Sacrifice Page 16

  “Fine,” Bob said. “Toss me your health book.” Smoking Bob hadn’t fared well in that class, and there were too many horror stories about senior year repeaters taking only that class.

  Paul grabbed the health book from the stack at the foot of his bed and threw it to Bob. He picked up the American history book underneath it. He paged through a few sections.

  “I just need to brush up on the end of this,” he said. “Everything after 1776.”

  And for two hours they read. Bob learned about polio and measles. Paul learned about the Trail of Tears.

  The bedroom door opened a crack and Paul’s mother stuck her head in. She looked suspicious and then surprised.

  “Hey, Mrs. Hampton,” Bob said in his best Eddie Haskell impersonation. “Nice to see you.”

  “You really are studying,” she said.

  “First time for everything,” Paul said.

  She shook her head, withdrew and closed the door behind her.

  It was pushing midnight when the boys killed the lights to sleep. Bob opted for the lounge chair over the floor. Paul’s mother had returned with blankets, a pillow and a plate of pizza rolls earlier in the evening, still astounded at their studying. The lights were out but neither of the boys was asleep. Without visions of VD and world pandemics to occupy his mind, Bob’s thoughts returned to the Woodsman, and that was the opposite of counting sheep.

  “You think we can do it?” Paul said in the inky darkness.

  Bob didn’t need to ask for clarification. What else would they both be thinking about?

  “Yeah, we can kill the son of a bitch. Madame Calabria was sure of it.” So maybe “sure” wasn’t the right word…

  Minutes of silence passed.

  “You ever wonder if we’re going to be screwed up for life?” Paul said. “Growing up without fathers?”

  Bob wondered where that question came from. The Half Dozen were tight, but they never talked about shit like that. Personal, emotional shit.

  But there was something about the darkness, about the threat of the Woodsman, about impending finals and the end of school. Like there was some clock ticking down. Somehow it now seemed right to talk about that shit.

  “Happens all the time,” Bob said. “Lots of people end up with one parent.”

  “But aren’t you afraid we’re missing something?”

  Bob thought about the brief interlude with his stepfather, the summer from hell that sent him and his mother running back to Sagebrook with little more than what they could pack in the trunk of the Duster. Alcohol, abuse, anxiety. He shivered when he thought of the last night he spent in that house when he woke up with a rat on his chest.

  “I’m not missing anything,” he said. “But you probably are. Your dad was a good guy, a hero cop.”

  “Yeah, he was.”

  In the silence, Bob understood Paul for the first time.

  “If he’d seen what you’ve done,” Bob said, “varsity football, lifeguard, he’d have been proud.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shit, yeah. Wait ‘til you kill a ghost.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  A light snore a few minutes later signaled that Paul had drifted off to sleep. Bob sat in the darkness. He shifted his weight to stop a spring from the old chair from boring into a kidney. He wished he felt as confident about the future as he tried to sound. The whole ghost-killing idea sounded iffy from the start, and it wasn’t selling itself the more he thought about it. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He pulled the blanket up over his head.

  He finally fell asleep and dreamed his father had never left them.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  It was after ten p.m. and most of the textbooks in Ken’s bedroom remained untouched. He and Jeff both had a physics textbook open.

  Ken’s rested against his flexed legs as he lay on his back on his bed. He read without comprehension.

  Jeff sat at Ken’s desk, feet propped up on the desktop. He’d been staring at the page on Newtonian physics for an hour, but hadn’t considered once what it meant.

  Model fighter planes hung from Ken’s ceiling, the remnants of several years fascinated by hearing his grandfather’s exploits in World War II. A poster of the band Boston hung over his bed.

  “You know,” Ken said as he closed his physics book. “If we don’t know it by now…” He pulled out the page of the Prayer of St. Severinus.

  “You don’t have to memorize it do you?” Jeff said. “You can read it.”

  “But what if I can’t? What if it’s too dark? What if I lose the paper?”

  “You understand what the prayer says?”

  “Six years of Latin,” Ken said. “Yeah I know what it says. It beseeches God and all the saints to open the gates of the afterlife and guide this lost soul through them.”

  “Like an exorcism?”

  “No, it doesn’t assume the spirit is evil. It also doesn’t specify whether the sprit goes to heaven or hell.”

  “I’m guessing the Woodsman heads south.” Jeff turned to face Ken. “How is it you can memorize so much so quickly?”

  Ken shrugged. “I don’t know. I can just look at things and later there is this picture in my head of whatever it was. And it’s there for a long time. I can remember stuff that’s ten years old like I saw it yesterday.”

  “That’s going to help freshman year,” Jeff said. “Man, I wish we were all going to college together.”

  “I told you to come with me,” Ken said. “Columbia has electrical engineering.”

  “I can’t get into Columbia like you,” Jeff said. “None of us can. That amazing memory you take for granted is way beyond what we’ve got.”

  After a moment, Jeff continued. “You think about it, all of us splitting up?”

  “We’re not really splitting up,” Ken said. “We’ll be home for Christmas and Thanksgiving and Spring Break and all summer long. Bob’s not going to college, so he’ll get us up to speed on the neighborhood and the Dirty Half Dozen will be back in business. You and Katy will come back from SUNY Albany and probably be engaged.”

  Jeff’s face got red and he smiled. “That would be cool.”

  “We’ll marry you off first, and then the rest of us have someplace to hang out on the weekends.”

  Jeff hit Ken in the chest with his physics book. “Like we’d let assholes like you into our house.”

  “We just have two things to do,” Ken said. “Finish high school and then finish the Woodsman. Then everyone lives happily ever after.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Marc sat in the corner of Albert’s room. The nightlight in the wall cast a weak, soft glow across the floor and onto Albert’s low bed. The boy lay wadded up in a pile of blankets. Even in the dead of summer the kid slept under two comforters. Just his mop of black hair stuck out onto his pillow.

  Marc should have been studying but his brain was well past full. It might not be enough knowledge, but it was as much as he was going to have. As night fell, he couldn’t focus anymore anyway. Once his mother put Albert to bed, and his brother was alone, Marc started to worry. His mother was so overprotective that he wasn’t concerned about the Woodsman’s tricks when she was around. The Woodsman had gotten through her defenses once, when Marc was three. He’d never get that lucky again. But when Albert was alone, he could be vulnerable. Could the Woodsman wake him up or give him a nightmare or make him do something awful in his sleep? There were too many unanswered questions that kept Marc from sleeping well until his Uncle Tim got Albert out of the danger zone in the morning.

  Marc’s mother cracked open the door to check on her youngest son. Her jaw dropped when she also saw her eldest. Marc raised a finger to his lips and shepherded her out into the hall.

  “What are you doing?” his mother began.

  “Ma, I walked by and he was making a noise,” Marc said. “Like he was having a bad dream or something. I sat there in case he woke up.”

  “Is he all right?” His mother’s
voice held a tinge of panic.

  “Yeah, Ma,” Marc said. “But as I sat there I thought of him going to Grandma’s and that I’d miss him. So I just sat there with him.”

  “Well, you go to bed yourself. You have a big day tomorrow.”

  Marc almost laughed as his mother didn’t know the half of it.

  “Yeah, Ma,” he said. “I’ll go soon.”

  She left and climbed the stairs to the upstairs master bedroom. When he heard her door close, Marc slipped back into Albert’s room. He looked down at his brother. The little pile of covers rose and fell as he breathed.

  “What happened to me,” he said, “won’t happen to you. Not tonight. And after tomorrow, not ever.”

  Albert made a contented murmuring sound.

  “I promise,” Marc said.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Friday’s final exams were scheduled in blocks at Whitman to standardize the time period to complete the test. This process overjoyed all involved. The students hated the longer tests. The teachers hated the break in routine.

  The Half Dozen rolled into the exams with a burden the rest of the senior class did not share. How do you focus on calculus when that night you knew you would have to stare death in the eye and not blink?

  At the lunch break, Jeff caught up with Katy in the cafeteria. He’d looked for her between exams to no avail. Part of him was relieved to put off seeing her for a few more hours. She wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

  Katy sat at one end of a crowded cafeteria table, across from Olivia. Olivia had a full tray of the cafeteria’s finest fare. Katy had nothing before her. Olivia saw Jeff first. Her demeanor went frosty and Jeff lip-read her telling Katy, “He’s here.”

  Katy gave Jeff a withering stare. As he approached he felt like he was walking into machine-gun fire.

  “Hey, Katy.” His smile provided no defense. “Can we talk in the hall?”

  “Yeah, let’s.” Her eyes narrowed.

  He led her out of the cafeteria to the relative quiet of the hall. When he turned she was flushed with anger.

  “Get it over with,” she said. “Tell me we’re not going to the prom.”

  Jeff nearly hit the floor. “How did you…”

  “You never wanted to go,” she said. “How many times did I have to ask you to get fitted for your tux? How many times did you cancel going to pick out a corsage?”

  “But I did all that.”

  “And still you’re running out, hours before the prom. I should have known. I’ll be the punch line of the evening when I don’t show up. ”

  “I want to go, really. But something’s come up.” Jeff had a family-oriented excuse at the ready.

  Their argument began to garner stares from people passing in and out of the cafeteria.

  “Something with your stupid friends,” she spat. “Tell me it’s not.”

  Blindsided, Jeff could only summon the truth, and he was going to be with the Half Dozen.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said.

  Katy slammed her hand against the wall. “Son of a bitch!” Jeff had never heard Katy swear. “I saved forever for my dress! I put together the seating at our table, talked friends into it despite the fact that your pig friend Paul had to be there. This is the event of my senior year and you have FUCKED IT UP!”

  She shouted the last three words so loudly the cafeteria went silent. Everyone in the hall froze in place.

  She pulled Jeff’s high school ring from her pocket. Jeff hadn’t seen it anywhere but around her neck from the day he gave it to her. She hurled it down the hall.

  “Never, never talk to me again!” She whirled and marched back into the cafeteria. Olivia greeted her with a look of approval.

  The rest of the student body stared at Jeff. He wanted to spare himself the humiliation of retrieving his discarded ring, but the damn thing cost a bundle. He made the walk of shame and plucked his ring from the floor. The cafeteria broke out into a low murmur, punctuated by a few loud laughs.

  Rather then reenter the arena, Jeff headed for his next final. He had no idea how Katy had known he was going to have to cancel their prom date, but she knew. She’d hit him with both barrels loaded. He hadn’t expected her reaction to be so violent, immediate and permanent. His heart felt torn in two.

  They had been together over two years, which had to be the longevity record for the Whitman High Class of 1980. She couldn’t—they couldn’t—throw it all away now, now that they were about to start real lives away from Sagebrook.

  He slipped his ring on his finger. It felt alien. He realized he’d never worn it. The day he got it, he handed it to Katy. Her eyes had sparkled so when she took it.

  He took off the ring and put it in his pocket. He didn’t want to get used to it.

  When the end of the day finally arrived, Jeff could barely remember taking any of the exams. He knew there were physics and English and history tests, but he could not recall a single question or any answer he had given. All he knew was the loss he felt within him, the hollow echo in his chest that said for the first time since it started to matter, he was alone. These finals were supposed to salvage his grades for entrance into SUNY Albany. He could kiss that goodbye.

  How could his whole future go so wrong so fast?

  Chapter Fifty

  The Half Dozen decided to take the risk and briefly split up after the last final exam. Each needed to gather their contribution to the night’s ritual and provide a decent cover story for their late night out. Then they would wait in separate locations until the appointed hour when they would meet at the mill. Standing together, the plan sounded great. Once they were alone, they had too much time to ponder the magnitude of their mission.

  Jeff stood at the workbench in his garage and ran a hand file over the edge of an iron magnet clamped in a vise. There was an old horseshoe on the wall and a bunch of gardening items around, but the magnet was the only item he was sure was made of iron. Killing the Woodsman wasn’t the time to be guessing about metallic composition.

  A little pile of black specks grew as he took long strokes across the magnet’s end. If the stuff had to burn, it needed surface area, so he felt much better delivering the iron in grains. This little ritual at the mill had to work.

  He could barely focus. There was an emotional emptiness within him he knew he would never fill. He was supposed to be getting ready for the prom tonight. How the hell had it turned into hunting a killer ghost? He was never going to make this up to Katy. Skipping out on the prom was one step below skipping out on your own wedding.

  He banged the file against the bench to clear the grooves and started another set of passes on the metal.

  Maybe he could explain it to her. He’d go to the Venetian and tell her the truth, about watching Josie Mulfetta eat the side door of a Mustang, about the Woodsman trying to kill his friends, about a plan to exorcise a demon in the middle of the night, a demon only he and the Half Dozen could see.

  He could feel her slapping his face about one sentence into the explanation. It even sounded like a load of crap to him, and he knew it was all true. No wonder Clark Kent never told Lana Lang about Krypton.

  A quarter of the magnet was ground into grains. He swept them off the edge of the workbench with his finger and into a white envelope. Was that enough? The fortune teller needed to give better instructions.

  Life will be normal again, he thought. We’ll do this tonight and I can get back to the last hours of being a senior. We all graduate on Sunday. I’ll explain it to Katy and get the Half Dozen to vouch for me. We’ll all have a Senior Summer blast, hang with Paul down at the beach, hit Great Adventure amusement park in Jersey. It will be that easy.

  His kitchen freezer didn’t have a light when you opened the door, but Bob didn’t need one. He reached into the far left-hand corner and pulled out a lump in aluminum foil. It hit the kitchen counter like a rock. Bob tore off the foil to reveal a whole bluefish.

  He’d caught it this spring of
f the town dock when he and Paul had decided to pull out their dusty fishing poles. He brought it home to much fanfare from his mother. She promised to cook it up in celebration that night. It was still in the refrigerator the next morning and Bob stuck it in the freezer.

  Just the glug of the coffee pot broke the silence in the house. Bob’s mother was long asleep, and he had lit only the light over the stove to keep from waking her.

  He popped the fish in the toaster oven to defrost. Minutes later it was thawed to crunchy, which was good enough. Bob slapped it on the cutting board and carved away chunks of fish which he dropped in the sink disposal. It probably wasn’t any good anyway after all these months. All he knew was he wasn’t going to carry a stinking fish around all night.

  Of all the fucked up shit in my life, he thought, I’d never have called this one. Gathering fish bones to send a ghost to hell. Bite me sideways.

  The fortuneteller had told them it was dangerous to attempt the ritual. The warning was clear. But Bob knew how dangerous it was to innocent kids if they didn’t try it.

  The list of things in Bob’s life that stirred his pride was pretty damn short. Paul had made varsity football. Ken and Dave had grades. Marc played music. Bob did dishes at a diner and in forty-eight hours would have a worthless diploma to hang on the wall. The rest of them were going on to bigger things. Bob didn’t see a way out of the diner and his mother’s morbid house. But if he could do this, if he could send the Woodsman packing, no matter how the rest of life unfolded, he’d have one great deed to his credit.

  He dropped the bones into a baggie and folded the top closed. He unplugged the pot and poured himself a mug of coffee. He dumped in sugar and stirred. Couldn’t do tonight without a slug of stimulants. He gave the coffee a swallow. Despite the sugar, it still tasted bitter.

  He shoved the baggie of bones into his pocket and headed out the door. He closed the front door behind him and locked it. He felt a strange sensation when he did, a feeling of finality. He walked to his car at half speed. He turned and looked at his house one more time and felt the need to let the image burn in long and hard into his memory. As if the next time he saw it, it would not be the same.