Black Creek Crossing

  Instead of going to his sixth period history class, he hurried back to his locker, packed everything he needed into his backpack, and headed down the stairs at the far end of the corridor. As the bell rang signaling the beginning of the last class of the day, he pushed the door open and stepped out into the breaking storm.

  Another jagged bolt of lightning ripped out of the roiling clouds overhead as he started down the steps, and Seth watched as it slashed to the ground over by the old cemetery. As the thunderclap exploded around him, he dashed across the street, ducking his head against the pouring rain. By the time he reached the corner of Black Creek Road, he was already soaked to the skin, but he didn’t care. He was away from the school, and away from Chad, Zack, and all the rest of them.

  For now, at least, he was safe.

  It had taken him almost fifteen minutes to get out to the head of the trail that would lead him to the cabin, and by then he was shivering with the cold and the slashing downpour nearly blinded him. He had to step off the road twice to avoid oncoming cars; both times, he was about to duck into the woods to avoid someone stopping to ask him what he was doing out in the raging storm, but the cars didn’t even slow down. Apparently the drivers were having as much difficulty seeing through the storm as he was.

  At the trailhead, he turned off the road and began slogging through the squishy mire the path had already become. Finally, he gave up on the path and edged his way alongside it, weaving through the trees and pushing through the thickets, but never moving so far from the path that he lost sight of it. Soon his shoes were as soggy as his clothes and heavy with mud.

  Still, the canopy of the forest gave him a little protection from the rain, and the flashes of lightning came often enough so that even under the blackness of the sky and the even deeper darkness of the forest, he was able to keep track of where he was.

  At last he came to the clearing on the far side of which he saw the berm of shattered granite. He searched for any sign of smoke coming from the chimney of the tiny cabin, but the darkness of the day and the fury of the storm made it impossible to see anything.

  He climbed to the top of the berm and looked down to the spot where the cabin was hidden.

  And saw nothing at all.

  It was as if the weathered wall of the cabin had vanished into the rock.

  But that was impossible! He’d already been to the cabin three times. And this was the right spot—he was sure of it!

  As another flash of lightning slashed across the sky, and the roar of thunder echoed off the sheer granite face of the cliff, Seth began scrambling down the mound of rubble.

  His left foot caught between two rocks, and he choked back a yelp of pain as his ankle twisted. A moment later he worked his foot loose, twisted it experimentally a couple of times, then continued on down.

  And found that the cabin was still there.

  Indeed, he could see a faint glimmer of yellowish light flickering in the crack under the door.

  He moved forward, hesitated, then pushed the door open.

  For a moment he saw nothing in the dim light inside, but then his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

  A fire was burning on the hearth, and above it the ancient kettle was already steaming.

  Houdini was sitting near the hearth, his tail wrapped around him. As his eyes met Seth’s, the cat rose and moved toward him.

  Angel was sitting at the table, the red leather-bound book open before her. As Seth stepped inside, she looked up.

  She smiled.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said.

  In the warmth of the cabin, the pain in Seth’s ankle melted away, and so did the shivering that had seized his body.

  He was safe.

  At least for a while . . .

  Phil Lambert glowered at the storm raging outside. When he woke that morning to see a cloudless sky with no trace of the sudden squalls that had been cropping up during the last week, he’d decided to get in a couple of hours of fly-fishing on the creek after school. He even put his rod and creel—along with his waders and his favorite fishing hat—in the car so he could get out as soon after the last bell as possible. And all day, the weather had held—a perfect fall day with a brilliant sun hanging in an utterly cloudless sky. And then, barely an hour before the day would be over, the sky suddenly turned black, a flash of lightning startling him so badly that he slopped coffee all over the report he was preparing for the superintendent. And then the whole school trembled under the thunderclap that struck before the lightning even faded fully away. Which meant that instead of spending two quiet hours trying to tease the trout in Black Creek into snapping at one of his hand-tied flies, he would instead spend those same two hours in his office, working on the endless mass of reports that his job seemed to have devolved down to.

  Maybe he should have kept teaching, he thought, and never become the principal at all.

  Or maybe this storm would blow through faster than the ones that struck last week and then again yesterday, and in another half hour the sky would once again be clear. The odds of that, he thought as he turned away from the window to gaze at the four people ranged in front of his desk, were about the same as being able to finish five hours of reports in only two or three, even without the sudden arrival of a priest and three upset parents, at least one of whom—Seth Baker’s father—was even more unpleasant than usual. After listening to Baker for ten minutes, he decided it would be easier to simply bring the three kids involved to his office now, rather than try to convince all of them to wait for the bell to ring in half an hour, especially since he was clinging to a faint ray of hope that by the time school let out for the day, the storm would have passed and he could still go fishing.

  There was a tap at the door, and his assistant, Stacy Moore, stuck her head in. “Zack Fletcher is here,” she said, “but neither Angel Sullivan nor Seth Baker are in their classrooms.” One of Phil Lambert’s eyebrows lifted questioningly. “Apparently no one’s seen Angel since lunch, but Seth was in his next to last class.”

  “You mean she’s not here at all?” Myra Sullivan asked.

  “So it would appear,” Phil Lambert observed dryly. “Give us a minute, please, Stacy? I’ll buzz you when we’re ready to see Zack.”

  As Stacy Moore backed out and pulled the door closed, Lambert leaned back in his chair, tented his fingers under his chin, and surveyed the three parents. Myra Sullivan looked worried and Ed Fletcher looked perplexed. And Blake Baker appeared to be growing angrier every second. “Here’s the situation as I see it,” Lambert said. “Obviously we’re not going to be talking to either Angel or Seth this afternoon, but I can assure you that tomorrow morning I’ll personally be speaking to both of them. When kids start skipping out of school in the middle of the day, I want to know why. Although,” he went on, turning to Ed Fletcher, “I suspect I know exactly why Seth is gone. At the end of the lunch hour today, I happened to find Zack and his two closest friends in the hall upstairs. I didn’t get there in time to see anything directly, but from what I saw, they were either hazing Seth Baker or getting ready to.” He held up a restraining hand as Blake Baker started to say something. “Now, given what happened last night, and what I saw today, my guess is that Seth decided to cut his last class today rather than risk running into Zack and his pals after school.”

  “Who were the other two?” Blake Baker demanded. “Were they Chad Jackson and Jared Woods?”

  “Since I didn’t actually see them doing anything, I’m not sure there’s any real point in naming them,” Lambert said mildly. Another flash of lightning flared across the sky, and once again the building trembled under the thunderclap that instantly followed. “Now, I suppose we could have Zack come in here and try to explain what happened last night one more time, but I’m not sure what that would accomplish. Frankly,” he said, standing up and coming around the end of the desk, “it seems to me that the best thing is to do what Seth apparently did—simply go home. By tomorrow I suspect that most of whatever went
on between Seth and Zack last night will have blown over, and in any case, I can assure you I’ll be keeping a careful eye on both of them.”

  “But what about Angel?” Myra Sullivan fretted. “If she’s been gone since noon . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “We take attendance in the homerooms in the morning, Mrs. Sullivan,” Lambert explained. “If someone doesn’t show up in a class later in the day, the teachers assume the absence was reported in the morning. The only other way we’d know about it is if one of the other students reported it.” He uttered a hollow chuckle. “Needless to say, the incidence of one student reporting that another is cutting classes isn’t very high. In fact, most of them cover for each other.” He moved toward the door. “So why don’t we all call it a day, and see what happens tomorrow, all right?” He offered Blake Baker a reassuring smile. “I wouldn’t worry too much about Seth—these things usually blow over pretty fast.” He pulled the door to his office open and stepped out into the anteroom, where Zack Fletcher was sitting uneasily on the plastic chair that was the only piece of furniture in the room other than Stacy’s own desk and chair.

  As not only his father, but his aunt and Seth’s father, came out of the principal’s office, he rose to his feet. “Did they tell you?” he asked his father. “I’m right, aren’t I? Seth jumped me last night, and Angel was with him, wasn’t she?”

  Ed Fletcher searched his son’s eyes, trying to see something, anything, that would give him a hint as to whether Zack was telling the truth or not, but there was nothing. “Seth and Angel aren’t even here,” he said. “So everything’s on hold till tomorrow. Come on—we’re going home.”

  Zack shook his head. “I have football practice.”

  Now it was Ed Fletcher who shook his head. “Not today you don’t—not with that bandage on your head, and the rain pouring down. I’m taking you home and you’re going to take it easy, and then tomorrow we’ll see how things stand.” His eyes fixed first on Blake Baker, then on Phil Lambert. “We’ll see how things stand with everything, right?”

  Blake Baker seemed about to say something, then apparently thought better of it.

  Phil Lambert smiled. “Not to worry, Ed—in all the years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve never yet seen a problem with the kids that couldn’t wait until morning. And you’d be surprised how many times the problem that seemed huge one day has completely vanished by the next.”

  Chapter 42

  NGEL HAD LISTENED IN SILENCE AS SETH TOLD HER what happened after she left that day and why he decided not to wait around until the last bell rang.

  “But what are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked when he finished.

  “I don’t know—I guess I’m hoping that by tomorrow Zack won’t be as mad as he was this morning.”

  Angel rolled her eyes. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  “Maybe I’ll just cut school.”

  “For how long?” Angel shot back. “I mean, what are you going to do, hide in your house for the rest of your life?”

  Seth couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “Didn’t you ever wish you could do that?”

  Angel was silent for several long seconds, then shook her head. “Not anymore. Now I wish I never had to go back to my house. I wish I could just stay here.”

  Seth glanced around the tiny cabin. With the fire burning on the hearth, the tiny chamber was almost too warm, but even with the heat, he could still feel drafts coming in from the cracks in the front wall and the gaps in the shutter over the window, and there was practically a steady breeze coming through the gap under the door. Only the light of the small fire brightened the gloom, and though most of the smoke from the fire was streaming up the chimney, enough of it curled out of the fireplace so that his eyes were burning, and he kept feeling like he had to sneeze. Yet he knew exactly what she meant. “So what are we going to do?” he asked.

  Angel reached out and turned the ancient book of recipes so he could read the page to which it was opened. “I think we should make this.”

  Seth bent down and peered at the page, which was barely legible in the dim light. Only when Angel tilted the book toward the fire could he make out the ornate print:

  Seth read the strange verses through twice. “Have you figured out what it means?”

  Angel shrugged uncertainly. “I’m not sure. I mean, I’m pretty sure the first line means we have to put in some blood from a live toad.” She shuddered at the thought, but Seth was too engrossed in studying the verse again to notice.

  “I bet the ‘weeping tree’ part means a weeping willow. There’s one at the edge of the clearing, right where the trail comes out. But what are we supposed to use? The leaves? Or maybe the bark?”

  “I think it has to be the sap,” Angel said. “It says ‘It also yearns for blood from thee.’ So wouldn’t that mean we need the sap from the tree? I mean, isn’t sap sort of like blood?”

  “It’s exactly like blood,” Seth said. “So what does this second part mean? Aren’t we supposed to drink it straight from the kettle like we did with the other stuff?”

  Angel shook her head. “I think we’re supposed to wait until the fire goes out, and then add some of our own blood to what we’re going to drink. I put my blood in mine, and you put your blood in yours.”

  Seth read the verses one more time, then looked up from the book. “What do you think it does?”

  “I think maybe it sort of turns things around. So whatever someone tries to do to you turns back on them.”

  Seth repeated the single word printed above them. “ ‘Reckoning.’ ” He looked at Angel. “You think maybe it’s like a day of reckoning, when everything evens out?”

  “What else could it be?” she asked.

  “But how would it work?” Seth countered, then picked up the book. “Did you find anything else in here?”

  “I made some more of the stuff that makes things rise,” Angel replied. “But I couldn’t figure out what the rest of them mean. In fact, I could hardly read most of them.”

  Seth went through the pages of the book one by one. On half the pages the designs were so ornate and the words so strange that he had no more idea of what they said than Angel did, and even when he could figure out what the words were, their meanings were buried so deep in riddles that he couldn’t begin to fathom them. Finally he went back to the recipe for “Reckoning.” At least it seemed relatively straightforward. “Okay. Let’s try it.”

  He put his coat back on as Angel pulled a plastic poncho out of her backpack, and together they went out into the storm. Houdini, abandoning his place by the hearth, followed them, and by the time they’d picked their way up the slag heap, he was darting across the clearing toward the willow tree, making a zigzag course that made no sense until they caught up with him in the shelter of the huge tree’s canopy.

  Held firmly in the cat’s jaws, but kicking wildly enough to give testament to the fact that it was still very much alive, was a large toad.

  As Angel stared at the squirming creature, Seth reached up, grasped a branch of the tree, and tried to snap it. Though the core of the branch broke, the softer bark only split and tore, but the branch still held to the tree. Seth worked it back and forth, but the tough bark refused to give way.

  “Where’s your knife?” Angel asked.

  “In my backpack,” Seth replied as he twisted the branch. As the bark twisted tighter, sap began to ooze out of it, and Angel reached out and caught a gob of it on her finger. “Maybe this is enough,” she said as a flash of lightning briefly lit the sky, and another thunderclap echoed off the face of the cliff.

  “I guess it has to be,” Seth sighed, letting go of the branch. “I should have brought my knife.”

  They ran back to the cabin, ducking their heads against the rain.

  Even before she took off the poncho, Angel scraped the sap from her finger into the boiling kettle. Seth retrieved the knife from his backpack, squatted down and took the toad from Houdini, who released it the moment Se
th had it in his grasp.

  “D-Do you really have to hurt it?” Angel asked as he carefully opened a tiny slit in the skin of one of the toad’s large hind legs.

  “I barely cut it,” Seth replied, holding the toad over the kettle and squeezing the leg until a few drops of blood fell into the roiling liquid. A moment later he released the toad out the front door and watched as it hopped toward the pile of rocks and disappeared. “I don’t think he even felt it,” he told Angel as he closed the door.

  As the fire burned and the cauldron boiled, the storm outside raged on. . . .

  As the sun began to set, the fire finally died away. The bubbling in the black kettle settled down to a slow simmer as the storm outside spent the last of its rage; the flashes of lightning weakened, the thunder lost its strength. The light seeping through the cracks in the wall and door brightened. When water stopped pouring into the granite sink, the last rumble of thunder had died away, and the fire beneath the kettle had shrunk to a pile of glowing embers, Seth opened the window.

  The air, washed clean by the storm, smelled sweet. As Seth gazed upward, the last remnants of the clouds evaporated into nothing. But for the freshness of the air and the dripping of the still soggy trees, the storm seemed to have left no trace at all, for even the wind that had driven the rain into a slashing torrent had died so completely that Seth felt no breeze against his cheek. He pushed the window shutter wide and opened the door as well. The fresh air left by the storm flushed out the acrid fumes left by the fire as the last rays of the setting sun washed away some of the gloom in the tiny cabin chamber.

  Seth came back to the table and watched Angel ladle the contents of the kettle into a small jar. Meanwhile, Houdini twined himself first through Angel’s legs and then through Seth’s, and finally stretched out in the small patch of sunlight that found its way through the doorway.