December Park(160)

I went to the bed and knelt down. I reached underneath and felt around until my fingers brushed the edge of a cigar box. I slid it out. It was made of very thin wood, not unlike my old balsa airplane. The lid was laid with gold foil. I had expected it to be locked but it wasn’t. I opened the lid and there it was: a six-shot revolver with an inlaid wooden grip, the body and barrel shiny even in the darkened bedroom. When I picked it up, it felt heavy and very real. I searched for the lever and learned how to release the cylinder. It rolled out. The six cylindrical chambers were empty.

I opened the drawer of his nightstand. It was cluttered with junk. I rooted around until I found a box of ammunition beneath some folded papers and a checkbook. I opened the box, slid out the plastic tray, and selected six rounds. They were silver with bronze heads. Like the gun, they felt solid and very real. I slid the tray back inside the box and replaced it in the drawer.

As Scott had said, there was a chance Adrian had hurt himself stumbling around inside the building. There was a chance he needed someone to find him, help him get out. I thought about how Scott had nearly been crushed by the items on that falling shelf, and I could too easily imagine Adrian lying inside that place, bleeding, hurt, possibly unconscious.

There was also a chance that something worse had befallen him.

Piper claims another, I thought, tucking the revolver into the waistband of my jeans and hurrying into the hallway, closing my father’s bedroom door behind me.

Outside, summer thunder growled its disapproval.





Chapter Thirty-Three


The Piper





The rain held off until I reached December Park. When it hit, it came down in sheets from the black sky, instantly soaking my clothes and backpack and plastering my hair down over my eyes. It was the type of warm summer rain that tasted like the Chesapeake and felt like fresh tears on my skin.

I pedaled like mad across the park, the ground churning and swirling in a muddy miasma choked with bits of trash. Lightning cracked the sky, briefly illuminating the skeletal puzzle of the swing set and the geometry of the chain-link backstop halfway across the park.

A waterfall spilled over the mouth of the underpass from the street above. I stopped, already breathing heavily, and felt a cool stream of mud dampen the cuffs of my jeans and patter against my legs. I climbed off my bike and walked it into the underpass.

It was like passing through a vortex to another dimension. Time stood still, stars winked out of existence, cells ceased aging, blood froze in the system of veins, arteries, capillaries. Objects tossed in the air remained in the air. Raindrops crystallized into needle-thin javelins of ice.

My heart stopped, too. As I leaned my bike against the underpass wall, my chest felt like a hollow tube. I peeled the wet backpack off my shoulders. Inside were the gun and the samurai sword, its blade wrapped in a bath towel, poking out about two feet from the backpack. I sat down, my back against the wall, and fished out a pack of Marlboros from the backpack’s front pocket. There were only four left plus a plastic Bic lighter. I shook out a cigarette and the lighter, lit the smoke, inhaled. My exhalation was shaky. My hands trembled on my knees.

I wasn’t halfway through my smoke when I heard noise at the mouth of the underpass. I looked and saw three figures passing beneath the waterfall toward me. The light of the lampposts from the street above caused their chrome handlebars to shimmer.

I stood up as Peter, Scott, and Michael wheeled their bikes into the tunnel, then leaned them against the wall next to mine. Scott was dressed all in black, with his Orioles hat on backward. Michael wore the World War II helmet and a backpack. Peter’s hair was wet and slicked back off his forehead.

With an unsteady hand, I extended the pack of cigarettes to them. “Only three left.”

Peter and Scott took one each. Michael shook out the last smoke and stuck it between his lips.

“No kidding?” I said.

“Keep your comments to yourself,” he said, “and light me up.”

The four of us smoked awhile.

“We’ll take the dirt road out to the cliffs,” I said once we’d finished, pulling on my backpack. “It’s quicker than going through the woods.”

But I hadn’t meant quicker. I’d meant safer.

We gathered up our bikes.





We were four black souls carving our way up the cliff road on the outskirts of town. The city faded to smeary lights and dark pits of shadow. It was the world as we knew it, and we were shuttling right out of orbit. The woods spread out like a vast inky stain on the face of the city. Lights lined the coast along the bay, and I made out the blurry headlights of cars traversing the Bay Bridge. When lightning split the sky, it cast eerie bluish-white light onto the cliffs. The faces of my friends were the faces of warrior ghosts.

We arrived at the top of the cliff with our clothes soaking wet. We tossed our bikes down and marched soundlessly into the trees. Each time it seemed like we might lose our way, lightning filled the sky, allowing us to glimpse the massive stone fa?ade of the Patapsco Institute. We redirected our course and continued onward.

And then we were there.

“There were thick branches leaning up against the window the other day,” I said. The branches were gone now.

“Over there,” Scott said, pointing to where one of them lay at an angle over a large boulder. “They must have fallen over in the storm.”