Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series) (13 page)

39. A Sign

It takes me half a second to realize where we are when we pull up.

I almost grab the guy’s keys and jam them back into the minivan and force him to take me back to Solitary.

What at first felt like a joke now feels like a mean prank.

Maybe that’s what this is, and this is Marsh showing me he’s still in control.

“Getting out?” Mounds asks.

The Chris Buckley who came here with Jocelyn ages ago was a different guy. The field is still the same, wild and overgrown with the abandoned skeleton of the church right next to it. It seems like the church has managed to fall apart even more, with more chunks of the wall missing than last time I was here.

Mounds opens the back door and hands me a suitcase. “Carry that, okay?” He grabs something that looks like a metal detector, and then we head to the church.

The church I remember Jocelyn telling me she was baptized in.

I remember her words to me.

I was only six years old when they died
.

But now, knowing everything I know, I realize that her parents’ death wasn’t accidental.

But why her parents? And why Jocelyn?

I stand there next to the burnt-down church, holding the suitcase. The wind gusts and chills me.

“Come over here.”

I do as I’m told. I open the suitcase and take out a boxlike thing that I’m supposed to hold up in the air. It’s light and resembles a big speaker. I’m not even going to ask Mounds what all this stuff does.

I think back to something else Jocelyn said.

It’s amazing how memories work like this.

Sometimes I think the darkness has swallowed up the light.

If only she knew the entire truth.

You were an answer to prayer. That I know.

An answer to a prayer that never finished the job he came to do.

I did not guard her the way an angel might.

“Come ’ere, Rick!”

This goes on with Mounds for about half an hour, with him checking the grounds of the church and the walls.

After a while, he just shakes his head.

“Nothing.”

He’s still waving his long ghost-detector stick over the ground as I put the box back in the suitcase, then head out to find the gravestones for Jocelyn’s parents. I want to make sure the stone I brought is still there.

It takes me a few minutes to find the gravestones.

I find the stone I made with the marked-in J on it. I’m probably the only one who would know that was a J. That’s okay.

Then I notice something beside it.

No.

I don’t want to pick it up, but I have to.

It can’t be. I got rid of that.

I know that when I touch it, it will disappear.

But the brown leather wristband is real.

It’s the one Jocelyn gave me as a Christmas present a year ago. The one her mother had given to her father.

The same one I put in the backpack along with the Bible from my father and the color printout of a picture of Jocelyn and me. The backpack I tossed over Marsh Falls.

My hand is shaking as I hold the leather band.

Then I glance up to the cloudy gray sky.

Are you watching over me now? Are you there, Jocelyn?

I really hope so. Even if I did send her away in my dreams. Maybe, possibly, she’s still out there.

Maybe this is a sign.

I touch the gravestone I made for her and then stand up. When I do, I hear Mounds shout something.

I start to rush back to the church, thinking he needs something, but then I hear him tell me to stay put.

“What is it?” I ask, not listening very well.

I make it inside the remains of the church, and then I see Mounds looking in terror at something outside.

A wolf is standing near the doorway as if on watch.

Then I spot another wolf, this one lighter-colored and really long.

Then another. And another.

“There’s a pack of them,” Mounds says. “Gotta be like a dozen of ’em.”

I see them and then look back to the field I was just in. I see another one coming.

It’s the dark one I remember seeing when I was last here. Not very tall but almost black.

It watches us but doesn’t seem to be dangerous.

“I’ve seen it here before,” I tell Mounds.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yeah.”

He curses and laughs at the same time. Then I hear a gurgling sound. He’s looking at the instrument in his hands.

“This thing is going haywire, man!”

The wolves watch us for a while, then the dark wolf goes over to the rest of the pack. It’s as if they were waiting on him.

Or her. You know it sure might be a her.

Mounds is blabbering about his meter picking up all these readings.

I just watch the wolves head into the nearby woods.

I look back at the leather band in my hand.

Nothing is accidental. Nothing is random.

I used to think things were, but not anymore.

I think that Jocelyn was waiting for me to come back here. To give me a gift.

And to give me a sign.

I’m not alone.

40. My Prayer

Mounds is driving like a lunatic, telling me he’s never in forty-two years of life seen that much activity show up in a concentrated place. He’s talking about how the instrument he built from scratch is able to detect spiritual entities and he’s explaining this and that but I’m a little overwhelmed myself.

He doesn’t have to convince me that what we saw was something supernatural.

The wolves would have been enough. But of course I have the leather band.

When we arrive back in Solitary it’s dark out, and Mounds asks if I need a ride home. I tell him thanks but I have my bike. Then he finds his coat in the back and grabs his wallet.

“Here’s six twenties, and there’s more when I get it,” he says. “Man, you’re like my lucky charm or something.”

I hold the money that’s not blood money but something I earned.

Even if I did it in a weird way.

“I’ll call you when I’m going out again. I gotta get these findings down in my journals and then blog about them.”

He hands me a card that gives me his blog address and other information.

I just want to go back home.

Who knows what’s waiting for me there.

Nothing supernatural or extraordinary.

But before I go to bed, I do try and see whether I can get another message from the other side.

Or maybe from one of those spaces in between.

I grab the Bible that my father once gave me and that Iris recently regifted to me.

As the wood in the fireplace is crackling to life, I close my eyes and open the Bible randomly.

I look down at a chapter from Ezekiel.

I start reading and then I glaze over, not really getting what I’m reading.

Then this message came to me from the L
ORD
: “Son of man, turn and face the south and speak out against it; prophesy against the brushlands of the Negev.”

Well, this is helpful if I know any Negev, but you know …

“Tell the southern wilderness, ‘This is what the Sovereign L
ORD
says: Hear the word of the L
ORD
! I will set you on fire, and every tree, both green and dry, will be burned. The terrible flames will not be quenched and will scorch everything from south to north. And everyone in the world will see that I, the L
ORD
, have set this fire. It will not be put out.”

I shut the Bible and then wait until the fire is fully going. As I do I fasten the leather band on my left wrist.

Maybe not everything has to have a message or a point. Maybe you don’t magically get a message every time you open the Bible.

Maybe the whole point is to open the Bible. And to keep opening it.

And to pray.

In this room with Midnight on my lap, sleeping in a contented way I can only dream about, I pray that God will show me the way.

I’ve heard people say that before, but it’s okay.

I need to be shown the way. It’s not just a cliché. It’s my prayer. It’s my need.

Not long after that, I fall asleep just like that.

And I actually do sleep as soundly as the Shih Tzu next to me.

41. Hurley’s Numbers

February arrives, and with it comes the first big party of the year. At least the first one I actually hear about.

When Kelsey says that she wants to go (since her friend Georgia is going), it makes me think of the time over the summer when I went to a party with my summer-school friends. Of course Lily is gone and so is Roger, though only one is by choice. I still see Harris and Brick at school. At the time of that party I was still running around after Lily like a dog wagging its tail.

Then Kelsey strolled across my path, knowing she’d get my attention.

I haven’t seen her in anything as wow! as that outfit since, though she really has changed from the mouselike girl I met in art class.

Wonder if I’ve changed, and whether it’s been for the good or the bad?

Kelsey agrees to pick me up, which is a good thing because that also means she can bring me home.

Home to an empty house where parents won’t be around.

Maybe the timing police will have it out for me again, and my mom will finally come back home.

I’d be glad if she did, of course, because I miss her and want her back around. I don’t
need
her—I’m doing okay. But just knowing she’s there and safe would make my mornings and nights a whole lot better.

Before heading out, I dash on some of Uncle Robert’s cologne, then check out the new shirt and jeans I bought with my ghost-hunter money.

The mirror seems to give me a bored glance back.

Yeah, I know.

Thank goodness there’s someone on this earth who might think that a new outfit and cologne mean something.

I hear that someone knocking, and I answer the door and greet Kelsey with a kiss.

I’m not sure where this is heading, this Chris-Kelsey thing, but I don’t want to worry about that tonight.

For some reason, this party is a chance to take a break from the blues and actually try to have a little fun.

As long as
they
leave me alone.

The visions and nightmares and people without faces under the haunted bridge.

“You look great,” I tell Kelsey after we get into her car.

She thanks me, but something tells me I should thank her. Kelsey doesn’t wear many skirts to school, but she’s wearing one tonight. I don’t want to stare at her legs like some creepy old man, but I have to admit she’s nice to watch as she drives the car.

“Stop,” she says.

“What?”

“Stop looking at me.”

“I’m admiring you.”

“Don’t,” she says in a shy way that makes me want to watch her even more. “I hate people staring at me.”

“That time at the party in the summer. You wanted me to stare, didn’t you?”

She looks at me without saying anything and only smiles.

“Girls. You’re all the same.”

“No, we’re not.”

“I think so.”

“Sometimes you just have to get someone’s attention,” Kelsey says.

“Well, it worked.”

Again she only smiles, the way only girls can smile.

Guys just aren’t that smart. And they almost never get the things they really want.

Roger from my summer class drapes an arm around me and greets both Kelsey and me. He does it more to talk to her, which I find amusing since he probably could have talked to her anytime he wanted when he was actually going to Harrington.

“Shouldn’t you be at college?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah. That didn’t work out too well.”

He’s still got the short, short beard going with the faux-hawk hair, but somehow he looks a little different.

Heavier. He looks heavier.

“Were you going to USC?” I ask.

That’s what he told everybody, but I never believed it and I still don’t. Especially since you don’t just come home for the weekend (especially in February) if you’re living in California.

“Universities are a drag,” he says, then looks Kelsey up and down. “So who are you?”

Kelsey smiles and then darts away to find someone else. Or maybe just to find the nearest bathroom to hide in.

We’re at a large house that’s close to downtown but tucked away behind woods on a hill. The kid who lives there is a sophomore. It’s the typical weekend party. Loud music and lots of kids standing around looking at other kids standing around.

“You’re always hanging out with a hottie, aren’t you?” Roger asks.

“Her name is Kelsey.”

And she would probably choke to hear she was called a hottie.

“You ever hear from Lily?”

I’m not sure if he’s joking or not.

Oli dying made news; Lily dying was different. Everybody knew Oli. He’d been part of Gus’s gang for a long time. Nobody really knew Lily.

And because of the way she died, it was easy to cover up.

I just tell Roger I’ve lost contact with Lily.

“So you getting any from Ms. Long Legs?”

Somehow I think this name is actually worse than hottie.

I look at him to see if he’s being serious, and he really is.

“You know—maybe girls would hang around you if you weren’t so …” I pause as if I’m thinking of the exact word to describe him. “You.”

Roger doesn’t seem to get it, but that’s okay. I go to find Kelsey. Ms. Long Legs Hottie herself.

I’ll just keep the names to myself.

I’d rather not be slapped tonight.

It’s around ten, and I’m bored and in the mood to go home. Kelsey is talking with Georgia, and I leave them to talk since I still get the vibe that Georgia isn’t my biggest fan. I guess after the whole Lily thing, I can understand that. Georgia doesn’t know me, and really that’s fine.

I have to use the bathroom, hoping that it’s the last thing I do before we leave. When the two bathrooms on the main floor are locked, I go down the stairs to the finished basement.

What I find is a large group—maybe about a dozen people—sitting on the wood floor in shadows, playing cards.

Playing that card game. The one I’ve seen before at parties in Solitary.

I think of the time Lily and I played this game. And Lily began to wonder what was going on in this town.

I ask where the bathroom is and someone points to a door a ways down. I’m heading back to the stairs when someone calls to me.

“Come on, Chris. Join us.”

It’s as if they were told to let me play.

“Nah, thanks anyway. Really.”

A tall kid who looks like a basketball player stares at me and says, “I think it’s probably good if you play.”

“And why’s that?”

The faces look at me, and I scan them to see if I recognize anybody. I don’t, but it sure seems like they recognize me.

“Go ahead, Chris,” the tall guy says again.

Talk about peer pressure.

I walk over to the game and reach down to pick up a card. The last time I did this, I picked up a card that matched Lily’s.

But that was fixed, right?

Lily sure didn’t know about the card game. And so far Marsh or Staunch have never said that they rigged that game on my account.

But of course they did. They had to.

Maybe this will prove that the game is ridiculous.

I put my card over the lit candle and hold it until an image appears.

It’s a number. Or maybe a year.

“1820.”

I hold the number and show it to everybody.

“I was personally hoping I’d get 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42.”

They all continue to stare at me like characters in a zombie movie.

“You know—Hurley’s numbers,” I say with a laugh.

Nobody laughs with me.

I nod and then leave as fast as I can.

I recall being told that a number means that there’s a task you’ll have to do.

But who’s going to tell me what to do? Marsh? Kinner? Maybe Mounds?

The very thought of Kinner makes me want to torch the card. I slip it into my pocket so that Kelsey doesn’t see it. When I find her, she asks where I was.

“Just getting a tour of the house,” I say. “You want to stay much longer?”

She shakes her head and gives me a serious look.

Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking?

But I have enough thoughts going on inside my head for the both of us. I glance at Georgia, who still mostly ignores me.

“Good night, Georgia,” I say just to make sure I get her attention.

“Good night,” she says in a mocking way that proves she totally hates me.

I leave the party finally doing what I’ve wanted to do since Kelsey showed up at my door.

Being alone. With her.