Bad Things (4 page)

Robin pointed at him and began giggling.

He forced himself to lean forward again. “Robin, you jerk, get inside!”

“Why?” Robin grabbed the limb he balanced on with both hands and pushed his body up. “Wanna see me do a handstand?”

“No!”

“What's the matter, little brother? Is bad old Big Jack out here?” His eyes twinkled. “It's not midnight yet. I guess he's around somewhere, huh?” He giggled.

“He's behind you.”

Robin made a face. “Yeah, and so's the tooth fairy.” He pushed up and down on his arms, doing the spider imitation.

It took all of Ricky's courage to climb onto the windowsill.

Big Jack stepped closer.

Ricky balanced himself on the ledge, his outstretched fingers only inches from his brother. “Give me your hand,” he said, vaguely aware that tears were running down his cheeks and into his mouth.

“Cripes, Ricky, don't cry, I was just fooling around,” Robin said. “I'll come in. Jeez, I didn't mean to—”

He froze as skeletal hands clamped down on his shoulders. He turned his head and saw the woody fingers, then slowly turned back to Ricky, no fun in his eyes now, only raw, incredulous horror. A soft moan escaped his lips.

Ricky felt the thing trying to suck his will away with its charcoal eyes.

“No!” Carefully, his gaze never leaving Big Jack, Ricky climbed back through the open window, then wriggled back out, this time on his stomach. To keep from falling, he hooked his feet on either side of the window, then, inch by inch, pulled his upper body onto the nearest branch, not stopping until his body would stretch no farther.

His brother was within reach, but he was like a statue, his hands cemented to the branch, his body still raised above it as Big Jack's viney claws dug into his shoulders.

Ricky slapped at his twin. “Robin! Give me your hand! Hurry!”

Dully, his twin looked at him, focusing only when Ricky grasped both his wrists and began yanking him forward. “Ricky—”

“Come on!”

Suddenly Robin let go. Ricky caught him and, with all his strength, began to pull him inside, realizing that his brother was paralyzed with fear. He grunted with effort, determined to win this battle with Big Jack. Robin cried out as the creature renewed its painful hold on his flesh.

Ricky struggled, gaining an inch, losing one. “I got you, I got you, I got you!” He repeated the litany as he worked, aware of Big Jack's laughter in his head and of Robin's shock-white face and fathomless eyes. “I got you!” Panting, Ricky held on. “Robin, I got you!”

Suddenly the monster released its hold. Ricky almost lost his balance as Robin fell from the limb, but he hung on to his brother's wrists, his hands slippery in the rain, gulping air, struggling to keep his feet wedged safely inside the window. After an eternity, Ricky began to pull him up, his back and arms screaming with the effort.

Robin was a foot from the window, Ricky half-inside, when Big Jack struck, sweeping across Robin, its storm of laughter echoing madly in Ricky's head. The sharp wooden hands grabbed Ricky at the elbows, pinching and holding until his fingers turned numb and started to open against his will.

Robin began to slip from his grasp. “No!” he cried, but his voice was lost in the howl of the storm. He watched in horror as Robin began to slip.

The wind screamed and then he saw Robin grab a branch two feet below. He hung on, then began pulling himself back up the tree.

And then Ricky couldn't see anything because Big Jack was all over him, grabbing, touching, plucking at him. Wind swirled around them, wet and rotting and green like cold swamp water. It whistled among the bony branches with a life of its own, mingling with the laughter of the thing itself.

Big Jack dragged him out of the window and into the tree. It hugged him against itself, smothering him in its green darkness, bruising him on its bark and bones. It paused for an instant, staring into Ricky's eyes until he thought he would faint. Its gaze drained him of his will while its arms crushed the life from him.

“No! Let him go!” Robin yelled from behind them.

Ricky only saw him for an instant, hanging on to the tree limb with one hand, pounding and pulling on Big Jack with the other. “Let him go!”

The thing paused, its grasp loosening slightly. Ricky drew a breath, coughing, and watched as Robin tore at Big Jack, ripping out the root nerves, yanking the blood vines. It seemed amused until the boy snapped off two of its gnarled toes. Then the swamp wind rose again, Big Jack's howl of anger within it, a part of it.

“Punch him!”

Robin's words startled him into action. Ricky fought, pulling and twisting the foliage guts, trying to break off ribs. The monster howled furiously as Robin attached himself to one of its legs and started ripping it apart.

Steeling himself, Ricky reached for Big Jack's neck and wrapped his hand around the thick, pulsing jugular vine. He pulled.

Howling, Big Jack let go for a bare instant, but that was enough. Ricky sprang back, grabbing the tree trunk and regaining his balance. Something cold splashed across his face and mouth. It tasted of plants: Big Jack's blood.

Ricky edged around the trunk as the thing reached for him, backed farther as he watched his twin do a monkey-climb right up the monster, ripping and tearing and shredding the vines as he moved. The thing put its arms around Robin as he reached its chest.

Two blocks away, the bells of Our Lady of Guadalupe began chiming the measure of prelude that would ring in the hour.

Midnight. The first bell rang.

Big Jack's almost out of time!
Ricky edged forward to help his brother, who still tore at the monster's chest. “Get him, Robin!” he cried. “Hang on!”

Two chimes. With one hand, the thing shoved Robin's head into its torso, smothering the flailing boy. Its laughter blended with the rain as it extended its other hand and beckoned Ricky closer.
Come with me and I'll let your big brother live.

Three.
I'm supposed to die! Not Robin!
Ricky stepped nearer.

“No!”
Robin yelled, his voice muffled against the creature. He punched into the thing with all his might, over and over.

Four.

Green fluid still pulsed from the broken vine in Big Jack's neck, and green slime dripped from its mutilated torso, but still it held Robin. The vines growing from its mouth began to twine around his face.

Five chimes. Big Jack extended its hand again.
Come with me or he dies dies dies.

Six. He couldn't let Robin die for him. Swallowing, Ricky reached for Big Jack's hand.

“NO!” Robin screamed as the creature's hand closed painfully on Ricky's wrist.

Seven. Big Jack paused, glanced at Robin, then stretched out its other arm, holding the boy far away from its body. Suddenly it let go, but Robin was already clinging to the arm, hanging on as Jack tried to shake him off. Face smeared with green, eyes fierce, he screamed, “No!” and refused to fall.

Ricky twisted in Big Jack's grasp, and suddenly the grip became so tight that he felt as if his bones were being crushed. He cried out, nearly fainting with the pain.

Eight. Robin swung across Big Jack's body and grabbed the arm it held Ricky with. With all his might, he began to tear at Jack's forearm, using every muscle in his hands and arms, using his teeth to bite, doing everything to make the monster let go of his brother. The monster tore at him, but he didn't seem to notice.

Nine. The wooden wrist began to crack. Robin twisted the wood fiercely, and it broke. He ripped a vine with his teeth and the hand came off, still attached to Ricky's arm.

Ricky staggered back against the tree trunk, breathing heavily, holding his wrist.

“You can't have him!” Robin screamed.

Ten.

Big Jack pulled its mangled arm back and again shoved Robin's head into the mass of oozing mashed foliage behind the ribs.

Eleven.

“Robin!”
Ricky cried.

Twelve. Midnight, November 1.

The leaves on the vines growing from Big Jack's mouth withered in an instant, turning brown and flying away on the breeze before the final bell finished echoing. Big Jack laughed again and let go of the oak, Robin trapped in its arms.

“No!” Ricky cried as they fell.

In the first minute of November first, Ricky stood in the branches of the old oak tree, barely aware of the rain beating monotonously against his face. He clung to the trunk and stared in shock at Big Jack's body on the ground twenty feet below. He craned his neck, trying to see Robin, but the boy was lost in the rain, buried in the dark visceral vines of Big Jack's remains.

The scene was lit by moonlight and the rainbow of Malibu lights that lined the paths crisscrossing the immense forest of a front yard, and as Ricky watched, a dozen little greenjacks gathered around the ruins of Big Jack. An instant later, a dozen more glimmering forms poured from the lifeless body of their king. A strong wind suddenly rose and the body began to break apart, the arms and hands and legs becoming nothing more than harmless twigs and branches. The roots and leafy vines crackled brown as they dried up and rode away on the wind.

Big Jack was gone for another year, and only the unmoving form of Ricky's twin lay within the circle of little jacks.

“Robin.” Ricky moaned the name, and the greenjacks looked up at him briefly, then turned their attention back to Robin. They started to move around him. Ricky realized that they were fighting over his brother's body.

He realized that Robin was unconscious, not dead, just like Thomas in Grandfather's stories. That meant a greenjack could force Robin out and take his body—just as Big Jack had promised. Quickly Ricky started to climb down the tree. He had to get his twin into the house before they took him.

But the handholds ran out after a few feet, and it was too far to jump. “Robin,” he whispered. The jacks barely glanced at him as he crawled back up the tree and into his window.

Once inside, he glanced briefly down and saw that the circle of jacks was moving wildly, violently, melding, coming apart, melding again. Quickly he took the back stairs past Carmen's room and down and around through the kitchen and dining room, not caring about the darkness, caring only about his brother.

He crept across the living room, avoiding the spots where the floorboards would creak. The drapes were drawn, and for once, he wished they weren't.
Don't let them get you, don't let them, don't let them.

Quietly he reached up and pulled the wrought-iron bolt on the arched front door, then grabbed the handle and pressed the thumb latch. It clicked softly open. He waited a moment, then, slowly, silently, he pulled the heavy planked door open. His heart thumped as he got ready to run out and down the steps to the oak, to rescue Robin and carry him inside to safety.

“Hi, baby brother.”

“Robin!”

Bathed in the yellow glow of the porch light, Robin waited on the welcome mat, resting on his hands, peering up at him. He was soaking wet, and a small trickle of blood oozed from a cut hidden in his hair. Otherwise he looked fine. Below, at the bottom of the wide steps, the amorphous shifting shapes of the greenjacks cavorted and tumbled in the grass.
I'm not afraid of them anymore.
The realization astounded him even more than Robin's amazing recovery.
I'm not afraid.
Suddenly he knew what it must feel like to be a grown-up. Smiling, he turned his attention back to his twin.

“Robin, you're okay! I was afraid you were—”

“Dead?”

“Knocked out. I thought you were knocked out!”

“I was.”

His twin's crooked smile made the hairs on the back of Ricky's neck stand on end. Grandfather's familiar words flitted through his mind.

“Whatcha thinkin'?”

“Nothing. Are you okay?”

“Okeydokey, icky Ricky.”

Stunned, he stared at his brother. Ricky
knew,
beyond all doubt, that he had never,
ever
told anyone about the name the jacks called him: It was too humiliating. His bladder let go. It didn't matter. “What?” he whispered.

“I'm okay.”

“Did you hit your head?” he asked timidly, wanting to believe that he'd imagined his brother's rhyming reply.

“Just a little. Just enough.” He crossed the threshold, his movements lacking their usual grace, and stared around the room as if it were something new. “Shut the door, Picky Ricky. Let's go to bed.”

In shock, Ricky loitered a moment in the open doorway watching the greenjacks as they capered in the rain. One, dimmer than the others, did not jump or dance, but stood motionless under the tree, near the place where Robin had fallen. A chill raced up Ricky's spine.

Robin?
he thought hard at the figure.

And he thought he heard his name, called softly, but it was lost in the leaves that chattered in the breeze.

“What's going on here?”