Can You Keep a Secret?

  38.

  Mac’s words sent a chill to the back of my neck. “You—you can’t keep us here!” I cried. I dove to the doorway, but he moved quickly, blocked my path, and I bounced off him.

  I stumbled back. “L-let us out of here!” I stammered.

  Mac clicked the door lock. “Let’s be calm and think about this,” he said. He stepped to the desk, pulled open the middle drawer, and his hand came out gripping a small pistol. “Maybe this will help you three stay calm.” He aimed it at Eddie, then, Sophie, then me.

  “Mac, we know you took the money,” Eddie said. “The police—”

  “Shut up!” Mac screamed. He lowered the gun till it was pointed at Eddie’s chest. “Just shut up.” He nodded his shaved head a few times. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead. “Okay. Okay. We have a problem here.” He was talking to himself.

  His eyes darted rapidly from side to side. I could see that he was thinking hard, desperate to come up with a plan.

  “You’re not going to shoot us,” I said.

  He waved the pistol. “Shut up. I mean it. Just shut up.” He turned his gaze on Eddie. “I like you, kid. You know that. You’re my cousin’s son. You’re family. But I can’t let you ruin everything for me. The money is mine now, and I plan to keep it.” He rubbed his shaved head with his free hand. “But what am I going to do with the three of you?”

  We stood there in that small room, the money at our feet. No one moved. Our eyes were all on Mac. My legs were trembling, and it felt as if my heart had jumped into my throat. I struggled to breathe.

  He wouldn’t kill us, would he? He wouldn’t kill us for the money.”

  “Follow me,” he said, waving the gun again. “Follow me and don’t say a word.” He gave Eddie’s shoulder a hard shove. “Don’t try anything.”

  “Mac, listen,” Eddie pleaded. “You don’t want to hurt my stepfather, do you? Lou is going to do a lot of prison time if that money isn’t returned.”

  Mac shoved Eddie again, sending him stumbling into the wall. “Lou made his bed. Now he has to sleep in it. It doesn’t mean I have to be a loser, too.”

  He forced us out the door and down the metal stairway. “Keep moving,” he barked. “Out the back door. This way. Hurry.”

  “Where are you taking us?” Sophie demanded.

  “Shut up,” Mac said again. “I have to think. I need time to think.”

  He forced us out a narrow door at the back of the supply room. We were outside now, but in a walled-in area I’d never seen before. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the light and then gazed around.

  “Ohhh, the smell,” Sophie groaned. She pinched her fingers over her nose.

  The sour putrid odor filled my nose. Much stronger back here. So strong, it made my eyes water. I grabbed my stomach as it started to lurch.

  What smells so bad back here?

  “Get moving,” Mac ordered. “Walk!”

  Tall brick walls on both sides of us. Huddled close together, we made our way through the narrow gravel path between the walls. I could see the pale half-moon above us in the night sky, but I couldn’t see anything else over the high walls.

  “I’m going to be sick,” Sophie moaned. “I … I can’t stand the smell. Ohhhhh noooo.” She bent over as if about to puke.

  Mac gave her a shove that sent her sprawling to her knees. “Walk. Walk and shut up. You’ll have plenty of time to discuss the smell in a moment.”

  “This is seriously crazy, Mac,” Eddie said. “Where are you taking us? Why don’t you just take the money, get in your Jeep, and take off?”

  “Maybe I will,” Mac said. “You’re smart, Eddie. Maybe that’s just what I’ll do. Take the money and get as far away from here as I can.”

  The gravel path wasn’t very long. We stopped at the end. The odor was so powerful here, I couldn’t breathe at all. The smell was sickening, like nothing I’d ever smelled before. I wiped tears from my eyes and struggled to hold my breath. Every muscle in my body tensed tightly.

  “That’s just what I’m going to do,” Mac said. “I’m outta here. But I need a little time to get it together. So I need to put you away for a while.”

  Put us away? What did that mean?

  “Go ahead. Jump,” Mac said, his jaw clenched, his face beaded with large drops of sweat. “Jump. All of you.”

  I suddenly realized that the three of us were standing at the edge of a pit. A deep hole in the ground. I peered over the edge, but I couldn’t see the bottom.

  “How deep is it? What’s down there?” Sophie demanded in a trembling voice, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Go find out,” Mac said. He shoved her from behind and sent her toppling into the pit. I gripped the sides of my face and screamed in horror as she vanished.

  Sophie’s scream joined mine. We heard a soft splat as she landed.

  “No … no … no…” I kept repeating, shaking my head, my hands still pressed to my cheeks.

  “Go ahead. Join her,” Mac screamed. “Jump! Jump in!”

  Eddie and I hesitated at the edge. My legs were shaking so hard, I could barely stand. I cupped my hands around my mouth and called down: “Sophie? Are you okay?”

  No answer.

  “Mac, give us a break,” Eddie said. Moving suddenly, he lowered his shoulder and rammed it deep into Mac’s big belly.

  Mac uttered a groan. The pistol flew from his hand. Gasping for breath, Mac dove for it. Eddie dropped to his knees. Reached for the pistol. And Mac kicked him hard in the side.

  “Stop! Stop!” I shrieked. I stumbled back from the pit edge, my eyes on the gun.

  With a sharp cry, Eddie tried to roll away from Mac. But Mac kicked him again, with even more force, a fierce kick that made Eddie scream in pain.

  The force of the kick sent Eddie rolling over the side and into the pit. Another soft splat sound made me gasp.

  Mac grabbed the pistol, spun around, his eyes wild, his chest heaving up and down. “You made me do that!” he shouted. “I didn’t want to fight you, Eddie.” He aimed the gun at me.

  I shut my eyes—stepped over the edge, and dropped into the pit.

  39.

  I landed on my back with a sharp cry. My breath whooshed out and my lungs throbbed with sharp pain. Fighting the pain, I struggled to regain my breathing. I glanced around. I saw Sophie and Eddie climb to their knees.

  “Emmy—Emmy—are you okay?” Eddie cried, reaching toward me with both hands.

  “I-I think so,” I stammered.

  I swung myself onto my stomach and started to pull myself up. I stopped when I realized my hands were buried in something soft. Some kind of fur?

  I raised my hands and bumped something hard. A tree branch? No. I raised it close and saw that it was a bone, a bone with patches of fur clinging to it.

  An animal bone. I waved it in the air. “Eddie—look!”

  “A dog’s leg!” he cried.

  “Oh, nooo!” A cry burst from my throat, and I heaved it to the pit bottom.

  Trembling in horror, I gazed down at the bones poking up from the clumps of fur beneath me. “I … I think these are ribs!” I choked out.

  Her eyes wide with terror, Sophie raised a skull in one hand. “It’s … it’s … a dog skull.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” The moans escaped my throat as I realized we were sitting on top of corpses. Dead dogs and cats. It all started to come into focus. Patches of ragged fur. Rib bones and leg bones and skulls with their eye sockets black and empty.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no.” I shifted my weight. My hand tightened around something beneath me, and I raised it to my face. A dog tail. A long fur-covered dog tail.

  “Noooooo!” A scream burst from deep inside me. I heaved the tail against the pit wall. I tried to stand, tried to move to Sophie and Eddie. Stumbled. Fell back into the deep pile of corpses. Rotting meat … tattered fur … clumps of bones. Flies buzzing, swarming so thick and dark they blocked out the moonlight.

  “The smell,” Eddie utte
red in a hoarse whisper. “Now we know. Now we know where the smell comes from.”

  “But … what is this pit?” I screamed in a trembling voice.

  “Don’t you see?” Sophie cried. “Mac never buried the animals. He never cremated them or anything.”

  She staggered over the bodies to the dirt pit wall and pressed her back against it. “He never cremated them and he never buried them. He took people’s money, and he just tossed the dead pets into this pit.”

  I pulled a chunk of hardened meat from the back of my T-shirt. My hair felt wet. I didn’t want to think about what caused it. Wave after wave of nausea rolled down my body. I brushed chunks of fur-covered flesh off the legs of my jeans.

  Sophie tugged something from her hair. “What is this?” she shrieked. “Ohmigod! Ohmigod! It’s a heart or a liver or something!” She tossed it to the pit floor.

  Eddie stumbled to the dirt wall. He tried to grip the side and pull himself up. But the soft dirt tumbled from under his hands and he slid back down. He made his way to Sophie. “This explains why Mac was so frightened when that federal agent came to the cemetery. Mac thought this pit had been discovered. He thought he’d been caught cheating his customers.”

  Flies swarmed around my head. I tried to bat them away with both hands. “No. That’s not it,” I said. “Mac was afraid the agent knew Mac had taken the stolen money.”

  “Hey—!” Mac leaned over the edge of the pit and scowled down at us. “Did I hear someone saying my name in vain?”

  “Let us out! Let us out of here!” I screamed. Sophie and Eddie repeated my plea.

  “No way,” Mac shouted down to us. “You can stay down there till I get away.”

  “Get away?” I cried.

  He stuck his face over the pit edge. He was drenched in sweat, and he kept blinking crazily, as if he’d lost control of his eyelids. Tension, I guessed.

  “I’m taking your advice. I’m grabbing the money and getting out of here. I’ll be rich somewhere else,” he said. “Somewhere far away from here.”

  “But you can’t leave us down here!” Eddie cried.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mac replied. “Someone will find you. In a day or two probably.” That made him chuckle. Awesome joke.

  We shouted and pleaded. But he disappeared.

  Eddie covered his head in his hands. I swung my arms rapidly, still trying to bat away the swarming flies. Sophie leaned against the pit wall, her mouth hanging open, not moving, still as a statue.

  Over the buzzing drone of the flies, I listened to the silence above the pit. Mac had definitely gone. He wasn’t up there listening to us. He wasn’t going to rescue us from this putrid horror.

  Angrily, I kicked a slender cat skull with my shoe. It made a clattering sound as it landed inside upturned rib bones, some of the meat and fur still clinging.

  My eyes studied the dirt wall. Too steep and too high to climb. Eddie had already tried, but he couldn’t climb the side. But maybe if one of us gave a boost to another … maybe if we did some kind of pyramid thing … maybe we could push one of us out, and they could rescue the remaining two.…

  My mind was spinning. There had to be a way for at least one of us to get to the top.

  “Eddie?” I started to ask him if he had any ideas on how we could escape.

  But then Sophie caught my eye. Something strange. Something strange was happening to my sister.

  Gripped in shock, I stared silently as her face began to change. Her eyes grew bigger, darker. Her nose pressed into her skin, and a long snout poked through. A long animal snout.

  I wanted to call out to her. But I couldn’t find my voice. I couldn’t find words.

  And I watched, paralyzed, as the black fur spread over Sophie’s arms, her legs … in seconds she was covered in thick animal fur. Pointed ears poked from the top of her fur-covered head. She pulled back black lips revealing two sets of yellow teeth … curled fangs poking down to her chin. She snapped her jaw … snapped her teeth, as if testing them. Dropped to her knees. Raised herself on four clawed animal paws, pawing the dirt, snapping her jaw.

  “Sophie—” I uttered her name. I finally found my voice and choked out her name. “Sophie—”

  “Emmy…” She growled my name, in a husky voice from deep in her throat. “Emmy … I’m the wolf! Not you!”

  40.

  “N-no—!” I staggered back, away from her. I lost my balance, stumbled and toppled down, onto a soft, squishy pile of animal fur and bones. I didn’t move. I sat there staring at the wolf with its chest heaving, saliva rolling off its fangs.

  “Listen to me,” Sophie growled a husky, throaty rasp. “I can’t talk long. Listen to me before the transformation is complete.”

  I stared at her—stared at this terrifying wolf creature that was my sister—stared at her, unable to speak.

  “When you had those wolf dreams,” Sophie snarled, “you thought you were dreaming about yourself. But now you see the truth. You were dreaming about ME!”

  “I-I don’t understand,” I stammered. Across from me, Eddie had his back pressed to the dirt pit wall, his mouth hanging open in shock. “Sophie, why—”

  Sophie didn’t give me a chance to finish my question. With a fierce growl, she arched her spine, pulled back on her hind legs, bared her fangs—and leaped at me.

  I screamed in horror. I raised my hands as a shield and ducked my head.

  But Sophie wasn’t attacking me. She leaped over me. Her forepaws grabbed the top of the pit easily, and her belly rubbed the side as she hoisted herself out of the hole, kicking hard with her hind legs.

  Eddie and I didn’t move. It was as if we were frozen in horror, in shock.

  Sophie … my sister …

  I heard the heavy thud of her paws on the ground above us.

  Then I heard Mac’s scream. The scream cut off sharply. I heard a struggle. Grunts. Groans.

  Eddie and I both cried out as Mac came hurtling down into the pit. He landed between us on his back. He bounced once, sending animal parts and patches of fur flying. His t-shirt was torn to shreds and blood puddled down his chest.

  “Help me … Hellllp me,” he groaned, gazing up at me, eyes bulging in terror.

  Before he could struggle to his feet, the wolf came leaping in after him. She landed on top of him, shoving him down deep into the corpses with her front paws. He raised both hands in a futile attempt to shove her away.

  But Sophie lowered her teeth to his chest, tore away a large piece of skin, shook it in her teeth, and tossed it aside. Then she raised her snout to Mac’s throat—and bit deeply, sending up a spray of dark blood that spattered Eddie and me.

  Mac stopped struggling. His body went limp, sprawled on his back, covered with bones and fur and dried animal parts.

  Panting, Sophie backed off. She kept her head low, waiting to catch her breath. Her dark fur was stained by patches of Mac’s blood. Her tongue swept over her fangs, and I knew she tasted his blood on them.

  Eddie pressed his back against the pit wall. His eyes, wide with horror, kept darting from Sophie to me. He appeared too frightened to speak.

  Finally, I found the courage to talk to her. “Sophie … I don’t understand any of this. Can you tell me—”

  She raised her head. Her blue wolf eyes gleamed as she gazed at me. She began to change again. I could see her face emerge. Sophie’s face. Her cheeks … her lips. But she remained on all fours, her body covered in thick wolf fur. Sophie’s face on a wolf body. Sophie … Sophie …

  “I thought I was the one,” I choked out. “I thought I was the wolfen one.”

  “Marta never could tell us apart,” Sophie said in that hoarse growl from deep inside her. “She was half-blind, remember?”

  I swallowed. Hugged myself to stop my shudders. “So when we visited Marta when we were l-little…” I stammered. “You were the one bitten by a wolf? Not me?”

  She nodded, still breathing noisily. “Marta told Mom you were bitten. Mom never knew th
e truth. But I did.” She uttered a low growl. “I felt strange my whole life, Emmy. But my wolfen powers didn’t bloom until a few months ago.”

  I shut my eyes, trying to understand all this, struggling to have it make sense. “But all those dreams I had, Sophie.… I had the wolf dreams—not you.”

  “The wolfen powers are strange,” Sophie replied. “It took me a while to explore them. It took me a while to figure out how to send you those dreams. It took me a while to figure out how to make you black out … how to make you think you were the wolf.”

  “But … why?” I choked out.

  “Because you were normal and I was not. It wasn’t fair, Emmy. It was never fair. I was just three years old when I was bitten. You should have protected me. You should have helped me.”

  “But—I was just a little kid, too,” I protested.

  Sophie turned away from me. She raised her head to the sky.

  “Wait—don’t go,” I begged. “You haven’t explained, Sophie. Why did you kill Riley? Why?”

  A growl escaped her throat. Again, she turned her gleaming blue eyes on me. “He knew my secret. He was in the park the night I attacked that dog. He recognized me when I turned back into myself. He said he was going to tell. I begged him. But he refused to keep my secret. I couldn’t let him tell people. The wolf in me took over. Riley had to die.”

  I took a deep breath, fighting to slow my racing heartbeats. “And so you made me think that I was the one who killed him?”

  “Why should I be the only one whose life is ruined?” she snarled. “Why should I be running on all fours, killing, craving meat like a low animal, while you’re totally normal, out having fun with your boyfriend and your friends?”

  She growled again. Her eyes went dim. She seemed to sink in on herself, as if her thoughts were too heavy, too frightening to bear.

  I reached both hands out to her. I struggled to step across the animal corpses to reach her, to hug her.

  But another low growl made me stop. She lowered her head. To attack me? Was she about to leap at me?