December Park(55)

We came to a narrow little brook that snaked through the underbrush, its water level shallow and crusted with muddy ice. “Watch your step,” I warned and easily hopped over the brook. Adrian followed.

Eventually we arrived at our destination. I hunted around for several moments, sniffing like a bloodhound for a scent, until I came upon a scraggy overgrown mess of leafless bushes. I crouched down and pushed the poking branches aside, then waved Adrian over. He dropped to his knees directly beside me.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice just one notch above a whisper. This close, I could smell the sourness of his breath.

“One of the headless statues,” I said.

Indeed, the thing that lay supine on the ground, entwined with brown veins of ivy, was a life-sized concrete statue of a man in a suit and tie, a square concrete base at the end of its tapered legs. It wasn’t wholly intact, and there were crumbled bits of concrete scattered around the body as if leprosy had caused pieces of it to slough off. Most noticeable was the fact that the head was missing, a rusted metal pipe jutting up from the figure’s concrete neck. “There’s a bunch of them, and they’re scattered all over the place. You can find them if you know where to look.”

“Where’d they come from?”

“I don’t know. They’ve always been here.”

“Are all their heads missing?”

“Yeah. Creepy, huh?”

“Who did that to them?”

“I have no idea.”

Adrian reached out, his fingers hovering over the concrete dummy. Eventually, he touched it. “It’s cold.” He removed his hand. White powder from the stone came off on his palm, which he rubbed down the length of his pants. “Do you think these were . . . I mean, you know . . . used in some kind of devil worshipping séance or something? Like black magic or conjuring spirits? That stuff your brother told you about.”

“I guess it’s possible. But like I said, I don’t believe those devil worship stories anymore. That was just Charles trying to scare me.” I straightened out my legs and felt the cold stiffening my muscles. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is kids play down here in the summer, but hardly anyone knows these statues exist. Mostly, it’s just me and my friends who know about them. So finding some tiny clue that connects to whatever happened to Courtney Cole or any of those other kids that the police have missed is a crazy long shot.”

“But you found the statues, just like I found the locket.” He smiled. “Things can be found.”

I chewed at my lower lip while staring at him.

“You don’t have to help if you don’t want to,” he said, the smile vanishing.

Suddenly, I felt like a jerk. “Cut it out, man. Yeah, I’ll help you look around.”

And there it was again—that crooked smile. “You mean it?”

“Sure. But not tonight. We need to get back. It’ll be dark soon.”

Adrian stuffed the locket back into his parka. “Do you really think these woods are haunted?”

“Nah. It’s just superstition.”

He nodded but his expression was not one of agreement. He surveyed the dark woods around us, a creeping unease all too evident on his face.

“Come on,” I said, leading him back in the direction we had come.

Together we rolled my bike up the embankment and through the busted section of guardrail. I wheeled my bike across the street, then paused on the shoulder of the road. “Show me where you found it.”

Adrian pointed down into the ravine, where the runoff had frozen to mud-streaked ice and the weeds were the color of straw. The mouth of the drainage tunnel that ran beneath the highway was curtained in dead ivy and brown vines and nearly four feet in diameter. Blackish water trickled from the mouth of the tunnel and turned the dirt to marshland. “Right down there.”

“Let’s get home.”

I steadied my bike while Adrian climbed onto the handlebars. This time there was no quarreling. Dropping down onto my seat, I began pedaling, and with the cold firmly ingrained in my bones, it was like trying to start some enormous and antiquated machine.

By the time we arrived at the foot of Adrian’s driveway, my leg muscles were sore and I was winded. I eased the bike to a halt, and Adrian hopped off the handlebars.

“Hey.” He played with the zipper on his parka. “You’re not gonna tell your dad about the locket, are you?”

“No,” I said.

“You promise?”

I touched the tip of my nose. “I promise. But if it’s really hers, then I still think you should turn it into the police. Or at least think about it. It may help them catch this guy. And that would be good. But, no, I won’t say anything.”

“Okay. I’ll think about it.”

“Cool.”

Adrian looked lost in contemplation. I waited for him to say something more. When he didn’t, I said, “See you later, skater.”

“Yeah.”

“No. You say, ‘After a while, pedophile.’”

“What’s a pedophile?”

“It’s like a pervert.”

“Oh . . .”

“So . . . see you later, skater.”

“After a while, pedophile.”

I turned and wheeled my bike up the slope of lawn that connected our yards. After I stowed my bike in the ivy at the side of the house, I watched Adrian mount the porch steps of the old Dunbar house. When he reached the front door, he cracked it open only the slightest bit and vanished into the slender band of blackness within.