December Park(154)

Adrian shuffled out into the hall.

“Adrian,” Peter said, “we’re leaving. Are you coming?” There was a firmness in his voice I’d never heard before.

Adrian muttered, “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

Together, we backtracked through the Patapsco Institute until we returned to the expansive, crumbling room where we’d begun our tour. One by one, we ascended the pyramid of stone and climbed out the window into the bright summer sun.





Chapter Thirty-One


The Disbanding





There was a noticeable change in our group the moment we were back on solid ground.

Scott collected his hat off the ground and tugged it on. The cuts on his arms had dried in brownish-red streamers along his forearms. Peter gathered his Walkman and headphones. Adrian systematically replaced the flashlights into his backpack, then zipped it shut. Michael, who was usually jovial and beaming, now looked either saddened or frightened. There were streaks of grease smeared on his face—on all our faces, really—and his eyebrows seemed permanently knitted together, as if he were doomed to contemplate a difficult mathematical equation for the rest of his life.

Dusk was creeping up from the east, so we wasted no time heading back through the woods. We walked mostly in silence. Peter wore his headphones and hummed along to his tunes. Scott examined his wounds and commented that he might need stitches. Uncharacteristically silent, Michael carried the compact ladder in the box with the oddly smiling family on the lid. Adrian just stared straight ahead, seemingly lost in his own world. It looked as if a part of him had been left behind in that old building—some vein had been tapped, some vital fluid had been drained.

Something inside that building had poisoned us. Scott had nearly died and it wasn’t a game anymore. It was over; we were done searching for the Piper.

When we reached the road behind the Superstore, my friends peeled off and went their separate ways. We had walked our bikes the entire time, but now I thumped the handlebars and said, “Come on. You want a ride?”

Adrian shrugged. “Not really in the mood.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m just thinking about that place. He probably lives there.”

“There was no one there.”

“What about the blood on those mattresses?”

“I told you, it wasn’t blood.”

He slid his thumbs beneath the shoulder straps of his backpack. “What are you saying? You don’t want to do this anymore?”

“Me and the guys have been thinking that maybe it’s time to talk to my dad, tell the police what we know.”

His pace slowed. “I thought we were gonna see this to the end?”

“There is no end. We’re not detectives. We don’t know what we’re doing. That building was empty. No one’s living in there.”

“But you promised,” he said. The word dripped with accusation. I had wounded him with betrayal.

“Adrian—,” I began.

“You promised you wouldn’t say anything to anybody, and now you’re going back on your word!”

“I think we—”

Adrian took off down the street, his backpack jostling from side to side. I climbed on my bike and rode up to him, but he cut right and veered across someone’s front lawn. I skidded to a stop and shouted after him, but he wouldn’t stop. He kept running and eventually disappeared around the back of someone’s house.





Another nightmare that evening had me running with my father through a rain forest toward the circular clearing of a grass hut village. Again, some tremendous beast pursued us, rattling the earth with its Goliath footfalls. When we reached the clearing, my father—who had now transmogrified into my grandfather, though he retained much of his youthful appearance—gave me a shove. I stumbled forward, the rucksack on my back causing me to lose my balance, and slid through a pile of bleached skulls and femurs. Phalanges scattered like dice across a craps table.

As before, I quickly ditched into the nearest hut to hide from the great beast that destroyed the rain forest in its furious campaign. This time, however, the walls of the hut were braced with confusing metal sculptures of intricate (and suspiciously deadly) design. I knew that just touching one would summon blood to the surface of my skin.

There was someone else in the hut with me. I glimpsed the figure in my peripheral vision, but each time I turned to face the intruder (or was I the intruder?), he seemed to flit just out of sight.

Then his hands fell on my shoulders. I glanced down and saw fingernails like hooked talons stained brown as if by Mercurochrome. When the figure pushed his face against mine, I smelled the sweat and anger and years of seclusion on his unwashed flesh.

—Let the world hold you down, the Piper whispered in my ear. His breath was that of an animal that subsisted solely on roadkill. Then he tightened his grip on my shoulders. It’s just pretending. You can be me and I can be you.

I told him I didn’t understand.

—It’s just pretending.

I repeated that I didn’t understand.

—Don’t you? he said. Don’t you, Angelo? It’s easy. I become you and you become me and us become us and we become we.

I told him I wanted to wake up.

The Piper laughed. It was a sound like dragging the tines of a garden rake across pavement. When you wake up, he told me, one of us will be the other, and neither of us will be the same ever again.