Unspeakable Things(66)

“I made party invitations yesterday.”

She cocked her head like she wasn’t sure what I was talking about at first. “Oh, that’s right! Your birthday is tomorrow. What kind of cake do you want?”

“Devil’s food with chocolate frosting. And vanilla ice cream on the side.” I was pushing it, but on our birthday, we were allowed.

Mom laughed. It sounded like a calliope. “I can manage that. How many kids will be coming?”

“I invited three.”

She smiled, and I could have snuggled under that love like a blanket. For the first time in a long time, I felt like my life had hope. I had a best friend. I’d stood up for myself at the river. My family was being relatively normal.

The harsh shrill of our telephone disrupted the air. Both Mom and I paused, but then continued.

“Did you make the invitations for a lunchtime party?”

“Yep,” I said. “How much weeding do we have to do today?”

Mom laughed again, but it was dryer than the previous laugh. “All of it.”

I was going to whine about Sephie not having to help, but I didn’t want to wreck the magic fizz we were floating in. A car rumbled in the distance. A red-winged blackbird trilled from the direction of Goblin’s house. Red-winged blackbirds loved swampy land.

Mom moved over a row and clapped her hands. “Look at all this lovely spinach! We can eat it for supper. That and fried chicken. You won’t mind having it again? I’ve been craving it ever since we butchered.”

“Peg.”

I hadn’t heard Dad come up behind us. Mom must not have, either, because she whipped around, holding her garden spade out like a weapon. “Donny. What is it?”

At first, I thought he was standing in a shimmer of the fog hugging the low spots this early in the morning, but then I realized he was all-over white.

“Donny?” Mom repeated, dropping her spade to rush to him. She placed her hand on his chest, and when he didn’t respond, she wove her arms around his waist. “What happened?”

He didn’t return her embrace. “Another boy’s been abducted, but this time, he hasn’t been brought back.”

I felt a cramp in my belly, like maybe I’d finally gotten my period. “Who?”

Dad didn’t look at me, just stared a thousand miles away over Mom’s shoulder. She pulled back. “Who was it, Donny?”

“Gabriel Wellstone. The dentist’s son.”

My blood turned to sludge.

If Gabriel had been kidnapped, it was my fault.

My fault.

I’d let down my guard this morning. I’d been powerfully selfish, forgetting everything Ricky had told me last night, that kids were still getting attacked out there. My family had acted normal for a few hours this morning, they’d offered a tiny slice of okay, and I’d let myself care about nothing else.

Dad sounded as far away as I felt. “That was Bauer on the phone. He said they arrested the band teacher. Connelly.”

Nononono. I ran toward my bike. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel. I was a nerve in motion. I grabbed the backpack that hung off my handlebar and tossed it over my shoulder.

“Cassie!” Mom hollered, but she didn’t try to stop me.

I took off toward Sergeant Bauer’s house, pedaling so fast that the road argued below my tires. Bauer needed to know what only a kid could see: it wasn’t the Hollow connecting all the hurt boys.

It was that they all rode bus twenty-four.





CHAPTER 43

My brain raced after my body, churning to catch up. I couldn’t slow down for it, though. I tore around the corner past Goblin’s, then by Frank’s place, careening down Sergeant Bauer’s road.

I had to tell him about the bus route.

Once he knew, he could find Gabriel and bring him home. The sun was warming the treetops when I skidded into Bauer’s driveway.

“Sergeant Bauer!” I yelled, biking toward his house. “Are you home?”

I hopped off the bike with the wheels still spinning and raced to his screen door, pounding its wooden edge with both fists. The police car was parked in his driveway. He must have had the day off, or he had worked the night shift. I yanked open the screen door and stepped into his sunporch to wallop directly on his front door.

When there was no answer, I put my hands on each side of my face and peered in, hollering for him. His kitchen was directly off the porch. At the rear of his kitchen was an open door, its black pitch telling me it led to his basement. Every cell in my body was sure it was a dirt basement, wet and smelly, exactly like the one underneath my own house, just like Frank had guessed.

“Hey, little girl with the forever necklace.”

I jumped so high that I left my skin behind. Sergeant Bauer had been sitting on the screened-in porch all along, hadn’t reacted when I’d pounded on one door, then the other, hadn’t moved from behind the unpacked boxes stacked nearly to its ceiling. He lumbered toward me, slowly, navigating the boxes but with something more, something invisible, weighing him down. I backed out of his porch, through the creaking screen door, stumbling down his front steps toward my bike.

He followed me outside, stepping off his porch as the sun hit his yard. He looked a hundred years older than he had when Frank and I’d been here selling popcorn. His jowls were bristled, his skin gray as old deli meat.