Dastardly Bastard(47)

“Where do you live, Lyle?” Justine asked.

“On the eastern edge of town behind Bachman High. I don’t go there yet. I will next year, though. My school is okay, I guess. Kids are jerks, but Mom says—” Lyle stopped and choked back a sob.

“But,” Mark jumped in, “the question remains. Why are we here?”

“We’re just being played with again; aren’t we?” Lyle asked.

“Maybe he wants to show us something.” Justine stood up, taking the pressure off her aching knees. She felt stiff all over.

“Who?”

“The boy.”

Mark broke in. “What boy?”

“Before I pulled you guys out of those… fake memories or whatever you want to call them, I met a boy. He’s connected to the evil in the chasm somehow. I just don’t know how yet.”

“How exactly did you pull us out? Care to elaborate, chick-a-dee?” Donald asked.

“I don’t really know. Maybe the boy helped me. I was just… able to reach inside your thoughts. Project my own thoughts into yours.”

Lyle shrugged. “Maybe the kid wanted to show you what’s after us?”

“Why would he show us that? Whatever this thing is, Lyle, it hides. It’s not just going to—” She broke off as a thought occurred to her.

“Thing? You didn’t happen to catch a name, did ya?” Donald laughed.

Justine was growing tired of his nonchalant attitude. She’d seen him kneeling over his girlfriend’s body, had watched what those thugs did to the woman, but that was no excuse for the man before her. Justine had been through hell, too, but she wasn’t taking it out on everyone. “Actually, I didn’t. All I know is that the boy’s last name might be Fairchild.”

“Like Waverly Fairchild?” Lyle asked. “Scott isn’t too far from Scooter. Remember what the tour guide said about the man who lost his son. Maybe Scooter’s a nickname.”

“That’s a stretch, kid. Let’s not take any more leaps of faith, ‘kay?” Donald said with a smirk.

“This couldn’t be him. This kid was locked up in an asylum. No way they let him out,” Justine informed them.

You can come by, take him out for day trips. You have to maintain contact.

“But I don’t think I saw everything,” she added. Everything was starting to come together. Little pieces falling into place on the bigger puzzle ahead. “Where did Jaleel say the tour was going to end?”

“Where is the tour guide, by the way?” Mark asked, scanning the area as if they’d just overlooked him.

“There was only you three…” Justine paused, trying to think of how to word it. “Um… in the black. I couldn’t find Jaleel or Trevor.”

Lyle, with the single-mindedness kids could be known for, went back to the topic at hand. “Mr. Warner said that we were headed to Scooter’s Dive. Maybe that’s where Scott jumped. Kinda sick naming it that, huh?”

“You’re smarter than you look.” Donald told Lyle as he chewed on a cuticle. “Still doesn’t explain shit, though. You trying to tell me some kid that jumped off a cliff forever ago has anything to do with stuff that’s happening right now? I’m a writer, and not even I could feed that load of hogwash to my readers. Just sayin’. Fuckin’ kids. Stay seen, not heard.”

“I don’t like the way you’re talking to him.” Justine stepped in front of Donald, looking down on him.

“And I don’t like grasping at straws. Feels like I’m playing pin the tail on the donkey with a bunch of fucking morons. But here I am, all the same, face to face with an ass. Just wish I had a blindfold.”

“You little shit.”

“Little?”

Justine ignored his response. “We’ve all lost something on this goddamn tour. You didn’t see what I yanked Mark and Lyle from. You’re not the only one hurting, jackass. The boy lost his mother, and I lost Trevor. Rein it in before I do it for you.”

“Oh, my fucking hero speaks.”

Justine slapped him as hard as she could.

Mark laughed. “Shoulda zipped it, partner.”

“You hit like a bitch. Oh, wait, that’s all you are.”

“Pull your head out of your ass! You have no right, none whatsoever, to treat people the way you do. You want to have some kind of complex? Save it for the rest of the world when we get out of here!”

“If we get out of here.”

Justine dropped to her knees to get to his eye level. It hurt, but that just made her rage burn brighter. She grabbed Donald around the collar and pulled him nose to nose. “When! When we get out of here. You might have given up, asshole, but I refuse to. I have not come all this way, seen what I have seen, just to roll over and play fucking dead! Do you understand me?”

“Let me go.” Donald’s voice was much calmer than Justine had expected it to be.

“Well… do you?” She was determined not to let him go until she got the response she needed.

“Let me go.” Donald wasn’t looking at her. He was looking around her. “We got bigger problems.”





34


DONALD HEARD THE RHYTHMIC THUMPING even before Justine grabbed him. The sound made his head hurt, making him irritable. He supposed the girl was right, but that was the least of his worries. Something was moving through the tree line of that place the boy had called Rifle Park.