The Children on the Hill(76)

“I don’t know, Skink.”

He took out his cell phone, held it like a weapon, finger poised over a button. “I’ll call my dad. I probably should have already called him, but I wanted to hear your story first. Maybe it’s better if he and I both hear it together.”

“I’d like the chance to tell you first,” I said, keeping my voice calm, level, friendly. “Then, if you’d like, you can call your dad.”

The dark circles under his eyes were like purple bruises. “So start talking.”

I took in a breath, wondered how little I could get away with saying while still keeping him happy. “I did come here, to the island, to find Lauren. I’m very sure she didn’t run away.”

“She was taken,” Skink said. “But not by Rattling Jane.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“I read the book,” Skink told her.

“This book?” I pointed at the cracked three-ring binder that held The Book of Monsters. A child’s project dragged from a closet.

I heard Neil Diamond again, one of Gran’s crackling records.

I am, I said.

“That’s just something my sister and brother and I made when we were kids—it’s got sentimental value, but that’s it.”

He nodded. “I know. I mean, I figured it out. Also that this… this monster… she isn’t really who she says she is. She’s not Rattling Jane.” He paused, chewed his lip. “It’s your sister. Your sister who calls herself a monster.”

I froze, my body turning to ice.

The truth at last.

“What?” I said. “How do you—”

“It’s all here, in this book.” He gave me a well, duh look. “Haven’t you read it?”

“Not for years,” I admitted. “I went to the tower last night after I left you. I thought… I guess I hoped that maybe I’d find Lauren. But all I found was the book and the doll—left for me.”

“Left by your sister?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“And she’s got Lauren,” he said.

I nodded. “She must.”

Skink rubbed his eyes.

“You want to help Lauren, don’t you?”

He nodded, very slightly.

“I want to help her too. I want to find her and save her. And I think I can.”

He sat up straight, staring at me with glassy eyes.

I knew what I had to do, though I hated to do it. I didn’t want to involve this boy. But it was too late. He was already in deep; no way he was walking away. “I think I can do it with your help. Will you help me, Skink?”

He stared at me, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He still held the phone in his hand.

“?’Cause here’s the thing: if you call your dad, I think we blow all our chances of finding Lauren. I think… I think I need to be the one to find her. I’m being led there. It’s what the monster wants.”

Skink grimaced. “She’s playing some sick game with you, using Lauren as bait.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s not just Lauren. There have been other girls.”

“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll help you.” He set the phone down on the table. “But I’m warning you, if you try anything weird, or I find out you’re actually more involved in this, then I’m calling my dad. And I want to know everything. The whole story. Like, is she really some kind of… monster?”

How could I even begin to answer that? “She thinks she is,” I told him. “And that’s what matters.”

“So how do we stop her?” Skink asked.

“First, we have to find her. We know she’s on the island. Or she has been in the last day or two, because she left the book and the doll. And if she’s here, then Lauren’s here. Maybe they’re in the woods somewhere? Or holed up in one of the cottages?”

“I don’t think so,” Skink said.

“Why not?”

“I read the book, remember? She’s added new stuff to it. She wrote a note to you at the end, and I think it says where they went.”





Vi

July 28, 1978




VI AND IRIS held hands as they crossed the lawn to the Inn. The yellow bricks seemed to glow. It felt like the building was waiting for them, watching them as they ran to it.

For as long as she could remember, Vi had thought of the old hospital as part of her home—ghosts and all. She had looked out at it in every season, from her bedroom window or from the front porch. Had seen it covered in a thick blanket of snow, surrounded by the blazing foliage of autumn, watched it come alive with green buds in spring, and seen it seem to waver like a mirage in the heat of summer.

She had been right all along: The Inn was haunted.

Not only by the ghosts of long-ago Civil War patients, but by the things Gran was doing down in the basement. Terrible deeds and actions caused their own kind of haunting. Vi believed that it held memories of every terrible thing that had happened inside its walls. The building felt angry and sick to her; it felt dangerous.

The summer rain pounded down, soaking their clothes, their hair. They slipped in the wet grass, holding each other up. Thunder boomed in the distance, a low grumbling roar. Lightning struck, and the world flashed bright and blue and brilliant for one second, as if God were taking a picture. The sky was electric, alive and humming, and Vi felt like they were tapped into it, feeding off it, the current running through them, turning them into live-wire girls. She felt that if lightning came down and struck them right now, it wouldn’t kill them or even hurt them.