Summer's End Page 9

  He shook his head and closed his eyes. The image of the apron appeared in his mind. The pocket, Jacob realized, would have rested against Tresa’s abdomen. He pictured Blake drawing a finger across his belly.

  “She’d been disembowelled,” Blake had said. Dr. Stockwell had slit his wife open when he killed her. It made sense — in a twisted, bizarre sort of way — that Jacob would reach into her pocket and pull his hand out covered in blood.

  But if that makes sense, Jacob thought, nothing in the world makes sense anymore.

  When he opened his eyes again, he saw another flash of blood that disappeared quickly.

  For a horrifying second he feared the blood was on his hand again, but then he realized it had been farther away, deeper in the woods — out of reach and now out of sight.

  Jacob got to his feet. He walked slowly, watching his step, winding around trees, moving closer to the spot where he had seen the blood. It had moved from right to left before disappearing behind a pine tree. Maybe he had caught a glimpse of a wounded animal, like a deer, moving through the forest.

  And what would I do if it is a dying deer? he thought. Would I put it out of its misery, or call Hannah to do it for me?

  As he inched forward he started to believe, started to hope, that he hadn’t actually seen anything. He was tired and stressed, his nerves wound up as tight as fishing line around a reel. It was far more plausible that he had imagined both the blood on his hand and in the woods.

  The same flash of movement he’d seen before stopped Jacob dead in his tracks.

  It was red, but it wasn’t blood. It was a hat. A lucky red hat.

  Colton.

  The boy looked at Jacob with wide, pleading eyes.

  “Jacob?” he said in a raspy voice. It sounded like he hadn’t spoken in years.

  Jacob didn’t know how to respond. Even if he could think of something to say, his brain no longer seemed to be connected to the rest of his body. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe.

  Colton took a step toward Jacob. He walked over dry pine needles and crunchy leaves without making a sound. He reached out a hand. “Help me, Jacob. Please.” His final word came out in a wet gurgle.

  “Colton?” a man’s voice bellowed from the front porch of the house. “What are you doing out here? Get inside. Now!”

  Jacob turned and stared in disbelief. It was Dr. Stockwell, dressed in an old-fashioned suit and a bloody apron.

  “I have to go,” Colton whispered urgently. “If I stay out here any longer I’ll be punished. Please help me, Jacob.”

  The boy turned and ran out of the woods. As Jacob watched Colton cross the clearing, he realized with a sickening feeling that the boy hadn’t aged a day since he had disappeared four years before. He was still a ten-year-old boy, although not the healthy, happy child he had been the last time Jacob had seen him.

  Colton ran around Dr. Stockwell’s large body and disappeared inside. The doctor watched him pass and then turned his attention back to Jacob.

  “If you return,” he said, in a low voice that carried across the clearing, “you will meet the same fate as that boy.” He stepped back through the open doorway and was swallowed up by the darkness of his house.

  And then, suddenly free of the madness that had held him in place, Jacob dropped to his knees and cried.

  A moment later Ichiro came outside, followed by the twins. They spotted Jacob on the forest floor and ran to him. Ichiro crouched beside him.

  “Jake? Are you okay?”

  “No,” Jacob said.

  “We heard voices,” Hannah said. “Were you talking to someone?”

  Jacob nodded. “It didn’t sound like chittering squirrels, did it?” he asked.

  “No. It didn’t.”

  “Maybe now you’ll believe me when I say this house is haunted, although you might not believe this next part. I’m not even sure I do.” Jacob looked at his friends and took a breath, knowing what he was about to tell them would make him sound crazy. But he didn’t care. He knew what he had seen, even if he was having a hard time believing his own eyes. “It was Colton’s ghost. The Kalapik didn’t get him. Dr. Stockwell did.”

  TEN

  August 10

  Everywhere Jacob looked, down every aisle and around every corner, he saw Dr. Stockwell. When he entered Connor’s Grocery with his mother, he thought the cashier was wearing a bloody surgical apron. When he passed a stock boy near the produce, he thought he was stacking knives and saws, not cans and bottles. Even the cereal aisle wasn’t safe — Cap’n Crunch’s white moustache briefly turned black and grew to a full-blown beard out of the corner of Jacob’s eye.

  Crackle, crackle.

  The voice of Dr. Stockwell whispered in his head, followed by the grisly sounds of a body being skinned alive, hacked to pieces, placed in a weighted bag and thrown into Sepequoi Lake.

  As much as he had hated the dreams he’d had earlier in the summer, the black eyes and the green skin and the fingernail claws of the Kalapik had been preferable to the images and sounds of Dr. Stockwell that now filled his mind. Real-life horrors, Jacob now knew all too well, were far scarier than make-believe bogeymen.

  Jacob laughed bitterly. A murderous ghost was now part of his real life.

  As was Colton, even though he hadn’t been a part of Jacob’s life since he’d disappeared four years ago. Seeing Colton in the woods, wearing his red hat and pleading for help, had raised more questions than ever. Answers were starting to take shape in Jacob’s mind, and he couldn’t wait to get together with Ichiro and the twins to discuss them.

  “You all right, Jake?” his mother asked, as she placed a few cans of soup in their cart.

  “What?” Jacob asked, as he came out of his thoughts. “Oh, yeah. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

  “I dunno. I guess.”

  “A moment ago you laughed even though I hadn’t said anything. And you’ve been really jumpy for a week or two.” She stopped pushing the cart and squeezed his shoulder. “If there’s something bothering you, you can tell me.”

  “I’m good.”

  His mother frowned and looked at him skeptically, but the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “I am! Really!” Jacob laughed at the goofy look on his mother’s face. “It’s been an awesome summer. I guess I just don’t want it to end.” It wasn’t the full truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either.

  “You’ve still got a few weeks left to raise a little hell. No need to get all mopey just yet. Save that for the last week of August, okay?”

  “Sure thing, Mom.” He smiled.

  “You look better already!”

  “I feel a little better.”

  “Well, while I’m on a roll toward winning Mom of the Year, tell me something good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I like good things, especially when they involve you. So tell me something good. How’s your baseball team doing?”

  “Not bad,” Jacob said. “We lost three games during Hannah’s suspension but we’re still in second place.”

  “That’s good.” She paused for a moment. “You get along pretty well with Hannah. Are you two, um …”

  “No,” Jacob said, trying not to shout. “Absolutely not, Mom. Gross.” He looked down both ends of the aisle. Luckily they were alone. Hopefully no one had heard any part of that.

  His mother blushed and shrugged. “It’s just—”

  “She’s just a friend. I’ve known her practically my whole life. She’s just a friend,” he repeated.

  “All right, all right. Excuse me for asking.” Jacob’s mother pushed the cart toward the freezer section. “You know, I saw her with Hayden and their dad here in the grocery store shortly after she was suspended. They didn’t see me.”

  Jacob slowed his pace. He didn’t ask, but he wondered where his mother was going with this slight shift in the conversation.

&
nbsp; “Their father was …” She trailed off and ran her tongue over her lips as if her mouth had suddenly gone dry. “Not happy.”

  “Hannah was only sticking up for Hayden,” Jacob said defensively, as if the twins’ father had popped up beside them and Jacob was speaking directly to him. “Sebastien was charging at him. He could’ve really hurt him if Hannah hadn’t stopped him.”

  “He wasn’t angry at her. He was angry at Hayden.”

  “What? What for?”

  “For not fighting that boy.” Jacob’s mother shook her head. “For ‘needing’ his sister to stick up for him.”

  Jacob fell silent. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course the twins’ father wouldn’t be upset at Hannah for getting suspended, but instead at Hayden for not standing up to Sebastien himself.

  “It’s not fair.”

  The words had escaped Jacob’s mouth before he had even realized the thought had entered his mind.

  “What’s that?”

  He tried to think of a way out of answering, but nothing came to mind. “Sometimes I wish my dad hadn’t left, while Hayden and Hannah go through life wishing their father would go away.”

  His mother sighed. “This is a horrible question, Jake, and I wish I didn’t have to ask it, but … does he ever hurt them?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jacob said quietly. “Not physically. Just verbally, you know?”

  “I know,” his mother said sympathetically. “You’re right, it’s not fair. You don’t get to choose your family. But you do get to choose your friends. So be there for them, listen to them and let me know if it starts to get worse. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They walked past frozen pizzas, frozen waffles and frozen peas.

  “Well, that was an epic fail,” his mother said while eyeing the frosted glass of the freezer doors.

  “Hmm?”

  “Asking you to tell me something good — didn’t exactly pan out the way I had intended.”

  Jacob laughed. “No kidding.”

  “What can I say?” She shrugged and shot him a smile. “Sometimes I forget how tough it is to be a teenager. How about this? How about I tell you something good?”

  Jacob nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “Well, Bernadette — the daytime server at The Hot Plate? Older than the devil and moves as slow as molasses? She finally decided to retire at the end of the month. Guess who got her shift?”

  Before Jacob could answer, his mother shouted, “Me!”

  “Congratulations, Mom,” Jacob said, as he gave her a hug.

  “Thanks, sweetie. Not only is it a little extra pay, but it’s Monday to Friday, six thirty to two thirty. I might have to pick up an extra shift here and there to cover for the other servers, but for the most part I won’t have to work nights and weekends. We can finally do all that cool stuff we’ve wanted to do together for years!”

  “What cool stuff?”

  “I have no idea! But we’ll think of something.” Jacob’s mother laughed and absent-mindedly tossed a bag of frozen mangos in the cart even though neither of them liked mangos, frozen or unfrozen.

  “Mom, you’re scaring me.” Jacob returned the frozen mangos to the freezer and smiled. “But it’s great to see you so happy.”

  “Yes, yes, but I want you to be just as happy as I am and enjoy the rest of the summer. Just check in every now and again and let me know if you’re going to be home late, okay?”

  “Thank you, Mom.”

  “And do me a favour and don’t get into trouble. And if you get into trouble, don’t get caught.”

  “Deal.”

  “Well, enough about all that,” Jacob’s mother said. “Let’s go pay and get out of here. I’m making your favourite dinner tonight, spaghetti and meatballs. You’ll need your strength for your baseball game this evening. Which reminds me, I need to get spaghetti … and meatballs …”

  * * *

  The smell of grilled hot dogs and fresh popcorn wafted from the food truck that was parked beside the baseball field’s bleachers. A few young children watched the game with their parents and cheered on their older siblings, while others chased each other in the park nearby and skipped and laughed and picked dandelions.

  The sun sat low in the sky and cast an orange blanket over the horizon. Insects buzzed and chirped and thrummed around the diamond.

  The second baseman crept closer to the bag, slowly, quietly.

  Even though Jacob had taken a large lead from the base and the approaching second baseman was behind him, Jacob knew he was there. His senses were heightened, alive with the thrill and the rush of the game. He smelled the grilling dogs, heard the insects’ buzz and saw the tension on Hannah’s and the rest of their teammates’ faces as they sat on the bench. From the bleachers, Hayden clapped and whistled. Standing at the plate, Ichiro tightened his grip on the baseball bat and took a gentle practice swing. The world practically sizzled and pulsed with electricity and nerves. It was the bottom of the ninth. They were down by one with one out. Jacob inched a little farther from second base, his eye on third.

  Suddenly, Jacob’s focus was shattered by a feeling of pressure that filled his head. He groaned and jogged somewhat blindly back to second base, just to be safe. The moment he stepped on the bag, he heard a woman singing in German. Not near his ears, but directly inside them.

  Guten Abend, gute Nacht,

  mit Rosen bedacht,

  mit Näglein besteckt,

  schlupf ’ unter die Deck!

  The voice faded away on the final lyric, and the sounds of the game slowly returned as the pressure in his head dissipated. He looked around. Everything was a little blurry. He rubbed his eyes, then noticed Ichiro. He appeared to have called a timeout and stepped out of the batter’s box which, Jacob thought, was fortunate timing. Jacob looked at the bench to see if anyone had noticed whatever had just happened to him, but all his teammates were focused on Ichiro. All of them, except for Hannah. She was hunched over with her head between her knees as if she was sick to her stomach. Over in the bleachers, Hayden looked like he was going to throw up.

  “You feeling okay, Ichiro?” their coach called out from the bench.

  “Yeah, I just … Yeah.” Ichiro shook his head, knocked some dirt out of his cleats and stepped back into the batter’s box.

  What the heck was that? Jacob wondered.

  His own mind answered. You know what that was. That was Tresa. Singing Brahms’ Lullaby in German. And Ichiro, Hannah and Hayden heard it too.

  Jacob clapped his hands — as much to clear his head as to encourage Ichiro — and took another lead that was considerably smaller than before.

  The pitcher took the mound, faced home plate, dropped his hands and tensed. For a panicked split second Jacob thought he was going to spin and try to pick him off. He considered inching back to second base but stopped when the pitcher kicked off the mound and fired a blistering fastball toward home plate.

  Ichiro swung hard and fast and connected with the ball on his bat’s sweet spot. With a beautiful crack, the ball sailed high and far, deep into centre field.

  Jacob jumped back to the base and watched. And waited.

  The world around the baseball field grew quiet. Not a deathly quiet; it was a living quiet. A quiet filled with the tense thrums of anxiety and hope. It was a quiet that was ready to explode, regardless what happened next.

  With her neck turned to trace the incoming ball over her shoulder, the centre fielder pumped her arms and hustled toward the fence. She reached the outer edge of the field at the same time as the ball. She jumped into the air, kicked a foot against the fence, spun around and reached her gloved hand high above her head.

  She caught the ball.

  A miraculous catch.

  Two outs.

  The crowd went wild.

  Jacob didn’t hesitate. He pushed off second base and barrelled toward third with his head down. One word repeated silently in his brain: go, go go!

  The third-bas
e coach waved him home. Jacob rounded the base. The only sounds he now heard were the beat of his heart, the rasp of his breath and the crunch of his cleats.

  Halfway home he spared a quick glance to his left. The second baseman had caught a throw from the centre fielder. He turned and threw the ball over the pitcher’s head.

  Jacob ran, his eyes focused solely on home plate, when—

  Guten Abend, gute Nacht,

  von Englein bewacht,

  die zeigen im Traum

  dir Christkindleins Baum.

  Schlaf nun selig und süß,

  schau im Traum’s Paradies.

  He stumbled and slowed. He slid.

  The catcher caught the ball. He tagged Jacob’s foot.

  The umpire pumped his fist in the air and yelled, “You’re out!”

  Out. Jacob was out. The Tigers had lost the game.

  The crowd went wild again. Some cheered, some groaned, but no one remained quiet. Everyone was on their feet.

  Everyone other than Jacob. He remained on the ground for a while before standing up.

  He knew then that Tresa was trying to send him — maybe his friends too — a message. What that message was, Jacob wasn’t yet sure.

  ELEVEN

  August 11

  Although the library’s air conditioner was working overtime to keep the building cool, the back of Jacob’s shirt was still wet from the bike ride there. Through a series of late-night texts after the baseball game the day before, the four friends had agreed to meet there as soon as it opened in the morning. Jacob recommended it as a safe zone, a central location away from the prying eyes of adults.

  They sat around the small table in the local history room, removing pieces of paper from the torn-apart envelope Jacob had found in Tresa’s wardrobe — don’t think about the bloody nurse’s apron, he willed himself — and fitting them together like a jigsaw puzzle.

  “So all three of you heard Colton and Dr. Stockwell’s voices when I was outside?” Jacob asked. He dreaded their answers, but he had to ask the question all the same. If they had heard the ghosts too, that made them real — really real.

  Ichiro, Hannah and Hayden looked at each other, then turned to Jacob and nodded.