Simon flung himself down at the edge of the hole to see. He heard Zoë come up behind him, then moan and move back.
Christopher writhed on two stakes impaling him. Foul smoke arose from his bubbling form. His body, dying, tried remembered shapes to escape but couldn’t quite make the change. A sequence of muddled forms emerged, and twisted on the skewers, spitting blood—boy with bat’s head, wolf with boy’s arms, pig with boy’s face, sloughing skin.
And huddled in the corner, miraculously unhurt, the skinny boy whimpered and sucked his hands, too terrified to scream. Simon reached in, hauled him out with one hand, and flung him. He rolled across the grass, got up, and fled.
Christopher, a boy once more, twisted into a wizened dwarf, fell in on himself like a crushed insect husk, and finally lay still and mummy like.
Zoë didn’t speak. Simon didn’t turn to face her. He imagined disgust on her face and didn’t want to see it.
“Leave me,” he whispered hoarsely, fighting ice tears. “Leave me, brave heart. I’ll come for you. I’ll let you know how I am. I must fill this hole, and I must think.”
He never turned to her. He never heard her leave. Or noticed the soiled teddy bear lying abandoned on the ground. The emptiness crashed in, and he asked himself the question that he hadn’t dared to ask before. What will I do now?
15
Zoë
Zoë gazed at her reflection in her mother’s dresser mirror and held a string of pearls to her throat. They glowed against the black sweatshirt she was wearing. Her sleek neck showed no blemish, as if the boy had never existed, but he was out there somewhere. Her fingers trembled as again she felt the bitter aftertaste of sickness.
She’d come home last night and had hardly time enough to undress before she was in the bathroom throwing up. She’d huddled on the bathroom floor in her nightdress, pressing her sweating forehead against the cool porcelain, moaning with each wave of nausea. The repeated flushing finally got her father’s attention, and he came tapping gently on the bathroom door. She let him in, and he patted her back and said comforting things, until she was well enough to get up and return to her room.
“Something I ate,” she told him.
He laughed sympathetically. “You eat so little, it seems unfair.”
She tried to smile. “Yes. It’s usually me disagreeing with food, not the other way around.”
Her sleep had been restless. Once she woke with a start in a cold sweat, but she couldn’t remember what she’d been dreaming. She was afraid to fall back to sleep, fought it, in fact, but was dragged under again despite her efforts. She got up in the morning to a nervous stomach, and dark rings under her eyes.
“Don’t go to school today, sweetheart,” her father said before he went to work. “I’ll pick you up here on my way to the hospital.”
Zoë had no intention of going to school, but she couldn’t settle to anything else either. Eventually, she found her way into her parents’ bedroom, and to her mother’s jewelry box.
She had always loved playing with her mother’s jewelry when she was small, and her mother had sometimes used that to her advantage when she especially wanted some quiet. Going through the little drawers brought back the peace of childhood. Here was the cheap, sparkling star she had given her mother one Christmas, and here was her grandmother’s ring. There was order in the rows of earrings under the velvet-lined lid, memories in the broken and odd assortments in their special niches.
But the old memories couldn’t blot out her memory of the night before, and that awful, terrifying chase. She had really believed Christopher was killing Simon, and there was nothing she could do about it. I wanted to protect him, she thought. But how do you protect someone against that? The craziness was overwhelming her. And who were those boys? She shivered. Those stupid boys. She threaded the pearls back into their velvet pouch. They clicked like teeth.
Nothing will frighten me ever again after seeing Christopher in that hole, she decided. Her stomach tightened, still not immune to the memory. She closed the lid of the box.
Simon had killed his own brother. Surely that hurt, no matter what his brother had been? What did he feel? His whole life—if that’s what you could call it—had been spent chasing this one thing. What would he do now?
If he leaves, could I go with him? she wondered. Could I live like that? She could live by night, she knew, but the blood? No, she couldn’t face the blood.
Her gaze sought the self-portrait of her mother that hung over the bed. “He’s so lonely,” she said to the painting, as if begging her mother to understand.
She curled up on her parents’ bed, stroking the familiar, nubbled bedspread, and fell asleep under the portrait, under her mother’s watchful eyes. She slept an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
Her father found her still sleeping when he came home. She splashed some water on her face and climbed into the car, still bleary-eyed. They were almost at the hospital before she felt fully awake.
Anne Sutcliff was sitting up in bed, wearing a pretty bed jacket she had bought on a trip to England years ago. She was very pale and thin, but she was smiling.
“I’m going to get a soda,” Harry said. He left the room.
Zoë sat in a chrome chair by the bedside. She felt fragile.
“I hear you’ve been smashing up furniture.”
Zoë started, and groped quickly for the excuse she had given her father. “Uh, yes. I put my coffee down without a coaster. You always warned me, didn’t you?”