The Creek (21 page)

“But how? I mean, who killed him?”

Penny shrugged helplessly.

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

“He’s dead. His body—” Then she gulped hard and sat back down on the rattan stool, knowing her legs wouldn’t support her a minute longer. “Look,” she said miserably, holding out the silver cigarette case. It gleamed dully in the kitchen light.

Zachary stared at the case, transfixed.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” he whispered.

“Because,” she said, her voice catching. “Because of Becky. I knew he didn’t kill Becky, and I was trying to figure out who did. And now I have. It’s Oren.”

Zachary looked at her and then at the bag of melting Popsicles on the floor.

“Whoa,” he said, almost to himself. He picked up the bag and went over to the kitchen counter, with its sink full of dirty dinner dishes. He flipped on the
faucet and looked out the window, into the backyard.

“We have to tell the police,” he said. “We’re just kids.”

Penny sniffed miserably. “I know.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” she heard Zachary say in a soothing voice. He was standing right in front of her with a glass of water in one hand.

And then there was a flash of silver, a glinting arc, and Penny moved instinctively, tumbling back off the stool and slamming hard onto the floor. She scrambled up, the world spinning, and pumped her feet fast, toward the French doors and the hall leading upstairs. Zachary followed her slowly, the long, pointy kitchen knife in one hand.

Zachary was shaking his head in disappointment. “Penny,” he said. “Why did you have to go and do this? Everything was going so great.”

“It was you all along?” she gasped.

He lunged at her with the knife. He moved pretty fast, faster than she’d ever seen him move on the softball field. She stumbled down the hall toward the stairs and scrambled up quick as she could, slipping, her balance off.

Zachary paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I was
just doing what I had to do. And it worked. Everyone thought it was Caleb, and you liked me!”

“We
do
like you,” she said uncertainly.

“I just wanted to be friends with you guys!” He looked up at her, an anguished expression on his face. “You never let me get ice cream with you before all this happened!” he said, wailing.

Penny looked at him in horror.

“Why Becky?” she whispered shakily.

“It wasn’t my fault. She was just so nosy, always following me. And you! You were my favorite!” he said, his face twisting. “Why’d you have to ruin everything!”

Penny felt a rush of adrenaline at these words and moved faster now, crablike up the stairs, two steps at a time, until she was nearly at the top.

“No,” Penny said quickly. “I do like you, I—”

“Liar!” he roared. “You’re gonna tell everybody, and then I’ll never be friends with the guys! After all my hard work!”

“I won’t! I promise!” Penny begged, desperately.

“No, it’s too late,” Zachary said sadly, pointing the shiny knife at her, the same knife her mother used to chop onions.

“Please,” she started to say, and then all at once she knew there was no use talking because he was nuts, absolutely bananas, and with that thought she started down the upstairs hall, hearing him barreling up the stairs behind her. She flung the door to her bedroom open and staggered in, falling to her knees and rolling under her bed.

A moment later, she saw Zachary’s feet enter the room, watched them circle the bed. There was a vicious tearing noise and clumps of stuffing rained down to the floor, along with a lone plush bear arm. Georgie.

Penny rolled out from the other side of the bed, and Zachary caught sight of her. He flung himself at her, knife raised, her worst nightmare come true. Penny grabbed her pillow and held it out to shield herself. The knife ripped through the fabric, and feathers went flying. Penny shoved the pillow at Zachary and pushed with all her might. He tumbled onto the bed and she rushed back into the hall.

The door to her parents’ bedroom was open, and she slipped in. She heard loud voices and wild shouting outside, and crossed the room to the open window to look out. A crowd of parents had gathered in
front of the Devlins’ house—her mother and father were right there, too—and she couldn’t quite see, but there seemed to be some sort of commotion. The shouting was getting louder.

“Mom! Dad!” she screamed hysterically out the window, her voice shaking with the effort. “Help!”

But at that exact moment a loud shot rang out. And the shouting grew to a steady roar, punctuated by someone’s high-pitched screams.

Nobody could hear her.

“Penny?” Zachary called in a frustrated voice.

Penny shook her head. A wave of nausea washed over her, and she fell to her knees on the other side of her parents’ bed.

There was a soft noise at the door, and Penny flattened herself against the floor, hoping her body was obscured by the bed. She closed her eyes tight, her slender body wracked by shivers. Zachary seemed to hesitate a moment and then moved off down the hall, calling her name.

“Penny?”

Penny drew herself together, her heart pounding. She just wanted to curl up in a ball and hide under her parents’ bed as she used to do when she was a small
child and played with Teddy, their favorite game, hide-and-seek.
Hide-and-seek, that was it. Just pretend it’s a game,
she thought. He was on
her
territory. Even half blind, she knew it better than he did. But where to go? Her parents’ bedroom looked soft, all the edges blurred. And then there, in the corner, she saw the door.

The attic.

She crawled quietly across the floor and tried to open the door with a tug, but it was sticky; it wouldn’t budge.

“Come on,” she hissed urgently, pulling hard, frantically. The door finally gave way with a small creak. She rushed in, flicked on the light, and closed the door, looking for a way to lock it, but of course there was nothing, because why would someone lock an attic from the inside? She heard Zachary calling her name and climbed up the stairs.

“Penny”

The attic was stuffy and smelled like hot, stale wood. Penny took stock of her surroundings: the cotton-candy insulation, the boxes of baby clothes, the old wicker stroller with the sheet draped over it. Hanging from rods attached to wooden beams were the garment bags, big ones, the old-fashioned kind
made of thick, sturdy reinforced plastic and containing years’ worth of old clothes and Halloween costumes. The bags were big—big enough to hold an entire wardrobe.

Or a slender girl.

She heard the footsteps enter the bedroom below and gently tugged the pull chain hanging from the bare bulb at the peak of the roof, plunging the attic into darkness.

S
he felt a tickle in her nose.
Please,
she prayed silently,
please don’t let me start sneezing.

“I know you’re in here somewhere,” Zachary called from the bottom of the stairs. She heard him click the light switch on and off a few times, but the light did not go on.

“That’s not going to help you,” he said, starting up the stairs.

He moved toward a stack of boxes and lifted up a sheet, peering closely in the dim light spilling through the attic vents.

She couldn’t help it. She sneezed, a soft, muffled sound.

Zachary straightened up like a cat and whipped his head around, zoning in on one of the garment bags hanging from the rafters. “There you are,” he
said in a pleased-sounding voice.

Penny held her breath.

Zachary stepped back, raised the kitchen knife, and plunged it furiously into the garment bag again and again, the force of his fury concentrated in short, angry, stabbing strokes, a frenzy now. The sound of tearing fabric filled the attic. And then abruptly he stopped, as if all the anger had gone out of him.

He took a deep breath, as if to say he was glad
that
was over, and unzipped the bag, pushing back a thick bundle of old Halloween costumes.

There was no one inside.

Penny rushed at him from around the other side of the bag, where she had been hiding all along, and pushed him as hard as she could toward the exposed insulation. He flailed and tumbled face-first into the pink fluff, roaring like a bear stung by nettles.

But Penny wasn’t about to wait for him to get up. She moved on rubbery legs to the attic stairs, but she misjudged the steepness of the first step, and the next thing she knew she was flying down the stairs, tumbling, hitting every hard, uncarpeted edge. She banged right into the door leading to the bedroom, knocking it open and landing with a hard thump on the bedroom floor, blood streaming from her nose, a
huge bloody gash on her forehead, her ankle twisted, her whole body throbbing in pain.

The boys were standing there, stunned expressions on their faces.

“Holy—” Benji said.

“Penny?” Teddy asked with a horrified look on his face.

Penny started sobbing. Benji rushed to help her up, and she winced in pain.

“What happened?” he asked, alarmed.

Penny clutched Benji with all her strength, gripping him with both hands. “Zachary’s up there! He killed Becky!”

Teddy looked around at the other boys. “See? That’s what she was saying before!”

Benji held her away from him, looking her in the eye. She swayed in his grip, her face all splotchy, her pupils dilated, her words slurring together.

“You’ve completely lost your marbles,” Mac said in a disparaging voice.

“I’m not lying!” she cried. “He’s up there, and he’s going to kill us. He told me he killed Becky,” she said, looking at Benji, willing him to believe her. Benji
had
to believe her.

“Caleb killed Becky!” Mac said harshly.

“It was Zachary! He’s been doing it all along and making it look like it’s Caleb!”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mac guffawed. “Zachary?”

“We don’t have time to argue,” she said urgently. “He’s up there!”

“I’m sure,” Mac said. His voice dripped sarcasm.

“Look, the only way to solve this is to go up there and check it out,” Benji said.

“But what if Penny’s right?” Oren asked uncertainly.

“Yeah,” Teddy echoed.

The boys regarded one another warily.

Mac gave a disgusted snort and said, “What a bunch of wusses.”

“No!” Penny shouted, throwing herself at him, her ankle hurting. “He’ll kill you!”

Mac gave Penny a little push, and she fell back onto the quilt on her parents’ bed. “Chill out.” He turned to the other boys and said, in a voice that brooked no refusal, “Come on.”

Penny watched as the boys started up the dark stairs.

“Woo-hoo, killer!” Mac called facetiously.

“Something’s wrong with the light switch,” she heard Oren say in a nervous voice.

“There’s a pull chain upstairs. Try that,” Teddy said, the sound of his cast bumping as he started hopping up the steps behind the other boys.

“Got it,” Mac called down, and Penny saw yellow light spill down the stairwell.

“Whoa!” Teddy yelped.

Penny heard her little brother’s voice and knew what she had to do. She forced herself to get up and limp to Teddy’s bedroom. Lying on the floor next to his bed was his Louisville Slugger bat, the same bat she’d used countless times in softball. She grabbed up the comforting weight of it, and a moment later she was creeping up the stairs, pain lancing her ankle.

The boys were gathered around Zachary, looking at him—the skin of his face was red and irritated.

“Man, what happened to you?” Benji asked.

“Penny’s crazy!” Zachary warbled. “She’s gone nuts!”

“What’d you do to mv sister?” Teddy demanded.

“I was just defending myself! She came after me!” Zachary insisted.

“But you’re like twice her size,” Oren said suspiciously.

“When I told her about the cops questioning us about who had been the last to see Becky alive, and
that we knew that it was her, she flipped out. She said that she’d
had
to kill Becky, whatever that means. I know, it’s nuts, but you know how weird she’s been acting! You said so yourself, Teddy!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Benji said. “Becky was home for dinner.”

“Look!” Zachary yelled, pointing across the room at the garment bags. “Look at that bag. She tried to stab me to death with a knife!”

All four boys walked across the room to the ripped-up garment bag.

“Check it out,” Mac said, examining the ragged tears, the boys huddled around him doing the same.

“This is just crazy,” Oren said, sounding bewildered.

“But Penny hates knives,” Benji said suddenly. “She has a thing about them, remember?” His eyes met Mac’s for a long, quiet minute.

The boys turned slowly around.

Zachary was standing in the middle of the room, holding the kitchen knife, his back to the door.

“If you would have just let me play with you, none of this would have happened,” Zachary said mournfully.

And then he leaped at the boys.

Teddy was so scared that one of the crutches went right out from under him and he tumbled to the floor, frantically scrambling to get out of Zachary’s path.

Mac bleated in surprise, flailing his arms as he tried to get away. He accidentally smacked Benji across the chest and then plowed right into a wooden beam, falling to the floor with a low moan.

Benji grunted and stumbled, the wind knocked out of him. He looked up in time to see Zachary plunge the knife into his chest and then pull it out with a sick, sucking sound. Benji cried out in pain, falling to his knees.

Zachary gasped with effort and raised his hand to stab Benji again.

Teddy’s Louisville Slugger bat struck Zachary hard on the back of his neck, with all of Penny’s strength and fear behind it. A look of astonishment flashed across Zachary’s face, and then he collapsed.

Penny stood over Zachary, shaking, with the bat dangling from her hand. Fury rushed through her veins, fury at this crazy, sick kid who had killed cats and people and terrorized an entire town. She wanted to smash him into a million pieces, pound him until there was nothing left. She raised the bat high, her muscles tense, the anger washing over her in waves.