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"You want to ask him to join us?"
"Not yet," I said. "I'd rather & I want to make sure first."
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Even though I was sure. Unfortunately, I was really sure.
"All right," Rob said. "Where to now?"
I pointed into the thick woods off to the side of the road. The thick, dark,
seemingly impenetrable woods to the side of the wood.
"Great," Rob said without enthusiasm. Then he put down his helmet's visor
again and said, "Hang on."
It was slow going. The floor of the woods was soft with decaying leaves and
pine needles, and the trees, only a few feet apart, made a challenging
obstacle course. We could only see what was directly in front of the beam from
the Indian's headlamp, and basically, all that was was trees, and more trees.
I pulled back the sleeve of Rob's leather jacket and pointed whenever we
needed to change directions.
Don't ask me, either, how I knew where we going, me who can't read a map to
save my life and who's managed to flunk my driving test twice. God knew I had
never been in these woods before. I was not allowed, like Claire Lippman, to
swim in the quarries, and had never been to them before. There was a reason
swimming here was illegal, and that was because the dark, inviting water was
filled with hidden hazards, like abandoned farm equipment with sharp spikes
sticking up, and car batteries slowly leaking acid into the county's
groundwater.
Sounds like paradise, huh? Well, to a bunch of teenagers who weren't allowed
to drink beside their parents' pools, it was.
So even though I had never been here before, it was like . . . well, it was
like I had. In my mind's eye, as Douglas would say, I had been here, and I
knew where we going. I knew exactly.
Still, when we hit the road again, I was surprised. It wasn't even a road,
exactly, just a strip of land that, decades before, had become flattened by
the heavy limestone-removing equipment that had passed over it, day after day.
Now it was really just a grass-strewn pair of ruts. Ruts that led up to a
dirty, abandoned-looking house, all of the windowpanes of which were dark and
busted out and which had aDANGER KEEP OUT sign attached to the front door.
I signaled for Rob to stop, and he did. Then we both sat and stared at the
house in the beam from his headlight.
"You have got," Rob said, switching off the engine, "to be kidding me."
"No," I said. I took off my helmet. "She's in there. Somewhere."
Rob pulled his own helmet from his head and sat for a minute, staring at the
house. No sound came from it or from anywhere, actually except the chirping of
crickets and the occasional hoo-hoo of an owl.
"Is she dead?" Rob asked. "Or alive?"
"Alive," I said. Then I swallowed. "I think."
"Is anybody in there with her?"
"I don't & I don't know."
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Rob looked at the house for a minute more. Then he said, "Okay," and swung
off the bike. He went to the back storage compartment and dug around in it. In
the glow of the bike's head lamp and the dim light afforded from the tiny
sliver of moon, I saw him pull out the flashlight, and something else.
A lug wrench.
He noticed the direction of my gaze.
"It never hurts," he said, "to be prepared."
I nodded, even though I doubted he could see this small gesture in the
minimal moonlight.
"Okay," he said, closing the lid to the storage compartment and turning
around to face me. "Here's how it's going to go down. I'm going to go in there
and look around. If you don't hear from me in five minutes oh, here, take my
watch you get on this bike and you go for that cop car we saw. Understand?"
I took his watch, but shook my head as I slipped it into the pocket of his
leather jacket.
"No," I said. "I'm coming with you."
Rob's expression what I could see of it, anyway was eloquent with
disapproval.
"Mastriani," he said. "Wait here. I'll be all right."
"I don't want to wait here." I couldn't, I knew very well, send him in to do
what by rights should only have been done by me. I'd had the vision. I should
be the one to go into the creepy house to see if the vision was real. "I want
to come with you."
"Jess," Rob said. "Don't do this."
"I'm coming with you," I said. To my surprise, my voice broke. Really. Just
like Tisha's had, when she'd gone into hysterics outside the Chocolate Moose.
Was I, I wondered, going into hysterics?
If Rob heard the break in my voice, he gave no sign.
"Jess," he said, "you're staying here with the bike, and that's final."
"And what if," I asked, the break having turned into a throb, "they come
back if they aren't in there now and find me out here all alone?"
I did not, of course, even remotely believe that this might happen, or that,
in the unlikely event that it did, I would not be able to get away on the
Indian, which went from zero to sixty in mere seconds, thanks to Rob's
dedicated tinkering.
My question did, however, have the desired effect on Rob, in that he sighed
and, hooking the lug wrench through one of the belt loops of his jeans,
reached out and took my hand.
"Come on," he said, though he didn't look too happy about it.
The steps to the house's tiny front porch were nearly rotted through. We had
to step carefully as we climbed them. I wondered who had lived here, if
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anyone. It might, I thought, have served as the management office during the
time the limestone had been carved out of the quarry down the road. Certainly
no one had lived in it for years. . . .
Though someone had certainly been inside recently, because the door, which
had been nailed shut, swung easily under Rob's palm. In the bright beam from
the Indian's headlamp, I could see the shiny points of the nails gleaming
where they'd been pried from the wood, while their heads were nearly rusted
through with weather and age. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]