sins. That’s why he ran, why he wouldn’t turn himself in. He protected Sarah on her journey west, even as he was inching closer to death’s door. He gave me the Raven Puzzle in the Portland Underground. And now he’d given us the solution to the B and C hideout: Bonnie and Clyde. The famous bank robbers from the 1930s. We should have been smart enough to figure that out, because Bonnie and Clyde’s hideout was in Joplin, Missouri, part of the Spooksville Triangle.

  — And finally, he asks us to invoke “the clause.” This statement is a mystery, but I think the vial of liquid on its way to Skeleton Creek is going to show us what it means. He wants us to invoke “the clause,” so that’s what we’re going to do. I hope it doesn’t set off a Crossbones nuclear bomb or something.

  My last words on this: Henry had to be in a lot of pain. He lived a lie his whole life and he was wandering the earth alone at the end. He tried to make things right. And now he’s gone, soon to be forgotten. All in all, the guy paid a heavy price.

  Rest in peace.

  Sunday, July 17, 1:40 a.m.

  We agreed that I would use an anonymous email account to send in an alert while Sarah checked into her hotel and kept a low profile. Everyone in Skeleton Creek had been given an email address to use if they stumbled onto anything that might lead to finding Henry, so I knew just where to send it. Took me about a minute to create a bogus Gmail account and another minute or two to type in what I wanted to say.

  With all the other action flying around Skeleton Creek, I was sure this news would make it to the mayor’s office in no time flat. By morning, he’d be knocking on my door with news of Henry’s death. It would be bittersweet for my dad, but it would also allow him to rest easier knowing an unseen threat against his family had departed the planet.

  Sarah is going to head for the hotel in Joplin, Missouri, and crash for the night. She’ll sleep late and book the room for a second night, using her own money. Sometime during that two day break, she’ll go to Bonnie and Clyde’s hideout and find what the Apostle left behind.

  Her parents are going to hear about Henry for sure. Hopefully, that won’t put an end to her stops right as we’re coming to the final leg of our journey.

  Sunday, July 17, 4:05 p.m.

  As I’d suspected, it was the mayor who delivered the news. About an hour ago, he landed on our front porch, where my mom and dad were reading the paper. I was inside, napping on the couch, when my mom called me out to join them.

  “They found Henry,” said Mayor Blake. “He’s gone.”

  My mom seemed the most shook up at first, sitting down and staring at the old painted boards on our porch. She’d always liked Henry, and never really could bring herself to fully believe all the bad things he’d done.

  “Where?” my dad asked. He, too, was moved by the news. “Where” was the only word he could muster.

  “It’s the strangest thing,” the mayor continued. “He was out in the middle of nowhere. Someplace called the Spooksville Triangle on the border of Kansas and Missouri. What he was doing out there, I have no idea.”

  “How’d he die?” I asked, curious about whether or not they’d be searching for foul play. The mayor said they didn’t know for sure, but that it appeared Henry had never gotten medical attention after the fall in the dredge. His leg was bleeding internally, and he’d suffered a severe concussion.

  “It was really
just a matter of time,” he concluded.

  I couldn’t tell how my dad was taking the news. He’s a quiet guy by nature, especially so when bad things happen. I ventured an important question.

  “Who knows about this?” The mayor could not have given me a better answer.

  “I was just coming to that. The investigation is ongoing, for reasons I don’t fully understand. In any case, the authorities would like us to keep this quiet for a few days until they can make an announcement. It would seem Henry had a complicated life both here and back east.”

  He went on to tell us that we were only being told because of all the things about Henry that were connected to our family. The authorities figured we deserved to know there was no longer a madman on the loose.

  If only they knew about the ax-wielding Raven living in the woods outside Skeleton Creek. Or maybe the Raven is exactly why they don’t want to go public with the news just yet. Maybe they’re trying to flush out the really bad guy, and letting him think Henry is still alive has some purpose.

  Either way, it’s exceptionally good news. I was lying on the couch all morning thinking of how we were ever going to keep Sarah on the road once her parents found out about Henry being in the same place she was. They’d flip out for sure. They’d make her drive straight home, no more making documentaries about spooky places. She’d never get to Savannah or Monticello, and the Apostle’s final message might be hidden forever.

  As I got up to go to my room and call Sarah, I heard Mayor Blake talking to my parents about Henry. He was already spinning it into his PR machine.

  “I’d like to see if we can get him buried here in town, if you all don’t mind.”

  Another stop in the evolving Skeleton Creek tourist trap.

  Yippee.

  Sunday, July 17, 4:24 p.m.

  Just called Sarah, but she didn’t pick up. I’m sure she’s catching up on her sleep, but I can’t help worrying about her. I left her a voice message about word of Henry’s death reaching Skeleton Creek, but that it was an open investigation not to be discussed outside of my own family.