Wicked Cruel (9 page)

“God!” I jump back.

The tiny samurai is on the first step, facing me. Two steps
farther up is the Batman, its right arm raised as if it’s pointing to the attic. Doc is waiting on the next-to-last step.

Somebody’s been here, I guess.

I poke my head into Bainer’s room, but it’s empty, so I take a deep breath and slowly climb the attic stairs.

The attic is a big open space—no partitions or rooms, just bare floorboards and exposed beams overhead.

Something flutters down from the ceiling and I jump. A bat? No. I shine the flashlight and see that photo of Bainer, the one that was tacked to the wall in his bedroom the other night. I can’t bring myself to reach down and pick it up.

The light catches a cardboard box in the corner, covered with dust. I step toward it and swallow.

The box is square, about two feet high and wide.
LORNE THINGS
is scrawled on the flap in black marker.

I unfold the top, holding the flashlight in my armpit. Then I pull out a handful of papers and set them on the floor.

His report card from fifth grade, all Bs and Cs. A couple of school photos. A sealed envelope with
Mr. and Mrs. Bainer
handwritten on the outside.

I hesitate, then carefully tear open the envelope. Inside is a note from our fifth-grade teacher.

The next paper is a simple list in Bainer’s handwriting:
Invite to birthday
. There are four of us on the list. Me and three people I don’t even recognize. Maybe from his church or something.

I never got that invitation. Probably nobody did.

Why did they leave all this stuff behind? Maybe it was too painful to take.

And here’s the script he wrote for that comedy routine that never happened. It has some reasonably funny jokes.

Another piece of paper. It looks something like a form for a prescription, with
Douglas Schuter, MD
, at the top and the doctor’s address, dated just before the Bainers left the country.

I scan it: Cheshire Medical Center … Lorne Bainer, male, 11 years …

And then I hear my name. Clear. From the second floor. It’s not a voice I recognize. Not Scapes or Gary or any guy. It sounds like the tone of a bell, or a song. Just my name: “Jordan.”

I freeze and slip the paper into my pocket.

I’ve heard no footsteps. No one entering the house or climbing the stairs. I listen hard, but there’s nothing.

But there must be something. Something called my name. My breath is short and cold and the back of my neck is sweaty.

An attic step creaks ever so slightly. I back against the wall, crouching behind the box.

Those stairs are the only way out of this attic.

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes have passed, but there hasn’t been another sound or any movement. I’m cold. Petrified. I can’t bring myself to move.

The voice sounded pure, like it was floating in the air and detached from any person. It went right through me; it feels like it’s still vibrating in my chest.

Another attic step creaks. This one sounds closer. I grip the flashlight tighter; it’s my only weapon.

There are four small windows up here, but it’s a three-story drop straight to the ground. Broken legs, at least. I’ll take my chances for now.

Another creak, and then I hear the plastic toys clunking down the stairs. I put one hand on the cardboard box and squeeze, just staring at the opening in the floor where whatever it is would emerge.

The shadows seem to shift in the attic, as if the faintest glimmer of light has moved in. It’s everywhere at first, and then localized in the corner directly across from me. It’s like that almost-imperceptible glow from the facedown flashlight when me and Scapes were in Bainer’s room. Too soft for me to make out any shape—just a presence.

I swallow hard and turn on my light, aiming it toward the glow. It’s grayish and my size and it moves slowly, like an animal—wary and controlled. I think I see a head, two arms.

I’m across the attic and onto the stairs in less than a second, taking them three at a time and pivoting as I reach the bottom. My feet slide out from under me—Batman and Doc cracking from my weight and shooting away from me as I go down hard, feeling intense pain in my forearm.

I push up and hear “Jordan” in that same eerie voice from
upstairs. My face is dripping with sweat and tears as I hobble down the next flight of steps.

I reach the front door and yank it open with my good arm and stumble onto the lawn.

“Come back and play, Jordan,” I hear. “I only want to be your friend.”

I run a few steps, but my arm hurts too much. I pull it against my body and wince. “I wish I could,” I say, turning toward the house. “I wish I’d tried back then.”

I see a flicker of light in Bainer’s room, then the shadow of a person on the wall.

The house goes dark, and I step away. But then I hear footsteps or something behind me, and I shiver and turn and see a swirl of dried leaves scooting toward the back of the yard.

And despite the pain and my fear, I walk toward the swirl until it stops and seems to hover. The leaves slowly fall to the ground.

“Go back, Bainer,” I whisper. “Wherever you’ve been, go back there and start over. There’s nothing I can do for you here.”

The leaves rustle up again, then settle. I stare at the pile for a couple of minutes, then back away and walk home.

Gary comes to our house late the next afternoon, bringing me my history book and a homework assignment. He signs the cast on my arm—
Happy Ghostbusting!
—and asks if I’ll be able to play in Saturday’s basketball game.

“Are you nuts?” I ask. “I’m out for the season.”

“Big loss.”

Uncle David managed to reach my parents this morning, but he told them not to pay for an earlier flight home. “He’s tough,” I heard him say. “It’s just a hairline fracture.”

He tripped up a bit trying to explain how it happened, but then again, he didn’t have much to go on. My story was that I went for a jog to get in better shape for basketball. Fell on the bumpy sidewalk. That’s what I told Gary, too.

“What really happened?” Gary asks me now.

“I slid down those attic stairs. Trying to get out of there as fast as humanly possible.”

“Because of an inhuman presence?” He laughs.

I don’t laugh back. “Something like that.” I shake my head. I’m not ready to talk about it with him or anybody else. But I do think it’s over.

Maybe Bainer died from all those beatings, and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’s been haunting me for the past five days, and maybe he hasn’t. I found that paper from the box in his attic in my pocket this morning. It said Lorne was scheduled to start chemotherapy right before they moved. That’s how they treat cancer. Maybe they went back to Europe so he could get better treatment. Or maybe they just ignored it, like that letter from Mrs. Munson.

Like Uncle David said about these urban legends: there’s always a kernel of truth behind them. You poke around, looking for that truth, but you usually come up empty. Instead, you find half-truths and fiction, and the reality disappears into myth.

But the myths don’t come from nowhere. Somewhere in the past some creepy event really did happen to start the story. This one started here. This week. And I lived through it.

The legend of Lorne Bainer has a lot more truth to it than fiction.

Danny closed his bedroom door tight and walked to the bathroom. He leaned over the sink and pried up his left nostril, examining it in the mirror. It looked dry in there. Empty. No more blood.

“Danny!” Claudine called from the bottom of the stairs. “The pasta’s ready! Mom says to get down here. Now!”

He pulled the note from his pocket and considered throwing it away. But then he walked down to the kitchen.

“Here’s a note from the nurse,” he said, handing the envelope to his father. “It’s no big deal.”

“Did you get hurt at school?” Mom asked, setting down a slotted spoon that she’d been using to stir the pasta.

“I had a bloody nose,” Danny said. “It was nothing. She said she had to send a note anyway.”

Dad unfolded the paper and read it. “What’s this mean?” he asked, squinting. “ ‘Nosebleed. Likely due to digital manipulation.’ ”

“It means he was picking his nose!” said Claudine.

“Lay off,” Mom said. “Did you get any on your shirt, Danny?”

“Snot?”

“
Blood
. Snot washes out, but blood stains.”

“Maybe a little,” Danny replied.

“Well, get the shirt. I’ll spray some pre-wash on it.”

Danny walked back up the stairs.

“Pick me a winner!” called Claudine.

“Bite me,” Danny mumbled.

It was a good shirt. Light blue with a collar and buttons all the way down. The kind you’d wear if you worked at a convenience store or a quick-lube car place. Danny held it up. There were three drops of blood near the chest pocket. Two were smaller than a kernel of corn. The third was the size of a nickel. They were a dark, rusty red.

“That’s bone-dry,” Mom said, poking at the spots with her thumb. “How long ago was this nosebleed?”

“I think that one was around noon.”

“You had more than one?”

Danny frowned and sat down. He scooped a heap of pasta onto his plate. “It was bleeding when I got to school this morning. I stopped it up with toilet paper. Then it bled some more at lunch. Just a few drops, but I didn’t feel it coming, so it landed on my shirt.”

“That’s ’cause you dug out the boogers,” Claudine said. “They were holding back the blood.”

“Mind your own business,” Danny said.

Dad cleared his throat. “This isn’t an appropriate subject for the dinner table.”

“Better watch what’s
under
the table,” Claudine said. “That’s where he wipes it.”

“Enough,” Mom said. “Is this a problem, Danny? Have you been having a lot of nosebleeds?”

“Just those two.”

“Then let’s forget about it. No worries.”

“Fine with me.”

“But be careful when you pick,” Mom said. “Sometimes it’s better just to leave it in there.”

Dad set his fork down hard. “Can we please move on to something else?”

“It’s perfectly natural, Byron.”

“Yes, dear, I know that full well. But there are a lot of natural things we don’t talk about over spaghetti.”

Claudine laughed. “Dad’s squeamish.”

“He must have looked at your face,” Danny said.

Claudine put her hand to her heart and gasped. “
Biting
sarcasm, Danny. Such a clever wit.”

“Cleverer than you.”

“More clever.”

“Like I said.”

Dad set his fork down even harder. “How old are you two? Will this go on forever? Most brothers and sisters get along, you know. Maybe not when they’re children, but you two are teenagers!”

“She is,” Danny said, pointing at Claudine, who would turn fourteen in a few weeks. She didn’t
look
fourteen, still holding on to baby fat and her straight, unfashionable hair. Danny wouldn’t be thirteen until summer, and he didn’t look his age either—short and freckly and bony.

“He’s so disgusting,” Claudine said. “He never washes his feet.”

“How would you know?” Danny asked.

“You
told
me. And this nose-picking thing … Have you guys ever looked at the side of the couch? It’s like a green wall of snot.”

Mom shivered and looked at Danny. “Is that true?”

Danny shook his head.

“Take a look after dinner, Mom,” Claudine said. “Not you, Dad. I know it would upset you terribly. Especially after this lovely spaghetti.”

“What’s wrong with the spaghetti?” Mom asked with surprise.

“Nothing, Mom,” Claudine moaned. “I always look forward to it on the fourth night in a row.”

“Danny,” Mom said, “you don’t really wipe snot on the side of the couch, do you?”

“No.”

“Yes, he
does
,” Claudine said. “Every time he watches TV. Go take a look.”

“I do not!”

“Enough!” Dad said. He picked up his fork and set it down much harder than the last time. “Not another word about nose picking, please.… And the word is
mucus
.”

Claudine looked at her plate and rolled her eyes. “He’s so immature,” she muttered.

“
You’re
immature,” Danny said.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Mom cleared her throat. Dad carefully picked a scrap of green matter from the tomato sauce on his plate and set it on his napkin.

“I hope that’s not what I think it is,” Claudine said.

“I don’t care for olives in my spaghetti sauce,” Dad said, raising his graying eyebrows at Mom. “That’s a well-established fact.”

“Maybe it’s not an olive,” Claudine said. “Maybe Danny wiped something into the pot.”

“Real funny,” Danny said. “Ha-ha.”

“You know, you can give yourself a brain infection by sticking your filthy fingers up your nose,” Claudine said.

“Can
not
.”

“Yes, you can. They told us about it in health class. There’s only a very thin layer of skin between the back of your nostril and the brain cavity. When you make it bleed, you’re exposing your brain to all kinds of bacteria.” She sat back and gave Danny a smug look.

“At least I
have
a brain,” he said.

“Oh, and I don’t?”

“Not as far as I can tell.”

Claudine made her voice very high and whiny as she imitated her brother. “ ‘Not as far as I can tell.’ ”