Gravestone (2 page)

I hear her voice calling my name.

The sound is deep in the dark.

—“A Forest” by The Cure

Preface

Evil wears a mask, and I can finally see its face.

The rushing waters surround us as sunlight plays tricks on my eyes. Gold glitters in these woods, damp from the earlier rain, foggy from the temperature change. My legs splash in the cool stream that comes up to my shins.

He’s standing on the edge where the water drops fifty feet to the jutting rocks below. He faces me with his sick smile. “What are you going to do now, Chris?”

I’m no longer scared, no longer running away.

“It’s done,” I say. “You’re done.”

The voice talking is not mine. The hand holding this knife doesn’t belong to me.

Chris Buckley is gone. Long gone.

It’s been six months, but I can still taste it in my mouth. The anger, the bitterness, the absolute hunger for revenge.

You don’t have to do this, not here, not like this.

He smiles. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

“Whatever you’re doing to this place and these people—it’s over. Right now.”

His laugh twists into my skin.

“There are things you need to know,” he says.

“I know enough.”

“You know only what you’re supposed to know. That’s why I brought you here.”

“I
followed
you.”

“I could break your neck if I wanted to.”

I smile. Because something in me says he’s wrong. Something in me believes that if he wanted me dead, I’d be dead already.

“You’re not going to do anything to anybody ever again,” I say.

“So what happens after you kill the Big Bad Wolf?” he asks. “There are others lurking in these woods and in this town. I’m just the obvious one. Killing me achieves nothing.”

My hand shakes, but I steady it as I walk closer to him. Streaks of sunlight circle us like a laser show.

You can’t really do this, Chris, no matter how you feel and how right it is.

“So the pastor stands at Marsh Falls,” he says. “How ironic. How fitting. And how utterly predictable.”

“You killed her,” I say to him.

He laughs and looks at me through his short glasses, and I want to take them and break them just like I want to break him.

“Six months and you’re still seething,” Pastor Marsh says. “That’s good.”

“People are going to know.”

“Haven’t these past months taught you anything? You’re smart, but you’re not
that
smart. You’re not here because you’re some bright young star chosen because of your intelligence, Chris. You’re really rather unremarkable, to tell you the truth.”

I inch closer.

He’s now about five feet away from me. He looks behind him, then glances back at me.

This is the first time I think I see fear on his face.

Because maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t see fear in mine.

One more step.

The echoes of the falls smother all other sounds.

Hell is not dying, Chris. It’s knowing and living.

Whoever said that was right.

I think whoever said that is standing before me right now.

“Do you want to know the truth?” he asks.

“I
know
the truth. The new church. I know where it is. I found the folders. The pictures. I have proof. Everybody is going to know about Solitary. Everybody is going to know what’s really going on.”

“Have you ever been surprised, Chris?”

“You’re a sick man.”

“Have you ever believed in something with all your heart, only to discover it was an ugly little lie?”

“Shut up.”

“Everything you think you know about this town and about your mother and her family—all those things are pretty little lies covering up the ugly, awful truth.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes, Chris. Maybe this has all been some elaborate test.”

I move closer.

“Maybe we never wanted Jocelyn. That sweet but dirty little thing you professed to love.”

I curse at him.

“Maybe all we ever wanted was you.”

My hand is steady and I know it’s because I’ve used a weapon before and I’ll do it again. Even though a gun’s a lot different from a knife, it doesn’t matter.

I’m not Chris Buckley because that boy died on New Year’s Eve along with something far more precious.

Stop before it’s too late.

“We’re watching, but all you see is the scene before you,” Pastor Marsh says. “You don’t see anybody but a face you hate and fear and a boy you hate and fear even more.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

He smiles. “If you do, Chris, we will watch and applaud and await.”

Then the pastor opens his arms as if giving the benediction at church.

And that’s when I plunge the twelve-inch hunting blade deep into the place where I imagine his heart might have been at one time.

I see Jocelyn’s face as I move the knife and feel the softness of skin and hear the gasping, choking breath as I thrust down.

I let go and see him looking surprised. Not in horror, but almost in utter delight.

“You want to know the truth, Chris?” a draining, coughing voice asks.

And then he tells me.

And suddenly I realize that he’s right and I’m wrong.

I realize this just as he staggers over the falls and drops below.

1. The State of a Sixteen-year-old

Snow.

That’s what the new day brings.

A white, cold cover-up.

Complete and total isolation.

Icy fingertips on the window.

And hot, raging anger.

The second day of the new year, and I’m ready to wake up from this nightmare and find myself back in Illinois. Where’s my buddy Brady’s game room with all the latest games and the ability to connect with twenty other players online? I can only connect with a dog that looks like a cotton ball dropped in chocolate. Everything else is impossible. Starting with Mom.

She looks like a survivor of a car crash. I didn’t want to talk with her yesterday, but when morning came and she eventually woke up and I made an effort to communicate, I knew that something was wrong with her, too. Maybe she watched her own personal New Year’s Eve bonfire and sacrifice. Maybe she got a call from Dad saying he wanted her back. Maybe she realized the mess the two of us are in and then proceeded to drink herself to oblivion.

I was going to tell her, but not in her condition of walking unconsciousness. Instead I made her coffee and waited until she could listen without dozing off into Slumberland.

Our phones don’t work. Of course. Mom says they’ve been out ever since the ice falling last night turned to snow. If she’s so groggy now, how can she remember what it was like in the middle of the night? All I can remember is the tapping on the window and Midnight snuggling next to me. I can’t imagine the dog enduring a storm like this in the deserted barn where Jocelyn was keeping her.

Sure you can, buddy. You can imagine anything now. Anything.

The Internet doesn’t work either. Yet our cable does.

I’d try a cell, but we haven’t made it that far. Baby steps. Like my license. Like my sanity. Like my soul.

Midday, and the weather reports are wrong. This ice-turning-into-snow storm has tripled expectations, at least in the wonderful little vacation getaway of Solitary.
Come for the weekend, and you’ll leave scarred and changed for life! Come for life, and you’ll discover that life’s not exactly worth living.

I stepped out on the deck and saw a good seven or eight inches.

That was hours ago.

That means any thought of driving is no good.

No phone, no Internet, no car.

And no Mom.

I’m imprisoned with this rage inside me.

Still in shock, still out of my mind in awesome terror, still in this little cabin that once belonged to Uncle Robert before he disappeared.

A voice reminds me that oh, yeah, I’m still sixteen.

But I don’t believe that voice anymore.

2. Déjà Vu

You leave, and we’ll forget you. Do you understand?

Snowflakes hurl sideways as I make my way down the white, vanished road.

We can do this to your mother, Chris. To your father. We can do this to anybody who means anything to you.

I squint and look out the slit between my cap and the scarf covering my nose and mouth.

You’ll live and you’ll know, Chris. And you won’t tell another single soul. Do you understand?

Each step I take is like one taken on the top of Mount Everest. It’s not just the deep snow; it’s that wind.

Do you understand?

I’ve been walking for at least half an hour.

Walking with that voice going off in my mind.

My answer has changed.

No, I don’t understand.

And no, I’m not staying quiet.

There are two ways into town. Sable Road comes in from both the north and the south. Two roads that feed into a town the world has somehow neglected. So
snowed in
really means that. As I trudge through foot-deep snow, I realize it’s going to take a while for them to plow Sable Road, and far longer to plow side roads like mine.

There’s no way every single person in this town could be crazy psycho. No way. That’s nice in zombie movies, but this is no Hollywood set.

If I can’t find anybody in town, I’ll keep walking until I get to another town. To another state.

To somewhere else.

The wind howls, and I swear I hear Jocelyn’s voice in it.

Whispering
Be careful.

Whispering
Be smart.

But that’s not her ghost because … because it’s not.

Maybe I’ll be able to see her with the help of some freaky old lady who does séances, but not here and not today.

I notice the tall trees that stand by the road like people watching a parade. Silent, towering sentries in white, guarding Solitary. I don’t realize just how far the town is from our cabin. It sure doesn’t help that I’m wearing tennis shoes. But snow boots are on the To Buy list along with a shotgun and some vampire repellent and an AA book for Mom.

Everything is gray, and I can’t make out the end of the street. A dark cloud of doom seems to be stuck in this place, or at least stuck right over me.

When the road turns, I see the partially concealed sign of Solitary. Underneath reads the statistic that has never caught my eye until now.

Population 1772.

I think about how many people that is. Almost two thousand. They can’t all own red robes and conduct sick rituals in the middle of the night. Not all two thousand. I refuse to believe that.

Population 1772—no wait, strike that. Now it’s population 1771.

The wind howls, and again it seems to speak to me.

Not now, Chris, not like this.

But that’s my fear talking.

I stood by the sideline and watched and waited when I should have done something. Anything. I should have gotten the car and forced Jocelyn to come with me. We could be in Canada by now. I could have forced Mom to come somehow.

No, you couldn’t.

I could have saved Joss.

She could still be by my side this very instant.

No, she couldn’t.

One thing the last twenty-four hours has taught me: I will never again be complacent. I will never just wait and wonder.

I’m going to seize the day, as they say. Or seize someone’s throat. Whichever comes first.

The snow launches another offensive right as I pass the sign of Solitary. I can still only see dimming nothingness in front of me.

Until I see the figure.

I have a bit of déjà vu and remember a figure like this seeming to guard a town when I thought that town didn’t need to be guarded. When I thought Solitary was just another little town stuck in the middle of North Carolina.

The figure stands in the middle of the road.

Then something else emerges at his side. Something low and dense.

A dog.

The dog has to be the German shepherd. The figure has to be that guy. The one I saw the day I rode my bike into town. The one I spotted at my driveway that one morning. The figure with a red mountain-man beard and a long trench coat.

I don’t slow down.

The dog seems to jerk forward at me, but something keeps him restrained. He must be on a leash.

Flakes fly all sorts of ways as my footsteps feel weighed down, my feet no longer just cold but numb, my back damp with sweat, my nose a frigid Popsicle.

The man just stands there, facing me. I can see his face under a hood.

Is there anybody normal in this crazy town?

“Hello,” I call out.

But the word gets sucked into the storm as soon as it comes out.

“Hey, can you help me?”

This of course is crazy, but I don’t know what else to do. Nothing is as it seems in this town, so why should some dark, hulking guy with a scary dog necessarily be bad? I’m already here, and running away seems to be a bit ridiculous considering I can’t even—

“Chris, over here!” a voice says.

It’s a guy’s voice, but not one I recognize. It seems to be flying around the air just like the snow. I turn to the side where I thought it came from and don’t see anything—just the side of the road and the forest behind it.

I turn again and see something coming toward me.

“Chris, watch out!”

The moving thing has to be the dog.

It’s bearing down on me and flying over the snow.

I think of that other dog I saw in the woods. The dog-thing-creature that was after me.

What’d I ever do to dogs?

I turn to run, and this is of course stupid, but I don’t know what else to do.

I slip but regain my footing and then race down the path I’ve been walking. I decide to veer right into the woods.

I don’t look behind me, but I can hear it.

“Chris, over here!”

Then I see something coming out of the woods toward me over me on top of me and I don’t know if I can—