When Cooper was in his rightful place, Auguste would finally be strong enough. Strong enough to seek justice.
I grabbed my still-loaded backpack, throwing in the Bic lighter, then ran downstairs, past the smoldering embers of the vine guy, stomping on what was left of its head as I went. "Take that, stick man."
It turned to dust under my foot. Round one to Cooper Warner.
At least I had a way to beat those things. Now I just had to save my brother, find my girlfriend, and avoid my homicidal mother, maniacal stepfather, and a man-eating monster. Piece of cake. Right.
I ran out of there and into the woods. As soon as I hit the trees, the woods came to life, vines springing up around me, dropping down off the branches, curling in like hands reaching for my arms, my legs.
The creature was here, and he was letting me know that this time, he wasn"t going to let me go.
The trees crackled with movement. A vine lifted the back of my hair and tickled at my neck. I yelped and leaped away, smacking at it. From farther in the woods, the creature began to laugh.
Just saying h.e.l.lo, Cooper. You"re taking long enough to get here. Poor Faulkner *s about done. And I don"t like to play with tired toys.
"Leave my brother alone!" I pulled out the knife, raised it in my hand like a caveman trying to threaten a T. rex. My wrist twinged.
I"d never be able to stab the thing with my wrist like that. I needed to brace that sprain. I dug in the pack again and found Megan"s bandanna.
I"d see her wear it again. And I"d see her smile again. No matter what.
"Megan," I whispered, and then I spun the bandanna tightly around my wrist, weaving it between my thumb and fingers like a flexible bandage. I picked up the knife and gave it a swing, then a jab. The sprain still hurt, but less than before. And best of all, I could hold the knife and use it.
Before I started off again, I loaded up my pack with whatever rocks I could see from the faint light cast by the moon, yanking them up before the vines could reach out and grab me. The rocks weren"t much as weapons went, but then again, I wasn"t much as heroes went, either.
All the while the creature laughed and laughed. I ignored him, letting my hatred build. One more weapon, I figured. My pack slammed against my back as I ran, rocks pinging my kidneys. I"d be paying for that later.
If I had a later.
The woods snapped and popped like a thousand bowls of Rice Krispies. The vine army ran with me, h.e.l.l"s crosscountry team. And all the while, the creature lay at the bottom of that well, panting in antic.i.p.ation.
I could feel him now. Feel his breathing. Feel it as if he were part of me.
Come closer, Cooper. Hurry now. We"re waiting for you.
Every breath I took drew in the scent of the well. It was as if the slime, the muck, and the putrid air were clawing their way into my lungs. I tried to breathe through my mouth instead, but the smell stuck to my clothes, my skin, me.
The creature was stronger now. So strong- Maybe too strong.
Would he get me before I got him? And keep me down there forever?
Would I turn into him?
No. I couldn"t think that. Wouldn"t. Concentrate, Cooper, I told myself. Concentrate.
Finally, I rounded the last tree and skidded to a halt a few feet from Faulkner. He was still slumped over, his body seeming pale, thinner. He wore only a T-shirt and jeans, his feet bare, his arms useless, tied to his sides so he could lift his hands only a few inches. He didn"t move. I prayed for him to breathe, for him to flinch, blink. Anything.
Was he a dead?
G.o.d, please, no. Not my brother. Maybe we didn"t always get along, barely tolerated each other some days. But we were brothers, and when it counted- It counted.
I bent down, reached out, then drew back, afraid to touch him, in case a "Faulkner?"
He moaned, then lifted his head, his limp and stringy hair swinging across his face. His eyes were gla.s.sy, his lips barely moving. Had he been drugged? "Cooper?"
Not dead. Relief ran over me like a tidal wave.
I scrambled to his side and reached for the rope binding him to the well. The knots were tight, tied by Hercules himself, I swore. "Are you okay?"
"Don"t." He waved a hand at me. "Don"t a untie me."
"We have to get you out of here." I glanced around, but for now, the vine army stuck to the shadows as far as I could tell in the inky blackness. They had merged with the woods, their spiny bodies forming a second phalanx with the trees. Watching me. Watching Faulkner.
"We have to move fast," I said, jerking at the ropes, but they held fast. Too tight, too thick-it didn"t even feel like real rope or regular knots. What the h.e.l.l? If I could get the knife under the ropes, maybe that would do it.
Faulkner reached up a shaky hand and grabbed my left wrist. "It"s a too a late."
The clouds shifted away from the moon, and a shaft of light dropped down over us. And over what really held him in place. It wasn"t just ropes.
Vines covered Faulkner from head to toe, weaving in and out of every exposed inch of his body like an afghan of green. They wrapped in and around the ropes that were already there. They"d interlocked across his chest, crawled under his neck, and leapfrogged their way over his head, tugging down again in a macabre green veil. They laced over his legs, under his knees, then back over the stone wall. He was a c.o.c.kroach pinned to the well"s science lab.
No, no, no. Not him, too. The thing wanted only me. I was the sacrifice; I was the one who was supposed to go down there and stay.
What was happening?
I clawed at the vines, trying to loosen them, but they barely moved. "Who did this to you? Who would tie you to this thing and leave you here?"
"Mom did it," he said, his voice so weak, I had to lean in to hear him. Faulkner waited for our gazes to connect across an impossible, ridiculous, horrible situation. "To save you. And me."
I cursed. "But you"re dying! How could she do this to you?"
"You don"t understand." His words were a whisper. "The thing caught me first. She a stopped a" That was all he said.
I stared at Faulkner. Had I heard him right? "What?"
Was he crazy? Maybe he"d been given something that had gone to his brain.
No response. Faulkner"s head dropped to his chest and he zoned out. He was drained, as if everything vital had been sucked out of him.
The vine army still hung on the fringes, watching. Hyenas on the prairie. Waiting for the lions to finish their kill so they could scoop up the entrails. I glared at them, then turned back to my brother. "Faulkner. You okay?"
He didn"t move.
I shook him. "Stay with me, dude. I"m going to get you out of here."
He roused a little, and then his eyes met mine, and in his gaze I saw the last thing I"d ever expected to see in my older, stronger wise-a.s.s brother.
Resignation.
"Just leave me," he said. "Run. Fa a fast"-he took in a breath, let it out-"as you can."
"I can"t. I won"t." I started sawing at the vines with the knife, ripping at them with my other hand, trying to yank them away from his arms, but as soon as I hacked off one piece, it grew back. What the-? I cut another. It came back. A third. It reappeared almost instantly. "I"m getting you out of here, Faulkner."
Somehow.
He grabbed my wrist, the one with the bandage this time, and I had to stop cutting because it hurt so badly. I bit my lip so I wouldn"t scream in pain. "They are going to kill you, Cooper." He breathed in and out, clearly beat, as ready to quit as I had ever seen him, and it scared me, scared me worse than anything so far had, because Faulkner was the older one, the one who never got scared, never gave up, never did anything but grin and make a joke. "Run. "
And his hand dropped away, as if that had been all he had had in him.
The knife shook in my hand so badly that I almost cut him, but I went back to sawing. Still the vines kept coming back, twice as fast each time, doubling their grip on my brother. It was as if the vines kept trying to drag him down there. But the ropes held Faulkner securely in place aboveout of the vines" total control. Could he be telling the truth about our mother trying to help us? I had no time to decide. I had to get him out of there. Now. "I. Won"t. Leave. You."
"You have-" Then the vines pulled taut, cutting off his words. Faulkner"s head jerked back, as if he were a puppet and the puppet master had yanked his prize toy into line. Faulkner"s eyes glazed over and his mouth dropped open.
"Of course you"ll leave," Faulkner said in a voice that wasn"t his own, a dark, menacing, low growl that came from somewhere below him. "Because your real family is down here, Cooper."
I scrambled backwards. "Faulkner?"
"He"s gone, Cooper," said the thing inside my brother, singsongy. Teasing, thinking this whole thing was just oh so funny, a real Jay Leno now. He grinned at me. "Too bad you didn"t even get to say goodbye. That"s two brothers you"ve lost in one lifetime." He tsk-tsked. "Such terrible luck."
The creature had invaded my brother, had taken over something I loved. Okay, so maybe I had never told Faulkner I loved him, but he was my brother and I did. And now the thing was playing me. Faulkner wasn"t gone. No way. He was too young. Too strong. Too a Alive.
The thing lied. That"s what he did. Just to mess with my head.
Except Faulkner wasn"t moving, and his eyes were blank, and his skin was starting to pale. I stared at the left side of his chest, through a small triangle in the vines. I didn"t see a single twitch of activity. Move, I screamed in my head. Move up, move down. Make your heart beat, Faulkner.
Nothing happened. Nothing moved.
Move! Breathe!
Nothing.
I leaped forward and clawed at the vines around my brother"s neck, but they had him in a maximum-security collar.
"Poor Cooper," the thing said through Faulkner"s mouth. All words. No breath. "Poor, poor Cooper."
"Shut up!" I screamed at the face that was my brotherand wasn"t.
He just laughed.
Tears stung my eyes but I refused to let them fall. Refused to let that thing know he had gotten to me. Because as soon as the creature knew that, he won.
I pounded on Faulkner"s chest, pushing at his heart, willing it to beat.
No movement. No ticking of life.
Nothing.
"Do you want your brother back?" the thing said. "You can have him, and we can all be together, be a happy little family. Just say the words, Cooper, and come with me. I"ll take care of you. Forever." The vines released, as if the creature was saying, Look, my hands are off he"s all yours. "Now all you have to do is untie the rope, Cooper, and let Faulkner go. And then come down here with me. Then everything will be fine again. Everyone will live."
Then he laughed.
Was he lying again, or was there still a way to save Faulkner? I couldn"t take the chance, I decided. I had to try. I reached for the rope and started in on the first knot. "Hold on, Faulkner, I"ll-"
Then I stopped.
The vines hovered over my fingers, dancing in the air, waiting. For what? If the creature was really letting Faulkner go, why were the vines still there? And why had my mother tied Faulkner up? What did she know that I didn"t?
Was she protecting us? Or working for the creature?
I looked at my brother again. The idiot light finally came on and I understood. Faulkner had been the goat for the Tyrannosaurus rex that lived twenty feet down below, in some sicko Jura.s.sic Park-The Well Edition.
My mother had known the creature had been trying to take over Faulkner"s body and use him to get to me, like the other creature had used Gerard, turning brother against brother. She had tied Faulkner up to stop him; she had stopped him before he could eat the grapes. Before he, too, could turn into what she had become. Before Faulkner could do to me what Gerard had done to Auguste.
When it mattered, my mother had come through. For Faulkner and me. There was a Hope.
But if my family was ever going to have a normal life again, was ever going to go back to meatloaf and mashed potatoes, that thing had to die.
I leaned in and whispered into Faulkner"s ears. "Faulkner, I"m coming back to get you. Hang on."
"Oh, how sweet," the thing mocked. "Now let me go."
I moved back, eyeing that thing inside my brother. The same thing that had turned Gerard against Auguste. "I"m not untying anything. Go to h.e.l.l, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
The body that used to hold Faulkner leaned forward and turned, its mouth open, trying to snap at me. "Cooper!"
I scrambled back, dropping the knife. The body strained at the ropes, clearly frustrated by the ties that bound and held its prize out of its total control. The vines reached with the body, working in concert, like a spider web swinging with the spider trying hard, trying to overpower the other knots. The ropes nearly broke, but then no, they held fast. The creature let out a scream like a wounded animal. I thought for sure it would do some crazy ten-foot-bite thing and take my head off. "Let me go!"
"Never!" I shouted. The thing inside Faulkner stopped, breathing heavily as though it had pa.s.sed out. Had Faulkner"s body given out? Or was the creature lying in wait?
I was so afraid, I couldn"t breathe. I should do what Faulkner had said.
Run.
Go back to my father"s house. Call Sergeant Ring, hope he was sober enough to deal with this. Let someone else, someone with a gun or a nuclear bomb to drop down onto that thing, handle this.
I started to push away, keeping my body low to the ground, praying I wouldn"t awaken the creature again. Or the army of vine guys. Or whatever other surprises that creature had in store for me.
Then a whisper, carrying up from the bottom of the well. "Cooper, is that you?"
I froze. Was that a Megan"s voice?
I crawled closer. Stared at Faulkner"s body. It had to have been the creature, teasing me through him. Making the sound of Megan"s voice.
But still, my heart didn"t want to believe that. "Megan?"
"Cooper, I"m down-"
That"s enough, my dear Cooper. You know where she is now. If you want her, come and get her. We"ll do a little trade.