David doesn’t seem to notice my distracted thoughts, but simply nods at my mention of the boy’s name. “What about him? I mean, I agree he’s likely involved, given how he was part of that group. But Peter, he was stuck in the hole the entire time we were fighting for our lives down there.”
“That’s what worries me,” I say. The wound on my back stings, and my stomach gurgles, empty and queasy. I feel lightheaded. I sit down on a nearby cot.
David sits next to me. “I don’t follow.”
“This whole time, he’s been in the hole . . . with Ben.”
I stand, shaking. Something inside of me stirs, then settles into place. As if some lost, inner piece of me, floating through the ether of my mind all these years, has only now found its destination. Locked into place like a final puzzle piece.
The mystery of who I am—who I really am—feels solved. The answer to a question I’ve been wrestling with my entire life, like Jacob and the Angel. With the realization comes a wonderful sense of peace. Of certainty. Resolve.
A strength I have never felt swells up from deep inside me. A hidden flower that now blooms, to replace my beating heart.
“I need to go,” I say, knowing what must be done. “I need to find Andrew.”
David looks at me as if I’ve gone mad. And perhaps I have.
“They’re still out there, Pete. Hell, for all you know, they’re waiting on the other side of that door.”
Obviously eavesdropping, Byron stands from his place at a nearby cot. “I’ll go with you.”
David eyes the mallet in Byron’s grip and shudders. “You’re both out of your minds.”
“I need to know what’s going on,” I say, determined. “We need help. Locking ourselves in here isn’t going to solve anything.”
After a moment of consideration, he finally relents. “All right,” he says. “But I’m going with you.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think so. Watch the others. Protect them.”
He looks to me, then Byron, his face conflicted. “Fine, I’ll play mother hen. But be careful, yeah? Try to remember, they’re just kids. They’re just like us.”
I offer a reassuring smile, even though I know, in my heart, that he’s wrong.
They’re not kids. They’re not orphans.
And they’re not the children we know.
Not anymore.
40
“THE SLUMBERING GIANT AWAKENS.”
Johnson is face-down in the dirt. His head feels foggy and his mouth is bleeding. He slides a hand to the cold earth where his head landed, feels a smooth hard stone the size of a baby’s skull. He spits blood into the dirt and pushes himself up off the ground. His fingers sink into the earth and for a moment his mind is flooded with grim imagery:
. . . screaming while being buried alive, clawing through the mud, seeking air, seeking light . . . In a coffin, dirt hitting the top as he yells out that I’M ALIVE, DAMN YOU, I’M ALIVE . . . Inside a closet, his mother talking to him through the door. “I can HEAR you. I hear you in there. That’s more time! More time for you, Teddy.” And he claws at the door but it’s not a door it’s dirt and it crumbles beneath his fingers because this is not a closet and this is not his childhood. This is a grave. He’s buried in the ground, trapped deep down where the sun doesn’t reach and the bugs and worms crawl into his hair, crawl over his digging hands, climb mercilessly into his eyes, his mouth, seeking life, seeking flesh.
“Stop!”
The images vanish like the snuffing of a candle. He’s breathing heavy, hunched over on all fours, staring at the dirt at the bottom of the hole. His stomach boils and he wants to vomit, but holds it in, focuses on deep breaths. His skin is tingling, as if his limbs are asleep, and his mind feels untethered, no longer part of his body. If feels as though his entire being is in the hands of another, some awesome power, his body tied to his spirit by nothing but a flimsy thread of black yarn.
He raises his face slowly, looks through strands of clotted hair. His head throbs. A bloody string of drool slips from his bottom lip. He sees Bartholomew, standing against the far wall, hands folded neatly in front of him, ankles crossed. His face a pale blur in the darkness.
Near Bartholomew, huddled into the near corner, knees drawn up to his chin, perceptibly shaking, is Ben. He looks so small in the thick shadows. Johnson can’t see either of them clearly, the light from above is dim—darker, he realizes, than the early-afternoon light he was walking in when first going for the horses. The day has grown late.
The horses. Cut up. Butchered.
He shakes his head, grunts, and forces himself to his feet. The hole seems much smaller with him inside of it. He looks up toward the opening, gauging the distance. Were he to jump he could almost touch the open trapdoor with his fingertips.
Almost.
“What is this?” His words are thick, groggy. Slurry. “How long have I been down here?”
Bartholomew takes a step forward, and Johnson—inexplicably—fights off the urge to take a step back.
Something’s wrong with him. Something is very off about this boy.
He looks over to Ben, as if for answers, but the child simply cowers. Johnson wonders if Ben’s mind is broken, or if he’s simply so frozen he can’t think straight.
“I must have slipped,” Johnson mumbles, answering his own question. A sane answer to how he got down here.
No, something pulled at me. Something seized me, yanked me down here.
It whispered in my ear . . . what?
I’m here . . . and then: Join us.
And whatever grabbed me . . . was strong.
“Impossible,” he murmurs. He studies his dirty hands, then glances up once more at the open trapdoor—snow flurrying past, a charcoal sky above—then back to Ben in the corner. His eyes rove everywhere, everywhere except at the skinny boy now walking toward him.
Here, in the dark beneath the earth, Johnson is stunned to realize he’s frightened of the child. He feels it in his bones, in his guts.
Pure, naked terror.
What’s wrong with me?
He takes a sideways step toward Ben, away from Bartholomew, who pauses, eyebrows raised in curiosity. Johnson ignores him for now, tries to study the other boy more clearly through the gloom. “Ben? Are you okay?
Ben’s only response is to lower his forehead into the arms crossed over his knees; to shrink away even more than he already has. To hide inside himself.
“Ben’s a little peaked right now, Brother Johnson.”
Now Johnson turns, finally, to face Bartholomew. He’s relieved at what he sees, what he feels. Just a boy, he thinks, almost grinning at his own fear, his stupidity. Just another brat that needs dealing with. He takes a step toward Bartholomew—in the confined space, he hopes it will intimidate the boy. He badly wants to wipe that little smirk off his face, wants to see fear in his big brown eyes. “What’s wrong with him? Tell me.”
But Bartholomew does not step backward, or frown in discomfort, or look in any way afraid. Instead, he puts a thoughtful finger to his chin. A doctor discussing a patient. “I’d say he’s suffering from indecision. I think he’s having a hard time deciding what to do.”
Ben begins breathing more heavily. More rapidly.