Crucifax (32 page)

The note was shakily written but readable:

How did Sherry die? No one will tell me.

"She killed herself," he said quietly.

How?

"With the Crucifax. She cut her throat."

Her heavy eyes widened for a moment.

You know about them? About the Crucifaxes?

He nodded.

How?

J.R. pulled a chair close to the bed, sat down, and leaned toward her, propping an elbow on the railing.

"I found out from a student of mine. But that was just a few days ago. You've known for quite a while, haven't you?"

She cocked a brow curiously.

"Look, Faye, I know it's unethical, but… well, last night I went through your files. After what happened, when you asked about Sherry, I got the feeling you knew something. I wanted to find out what."

She made a noise that sounded like,
Well?

"You know more than I do. And you're scared. Tell you the truth, I'm scared, too, but I'm not quite sure why."

Faye closed her eyes and sighed through her nose; J.R. couldn't tell if it was a sigh of relief or unrest. She lay still for a long time, and he thought she'd fallen back to sleep, but she reached for the pad again.

What do you want to know?

"Who is Mace?"

I don't know.

"What
do
you know?"

She closed her eyes again, thought a moment.

He's got something the kids want. Need.

"But only certain kids, right?"

A slight nod.

"Look, Faye… this is just between us, right?"

Another nod.

"I went through all the files in the office. Every one of them. We're the only ones who know something's going on, but even though the others don't see it, it's in the records. Changes in some of the kids, in their behavior and grades. Most of the kids, it seems. But there's a thread, a pattern among the ones who change. Something bad has happened recently in their lives, a divorce or a problem with a sibling or… here." He reached into his coat pocket and took out the notes he'd made. They were bound together by a rubber band, which he quickly pulled off, flipping through the pages. "This was in your file. Sherry Pacheco. Her parents wanted her to be a nun, is that right?"

She nodded.

"They were going to send her to a Catholic schqol. She changed then, went straight downhill. Then she started wearing a Crucifax. Like Steve Paulson and Brandon Ott and Holly Porter and many others, Faye, many others. It's beginning to look like—"

He stopped when he saw that she was writing again.

There's nothing you can do.

"What do you mean, there's nothing… ? Listen, Faye, these kids seem to think this guy Mace is gonna take them away soon. They don't seem to know where he's taking them, but they want to go. When Sherry was running out of the office, she was shouting something about going away. 'I'm going away, I'm going away,' she kept saying, then she went outside and—" He realized he was speaking faster and his voice was rising; he leaned closer to her and spoke softly. "—and she cut her throat open with that
thing.
Do you see the connection, Faye? They're all wearing those things, and Mace tells them they're all going away. Do you see why I'm so worried?"

There is nothing you can do.

"Why
not?
I don't understand. Can't we tell someone? Warn someone?"

The only people who can do something haven't done it.

"The only… who?" He slowly nodded when the answer came to him. "The parents. But they don't know. I can tell them."

She closed her eyes again.

"Can't I?"

You can try.

"Faye, I have the feeling you're… well, familiar with all of this. How?"

From watching. For many years. It happens again and again.

"You've come across this guy before? Mace?"

She shook her head and scribbled some more, writing slowly.

If it wasn't Mace, it would be someone else. Something else.

"Something?"

With a long sigh through her nose, she began writing again, filling two pages with her big, wavy script.

4 years ago
—
Newark, N.J.
—
7 kids killed themselves in a garage
—
carbon monoxide. Left notes saying they "had to leave."

6 years ago in Wisconsin 12 teens slashed their wrists in a field. No notes, but in previous weeks two other teens in area did same.

The pages quivered in J.R.'s trembling hand, and he almost stopped reading, almost asked Faye how she knew those things, why she kept records of them, but the next sentence stopped his words in his throat.

13 years ago in El Cerrito, CA, 22 kids hanged themselves in an abandoned restaurant. In weeks before that 7 individual kids did same. Some left notes saying they were
—

"—going someplace better," J.R. finished aloud. There was more, but he put the notes on the bed and leaned on the chrome railing. "One of those kids was my little sister," he whispered.

Faye reached for his hand and held it for a moment, then took the pad and began writing again.

Did you meet John and Dara?

"John and… how did you know about them?"

In each case there are accounts of a stranger or strangers in town weeks or months before deaths, hanging around kids, throwing parties, sometimes handing out drugs. Always gets little more than two paragraphs in papers. Strangers are never seen again, and their connection to deaths is always ignored.

"How long have you been doing this? Gathering all this information?"

Many years. And it goes on. I go to the library, watch the papers, the news.

"Who are all these people? Where do they come from? Why are they so powerful?"

Don't know who or what they are
—
what it is. They're different each time
—
a man or a woman or a couple
—
but always the same.

"You talk about them like they're not human."

You don't clean your house, it gets dirty, dusty, windows get grimy. Where does it all come from? Don't know. It comes while you're not watching, not looking for it. They're like that. They come while no one's watching. They're not very powerful
—
only as powerful as their victims are weak.

She closed her eyes a moment, breathed deeply, then wrote:

Sorry. Medication makes me rummy. We'll talk later. Don't let it eat you, J.R. They can't be stopped, only held off. And the only people who can hold them off usually don't notice them until it's too late. There's
nothing
you can do.

She patted his hand and drifted to sleep, leaving him to stare at the last five words of her note.

He didn't agree….

"I've been calling her all day," Lily said as she tried to maneuver her car through the soup-thick traffic on 101. "There was no answer until about fifteen minutes ago."

Lily had come to the gymnasium during Jeff's P.E. class and frantically asked him to go with her to Nikki's. He'd cut the class before his teacher arrived and changed back into his clothes.

"Nikki finally answered," Lily said, taking the Cahuenga exit. "
I
said I wanted to see her today, but
she
said she was leaving. Wouldn't tell me where she was going, though. 'I'm leaving, that's all,' she said. I told her to wait a few minutes, that I'd be right over there, because I wanna get to her before she goes again, you know? If I have to tie her
up,
I will. Anyway, then she said, 'I'm leaving now,' and she hung up." She stopped at a red light and nervously rapped a knuckle on the steering wheel as she waited for it to change. "There was something about the way she said 'I'm leaving now'… something that just didn't sound right."

When they got to Nikki's apartment building, they hurried through the rain and up the stairs, where Lily pounded on the door.

There was no answer.

"Damn," Lily hissed, knocking again. When there was still no answer, she removed the key from the porch light and opened the door. "Nikki?" she called.

Jeff followed her through the living room reluctantly. The apartment was dark, all the curtains were drawn over the windows, and the only light came from the hall; somewhere in the apartment a clock ticked loudly and the refrigerator hummed.

"Wait!" Jeff snapped.

She stopped at the entrance to the hallway and turned to him. "What?"

Jeff remembered Sherry Pacheco's last words:
I'm going away, going away
….

"I'm leaving now," Nikki had said.

Jeff felt a chill and stepped forward, saying, "Let me go first."

The light was coming from Nikki's bedroom, spilling through the half-open door and onto the tan carpet. The door creaked slightly as Jeff pushed it.

Nikki was lying on top of her neatly made bed, her back to the door. There was a sheet of notebook paper on the pillow behind her head, and Jeff sucked in an involuntary gasp. He stood in the doorway for a moment, waving his hand behind him at Lily, trying to speak but finding no voice for several seconds, until finally he said in a dry and hoarse voice, "Wait, just… wait a second."

He entered the room, slowly walked around the bed, his knees feeling weak, saw Nikki's arm hanging over the edge of the bed, saw the Crucifax on the floor inches below her hand—

—and the blood.

It had soaked into the white bedspread and run onto the floor where it darkened the carpet; streams of it glistened on Nikki's forearm and ran to her fingertips.

"What?" Lily called from the hall. "What's wrong, dammit, what's happened?"

"Call… an ambulance."

"What's wrong?"

"Just call an ambulance now, Lily, now!"

He heard Lily's frantic voice fade down the hall and into the living room.

Jeff turned away from the blood and swallowed again and again, trying to hold down the thick lump he felt rising from his stomach. He went to the other side of the bed and picked up the note. After staring at Nikki's still body for a moment, he read it once, twice, three times….

I'm going away to someplace better.

Jeff's phone call stunned J.R. into silence.

He'd been on his way out of the office for the day. Except for the two he'd postponed that morning, J.R. had met all of his appointments, but not without difficulty. As he talked with his students he'd had to fight the urge to warn them about Mace, but he wasn't sure that would be wise, considering what had happened to Faye. Instead, he watched their necks for leather cords concealed by shirts and jackets.

Of the eight students who had entered his office that day, five of them were wearing Crucifaxes.

By the end of the day, J.R. had worked himself into quite an unsettled state.

"Paranoid," he'd mumbled to himself as he put his things into the briefcase. "Something's going on, but you're taking it too far, you're too damned paranoid." He'd planned to go home, take a hot shower, pop a frozen lasagna dinner into the microwave, read the paper, watch "Moonlighting," and think of nothing but relaxing.

Then Jeff called.

It wasn't Nikki's death that so disturbed him, although that was horrible enough. What made him clutch the telephone receiver in a white-knuckled grip was the note Nikki had left.

Licking his suddenly dry lips, J.R. asked, "What… did that… note say again, Jeff?"

" I'm going away to someplace better,'" Jeff replied.

J.R. lowered the receiver from his ear, put his face in his hand, and muttered, "Oh, God." He felt a rush of emotions, a sickly, dizzy feeling of emptiness, helplessness, that he had not experienced in years. Not since Sheila had died.

Killed herself,
a silent voice reminded him.

"Hello?" Jeff said.

It
happens again and again….

"J.R., you still there?"

…
again and again…

J.R.'s mother had kept Sheila's note near her for days after the funeral, reading it over and over, staring at that single, neatly written line as if it might change. But no matter how many times she read it, the note remained the same:
I'm going someplace better.

"You there, J.R.?"

"Yeah. Where are you now?"

"Nikki's. They took the—uh… took her away. We're waiting for Nikki's mother to get home."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No, I just thought you'd want to know."

"Yeah, thanks for calling. I'm going home soon, so if anything comes up, call me there."

"J.R.?" Jeff suddenly sounded years younger. "Do you know anything about this? Because Lily and I are—" There was a nervous fluttering sound in his throat, a sort of chuckle that came out sounding like a whimper. "—we're pretty scared. Nikki's note, Sherry's words just before she killed herself… what's he doing to them, J.R.? My sister's with him!"

"I know, Jeff, and we're gonna get her away from him. Call me tonight. We'll get together and talk, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

After he hung up, J.R. ran his fingers through his hair and wished he was already home.

"Nope, not yet," he sighed, picking up his phone and dialing.

"Principal's office."

"Hello, Mrs. Lehman, this is J.R. Haskell in counseling. Is Mr. Booth still in?"

"Well, he's on his way out. Is it important?"

"Yes. Very important, I'm afraid…."

Twenty-Four

The TV room in Ward C of the Laurel Teen Center was closed at ten o'clock every night, and everyone was in bed by eleven. The early bedtime was Kevin's least favorite rule. Before being admitted to the center, he'd seldom gone to bed before two
am.
Now he went to bed but did not sleep.

Instead, he lay in bed listening to the rain or the sounds coming from the desk just down the corridor or the occasional outburst of shouting or crying from other rooms on the ward. Sometimes he closed his eyes and listened for the whisper of Leif's breathing, tried to separate it from the other sounds.