Croak (5 page)

Lex swallowed a couple of times, clutched her stomach, and followed him through the trees as he began talking into his wrist once more.

“Yep, she got in just fine, no problems to speak of. Lex, say hi to your dad.”

“Dad!” She grabbed her uncle’s arm and shouted into the flickering metal. “Your brother is a lunatic. He’s trying to kill me!”

“Nice try, Lex,” her father’s tinny voice answered. “You’re not getting home that easily.”

“I don’t think you’re fully grasping the enormity of the situation, Dad. He doesn’t even have a
television!
”

Uncle Mort jerked his arm away, hung up, and began walking faster. “Enough chat. Let’s enjoy us some nature.”

Lex tried to keep up. “Good idea. Find me a nice tree to puke on.”

They were now ascending the gently sloping side of a grassy bluff. When at last they reached the top, Lex gaped at her surroundings, which included, among other things, an enormous gray boulder that almost seemed to be keeping watch over the town below. “Where are we?”

Uncle Mort walked to the brink of the precipice and sat down on the cliff’s edge. “Best place in Croak to watch the sunset.”

Something in Lex snapped. She didn’t want to watch a sunset. She wanted to be told what in holy hell was going on here. The rage stirred yet again, spurring her to grab her uncle’s arm and twist it behind his back as hard as she could.

Seemingly bored with her antics, Uncle Mort breathed a peaceful sigh and gazed into the distance. The sun, a fiery ball of neon orange, set over the village below them.

“What can you see out there, Lex?” he asked in a tranquil voice.

“Well,” Lex said, twisting harder, “I see a pitiful excuse for a town, some trees, a few hills, and an abusive, stark raving madman.” She dug her nails into his wrist. “That about cover it?”

“More or less. Hey, would you mind letting go? It’s starting to tickle.”

Lex dropped his arm with a defeated grunt. How had she not separated his shoulder by now? Why wasn’t he begging for mercy?

“Just sit,” he said. “You may continue your attempt to detach one of my limbs later. Right now, there are some things you need to know.”

Lex sat, defeated, exhausted, but most of all, confused—because despite all efforts to suppress such inclinations, she could not help but feel the tiniest bit of admiration for her uncle, who was now wiping away the few drops of blood that emerged where her nails had dug into his skin.

He caught her sheepish gaze. “Don’t worry, I’ve encountered much worse,” he said, his eyes sparkling with either youthful excitement or demented delirium. “I knew you’d put up a good fight. I’d be surprised and frankly insulted if you hadn’t.”

Lex cocked her head. The wrath that had raged within her only seconds ago seemed to be rapidly melting away of its own accord, like an ebbing storm. What was going on?

“But you’re also smart,” he went on, “which is why you’re going to listen very closely to what I’m about to tell you. Right?”

Lex found herself nodding. How did he do that?

He turned serious, all traces of insanity abruptly leaving his face. “Your parents haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you, Lex. Nor have I been entirely forthcoming with your parents. It was my idea for you to come here, not theirs. When I heard that you had turned delinquent, I knew your time had come. So I suggested to your father that you visit me and experience some country living.” His eyes turned dark. “But that is not your purpose here.”

Lex listened as patiently as she could, tearing a piece of grass into microscopic shards.

“We’re going into town tomorrow, and I want you to be prepared. What we do here is important business and should never, ever be taken lightly. We have been blessed—and burdened—with a very grave responsibility, if you’ll forgive the pun.” He glanced over the valley. “Croak, as you may have gathered, is a different kind of town. All of its citizens exist for a common purpose. Naturally, from time to time we need some fresh blood, which is where you come in. And as I said earlier, you’re going to be a natural. Trust me on that one. All you need to do is pay close attention, learn as much as you can, and try not to be scared by anything you see.”

“Scared of what?” she said. “How disgustingly adorable your little village is? The perfectly groomed flowers? The—the . . .” Lex trailed off. A national coffee shop chain wasn’t the only thing missing from this town. She had seen no firehouses, no police departments, churches, gas stations, schools . . .

A furious outbreak of goose bumps flickered across her skin. Everything was starting to feel very strange.

That same electric crackle shot through the air once more as Uncle Mort opened his mouth to speak. “Lex,” he said, “Croak is a portal—one that sits between our world and the next.”

A strange noise escaped Lex’s lips, something between a stupefied gasp and a dubious snicker. “What?”

“That’s why you’re here. I’m going to teach you how to do what I do.”

“And what is that?”

He leaned in close. She could feel his breath on her face.

“I Kill people.”

Starving and exhausted, yet unable to fall asleep without the familiar sounds of Cordy wheezing from three feet away, Lex lay on top of her covers that evening and stared at Leonardo DiCaprio’s giant head. Other than the poster, everything else had been mysteriously remodeled after she and Uncle Mort left for their chat. Most of the pink items were gone, the armoire had been replaced by a small tank of jellyfish, and a series of satellite dishes and gizmos now stuck out of the window.

The poster, however, had been glued so strongly to the wall that nothing in the house could remove it.

Lex didn’t know how many hours she had been lying there awake, painstakingly analyzing every word her uncle had said, but it felt like at least a baker’s dozen. And the stomachache produced by the Family Size bag of Doritos she had eaten in lieu of a proper dinner wasn’t helping, either. So she simply clutched at her pillow, dazed beyond belief—and not just by Leo’s whimsical coif.

“Excuse me?” she had said back at the cliff. “You
Kill
people? What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I am one of a very select group of people who are endowed with the power to transport souls from this life to the next.” Her uncle looked at her, his green eyes flashing. “That’s who we are. That’s who
you
are.”

A small surge rose into Lex’s chest. She almost recognized it as excitement—something she had not felt in a long time—but the rational part of her brain bulldozed it too quickly for her to savor.

“You’re nuts,” she said to him. “Really. Is Dad aware of your mental deterioration? You need help.”

He watched her, amused.

“I mean, listen, I appreciate the effort to make this farm stay thing a little more fascinating than just an exercise in dispensing pig slop, but this is just moronic. Or—wait, I get it, you’re speaking metaphorically, right? We butcher the cows and deliver them to a new ‘afterlife’ on the shelves of supermarkets? Hilarious. Really clever.” She got up, dusted off the seat of her pants, and crossed her arms. “Let’s just go,” she said miserably. “Why did you even drag me up here? Don’t get me wrong, the sunset was simply breathtaking, but here’s the thing: I’m stuck in this stupid town for the summer no matter what. So I’ll clean up as much goat shit as you want to throw at me, fine, but don’t bother to make it sound like a higher calling.”

He nodded slowly. “Well, a thousand apologies,” he finally said with a shrug. “I guess I was wrong about you.”

She started to walk away, back down the hill.

“Unless, of course, you’ve ever seen a deathflash.”

Lex turned around. He was standing at the edge of the cliff, his body a silhouette against the sunset.

“A what?”

“Deathflash,” he said. “A white, blinding light that flashes when someone dies. Sound familiar?”

“I—” Lex screwed up her face. “On the bus ride here, there was an accident. I saw a light . . . a bunch of lights . . . ”

“You want to know why I dragged you up here, Lex?” He pointed out over the town. “Do me a favor. Count how many tractors you see.”

Lex walked back to the precipice and scanned the vista, really looked at it this time, and the sudden realization that followed almost short-circuited her brain: the sweeping panorama, green to the farthest horizon, was devoid of even the smallest agricultural endeavor. Not a barn, silo, field, or errant chicken in sight. She turned to him, dumbfounded.

He just smiled.

“Okay,” Lex said, compulsively peeling the bark off a twig as they walked back to the house, “let’s just entertain for a moment the completely mental notion that what you’re saying is true. How come I’ve never heard of this before? How come
no one’s
ever heard of this before? How did a hole to the great beyond just pop up in the middle of the Adirondacks? How did a puny little human like you become entrusted with such a massive undertaking? How does one transport a soul? How does one even hold a soul? And what in the name of all that is disturbing did you mean when you said you’re going to teach me how to Kill people?”

He snickered. “You didn’t really think you were going to spend the whole summer milking cows, did you?”

“Don’t! Change! The! Subject!” she cried, stabbing the twig into his arm with each word until it stuck there.

He effortlessly yanked it out. “I gotta say, Lex, your negotiation skills really leave something to be desired.”

She blinked in disbelief at the bloodied splinter. “And even if all that other bullshit were true, why me? What makes you think that a walking calamity such as myself would be even a fraction of a smidgen qualified to Kill people?”

“Well, you did just shiv your own uncle with a stick.”

Lex shrank a little. “That’s . . . different.”

“And you beat up all those kids at school.”

“Yeah, but—hey, that’s not fair. It’s not like I wanted them dead or anything.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So what you’re saying is that maybe you’re not really as bad a kid as everyone thinks you are.”

Lex’s mouth fell open. There it was, that one steadfast belief she had been clinging to all along, the one thing her principal, her teachers, even her own parents hadn’t been able to see. He had just said it. Out loud.

“You didn’t end up here by chance, Lex,” Uncle Mort said. “If you believe only one thing I’ve told you tonight, believe that. I know nothing else makes sense right now, but try sleeping on it.” He smiled. “And tomorrow I’ll show you how to do things that a walking calamity such as yourself has never even fathomed.”

***

Lex awoke the next morning with a start.

After a few seconds of disoriented panic she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, sat up, and immediately clutched her rumbling stomach, cursing her uncle for his paltry dining options. “Sorry for not preparing a welcome feast,” he had said when they arrived home, tossing her the Doritos as he descended into the smoggy basement. “Not really my forte.”

Lex took a moment to look around the room in the light of day and ponder exactly what his forte was, as it was becoming increasingly evident that it was not, in fact, farming. The weird gadgets poking out of the windows suggested some type of technological occupation, but she couldn’t imagine how that could be, seeing as how he lived in the middle of nowhere. And what did the jellyfish have to do with any of it?

Still, the only other explanation he had provided was, in a word, nutzoid. Lex had watched enough Discovery Channel specials to know that conspiracies and secrets of this magnitude did not exist in the real world. And even if they did, the chances that she was smart or talented or Bond-girl-sexy enough to be privy to them were slim to none.

Yet why would he bother to come up with a lie like that? And the deathflashes, as he called them—she had seen those, no question. How could he have known?

She resolved to torture it out of him today. She fell out of bed and threw on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, sneakers, and her black hoodie, then shuffled down the hallway and pushed open the door to the bathroom.

“HEY!”

“Whoa!” Lex screeched. “Sorry!”

The kid standing at the toilet crumpled in embarrassment just in the nick of time, or Lex would have gotten much more of an eyeful. As it was, she could tell that he was probably a little older than she was, but not by much. His deep brown hair was the color of enriched soil, the kind sold at hardware stores. Like Mort’s, but cut shorter, it too stuck out in every conceivable direction, as if suffering an existential crisis over which way it should be going. He seemed tallish and lean, but not lanky; well built, but not bulgingly muscular. He wore a faded blue T-shirt, cargo shorts, and a beat-up pair of high-top Chuck Taylors. But none of these features made a bit of difference, because Lex was floored by only one element of his appearance.

His right eye was brown. His left eye was blue.

Both of Lex’s eyes, meanwhile, were blinking maniacally. Her face instantly flushed, though she was unsure whether this was due to humiliation or to the fact that this kid made even the hottest kid at her school look like a bog monster. “Who are you?” she asked.

“This bathroom’s current occupant,” he said breathlessly, his hands fumbling with the zipper as if they had never operated one before. “Ever heard of knocking?”

In an attempt to suppress any further hormonal shenanigans, Lex shielded her eyes and pawed at the doorknob, her motor skills failing her at the precise moment she needed them most. “I’m sorry!”

The kid, clearly no stranger to hormonal shenanigans himself, kept working at his fly and staring at her as if she were an advancing velociraptor. “And yet you’re still here.”

“Okay, I know. Sorry.” Lex ultimately managed to take a step back into the hallway and regain her faculties. She frowned. Uncle Mort didn’t have any kids, she knew that much. “What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I mean here in this house.”

With a final tug at his pants, the kid straightened up. He flushed the toilet, took a deep, cleansing breath, and walked to the sink in a far more composed manner. “I live here,” he said affably, washing his hands. “Nice to meet you, roomie.”