“Thanks a lot!”
Travis was shaking, but only partly from the terror of The Blood Children. More than anything, he shook with fury.
Here he was, finally seeing the movie he had been looking forward to for weeks, finally, for the first time, getting into a movie without adult accompaniment, and now, with the movie not even half over, he was out on the street. Not only that, but Mr. Dinsmore, pointing a long, bony finger at Travis and Nish, had threatened to call their parents to tell them what had happened. They could consider themselves “banned for life,” he said.
“Banned for life?” Nish had snorted as Mr. Dinsmore pulled the door shut behind them. “Banned till the next movie comes to town would be more like it. He needs our business. And he won’t be telling any parents on us; he’d be the one in trouble for us being in there, not us.”
Travis wasn’t going to waste any more breath arguing. There was no sense trying to talk to Nish now. It didn’t matter to Nish that they had missed the end of the show. For Nish, the show had simply moved out into the streets, where he was still the star and the plot was whatever he decided to do next.
Travis figured the least he could do was throw him an unexpected twist, so he turned on his heel and walked away.
“Where’re you going?” Nish asked.
Travis said nothing, did not even turn to acknowledge the question.
“What’s wrong with you?” Nish called after him.
Travis ignored him. Leaving Nish staring after him, he struck out for home, his sneakers sticking and snapping on the pavement from Nish’s drink. He did not hear Nish’s own sticky sneakers following; perhaps Nish knew better than to try to act as if nothing had happened. The two had fought a thousand times before, but this one would take longer to heal than most.
It was bright along Main Street. The lights from the stores made it feel almost like daylight. There were lots of people about, some of them carrying ice cream cones, which they licked frantically in the warm late-spring air. Travis turned his thoughts away from Nish, but he was still shaking. The Blood Children: Part VIII had more than lived up to its gruesome billing.
To get home, Travis had no choice but to turn off Main Street. He waited until the very last possibility, then chose what he knew would be a reasonably bright route, River Street. He looked into the cloudy sky. His father had called for a new moon – “It means good fishing,” he’d said over breakfast that morning – but if there was a moon it was nowhere to be seen. How Travis wished it could be a clear and cloudless night.
River Street had good lighting, but the posts were far apart and there were no storefronts here to wash their friendly light into the street. There were more shadows than bright spots, and unlike Main Street there were no people out walking with their dripping ice cream cones.
The wind rattled the new leaves overhead, almost as if it were trying to get his attention. Travis wished Nish was with him, but he knew he couldn’t go back. Besides, Nish wouldn’t be there anyway. He would have headed down McGee Street and cut back across King to get home.
Travis also knew that after a horror movie Nish would stay as far away as possible from the cemetery that ran along River up from Cedar Street. No way would Nish walk past a graveyard after watching The Blood Children.
Travis, on the other hand, had no choice. He had to walk past the cemetery to get onto Cedar and home.
He shoved his fists deeper in his jacket pockets. He wished he could wrap his right hand around a big, weighty stone. When he was younger and afraid of large dogs, he would often secretly carry a rock in his jacket pocket, though he’d never actually had to throw one. Its heft had given him an odd comfort.
What good a rock might be against ghouls and zombies, he didn’t know. No rock at all to weigh him down might be a better idea. He could run faster then. He wondered if he should be running.
The wind was picking up, moaning now in the high tree-tops. Up ahead, shadows flickered. A cat yowled behind one of the houses.
In another few steps Travis would be beside the Tamarack Cemetery. He swallowed hard. His throat felt dry and his tongue swollen – strange, since he, unlike Nish, had just finished drinking a huge pop. He wondered if he could scream, if he had to scream. He could feel his heart pounding as if Muck had just put the Owls through a hard series of stops and starts.
Someone was crying!
It was impossible to tell exactly where the sound was coming from. It was so faint, barely audible above the rustle of the leaves. For a moment Travis thought it must be the cat, or the wind through a different type of tree – but then he heard a quick choke and the sharp intake of breath.
He stopped, afraid to make a sound.
He forced himself to turn to his right and look into the cemetery. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. There were no streetlights here and no lighting from the graveyard. The cemetery was bordered with dense lilacs, some still in bloom, and their sickly sweet smell was thick in the night air. The smell of a funeral parlour.
Something was moving! He couldn’t be sure what. He thought he glimpsed a light bouncing through the branches.
Travis felt frozen. If he ran, he would only draw attention to himself. If he stayed, his wildly pounding heart might burst. He forced himself to think: he could either bolt for the other side of the street and then double back when he came to Cedar, or he could move silently along the cemetery fence until he came to the gate, and a break in the trees, where he could see in.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He let it out and took a second, and held it.
He began moving, each step as cautious as if he were walking along the ridge of a high roof.
Again, the wet choking sound of someone crying!
Travis was almost to the gate. The light was moving rapidly now, seemingly dancing on the end of a string as it moved through the branches.
He was at the gate, free of the branches and leaves of the lilac.
The light suddenly snapped off.
It was dark again, pitch-black.
It’s nothing, Travis told himself. Nothing at all. He let go the deep breath he’d been holding and gulped fresh air.
Of course it had been nothing. It had to have been nothing. Just the sound of the wind and a flash of the moon through the branches. Or distant car lights, maybe. Or that “swamp gas” Mr. Dillinger had told them about, which people mistook for UFOs. Or just a reflection. Nothing really. Nothing at all.
Travis turned to walk away, and felt every drop of blood and every ounce of oxygen leave his body.
A boy was standing by the gate.
A boy, about twelve years old.
As pale as the sliver of the new moon just now cutting through the clouds.
Weeping.
Travis stared, his mouth open, unable to speak.
The boy wiped away the tears with the back of a thin, pale hand. He smiled, weakly.
“Help meee,” the boy said.
And then he was gone.