TEN

THE WEEKEND WAS a blur of nerve-exploding nightmares and conflicting discoveries. A quick social media search confirmed that Spenser Colson was a real person, a junior at my school, and he was definitely the guy Ashlyn had been talking about. Her status said she was in a relationship with him. His said, “Single.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how or why I was seeing names on cuffs, but now that I’d witnessed the chains used as monstrous torture tools, I was even more obsessed with making sense of it.

Coach came to my house on Friday, along with a school counselor. I thought they’d never quit knocking.

Lance sent me a text on Saturday afternoon: Heard Jess is going to prom with Dan. What’s up? Maybe it was Lance’s way of trying to smooth things over. Fine by me, but if I couldn’t get him to believe me, our truce wouldn’t last long.

I was relieved to know I was off the hook for prom. But Dan? Why would she go back to her egotistical ex? Nice choice, Jess.

It was Sunday night, and I was hanging my entire future on Ms. Barnett’s explanation tomorrow of what parasite or poison was in that water. Around midnight, I left my bunker/bedroom and headed to the kitchen to fix a bowl of Apple Jacks. I did a double take when I saw the word guilty scribbled above the living room window. It hadn’t been there the day before. The blizzard churned in my gut.

On Monday morning the sky was radiant blue, the first beautiful day in a long time. Maybe the scary things don’t come out on sunny days.

I’d obviously watched too many vampire movies. I drove by a convenience store, and right there in broad daylight was another one of the ghastly beings, linked to a guy, just like I’d seen with Ashlyn. So they weren’t confined to my school. Another bitter disappointment.

I pulled over and stared at it.

What are you?

I couldn’t explain its existence, much less identify its species, and I still didn’t know for sure if it was real or a delusion. But I had to call it something. It didn’t take long for me to decide on a name. Creeper.

I pulled back onto the road and sighed. Did naming them mean I’d sunk to a deeper level of psychosis?

I finally made it to Ms. Barnett’s classroom. Without hyperventilating, too.

“Hi, Owen. I’ve got some results for you.” She headed toward me, hands in the pockets of her starched white lab coat.

“Great.” It was the most enthusiasm I’d felt in a week. “What did you find? Something toxic? Parasitic?”

“Nope. The lab results indicate that this water is pure.”

It felt like my energy was draining out through my fingertips, taking my hope with it. Ms. Barnett said something about an excellent Ph level and an abundance of minerals.

“Are you sure, Ms. Barnett? Did you check for rare contaminants?”

“Well, I’m not the FBI, but I gave it a decent look.”

“So the water is pure enough to drink?”

“Appears so.” She kept smiling.

“You’re sure?” I couldn’t get past the denial.

I’ve heard it said that right before you die, your whole life flashes before you. In that instant, that happened to me, only it was my future. I would never go to med school or be a doctor. Never travel to another continent, watch a game at Wrigley Field, or get married. Without a diagnosis and remedy, a normal life was out of the question.

“How is she, by the way?” Ms. Barnett asked.

“Who?”

“Your dog.” She crossed her arms, stepping close. “What’s going on, Owen?”

I knew better than to spill the facts —that had gotten me nowhere —but I did crave some guidance. “Nothing in my life is adding up anymore. Everything is —petrifying.”

She leaned toward me. “I’d quit adding and start subtracting or multiplying. Find a new life formula, Owen. A shift in perspective. It’s usually a good thing, a step on the path to maturity.”

She gave me a motherly hug, the kind that includes pats on the shoulder blade, but I left my arms at my sides. It was the most contact I’d had with a shackled person. “I’m writing you a pass to go speak with a counselor. You can —”

“No. I’ll be fine.”

A second later, she handed me a pink counselor slip and the printout of the lab results, then walked beside me as I shuffled out of her classroom. I didn’t thank her.

What now?

I had no plan B. No sensible next step or strategy. My feet walked without any directive from my brain, carrying me to my first-period desk. I hadn’t intended to go to class, but I had no idea where else to go. I stared at a random spot on the wall, unflinching. Until Dan opened his big mouth.

“I’m gonna party all night with Jess after prom.”

I snapped out of my stupor and took a long look at him —past his sun-glossed brown hair and pretty-boy face to the bolted shackle around his neck. He had eight cords jutting out of his head, skimming the back of his Abercrombie shirt, and ten or so chains lay spiraled next to his expensive shoes. If I could have lifted one of those freezing suckers, I’d have strangled him with it.

I let his comment go. For now.

Ashlyn took her seat in front of me. She was alone, as in not escorting a Creeper. She seemed fine, like nothing had happened.

Our teacher passed around a sheet of paper and asked us to write the name of the book we’d selected for the upcoming book report. I wrote down the title someone else four names before me had picked. That’s all I recall of that class.

The bell rang, and I wandered into the hallway. I noticed more words written on walls and a few lockers. Oppressive words like despair and anger. And there were droves of Creepers among us. I could smell their nauseating odor even when they were out of sight.

My freakish observations mixed with the mundane. Teachers piled a ton of makeup work on me. It was nearly impossible to concentrate, but I found it sort of comforting to make an effort to do schoolwork. A connection to my old life.

Lunchtime came, and I was actually glad to see my friends. I was adjusting to the fact that, as monstrous as they looked, people weren’t trying to hurt me. I finally understood . . .

They were prey, not predators.

I grabbed a few things from the vending machines, then sat in my usual spot next to Walt and some other jocks, including Lance. He and I were polite but hardly talked.

Jess sat at my table, between Meagan and Ashlyn, ignoring me.

I still wasn’t sure what to do now that my toxic-water theory had been debunked, but I forced myself to stay calm, pulling open my bag of Cheez-Its along the seam instead of ripping it into a thousand pieces like I wanted to.

I tried to go along with the table talk, but people hardly looked my way. Had Lance blabbed about me?

I was down to my last cracker when I glanced across the cafeteria and saw a Creeper closing in on a girl, swooping down like a vulture on a carcass. I watched it shrink to the floor, then hoist up again with a chain fastened to its wrist. Between spastic glances in every direction, it fumbled through her cords, then picked one.

I could just sit there and do nothing, but that was getting old. I figured the worst that could happen is the Creeper would kill me, and that would almost be a gift. My friends already thought I was crazy, so nothing to lose there.

I took one last sip of my Powerade, then made the trek across the cafeteria, enduring the increasing drop in temperature as I got close to the assailant. I walked up to the girl, ignoring the Creeper behind her back and her giggling, whispering friends.

Freshmen.

“Hey.” I fought the instinct to run.

She looked around, finally pointing to herself.

I nodded, then reached out. She eased her hand toward mine, then held my hand about five seconds longer than normal.

“I’m Owen.”

“I know,” she said. A girl held up her phone and snapped our picture. More giggles.

“I’m —Riley.” She didn’t sound certain of her name.

The grotesque ritual was in progress. The Creeper fluttered its fingers, enticing a cord stretching from Riley’s head to burrow beneath its skin, sinking into its palm. Its garbled whisper sounded like an ensemble of anguished cries mixed with hissing. It gave me goose bumps.

“I need to talk to you, Riley.”

She cast a wide-eyed glance at her equally wide-eyed friends. A girl prompted the others to get up and give us some privacy. Perfect.

I lowered into the chair across from her. “Do you feel okay?” My tone was more fatherly than friendly.

“Um. Sure. Yeah. I’m fine.” She grinned, showing a mouthful of braces.

“You sure? Nothing tingling or aching?”

She shook her head, narrowing her eyes in confusion.

“I know we don’t know each other, and this is gonna sound crazy, but . . .” How could I explain? “I’m wondering if you feel different than usual. Maybe sort of an . . . eerie sense?”

“Uh. No.”

My gaze drifted above Riley to the Creeper’s jacked-up face, and I zeroed in on the festering wound stretched across its forehead. I couldn’t peel my eyes away.

Riley squirmed in her seat. “What are you —?”

“Don’t move!” I tilted my head.

What I had assumed were random gashes and scars on its face began taking shape in my mind, forming a word out of battered flesh:

hopeless

It looked like a brand, a deep burn on the Creeper’s decomposing forehead.

Riley glanced over her shoulder.

“Hey.” I leaned in, both fists on the table. “Are you . . . ? Have you been . . . ?” I swallowed hard. “Are you feeling hopeless right now?”

As the word shot off my tongue, the Creeper’s head jerked in my direction, its threatening eyes targeting my face. I ducked down, almost wetting my pants.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m all right.”

I leaned close enough to whisper. “Are you sure?” I knew I was making her uncomfortable, but under the circumstances, I didn’t care.

She slumped over and bit the side of her lip. “I’m okay. I guess.” Even less convincing.

“Riley, I know this sounds weird, but if you happen to start feeling hopeless today —” The Creeper growled at me like a ravenous bear. “ —please don’t listen to those feelings. They’re not coming from you and they’re not real. There’s always hope.”

I needed to listen to the advice I was giving. “Promise me you won’t give in to . . .”

Did I dare say it a third time?

“. . . sadness.” No reaction from the Creeper. “Promise?”

“I’ll try.” She sounded like she was defeated already, her smile now a drooping frown. She stood and crumpled her lunch sack, then stared at me, eyebrows raised. But I’d just given her all the advice I had.

“See ya.” I didn’t know what else to say. I walked off, leaving her standing there, tethered to a hellion.

But something inside me had changed.

Without intending to, I’d taken Ms. Barnett’s advice. I’d found a new formula. I still wanted help for myself, but at the same time, I wanted to give help —to people like Riley. Time to quit obsessing over my sanity and switch gears, especially since I was more convinced than ever that what I was seeing was somehow real. Maybe another dimension intruding on ours?

I was trapped in an evil mystery that had to be solved —for my sake, yes, but for everyone else, too. I wasn’t carrying torture tools like they were. Surely that meant there was hope for them. I wouldn’t stop until I found a way to intervene, to free them.

But first, I had to get through seventh period.

My coach called me into his office and gave me what can only be described as a bipolar lecture. First he’d shout, launching white balls of spit at my face, then he’d ask if I was all right. This up-and-down interrogation went on for most of the class period. I finally convinced him I’d been sick, which was basically true, and that I couldn’t run in this week’s track meet. It was our last one of the season, and we weren’t going to win whether I ran or not, so he let me off the hook without too much grief.

I’d always considered my coach one of the strongest men I knew, but his half-dozen chains ruined that.

As I was leaving school, I saw Jess across the hall, at her locker. She took a step toward me, but then stopped when Dan moved deliberately between us. Jess wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pulled her body to his.

I turned and made my way toward the main exit doors, stomping my heels into the floor, squeezing my keys. Jess wasn’t just dating Dan. She was flaunting it.

I couldn’t stand her flirting with him. More than jealous, I was worried about her. She’d told me stories about how he’d lost his temper with her. Grabbed her so hard during an argument that he’d left a bruise on her arm. And now she was back with him?

On top of that, right or wrong, I was beginning to measure people —okay, judge people —by the number of chains and cords they had. People like Dan and my mom had tons. People like Riley and Ms. Barnett had just a few. Jess was basically in the middle.

I was out the door and almost to the parking lot when I did a double take, skidding to a halt.

How is that even possible?