Draw the Dark (27 page)

There was also a lot I didn’t know and probably would never find out: why the Witeks’ house burned to the ground; why Daecher had never ratted Woolfe out (though maybe as Eisenmann, Woolfe had made Daecher’s silence very worthwhile); whether Catherine Bleverton had been murdered out on the lake because she suspected or guessed the truth.

I said all this to Dr. Rainier and added, “And don’t forget the synagogue. We have no idea what happened there either.”

“Some things will always remain hidden, no matter how much you dig. The question for you now is what to do with the mysteries
you
really care about.”

“My mom, you mean.” I eyed her curiously. “When did you figure it out? That I was hearing the muttering again?”

“I didn’t really . . . figure it out, I mean. I just had this . . .
feeling
. I guess you’d call it a premonition.”

I thought about her willingness to believe
in
me and suspend her own disbelief. So maybe she had empathy—and a little bit more.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “She’s out there.
They’re
calling me. If it was your mom and she needed help, what would you do?”

She was silent a few long moments. “I would have to think long and hard. We’re not talking about dragging someone from a burning building. This isn’t the same as driving to the next city and giving her a place to live. You don’t even know if being in the sideways place hasn’t resulted in some fundamental change in who she is. She won’t be the mother you remember, not after all this time. No one’s mother ever is, not only because a mother changes but because a
child
does. Yes, you’ll always be her
child
, but that doesn’t mean you’re frozen in time. A parent’s job is to be left.”

“What does that mean?”

“The minute you leave home, things change. You can’t and shouldn’t want to go home again, and Hank would be doing a bad job of raising you if he insisted that you should.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but he seems to have a hard time letting me do things on my own.” I told her about the thing with the barn and Dekker. “By your definition, he’s doing a lousy job.”

“Don’t confuse ambivalence and regret with incompetence. Of course, he’s got mixed feelings. What parent wouldn’t? You’re his only blood relative, and his job means that he sees all the ugliness in life, all the things that can go wrong. I haven’t known a single cop who doesn’t worry more the longer he stays on the job. Remember: he’s alive. He’s right
here
. All you have to do is reach out and take his hand.”

We moved on to other things after that, like whether I would return to Aspen Lake. Dr. Rainier wanted me to; she really felt as if I was gaining some control over my . . . well, we just called it a gift, and she thought I could free up some of those other people, help them rediscover themselves the way I had with Lucy. The limiting factor was in my ability to protect myself from getting sucked into those maelstroms of rage and death. Or sucking them
out
.

“Otherwise, what are your options? Live like a hermit? Be by yourself so no one can touch you and vice versa?” She shook her head emphatically. “That’s not a life. So I want you to try as hard as you can to be present, and that means staying engaged, here, with us.”

I told her I’d try. I wasn’t sure I meant it.

“I know this is a dark time for you. I know you want to escape all this; that all you see right now is evil and what you feel most is regret and loss. Believe me, the world’s filled with dark places and the armies of the night are just waiting their chance. But remember this.” She took hold of my shoulders and squeezed them hard. “There’s also the light. Call it soul, call it God’s light, call it the human spirit, call it hope. It doesn’t matter what you call it. The only thing that matters is this. The light is here.” She bunched a fist over my heart. “The light is power, and that power is love, and love is strong.”

I gave a breathy laugh. “All you need is love?”

“You’re smart, so don’t act so dumb. You need a lot more than love, and you know it. What I was going to say is that love can also kill. Love, especially one that is so all-consuming that it overcomes reason, can be as destructive as any evil you can imagine. So be careful. You
will
beat back this darkness, Christian, I know you will. Follow your heart. Just don’t get lost.”

Uncle Hank always works on Halloween. Trick-or-treating is limited to the hours between six and nine, and the town has a big bonfire at the school at nine thirty. Curfew is ten o’clock. A little harsh for a Saturday night, but doing things this way really cut down on all kinds of vandalism.

So I biked over to Sarah’s at five to help set up. The Schoenbergs live out a ways on about fifteen wooded acres, but I enjoyed the ride. Her father wasn’t home; he’d gone to some kind of conference down near Madison and wouldn’t be back until Monday night. Mrs. Schoenberg had things pretty organized: a big tub out back for apple bobbing, about a million bales of hay and bunches of cornstalks all set up near a big steel fire pit and more near the house for people to sit on, a piñata chock-full of candy and coins, and stuff like that. It was kind of old-fashioned, yeah, but there was also a karaoke set up in the basement and a stack of scary DVDs for anyone who just wanted to stuff his face with candy and popcorn and gork out.

Sarah opened the door to my knock, and for a second, I thought I had the wrong house. She wasn’t just dressed up. She was beautiful. I mean, really beautiful. She wore this poufy, off-the-shoulder yellow dress with a very BIG skirt—like big enough to hide under—and a red rose in her hair, which she wore swept up in curls. A pair of white gloves reached all the way to her elbows.

“Wow.” I looked her up and down. “You really look nice.”

“Yeah?” She did a little twirl so her skirt poofed out like an umbrella. “I’ve always wanted to be Belle.”

Yeah, I knew that. Back when we were little, she had this thing for Disney, and I guess it hadn’t stopped even after she got popular. Or maybe Disney was something popular kids liked, I don’t know.

She stopped twirling. “You’re not dressed up.”

“Uh . . .” I looked down at my black jeans, black T-shirt, and black Chucks. Touching the black beret perched on my head, I said, “I’m a starving artist. See?” I withdrew Witek’s pouch from my hip pocket with a flourish. “I even brought my brushes. Hey, that reminds me. Didn’t you want me to paint something, like a mural, for the party?”

Her neck flushed with color. “Well, I got to thinking about what you’d said, and I didn’t want you to think that the only reason anyone would want to hang with you is for what they can get out of you, like, you know . . . work. You’re here to have fun and be with people.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you. That’s really nice.”

“Yeah, well, don’t let it go to your head.” Then she grabbed my hand and pulled. “Come on and help me set up chairs.”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to work.”

“Christian . . .”

Some of us made cookies with Mrs. Schoenberg—yeah, I know, it sounds lame, but it’s really fun, and I really like chocolate chips. We drifted on to karaoke. I didn’t sing, but Sarah’s got a beautiful voice, and I liked listening to her. She sang something about kissing in barley and swing, swing . . . something like that, and I got this warm feeling in my chest. It was nice, like she was singing to
me
. In between, we took turns answering the door for trick-or-treaters, who came in waves of cars with their parents because of where the Schoenbergs live. I had fun watching the little kids see how much they could grab with one hand.

So, yeah, it was good.

Night came on fast, and a couple of guys—football jocks but playing it cool—started a fire in the big steel fire pit the Schoenbergs had in the backyard well away from the house and about fifty yards from the woods. The air had been cool before but now turned chilly enough for our breath to fog. I was prepared and pulled on a thick black sweatshirt. Sarah changed out of her princess outfit into jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt, which was kind of a shame, although she kept the hair, which was classy and cute at the same time. Mrs. Schoenberg brought out platters of graham crackers, bags of marshmallows, and those humongous Hershey bars for s’mores, which I haven’t had since I was, like . . . well, I don’t remember.

Anyway, does this sound really lame? Yeah, I guess. But there was something about hanging around the fire, toasting marshmallows, getting a little queasy with all that sugar, and listening to the sputter of wood send red sparks flaring into the night like fireflies that made me start thinking about how eager I’d been to get away and what I’d leave behind when I did. I tried to imagine what it would be like next year come May and June when I’d know about college—and I felt a little sad.

Right around then, I realized I was thinking about what it was like to fit in, if only a little bit. I mean, it wasn’t like a bunch of guys were elbowing one another to be my best friend or anything. I wasn’t the center of attention, either in a good way or bad. After people got over the novelty of seeing me there, I was just . . . there. I did some things. A couple of people talked to me. I was on the periphery, yeah, but there was this tiny opening I could see—because of Sarah. Like I wasn’t getting all mushy or anything, but I kept thinking about us growing up, being close, and talking, and I thought that before you could grow to love somebody, you need to know how to be best friends.

Weird, I know.

I should’ve realized all that was too good to last.

The voices started in, loud, like cranking up the volume. Had they been there all along? Sure, but low, like white noise, you know? You stop hearing certain things after a while because you get used to them. Anyway, the muttering suddenly got clearer and louder. I had practice not showing much in the way of how I’m feeling, but I felt like crying. It was so unfair; I felt, like, leave me alone; I’m trying to be normal for a change . . . but that was too much to hope for.

I think it was because of the piñata. Watching people wind up and then let ’er rip, I had this, well,
flashback
, I guess, to the moment when Woolfe whipped that crowbar around and smashed in Mordecai Witek’s skull. I heard the crunch, I smelled the blood, my heart ramped up, and my palms were sweaty.

“Come on, Christian.” Sarah was laughing. She held the baseball bat in one hand, and now she trotted over and gave my arm a tug. “Your turn. Give it a whack.”

I tried begging off. “I’m really not very good at that kind of thing.”

“Come on,” she said, but her eyes were pleading and angry at the same time:
Don’t be such a jerk, you were doing so well.

I shot a quick glance at the other kids waiting for me to get on with it already. Something Dr. Rainier said—or had it been Sarah—came back to me:
Have you ever considered that you exclude yourself?

“Sure. Hand it over.” I let myself be blindfolded and then started taking shots at that piñata with the bat. At first people were egging me on, but then all the talk suddenly dried up, and I felt the air change. In the silence, I could hear the distant singsong of Mrs. Schoenberg talking to someone in the kitchen, a girl doing a breathy, very bad Mariah Carey imitation on the karaoke—and the sudden surge of the muttering in my head.

Oh no . . . I tugged off the blindfold and saw that everyone was staring at something behind me. I turned—and all the feeling in my body puddled at my ankles.

Karl Dekker was there. Curly and Larry or
whoever
flanked him. All three wore that weird mask and cape like that guy in
Scream
, only the glow-in-the-dark masks were pushed up on top of their heads. Trust me, the view wasn’t any better or less scary. Silhouetted against the orange flames from the fire, Dekker was a demon straight out of hell.

Dekker’s lips split in a wolfish grin. “Hey, Killer. Trick or treat.”

And, right then, I knew something else.

Daecher.

Dekker.