The Pricker Boy (6 page)

Vivek continues using his father’s voice. “And now Stucks Cumberland offers the thesis—”

“Cut it out,” I interrupt him. “I’m serious.”

Emily’s marshmallow is turning black. She looks at me. “And how, exactly, would you know that? Ronnie did all the ‘research’ into the story.”

What she means is,
Why are you trying to take Ronnie’s story away from him?

I lean forward in my chair. “Because, Emily, I’m the only one who’s seen him.”

Even Ronnie appears shocked by what I’ve said, but he soon recovers and tries to pick up the thread that I’ve left dangling. “Yeah! Yeah, I remember that. We were just kids. That was years ago! You were scared to pieces!”

“Really?” Emily asks. Her marshmallow catches fire, but she doesn’t care. She’s more interested in defending Ronnie.

“And what exactly did you see?” Vivek asks. His face can’t hide a slight smirk. He still thinks I’m pulling his leg. He’s waiting for me to burst into a smile and say, “I can’t believe you fell for that.”

“Full body,” I say coolly. “In the woods near here. I was about six or seven at the time. Ronnie was there, but he didn’t see him.”

“I remember!” Ronnie says. “We were building that fort down where the wild grapes make that canopy! We could see the rock wall that connects to the Widow’s Stone. You said he came right up to the edge of it!”

“Day or night?” Emily asks.

“Day!” Ronnie blurts out.

“No,” I correct him. Ronnie is only playing along in the hopes of mining more credibility for the story, and I’m not going to let him in. “It was dusk. We were just about to head home for the night.”

“What was he doing?” Emily asks. She throws the burning marshmallow, branch and all, into the fire pit.

I shrug. “He was just standing there. Watching us. I could see him clearly. It wasn’t a flash in the trees, some
animal ducking out of sight. When I looked at him, he didn’t even look away. He just kept staring at me. He must have looked at me for half a minute, then he walked back into the woods.”

Ronnie’s brow wrinkles. “You’re serious.”

Robin comes back from the house, pausing for a moment when she sees everyone staring at me. “Everybody all right?” she asks.

Vivek’s face breaks into a grin. “Come on, bud. You were a little kid. You saw a deer or something. You saw antlers or whatever. I mean, you never told us this before.”

“Well, perhaps …,” Emily starts, then pauses. “Listen, I know this is just a story that Ronnie’s been telling since we were little kids, but you might find this interesting. I remember this one night. I heard something following me home in the woods along the road. It stopped when I stopped, walked when I walked. It wasn’t my imagination, I know that.” She looks around at all of us, then shrugs, “But then again, I was ten at the time.” She reaches into the pouch of her sweatshirt, pulls out another marshmallow, and tosses it into her mouth.

Boris groans next to me, and I reach down to scratch behind his ears. I feel the first faint drops of rain strike my arm.

“Wait a minute,” Robin asks. “Are we still talking about the Pricker Boy?”

“Come on,” Vivek says. “This is kid stuff. You don’t actually believe this!”

“I know there’s something,” I say. “I woke up here this morning. Boris was with me. He’d smelled something up the path that leads to the Widow’s Stone. He was standing there growling, his tail straight out, his fur all spiked up.”

“This morning?” Emily asks.

“You were half-asleep! There’s nothing up there, Stucks,” Vivek says.

“Okay,” I say, and then pause. Everyone around the fire knows what’s coming next. “Whoever believes that there’s nothing up there in the woods can go,” I say flatly. “You know what to do.”

Vivek laughs. “Oh, good one!” He points at me and Ronnie. “You guys planned this! To make the story scarier. ’Cause we’re older now and don’t believe this crap.”

Ronnie shrinks back in his chair and wraps his hand around his scarred wrist.

“Come on,” Vivek says. “Please. We’re not kids anymore, Stucks.”

I throw my hands out. “Fine. We’re not kids, and it’s just a story. So prove to us how grown-up we are, Vivek. Here.” I pull a stone from the edge of the fire pit, grab my fire poker, and using the charred end, mark an X on the rock. I toss it gently toward his feet. “You know what to do.”

Vivek stares at the rock. “Come on, Stucks.”

Robin chimes in. “Vivek, you don’t have to go anywhere. This is silly.”

“She’s right. No one has to go anywhere,” I say. “You
can claim it’s all crap and not back it up.…” I wink at Vivek, and I see his pride flare.

Robin’s voice chirps like a flustered chickadee’s. “No, Stucks! He doesn’t have to prove anything to you. Vivek, ignore him. He usually saves this side of his personality just for the family.”

Ronnie jumps in. “Listen, this is just a story. Just a story, okay? Let’s relax and talk about … I dunno. But I didn’t tell it to get people mad at each other. Let’s relax here.”

“Just a story?” I can’t help but raise my voice a bit. “I thought you said it was true!”

“Stucks, calm down!” Robin chirps again.

“Stucks, relax,” Vivek adds.

A long silence follows. A warm wind rolls through the trees, and lightning flashes near the far shore. “Maybe when we were kids we all had a good scare over this,” I say. “Watch out! Hug your teddy bear, ’cause here comes the spooky story! But what about those kids, Amanda and Willie? What really happened to them? Emily says something followed her home one night. What was that? Explain these things to me, someone, please!

“I believe that there’s something back there. Something bad. Something that may have even hunted us at times. Something I have seen, whether you believe me or not. Even Boris here has seen it. The hair on his back stood straight up. Boris is the dumbest dog on the planet!” Boris flops over sideways, bumping my lawn chair, and whinnies like a
horse. I scratch his belly. “If Boris is smart enough to know there’s something back there, what does that tell you?”

They all stare at me. Ronnie has given up altogether, relinquishing the reins of his most prized story to me. “And here’s what else I think. I think that each of you believes in it too. If you’ve outgrown it, then prove it. Prove that you’re not still afraid. Any one of you. Take that rock and go up into the woods past the Widow’s Stone and back to the Hawthorns. Go alone in the dark and leave the rock. In the morning we’ll all go up together to find the rock, and I’ll admit that you were right.”

“I’d go,” Emily says. “But I’m not going to do it just to prove something to you.”

Thunder begins to rumble on the other side of the pond, and Boris groans nervously. “Well, Vivek?” I ask. “You started all this.”

Vivek begins to stutter. “Look, I—I … I just got here. It’s the first day of summer! Why be mean to me? I’m just … hey, why me?”

I glare at him through the flames. “We’re older now and don’t believe this crap. Isn’t that what you said, Vivek? So show me how much you’ve grown up.”

Vivek leans forward and picks up the stone. “It’s not fair. It’s just a story.” He turns and disappears into the darkness with the stone, mumbling, “Why me?” over and over again as he goes.

Robin shakes her head at me across the fire.

“I don’t want to hear it, Cousin,” I say. I get up and
reach for one of the buckets. Earlier in the day, the Cricket made several trips with his small metal bucket to fill up these large white ones, while I sat on the shore watching him. Only now do I smell the soft odor of algae and fish scales. I don’t know why I never noticed the stink and the muck of the pond before. I think the water is more orange this year—in fact, I don’t remember it ever being orange before. Not so you’d notice. Maybe there was an extra load of leaves last fall and the tannins have soured, brought the rot up from the bottom.

I drop the bucket and step down the path, away from the orange flames. Boris wobbles to his feet and follows me.

The cooler air feels good on my cheeks. I look up for the stars, but tall clouds swell in the sky, crackling with energy. I breathe. I just breathe. I stand there for a second, or maybe it’s a minute, or it could be five. I honestly don’t know.

The next thing I hear is Robin calling out for me. The rain starts pouring down on top of us, making my bucket of water pretty redundant. I run back up the path with Boris. Vivek is standing there in the rain, as white as a sheet and still holding the stone in his hand. Huge drops of water splash into the fire, causing it to squeal. The fire pit hisses like the open mouth of a dragon, spitting clouds of steam.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Guys, there’s something up there. Something on the rock in the center of the Hawthorns,” Vivek says.

I hope he’s joking, but he looks terrified.

“I saw something there, and I reached out to touch it
just to make sure. Then I turned right around.” He drops the stone by the edge of the fire pit.

“What was it?” Robin asks.

“It felt like a dead animal. Like a rat or something.”

“A dead rat?” I ask with a nervous laugh.

“I didn’t pick it up and look at it!” he shouts at me over the thunder. “But that’s what it felt like. A dead animal, all wrapped up in rope or something. That’s the only way I know to describe it.”

Lightning flashes across the sky. We all look at each other, trying to figure out what to do next. Part of me thinks we shouldn’t go look until morning, but another part knows that it simply will not wait. Besides, if we all stick together, we’ll be fine. We’ll be terrified, but we’ll be fine. The thorns only claim people when they’re alone.

“I want to see it,” I say. “I’ll go if we all go together.”

“To the Hawthorns?” Ronnie screams. “At night? But it’s raining! My grandpa will want me to come home—”

“Don’t be such a baby, Ronnie!”

He surrenders. “Okay, I’ll go. If everyone else goes.”

Everyone moves except Robin. “You’re not serious!” she says.

“How else are we going to know what it is?” Emily says.

“I don’t want to know!” Robin says. “This is scaring me. Seriously!”

“Be scared then, but you’re coming anyway,” Emily says, grabbing her hand and pulling her along with us.

I lead the way, taking a few quick steps up the path. I stop, and Ronnie bumps into me from behind.

Lightning flashes again, illuminating the trees and the rocks all slick with wetness. Behind the Widow’s Stone, his gray skin shiny and darkened by the rain, I can see the Pricker Boy waiting. I slip and fall to the ground. My friends immediately reach down to help me to my feet. I brush off my hands on my jeans as quickly as I can, the earth feeling leprous on my palms.

The lightning flickers again. This time, the apparition is gone.

“You okay?” Ronnie asks.

I don’t answer him. I turn around and put my arms out, sweeping my friends back down the way we came. I move them all quickly past Whale’s Jaw, past the dying fire, past where Pete and I built that old fort, past the twin climbing trees and all the way out into the road, all the while carrying the feeling that something is watching from behind.

“The morning,” I say once we get back to the road. “The morning will be soon enough.”

We split off then. Vivek and Emily walk home together. Robin and I deliver Ronnie to his screaming grandparents before going back to our own house. Even after we get inside, I can feel that thing, feel it reappearing at the Widow’s Stone and watching us on the path. I can feel it there, though I can’t be sure myself of what I’ve actually seen.

W
hen I open my eyes, all I see are thorns, millions of their branches twisting away in the darkness. The leaves are dripping, and the lightning is still flashing nearby. Everything is slick—slick from the rain. It takes me a moment to realize that I am standing next to the Widow’s Stone, on the exact spot I saw the Pricker Boy standing earlier this evening. I can feel the mud beneath my bare feet. My heels are sinking into it, and I can feel worms, tiny worms crawling in between my toes. I jump away and bolt down the path toward Whale’s Jaw. Before I get two yards, I slip in the mud and fall to the ground.

I feel him before I see him. I don’t even have to turn around to know he’s there. I try to get up, but the mud is greasy, and my hands and feet keep slipping. I turn to look at him. He is standing at the break in the wall, staring down
at me. Every wet thorn on his skin gleams. He doesn’t make a move toward me. The wind dies away. I struggle to my feet.

He nods at me, and my fear fades away. He has no plans to hurt me. His lips aren’t moving, and he isn’t talking, but I know he wants something. He’ll leave me alone if I will only bring the others, Ronnie and Emily and Robin and Vivek. I nod. I don’t know why. I can’t explain my actions. I just nod.

His eyes twinkle. He wants one more. He wants the Cricket. I shake my head and stumble away. I slip once again down into the mud. I scream at him, but no sound comes out of my mouth. I try to stand, but I fall in the mud, sliding down toward Whale’s Jaw. I can hear the Pricker Boy on the path behind me, sure-footed, the thorns of his feet acting as cleats in the mud. For every yard I can struggle along, he moves three. I am almost to Whale’s Jaw when his hand grips my ankle. I feel the prickers on his palm sink into my skin. He drags me up the hill, past the Widow’s Stone and down the path into the thorns.