This person couldn't even punctuate, let alone spell. It smacked of fraud, and I remembered that Justin had posted a couple of times on Adams's website. That would have drawn clicks to his e-mail address. In fact, he had just posted five months ago, back when Adams said he wouldn't be posting anymore. Justin had posted to thank him for all he had done to try to find Chris. The dates of these e-mails were more recent, a little more than two months old. But any cruel joker could have seen that post. Yahoo e-mail address ... I was amazed that he'd received only these two.
I wished he had my investigative reporter training. He needed it, considering he was so inept at watching the details of people. This was a cruel joke by a cruel person.
I didn't want to derail his train totally. I said, "Justin. Wasn't your brother, well, very articulate? Didn't he speak sort of like your dad?"
"I thought of that," Justin said. "And yeah, my brother was obnoxiously well-spoken, my dad all over again. But he would be afraid my mom might see, and he was trying to disguise himself, to try to look like a fraud."
"Did you reply?"
"Yeah. Right away. I told him that I hung out at the Lightning Field and to come there. But this is all I got. And you can't trace Yahoo."
Very convenient for a prankster. I was speechless, but he didn't need my approval. He didn't seem to notice my tight face. He was a bull in a china shop, bursting past people's actions and emotions without them even registering. He only noticed what he wanted to, what he was able to, given his racing mind.
"I think it's my brother," he said, "because of the timing. You know the meditation rituals I started with the lightning trees? It looks crazy, but I've never been the type to care what things look like. Most people are crazier than I am. Most people are crazy enough to accept what's popular without ever questioning it. It's popular to say things are impossible. Well, fuck it. Ya know why? For more than four years, I don't hear from him. Then, I start sending up vibes using the lightning trees in February. And all of a sudden, these show up in March."
"Did you ... put out any Internet posts and stuff around the same time?" I asked.
"No. I swear on my life. All I ever did was touch those trees."
I thought I heard a floorboard creek upstairs, followed by a gust of wind outside the window. The house was still making me nervous. I needed to get out, get a breath of fresh air, and be with RayAnn's calming effect.
"I have to go," I whispered, starting up the stairs.
"Wait while I check my e-mail. It's been a while. Then I'll come out with you. Say a proper goodbye. I will miss you, man. I'm sorry I lost it on you today. I get like that sometimes ... I just pop off."
Speaking of which ... I asked, "Where do you think your mom put your medication? You take two doses a day, right?"
He was busy clicking the mouse, but finally answered. "Well, that could take some finding. One time, maybe a year ago, the school counselor sent me for a formal diagnosis of bipolar disorder, just because I couldn't stop acting up in class. It was mild then, but she was smart enough to see it. My mom wouldn't let me go to a shrink. She said I didn't need any medication and there was nothing wrong with me."
"Jeezus," I groaned. "Being a control freak ought to be a crime in some cases."
"My guess?" he went right on. "She didn't want to admit there was anything wrong with her, and all of that would have come out in therapy. That's an alcoholic's thinking. They think everything they're doing is a gosh darn secret, when the truth is that everyone in town suspects what's wrong. Medication ... let's see. First place I'd look? Under her pillow. Second place? I don't know. I'll think of it when you're gone."
She was boiling my blood, blind to the fact that her own son's high-energy mania needed to be leveled out.
"What happens if you can't find it?" I asked. "You've missed one dose already."
"I'll find it," he assured me, but looked distracted with his printer. "I've been warned. It takes a while to build up in your system, but it doesn't take nearly as long to start feeling it if you miss."
"Are you feeling anything right now?"
He grabbed the first page, smiling at me. "I smoked weed today, and tonight I drank a beer. I have no idea how I'm feeling."
I headed up the stairs to the living room level, figuring I needed air badly enough to wait for him out on the curb. I couldn't understand why I hadn't heard from RayAnn, but I pulled my cell out of my pocket, gripping it for security.
I never felt it coming ... I never heard anything. Something beyond sound, maybe beyond energy, made me look up those stairs where we'd laid the Mother Creed. I caught her wild, angry eyes, not much more. She was standing there at the top of the stairs, towering over me like some dragon from my own nightmares, and something came out of her akin to "GET OOOOOOOOOOO ... VER HERE!"
And the next second she was toppling me to the ground, screaming syllables and nonsense and jabbing her nails in my face.
"Justin!" I screamed, covering my eyes to protect them, and I could hear stomping and him hollering.
"Ma! Get off him! Get up!" I could feel him tugging at her, but she was tugging back insanely, actually pulling him on top of us.
Something scratched my cheek, and I thought it was her nails, but then realized it was her tongue. She was either licking me or trying to speak with her face pushed against mine. With my own hollering, I still managed to make out the word "Chris."
"Get her off, damn it!" I screamed at Justin.
"Oh my God, she thinks you're my brother," he said with gritted teeth, struggling to get her arms pinned down. I did not appreciate the fact that he was still giggling. Manic, stressed, half stoned. What in hell made me agree to come into this nut factory?
I spat out something pasty—the woman's drool—and that was the last straw. I closed my eyes and pushed, sending both her and Justin into the dining room table. A chair fell over—I heard it, but could not see a blessed thing. I counted to five slowly as my tunnel vision returned and I heaved a sigh of relief, which was momentary, as her little horse whinnying filled the air.
"My Christopher ... my baby..." she sobbed, her hair wet with drool. I stayed perfectly still, afraid to breathe for fear that she would catch sight of me again. It was animal instinct, like playing possum.
Justin pulled her up, took her under one arm, and led her back up to bed, saying, "He's not here, Mom. What is up? You gonna start having nightmares every night, too? I'm a school kid. Gotta get my sleep, you know."
I jutted to the front door, fumbling first with the doorknob until the door swung inward and cracked me in the nose. I got to the curb and was sitting, trying to figure out what the hell had happened to my cell phone, when suddenly the garage door thundered opened. Tires screeched and a car pulled up beside me. The car door flew open.
Justin was grinning insanely from behind the wheel. I could not fathom what would put me in the death seat beside an underage driver in an expensive luxury car if it was not what had just happened in that house. I dived for it, and Justin took off as I was fumbling to shut the door, almost spilling me onto the asphalt.
"You're bleeding," he said, tossing something wet into my lap. Paper towel. He tossed something else. My cell phone.
I put the paper towel up to my temple, my hands shaking until I exploded. "What the hell was that all about?"
"Dude, I am so, so sorry. Nothing like that has ever happened before. She's totally harmless. I mean, she was—"
"Oh, yeah, I can see that!"
"She thought you were my brother come home. I can't think of anything else that would—"
"I don't care if she thought I was the prince of darkness!" I hollered, holding out the paper towel so that I could see a spot of blood the size of a golf ball on it. "She could have blinded me! I have enough problems to overcome without your goddamn insane mother taking my eyes from me! Do you have any idea how much money has gone into my vision? Just so that I can work someday?"
He groaned and said nothing, which was a
smart idea. He might find her amusing, but I wondered how many days it would be—how many months or years—before I stopped spitting the woman's froth out of my mouth.
After a while, he asked softly, "Where we going?"
I dialed RayAnn's phone number, and this time somebody answered. Somebody not RayAnn. A guy's voice.
"Where's RayAnn?" I asked.
"Oh! Um. She's not here. Ha-ha"
My skin started to crawl and my arm grew weak to the point where the paper towel flopped down off my bleeding temple. "Where the hell is she? Who is this?"
I could hear people laughing in the background, and he was trying not to. "She left us, but she forgot her cell phone."
"Lydee, is this you?" I didn't wait for him to answer. "She never forgets her cell phone. You'd better hope to God nobody did anything to her."
I heard a click and her cell went dead. They might be dumb-ass kids who needed a job, but they were strong and, as RayAnn had observed this afternoon, mysteriously edgy. Her background was different from theirs. Differences can make packs of animals attack each other. I wondered, as my gut spiraled even further, if the same was true for people.
I imagined my own cell phone, the one time I heard from somebody I dreaded, tumbling through the air and plopping into a duck pond. I imagined hers tumbling through air somewhere, then being bitten through by the jaws of a water moccasin.
"This place is a nightmare," I said. "My worst nightmares are coming out of the woodwork. Take me to the motel. You better hope she's there and in one piece, or I'm going to set this town on fire and laugh while everyone in it burns to death."
TWENTY-ONE
WE GOT TO THE TWILIGHT INN, and I was running, which makes me totally blind, but I held on to Justin's shoulder with one hand.
"She's there," he said. "Or at least the door's wide open."
I stopped to catch my breath until the orange glow of the room came clear through the open door. A man was standing in the doorway. I recognized him—the owner, whom we'd gotten out of bed to check in last night.
I could see RayAnn behind him for a brief second as she moved from the bed deeper into the room, and her suitcase was up by the lamp. It lay open.
We entered and Justin muttered, "Bloody hell..."
"What's up?" I pushed him aside, stepping past the owner.
He said in too nice a voice, "Your friend has had some problems. I've been standing here until you got here—just giving her a little company. Looks like she got in a cat fight."
I found RayAnn's eyes popping as she stared at the man in disbelief. "I was not in a cat fight. Great. Is this what school was like, Mike? One kid hits another and they both end up in detention? Something like that?"
I'd been in lots of detentions, and that explained just about every one of them.
Her lip was puffy, had been bleeding, I thought.
"Tell me what happened," I begged, making my way over to her. There was stuff on the floor, and I stumbled past her empty laptop case.
She didn't move toward me. She shook her head, her swollen lip trembling. "Mike, I am not prepared for this story. This place looks sweet, until you get into the middle of it." She burst past me, flopping the laptop onto the bed and shoving printouts in her suitcase. "These kids are mean."
"What'd they do?" Justin tried. "Who hit you?"
"My lip is thanks to the car door, which I slammed on myself trying to get away fast—after Kobe Lydee had me by the throat, threatening me for a good two minutes. Au mon Dieu."
Justin decided it was appropriate to lecture her on how to defend herself against a bully, but although I waved my arm to shut him up, he didn't pay me any mind. His mother's leap out of the dark seemed to have triggered a burst of energy. He didn't shut his mouth until I found his jacket and half shoved him off the bed.
RayAnn jammed things into her suitcase. "Six of them had ridden on bikes and handlebars to get out to the Lightning Field, and the ones who didn't bring bikes all piled into our borrowed car without asking. I figured, fine, I'd just drop them off where they wanted, even though they stank. Pot and beer breath. They were okay at first ... as sweet as people can be when they've got a gang-up vibe and a we-hate-you tone."
"Why'd they hate you?" Justin asked. "Were you talking French at them?"
RayAnn nodded hard with mock understanding. "Gee, that's a great reason to steal somebody's car—even if I did. It's what I do when I'm nervous, and your friends were whispering and glaring—while I was giving them a ride and had answered all their background-check types of questions in the nicest of ways."
"What set them off?" I asked.
"They had a lot of questions ... found out I didn't go to high school and that I was their age. That didn't sit very well, I guess. That's when they went from curious to frosty. I should have figured they'd 'get even' with me for being a little different. They talked me into taking them to Dairy Queen before dropping them at Mary Ellen's. We were eating ice cream in the car. I hadn't been to the bathroom since around noon, so I really had to go. They asked me to leave the keys so they could keep listening to the radio. I came back out..." She trailed off, rearranging a couple pairs of socks, as if she'd forgotten how to fold.
"Oh my God," I said.
"Yeah. No car. And in the car was my cell phone, my three-thousand-dollar laptop, and your priceless dog."
I glanced around until I saw her laptop on the bed. Lanz...
"They ... probably only took it for a ten-minute joy ride," Justin guessed, and we both turned to glare at him.
"I don't know how long it was, because I use my cell phone to tell time. I think it was more like fifteen. I was two seconds from calling the cops when they came back, all laughing. They'd done at least one donut. There's gravel all over the back of the car, and there's a tremble when you drive it, like one of the tires isn't aligned anymore."
"Oh, great," I said. Drunk stoners, joy riding in a borrowed car. I was afraid to ask about Lanz.
"Kobe Lydee was driving. They got back all laughing, and couldn't understand why I was so pissed. That's when I was screaming French. Obtenir un emploi, vous stupides, paresseux imbeciles!"
Get a job, you stupid, lazy morons.
"I guess Kobe Lydee got scared I would tell the cops. So he threatened me—with everything from gang rape to being thrown in the snake pit out at the Lightning Field ... the one in the house foundation."
My anger roared and mixed with guilt. I could see she was really shaken up, even though she was trying to hide it. After everything that happened to me in high school, how could I not have guessed that something like this would happen to her?
"I already called Glenda up at Rowan and told her what happened with her car. She's rightfully pissed, but not at me. She's driving down here with her boyfriend to get it. We'll have to pay for the damages if—"
"I'll pay for the damages," Justin said quickly, and I wondered if he was suddenly manic enough to imagine himself a millionaire, though he added, "I'll find Lydee, and we'll make him pay for the damages. I got the goods on him in so many ways. I'll blackmail his spoiled ass—"
We could think of that later. "Where's Lanz?" I finally got the nerve to ask.
"Still in the car, but he puked all over the back seat. Probably scared."
More guilt.
"I cleaned it up already ... Mr. Stillman gave me a bucket, Lysol, and some rags." She pointed to the door, where the motel owner stood looking outside, pretending he wasn't listening to this.
"Better get him out if you're staying. If you're coming, my dad got me on the red-eye out of Atlantic City. It's a seven-hundred-dollar plane ticket, but he did it, no questions asked. That was the deal—if I felt uncomfortable, he would get me out, NQA. He says he'll loan you the ticket money if you're coming with me."
I wanted to run to Lanz, but I went to her first, trying to hug her. But she ducked under my arm and kept talking.
Justin's voice finally sounded a little contrite. "Just so you know, that wa
s all talk, RayAnn. Kobe Lydee is a hot-air bag, and okay, he's a morbid loser, but he's not a rapist. Kobe Lydee is not going to do anything to you."
She dropped to her knees in front of him and stared up at the ceiling. I followed her eyes at first, and then, realizing nothing was up there, I saw her neck. Bruises were forming where Lydee had grabbed her. The bruise on one side was the size of a thumb. There were four small bruises on the other side.
"Just let me kill him," I said. I was dead serious. My insides were on fire, leaving me swaying.
A car pulled up outside with music booming out the window. A car door opened, and a shadow crossed our door way. A kid who looked vaguely familiar stood on the other side of the motel owner. Someone from the Lightning Field, and from RayAnn's gasp, I gathered he'd been in the car.
"Here," he said, and tossed something. RayAnn's cell phone landed in the middle of the bed. He ran off into the parking lot, laughing. A couple of other voices laughed, and the car gunned away.
"See?" Justin said in disgust, as if kids returning her phone instead of throwing it out the window or selling it made all of this okay. Bad frequency is subtle sometimes. Still on fire, I couldn't believe it when Justin continued on with a shrug. "You got no sense of humor, that's your problem—"
"Justin, shut up!" I exploded. "You talk too much. He tried to strangle her!"
"She bruises easily," he said, which I'd known almost since I'd known RayAnn, but I didn't need to hear him defending Lydee and mean kids, and it was the last thing I'd wanted RayAnn to experience.
She yelled, "If their sense of humor ends up costing us eight hundred bucks to have Glenda's car repaired, are we supposed to think that's funny?" She turned to me with a sigh, more of disgust than fear. "They know where we're staying. I don't think they're going to ax murder us in our sleep. But they might spend half the night trying to make us think they would ax murder me ... for what? For not going to high school and for starting college early? For not seeing the humor when they took off in our car for fifteen minutes and popping a three-sixty? Why am I not surprised they'd pick on me? I mean, this is the home of Christopher Creed, one truly different guy..."