76. Proof

I really totally and completely don’t care anymore. Not a bit.

I’ve just gotten off the phone with Sheriff Wells, and here’s the thing. Not only do I have to go through this, all of this, this black pit of mess, but then I have to be treated like a liar and a loser.

If they’re bugging my phone oh well.

If they’re watching me now oh well.

If the sheriff is working for them …

Oh.

Well.

Mom’s not home, and that’s good, because I don’t want to tell her about the hole in the bathroom wall that goes to whatever-that-is. I need to tell somebody, because I’m beginning to think that the hole is going to my brain, and it’s sucking every legitimate and decent thing left up there.

“Am I crazy?”

The flat little furry face doesn’t answer.

“I’m not crazy, am I?”

Midnight just looks at me, but I don’t like that look. She knows. She knows too much. She knows I’m loony tunes.

“Look, just—just don’t tell the sheriff that I’m a little … you know. Okay?”

Midnight puts her head back on the couch and seems content to keep our secret.

The sheriff looks skeptical until he opens the doors to the bathroom cabinet and pulls off the piece of paneling. I see him look up at me with a speechless, dazed glance.

“Here,” I say, handing him the flashlight.

He shines it, but I know there’s nothing really to see. Then he forces himself into the opening and shines the light down.

I can’t imagine what he’s thinking. If, and this is a very big if, Sheriff Wells had no idea about the tunnels, then this has got to be pretty eye-opening.

He slips back out and dusts himself off as he stands. The face looking at me is grim and pale. “Your mom know about this?”

I shake my head.

“Anybody else?”

“No.”

For a second he rubs the bridge between his eyes as he looks around the bathroom. Then he walks out into my mom’s bedroom and into the main room. I follow in silence.

“Look, Chris,” he says in a very slow and deliberate manner, “you need to keep doing what I told you to do.”

The strange thing as the sheriff talks is that he’s not looking at me.

“Do you understand?”

Still not looking at me.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“That’s good. You keep quiet and mind your manners and stay out of trouble. Got it?”

Again I say that I do.

Again he’s not even trying to look at me.

He’s more interested in finding something. At the kitchen counter, he sees a notebook of mine from school, then finds a pen.

“Nobody needs to know what the owner of this cabin did to it before you guys got here. Probably your uncle, right? Probably someone just trying to have some fun.”

As he says this, he’s writing something down. He shuts the notebook and then walks up to me. “You leave this alone, and leave me and Ross to watch over Solitary. Do you understand?”

I shake my head and am about to ask him what he just wrote down when

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He leaves me, and for a moment I just stand there hating the guy. Then I open the notebook and find the page he wrote on.

Meet me at Jocelyn’s cabin at eleven tonight. Be careful. Make sure nobody knows you’re coming. Be quiet.

I hold the notebook in my hand and can tell it’s starting to shake.

I don’t know which scares me more. Going to meet with the sheriff late at night. Or going back to Jocelyn’s abandoned house.