Bad Creek, page 14
Could Hudson’s dad have learned about Glory’s real cause of death? That was why he was pissed at him? Gum still wasn’t sure. He couldn’t focus, not with Roy whining at the door.
“Gum, it’s your move.”
He was barely invested in the game. All his blue pawns were still trapped at the start, while Aidan and Iris were close to scoring. He drew from the deck, finally pulling the coveted Sorry! card. He could steal either of his opponents’ positions and finally be in the game. The green and yellow pawns were close together, so it wouldn’t matter which one he took.
“Take Iris,” crooned a voice right next to him. He saw her then from the corner of his eye and put his head down, staring at the board. Brown water plopped on the cardboard. Gum could feel every hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“Gum? Hello? Jesus Christ, you never fucking listen.”
She was waving in his face. Her fingers were bloated and peeling, but her manicure was still impeccable. Her voice was a low gurgle, as if coming from the wrong part of her throat.
“Gum?” That was Iris now, a million miles away.
“There’s only one option,” Glory said. “You see it, right? You don’t have much time to mess around. Clock’s tickin’.”
“What does that mean?” Gum said. He sounded desperate, and he didn’t care if she made fun of him for it. “You aren’t saying anything!”
“Gum, who are you talking to?” Iris asked.
“It means it’s not over, dumbass.” Glory’s smile was wider than it had been at the drive-in. Last time, she didn’t have enough teeth; now she had too many. Like her face didn’t remember its own design and was responding to Gum’s reactions. She took the feedback but overcorrected, resulting in a toothy Muppet mouth.
“C’mon. Be serious for once,” Glory sneered. “You really think it ended with me? It never ends. That’s the deal.”
Gum knocked over all the pieces on the board with one swipe of his hand. Suddenly the room grew warmer, lighter.
Glory was gone.
Now all eyes were on Gum. At least they were living eyes this time.
“Was it her?” Iris asked in a whisper.
Gum couldn’t explain the truth. Aidan wouldn’t believe it and Iris would be devastated. Glory wanted him to antagonize her, after all. Steal her scrunchie. Steal her pawn. Mess with her.
Iris added, “You saw the girl from the house again?”
Close enough. Gum nodded wordlessly.
“What did she say?” Iris asked.
“She said . . . that it wasn’t over.”
“That’s literally what I was thinking!” Iris said. She was much too happy about it, like she’d successfully predicted the plot of a TV show. “It’s a pattern. It’s happened three times.”
Aidan butted in, “Well, technically—”
Iris didn’t let him finish. “Each drowning was, what, like twenty or thirty years apart? She’s trying to warn us, guys. It’s gonna happen again. I was right. Bad Creek is cursed.”
Maybe the whole town wasn’t cursed, but Gum definitely was.
Chapter 19 Aidan
The Jeep still smelled like the lake. Gum and Iris hadn’t mentioned it at the drive-in, but Aidan was sure the smell lingered on him. So, of course, he had that dream again.
He came to in the driver’s seat. A bomb had gone off inside his skull. He pushed open the door to puke. That was how it had happened the first time. He’d emptied his guts and crawled inside the house. He hadn’t even made it up the stairs to his bedroom; he’d simply collapsed on the couch. His brain hurt too much to think about what he had done.
But in the dream, he didn’t puke. And Glory was next to him. She was cold. Slimy. Dead. He dragged her body out of the car. She weighed nothing. It was too easy to carry her to the edge of the water, where a moose was wading, neck-deep. Its features were twisted, skin shredded off. It was even more decayed than Glory was. He knew something bad would happen if he got any closer to it, so he dropped Glory where he stood. He didn’t turn around to check if she sank to the bottom or not. To check if the zombie moose was still watching.
Besides, he had a lot of work to do. Suddenly he had a sponge in his hands. And soap. And a bucket of water. He began to scrub the inside of the car.
Then he woke up. Sunlight was streaming out of the round, circular window above his bed. He was safe. The truth wasn’t that bad. The lake wasn’t on him, that was just his own sweat.
Still, he grabbed his phone from the bedside table. Six-thirty a.m., way too early to be awake. They had stayed up past midnight.
There was a snoring lump on the floor next to him. Gum had managed to tangle himself inside of the sleeping bag, and the pillow was five feet away. And Iris . . .
She wasn’t on the futon.
“She’s probably in the bathroom,” Aidan muttered to himself, before turning over and burying his head under the comforter. A minute passed. Another. He didn’t hear the door creak open. Okay, maybe she wasn’t in the bathroom. Maybe she had her moms pick her up. That girl always had a flair for the dramatic.
He shouldn’t enable her. He tried to close his eyes, to go back to sleep, but Roy started barking hysterically. It wasn’t his normal, excited bark either. There were whines intermixed. He sounded like he was in pain.
Aidan shot up in bed. The sleeping bag swished around as Gum untangled himself.
“The fuck is that?” he muttered.
Aidan pulled on his boots in a panic, not bothering to lace them all the way.
“Something’s wrong.” Now that he studied the futon again, he noticed Iris had left her sweatshirt. Her backpack. Her water bottle. Her phone.
There was no way her moms had picked her up.
Roy kept whining from somewhere outside. Aidan peered through the window. There was just the Jeep, no signs of the Garrens’ van. A fog hung over the lake. The Dirty Diana looked ghostly, bobbing gently in a gray void. Roy was close to the dock, barking at nothing.
No, not nothing.
A figure wavered on the edge of the mist.
Iris.
That was her ponytail, her giant T-shirt hanging halfway to her knees. She stood on the dock, facing the water, rocking back and forth on her heels.
Gum peeked out the window, wiping crust from his eyes.
“What the fuck is she doing?” Aidan asked.
“I think . . .she’s sleepwalking,” Gum answered.
Shit.
Aidan flew down all three flights of stairs. He didn’t have time to wonder why this was happening. A suicidal urge. A horrible coincidence. A curse. Didn’t matter. He just knew he had to get her to safety. Even if she didn’t break her legs or hit her head on the way down, it wouldn’t be pretty. Unconscious people plus water were not a great combo.
When he burst outside the back patio, Iris wasn’t standing still anymore. She’d shuffled farther and farther onto the dock and into the fog.
“Iris!” he shouted.
She didn’t even flinch when he called her name. She couldn’t hear him. Of course she couldn’t hear him. She was asleep.
Aidan ran, nearly slipping on the dewy grass. Iris was only a few inches from the edge now and she wasn’t stopping.
Just in time, Aidan grabbed her by the back of the shirt. She tried to fight her way out of his grip by blindly throwing her hands around.
Aidan knew sleepwalkers could freak out when awoken prematurely. You’re supposed to be gentle with them, but now wasn’t the time for gentle.
He yelled directly in her face. “Iris!”
He managed to put his hands around her shoulders and give her a good shake. Her eyes fluttered open, and she gasped as if she had gone underwater. But she still didn’t move.
The morning light flicked off. The fog dissipated, replaced with smoke from fireworks. Aidan gripped her too tight. Glory had told him not to. You always hold on too tight, she had said. But she wasn’t saying anything now. Why wasn’t she saying anything? Glory’s eyes were glazed over. Still hazel, still glittering with gold eye shadow, but she wasn’t really there. She felt gone. Aidan shook her again. She didn’t react.
“What did you do to her?” Aidan had shouted. There was someone else standing in the darkness. In his dreams, it was the zombie moose, but he knew it really was Hudson. He stood knee-high in the water.
That was when Hudson said it. “Go home. You don’t want to see this.”
With a gasp, Iris broke her trance. She wasn’t Glory anymore. And Aidan was in the present. Iris glanced around wildly, and stared at the lake, like she was going to ask it something.
“You okay?”
She nodded, pulled a curl behind her ear. “You shouldn’t have woken me up,” she said, frustrated. “I almost had it. She was trying to tell me something. I was so close . . .”
“Close to drowning, you mean?”
How could she possibly be mad at him for saving her?
She sighed. “I felt her, this time. I think Glory’s trying to lead me.”
“Lead you to your death?”
“To answers.” She kept her eyes on the lake. The morning was downright serene, with the coos of doves and trill of frogs in the water. If she would have continued, she would have quietly faded into the mist.
Gum had caught up with them. He put his hands on his knees, panting. “What the hell, Iris?”
“I saw it, okay?” she said. “The smudge.”
“The smudge?”
“What she drew, at the edge of Savi’s dock. I think it was the killer. Only a few more steps, and I would have seen who it was.”
“Only a few steps, and you would have gone off the edge,” Aidan told her.
She shook her head. She couldn’t accept it.
But a new thought was bubbling inside of him. The same unanswered question from last year. What had he done to her? It wasn’t just smooth talking that had turned Glory so passive. Hudson had changed her. Somehow. By the time Aidan had gotten to her, it was too late. But it wasn’t too late for Iris.
“What did he say to you, exactly?” Aidan asked.
“It’s not a he. It’s a . . .feeling.”
“I mean Hudson.” It could have been hypnotism. It could have been a weird poison that attacked the brain, transferred through touch or administered in a drink. Oh God, had Hudson slipped something in Glory’s cup?
Iris gritted her teeth. “I know what I saw,” she growled, before storming toward the house, slamming the door behind her.
Chapter 20 Aidan
“Give her a sec to calm down. It’s just like before, ya know? It’s always the same fight. You both care about Glory a lot,” Gum said. He had changed into a new shirt and left his baseball cap off. His leg hadn’t stopped bouncing since they’d gotten in the car. The Jeep still smelled like stale lake water, and Aidan could feel the splinter every time his foot hit the gas.
Iris had said one of her moms would pick her up, and shooed them out the door, still believing Aidan had betrayed her.
“I’m tired of fighting,” Aidan said. He never wanted to fight her. He only wanted to save her, but Iris wouldn’t allow herself to be saved, she’d rather chase ghosts.
“It’s up here,” Gum said. “On the left.”
Aidan held his breath as he turned into the parking lot. Gum had asked for a ride to brunch with the same cadence one would ask to be sent to the electric chair. And Aidan didn’t blame him.
Handerson’s was only a short drive from his dad’s house, near the shiny new golf course, in the shadow of the giant crucifix. The mansion-turned-bed-and-breakfast was one of the county’s oldest buildings, yet whatever antique charm it once had was washed away in gallons of white paint after the new owners bought it, leaving a square fortress with tall windows and perfectly aligned blue shutters.
This was Clavey country.
Bill Clavey stood outside on the porch. He shook hands as customers walked in. When he noticed the Jeep, he marched up and put his beefy hands on top of the open window before Aidan could crank it closed.
“You’re Paul’s boy?”
He was a sturdy old man, with a thick mustache and shockingly white hair. Aidan always thought he looked like Colonel Sanders’s evil twin.
“Uh-huh.”
“Your family comin’ to eat?” He sounded like Colonel Sanders’s evil twin too, words soaked in a Kentucky drawl that suggested he was trying to sell something. Probably not fried chicken.
“No, Grandpa, he was just dropping me off,” Gum said. He always talked to the Claveys like you’re supposed to talk to cops. Respectful, but stilted. Like he was trying to avoid incriminating himself.
Bill Clavey didn’t look away from Aidan. His robotic eyes didn’t even blink. “Please join us! All on me, of course.”
“You don’t have to,” Gum mumbled to Aidan.
“I insist,” Bill said.
Aidan stared at the man’s face, trying to will a memory to float up to the surface. He had already considered the possibility that Hudson hadn’t worked alone, that maybe his family had helped him get out of trouble. Maybe if Aidan spent the morning with the Claveys he would remember something else.
Aidan was ready to burn this whole town, he just needed something to strike the match. So he forced a smile, practically feeling his cheeks cracking from the falseness of it.
“Sounds good,” he said.
As Bill Clavey led them into the restaurant, he pointed out the features of the building. “Real ivory on the piano. Couldn’t be made today. Even music is offensive now.”
Gum gave Aidan a sympathetic look. It’s fine, Aidan mouthed, though he was practically vibrating with anxiety.
“Original mahogany trim,” Bill continued. “They almost had it replaced a few years ago, but I wouldn’t allow it.”
They passed room after room of candy-colored walls, not unlike the peeling wallpaper in the house in the woods. The same house Hudson had been in. Probably with Glory.
Don’t think about that.
Yet the thought hadn’t left Aidan’s mind since he’d learned about them. He’d asked it to leave politely, but it decided to make his brain its home. The thought slept on his brain’s couch. It raided his fridge. It used his Netflix log-in.
The rest of the Claveys congregated in a private room next to the main dining hall. They sat at a huge circular table surrounded by baby-blue floral wallpaper, matching their creepy blue eyes. Gum’s dad wasn’t there. Aidan had hardly interacted with the guy, but compared to his in-laws he always seemed refreshingly normal. Bill grabbed the nearest server—who was already balancing drinks on a tray—and asked him for another chair for “Paul Ross’s boy.” When Aidan sat, they all stared curiously at him, part offended and part amused he would dare dine with civilized people.
After all, he was still wearing last night’s T-shirt and sweats, socks that didn’t match, and sandals half chewed up by Roy. He hadn’t even checked a mirror this morning to know the state of his hair. Everyone else was in their Sunday best.
Hudson wasn’t present. There wasn’t even a place setting for him.
Hudson wasn’t just late; he wasn’t expected to come at all.
Aidan turned to Gum. “Where’s Hudson?” he whispered.
Gum shrugged. He seemed checked out. The rest of the Claveys started to order, but Gum had his head down, messing with the napkin in his lap, tracing his fingers around the white cloth, performing the same motions over and over. A long vertical line, two horizontal ones intersecting it, then two curves, facing outward.
Something twisted in Aidan’s gut.
Across the table, the nurse ordered for herself. Beth’s eyes were open yet far away. She didn’t react to any of the conversation at the table, and no one but the nurse acknowledged her. Paul had explained before that Beth was in a coma. Yes, her eyes were open, and sometimes she twitched. It was all involuntary. But most people in comas rested in bed. They weren’t paraded around like this, just to be ignored.
Now Aidan understood the appeal of curses. If Beth was cursed, she could be like a princess in a fairy tale who could only wake up when the beast was slain. If this was a fairy tale, what happened to her would have meant something. And there was a chance she would wake up, after the curse was lifted. After true love’s kiss or the clock struck midnight.
Aidan shouldn’t have given Gum shit earlier. Now he regretted calling all of Gum and Iris’s theories delusional. They were delusional, but he could have said it a little nicer.
“So, you’re Paul’s boy?” asked the man on the other side of the table. Bruce Clavey. One-fourth of the Disasters 1.0. He hardly looked like the boy from the pictures in Paul’s living room. He’d lost a lot of hair, for starters, along with the glimmer of rebellion in his eyes.
“Uh. Yeah.”
“But you’re not a year-rounder?”
Year-rounders were people who actually lived in Bad Creek. Most of them were stubborn elderly locals like Rex, who toughed it out in the snowy winters when all the tourists were gone and most businesses were closed. No one stayed in the mighty lake houses on the north side for most of the year.
Except for Paul. And Bill Clavey.
“No. I live with my mom in California.”
“In Los Angeles?” probed the woman next to Bruce. His wife, Brenda, looked like the ladies on Fox News, with an unnatural tan and aggressively blonde hair.
“Pasadena.”
“Hollywood,” Bill Clavey said. He dragged the last syllable, milking the word for all it was worth. Hollywood was a bad thing, and the rest of the family was expected to understand it. He then let out a hearty chuckle. “Not much like your father when he was your age.” Aidan liked to think it was true, but that didn’t feel like a compliment to either of them. “How is Paul?” Bill added. His tone was light, but his eyes were accusing.
“Fine.” Aidan had been lucky to avoid them at the cookout this year, but he knew he would never completely escape interviews by adults who didn’t care about him.
Bill dabbed his mustache with a napkin. “Is he still off the bottle?”
