Thunderland (31 page)

Oh, no,
Jason thought. As he stared at his freed hands, he had a dreadful realization. Something so terrible, he could not bear to think about it.

Blake had halted with his fist raised. “What the hell?”

“This is what the hell,” the Stranger said, using Jason’s mouth, Jason’s voice. As Jason watched in horror, he seized Bryan’s head with both of his own hands. He twisted savagely. The sound of cracking bones filled the air. Bryan dropped like a rag doll to the ground, his head sagging between his shoulder blades.

Gaping at Bryan’s corpse, Blake backpedaled.

No,
Jason thought.
No.

“More secret wishes to fulfill,”
the Stranger had said. He had given Jason the bike of his dreams and a fantastic sexual experience with a replica of his girlfriend. Now it was time to grant him another wish: getting rid of the bullies who had terrorized him.

Jason had wanted to be rid of Blake and the others, but never in his darkest dreams had he wanted it to happen like this.

A fierce thunderclap resounded; then rain began to fall. The downpour snapped against the trees and glittered like silver chains in the flickers of lightning.

Travis turned to run. In one quick motion, the Stranger made Jason stoop, grab a beer bottle, and bring the bottle down on Travis’s head. The bottle shattered against his skull, and Travis shrieked and fell to the earth. He lay there, groaning.

Jason stepped forward. With incredible force, he stamped his foot onto the kid’s back. The boy’s spinal cord popped like a rubber band, and his moans immediately ceased.
Dead.

Jason wanted to vomit but could not. He could not control his own stomach.

 Blood spattered his hands. Blood he had spilled with his own hands.
Oh, God.

He caught movement in the corner of his eye. Involuntarily, his head swiveled.

Blake was taking off.

The boy ran fast but sloppily. He bumped into trees and bushes, blinded by the rain and his own terror. Even a seemingly fearless bully like Blake sensed when something supernatural was happening, and he had the good sense to flee.

For once, Jason felt pity for him. In spite of his unwillingness to continue this slaughter, Jason’s body began to pursue Blake.

He ran with inhuman speed and agility, taking impossibly long and powerful strides, effortlessly dodging trees and shrubbery, not hampered at all by the pounding rain. In seconds, he was on Blake’s heels.

“You can’t get away,” the Stranger said through Jason. “The more you run, the more pain I will give you when I murder you.”

“All right, you motherfucker!” Blake stopped running and whirled around. “You want a fight? I’ll give you one!”

Blake flicked out the switchblade. He lowered himself into a fighting stance.

“Come on, you crazy fucker,” Blake said. He lunged at Jason.

As easily as if Blake had moved in slow motion, Jason caught the hand that gripped the knife. He squeezed. Bones popped. Blake yelped, the knife dropping from his broken fingers. Still clutching Blake’s ruined hand, Jason drew back his fist and hammered it into Blake’s nose.

Blake howled.

Jason wanted to cry, too, at that act of cruelty, but he was not in control; he was only an observer in his own body. He released Blake’s hand.

Blake put both hands to his smashed nose. He stumbled backward, shrieking in agony.

The Stranger made Jason bend down and retrieve the switchblade. Raindrops glimmered on the sharp, deadly knife.

Please, God, don’t let the Stranger force me to do this,
Jason pleaded.
Give me the power to stop this.

Blake had backed into a tree. He covered his nose, weeping. Blood drenched his hands.

Jason stalked toward him. He grabbed the boy’s wet hair and raised his head, making him look at him.

“Are you scared?” the Stranger said through Jason. “Are you gonna piss your pants?”

Face smeared with blood, Blake stared at him, terrified.

Jason raised the switchblade to Blake’s face. Blake’s eye widened.

“Were you actually going to use this on me?” the Stranger said.

“No, dude, no,” Blake said. He spat blood. “I only wanted to make you listen, you know ... throw a scare into you. I’ve never stabbed anyone. Honest, dude.”

“Neither have I,” the Stranger said. “Honest, dude. But I’ve always wanted to.”

He rammed the knife into Blake’s chest.

Blake gasped, spluttered, wheezed. Blood seeped from his lips. He fell forward against Jason.

The Stranger made Jason twist the blade around in Blake’s chest, then yank it out. He shoved Blake away. The kid’s corpse fell lifelessly to the ground.

Jason regarded his bloody hands. The Stranger, who claimed to be his friend, had made him into a killer. He would never be able to escape the guilt. This would haunt him forever.

Thunder crashed across the sky. Rain plopped onto Blake’s corpse.

Still controlled by the Stranger, Jason turned away from Blake’s body. He dropped the blood-stained knife ...

And he was standing in the small clearing. The open handcuffs lay at his feet. His hands were clean, dry.

Shafts of sunlight pierced the forest canopy, bits of blue sky visible through the leaves. A flock of large, curious black crows perched on the tree branches.

Blake, Travis, and Bryan lay on the ground, scattered around him like forgotten, broken toys. None of them moved. Their eyes gazed sightlessly at the sky.

“Oh, God,” Jason said. Hesitant, he stepped forward, in full control of his movements once more. He bent beside Blake. He noted that Blake’s body did not have any of the wounds he’d suffered in Thunderland. There was no blood anywhere, no knife tear in his shirt. Was he still alive, in a comatose state?

Jason placed his fingers against Blake’s pale neck, seeking a pulse.

Nothing. The boy’s flesh was cool.

Jason snatched away his hand. Turning, he saw the other two kids sprawled on the ground, their faces languid, eyes as glassy as marbles.

They were gone. All three of them.

He crawled away and vomited explosively.

Blake and his friends are dead, and I killed them.

Tears spilled out of him. Although he hadn’t liked Blake or his buddies, they hadn’t deserved to die. And the fact that the Stranger had forced his body into committing the vile act sickened him to the core. He wanted to run—run far away and as fast as he could, escaping the Stranger and what the Stranger had forced him to become: a killer.

Using a tree to support himself, he got to his feet.

In the branches above, crows squawked. Jason looked up. He saw dozens of crows, big ones almost the size of falcons, lined up like soldiers. Each of them seemed to be looking down at him, their sharp black eyes condemning him.

But they were only birds. They couldn’t be accusing him. Still, he started thinking: what would happen to the bodies of Blake and his friends?

He didn’t want to ponder the question, but he couldn’t avoid it. He couldn’t bury them himself, which meant someone would eventually find their bodies. The discovery would be a major story in a small, sleepy town like Spring Harbor. There would be an investigation. People would be questioned. Witnesses might come forward.

He might be convicted as a murderer.

There was no way out of it. This was no longer a game or a puzzle. This was murder, and he was going to be held responsible.

Run.

The whispered command came to him so softly that he questioned whether it was an actual voice or a thought in his own mind.

Above, the crows jittered and squawked excitedly. The tree boughs were heavy with them; there were so many of them now that their bodies blocked out the sunlight.

Run, Jason. Now.

He heard the voice clearly. It wasn’t his imagination. The voice was familiar: it was the Stranger. Although Jason’s watch did not stop and he did not hear thunder rumble, the Stranger’s presence permeated the air; a numbing coldness enveloped him as if the door to an immense freezer had been opened. Jason shivered, goosebumps breaking out on his skin.

A crow swooped out of the trees and landed on Blake. Wings fluttering, the crowjabbed its beak into Blake’s eye.

Jason’s stomach roiled. Dread weighed down his limbs like sand.

Crows fed on dead things, but how had such an enormous flock of them arrived so quickly? The instant he had snapped out of Thunderland, he’d noticed the birds aligned in the tree boughs, as though they had foreknowledge of the massacre. Crows did not behave like that—unless they were somehow being controlled.

The idea of someone like the Stranger being capable of manipulating an army of crows did not seem far-fetched at all.

Another bird slashed through the air and attached itself to Bryan’s neck. It greedily attacked the throat.

Last warning, Jason
... The Stranger’s voice was as clear as if he’d been standing beside him.

Jason looked up ... and saw the platoon of crows dive off the branches and funnel to the earth in a dark, roaring wave, driven by a single mind, a sick hunger. He covered his head with his arms and raced out of the clearing, directly through the teeming mass of birds. Wings flapped against his face, and beaks grazed across his skin, but the crows did not attack him. Inexplicably manipulated by the Stranger, the carrion eaters cared only about the three corpses; they swarmed across the bodies, feeding, and would do so perhaps until little trace of the corpses remained.

Jason ran with a scream trapped in his throat and did not stop running until he reached the edge of the forest.

He found his bike at the rim of the woods. He pushed it out of the forest, hopped on it, and returned to the supermarket.

The grocery bag that he had dropped lay on the pavement where he had left it. He tucked it under his arm.

He couldn’t go back to Granddad’s house yet, not after something like this. He rode directly to Brains’s place.

“We’ve got to call a meeting,” Jason said to Brains the moment he answered the front door. “Where’s Shorty?”

“He’s at home,” Brains said. He stepped onto the porch. “What’s going on? Why do we need to have a meeting?”

“Before I tell you why, you better sit down,” Jason said, sitting on the porch swing. Looking puzzled, Brains sat beside him.

Jason told him what the Stranger had done to Blake and the other boys. “Oh, my God,” Brains said, his eyes huge behind his glasses. “This guy is ... crazy. I can’t believe he killed those kids.”

“It’s my fault,” Jason said. “If I’d jumped out of that tree yesterday, maybe—”

Brains grabbed Jason by the arm. He shook him hard. “That’s bullshit, Jason. Do you hear me? So what if you didn’t take the fall out of that tree?
You
didn’t wish anyone dead, and you didn’t kill anyone. The
Stranger
used you to murder those guys, and he’ll have to answer for it. You won’t. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Jason said. “But I feel sick. God, why did he have to kill them? I only wanted them to leave me alone. I didn’t want them dead!”