I get a flash of that thing leaning over me. The gaping mouth. Razor teeth. And a long pale tongue striking out.
Panic works my heart like a speed bag. My breath comes in short gasps. I’m back there again—in the dark.
I hunch over and force myself not to think. Just breathe. A cold sweat runs icicle fingers down my back. Takes a minute before I can get a grip.
Time to go.
But first I pull out my cell phone and take a few quick shots of the tracks, setting my own foot beside them to show how big they are.
I’m a city boy, so I don’t know squat about wildlife. But I can’t imagine any kind of animal leaving tracks like these. Whatever left them was real, though. This was no nightmare.
I pocket my cell and climb the overhanging roots. Back on top, I breathe a little easier.
Already late for school, I start to jog, burning off some adrenaline.
I glance over my shoulder a few times as I head for the turnoff for school. That ghost-itch feeling of being watched by hidden eyes is gone. Still …
But there’s nothing out here except blowing snow under a steel-blue sky. The Big Empty. So big it could swallow you without a trace. So empty, nobody’s going to hear you scream.
My headache throbs to the beat of my feet, snow crunching under my sneakers.
None of this makes sense.
What I need is a bigger brain. And I know where to find one.
SIX
Like a name on an old grave, the date carved into the cornerstone of the school has been erased by a century of hard winters.
But the place was made to last, a stubborn redbrick building that has survived everything from fires, to blizzards, to a tornado that touched down where the baseball diamond sits right behind it.
I’m running through the outfield now, making for the back door. Fifteen minutes late.
I throw the door open and step from the chill into the dusty dry heat. I stand there shivering a moment, my ears tingling back to life. Then I climb the stairs to the second floor.
There are only three classrooms in the school, with grades seven through twelve. We’re talking small town. So my class has the eleventh and twelfth graders squashed together, all fourteen of us. It makes for kind of a split-personality classroom. It’s either this or you take the forty-minute drive into Barrie every day.
I make the top of the stairs, and I’m just starting down the hallway when I see the cop outside my classroom, talking quietly with Miss Mercer.
I stop dead. My confusion and panic over what I found in the ditch drop away.
Their backs are turned to me. They haven’t spotted me yet.
This looks bad. Somebody must have seen us last night at the fire, or recognized Pike’s car. We’re in deep crap.
Should I take off? Before they see me.
What good will that do? Then I’ll be the only one missing from class. They’ll put Danny Quinn on Harvest Cove’s Most Wanted.
But come on, I didn’t do anything. Wasn’t even driving. And there’s no way eating a Mr. Big makes you an accessory to arson.
So I start down the hall again. Dead man walking.
They both glance over.
“Sorry I’m late,” I tell Miss Mercer. “You know, the snow.”
A weak excuse, but she just nods. “Take your seat, Danny. We’ll be in in a second.”
Avoiding eye contact with the cop, I slip past into the room.
A low mumble of conversation inside pauses momentarily when I come in. I catch Ash’s gaze first and make a little head gesture toward the door, mouthing “cop.” She gives a tiny nod. Howie’s got his head buried in his arms on the desktop. I glance at Pike, who sits right behind me. He’s got a crazy smile, like this is funny.
I drop my pack on the floor and plant myself at my desk, staring at the back of Ash’s neck. Everybody’s talking except my row by the window, with Ash in front and Howie bringing up the rear.
Death row. We sit silent, waiting for the verdict.
Miss Mercer walks in with the cop. “This is Officer Baker, with the Ontario Provincial Police. Listen up, now. Officer?”
He looks us over. He’s got wolfman eyebrows—big, black and bushy—giving him a natural scowl. Which he focuses on us.
I hold my breath. He knows! In the sudden quiet, I think I hear Howie sniffling at the back.
“Some of you may already know why I’m here.”
I stare at my desk. Here it comes.
“Raymond Dyson, a student in the tenth-grade class at this school, has gone missing.”
I let my breath out, too stunned to be relieved.
“As you may be aware, he’s been receiving treatment at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie. He’s in pretty rough shape, suffering from some kind of infection. Anyway, he seems to have wandered away from the hospital last night, and we need your help finding him. He may be confused or delirious. Has anybody seen or heard from Raymond in the last twelve hours?”
Nothing from the class.
Then Janey Carlyle sticks up her hand.
“Yes?” asks Officer Baker.
“Okay, I heard he has rabies or something,” she says. “Someone said he got bit by one of Mangy Mason’s dogs.”
Another girl jumps in with “No, it was a raccoon.”
That opens the floodgates.
“I heard it’s West Nile virus.”
“No. It’s Lyme disease. You get it from ticks.”
“It’s a superbug. The kind that resists antibiotics.”
“They had him in quarantine. He’s contagious.”
Baker’s scowl deepens. “Enough! There’s no need to speculate. He’s not contagious. We just need to locate Raymond before he gets himself hurt or frozen to death. Keep your eyes open. You see or hear anything, call the O.P.P., Barrie detachment. The kid’s very sick and needs to be back at the hospital.”
Now he holds up a sheet of paper with a photo of Ray. “I’m sure most of you know what Raymond looks like, but I’m going to leave some flyers. Our number is at the bottom.”
He turns to Miss Mercer, who says: “Thank you, Officer. We’ll definitely keep our eyes open.”
Then the cop leaves and I sag back in my seat.
The teacher pins one of the flyers up on the bulletin board. Ray Dyson. We just call him Raid, after the bug spray. It suits him—that guy’s toxic. A real psycho bully. He makes Pike look sane. Last time I saw Raid was a couple days ago when they took him off to the hospital.
The day he went nuts.
I was sitting at my desk, dozing off as Miss Mercer went on about the retreating glaciers and the end of the Ice Age. Heading into the third week of a killer cold snap, it was looking like the Ice Age was back with a vengeance.
“What the hell’s that?” Pike blurted out.
I snorted awake with the rest of the class.
“Watch your language!” Miss Mercer told him.
Pike was staring out the window.
Right in the middle of the frost-covered baseball diamond, there was a guy standing in his underwear. No socks or shirt. Just briefs and bare skin.
Miss Mercer peered out the window with us. “Good lord.”
Then she made for the door, telling everybody to stay in their seats. Which nobody did, of course.
The crowd by the windows watched as the guy in his tighty-whities flashed his pale body at the trees and the snow.
“Who is that?” Ash asked.
“Ray Dyson,” Howie mumbled. “Raid.”
I don’t know how he recognized him from that distance, but Howie always knows the right answer.
Raid wasn’t hugging himself against the cold, like you might think. He actually had his arms held out wide, like he was waiting to hug something.
A minute later, Mr. Cunningham, who teaches the ninth-and-tenth-grade class, was running out to the diamond, with Miss Mercer hustling after him. Mr. Cunnigham tried talking to Raid. But he just stood there, arms out like he was going to fall ba
ck and make a snow angel any second. They managed to get him walking finally, back toward the school, with Miss Mercer gathering up the clothes and shoes he’d stripped off.
That was the last we saw of Raid. Word was he’d been bit by some stray dog, bat, raccoon, coyote or deer tick, depending on who you talked to. They took him to the hospital for rabies shots, and observation I guess.
Now, as Miss Mercer tells us to turn to our Canadian history texts, I stare at the face on the bulletin board.
Ray Dyson. The photo they used for the flyer might be one of his mug shots the cops have on file. He’s a local legend, local loser. Dark little pit-bull eyes glare out from under his caveman brows; his cheeks and forehead are cratered with acne. Greasy hair hangs down over his eyes. More muscles than brain cells, he’s already failed a couple grades, or he’d be in our class.
I picture him escaped and running wild through the snowy fields in some hallucinatory fever. Wearing a flimsy hospital gown, out in a ten-below chill, he’s not going to last long. I almost feel sorry for the guy. But he’s one missing person nobody’s going to miss much.
Still, I hope he’s holed up somewhere. You don’t want to be wandering around here at night.
“Can I tell you something?” Howie’s working on his third doughnut.
We’re having lunch at the Tim Hortons fast-food dive. It’s either that, or eat at the tables they set up in the gym. The school’s too small for a real cafeteria. So we walk the three blocks most days, get a sandwich or soup. Or in Howie’s case, doughnuts and Coke.
“Sure,” I tell Howie, chowing down on my meatball sub. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know if it means anything …”
“Try me.”
He looks around to see nobody’s listening. Ash is in the can, and Pike’s over at the counter.
Howie sips his drink. “The day Ray Dyson freaked, I sort of ran into him in the washroom. I was taking a leak when I heard this voice. Whispering. I thought I was alone in there, so I kind of jumped and whizzed on my shoe. This is probably more detail than you need.”
“Probably.”
“Anyway, so I finished up and saw there was one stall door closed. I could see his shoes under. At first I couldn’t tell what he was saying. So I went closer. And he was whispering: ‘It’s sleeping. It’s sleeping.’ ”
“What’s sleeping?” I ask Howie.
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what he was saying. So then he goes, like: ‘Thought I got away. Thought I got away. But it was just letting me think that.’ ” Howie raises his eyebrows. “So, by then I’m thinking this guy’s playing with me. Screwing with my head. I couldn’t tell who it was yet. But everybody knows how jumpy I am.”
Jumpy is putting it nice. He’s a panic attack waiting to happen.
“I ask him through the door ‘You okay?’ And he doesn’t answer, but he says, like: ‘When it wakes up, it’ll come for me.’ So I’m pretty freaked out. Then the door opens and I see who it is. I was in Raid’s class last year. Before I skipped, I was one of his favorite victims.”
He’s already skipped two grades, which is why he’s in twelfth with his brother. Howie’s scary smart.
“By then, I’m sure Raid’s playing mind games with me. But man, he didn’t look good. He looked … blue. Like he just walked out of a freezer. So I say to him, ‘Maybe you should go home, you don’t look so hot.’ But he’s not even hearing me, not even seeing me. He just keeps going: ‘It’s sleeping. Sleeping.’ ”
Howie finishes off his doughnut, shaking his head.
“What?” I ask. “That’s it?”
“Pretty much. I didn’t know what to do. I said his name a few times, trying to snap him out of it, get him to wake up. But then he walked out. The last thing I heard him say was ‘Nowhere to hide. Nowhere.’ ”
Pike drops his tray on the table. “Who can’t hide? What are we talking about?”
“Ray Dyson, freaking out,” I tell him. “You know, on the diamond.”
“That was one strip show nobody needed to see.” Pike looks over at what Howie’s eating. “You gotta have some real food, bro. Can’t live on that. Eat some of my sandwich.” He drops half in front of Howie.
Hard to believe they came from the same womb. It’s like when Pike was born, he took all the muscle, anger and balls, so there was none left when his brother came along.
Their father, a former drill sergeant and now a captain assigned to Base Borden, thought it would be a great idea to name his boys after weapons. A pike, Howie tells me, is a kind of spear with a long shaft and a nasty, razor-edged head. Howie isn’t short for Howard but for howitzer, a type of artillery gun that fires heavy-caliber shells.
The weapon-naming thing suits Pike. But Howie wouldn’t hurt a fly—the fly would hurt him.
Ash comes back, crowding up against me in the booth—not that I mind. “You get my lemonade?” I pass it over. “You’re not eating?”
“Nah. Gotta make weight for my fight tomorrow. I don’t drop two pounds by then, that bumps me up a class and I’ll have to fight with the welterweights. Those bitches are fierce.”
In Barrie, they’re hosting the Canadian Junior Boxing regionals. If Ash wins tomorrow, she’s got a shot at going to Toronto for the next round of eliminations.
“How you going to lose two pounds in a day?” I ask.
“Sweat it off. Got this thermal suit I work out in. You wear it in the sauna, you can lose four pounds easy.” She stares at Howie’s sandwich with lust. “You guys coming to the fight?”
“ ’Course we are,” Pike says. “Gotta get you a name, though. Something catchy. Like, I was thinking … The Indian Assassin. Or how about … Red Death?”
Ash glares at him. “Maybe something a little less, I don’t know, racist.”
Pike grabs one of Howie’s doughnuts. “My genius is wasted on you slobs.”
Something that’s been bothering me since the cop showed up this morning comes back to me.
“So why were you smiling?” I ask Pike. “When that cop was out in the hall? Before we found out he was just there about Raid, and not, you know … last night?”
Pike gives me a sample of that lunatic grin now. “It tickled me. The way you guys were all pissing your pants.”
Ash drains her lemonade and belches. Her warm leg is pressed up against mine in the tight booth. She throws off a lot of heat. After the kiss last night, I’m still kind of stunned. Where do we go from here?
“What happened with those meds you were taking?” she says to Pike. “For your antisocial, insane homicidal rages.”
He shrugs. “I quit them. They made me numb. Weak. I lost my edge. No edge—no Pike.”
It feels like I’ve known these guys a lot longer than the few months I’ve been here. The thing with army brats is they’re drifters too, moving from base to base, town to town. And drifters never fit in, except with each other. Guess that’s why we’re so tight so quick. But they pretty much grew up together. I’m still the new recruit.
Howie mumbles something.
“Huh?” I ask.
“Wonder where Ray is now,” he says.
“Frozen stiff.” Pike licks powdered sugar off his thumb. “They’re not gonna find him till the spring thaw. Then they’ll find him by the stink.”
Howie turns a little green.
Wish I had him alone, so I could show him my cell shots of the monster tracks. See what he makes of them. But right now there’d be too many questions.
Looking out the window, I watch the wind blow swirling snow devils down the road.
Not fit for man or beast.
But maybe there’s one beast out there who doesn’t mind the chill.
SEVEN
I’m sitting on the couch, half watching the hockey game, half trying to finish the chapter I’m reading. I dog-ear the page, close the paperback and squeeze it to see how much there is left. I’ve barely made a dent.
Frankenstein. Sounds action-packed. Some monster pie
ced together from a dozen corpses, brought to life with a bolt of lightning. In the movie there was a massive body count. Decapitations. Stranglings. Miscellaneous slaughter. But the book—anesthesia. And it’s written in this English nobody talks anymore.
Right now, some guy’s been writing a letter for the last ten pages. This guy never heard of postcards? Enough! Less scribbling, more killing!
Miss Mercer gave us a choice for our English essays. We could do one of the Romantic poets (gag!), Frankenstein or some epic poem called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Rime’s about some crazy guy who stops strangers to tell them what’s haunting him. No thanks, I’m haunted enough already. So I took Frankie, expecting killing sprees.
But I’m twenty pages in, and the only thing that’s died so far is my brain, from boredom.
Dad’s on the other end of the couch, drinking a beer. I count the empties on the coffee table. Only his third. If he hits six, I know he’s in a mood. Trying to drown the demon, as he likes to say.
Looking up from the empties, I notice something new on the middle shelf of the fishing-trophy case. Sitting between two mounted trout is a midget ceramic Christmas tree with tiny lights.
“What the hell is that?” I point at the tree, its lights blinking red, green and blue.
“That woman from the Red and White, Andrea, thought it would bring some cheer to the place. ’Tis the season, eh?”
I go over and take a look at the incredibly tacky, incredibly sad little tree.
“You plugged it in?” I’m surprised he didn’t banish it to the basement the second she left.
Dad takes a swig of beer. “She plugged it in. I’m afraid to go near it. My heart might start expanding like the Grinch’s, and before I know it I’ll be shouting out carols, running down the street screaming ‘It’s a wonderful life.’ ”
I stare at the little lights winking on and off. “That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen. We should take it out back and shoot it. Put it out of its misery.”
Christmas decorations were always Mom’s thing. She was a wizard with tinsel, stringing lights up everywhere, spraying fake snow in the windows. We even had a doormat that ho-ho-ho-ed when you stepped on it.