Black Creek Crossing

  Angel made a face. “That’s disgusting. And besides—”

  “Stop arguing,” Seth said. “Let’s see what happens.”

  Angel reluctantly turned back to Seth, but still couldn’t believe he was actually going to try to make her features even bigger. Everything was already so large!

  “First we’ll do your eyes,” Seth said. Opening the purple eye shadow, he began carefully applying it, first to her eyelids, then below her eyes.

  “How’d you learn to do this?” Angel asked.

  “I was in a play last year—Mr. DeBerg showed us. Now be quiet—every time you say something, your whole face moves.” Finished with the shadow, he found the black eyeliner and began outlining her eyes, pulling the line outward on both sides so her eyes seemed to be a little farther apart, just like the drama teacher had showed him.

  When he was done with the eyeliner, Angel turned to look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes actually did look even bigger, but somehow, with the color Seth had added, they looked deeper too.

  “Is that so terrible?” Seth asked.

  Angel shook her head.

  “Then let me do the rest.” Seth set to work, accentuating every feature Angel had spent her life hating, making her cheekbones look higher and more pronounced, her nose longer, and finally applying “bloodred” to her lips. “Cool,” Seth pronounced when he was finally finished. Turning Angel toward the mirror, he stood beside her as they gazed at his work. “Nobody’s going to say ‘yuck’ when they see that!”

  Angel stared silently at her own reflection, and as she slowly got used to what Seth had done, she found herself thinking that maybe she actually did look a little better.

  And then the bedroom door suddenly opened, and Angel turned to see her father framed in the doorway. His eyes fixed on her, shifted to Seth for a moment, then came back to her. “What the hell’s goin’ on in here?” he demanded, his slurred words telling Angel that he’d been drinking.

  “Nothing, Dad,” she began. “Seth and I were just—”

  “Nothing?” Marty Sullivan repeated. “I come home and find my little Angel painted up like some whore, with a boy in her bedroom? Don’ tell me nothin’s going on.” His malevolent gaze swung back to Seth Baker. “Get out, you little punk.” Abruptly, he lunged forward, grabbed Seth by the shirt, jerked the vampire cape off his shoulders, and began propelling him toward the door. Seth barely had time to grab his backpack before Marty pulled him out of the room.

  “Dad!” Angel cried out, but Marty Sullivan didn’t even hear her. He was already half dragging Seth down the stairs.

  A moment later Angel watched from the window as her father shoved Seth off the front porch. “You stay away from my girl, you hear?” she heard him yell. Then the front door slammed shut, and she saw Seth run across the yard and disappear down the street.

  Hearing her father coming back up the stairs, Angel ran to the bedroom door, closed it, and twisted the key in the lock.

  “Let me in,” her father called a moment later as he began pounding on her door. “Don’t you think you can lock me out! This is my house, and you’re my daughter, and you’ll by God do what I tell you to do. Now open this door!”

  But instead of opening the door, Angel backed away from it, praying that her mother would come home before her father broke it down.

  Chapter 15

  ETH BAKER STOPPED SHORT AS HE TURNED THE corner onto Elm Street. A quarter of the way down the block Chad Jackson and Jared Woods were throwing a football back and forth across the street between the Jacksons’ and the Woodses’ front yards. Chad and Jared had been best friends for as long as Seth had known them, which was ever since kindergarten, but he hadn’t paid much attention to them until the day eight years ago when his parents bought the house on Elm Street—and suddenly Chad and Jared’s favorite thing to do had become the torturing of Seth Baker.

  Or that was the way it seemed to Seth.

  He’d tried to be friends with them, or at least tried to get along with them, even though the two things they seemed to like best—baseball and football—were the things Seth hated most. Still, he’d done his best, knowing better than to argue the first time his father had sent him out into the street to join in the softball game Chad and Jared had organized. They’d let him play just long enough to find out he wasn’t any good at it, and then, when it got too dark to play any longer and everyone but Chad and Jared had gone home, they’d “pantsed” him and thrown his jeans up into the big oak tree in front of the Jacksons’ house. He’d tried to climb the tree, but only succeeded in skinning his legs, and finally went home in his underwear and T-shirt.

  His father only wanted to know why he’d let it happen, and told him that the next time they tried it, he should fight back.

  Seth had tried that only once, and all he’d gotten for his trouble was a black eye to go with the pantsing. After that, he’d decided it was better not to tell his father what Chad and Jared did to him and just do his best to avoid the two of them, especially when they were alone. Now, as he watched Chad toss the football to Jared, he wondered if he shouldn’t just go around the block and get to his house from the opposite direction.

  He was just about to turn away when Chad called out to him. “Hey, Beth! Want to throw a few?”

  Beth! The nickname stung just as badly now as it had the day they’d thought it up.

  The day they’d pantsed him for the first time.

  “Come on, Beth,” Jared chimed in. “Don’t you want to come and play with us?”

  It was too late to turn away. It was better just to ignore them.

  Steeling himself, Seth started down the sidewalk.

  Chad Jackson began making sucking noises.

  Jared Woods grabbed his crotch. “Come on, Beth—isn’t this what you want?”

  Seth felt his face begin to burn, but he kept on walking, moving steadily down the sidewalk.

  The taunts grew louder, then Jared darted off his front lawn to stand directly in front of him, his hand still on his crotch, his lips twisted into a cruel sneer. “You want it, Beth? Huh?”

  Seth kept walking, staring straight ahead, and finally Jared Woods turned away, laughing loudly.

  Then the football slammed into Seth’s back.

  He’d been expecting it—even braced himself for it—but when it happened, it still almost knocked him off his feet.

  “Jeez, Beth!” Chad Jackson yelled. “Can’t you catch anything?”

  Seth clenched his jaw, resisted the almost overpowering urge to break into a run, and kept walking at exactly the pace he’d set when he decided to face Chad and Jared rather than go around the block.

  Slowly, the taunts died away behind him.

  Safe.

  Then, as he cut across the lawn toward his own house, he saw his father framed in the open front door, and the notion of safety—along with the feeling of victory that had swelled inside him—faded away.

  “Where were you?” Blake Baker asked as his son stepped onto the porch.

  For a moment Seth’s mind went blank, but then it came back to him.

  Golf.

  This was the afternoon his father was going to pick him up after school so they could practice for the golf tournament.

  He’d completely forgotten.

  But he could tell from the look in his father’s eyes and the coldness in his voice that he wouldn’t forget what was going to happen next.

  “Go upstairs and wait in your room,” his father said. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

  As he began climbing the stairs, Seth could almost feel the sting of his father’s belt.

  Chapter 16

  HORE!

  The word reverberated in Angel’s mind. When she first heard it, it had slashed into her like a knife, cutting so deep it penetrated her very soul.

  My father called me a whore!

  She told herself that he was drunk, and tried to shut out his words as he pounded on her door, railing at her. After what seemed hours bu
t couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, his voice finally died away into an unintelligible mutter, and then she heard him go back downstairs.

  She stayed in her room, kept her door locked, prayed for her mother to come home, and tried to silence the echoes of her father’s voice.

  Her mother at last came home, but Angel didn’t unlock her door until she was upstairs and rapped sharply, asking if she was all right.

  Only then did Angel finally twist the key in the lock and open the door, letting her mother in. By then she’d wiped off the last vestiges of the makeup.

  Her mother knew in an instant that something was wrong, though Angel insisted that she was fine.

  And the word echoed once more in her head.

  Whore!

  Somehow she got through dinner. All through the meal she felt her father’s baleful glare boring into her as he washed down the spaghetti her mother had made with one beer after another. When he abruptly left the table while she was clearing off the dinner dishes and her mother was serving ice cream for dessert, Angel felt a few short moments of relief. Then her father returned, and there was a look in his eye—a dark gleam—that brought her fears flooding back.

  After dinner she went back upstairs to do her homework, and it was only then that she fully understood the glimmer in her father’s eyes when he’d returned to the table.

  The key was gone from the door of her room.

  She had no idea how long she stared at the empty keyhole, willing the key to somehow magically reappear, until she finally turned away, pulled her books from her backpack, and started on her homework.

  It was impossible to concentrate, though, with her father’s voice ringing in her head and the empty keyhole drawing her eyes away from the textbooks so often that she couldn’t follow the simplest paragraphs.

  Her mother came in at ten. “What is it, Angel?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Did something happen before I got home?”

  And finally Angel blurted it out, telling her mother everything. “He called me a whore, Mommy,” she finished, and began crying again.

  Her mother held her stiffly for a moment, then eased her away and looked into her eyes. “Why did you have a boy in your room?” she asked.

  “We weren’t doing anything,” Angel protested. “We were just goofing around with that old vampire stuff I had for Halloween last year.”

  “You’re sure?” Myra pressed, searching deep in Angel’s eyes for the truth. “All you were doing with this Seth person was putting on makeup?”

  Angel nodded. “I swear to God,” she said. “That’s all we were doing. Seth just wanted me to—”

  Her mother put a finger over Angel’s lips to silence her. “We don’t swear to God,” Myra Sullivan said. “We pray to Him for guidance. And I’m sure your father didn’t mean what he said, at least not the way it sounded. He loves you, Angel. He loves you more than anything, and I’m sure he was just worried about you.”

  “But—” Angel began, but once again her mother’s finger pressed against her lips.

  “He loves you,” she repeated. “And he’d never do anything to hurt you. Never forget that. He’s not always the easiest man, but he’s my husband, and he’s your father, and we must respect him. Now it’s time to put away your books, say your prayers, and go to bed.”

  Then her mother was gone and Angel went back to her books, but she still couldn’t concentrate. Finally giving up, she returned them to the backpack and went to bed.

  Whore!

  The word still echoed in her mind. Why had he said it? She and Seth hadn’t been doing anything at all—she’d just put on some makeup, and that was only to see what she’d look like.

  She tossed restlessly in her bed, turning first one way and then another, but no matter how she twisted around or pummeled the pillow or tugged at the covers, she couldn’t get comfortable. Finally she gave up, rolled over on her back, and gazed out through the window at the moon that hung just behind the treetops, its silvery light casting dark shadows on the wall of her room.

  The wind came up, and the shadows on the wall began to dance, taking on a strange rhythm that at last calmed her, and finally she drifted into a fitful sleep.

  Blood.

  It was everywhere, on his hands and on his shirt, and on his pants and on the walls and the rug and everywhere else he looked. But mostly it was on the bed.

  The sheets were crimson with it, and the hair of the still form that lay beneath the sheet was matted with it, and it was smeared on the headboard and the pillows and the blanket that lay at the foot of the bed.

  Marty rose from the chair in front of the fireplace and walked slowly toward the bed. It was almost as if he was floating, for he felt nothing under his feet.

  Nor could he hear anything. The silence around him was complete—not a creaking floorboard, or a whisper of wind from beyond the house, nor any of the other sounds of the night.

  No insects or frogs chirruping in the darkness.

  No low murmuring of birds roosting in the trees.

  And no breathing from the form on the bed.

  It lay facedown, the flesh of the back lacerated by the knife he’d wielded, slashed in every direction, the skin and flesh laid back so he could clearly see the unmoving ribs that had failed to protect the lungs or the heart.

  He reached down and turned it over. It seemed utterly weightless, moving as if it were somehow floating above the bed rather than lying deep in the blood-soaked sheets. And as it rolled over, the sticky matted hair fell away from the face, and Marty gazed at the visage of death that was smiling up at him, the lips drawn back in a rictus around stained teeth, the deep-sunk eyes gazing sightlessly up at him, but seeming to peer directly into his soul.

  As he gazed down into the face of his wife, the silence was finally pierced by a whispering voice, so faint at first that Marty barely heard it at all. But as the seconds slipped by—seconds that seemed to stretch out into eternities—the faint whispers coalesced into words.

  “The other one . . .”

  “Not done . . .”

  “The other . . .”

  “You want to . . . you know you want to. . . .”

  As the voice kept whispering, the still form on the bed slowly began to sit up. The bloody sheets fell away, revealing the carnage beneath. His wife’s throat was slashed open, the already shrinking skin pulling back to expose the torn flesh and ligaments. Her breasts had been slashed away too, and her chest laid open to reveal her heart.

  But it wasn’t any kind of heart that Marty Sullivan had ever seen—not even in the worst horror movie he’d ever gone to.

  This was a black mass of muscle, crawling with worms and maggots.

  And it was beating—throbbing in a slow rhythm that spewed a stream of maggots from its puncture wounds with every beat.

  Transfixed, Marty Sullivan stood still as the right arm of the living corpse began to rise.

  The hand reached out, as if to seize him.

  He shrank away, but it didn’t matter.

  The forefinger, its nail torn away and hanging only by a thread of cuticle, pointed directly at him, and he felt his flesh begin to crawl as if he himself had just felt the touch of death.

  The mouth opened and a croaking voice erupted from the mangled throat.

  “You have to,” the voice said. “You want to!”

  The finger came closer, and as he felt its touch, a convulsion seized Marty.

  An instant later he was wide awake.

  His heart was pounding, and the echo of the voice was still in his head: You have to . . . you want to. . . .

  He lay still, and the images of the dream began to fade. He could hear Myra breathing next to him—the long, slow, even rhythms of sleep.

  She wasn’t dead. He hadn’t killed her. It was only a dream.

  “You want to, Marty,” the voice whispered again. “You need to. Go on, Marty . . . do it. Do it now.”

  Listening to the voice in his head, knowing what it was tel
ling him to do, Marty Sullivan rose silently from the bed and slipped out of the room, leaving his wife’s sleep undisturbed.

  A moment later he stood at the door to Angel’s room, his hand on the knob.

  “Go on, Marty,” the voice whispered. “You know what you want . . . go on . . . she wants it too . . . she’s a whore, Marty. She’s only a whore . . .

  “She’s your whore. . . .”

  Listening to the voice, Marty turned the knob of Angel’s bedroom door and let himself in.

  The moon had set when Angel awoke, and the shadows on the wall had vanished into nearly total blackness. Even the sounds of the night had fallen silent.

  But what had awakened her?

  She lay still, listening.

  Nothing.

  But then she heard a sound—the creak of a loose floorboard.

  Now she could feel something—a presence in the room, close by her bed.

  Then she heard a single word, uttered in a whisper so low she almost thought she was imagining it: “Whore.”

  Another floorboard squeaked, and she felt the presence in the room draw closer.

  The voice whispered again, repeating the loathesome word once more.

  Angel felt her heart pound, and she began repeating the words her mother had spoken only a few hours ago: “He loves you, and he’d never do anything to hurt you . . . he loves you and he’d never do—”

  “Whore!”

  The word struck her with a force that was almost physical, and at the exact moment the word was uttered, she felt a hand touching her.

  Touching her chest at exactly the spot where her breasts were beginning to grow.

  Terrified, too frightened even to scream, she lay perfectly still, praying that if she didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t cry—not so much as a whimper—it would stop.

  He would go away, and the sounds of the night would begin again, and moonlight would stream in the window, and she would be safe.

  Instead, the hand on her chest pressed harder, then moved away. For an instant Angel felt a glimmer of hope. But then the hand was back, this time gently pulling the covers away so that all that covered her budding breasts was the thin cotton of her pajama tops.