The Winslow Incident (12 page)

“Do you see something?” Hazel
asked.

Patience pointed at the glass, her
face stretched in fright. “Don’t
you
?”

The din rising beneath them
increased. It sounded as if somebody had decided to rearrange the furniture in
a hurry. “I don’t see anything.” Hazel wanted to, but she didn’t.

“It’s there,” Patience insisted.

“Where?” Hazel stared hard at the
egg white, increasingly distracted by the noise from downstairs. She lifted her
head to look at her friend. “What do you see?”

Patience’s skin had gone even paler.
And when she spoke, Hazel could barely hear her above the clamor emanating from
the first floor.

“What did you say?” Hazel asked.

“It’s a coffin,” Patience
repeated.

Hazel scoffed and tilted the glass
back and forth, swirling the egg in the water. “You’re just saying that ’cause
that’s what the bewitched girls saw.”

“Am not!” Patience clutched her
hands to her chest. “Hazel, what does it mean?”

Hazel stood to look her in the
eye. “It didn’t look like a coffin to me.”

“I don’t like this game.” Patience
pursed her lips.

Hazel rolled her eyes and turned
to leave, wondering why she ever thought this stupid trick would work, let
alone be fun.

The crashing sounds coming from
the dining room didn’t seem so bad once the screaming started.

Hazel spun back to Patience, whose
face mirrored her own shock. Another scream from downstairs spurred her to grab
her friend’s hand. “Let’s go!”

On her way to the door Hazel
kicked over the glass and spilled raw egg and water across the wood floor.
Fighting not to slip, she rushed for the stairs, panic striking in bright
flashes of ugly imagination: her grandparents held hostage by a gun-wielding
maniac, her grandfather’s head crushed by a falling chandelier, her grandmother
running around with her hair on fire.

More voices joined in the
screaming and shouting as both girls hastened down the staircase. When Patience
knocked into her from behind, Hazel flew down several steps, arms flailing in
thin air, before her hand found the railing and she regained her footing.

After the girls landed on the
ground floor, they raced through the kitchen, pushed open the swinging door to the
dining room—and stopped dead in their tracks.

Chairs lay overturned. The table
was littered with broken porcelain. And Hazel’s grandfather had Lottie Mathers’
arms pinned behind her back, while Jules Foster held a knife to the woman’s
throat.

“Stop!” Patience shrieked. “What
are you doing to my Gram?”

Lottie tried to jerk her head
away, straining to break free, her mouth gaping in a silent scream.

“Hold her still!” Jules shouted.
Sure and swift, he plunged the knife into Lottie’s neck.

Hazel and Patience both screamed
as blood spurted Jules in the face and then splashed the others crowded around.

A cold meat smell touched Hazel’s
nose just as Lottie’s blood rained on a platter of rare roast beef on the
table, and Hazel swooned on her feet.

“No no no!” Ben Mathers howled,
rushing at Jules. “You’re killing her!”

Hazel’s grandmother Sarah shoved
both girls back into the kitchen, where they created red footprints across the
tile floor, reminding Hazel of the wounded deer she and her father found the
winter before, gut shot in the woods and leaving crimson, cloven hoof prints in
the snow.

Before the dining room door swung
shut, Hazel glanced back into the room.

Blood: dripping from the low-hung
crystal chandelier, pooling on the white tablecloth. The screaming had stopped.
Everyone stood frozen, stunned faces fixed on Lottie, who lay in her husband’s
arms, glassy-eyed, a wet red bib growing on her chest. Moaning, Ben Mathers
rocked his wife as if her life depended on his keeping her in motion. Instead,
each back and forth movement created a sodden smacking sound that made Hazel
want to scream again.

Then the door slammed closed in
Hazel’s face and Patience grabbed her hand, squeezing it so hard Hazel feared
her bones would break.

“This is our fault!” Patience whispered
feverishly. “We made it happen. The coffin—”

“Don’t say that!” Hazel couldn’t
handle another helping of horror; she was full.

Hazel’s grandmother kept pushing
the girls outside through the kitchen entry, repeating, “Shush, shush,” as if
the only thing wrong was their refusal to be quiet.

Patience stopped on the back steps
and seized Hazel by the wrists. “Don’t tempt fate, my Gram always says.” Her
eyes sparked with panic. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“It’s
not
our fault.” Hazel
tried to raise her hands to cover her ears.

But Patience held fast, mewled hysterically.
“Tempt fate and your worst fears come true.”

I
t was after that that Patience had begun to
collect her lucky charms. Now she stood in Hazel’s foyer on the verge of tears,
working that bracelet, her fingertips compulsively stroking the tiny talismans.
“It
is
happening again,” Patience insisted.

“Listen to me,” Hazel adopted a
firm tone. “Nothing like that is going to happen now. Don’t even start thinking
like that.”

Patience’s expression remained bleak.
“Tanner shouldn’t have broken that mirror.”

Hazel frowned. “That’s just a silly
superstition. Besides, you told me you buried the broken glass outside in the
moonlight like a good little witch. Didn’t you say that wards off the evil
spirits?”

“Wards off bad luck,” Patience
corrected.

“Then you’re safe, right?” Despite
Hazel’s attempts at reassurance, she sympathized with her friend. Not only had
they sorely tempted fate again, this time they’d taunted it—practically
dared it.

“I feel really, really weird,
Hazel.” Patience’s tears welled higher. “I threw up in front of the whole town.
Everything’s ruined. I ruined my best chaps and everyone saw me and my gramps is
mad that I embarrassed our family.”

“It’s just food poisoning.” Hazel
backed up a step, her heart suddenly racing. “Lots of people have it. You’ll be
okay tomorrow.”

“No I won’t. I’m
sick.
” Patience
looked desperate. “And I’m scared.”

Hazel wondered again how Sean was
feeling. “It’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” She tried to keep calm for both their
sakes. “Everything’s fine,” she said, realizing how hollow that sounded. “We’re
all fine.”

S
ean and Tanner perched on the water tower
platform, the highest point on Silver Hill, with the lights of Winslow spread
out below them like a Lite-Brite missing most of its pegs.

Sean hadn’t been feeling too good
since he and Hazel left Three Fools Creek. His stomach was slippery and it
seemed as though his heart was beating too fast, the blood pumping around his
body with sickening speed. His mom and Aaron were sick too, taking turns in the
bathroom, and the sound of it had made Sean feel even worse.

So when Tanner came by inviting
him to go have a smoke, Sean had said okay, figuring that the weed would settle
his stomach and slow the pounding in his chest. The fresh air couldn’t hurt
either, especially if he ended up retching anyway—who wants to stick
their face in a toilet?

He watched Tanner roll the joint.
After Tanner licked and sealed the paper, he held it up for Sean to admire.
Sean had known instantly that he didn’t particularly like—and definitely
didn’t trust—Tanner Holloway. But whatever, it wasn’t like there were a
lot of other guys his age to hang with around Winslow.

Sean decided that it might be
useful to know what Tanner was capable of. “What’d you get busted for back home,
anyway?” he asked.

“A little of this.” Tanner waved
the joint. “A little of that.”

“You miss home?” Sean was starting
to hope that he did and would go back there soon.

“Nah.” He lit up, took a hit,
passed it to Sean. “It sucks too,” he squelched, holding the smoke, “just in a
different way.” He let out a billowing breath. “More chicks though.”

“That’s cool, I guess.” Sean took
a hit, eyes narrowing. He could see how some girls might go for Tanner, but he
struck Sean as the kind of guy who’d sell out a buddy for a six-pack.

Reaching into his pocket, Tanner
retrieved a cell phone, flipped it open, waved it around.

“What are you doing?” Sean
scoffed.

“Thought I might get reception up
here.” He glowered at the unreceptive phone.

Sean pointed straight ahead.
“Happen to notice that mountain?” He pointed the opposite direction. “What
about that one?” Turning forty-five degrees: “Or those?”

Tanner slapped the phone shut and
crammed it back in his pocket. “Fucking boondocks. How can you stand it?”

“I don’t know.” Sean shrugged.
“I’ve always lived here.”

“Too bad for you, man. So what’s
up with you and my cousin?”

“Not much,” Sean replied through a
huge exhale.

“Bullshit!” He laughed. “You’re so
far gone on Hazel it’s embarrassing.”

Sean felt his face heat up.
“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing, I guess. Just hate to
see a friend get suckered, that’s all. Like I said—embarrassing.”

Friend?
Sean did not like this conversation. At all. He carved the
ash and took a deep hit before handing back the joint. “What the hell are you
talking about?” he asked.

“Now Patience, on the other hand,”
Tanner ignored his question. “Low-hanging fruit. Isn’t that what you called
her?”

“She’s a trip.” He coughed. “I can
tell you that. And don’t hotbox that joint.”

“So what?” Tanner hit too hard
again. “She’s hot. Screw it—I’m goin’ for it.” He held the joint back
toward Sean.

“No thanks, man.” He shook his
head, which set it to spinning. “Had enough.”

“Lightweight.” Tanner took one
last hit before he stubbed out the joint on the bottom of his lighter.

They sat back against the metal
tank and Tanner started jabbering again. Sean could barely hear him through the
buzzing in his ears, but it sounded like he was saying something else about
Hazel, something about her playing him . . . then Sean felt it coming and shot
up and rushed to the platform railing. Leaning out as far as he dared, he threw
up over the side—threw up a lot, and it was hot and disgusting but he felt
better with it finally out.

He turned back to Tanner, swabbing
his mouth with a shaking hand. “Damn. I don’t feel so good.” He wiped his face
with his t-shirt.

“Too stoned?” Tanner jeered.

“Fuck off,” Sean said, and then
stumbled toward the ladder.

Even though his stomach was in
turmoil and his throat and eyes were burning, he started down the side of the
water tower. His hands felt sweaty and slick on the ladder rungs that he hardly
saw through watering eyes but he hurried down anyway because he knew he was
about to hurl again. Partway down his right hand lost hold, then both feet
slipped, and he dangled for a moment, nervously wondering how far away the
ground might still be, until his left hand surrendered to gravity and he was
sent hurtling through the air.

Sean hit the dirt with an impact
that jarred his bones. Then he leaned forward, hands on his knees, and gagged.
But there was nothing left to come out except a trickle of yellow bile. Now his
throat really burned like hell when he dry heaved again. “Shit,” he said in a
voice so quavering that he made himself even more nervous.

He reeled over to his motorcycle
and tried to start it up. On the fifth kick he put all of his weight into it
and the bike finally sparked, but then he sat there idling, blinking to clear
his vision.
Is there something in that weed?
he wondered.

No, he’d felt crappy all
afternoon.

But now his heart was as sick as
his stomach.
Am I making a fool out of myself?

His confusion was sudden and
total.
What did Tanner mean? Is Hazel just playing me?

Sean started slowly down Silver
Hill, not taking the bike out of second gear, hoping to make it home without
wiping out.

A
aron Adair heard the guest lady crying, and
once he reached the second floor landing, he saw her. She sat on the top step
of the red-carpeted staircase, face buried in her hands, sobbing in a way that
scared him, scared him almost as much as the blood-gurgling lady had last
night. Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, she’d kept on, until finally he’d had to turn on
his light and read
Treasure Island
till he was too tired to be scared of
anything anymore except one-legged, one-eyed pirates.

Coming up behind her, Aaron
wondered why she was crying. Maybe she’d been left behind when all the other
hotel guests took off that afternoon. He stood at her back, feeling as though
he was intruding somehow, as if he’d caught her telling a secret nobody should
hear.