The Locker (22 page)

“Let him go!” I screamed. “He doesn't have anything to do with this!”

“On the contrary, he has quite a
lot
to do with this.” Jimmy Frank gave a slow, chilling smile. “He has big eyes and big ears. They pick up things they shouldn't.”

It all happened so fast.

I saw Dobkin's little legs flailing out at Jimmy Frank's shins, saw him bite down on Jimmy Frank's hand. And then there was a sickening thud, and Dobkin's body went limp in Jimmy Frank's arms.

“
No!
”

“You shouldn't have come here,” Jimmy Frank spat at me. “You're an outsider, and you don't have any right to stick your nose where it doesn't belong—”

“Let him go!” I begged. “What have you done to him! He might be dying!”

I could see Dobkin dangling in Jimmy Frank's grip, and as Tyler made a move toward him, Jimmy Frank slammed the pistol once again to Dobkin's head.

Tyler stopped and threw me a frantic, helpless look.

“Coming here with your
feelings
—your
stories
—making people remember all over again! If you'd just taken the warning and left when you had the chance! If you'd only taken the warning—”

“It was you in my room that night!” It suddenly dawned on me. “You tried to scare me! And you put the roaches in my locker! You came into my room and hid under my bed—were you planning to kill me then?”

“Scare you,” Noreen mumbled, and everyone jumped and looked at her where she still knelt on the ground.

“He wanted to scare you off.… He wanted me to help him.” She stared at the ground and kept mumbling. “He realized your brother had taken his bandanna. He was afraid you'd be able to read things from it—the way you could from Suellen's locker. That you'd know
he
was the one who took care of Suellen. He watched your house all the time. It was easy with the empty lot behind it—and sometimes he even peeped in your windows. He even tried to convince Tyler that something was wrong with you—mentally—so Tyler could find out how much you really knew.”

A faint smile touched her face.

“But that didn't work,” she murmured. “'Cause Tyler liked you too much. So then Jimmy Frank tried to pretend he was psychic, too. Thinking you'd confide in him and tell him what you'd figured out.”

But I was hardly listening to Noreen anymore. I could only stare at Dobkin's limp little form hanging in Jimmy Frank's arms.

“Let him go, and we'll leave tonight,” I begged. “I can
make
my aunt leave, if that's what you want. We'll go away, and we'll forget we ever heard of you or the town—just please don't hurt my brother.”

“Hurt him?” Jimmy Frank mocked me. “I promised the kid a trip downriver. So that's where I'm gonna take him.”

“No!” I cried, and Tyler took another step toward them.

“Don't be stupid, Jimmy Frank—you'll have to get rid of all of us now. You'll never be able to hide it—”

“Shut up, Tyler. There're plenty of accidents on Lost River—plenty of people who never come back. Kids go out there and get careless. Get lost. Fall down ravines and hit their heads. Fall out of boats and drown. Do you think I'm worried about that? I'm the sheriff's son. I'm the responsible caretaker. I'm the one everybody's gonna comfort when they find the bodies of my friends.”

He smiled. In the flickering lantern light, his face was a hideous mask.

“The sheriff's son,” he mumbled. “Who would ever have thought? And poor stupid Suellen Downing lying at the very bottom of our old well, right there on the farm. The well my dad had me fill in last winter 'cause he was afraid someone would have an accident.”

Noreen's head came up slowly. “Jimmy Frank—”

“Shut up, Noreen. Get in the truck.”

But Noreen was laughing again … quietly … to herself. Soft … satisfied … frighteningly resigned.

I never actually saw her leap for the gun.

One second she was on the ground beside Jimmy Frank—the next, she was struggling with him, screaming at the top of her lungs.

Tyler sprang forward with a yell, and from the hopeless tangle of bodies, I saw my little brother fall to the ground.

“
Dobkin!
”

I raced over to drag him to safety, and an agonized scream cut through the darkness.

I saw Tyler stumble backward, his hands on his head as he stared down at the ground.

“No,” I whispered, “oh, no …”

Tyler turned and looked at me. He looked at me for a long, long time. And then he walked over and picked Dobkin up and gathered both of us into his arms.

“Don't,” he murmured.

But I had to.

I had to see Noreen sitting there all alone, caught eerily in the lantern light, cradling Jimmy Frank in her lap.

There were pieces of his head splattered across her shirt.

She was covered with his blood, and as she slowly raised her eyes to us, she let the tire iron fall onto the wet, red ground.

25

T
here he is again”—Dobkin shook his head solemnly—“sitting out in that tree.”

Glancing up from my homework, I jumped off the bed and went to the window, opening it so I could lean out. I could see the branches all tangled together, and two legs hanging out of them, swinging.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” came the muffled reply.

“Get out of there.”

“It's a free tree.”

“Come inside. It's raining like crazy.”

I glanced back at Dobkin, who was lying at the foot of my bed with his turtle. His arm was still in a cast, and the bump was still on his head, and all the scratches hadn't quite healed yet on his face, but Dobkin is a kid who's proud of battle scars.

“Come on out,” Tyler said.

“I will not. It's cold out there.”

Before I could back away, he was at the window with his arms around me, pulling me out on the limb, and in seconds I was soaked through.

Tyler looked at me with disgust.

“Ugh. You're all wet. Get away.”

In response I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him, making sure I got him good and soaked. I pulled away, and that funny little smile played over his lips.

“You find me irresistible, don't you,” he said.

“Don't flatter yourself.”

“Truth is truth. Your life was empty without me.”

“My life was sane without you.”

“Same difference.”

“Hmmm.”

He grinned and shifted his body gracefully on the limb. He glanced over and his voice got serious.

“I hear things might go pretty well for Noreen.”

“Really? Oh, I hope so.…”

“She's got a good lawyer. He's reminding everybody that she really
wasn't
the one who killed Suellen, and that she
was
the one who saved our lives.”

“Do you think she'll ever come back here?”

“To Edison?” He shook his head. “No. Too many memories … too much talk. It's better for her—and her parents—to make a fresh start somewhere else.”

“I'll miss her,” I said.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Me, too.”

I watched the pain and sadness go over his face, and I reached up to touch his cheek.

“She really loves you, you know.”

A nod. “I know.”

The silence stretched on. Only the raindrops and the distant rumble of thunder and Dobkin humming to himself inside my room,

“How about you?” Tyler finally asked.

“How about me what?”

“Loving me.”

“Not a chance.”

“You could do worse.”

“And a whole lot better,”

“I doubt it. I'm pretty cute.”

“Who told you that?”

“You did.”

I turned to him and tried to hide a smile, but he hugged me, and I smiled all over.

“I guess I was right,” I said.

He nodded. “About most things.”

I looked at him, and the last few weeks flooded through my mind, and suddenly it was almost hard to remember the fears and the pain … only the relief and the joy. My mind was wonderfully free now … I knew Suellen was finally at peace.

Still, I couldn't help leaning over and taking Tyler's hand. I held it up and squinted at it, and saw him watching me intently.

“What do you think you're doing?”

“I have this feeling …” I said.

“Which is?”

“That you're going to kiss me just about any second now.”

Tyler's eyes went wide. He looked at me in amazement and slowly shook his head.

“Wow,” he breathed. “You really
are
psychic.”

And as he took me into his arms, the rain didn't matter at all.

Born on April Fool's Day 1952, Richie Tankersley Cusick was destined at a young age to write scary books. In a career spanning three decades, she has paved the way for young-adult horror writing, a genre she continues to publish in today.

Although born in New Orleans—home to some of the country's most ancient ghosts—Cusick spent her early years in a small bayou town called Barataria, which once provided a safe haven for the fearsome pirate Jean Lafitte. A true Southern writer, she took early inspiration from the landscape of crumbling mansions, Spanish moss, and aboveground cemeteries, and began writing stories at a young age. For years a ghost lurked in her family's house, making particular trouble around the holidays, when he would strip the Christmas tree of its ornaments and hurl them to the floor.

After graduating from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Cusick took a job at Hallmark and moved to Kansas City, where she once again shared her home with a mischievous spirit. It was then that she started work on her first novel,
Evil on the Bayou
(1984), based on her childhood memories of life in the eerie Louisiana swamps. Its success allowed her to leave Hallmark and begin writing fulltime.

When Cusick's novel-writing career began, horror fiction for teens was a new genre. Along with authors like Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine, Cusick pioneered the form, finding success writing chilling stories with only a dash of the gore that defines adult thrillers.

Since
Evil on the Bayou
, Cusick has written more than two dozen novels about everything from vampires to pirate ghosts. In 2003 she began
The Unseen
, a four-volume series about a young girl who is tormented by the occult. Cusick currently lives with her three dogs in Missouri, where she enjoys listening to classic horror-movie soundtracks as she writes on an antique roll-top desk once owned by a funeral director. The desk is, of course, haunted.

Richie Tankersley Cusick at age three in front of her grandparents' house in Rolla, Missouri. From left to right: Richie's father, Dick; her mother, Lou; Grandma Tankersley; and Aunt Deanie. Richie's grandmother was the biggest inspiration in her life, and the first one to really encourage her passion for writing.