HEX (19 page)

That one drop of blood, that black nipple in Jaydon's camera flash, those blue teardrop eyes on strings were what Tyler would never forget.

“Lawrence … Tyler,” Jaydon said with raised eyebrows. “I hope you haven't come to spoil my party, or you can both get the hell out of here.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Tyler stammered. He was nailed to the ground. Oh, Jesus. Just now, when he needed to keep his head straight, it was all slipping away. This was way too much for him. This was unreal.

“What the fuck were you thinking, showing my PM to that fucking ol' man of yours, who had to share it with the whole fucking town?” Jaydon practically shouted those last words, and spit was shining on his lips. The stick with the X-Acto knife shook in his hands.

“You should have stayed in touch!” Lawrence yelled. “We were calling and texting you all night! Where the hell were you?”

“Maybe I had more important shit on my mind than your fucking tests. Mathers gave it to me today with both barrels and then some! And all because that faggot there couldn't keep his mouth shut.”

“Dude, I just want you outta here, now…” Burak said, sounding desperate. “If my parents find out what you did in our house, they'll kill me.”

“You're sick,” Tyler said softly, his glance still locked on the witch's hideous black nipple. “You're playing with everybody's lives. If the Council ever found out about this, you'd get a lot worse than Doodletown.” He dug around in the pocket of his jacket and took out the GoPro, but as soon as Jaydon saw the camera he lunged at Tyler with his knife stick. Tyler screamed and shrank back, bumping into Lawrence.

“Oh no you don't,” Jaydon said, and the look in his eyes made Tyler put the GoPro back in his pocket. Jaydon had lost it. Completely. “The only one who's filming or taking pictures today is me. The best fucking pictures in human history. The bare tit of a ghost.” He roared with laughter. “I'll send them to Justin and I'll send them to Burak, because this is probably the first tit Mohammed here has ever seen and I know that he'll want to go back to his room and jack off to it later on. But if anybody opens their mouth about this, I'll tell them all about the website and your tests. I'll drag you all down with me.”

“Get that fucking knife out of my face!” Tyler said sharply.

“Whatever you say, dude,” Jaydon said, and in one fluent move he turned around and brutally jabbed the X-Acto stick at Katherine. The blade was only an inch long, but it disappeared completely into her drooping tit. The witch's body jolted backward and shuddered as if it had received an electrical shock. Her scrawny hands clenched convulsively. When Jaydon withdrew the knife, it released a gush of blood that spattered all over the carpet.

“Fuck!”

“Now look what you've done!” Burak shrieked, pointing at the carpet. “My dad's gonna kill me!”

Lawrence turned away and stumbled backward, tears on his cheeks. The witch was hanging forward in her chains, exposing her breast even more. The wound had split her nipple and blood was forming in dark spots on her dress.
Go on, disappear,
Tyler thought.
Get lost before it gets any worse.…

He tried to control his voice, but it shook nonetheless. “Dude, this is sick—this is abuse. You can't do that to her.”

“Who cares? She's a fucking ghost! If she pops up somewhere else later she'll be as good as new.”

“But you can't humiliate her like that, she'll…”

“That bitch murdered my dad!” Jaydon roared, fiercely brandishing his spear. Tyler recoiled once again. “That bitch raped my mom! Don't tell me what to do, because she's got it coming!”

“Jesus,” Tyler said, raising both palms in the air. “Listen, I don't know what happened yesterday, but let's talk about it. There isn't anything we can't solve together, right guys?”

He turned to Burak and Lawrence for help. Burak understood what he was trying to do. “Yeah, he's right. Just calm down.”

“Don't try to fucking calm me down. We've been making nice to her long enough. Plan's changed. We're not going public anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Tyler asked, but he knew very well what Jaydon meant. Something in Jaydon had snapped, something that had started a long time ago and had come to a climax yesterday. And at the root of it all was the witch. Jaydon didn't want to keep plugging the holes, didn't want to foster understanding anymore. If they were to go mainstream and the authorities moved in, it would no longer be possible for him to … Oh, Jesus. To take revenge. What the hell happened down there under the church? What's come over him? And why is the goddamn witch still here?

“I mean that
OYE
doesn't exist anymore,” Jaydon said, eyes narrowing. “I'm in charge from now on. We're doing things my way. And I meant what I said. If anyone here blabs I'll show them all the videos, all the reports, all the messages. You're all going to Doodletown. Don't forget my mom's on the disciplinary board, and believe me, they owe her big-time. She'll make sure they believe my side, not yours.”

He hurled the stick with the X-Acto knife into a corner with a crash, tore himself away from the others, and charged through the kitchen and out of the house. The rest were left in the sickly incense clouds, shaken, as if they'd just been hit by a hurricane. No one said a thing. After a few moments, Tyler turned to the witch, trembling.

“How's she doing?” Burak asked gloomily.

“I don't know, man.” She still hadn't moved. She just stood there, bending over as far as the chains would allow, her bleeding breast dripping onto the carpet. One of the blue amulets now dangled against her headscarf. Katherine curled her fingers in … pain? Despair? They were trembling, in any case. To what extent was she aware of the humiliation? Tyler honestly didn't know. The witch's humanity was a mystery that no one had unraveled yet, just like her decision to appear and disappear at will. That's what made her so freaky.

“Katherine?” Lawrence asked. He approached her cautiously with quivering lips. “Katherine, I'm so sorry. This should never have happened. It was Jaydon; he did it.
We
never wanted to…”

“Dude…” Tyler put his hand on his arm.

Lawrence shrugged and wiped his tears away. “I don't know what to do.”

“What's with all the amulets, anyway?” Tyler asked Burak.

“They're the
nazar boncuğu
—they protect you from the evil eye. When my mother came downstairs this morning and
she
was here, she hung this freak show all around her, and now they've gone to the mosque to pray for her to leave. Fuck, I probably ought to be praying for her to leave myself, because if they come home and she's still here, and they see her like this…”

“Have you got an old sheet or something? Just tell your mom and dad you couldn't stand how she stares at you so you covered her with a sheet.”

“She's blind.”

“You know what I mean. They'll never check underneath. But we've got to get that blood out of the carpet. Maybe we can … do you have a broom? Maybe we can push her upright, carefully. To make her stop leaking.”

“Fuck, I'm not gonna touch her.”

“And what about the website?” Lawrence said. “Jaydon has seriously flipped. He sounded like he meant it.”

“We'll go on without him,” Tyler said fiercely.

“I dunno…” Burak said.

“What? Are you just going to let him threaten you?”

Burak shook his head with doubt. “Yesterday I was chosen to do the whisper test, and today she suddenly appears in my house. That's gotta mean something, right?”

“It doesn't mean jack shit,” Tyler said, but he sympathized with Burak's anxiety. “Listen, you don't have to do the test if you don't want to. I'll do it. In a controlled environment, with you guys around. Nothing can go wrong. It's not like you'll kill yourself straight off. You have to measure it out properly. There are lots of people who've heard her whisper and they're still around to tell the tale.”

“I don't know, Tyler,” Burak said again. “I don't think it was a coincidence. I think she's trying to tell us to stop. Your experiments, going public. She's doesn't want us to do it. I'm sorry, man.”

“But…”

But before Tyler could figure out what to say—he was truly at a loss—it all toppled over the edge into the abyss. The bead curtain was shoved aside and Jaydon came in, his fingers clenched around Fletcher's collar. Jaydon had taken off, spotted the dog in the backyard, and changed his mind. Maybe he wanted to get even with Tyler; maybe he just saw an opportunity with the witch close at hand. Whatever his motives, he'd come up with the fatal idea to sic Fletcher on her. Tyler didn't know whether the dog normally detected her by her scent alone or by something more primitive, but the incense must have diverted him. Now that he'd caught sight of her, his growling swelled to a savage howling that filled the Şayers' small living room, and he pawed the air like a pit bull.

“Jaydon, don't!” Tyler screamed. He tried to jump in between Fletcher and the witch, but Jaydon provoked the border collie by yanking on his collar, and Fletcher was deaf to his master. His lips were drawn back from his teeth. He barked ferociously, mad with rage, and then Jaydon let go.

Fletcher slid across the floor. For a moment Tyler thought he had him, his fingers grasping his fur. But then the dog reached the carpet and his legs gained traction. With a terrific guttural snarl—louder than barking, wilder than growling—he threw himself at the witch. His powerful jaws closed around her right arm. The witch's body, dangling forward to the left, now jerked to the right, and for a moment Fletcher hung by her chained arm, shaking his head furiously, tearing skin and tendons. One second later, with a howling shriek, the dog flew across the room and slammed against the wall.

In that moment of absolute shock and bewilderment Tyler felt a hypersensitive jolt to his nerves from an electrical charge that seemed to come from
outside
his body. Every hair stood on end. Adrenaline flooded his veins. His terror seemed to actually sharpen his awareness to an extreme, and even before he turned around he knew that the witch had gone up in smoke … and that he'd been so close that it must have been
her
that he'd felt, the moment she disappeared.

The blue amulets swayed like mad pendulums.

Wailing, Tyler dropped down beside Fletcher. The dog lay on his side, whining and breathing too fast, groggily raking his foreleg across his snout, as if he had accidentally stuck it in a wasp nest. Tyler carefully took his head in his arms and stroked him. Fletcher licked his hands, and Tyler, who would normally have pushed him off, let him.

Jaydon hesitated in the doorway. “Is he…?”

“
Fuck off!
” Tyler roared, lunging at him. Jaydon jumped and twisted his mouth until there was nothing left of his lips but white skin and wrinkles. He stood there irresolutely for a few seconds, then took to his heels.

*   *   *

LAWRENCE STAYED WITH
Burak to help him clean up. When Tyler left the house, the early November cold hit him harder than before. It sank into his bones and blended with the inner chill that clung to him after witnessing Jaydon's cruelty. He let Fletcher drink from the stream that ran past the town square. The dog lapped greedily, plunging his muzzle into the water and drinking in thirsty gulps. By then Tyler was sick with worry. There were no visible injuries, no scorch marks or cuts on Fletcher's tongue or the roof of his mouth, but the dog was visibly shaken. He padded nervously behind Tyler, head low to the ground, tail between his legs. Every bird that took flight made him look around with wide, staring eyes, and when a car came around the corner, he jumped into a hedge, whining. Tyler's hushing didn't seem to help.

Back home, he took Fletcher upstairs and put him in the tub, where he gave him a lengthy soaping with dog shampoo and rinsed him off with warm water. Fletcher, who hated water with a passion and usually retaliated by soaking both bathroom and master, submitted to the treatment quietly. Tyler was relieved that Steve and Jocelyn had gone to work, sparing him the need to explain. He had no idea what he would have said.

There was only brief contact,
he told himself.
Naturally, he's upset, but maybe it's not that bad. There's no need to expect the worst.

But when Fletcher crept into his basket and Tyler offered him his favorite biscuit from the tin in the kitchen cabinet, the dog just sniffed it and looked up at Tyler with big, sad eyes.

All afternoon Tyler felt rattled, as if he were constantly on the brink of a migraine attack that never came. He checked the HEXApp almost compulsively. At two o'clock it reported that Katherine was standing in the shop window of Clough's Used Books, but there were no details. Apparently all traces of the incident had been erased … on her, at any rate. Because at about four, just before his parents came home and when over at O'Neill, his Spanish class had probably just ended, Fletcher started shaking all over.

“What's the matter, boy?” Tyler whispered, his nose buried in the dog's fur, sniffing the smell that had become so familiar to him over the years. “It's all over. Take it easy now.”

But Fletcher whined softly and Tyler felt the lump in his stomach swell as if a storm was in the air, a storm that couldn't be averted.

Fletcher didn't eat that night, instead lying silently in Jocelyn's Limbo. Jocelyn and Matt watched
American Idol,
Steve was engrossed in a magazine, and Tyler aimlessly surfed on his laptop. Fletcher didn't sleep. He sniffed every now and then and stared bleakly into the distance. When the TV produced a loud noise, he began to growl softly.