The Creek

  “It was you all along?” she gasped.

  He lunged at her with the knife. He moved pretty fast, faster than she’d ever seen him move on the softball field. She stumbled down the hall toward the stairs and scrambled up quick as she could, slipping, her balance off.

  Zachary paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I was just doing what I had to do. And it worked. Everyone thought it was Caleb, and you liked me!”

  “We do like you,” she said uncertainly.

  “I just wanted to be friends with you guys!” He looked up at her, an anguished expression on his face. “You never let me get ice cream with you before all this happened!” he said, wailing.

  Penny looked at him in horror.

  “Why Becky?” she whispered shakily.

  “It wasn’t my fault. She was just so nosy, always following me. And you! You were my favorite!” he said, his face twisting. “Why’d you have to ruin everything!”

  Penny felt a rush of adrenaline at these words and moved faster now, crablike up the stairs, two steps at a time, until she was nearly at the top.

  “No,” Penny said quickly. “I do like you, I—”

  “Liar!” he roared. “You’re gonna tell everybody, and then I’ll never be friends with the guys! After all my hard work!”

  “I won’t! I promise!” Penny begged, desperately.

  “No, it’s too late,” Zachary said sadly, pointing the shiny knife at her, the same knife her mother used to chop onions.

  “Please,” she started to say, and then all at once she knew there was no use talking because he was nuts, absolutely bananas, and with that thought she started down the upstairs hall, hearing him barreling up the stairs behind her. She flung the door to her bedroom open and staggered in, falling to her knees and rolling under her bed.

  A moment later, she saw Zachary’s feet enter the room, watched them circle the bed. There was a vicious tearing noise and clumps of stuffing rained down to the floor, along with a lone plush bear arm. Georgie.

  Penny rolled out from the other side of the bed, and Zachary caught sight of her. He flung himself at her, knife raised, her worst nightmare come true. Penny grabbed her pillow and held it out to shield herself. The knife ripped through the fabric, and feathers went flying. Penny shoved the pillow at Zachary and pushed with all her might. He tumbled onto the bed and she rushed back into the hall.

  The door to her parents’ bedroom was open, and she slipped in. She heard loud voices and wild shouting outside, and crossed the room to the open window to look out. A crowd of parents had gathered in front of the Devlins’ house—her mother and father were right there, too—and she couldn’t quite see, but there seemed to be some sort of commotion. The shouting was getting louder.

  “Mom! Dad!” she screamed hysterically out the window, her voice shaking with the effort. “Help!”

  But at that exact moment a loud shot rang out. And the shouting grew to a steady roar, punctuated by someone’s high-pitched screams.

  Nobody could hear her.

  “Penny?” Zachary called in a frustrated voice.

  Penny shook her head. A wave of nausea washed over her, and she fell to her knees on the other side of her parents’ bed.

  There was a soft noise at the door, and Penny flattened herself against the floor, hoping her body was obscured by the bed. She closed her eyes tight, her slender body wracked by shivers. Zachary seemed to hesitate a moment and then moved off down the hall, calling her name.

  “Penny?”

  Penny drew herself together, her heart pounding. She just wanted to curl up in a ball and hide under her parents’ bed as she used to do when she was a small child and played with Teddy, their favorite game, hide-and-seek. Hide-and-seek, that was it. Just pretend it’s a game, she thought. He was on her territory. Even half blind, she knew it better than he did. But where to go? Her parents’ bedroom looked soft, all the edges blurred. And then there, in the corner, she saw the door.

  The attic.

  She crawled quietly across the floor and tried to open the door with a tug, but it was sticky; it wouldn’t budge.

  “Come on,” she hissed urgently, pulling hard, frantically. The door finally gave way with a small creak. She rushed in, flicked on the light, and closed the door, looking for a way to lock it, but of course there was nothing, because why would someone lock an attic from the inside? She heard Zachary calling her name and climbed up the stairs.

  “Penny”

  The attic was stuffy and smelled like hot, stale wood. Penny took stock of her surroundings: the cotton-candy insulation, the boxes of baby clothes, the old wicker stroller with the sheet draped over it. Hanging from rods attached to wooden beams were the garment bags, big ones, the old-fashioned kind made of thick, sturdy reinforced plastic and containing years’ worth of old clothes and Halloween costumes. The bags were big—big enough to hold an entire wardrobe.

  Or a slender girl.

  She heard the footsteps enter the bedroom below and gently tugged the pull chain hanging from the bare bulb at the peak of the roof, plunging the attic into darkness.

  CHAPTER 19

  She felt a tickle in her nose. Please, she prayed silently, please don’t let me start sneezing.

  “I know you’re in here somewhere,” Zachary called from the bottom of the stairs. She heard him click the light switch on and off a few times, but the light did not go on.

  “That’s not going to help you,” he said, starting up the stairs.

  He moved toward a stack of boxes and lifted up a sheet, peering closely in the dim light spilling through the attic vents.

  She couldn’t help it. She sneezed, a soft, muffled sound.

  Zachary straightened up like a cat and whipped his head around, zoning in on one of the garment bags hanging from the rafters. “There you are,” he said in a pleased-sounding voice.

  Penny held her breath.

  Zachary stepped back, raised the kitchen knife, and plunged it furiously into the garment bag again and again, the force of his fury concentrated in short, angry, stabbing strokes, a frenzy now. The sound of tearing fabric filled the attic. And then abruptly he stopped, as if all the anger had gone out of him.

  He took a deep breath, as if to say he was glad that was over, and unzipped the bag, pushing back a thick bundle of old Halloween costumes.

  There was no one inside.

  Penny rushed at him from around the other side of the bag, where she had been hiding all along, and pushed him as hard as she could toward the exposed insulation. He flailed and tumbled face-first into the pink fluff, roaring like a bear stung by nettles.

  But Penny wasn’t about to wait for him to get up. She moved on rubbery legs to the attic stairs, but she misjudged the steepness of the first step, and the next thing she knew she was flying down the stairs, tumbling, hitting every hard, uncarpeted edge. She banged right into the door leading to the bedroom, knocking it open and landing with a hard thump on the bedroom floor, blood streaming from her nose, a huge bloody gash on her forehead, her ankle twisted, her whole body throbbing in pain.

  The boys were standing there, stunned expressions on their faces.

  “Holy—” Benji said.

  “Penny?” Teddy asked with a horrified look on his face.

  Penny started sobbing. Benji rushed to help her up, and she winced in pain.

  “What happened?” he asked, alarmed.

  Penny clutched Benji with all her strength, gripping him with both hands. “Zachary’s up there! He killed Becky!”

  Teddy looked around at the other boys. “See? That’s what she was saying before!”

  Benji held her away from him, looking her in the eye. She swayed in his grip, her face all splotchy, her pupils dilated, her words slurring together.

  “You’ve completely lost your marbles,” Mac said in a disparaging voice.

  “I’m not lying!” she cried. “He’s up there, and he’s going to kill us. He told me he killed Becky,” she said, looking at Benji, will
ing him to believe her. Benji had to believe her.

  “Caleb killed Becky!” Mac said harshly.

  “It was Zachary! He’s been doing it all along and making it look like it’s Caleb!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Mac guffawed. “Zachary?”

  “We don’t have time to argue,” she said urgently. “He’s up there!”

  “I’m sure,” Mac said. His voice dripped sarcasm.

  “Look, the only way to solve this is to go up there and check it out,” Benji said.

  “But what if Penny’s right?” Oren asked uncertainly.

  “Yeah,” Teddy echoed.

  The boys regarded one another warily.

  Mac gave a disgusted snort and said, “What a bunch of wusses.”

  “No!” Penny shouted, throwing herself at him, her ankle hurting. “He’ll kill you!”

  Mac gave Penny a little push, and she fell back onto the quilt on her parents’ bed. “Chill out.” He turned to the other boys and said, in a voice that brooked no refusal, “Come on.”

  Penny watched as the boys started up the dark stairs.

  “Woo-hoo, killer!” Mac called facetiously.

  “Something’s wrong with the light switch,” she heard Oren say in a nervous voice.

  “There’s a pull chain upstairs. Try that,” Teddy said, the sound of his cast bumping as he started hopping up the steps behind the other boys.

  “Got it,” Mac called down, and Penny saw yellow light spill down the stairwell.

  “Whoa!” Teddy yelped.

  Penny heard her little brother’s voice and knew what she had to do. She forced herself to get up and limp to Teddy’s bedroom. Lying on the floor next to his bed was his Louisville Slugger bat, the same bat she’d used countless times in softball. She grabbed up the comforting weight of it, and a moment later she was creeping up the stairs, pain lancing her ankle.

  The boys were gathered around Zachary, looking at him—the skin of his face was red and irritated.

  “Man, what happened to you?” Benji asked.

  “Penny’s crazy!” Zachary warbled. “She’s gone nuts!”

  “What’d you do to mv sister?” Teddy demanded.

  “I was just defending myself! She came after me!” Zachary insisted.

  “But you’re like twice her size,” Oren said suspiciously.

  “When I told her about the cops questioning us about who had been the last to see Becky alive, and that we knew that it was her, she flipped out. She said that she’d had to kill Becky, whatever that means. I know, it’s nuts, but you know how weird she’s been acting! You said so yourself, Teddy!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Benji said. “Becky was home for dinner.”

  “Look!” Zachary yelled, pointing across the room at the garment bags. “Look at that bag. She tried to stab me to death with a knife!”

  All four boys walked across the room to the ripped-up garment bag.

  “Check it out,” Mac said, examining the ragged tears, the boys huddled around him doing the same.

  “This is just crazy,” Oren said, sounding bewildered.

  “But Penny hates knives,” Benji said suddenly. “She has a thing about them, remember?” His eyes met Mac’s for a long, quiet minute.

  The boys turned slowly around.

  Zachary was standing in the middle of the room, holding the kitchen knife, his back to the door.

  “If you would have just let me play with you, none of this would have happened,” Zachary said mournfully.

  And then he leaped at the boys.

  Teddy was so scared that one of the crutches went right out from under him and he tumbled to the floor, frantically scrambling to get out of Zachary’s path.

  Mac bleated in surprise, flailing his arms as he tried to get away. He accidentally smacked Benji across the chest and then plowed right into a wooden beam, falling to the floor with a low moan.

  Benji grunted and stumbled, the wind knocked out of him. He looked up in time to see Zachary plunge the knife into his chest and then pull it out with a sick, sucking sound. Benji cried out in pain, falling to his knees.

  Zachary gasped with effort and raised his hand to stab Benji again.

  Teddy’s Louisville Slugger bat struck Zachary hard on the back of his neck, with all of Penny’s strength and fear behind it. A look of astonishment flashed across Zachary’s face, and then he collapsed.

  Penny stood over Zachary, shaking, with the bat dangling from her hand. Fury rushed through her veins, fury at this crazy, sick kid who had killed cats and people and terrorized an entire town. She wanted to smash him into a million pieces, pound him until there was nothing left. She raised the bat high, her muscles tense, the anger washing over her in waves.

  “Penny,” Oren whispered shakily.

  Penny looked at Zachary, who looked strangely peaceful now, and thought of all the anger that had built up behind that innocent face, all the anger and frustration and hate that had turned him into a monster. She couldn’t go there, couldn’t allow this hungry fury to sweep her there, too, to that dark place. She would be just like him.

  A monster.

  And then she saw Benji, lying still on the floor, blood pooling on his chest, and rushed over.

  “No,” Penny whispered, starting to shake all over at the sight of Benji’s waxy face, so still, the way Becky’s had been, his chest bright as a valentine.

  The adults burst in.

  “What is going on?” Penny’s mother demanded. “We heard screaming halfway down the block!”

  “Benji!” Mrs. Albright screamed, rushing over to her son.

  “He’s dead,” Penny whispered, a stunned expression on her face.

  “Dead?” her father demanded, pushing the kids out of the way to get to the boy.

  Mr. Albright, red-faced and wild-eyed, pushed through the doorway, toting a shotgun. Mr. Schuyler crowded in behind him anxiously, carrying his rifle.

  “Where is he?” Mr. Albright cried. “Where’s Caleb?”

  Even now they were blaming Caleb, Penny thought. A dead boy riddled with maggots.

  “It wasn’t Caleb!” she shouted, overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of it all.

  “Not Caleb?” Mr. Albright spat contemptuously.

  Penny whirled on them in righteous fury, an avenging angel. “It was Zachary! It was Zachary all along!”

  “Zachary?” Mr. Albright asked, startled.

  “Yes!” she hissed, pointing at Zachary, who was starting to come around now and was groaning audibly.

  “But Caleb—” Mrs. McHale said, her hands twisting.

  “I tried to tell you!” Penny shouted.

  The parents blanched.

  “We’re the kids! You told us it was Caleb!” Penny cried, anguished.

  Her mother said, “Penny—”

  “I listened to you!” Penny choked out, tears running down her cheeks, watching as her father worked furiously on Benji’s lifeless body. “I listened! But you were all wrong, and now Benji’s dead, too,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “No, not my boy,” Mr. Albright said, stricken, dropping his shotgun to the floor.

  And then Penny couldn’t take it anymore. She fell to her knees, her face in her hands. She didn’t even want to live, not anymore, not knowing that Benji was dead. It was too much. Her slender body shook with the force of her sobs.

  “It’s okay, Janine,” her father said to Mrs. Albright, holding his hands, wet with blood, firmly over Benji’s chest.

  Penny went still. She looked up.

  Her father smiled weakly. “He’s got a pulse.”

  The sounds of approaching sirens filled the air.

  CHAPTER 20

  When the rain finally came, it fell hard, viciously.

  Buckets and buckets poured down, clogging gutters, flooding basements. The kids sat inside, playing endless games of cards, counting every inch that fell, watching the weatherman talk about how much more they could expect. It was th
e biggest rainfall in years; if it kept up, they were going to have to call in the National Guard, because creeks and rivers were rising. All people could talk about was the rain and, of course, Zachary Evreth, who had been packed off to a mental hospital in western Pennsylvania.

  It finally stopped raining in the early hours of the morning, the sun breaking out brightly, almost guiltily, it seemed. Penny flew out of the house and down into the woods. She ran through the mud and muck, completely ruining her new white sneakers. She didn’t care, she had to see. She fell three times, and when she reached the creek, she was covered in mud.

  She stopped at the cliff’s edge, took a deep breath, and looked down at the place where Caleb’s body had been.

  But all she saw was muddy rushing water, thick as chocolate.

  Later that day, Penny and the boys were biking down Lark Hill Road when they saw the flashing lights of a police car, and an ambulance, too. A small crowd had gathered by the fieldstone bridge.

  “What’s going on?” Oren asked.

  “You kids don’t want to see this,” Officer Cox said, trying to wave them away.

  “See what?” Teddy asked automatically. His cast was off, and he wore a brace on his foot, with a long sock over it. Looking at him sitting on his bike, you’d never even know anything had ever happened. Even Benji was on the mend, and was going to be fine.

  “Yeah, what?” Mac demanded, shoving forward to peer over the bridge.

  They crowded the bridge, anxious to see. It was barely visible from above unless you were looking for it, wedged as it was between a rock and the bridge wall, the water rushing around it in swirls. But it was there all the same, and there was no mistaking it.

  The bloated dead body of Caleb Devlin.

  “Been here for a while, I think,” Officer Cox murmured to the young cherub-cheeked officer, who looked like he was going to lose his lunch.

  “Man,” Teddy whispered under his breath.

  Officer Cox shook his head sadly, looked at Penny, and said, “Must’ve been that Evreth boy who did this, too.”

  But Penny Carson just nodded.

  And then she got on her bike and rode away.