Dastardly Bastard (22 page)

42

“THAT LEAVES YOU MARK,” JUSTINE told the big man. “You were running toward Lyle. Reaching out to him and—”

“Wait.” Mark tried to grab her wrist, but his hand passed right through her arm. He looked at her, a sudden harsh fear in his eyes. “What about you?”

“He never got to me. For whatever reason. I didn’t let him take me. I came here on my own.” She knew what she was saying was the truth. If it meant saving these three, possibly more, she would let them go. She could be the one to stay behind. She had giant tracks to follow… and a boyfriend to find. “You caught him, Mark. You were so brave. I remember crying for you. You’re a hero.” Justine watched the man float off, being sucked away into a bright blue sky.

“We’ll find you, Justine. I don’t know how, but—”

Justine smiled. “I know. Now go on.”

Mark wavered, flickering like a dying light bulb. And then, he was gone.

“That’s that, then.” Justine sucked in a long deep breath. She kissed Trevor’s ring, letting her lips stay much longer than she’d intended. Turning back toward the crushed section of road, Justine felt she was taking her final steps toward the end. She didn’t know if she would survive, but something had to be done. She was glad she’d let Lyle, Mark and Donald go. It wasn’t their fight. If the Dastardly Bastard wanted her, then damn it, he’d have to take her.

43

THE GIANT’S TRACKS LED HER into the woods of Rifle Park. Lyle had given her the name of the place, told the group about the bonfire at the middle, and something resounded in her at the thought of it. Following the path of fallen timber and packed earth, she went through an S-curve. The monster had taken a zigzag approach, destroying everything in its wake. More than once, she had to climb trunks, sharp branches pricking her arms and legs.

If what Mark and Donald had said was true, she shouldn’t be able to feel anything, or at least should be able to ignore it. The pain in her legs was worsening, and the scratches continued to bleed. She
could
be hurt. She thought maybe it was because she had jumped into the chasm. Everyone else had been taken against his or her will. She’d volunteered.

“Smart move, dipshit.” Justine laughed at herself. The outburst was a brief glimpse of the insanity of the situation. There she was, traversing a trail that some glued-together monster had taken, trying to find a shadow that could destroy a person with nothing more than a memory. For the umpteenth time, Justine wondered how she was supposed to fight the thing when she finally unearthed it.

She smelled smoke. The acrid fumes rolled through the trees. Thick gray tendrils snaked around her body, swallowing her whole. Though she could no longer see where she was going, she pressed on. One word kept popping up in her mind: bonfire.

What she found yards ahead shouldn’t have been surprising, but the simplicity of the sight caught her off guard. An orange flame blew in a smoky updraft. The fire was made of silk, not actual fire. The image reminded her of one of those wacky flailing inflatable arm guys car dealerships had. The base of the bonfire was cardboard, flimsy and creased in places where it had been folded over onto itself. Justine thought the scene looked more like a child’s rendering of a bonfire than the actual thing. Gray and black smoke leaked from somewhere behind the picture stand. She half expected the plume to take on a form, but it never did. At that point, it wouldn’t have surprised her to find a butt-naked leprechaun standing back there behind the vision, picking his toenails while he asked where she might have put his gold.

Justine skirted the faux bonfire, going around behind it. A plywood frame held the thing together. A staircase led underground. The steps were cobblestone, ancient and browning. Smoke rose from the entrance, pouring out around Justine. She tried to cough, but nothing came of it; her throat was dry. Justine waved a hand in front of her face, and the smoke cleared enough so she could find her footing on the first step. Oak banisters ran the length of the stairway, and she slid her hands along them as she made her descent.

The back of her legs screamed with every step. Justine dug down deep, willing her feet to continue. She wondered why breathing wasn’t a problem. The plumes of smoke encased her, offering no oxygen. She should have collapsed long ago.

After what felt like an eternity of steps, the stairway finally ended. The air was clearer at the bottom. Smoke rose, covering the ceiling of the new room she found herself in and escaping back the way she’d come.

In the middle of the chamber was the real bonfire. Embers flitted off it like lightning bugs. Along the rock walls, archways led to God-knew-where. From each, soft voices wafted. They whispered words in languages she didn’t recognize. As she went around the fire pit, Justine found a podium of granite, not unlike the rock face back on the chasm’s trail. The stone had been polished to a mirror finish, and the light gray rock shined with firelight. And behind the podium…

The Dastardly Bastard of Waverly Chasm does gleefully scheme of malevolent things…

“Welcome, child,” the Bastard hissed, not looking up from His work. Even bent at the waist, the Bastard’s dark form loomed eight feet tall. Black hands worked on something, a slippery sound coming off them. The Bastard sighed and rose to his full height.

“My God,” Justine gasped.

The entire body was covered in an inky darkness. Waves of lesser dark came off of him, dissipating into the air like cigar smoke. He moved like a flipbook cartoon, jagged motions that left shadows where he had once been. It was as if there were two of him—one corporeal form, followed by an ethereal part. Justine knew they were shadows. And they numbered in the hundreds.

Beware, child fair, of what you find there. His lies how they hide in the shadows he wears…

“What do you want?” the Bastard asked, as if already bored with her presence. He clicked forever-long fingers against the podium.

Justine met the thing’s one eye, a black void containing a small red gem. As the fire raged behind her, she saw the ruby dilate, then return to normal as the light faded.

“I want Trevor. And I want out.” Justine managed to maintain some semblance of bravery in the Bastard’s gaze, but she could feel her courage fleeing by the second.

“Then you should have never come.” His gaze lowered, and he went back to work on whatever kept his attention.

“I had no choice.
You
left me no choice.”

The Bastard laughed. “Me? Oh, you are a treasure. I see why he likes you.”

“What?” Justine felt unsure. She felt as if a rug was being pulled out from under her. Some terrible prank had been played. Feeling dizzy, she leaned against a far wall. The voices inside the tomb-like passageways hissed like angry snakes.

“I grow so very tired, child, tired of the games he plays. But I am helpless.” The Bastard chuckled. His hands snapped something in two, accompanied by a squeak from whatever he held.

“Who? I don’t understand.”

“You poor thing.” The Bastard clucked his tongue, a segmented thing far too full of red blood. His hand came up quick, popping something into his mouth. “You can’t really tell me you fell for the boy’s story.”

Justine, broken and enraged, screamed, “No! You’re lying! Why should I believe you?”

“In this place, child, I’m as much of a prisoner as you and your friends. It makes no difference if you believe me.”

Justine could stand no longer. All the strength drained from her legs, and she collapsed to her knees. “I don’t understand.”

“Please stop repeating yourself. These things are not your concern. The truth will come. If you let it.”

“I can’t… I can’t believe anything you show me. I won’t.”

“That makes no difference. I am but a fraction of the real problem. That boy is far more powerful than you and I combined. How else do you think I came to be here? I’m nothing more than his… servant.” The Bastard went back to his podium chores. “I do as I’m told. In turn, I am allowed to remain.”

I didn’t fall. I jumped.

“You weren’t down there hiding in the chasm. You were in the boy.”

“I thought he would set me free. But he had other intentions.”

That thing’s voice is so sweet. Like music. I heard it calling me. It wanted me down there with it. So I jumped. I heard my father calling me the entire way down.

“You were the boy’s… creation?”

“Nothing more than a fracture of the mind. They kept him hidden away in that… that
cell
. He had no one to talk to, no one to share his trauma, no one on which to lay the burden of his memories. I am only the product of a lonely child.”

Justine saw Scott sitting cross-legged in that padded room, drawing, coloring… writing. He had toiled over that poem just as the Bastard worked on yet another snack he would toss into his mouth.

‘Cross wreckage of bridge is where this man lives. Counting his spoils, his eyes how they dig.

“He created you as an escape. You were meant to save him.”

“And save him I did. From himself. He hid away in those houses up there, out of my sight. He cowers because he knows I will come for him. I will take what is left of him and swallow it whole.” The Bastard stuffed his maw with something that sounded an awful lot like a crying baby. Justine tried to clear the image from her head, but couldn’t. It was forever there, cemented in place.

“You want me to give him to you.”

The Bastard had no control over his master. He needed Justine’s help.

The Bastard stopped working and looked at Justine with that red gem. “You will help me, then?” During his meal, his midsection had grown to three times its original width. She doubted the thing was full. It would never be. All it did was eat, feeding on the memories Scott allowed him.

“What becomes of me?”

“I do.” The Bastard didn’t have to explain.

Justine would be no more. Everything she was, all her memories and hurt and pain would be erased. She would become him. Forever.

“Will you allow Trevor to leave?”

“If you wish.”

Justine nodded. “Do it.”

44

DONALD FELT AS IF HE’D just stuck a fork in a light socket. He sat up on the trail, coughing and gagging on a sulfuric taste in the back of his mouth. Rolling over onto his stomach, he crawled to the edge of the chasm and vomited over the side. His eyes burned, hot tears blinding him.

The situation flooded back at once. He was rooted in place by it. He lay there, his chin hanging over the cliff side, reliving every vision, every horrible little nuance, until it wasn’t so real anymore. His thoughts hung in the back of his mind, just out of sight, as if he’d only just awakened from a very bad dream.

Still, he knew it had all happened—the chaos on the trail, the faux memory of him being a coward, the decayed version of Sunne chasing him through the cave. Every realization and revelation was behind him, but not forgotten.

Yet, in the forefront of his mind, he could see the sun playing over Sunne’s untarnished face and the smile there, the twinkle in her chocolate eyes. He knew what had really happened in that alleyway, how he had fought for her survival.

His mind was pushing away the unneeded parts, focusing on the good. The real. He pushed himself off the ground, his sickness fleeing him. When he finally stood, Donald found himself on Flat Rock. The name of the place was there in his memory banks; the tour guide had told them about it. But the guide hadn’t mentioned the bridge. Donald remembered it, but in his mind, it had been older and looked much less stable.

The sky above him was cloven in two. To the north, the sun sat sturdy and bright. In the south, the man in the moon gazed down upon him. A line ran down the middle of the heavens. One side blue, the other starry night.

Not everything was back to normal.

45

MARK HAD COME TO FEELING much better than Lyle. The boy was at the curve of the trail, vomiting on the other side of an outcropping. Lyle was the only person Mark saw. Marsha, Jaleel, Trevor, Donald, and Justine were still absent. He knew that meant something. Moreover, the world above him was off, way off.

He went over and rubbed Lyle’s back. Lyle looked up at him with soft, watery eyes.

Mark could tell the boy realized they weren’t fully safe yet. “You all right?”

“No. It’s all disappearing. I can feel my memories leaving, like they’re being sucked up by a vacuum. You feel it?” Lyle wiped gunk from the corner of his mouth.

Mark glanced down at the thick fluid on Lyle’s hand. It was charcoal black and smelled of death. “You remember, Lyle. You remember your mom and dad. You focus on that. Understand?”

Lyle nodded somberly. “When did you get your camera back?”

Mark looked down. Resting atop his belly was his prized Nikon. He couldn’t help but smile. “Well, whataya know?”

“So, now what do we do?”

“We gotta find Justine and Donald. Squirt’s gotta be around here somewhere. He was the first one to go.” Mark cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, “Donald!”

“Down here!” The response was weak, followed by a coughing fit.

Mark took Lyle in one arm, laying his thick bicep around the boy’s shoulders, and pulled him along. The curve around the outcropping lengthened to a flat area. Standing in the middle of the expanse was Donald. The little guy looked like shit warmed over. As Lyle had, Donald was wiping stuff from the corner of his mouth.

“Where’s… where’s everyone else?” Donald straightened his sports coat as if it really mattered at that point.

“We’re still inside, if that’s the right terminology. I’m out of ideas, little man.”

Donald quirked an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Mark said, feeling guilty. “I’ll try and refrain from commenting on your size.”

“Thanks.”

“Justine didn’t come through?” Lyle asked. The boy was coming back into himself, figuring things out. Mark could see the pieces coming together in his eyes.