Temptation: A Novel (31 page)

91. Definitely Not Brotherly

At first when I email Kelsey about picking her up for our—well, yeah, it’s called a date, so for our date, I say that I can see about borrowing my mom’s car. She doesn’t bring up the license issue, which is good. But she tells me to ride my motorcycle.

You think I can’t ride on the back of a motorcycle?
she asks in an email.

Of course not.

I’m not the wallflower you think I am.

I actually Google “wallflower” to see what she’s meaning.

I never said you were
I reply.

Good. See you tonight.

But Kelsey was right: she
can’t
ride on the back of the motorcycle. Mr. Page greets me when I get to their house and then ends up asking me about riding with a helmet. Something I don’t do.

“I think you need to drive, Kelsey,” he says in a nice, friendly manner.

But the nice, friendly tone still doesn’t mean she has a choice.

In her parents’ other car, a four-door Honda, Kelsey apologizes for telling me to bring the bike.

“It’s fine,” I say. “I really need to get a helmet anyway. Or two.”

“So where are we going?”

She looks cute in her jeans and boots and jean jacket. It’s as if she dressed to go riding on a bike, looking a little tougher and more rugged than usual.

But she could never really quite look rugged.

“I was going to head to Solitary. Just park and walk around the downtown area a few dozen times.”

“Stop.”

She knows me well enough to know my sarcasm.

“I don’t know. I was thinking—well, wondering what you like to eat.”

“I haven’t had Mexican for a while.”

“Really? I know a great place in Asheville.”

“You mind going that far away?”

“Do you?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“When do you have to be home?”

Kelsey shrugs. “I don’t have a curfew. It never really comes up. Even though the guys just keep coming around asking me out for dates.”

“Maybe they’re just intimidated by that shy persona of yours.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Kelsey says with a laugh.

“I don’t think you’d want many of the guys at Harrington asking you out. Would you?”

“I think they know I’m not particularly interested,” she says, adding, “And that I’ve had my eyes on someone for a while.”

The statement surprises me. I want to say something in response, a joke or a witty remark, but I don’t want to make fun of what she just said.

She did something I rarely do—put herself out there for better or worse.

“It’s about time he noticed,” I finally say.

Kelsey looks at me with a whimsical sort of look. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

For a while I’m seventeen again.

I’m not with a dark-haired beauty chosen to be a town’s sacrifice for a reason I still don’t understand, a girl tortured and facing the future by herself.

I’m not with the Goth girl who has always acted one way because of hiding another way she felt, only to be revealed too late.

And I’m not with the older girl posing as a high school girl to lead me down a troubled path.

Instead I’m with a cute girl who looks her age and talks her age but also seems to be more than just another seventeen-year-old girl.

There’s something about her, something that continues to surprise me.

I don’t exactly know what it is.

After dinner, while we’re waiting on a tiny dessert I urged Kelsey to get and promised I’d help her eat, she brings up college. I guess this is the place to go to talk about the future.

“I’ve decided where I’m going to college,” she tells me in a way that seems like she’s been waiting all night to tell me.

“Where?”

“Guess.”

I guess a few schools in North Carolina, like UNC and Duke. She’s smart, and I know she has the grades to get in.

“Wrong state,” she says.

I keep guessing until I eventually give up.

“Covenant College,” Kelsey says.

I don’t say anything, and she asks if I know where that is.

“Yeah, sure. Downtown Chicago.”

“Surprised?”

I nod, because I am. “That’s a long ways from here.”

“It’s a great school.”

“I couldn’t get in there even if I had a million dollars and my dad was the school president.”

“Maybe I’ll meet some nice Midwestern boys like you.”

“Ha. Hopefully you’ll meet some nice Midwestern boys who
aren’t
like me.”

“What are you going to do about college?”

“I’m thinking I’ll just move to a big city. Start painting. Because, you know, I’m such a great artist.”

This makes her laugh. We get the chocolate thing, and Kelsey takes a couple of bites as I tell her what my father said.

“Who knows,” I tell her. “Maybe I’ll follow you to Chicago.”

She gives me a glance that doesn’t go away. “Uh-oh,” is all she says.

I know that Kelsey is suddenly acting all girly and strange when she pulls the car into the driveway and gets out. It should be me driving and walking her back to her home. But, oh well, nothing I can do about it. I know why she’s being distant and quiet.

The date involving a great dinner and a cheesy romantic comedy movie is about to end.

What happens at her doorstep?

Do I get invited in?

Am I supposed to give her a passionate kiss good night?

Maybe the past year leading up to this gives me the confidence I need to let things be. For a while.

I still believe that I’m no good for Kelsey. But she’ll go off to college, find a real man who can be her rock, and that will be it.

“Thanks,” she says in that little chirp of a voice I got to know in art class.

“Thank you—for driving. And for hanging out.”

“It was fun.”

We’re standing at her door, the light on, the crickets droning away. She’s watching, waiting, surely wondering.

“You’re a pretty awesome girl, Kelsey.”

I move over and kiss her gently on her cheek. Not in a brotherly sort of way. But in an attempt—at least it’s my attempt—to be a gentleman.

I look at her and smile at her in a way no brother is
ever
going to smile at his sister.

“See you on Monday.”

She nods, telling me good night.

I see her open the door and slip inside, then hear the door shut and lock.

I go back to my bike and sit on it for a moment.

What’s your plan now?

But I don’t have a plan. Not with Kelsey. No plan, no intention, no goal. Just a guy hanging out with an awesome girl in the midst of a mad, mad world.

That’s all. We’ll go from there.

92. The Pit

It always seems that I’m heading down this creek when it’s freezing cold outside. At least I have a pair of boots this time. Waterproof boots I bought not long ago. Maybe in the back of my mind, I knew I’d be hiking back downstream to the Staunch mansion at dusk.

I reach the small waterfall that I now know Brick helped build. It reminds me of Wade.

Now dead.

I remember coming here a year ago and seeing the figure on the deck. I now know that was Kinner, my great-grandfather.

Somehow, he seemed to know I was coming.

Can you feel me now?

I remember coming down here when I was just trying to figure out what was going on with Jocelyn.

Also dead.

It’s dark and cold, and I’m heading to the place that Brick talked about, a big hole in the ground where the dead are buried. Or no, make that just thrown away. With a tarp covering them.

The farther I walk down the creek, the heavier I seem to feel. The faces and voices of the dead follow me. I feel like I’m carrying them, and I’m not doing a very good job of it.

I don’t use a flashlight until I need to. But I’ve walked about ten minutes past the waterfall and the Staunch house when I turn it on. I’m walking beside the creek now, trying to see where the trees open.

Soon I find myself stumbling in the darkness, having second thoughts.

Maybe Brick made this up.

I go another ten minutes and then wonder if I somehow missed it and need to backtrack.

What am I doing here anyway?

I ignore the voice because I know why I’m here. For proof. For tangible proof that there’s a monster living nearby and he’s killing people. I’ve seen enough cop shows and
CSI
episodes to know what they can discover these days. Disposing of a body isn’t as easy as it might have been when Count Dracula—I mean Solitaire—moved here years ago.

For a second I pause, feeling the slight wind chill my bones. That’s when I hear the sound. A rustling in the woods, something coming toward me, moving and shifting the leaves and dead branches.

I scan the bare skeletons of trees looking for what’s making the noise.

The sound is louder.

It’s the dead and they’ve risen to greet you with decomposing arms …

Then I spot it.

It comes out of the trees and then stands, facing the beam of light with no fear. The first thing I notice are its pointy ears that are straight up.

The wolf.

It’s the same one I saw when I came down here a year ago.

Does this thing guard the Staunch mansion? Does it turn into a demon dog that blows up into smoke?

Then suddenly it looks upward and howls.

I feel like someone just punched me in the stomach. Or I just landed on my back.

The air in my lungs suddenly disappears and I’m there trying to breathe but can’t because I’m terrified at this high-pitched, awful scream.

I want to move but can’t.

I want to bail but I can’t do squat.

It howls for a minute, and I’m wondering if that’s a call. If it’s summoning up other wolves who will come and eat me. Or if this is a message for Staunch or Kinner or the werewolf in the
Twilight
books who never seems to have a shirt on.

The wolf then stops howling and races toward me.

I shut my eyes and hold my arms up toward my face.

Then I hear it rush past me and up the small bank I’m walking near.

I open my eyes and aim the beam to where the wolf is standing. He’s on top of the hill, standing sideways, his head looking toward me.

He missed me.

But no. No way that tall and lean wolf missed me.

I see the white around its mouth as it howls again.

Then it does the weirdest thing. It starts to walk away, slowly, then it turns around and stares down at me.

Then it gives that freaky howl again.

It’s like Midnight when she wants to play. She looks at you to throw the ball.

But this isn’t a little Shih Tzu. It's a wild wolf in the woods.

It does the same thing again, disappearing and then coming back and looking at me.

It wants you to follow it.

I would laugh if I weren’t so spooked. I stand there for a minute.

I’m freezing and know I need to do something.

So I take a few steps up the bank toward where the wolf is standing. He bolts off, this time with speed. I make it up the hill and then scan the dark woods to see where the wolf is now.

That’s when I see the opening toward the gray sky above.

The wolf is leading me to it, to the place Brick told me about.

But that’s as crazy as …

The bluebird by Iris’s old place? That freaky thing in the woods by the wall to Staunch’s residence?

I keep walking toward the wolf. He hasn’t howled again, which I’m taking as a good sign.

Then I see it, a clearing in these woods where the ground starts to go down. But as I scan it, there’s no tarp or covering on the oval-shaped dip in front of me.

Rather, the ground is barren and black. I walk down into it and kick some of the rock and dirt around. It’s like a fire pit.

They torched the bodies.

I’m seeing the remains of a massive fire and ashes that were washed away from rain and snow and who knows what else.

I stand there just staring at the ground.

I can feel the evil here. It seems to cover me in an icy grip. I feel dizzy and sore.

I shouldn’t be here.

I’m about to start back upward toward the Staunch house when I hear that awful howling again. I scan the edge of the woods with the bright beam of my flashlight.

The wolf buries his nose in the ground near a fallen tree. He does this several times.

Do you have a name? It would be easier just calling you by name.

I walk toward the wolf and watch him slowly move over from where he was standing. He’s light brown and beautiful, so lean and muscular.

I get to the corner of the log and check out the ground. Sticking out of a clump of leaves and mud is something light-colored that doesn’t look like it belongs. My boot taps it and then pries it free.

It takes me about a second to realize I’m looking at the remains of an arm. The skeletal remains, that’s pretty much it.

I suddenly feel more than just woozy. I feel kind of sick.

This particular arm didn’t make the roasting.

I fight off nausea and I head out, away from this awful place. I don’t hear the wolf or see it anymore.

It showed me proof. The arm is proof.

I head back down to the creek. Otherwise I’ll end up walking around these woods and be like those guys in
The Blair Witch Project.
Lost and freaked out and eventually

Bye bye.

I get to the stream and quickly head back up it.

Walking and trying not to think. Rushing and trying to make sure I don’t fall.

Not thinking. Just walking.

And it’s fine and I’m almost out of here when I make the mistake of looking up at the Staunch house.

I see a light on near the deck.

I see a figure on the deck, standing as it did a year ago, watching and waiting.

He’s there. My great-grandfather.

Then I see an arm and a hand waving.

No, not waving.

It’s gesturing me to come toward him. It’s summoning me.

I feel my shaky breath as I try and think of what to do.

“Chrisssssss.”

Maybe I’m imagining the voice in my mind, but I don’t think so.

There are some things in this life you can put off. Getting a license, asking a girl to prom, deciding on a college, picking out what you want to do in life.

But this …

This isn’t one of those things.

I swallow and start walking toward the Staunch house.