Neverworld Wake(66)

No one answered.

He moved to the front of the car and sat on the hood, staring meditatively into the headlights. Another ten minutes, and he was furious. He looked around, scowling, then seemed to give up and climbed behind the wheel, slamming the door, radio blasting heavy metal. He tried to pull away, but the wheels were caught in the grass, the tires spinning. He put the car in reverse, and it bumped backward a few feet. He hit the gas harder and the car roared back, hitting something. Cannon inched the car forward, then reversed again. The car jerked, smashing whatever it was, bouncing over it and stalling.

Cannon climbed out. He crouched down to check under the tires.

He stood up immediately. Then he bent down again. Then he stood up.

He bent down a third time.

“No. No. No. No. No.”

Cannon threw his head back and began to howl.

“No. No. No.”

Bewildered, I glanced over at Martha, Kipling, and Whitley watching the scene in silence beside me. They seemed as puzzled as I was.

Muttering something, Cannon bent down once more, seemingly trying to wrench whatever he had run over out from under the tires. For minutes, all we could see were shaking grasses.

When he stood up again, he was making a strange noise, as if he was crying. That was when I caught sight of what was in his hand.

A tweed cap. It was Jim’s.

No. This can’t be happening.

Cannon was back behind the wheel. After a few tries, he managed to back out, doing a three-point turn. He was about to drive away, it seemed, only he had second thoughts, because the car jolted to a halt and he climbed out again.

He stood frozen for a moment, as if in a trance.

Then he stepped over to what he had pulled out from under the wheels; what I could see now in a rush of disbelief, of horror, as I scrambled on top of the pipe for a better look, was no log. It was Jim, my Jim, lying on his side. His jeans were streaked with blood. Cannon was cradling Jim’s head in his lap. Cannon bent over him, whispering something, and then he was on his feet again, on the phone.

“Call me. I need you to come. I need you to help me. Now. Please call me back. Please. Please.”

He said it over and over, his voice a high-pitched whine. It was terrible to witness. Cannon’s resolute action, his ease with problem-solving, his unflappable tenaciousness—all of which had come to define him in my mind the way waves define the ocean, clouds the sky—it was gone now. He was a different person.

“I need you. I need you now. Please come. Please.”

Whoever he was calling, no one answered. Cannon climbed into the driver’s seat again, sitting in pitch darkness, engine running, radio on.

Fifteen minutes later, when he finally emerged, he had a plan. He was his old self, the fixer. He grabbed Jim’s ankles and began to pull him brutally through the grass, cursing as Jim lost a loafer, crying out in disbelief, in despair, before wiping his face in the crook of his arm and continuing on.

He reached the quarry’s edge. It was yards away from where we were watching.

He threw Jim into the quarry without saying a prayer, without hesitation.

There was the hushed whir of the body falling, knocking against rocks, and then nothing, the muted splash of Jim hitting the water lost in the shriek of crickets.

Cannon stared after him, immobile, his blank face hollowed by shadows.

I wondered if he was considering going in with Jim, ending it all, right then and there.

Instead, he turned with an empty stare, climbed into the car, and drove off.



* * *



—

It was a moment before any of us could move.

I was standing on top of the pipe in the dark, my heart pounding, my mind short-circuiting. Too late, I realized the cement was cracking under my feet. Abruptly, with an angry belch, the entire thing collapsed, Martha and the others jumping back into the grass as I was sent plummeting into the pile of rubble.

Wit helped me, gasping, to my feet.

“What the hell was that? Are you okay?”

I nodded, climbing out, dusting myself off.

We stood silently in a circle for a moment, eyeing each other in shock.

“But who did Cannon call?” whispered Wit with a hint of indignation. “Because it wasn’t me. I never knew any of this.”

“He called Kipling,” said Martha.

We turned to Kip. He eyed us stiffly, guiltily, his arms held at odd angles at his side.

“She’s right,” he whispered. “The devil called, and I answered.”

He said it flatly, with a hint of relief, and I remembered with a shiver of shock the meaningful glance I’d seen Kip exchange with Cannon back in the Wincroft library, when they were confessing how Kipling had made it through Darrow. They hadn’t been thinking about the arrangement Cannon had made, or the cheating. They’d been thinking about this very night, and the secret they kept.

“I helped him throw Jim’s body into the quarry,” said Kipling.

We stared at him.

“How can that be?” asked Whitley. “We didn’t see you.”

“Chapter Thirty-Nine, The Bend,” whispered Martha. “You never run into yourself in the past or the future.”

Kipling nodded. “I had to come here. I had to watch. I had to know, once and for all, if it had been my idea to throw Jim into the lake, or Cannon’s. Would it happen if I wasn’t a part of it? I had to know who was the bad one, and who was worse.”