The Skeleton Flute, page 16
Back on the road into town, I stare out through the window, watching the world blur by. I can’t stop thinking about Helen wanting to stay here in this reality instead of going back to where she belongs. Maybe if I’d been here for ten years, I’d feel the same. But I don’t. I need to get back to my family, my real family. Even if Mom and Dad are separating, it’s better than this. Isn’t it?
Lena leans over and bumps me with her shoulder. “Whatcha thinking about?”
“I know the right thing to do is to get everyone back where they belong,” I say. “But if we manage to do that, I’ll still be in the situation that got me here in the first place. My parents are separating. How is that better than being here, where they’re together?”
Lena looks at me sideways. “What about your brother and sister? Don’t you want them back?”
“Of course I do,” I say without hesitating. “But I also want my parents to stay together.”
Helen looks at us in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry about your parents, Sam. I know that has to be hard.”
I swallow. “I feel like this—all of this—is my fault.”
“Adults have problems just like kids do,” Helen says. “No one’s perfect. You have to give your parents the chance to figure it out. You can’t fix them or blame yourself for it. You’re just a kid.”
“But why do Sammy’s parents get to be happy?” Tears sting my eyes. “How come they can make it work, but mine can’t? Is it because Sammy’s an only child? Did having three kids tear my parents apart somehow?”
Helen looks up at me again. “We don’t know how these alternate realities work exactly. Why did I have a miserable life in my reality, but I’m happy here? It’s not for us—for you—to figure out. You have to leave it to your parents, Sam, as hard as it is. And I don’t think it has anything to do with there being three of you.”
I suck in a shaky breath. “How do you know?”
Helen’s eyes return to the road. “I don’t know. Not for sure. But when adults have relationship troubles, it usually has to do with them and not the kids. I can guarantee you that your parents love you—all of you—even if they’re struggling themselves.”
“I just want things to be the way they were.”
“I can understand that,” Lena says quietly. “I’d give anything to be able to go back and fix things so my mom was still alive. No one wants things to change, but they do.”
Heat creeps into my cheeks. Here I am worrying about my parents separating. At least both of them are still alive.
“People have a way of surprising us, usually in the best ways,” Helen says. “Maybe your parents will work it out, and maybe they won’t. Be patient with them, Sam. And with yourself.”
From the very beginning, all I’ve wanted is to keep my parents together. But not for them, not entirely. I want it for myself. And for Grayson and Addie. Because I don’t want things to change. I don’t wanna be just one more kid with split-up parents. But is that selfish of me? Don’t my parents deserve to be happy—even if it means separating?
Helen said I should be patient with myself. Maybe she’s right. My feelings are all jumbled up inside me, and I don’t know how to sort through them. What I do know is that when I played the skeleton flute, I stole Sammy’s life from him to make mine better. If I don’t fix things, that makes me no better than Bones. No matter what my life looks like when I get back to my reality, I know I can’t stay here.
“So,” Lena says, “how do we get to the ether?”
“You two are determined to do this?” Helen asks.
“We need to get the flute,” I say, ignoring the question. “That’s what started all this, and that’s how we’ll get there.”
“Are you sure?” Lena asks.
“No.”
She blows out a breath. “Great. Okay, let’s say it will take us to the ether. How do we get it from Bones?”
“I think I have an idea,” I say. “He tricked us—now it’s his turn. We have to go back to Stapleton Park and get him to show himself. When he does, I’ll distract him, and you can sneak up behind him and grab the flute.”
Lena tilts her head. “Oh, that easy, huh? Just like that?”
I shrug. “It’s worth a try.”
“Okay, then,” Lena says. “I guess that’s the plan.”
I laugh. “The worst plan ever.”
“True.”
I sigh. “I know it’s not solid, but it’s all we’ve got. We have to do this, Lena. For Addie and Grayson, for Lenore and Beaumont. For us—both versions.”
Chapter 27
HELEN DROPS LENA OFF FIRST—down the street from her house so her parents don’t get suspicious—right before six o’clock. When I get home, the house is silent. I expect Mom and Dad to rush out and ask where I went after school, to demand to know who dropped me off, to tell me to get upstairs and get my homework done or I’ll be grounded. Everything my real parents would do if I was dropped off by a stranger well past dinnertime.
Instead, there’s a note stuck to the fridge:
Sammy—
Mom and I are out shopping for Hawaii. Dinner’s in the fridge.
Love you, champ
—Dad
Okay, then. I guess I should be happy they’re not here to ask questions. It would make everything I’ve been doing for the past few days—trying to figure out how to get back home—completely impossible. I should be happy, but I’m not. The silence and emptiness press in on me, squeezing my chest tight.
Grayson should be here, bugging me to help him with one of his models. Addie should be shoving her stuffed animals in my face or building big block towers just to push them over and watch them crash to the floor. Mom should be making dinner while Dad grades papers at the dining room table. The house shouldn’t be this empty.
Sammy didn’t seem surprised when I told him his parents were going to Hawaii. I kinda feel bad for the kid. No brothers and sisters, parents constantly taking trips and leaving him out of things. If I’m lonely after just a few days, I can only imagine how Sammy feels living this life all the time. Maybe that’s why he plays soccer—to feel like he’s a part of something.
A sharp ache blooms in my chest. There’ve been moments when I’ve gotten caught up in living his life. It’s been amazing having my parents in love again—going on date nights, dancing in the kitchen, cooking together. But there’s also so much about it that makes me want to run screaming.
I slide into a chair at the kitchen table and drop my head into my hands. A tear splashes onto the tabletop, then another. I miss my mom and dad. I miss my brother and sister, and Derek.
I wanna go home.
After inhaling a slice of cold pizza, I rush up to my room and change into my pajamas. I slide into bed, exhaustion weighing on me like a ton of bricks. It’s been such a long day already, and my work isn’t done. I need to prepare Sammy and Lee for what’s coming. We’re about to wage war, and they need to be ready for it.
As I’m drifting off, I remember George Ashcroft’s journal. I shudder, imagining how it must have felt not having any idea why everything in your life was suddenly different. At least I have Lena and Helen. He was all alone.
“I can’t get you home to your family, George,” I whisper, “but I’ll stop the man who took you from them and make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
My eyes flutter shut and fly open again almost immediately. I scramble off the ground and gaze up at the dark, swirling sky beyond the skeletal tree. In the distance, dark shapes move through the sky, dipping and sailing, then shooting upward. The sound of wing beats drifts on the air.
I move away from the tree and the field as quickly as I can. I don’t wanna hang around and wait for the monsters to notice me here in the open like a sitting duck. Nope, nope, and more nope.
I barrel down the embankment, Sammy and Lee’s building rising in front of me. I dart through the door and plunge into darkness. When my eyes adjust, I move away from the Staircase of Doom, heading straight for the much safer back staircase.
I climb the stairs two at a time, anxious to get to Sammy and Lee and tell them what we have planned. I’m halfway up when an earsplitting scream stops me in my tracks. I freeze, my foot raised in the air. The scream echoes through the building, a horrible, inhuman sound that’s guttural—like a croaking frog—and high-pitched at the same time.
My blood turns cold; the icy fingers of terror scrape down my spine. I’m not alone.
The smell of dirty swamp water floods my nose. My eyes fill with tears and I clamp a hand over my face. It’s heavy and earthy, tangy like sweaty socks that haven’t been washed in weeks. I glance down the staircase, squinting through the darkness. Another scream shakes the building, followed by a squelching sound, like the sound your feet make when you walk through thick mud. My stomach flip-flops, and saliva floods my mouth. I swallow, trying not to hurl.
Move, Sam, move!
But my legs won’t listen. I stand there, my eyes growing wider, as the creature comes into view. It’s impossibly tall, with pale, shiny skin. It’s unclothed, but there are no humanlike features. It’s a blank canvas of smooth, sickly gray skin. It walks hunched over, its long arms swinging in front of it as it shuffles toward the bottom step. I bite down on my tongue, fighting back a scream.
This is it. This is how I die.
The creature turns its elongated head to look up at me. The sides of its neck puff in and out as it breathes, the skin blowing up like a balloon and then shrinking back down again. A scattering of different-sized eyes covers the creature’s face, stretching from just above a pair of puffy pink lips and up over the top of its head.
The frogman. One of the ether’s monsters that Sammy and Lee told me about. It grins with needle-sharp teeth, and each of its eyes blinks in turn, like a wave, revealing pale orange irises and slit-like pupils. A long, slimy tongue rolls out of its mouth, and thick, yellow saliva oozes down its chin. The tongue draws back, like a snake ready to strike.
That’s enough to get me moving. This is not cool. Not cool at all. I stumble up the stairs, tripping over each step, but before I can make it to the top, the frogman leaps forward and closes a webbed hand around one of my ankles.
“Gah! Let go! Let me go!”
It pulls down on my ankle with inhuman strength, yanking me right off my feet. I slam onto the stairs, my elbows banging against the concrete. Stars blossom in front of my eyes. This is a dream! How is this happening? Dream or not, the frogman has a hold of me, and he’s pulling me closer to that slimy tongue and those needle-sharp teeth.
The vision from the cave comes back to me—images of Bones corrupting the people from this world and turning them into monsters. This was a person once. It didn’t choose to be a monster. Its life was stolen from it, just like Beaumont’s.
Well, person or not, I’m not about to lie here and let it eat me.
“Let! Go!”
I kick at the creature with my free foot, my toes sinking into its gross spongy skin with each blow. It rears back and lets loose another screech that vibrates my eardrums. Kicking it made it angry. Angry is bad. I try to scramble away again, but it pulls down on my ankle even harder. I slide down a step, then another, closer to the monster’s deadly teeth.
I’m inches away from it and can see thick drool glistening on its tongue when the smell of cigar smoke drifts under my nose. I know that smell, but… how?
A breeze kicks up inside the stairwell, rustling the hair on my head and stirring the swamp-water smell around until my eyes are watering. The frogman yanks me free of the stairs and pulls me down into the entryway. Its slimy hands grip my arms as it wrestles me into a standing position.
The cigar smell is stronger down here, so strong it gags me. Through my streaming eyes, I see a tall figure come into focus. An ice-cold chill races through me as a familiar voice comes out of the darkness.
“Hello, son.”
Bones steps forward from the shadows, a grin stretching across his face. His dark eyes are black in the orange moonlight coming through the dirt-caked windows. I shiver. Where’d he come from? My mouth drops open, and for a moment I stop fighting to get free of the frogman’s grip.
“What are you doing here?”
Bones nods at the frogman. “I see you’ve met my friend.”
“Your friend?” I grunt, trying to pull myself free. “More like your servant.”
Bones makes a tsk-tsk sound.
“Call it what you will.” He turns to the frogman. “Release him.”
The frogman lets go of my arms and sinks down onto its haunches, watching and waiting, its chest heaving in and out.
I stumble forward. “How did you find me in my dreams?”
A smile stretches across Bones’s face. “The gateway in the cave. You touched it. I can feel you.”
A wave of nausea washes over me. Did touching that awful puddle create some kind of connection between us? The thought sends shivers racing through me. I’d rather be connected to the disgusting frogman.
I take a step back, inching toward the stairs. “What do you mean?”
A deep laugh rumbles in Bones’s chest. “There’s so much you don’t understand, maybe some things I still don’t understand myself. But now I can sense where you are.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why are you here?”
“To deliver a warning,” Bones says, his eyes flashing.
“A warning? About what?”
“About helping the others. It’s pointless. They’re mine. Stop trying to save them.” He snarls the words between his teeth, spit flying with each one. I flinch, a chill shivering down my back.
“No way,” I say, still inching closer to the stairs.
“Maybe,” Bones says, rubbing his chin, “you need an incentive.”
“There’s nothing you can say—”
“What if I offered to send you back home, like you wanted?” Bones says with a sly smile. “I’ll even throw in your wish, absolutely free of charge.”
My mouth drops open, and a chill prickles across my skin. “But you said you couldn’t.”
“There might be a way,” Bones says. “If you agree to forget about the others.”
“What about Lena? Would you send her home too?”
He grins. “I could be persuaded.”
Would he—could he—really fix everything? Everything he’s ever said to me has been a lie. I have no reason to trust him now. He told me there was no way to undo what he did to us. But what if he’s telling the truth this time? Everything I’ve done since I woke up the day after playing the flute has been to get back home to my parents and to Addie and Grayson. What if I could fix it all, right now, by agreeing?
Bones leans forward as I wrestle with his offer, that ridiculous grin still plastered on his face. My heart thuds in my chest. If only Lena was here. I don’t want to make this decision on my own. What if I make the wrong one?
An image of Sammy and Lee swims in front of me. Their tired faces and dirty clothes. The fear in their eyes at having to go out into the nightmare world looking for food. My own words come back to me as Bones’s carrot dangles in front of me.
I swear I won’t stop until I figure out how to get you home.
I can’t break my promise. I can’t leave Sammy and Lee in the nightmare world. Just like it would’ve been wrong to choose to stay in Sammy’s reality and learn to live with things, this is wrong too. And I know Lena wouldn’t want me to leave them, even if it meant never seeing her sister again. How could we live with ourselves if we just went back to our lives and left Sammy and Lee to whatever horrors Bones has in store for them? Especially since it’s our fault they’re there in the first place.
I ball my hands into fists. “I’ll never stop trying to save them.”
A shadow passes over Bones’s face, the smile disappearing. “Then you’ll suffer too.”
He nods his head toward me, and the frogman leaps forward, brandishing its needle-sharp teeth. Wind rushes through the entryway, bringing with it the smell of swamp and sweaty gym socks. Bones steps back, fading into the shadows, and a chorus of screams cuts through the darkness. A squelching sound echoes off the walls, then another and another.
More frogmen are coming.
I run toward the staircase, darting back and forth in a zigzag pattern, then sprint up the stairs. I’m almost at the top when a hand closes around my ankle. I let out a scream and pull against it, but the frogman is impossibly strong. I’m too weak from fighting it before.
“Sam!”
My head whips up. Feet pound the floor above me. Lee and Sammy are racing down the hallway. I’ve never been more relieved to see anyone in my entire life. And I’m totally not exaggerating.
“Sammy, Lee, help! It’s got me!”
They skid to a stop. Sammy reaches down and grabs my hands. It’s a game of tug-of-war now between him and the frogman. I hope Sammy has more upper-body strength than I do. If he’s anything like me, this game will be over pretty quickly. And not in my favor.
The voices of the approaching frogmen get louder, closer, more urgent. Lee peers down the stairs, her eyes widening. “Guys, there’s more coming.”
She edges in to grab my upper arms, helping to tug me away from the creature. It’s not working. The thing is too strong. Pain rips through my shoulders, and my ankle screams in white-hot agony.
“Just go!” I yell. “Get out of here!”
I won’t let Sammy and Lee sacrifice themselves to save me. Not after I just seriously considered leaving them behind in this terrible place.
Lee shakes her head. “Not a chance.”
She bends forward to adjust her grip, and the old crank flashlight she’s holding clatters onto the steps. The beam of light splashes across the frogman’s face. The monster rears back and screams, all of its orange eyes widening in shock. I drop to the steps as its hands fly to its face, slapping at it to shield itself from the flashlight beam.
