The New Kid (10 page)

 

“Down” meant a little-used corner of the locker room where they laid Will on a trainer’s table. He was only half-conscious but his brain was clearing quickly and he heard voices.

“How’d you like that, pretty boy?” asked Duncan.

And then another voice, a voice that was animal-like, growled:
“Where is it?”

Will’s skin crawled. He turned his head in the direction of the voice but only saw a dark corner. Was there a shape there? He was so dizzy from the head shots that he couldn’t tell for sure.

“Wake up, fart brain!” said one of the football players as he slapped Will’s face. Then Will heard the creature growling again. He was confused. Who was speaking here? The players? Or someone, some
thing
, much more sinister?

Duncan circled around and clapped his hands on the sides of Will’s head, making his ears ring. The players were laughing now, their voices bouncing around the room, all distorted. Will’s hearing was suddenly out of whack but he could have sworn he heard a guttural roar erupt from the dark corner followed by a hissing sound like air escaping some hideous orifice like a blowhole. The room suddenly stank, awash with acidic microparticles, an excretion of pure malevolence.

Again the question came at him:
“Where is it?”

But all the players’ lips were moving and they jabbered and poked at him and sneered as they began performing a “fart down,” blasting Will with as much flatulence as they could muster. Maybe that’s where the smell was coming from. They were so tightly cloaked around him now that seeing into the corner was nearly impossible but—there! Was it
the Dark Lord
? Did he just see a pair of eyes peering out from the black corner? Creature eyes? Yellow eyes?

Will’s vision was blocked again but he thought he might have seen a figure in the corner nod its head, and Duncan and the other punks loaded sweat socks with baseballs and began pummeling
Will’s body. His body’s natural reaction was to toughen up and it did, his muscles contracting, his skin thickening. The rage began to build inside him and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold it in for long. The beating lasted only thirty seconds but felt like thirty lifetimes. Will was hit more than a hundred times but he just took it, absorbing the pain. He wouldn’t make his move until the precise moment. The power rod was waiting, but he wasn’t going to blow it by going off half-cocked. Still, his ribs were on fire and these creeps deserved a thorough thrashing.

He heard the raspy beast voice give an order:
“Search him!”

Again Will was so woozy from the beating he couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that the command hadn’t come from one of the bad boys. The voice he heard in his battered head was one he’d heard many times before. And no matter how many times he heard it, it still felt like a lance piercing his very soul. Duncan and the others did as they were ordered and searched Will roughly. They came up empty-handed. Will was dizzy. Maybe they’d done more damage than he’d thought.

“Nothing. He’s not carrying.”

Duncan and the others continued to search Will but were unable to locate the cleverly concealed retrieval patch. They were fumbling fools.

“Cut him open if you have to!”
said the beast.

“Gladly,” said Duncan as he produced a deadly looking hunting knife. The blade looked sharp enough to cut through bone like butter and it glinted in the light as Duncan lowered it slowly toward Will’s face.

Duncan touched the knife to Will’s chin, ready to being flaying him. “I’m going enjoy this. Let’s see how Sharon likes your face now. . . .”

Will reached behind his neck, placing a finger on the retrieval patch, and was just about to call his power rod down to try and pull
his ass out of the fire and hopefully save his life when the overhead fluorescents in the locker room banged on and the scene was flooded with a harsh white light. Principal Steadman stood in the doorway, leaning on his forearm crutches. Next to him were Rudy and Natalie.

Natalie’s heart felt like it was going to break; she ached to the bone seeing Will lying there, his body red with welts and bruises, his face grimacing in pain.

“Will!” she shouted and ran to him. She touched his forehead gently.

“Don’t worry,” said Will.

Principal Steadman puffed up with anger and indignation. “Will someone please explain to me what’s going on here?”

Duncan and the punks stood mute. Natalie helped Will sit up and he glanced into the corner. The creature was gone. Will had to wonder if he was ever there in the first place. There was the sound of a toilet flushing, water running, and then Coach Kellog emerged from the adjacent room, drying his hands on a paper towel.

“Coach, you know the school’s policy about hazing!” said Steadman.

“You bet I do, and the whole crazy rite of passage makes me sick, but what are you gonna do? Boys will be boys. It’s a stupid tradition. I was up in my office working on the playbook when I heard a commotion. I came on down and told them to knock it off straight away.”

Duncan and the others just stared stupidly at the concrete floor, saying nothing. In their war paint and festooned football pads they looked more foolish than dangerous in the light, more like bad boys than demonteens. Coach Kellog approached Will and used a damp towel to clean him up.

“Trust me, it’s not as bad as it looks,” he said to Steadman.

No
, thought Will,
it’s a hell of a lot worse
. His mind was starting to clear and as it did he knew it had just been wishful thinking before that he’d been imagining the voice and the players’ eyes.

“I’m fine,” said Will, and climbed gingerly off the table and then joined Natalie and Rudy.

Natalie’s eyes were full of fire. “Are you all insane? Look at him!”

“I said I’m fine, and I’m fine,” repeated Will, and he squeezed Natalie’s arm as he said it, a signal for her to play along. “They just wanted me to feel like I was part of the team. The thing is, though, like I told Coach Kellog, I’m not really a team player. If you don’t mind, Principal Steadman, I’d like to get out of here.” Then Will turned to Duncan and the others. “I’ll catch you later,” he said, even giving Duncan an affectionate pat on the shoulder as he passed by him, leading Rudy and Natalie up and out.

As they exited they heard Principal Steadman delivering another edict about the dangers of hazing. At least Will knew now that Steadman was one of the good guys and wasn’t infected.

 

Will had made it about halfway across the football field when Natalie stepped in front of him. He tried to walk around her but she blocked his path again.

“No, no way, José! We saved your butt, you’re not just gonna walk away. Look at you! You’re a mess!”

“She’s right, New Kid,” added Rudy.

“Come on, Will, let me help you. We’ve got to get you home and get some of that magic goop on you.”

“No need to go to my place,” said Will.

He went over to where he’d stashed his backpack and took out a small tube. Then he sat down on a bench and pulled up his shirt to rub the healing balm liberally all over his chest, arms, neck, and face. But his back was still in pain and he couldn’t reach all the bruises. He held out the tube to Natalie.

“Would you mind putting some on my back?”

Pulse racing, Natalie accepted the tube, squeezed out some of the gel, and carefully rubbed it over Will’s bruises. Then she stared disbelieving at Will’s skin. She knew the balm worked fast because of
her arm but it had been mere seconds and his back was already looking better.

Will was amazed at how tender Natalie’s touch was—especially when he turned around to find her standing with her hands on her hips, demanding, defiant, and beautiful. She almost glared at him. Even little Rudy looked all puffed up with bravado.

Natalie spoke first. “We saw that freak show in there and we are soooo calling you out! You are going to give us the
whole
story this time, tell us who you are and why you’re here.”

“Whole what story?” said Will.

“Don’t even go there,” said Natalie. “We know something big is going down and you’re going to tell us!”

Will measured them again, the pretty, pushy tomboy and the skinny, pimply-faced ninety-pound weakling. Natalie was muscular and quick on her feet, but overall they weren’t exactly the dynamic duo. He’d have preferred more formidable confidants, but these were who had arrived like the cavalry. Maybe he would have gotten the power rod in hand and kicked ass and maybe he wouldn’t have. Maybe Duncan and his cronies would have skinned him like a deer and left him to die. It was a close call—way
too
close. So he made up his mind to do something he’d never done before: share his life with someone.

It would feel good to let it out. He hadn’t had real friends before, ones he could truly confide in. Maybe this would be a good thing. He’d never let himself get attached to a girl before, either, but maybe it was time to change all that.

“We’re waiting,” said Natalie.

Will took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Before I say anything I’m going to warn you.”

“Warn away,” said Natalie, her arms crossed.

“Okay, then listen and listen good. What I’m about to tell you will make you change the way you look at things.”

“What kind of things?” asked Rudy.

“Everything.”

A silence followed as Will watched their faces. Natalie still looked determined but Rudy seemed nervous and a part of him clearly didn’t want to go down this particular road. Will wasn’t going to drag anybody into this who didn’t want to be involved, so he said, “Why don’t you take off, Rudy. Go rock on some game or something.”

“No,” said Rudy, now crossing his arms, too. “I’m staying.”

“The truth of the matter is,” said Will, “that the less you know about me the safer you will be. If I let you into my confidence it could be dangerous, for both of you.”

“Um, the thing is, Sir Lancelot, what you don’t know is that it’s already dangerous,” said Natalie. “So enough with the dire warnings and talk already!”

Will shot a look over at the field house. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll talk, but not here.” He began walking and they caught up and walked beside him. As they left the school grounds and moved through the small town Will pondered what he was about to do. Things were heating up and something bad was going to go down. There could only be one outcome. What he was about to tell these two would either save them, or kill them.

T
he night sky had cleared and the stars winked down as Will led his new friends to the verdant park in the center of town. Under a canopy of massive oak trees Natalie and Rudy sat on a bench while Will paced back and forth. As he spoke they barely moved. They might have been statues if it weren’t for their breathing, so rapt was their attention. He told them about a fateful night that had changed the course of his life forever, a night that had bound him to his eternal duty.

He was just eight years old and coming home from fishing up at Fallen Leaf Lake with his father, Edward. They’d been to a baseball game that same weekend and had gone out for ice cream, too. Edward had been so loving and attentive to Will that he’d even let him hold his prized railroad watch. It was an Elgin pocket watch, the watch Edward had inherited from his own grandfather. As young Will held the watch to his ear and listened to the ticking, Edward smiled and hugged him and told him someday the watch would be his.

It was as if Edward had known what was coming and was trying to cram in as much face time with his son as he could before . . . it
happened. As they arrived home to their modest three-bedroom Craftsman in Palo Alto they were greeted with a freak storm that whipped up punishing hot winds, winds hotter than any Santa Anas. And even though the winds were hot the sky was ragged with angry clouds. Will’s mother had gone to visit her sister during the “boys’ weekend” so the house was dark. As the winds grew to gale force Will’s father did his best to secure the house but it groaned under the sheer force of the assault, shingles ripped asunder, debris raking against the windows.

Normally a calm, grounded, steady-handed man, Edward was suddenly nervous and twitchy and Will saw fear in his father’s eyes for the first time as Edward gazed at the roiling sky.

“Come down in the basement with me, Will, I have something to show you. Hurry!”

Down they went. The basement was Edward’s domain and Will had not been allowed this kind of access until now. Sure, he’d snuck a peek or two and wondered what the big deal was about a workbench and a bunch of tools and junk in the basement. Why had he been refused entry? His father had told him it wasn’t a safe place for a boy to play and Will’s mother had backed him up. But tonight all bets were off; tonight was a rite of passage.

Edward moved quickly past his workbench and flipped a switch and a fluorescent bulb flickered on in the far corner of the basement. Will craned his neck to look past his father as Edward unlocked and opened a thick old oak door and saw a secret room full of different kinds of futuristic-looking tools and weapons—weapons!—the likes of which Will could never have conjured up even in his wildest imagination. His father picked one of the weapons up. It looked like a shotgun from the future and Will was filled with excitement despite the ominous howl of the storm outside.

Kneeling down inside the secret room, Edward dialed a combination on a floor safe and removed a crystal key. He then brought the key out of the room and locked the oak door behind him. He rolled
the clothes dryer aside, revealing another, smaller door to a hidden compartment. Using the crystal key he unlocked the compartment and pulled out an ancient box adorned with intricate engravings. He used the same crystal key to open the box, and from the box he lifted out a book. Or rather half a book.