The Pricker Boy (15 page)

I
reach into my pocket and pull out the ring. I press it hard into my palm and pull it away. There’s an imprint of a circle left behind. It’s way too big for a kid to have worn, but that doesn’t mean that one of us didn’t treasure it for some reason. Found it in the leaves or in the shallow water of the pond. Picked it up and gloated about our lucky find. But if it was so important that it was sacrificed for a widow’s walk, then someone should remember it.

“So I guess it’s just a normal summer from now on,” I say to the others.

Light from the Japanese lanterns flickers off the ring. Earlier in the evening, my father pulled me aside and told me that we couldn’t have a fire out at Whale’s Jaw. I was going to say, “What are you talking about, Dad? We don’t have fires out at Whale’s Jaw.” Instead I said, “We keep
buckets of water out there. Just like you used to when we were little. We’re careful.”

“It’s been dry,” my father said. “So use the lanterns.”

The lanterns are a pain in the ass, and I told my father so.

“I wouldn’t even let you use the lanterns if there was a breeze. Look, I don’t care what you guys do out there. Roast marshmallows, tell ghost stories, curse and call your parents assholes … whatever. But if I take a walk into the woods and see a fire tonight, then I’m coming out there, and the party’s over.”

“I’ll make a deal with you, Dad. Ronnie’s planning on telling a pretty scary one tonight. Lots of blood and gore in this one. Could you keep the Cricket home tonight?”

A little white lie never hurts, and if it keeps the Cricket from hearing anything about what’s really going on, then it’s worth it.

“That won’t be easy,” he said.

“Just one night. And I won’t be out late, so it’s not like you’ll have to hold him for long.”

Dad agreed. I carried the lanterns out to Whale’s Jaw, Boris wheezing and panting by my side. I hung them by Christmas-tree hooks on the branches around the fire pit and lit them with votive candles.

Now we’re sitting by the fire pit and watching dusk fall. The lanterns are becoming red and green and yellow orbs glowing in the trees. They’re pretty creepy. I’d really rather have a fire.

I close my fist tightly around the ring and look up at Vivek, Ronnie, Emily, and Robin. “How about it? Normal summer? Catchin’ fireflies and swimmin’ in the pond and playin’ tag?”

Emily reaches over and pinches one of the accordionlike rice-paper folds on a green lantern. “There was nothing that happened out in the woods that can’t be chalked up to overactive imaginations,” she says. She releases the fold and then gently taps the side of the lantern.

I have a tough time holding back my anger. “Overactive imaginations! The package, the words carved in the stone, even the Hawthorn Trees! What was it you said?
Those fairies get very upset if the tree is harmed in any way.
Something about sickness to the house of the offender? And what’s the first thing you do? Pluck the berries! Well, look around! We’ve been scratching at scabs for a week now.”

“Don’t you point that one at me,” she shoots back. “You know poison ivy better than any of us. You must have seen it. So let’s not blame the Hawthorns.”

“I told you it was poison ivy, you jerk,” Robin chimes in. “
You wouldn’t know poison ivy if your own name was written on the leaves.
” She folds her arms, leans back in her seat, and looks off into the trees. She continues talking, but it sounds more like she’s talking to the lanterns than to us. “I learned my lesson. I’m not going back there again. Poison ivy in my crotch! If they want to go back, they can, but I’m no dope.”

“I can’t go back,” Ronnie says. “My grandpa says—”

I sneer at him. “Your grandpa says what? Did he offer you a cookie if you promised not to go back into the woods again?”

I shake my head. I slide the ring over my thumb and pick up my fire poker. I jab at the ground, and the soil crumbles to powder. There hasn’t been a drop of rain in three weeks, and there isn’t any expected for some time. You can almost hear the ground beneath us crying with thirst.

“I don’t believe in fairies or woodland demons, Stucks,” Emily states. “I’ll admit that when I was a kid it scared me a little, but I never believed in the Pricker Boy any more than I believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. And I gave up Santa and the Easter Bunny a long time ago.”

“I’m Hindu,” Vivek says. “I never had to give up Santa or the Easter Bunny. Just women with lots of arms. Whole lots.”

I glare at him. “You know, I’m getting pretty sick and tired of your dumbass jokes.”

“I don’t know any other kinds of jokes. Sorry!”

We look at each other over the fire for a moment, and then Emily interrupts our staring contest. “Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aside, I’m still … interested,” she says. Boris wanders over to Emily and sticks his nose into her palm. She scratches his head. “And if one of you is orchestrating this whole thing—the package, the carving on the stone, the things you claim that you’ve seen—then now’s the time to stop. Because if it turns out that one or both of
you set this up as some kind of prank, then I’m going to lose interest pretty quickly. Both in this story and in you.”

“She’s talking about us!” Ronnie says, looking over at me.

Emily ignores him at first. She reaches into the pouch of her sweatshirt and pulls out a dog biscuit. She sniffs it once before handing it over to Boris. He flops to the ground and begins crunching. Finally Emily says, “Yes, I’m talking about you.”

“Hey, I know this is my story, so I guess that makes me the prime suspect for putting that package out there, but I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t leave any of you out there on your own either.”

Robin releases a sad sigh, then reaches over and squeezes Ronnie’s arm. “We told you, Ronnie. We thought that you’d headed back. We never would have left you out there on purpose. I swear, Ronnie. I feel so bad about what happened.”

“If you knew how to pee properly, then it never
would
have happened,” I say.

Vivek raises an eyebrow and turns toward Ronnie. “You don’t know how to pee?”

“You’re all just trying to embarrass me again!” Ronnie blurts. “You left me out there! You left me!”

At first, I think Vivek’s going to make another dumb joke. But then something in his face changes.

“It’s not their fault, Ronnie,” he says. “It’s mine.”

Ronnie looks confused. “But you weren’t even there.”

“Exactly. I was the one who said that we would all stay together. I should have been back there with you guys, but I wasn’t. And I’m sorry about that, bud. It never should have happened. Never.”

The way Vivek says “never” stretches his apology back further than our one-day trek out into the woods. Ronnie looks like he wants to say something, but no words come out.

So I speak first.

“I guess I’m the only one here who still believes in the Easter Bunny, because that thing out there scares the hell out of me,” I say. “Emily, do you really think that I’ve set this up? How could I have gotten hold of the old baseball cards, the locket, the book? I believe that there is something in those woods, something I can’t explain, and maybe I’m supposed to be too old to believe in it, but I do anyway. I told you, I saw that stone pit. You could see it from the ridge above! Are you saying that I rolled those boulders over so that they surrounded the Hora House? Or maybe I went back in time and actually
built
the Hora House?”

Emily turns to Robin. “Did you see this stone pit?”

“No,” she admits. I am just about to chuck a few choice words at her when she adds, “but I wasn’t looking down. I was too worried about the Cricket. I can’t say that it was down there … but I won’t say that it wasn’t.”

“Fair enough,” I say, nodding. I have to admit, I’m surprised by what she just said. But because no one else seems willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, I add, “There’s
one thing that no one here is considering. If there is any truth to the story—”

“That’s a good question,” Emily says, picking at the flaky remnants of poison-ivy rash on her jaw. She turns to Ronnie. “The time for ‘stories’ is over. You’ve been telling us for years that this is a true story, one that you did not make up. I want the truth.”

Ronnie slumps down in his chair. “Parts of it are true. Parts are made up. Those kids really died. My grandpa told me so when I was little so I wouldn’t go too far into the woods. And I know people have claimed to have seen him. A lot of the details were made up, filled in.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that before we went out into the woods?” Robin asks.

“Because it’s my story,” Ronnie says, sulking. “I made it. It’s mine. But it’s beginning to feel true. I didn’t tell you guys, but I thought I saw something out there too. That’s why I wasn’t at the Hora House when you got back. I saw a little boy and thought it was the Cricket and pushed through the bushes after him. But then it laughed and vanished, and for a few minutes I couldn’t find my way back. When I did, you guys were gone.”

“But you couldn’t have gone far,” Robin says. “Didn’t you hear us shouting for you?”

“I didn’t hear anything at all.” He shivers, then whispers, “I’m scared.”

A curious expression comes over Vivek’s face. He leans over and looks at the ground. “Did one of you guys start
smoking?” he asks, plucking a cigarette butt off the ground and tossing it into the fire pit. He finds two more and picks them up—

Boris leaps to his feet, the hair on his back rising. He looks up toward the Widow’s Stone and barks. Just like before, just like on the first day of summer.

I reach down and try to calm him, but he spins in the dirt, takes a few steps toward the path, and looks back over his shoulder.

Then a sound rises from the woods, a gruesome sound, frightened and sobbing. We all jump to our feet. Ronnie’s chair falls over. Robin knocks into one of the lanterns, and it falls to the ground. The votive topples out, snuffing itself out in the dirt.

“What the hell?” Vivek says. Emily actually steps forward, turning her ear in the direction of the sound.

We hear it again. It is a single voice, wailing from the woods. At first I think that it might be Pete out there, hiding out in the darkness and trying to mess with us all, but there is something unreal about the sounds, and I know that Pete could never produce them.

Vivek stumbles backward down the path. I hear Boris’s growl rumbling.

The voice yelps—excited and happy. It isn’t forming words, just releasing sounds into the night. It’s human, or at least it sounds human. My skin prickles cold in spite of the heat. This is clearly a child’s voice. A child’s voice mixed with blindness, blackness, and blood.

“My God,” Ronnie says. “I’ve never heard anything like that before in my life.”

The voice calls again, almost forming words before dissolving into nonsense. Now it’s a voice of madness, of gibberish. It says nothing rational, but it delights in every squeal it produces, as if it has been bound and gagged for a hundred years and some dark angel has finally reached down and ripped the muzzle from its mouth.

And it’s getting closer.

“Come on, let’s go!” Vivek shouts at us.

Robin joins him on the path. “Guys, let’s get out of here!”

“No,” Emily responds softly, as if she is in a trance. “Let’s wait a moment.”

Another voice joins, just as sickly as the first, and the two of them echo through the woods together. Any lingering suspicion that Pete is the cause of the noises evaporates, and I find myself crossing my fingers and praying that if Pete is in the woods tonight, he is far away from whatever is making these noises. Another voice joins, and another. Four in all, whooping with delight, happy together in the darkness out near the Hawthorns.

“It’s children,” Emily says, stepping toward them again. “They sound like children.”

They rush at us from over the hill. Emily doesn’t move. I push Ronnie down the path and grab Emily by the arm. I pull her along behind me. Boris follows at my heels.

We sprint halfway down the path, but just past the twin
climbing trees, Emily yanks her arm out of my hand. “Let go of me!” she says. Again she turns toward the noises. “I want to know what they are.” She starts to jog back toward them.

I know what they are. They’re those things that rose up around Emily in the cellar of the Hora House. Those things that were sleeping in the leaves. We woke them up, and now they’ve come back to the woods. And if I need to save her from them again, I’ll do it. I’ll throw her over my shoulder if I have to. I run after her, but just before I get to her, she reaches up and grabs hold of one of the branches of the climbing trees. She pulls herself up and disappears into the darkness above. From behind me I hear, “I’ve got to see too.” Ronnie pushes past me and climbs up behind Emily.

“Are they nuts?” Vivek says. “I’m getting out of here!”

I look at Robin. She looks back at me. “Let’s go,” I say.

“Okay, Cousin.”

Vivek is a few steps away before he realizes that we’ve taken to the trees with the others. He curses, looks toward the safety of home, stamps his foot, shakes his head at our stupidity. Then he follows us up.

I look down at Boris. He’s growling, whining, pawing at the dirt. “Boris,” I call down. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Go home!” He looks up at me. I can see genuine concern in his eyes. “Go home!” I shout at him. He obeys and runs off down the path.

I take the right tree with Emily. Robin follows Ronnie up the left one. Vivek pushes himself into the crook between the two. The voices haven’t followed us. They’ve stopped somewhere up around Whale’s Jaw. But they’re still screaming.

They do sound like children playing in the woods, but there is something else to them, some other quality that is impossible to put my finger on. Their voices are hollow. They sound like children whose minds have been torn apart and then sewn back to rag dolls. Unable to form words anymore, they simply scream out for each other, scream out and sing and laugh in the darkness.

“They sound like demons,” I say. “They sound like devils. Playing in our woods.”

Then I see something. In the dim light of those lanterns I see a large figure moving around the fire pit. The figure screams, and all the other voices go silent. He goes into a rage, furiously smashing at the lanterns and throwing our chairs off into the bushes. One of the lanterns catches fire, and in the flames’ yellow glow I can see the thing more clearly. He looks as if his shoulders are covered with short, sharp antlers. His hips look more like haunches.