The Body of Christopher Creed (24 page)

I finally sprang up on top of the rocks and shined the flashlight all around the clearing. Grass, sand, pinecones, trees, branches—all in shaky jerks—sky. My legs were rubbery from this combination of anger and relief. I didn't want to see a dead body, but I needed to find Creed with a definite suicide note, a definite cause of death, a definite time of death. He was not here.

But instead of leaving, I felt the strong need to stay and think about all this. I had seen something that could not have been real. An Indian ghost. When I was seven years old, I could shrug it off after a day or two.
You're not a little kid now, and you're seeing things, Torey. Which means you're some sort of nuts. Are you totally crazy or just in shock over being knifed in the back by your friends?
I hated Alex all of a sudden.

I looked around the clearing with the flashlight one more time. As the beam turned up more branches and grass and normal stuff, I felt very close to Creed. I could feel all his confusion over what was real and what was made up in his own head. I felt his wish for make-believe to come alive, for some sort of control over the universe so that if life started to suck, you could just imagine something else into existence. The air buzzed all around my head like it had in my basement that night. Like bunches of eyes burned behind me, burning a hole through me, begging me for something. Maybe there were a thousand Creeds out there. Begging for hope, for understanding, maybe.

I figured I could understand someone wanting to take his own life. If the world stopped making sense. If people became convinced that lies were true. This was the most dangerous kind of lying, it struck me, the kind that was happening to me now—where people need the lie so badly they become convinced the lie is true. It's dangerous because they can tell the lie with so much belief that it sounds like the truth, and they can make other people believe it.

Creed had lied, too—he had made me believe his diary. Renee's type of lying was different from Creed's diary, though. Renee's was meant to do harm, and Creed's was only meant to save himself from a life that seemed unfair and didn't make sense. I figured I knew why I didn't find him here. My mother's words echoed through the darkness.
I knew that Chris was leaving to survive, not leaving to die.
All that grinning he had done his whole life—it was like the diary. He might have believed he was superpopular every day. But he only did what he had to do in order to keep going. To be normal and be popular and have fun and have a girlfriend. He made real life mere shadows in comparison. When his make-believe world finally caved in last week—God only knows which twig finally broke the camel's back—he saw reality clearly. But he didn't survive years of abuse from other kids and lack of understanding from his parents so he could go die in the woods. I believed it totally at that moment. Creed was alive.

I felt some deep canyon of regret that I had sat ten feet from him through most of our years in grade school and could never see that he was a tortured person. I was so alone here, and maybe it was because I alone was meant to know. I could have screamed the truth to Alex—I could have breathed fire and burned down a couple trees—and Alex wouldn't have believed me.
People only see as far as they are able, and the rest of the truth is lost on them. A kid
in the midst of us led a tortured existence. Bo Richardson wants to be everyone's mother. Christ died naked.

I had some sort of peace. There's something peaceful about what you know to be the truth. I had it, so much that I would rather be in jail with the truth than living a lie in the historic Towne of Steepleton. I stood up to leave.

"He's alive," I muttered to myself, to the dead Indians, to the choir of crickets. "He's alive, and someday I will find him."

I stepped to the edge of the rock with the lip that hung over. As soon as the rock faltered, I remembered the space underneath it and, too late, realized I was now heavy enough to tip it over if nothing was underneath that lip.

I flew headfirst onto the ground, flipped around, and stared wide-eyed as the huge rock met air underneath it, then came over on top of me. I clambered backward, which kept it from hitting me square in the chest, but it slammed down on my leg. I heard a crack.

I don't think I even yelled out at that point. I was shocked and messed up and couldn't feel anything. A slight burning hit the center of my calf as I tried to work my leg out from under the rock, but nothing more. The rock must have weighed a couple hundred pounds. The thought of Digger Haines losing his leg flitted through my mind, and reminded me of benching a couple hundred during football seasons. But benching, and sitting straight up and pushing a rock straight forward are two different things.

I felt my first jolts of pain as I rocked the thing across my bones a couple of times before heaving it on a roll to the side. I sat there huffing, shining my flashlight on this gash in my jeans. I could see blood and torn skin and a white, shiny thing poking through.
Bone fragment.
I stared in shock at this mess, wondering why a broken leg burned but didn't really hurt. It should hurt more than it did, I realized, and that scared me.

I tried slowly to get my good foot under me, and when I leaned forward, the beam of the flashlight from the other hand fell on a black hole.

I gazed at this black circle that the rock had covered, no bigger than a garbage can lid. Slowly I brought the flashlight closer and closer. I eased myself up on my good knee, gazing at this hole like my eyes were glued to it. I was hypnotized almost, feeling myself being sucked into it. I bent down very slowly but without hesitating, beyond being scared. My head penetrated the edge of the hole, and I brought the flashlight slowly in, so I could see a dirt floor maybe four feet below. Dirt and something shiny beneath it. Rock. Old Indian cave.

I moved the beam across the smooth wall that was maybe thirty feet away. The beam moved down to the floor, to some sort of long bundle wrapped in a reddish blanket. There was another bundle a few feet closer, and another about ten feet from me. I froze, realizing what was in those blankets. They were wrapped with some sort of leather crisscross ties and covered with specks of gold, like jewelry or charms. I wished I had paid more attention to Lenape history in school.

If you entered a grave, you might feel that you were insulting the dead and making them not rest in peace. I had none of that feeling. I would have sworn there was a feeling of relief in there. I couldn't explain it, but even when a little breeze swooped down, I felt a sense of peace and only a mild ache in my leg. The breeze made a terrible groaning sound against that smooth wall, like it had not entered here in years. Before my eyes, one of those red blankets turned colors. I wondered if I was imagining it, or if the light beam from the flashlight was faulty. The blanket seemed to be turning slowly from red to brown.

My heart started to bang a little, and this weird feeling began to raise the hair on my arms. I moved the light beam off the blanket to keep myself calm. And that's when I spotted a body that was not wrapped neatly in blankets or even covered with one. It looked out of place in this shrine. There was nothing sacred about this body:
sneakers ... blue jeans ... T-shirt ... blond hair ... face turned into the rock wall ... gun pointing straight up the wall...

"Oh Jesus Christ..." I breathed.

My worst fear. Somehow I pulled myself into the hole and slithered to the ground, staring hard through the shaky beam of the flashlight. It was not like a horror movie, where the body might spring out at you or come back to life. This body was dead, and it was going to stay dead and never move a muscle again. That's what horrified me the most, the finality, the stiff hardness, the unmoving whiteness of those fingertips. The look of no return. I eased over to it slowly, wondering why there was no smell of death in here. I had never smelled death, but I knew instinctively that death should smell bad. It was hard to breathe, and there didn't seem to be any smells except a slight mustiness that was making me dizzy. I shined the flashlight on the side of his face. He had on a mask, I thought at first. What looked like black tar covered everything from his ear forward so you couldn't even see his expression. It got very thick around a black hole above the ear. Blood. Blood turned black.

I could feel my stomach heaving, and I shut my eyes.

"Chris, why?" I moaned, and it sounded like a thousand voices in that cave. "I would have helped you, I would have, I'm sorry..."

The air rushed through again in a way that reminded me of the barbecue gas grill lighting, that
FFFFFFFF-FOOOOOM!,
and I actually thought I smelled a barbecue gas grill all of a sudden. My heart banged wildly, and all at once, my broken bone started to burn like someone had stuck it on a spit.

I started to holler in pain, but the yell stuck in my throat. Another sound, almost like crackling, made me stay quiet and listen. It sounded like the place was on fire. A scorchy smell wafted up my nostrils. I beamed the flashlight around, but the other bodies lay calm and peaceful in their brown blankets. I tried to figure out where that crackling sound was coming from, but my own pain was deadening my thoughts. I beamed the light on the wall and down, until it crossed the gun and rested on Creed's hand. Before my eyes, the skin turned from white to brown to black and started to peel back, like layers of burning paper. It peeled from the ends of his fingers, flipping back almost like curling ribbon, revealing red layers that turned black, then more layers, and then specks of white. His bones. The gun finally dropped and lay pointed straight at me, in a pile of bones, with the black flesh still sizzling and shrinking.

I screamed at the top of my lungs. This body was burning right in front of me, only with no flames. It was like an invisible fire was eating Creed away to nothing and eating my leg away, too.

All I know is I screamed and screamed until I couldn't scream anymore. And somehow I had gotten outside into the blackness again, though the scorchy stench had followed me out and my leg still felt on fire. Red lights were flashing in my eyes and people were running all around me, screaming, too. I heard Renee Bowen's voice, I thought, but Ali's face was staring at me in front of a huge flashlight.

"Your mom's here," she said. "Your dad, too. We're getting you help, okay? Torey, what happened? What is that terrible smell?"

I just gripped her around the neck, saying, "I've just been in hell..."

Yellow fuzz glitters
dropped down the backs of my eyelids, following a bezillion yellow fuzz glitters. Boring. But opening my eyes would be a bad thing. They would know I was awake. Time to torture the kid again....
Son! Are you in pain? Do you remember?...

Decision made: Nameless. Legless. Clueless. Ageless. Me. Like when I used to sit with my big-buttoned tape deck between my Velcro Keds. Four years old, and there was nothing except the music. The brown warthog song.

Four brown warthogs sleeping in the wood.
One beard buzzing ... and up he stood.

A tread got near, and a mild crash. Dishes, followed by the voice of authority. "Mr. Adams, we know you're awake. You have to eat this time."

Caught himself a dragonfly.... MMmmMM good.

Nurse Ratched. The carnivore. The suppository rapist. She had wanted me to choose between food and a feeding tube for our next bout with reality.

"Mr. Adams, I can see your eyelids moving."

She didn't like me. Thought maybe I committed a murder, something like that. Something like, I went back to get a body found and broke my leg so people would feel sympathy for me instead of revulsion. Some people were thinking that. Sometimes I could hear voices echoing out in the hall. I opened one eye a slit to see if my mother was in the room with that George friend of hers. George was supposed to be my attorney. He had on an olive green suit last time he was in here. Olive green was the hot new color for suits.
I'm glad I'm not a grown-up.

The only one in slit range was Nurse Omnipresent. She was like God. Knew your thoughts by the slit in your eye.

"You're not allowed any visitors. Not until you eat something, drink something, and say something to Dr. Fahdi. He's a very expensive psychotherapist, and your parents are not paying him to watch your eyelids dance. And your leg will not heal on mere inhalation. Do you understand?"

The bed was moving. The top of it, at least. I was bending at the waist, coming up to meet a bowl of off-white barf. The nurse grabbed my arm and forced it toward the spoon. It made me think she was planning to push my face into this oatmeal, and I had other ideas.

"Before you get violent, think of who my mother is," I muttered, swallowing the razor blades in my throat. I could feel her glaring like four brown warthogs. She thought I committed a murder, something like that.

"Your mother is not here. Nor will she be here until you eat. So, you can rot here alone, or—"

"Fuck off."

I shut my eyes again, wondering if she planned to dump my head in this bowl. I heard her pick up the phone and punch in numbers. They told me I hadn't eaten in five days, but I knew they were lying. Five days, I would be completely and totally starving and not able to resist. She could bite me.

"Dr. Fahdi? It's Carol Flannery. He just spoke ... Yes, I'm quite certain...'Fuck off.'"

Three brown warthogs sleeping in the wood.
One heard buzzing ... and up he stood.
Caught himself a dragonfly....MMmmMM good!

"Oh, and before that he threatened me. No, not my life, my bank account."

Two brown warthogs sleeping in the wood....

"He still won't eat, and I think he knows I'm ready to drop the diplomacy tactics. Sure. Whatever you say."

She hung up. "He's coming right down. And if you're eating when he comes in, you'll probably see your family. If you give the profanity a test."