The Creek (9 page)

“Hey, Penny,” Benji said, a wary expression on his face, like he was worried that she might break or something. “Happy birthday!”

“Thanks,” she said, forcing herself to grin at him like everything was just great, like she didn’t feel shaky and out of sorts because of the lack of pancakes. She shook her head and stared off into the
distance. That was when she saw it.

“You guys!” she called. “Check this out!”

The boys walked over to Penny, and she pointed to the tree. Someone had carved a ragged lightning bolt about two inches long into the bark.

“Looks like a trail blaze,” Oren said. “We learned about those last year in Scouts.”

Oren
would
know something like this; he was a human encyclopedia.

“Yeah, I remember,” Benji said. “You carve them on trees or make little markings with, like, sticks and rocks and stuff.”

“What are they for?” she asked.

“They’re for when you’re lost, so people can find you,” Oren said.

“Or as warnings,” Benji added. “Looks fresh. You remember what this one means?”

Oren seemed to think for a moment, his eyes scrunched hard in concentration, and then he abruptly went pale. He looked at them helplessly. “I think it means danger,” he said in a shaky voice.

“Danger?” Mac demanded. “Is he right?” Mac would rather die than be in anything lame like the Boy Scouts.

Benji nodded. “Yeah, now I remember. It marks
dangerous spots, like bear dens and stuff.”

“There aren’t any bears in these woods “Teddy said firmly, and then wavered. “Right?”

“I knew we shouldn’t have built the fort here,” Penny finally whispered. “This is a bad place.”

“Can it with the superstitious stuff, Penny,” Mac said.

“But Caleb must have carved this into the tree. It’s a warning to stay away!”

“No way,” Mac said.

“C’mon, Mac, what if—”

“No way!” Mac said. “We just finished building this fort. We are not walking away because we’re scared of what he
might
do.” His face was red with anger.

When Mac got this way, there was no talking to him. Penny stalked away, down toward the dry creek bed. She had her bathing suit on and needed to cool off, needed to get away from stupid, stubborn boys. She would go to the swimming hole and take a dip. It made her so mad sometimes, how they wouldn’t listen to her, just because she was a girl.

She was winding her way along the creek when suddenly something caught her eye. There, farther down the creek, on a rocky ledge, was a flash of
orange. It looked like Mr. Cat. He was just lying there, his eyes glittering brightly in the distance. So this was where he’d been.

“Mr. Cat!” she called. “Here, kitty!”

The cat didn’t move. She loved Mr. Cat, but honestly, he was so stupid, the way he was always running away all the time.

“Come on, Mr. Cat! Time to go home.”

She had nearly reached the cat when she knew something was wrong. No living animal should be that still, that motionless.

“Mr. Cat!”

The cat was frozen in an attack crouch, his claws out, his fur stiff and flecked with blood. His eyes glittered unnaturally, glassy and bright red. A red so bright they seemed to glow.

Someone had killed Mr. Cat.

And stuffed him.

Penny let out a warbled scream and started to back away from the cat, her throat gasping, and then she was running along the dry creek bed, stumbling over the smooth stones, the fetid little pools of water.

She was out of breath and wild-eyed when she reached the fort. The boys stopped what they were doing, taking in her scared expression.

“Somebody killed Mr. Cat!”

They all just stared at her.

Teddy asked, in a trembling voice, “Somebody killed Mr. Cat?”

“Yes!” she shouted. “And they stuffed him!”

They dropped their tools and took off after her, back along the creek bed. Penny stopped abruptly, about twenty feet from the ledge. She pointed.

“Over there.”

The boys walked over to the ledge.

Penny crouched on the dry creek bed, clutching her knees and rocking back and forth, her mind whirling. She knew Caleb had done it, knew at the bottom of her soul that he was the one, he’d always had a thing for killing animals. It was his trademark.

“There’s nothing here!” Mac called.

“What?” she asked, standing up and jogging over to where they were standing.

Benji shook his head at her, a disappointed look on his face.

Penny’s eyes widened. The ledge was bare!

“But Mr. Cat was right there!”

“Maybe Mr. Cat was there, but he was alive, and when he heard us coming, he ran off,” Teddy suggested.

“No way. Mr. Cat was dead. Stuffed. And his eyes were weird. They were, like, all red,” Penny said.

Oren went still, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“Red, huh?” Mac asked in a sarcastic tone.

Benji nosed around the ledge. “Check this out,” he said.

There was a pile of cigarette butts and an empty, crumpled cigarette packet.

“See!” Penny hissed. “That’s proof! Caleb was here, and he killed my cat.”

Mac slapped his head in mock disbelief. “I mean, c’mon, lots of kids smoke,” he said. Then he paused. “Even I do, sometimes.”

“You smoke?” Benji asked suspiciously. “No way.”

Mac shrugged. “Sure.”

Oren weighed in. “Mac’s right. It’s not proof.”

“It was Caleb! He’s after me, I know it,” Penny said with conviction.

“Whatever, Penny,” Mac said, dismissing her. “First the rat, and then the guts, and now this?”

Penny shook her head wordlessly. They didn’t believe her!

“C’mon, you guys,” Mac said, walking away.

Benji sighed sadly and followed Mac. “See you at the party later,” he called out to Penny consolingly.

That was when she knew her year was pretty much ruined.

The next morning, Penny stood in the driveway, admiring her new pink bike. Her birthday party had been a success, with the exception of Becky Albright bursting into tears when she was told that there were no presents for her to open. All the neighborhood kids had come except one. Amy Bukvic.

Penny glanced across the street, and as if it knew Penny was thinking about Amy, the Bukvics’ front door opened. Amy walked out carrying a present and wearing a mulish expression on her face, obviously being forced by her mother to go over.

“Here,” Amy said, thrusting the package at Penny. “It’s a T-shirt.”

“Uh, thanks,” Penny said warily.

Amy had done something to her hair. It was tinted like a grown-up’s, with thin streaks.
She looks so much older than me,
Penny suddenly realized.

“Nice bike,” Amy said, all false smiles.

Penny went pale, utterly devastated. It was obvious to her that Amy thought the bike was stupid. “Yeah?” she said weakly.

“Yeah. It looks just like a little-girl bike,” Amy
observed, and then shrugged. “Which makes sense,

I guess.”

“I’m thirteen now,” Penny said, swallowing hard.

Amy swept her eyes up and down Penny’s gangly body, her tone mocking. “Really?”

“Yes,” Penny whispered. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“You know, being like this,” Penny said, struggling not to cry.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A pause. “Oh, by the way, Stu said any time you want to make out in a closet again, just let him know,” she said, and winked.

And then she turned and walked away.

It was nearly bedtime, and Penny and Teddy were in the den trying to squeeze in every last minute of television when the front door opened and Mrs. Bukvic called out, “Bethany?”

“In the dining room, Betty Ann,” her mother called back.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Bukvic asked.

“Icing about a hundred cupcakes for the Fourth of July party,” her mother said.

“Now?” There was censure in Mrs. Bukvic’s voice.
“Won’t the icing go bad?”

“I’ll freeze ‘em. The kids won’t care. They’ll still taste good. What’s up?” her mother asked, a little wearily. Penny knew Mrs. Bukvic sometimes got on her mom’s nerves, and part of her wondered if it was because of how mean Amy was to her.

“I tell you, those people have no manners. Why, he pushed me off his front step! Can you even believe it?” Mrs. Bukvic exclaimed.

“What people?”

“Ralph Devlin. The man’s crass as a cow,” Mrs. Bukvic said.

Penny could almost hear her mother sigh.

“And let me tell you, their bushes could stand to be pruned. Not to mention the fact that their geraniums looked positively ill. You’d never catch
my
geraniums looking like that.”

Penny’s mother said gently, “Ruthie is very sick, Betty Ann. Why did you go down there, anyway?”

“Because of Buster, of course!”

“Buster?” her mother asked, confused.

“Buster’s missing, Bethany! I let him out in the backyard, and now he’s gone. I just know Caleb took him!”

Penny paled. Buster was gone, too? She thought
about Mr. Cat, and a tight feeling rose in her throat.

“Betty Ann,” her mother said in a warning voice.

“So I went down there to see for myself,” Mrs. Bukvic continued righteously. “Anyway, all I asked him was whether or not Caleb was back in town, because I could see someone in the kitchen smoking a cigarette. And then Ralph Devlin started yelling at me, and pushed me off his front step!” She added indignantly, “Can you believe the gall of that man?”

“I see,” her mother murmured.

“Don’t look at me like that! It’s my civic duty to stay informed! Caleb is a menace. I’m going to call the police first thing in the morning and demand that they search that house for Buster!”

“You know, Betty Ann, I happen to think that even if Caleb’s back, it’s not a problem. The kid’s what, seventeen? He’s practically grown up. I can’t imagine why he’d bother with our kids. Or your dog,” she added.

“You just don’t know,” Mrs. Bukvic said darkly. “You don’t know what it was like before you got here.”

“But how bad could he have been, anyway? He was just a kid then. I think you all make him out to be something worse than he possibly could have been, like a bogeyman or something.”

“I’m telling you, he was bad news. He used to catch stray cats and skin them. He put a live rat in the Loews’ mailbox. He carried around this great big hunting knife. He did sick things, Bethany, things no child should ever do. Why, he even frightened me, a grown woman!”

“Betty Ann!”

“He killed his own sister,” Mrs. Bukvic whispered conspiratorially.

“Oh, please.”

“He did!”

Penny glanced at Teddy, and he shook his head in bewilderment.

“I heard that Caleb didn’t like the boy she was going out with, so he cut the brakes on the kid’s car. His sister wasn’t supposed to be in the car when it crashed, just the boy.”

“You told me before that was never proven,” her mother said.

“Well, no, the car was too badly damaged in the fire, but I remember him threatening that boy because he didn’t want his sister going out with him,” Betty Ann retorted.

“That’s like a bad TV movie,” her mom said with a laugh. “Something someone made up.”

“Well, nobody made up Jeffy Winegarten in a coma!”

“Who?” her mother asked in a startled voice.

“Jeffy Winegarten. It happened before you moved here. He was the reason Caleb was sent away.”

Penny pricked up her ears.

“Caleb put Jeffy into a coma. He tried to beat him to death with a rock.”

Her mother made a protesting sort of sound, but Mrs. Bukvic barreled on.

“And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Why, he tortured that boy! Both his hands were broken!” Mrs. Bukvic said.

“What?” her mother asked, with a sharp intake of breath.

“Caleb made up some lie that Jeffy fell down a cliff at the creek or some nonsense, but the real story is that Caleb caught Jeffy stealing from his fort. Anyway, Jeffy never came out of the coma. Susie Winegarten’s family was from Kansas, so they took Jeffy and moved back there. Janine still talks to her sometimes.”

“But it could have been an accident, like Caleb said.”

“Bethany,
all
of Jeffy’s fingers were broken. That is just not something that happens by accident.”

“I still can’t imagine a young boy doing that,” her mother said, sounding shaky even to Penny’s ears.

Mrs. Bukvic had to get the last word in.

“You weren’t here when he was growing up. You’ll never get it,” she insisted loudly.

But Penny, who was listening to every word, did get it.

W
hen Penny first smelled the smoke, she thought she was imagining things.

It was late afternoon the following day, and they were at the fort, hanging out.

That morning, Penny had gone back to look at the missing-dog sign by the bridge. It had been joined by one for Buster, as well as one for a missing Dalmatian up on Cardinal Drive. She wanted to tell the boys about the missing pets, but after the incident in the woods with Mr. Cat, they weren’t listening to her. Only Zachary believed her, but he didn’t really count.

Besides, there were problems more pressing than Caleb to occupy them now. Dr. Loew had moved out of the family house and into an apartment.

Oren sat in the corner of the fort, looking like he’d been hit with a Mack truck.

“Uh, want part of my candy bar?” Teddy asked him, breaking off a melting piece of chocolate.

As if on autopilot, Oren took the candy, put it into his mouth, and began to chew.

“Hey, Oren!” Benji said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “I say we rig up one of your remote-control cars and strap on some firecrackers and drive it around the block and set them off. We can hide in the bushes by the Schuylers’ and watch it all! Wouldn’t that be cool?”

Oren shrugged noncommittally, looking down at his chocolaty fingers.

And that was when Penny smelled the smoke, an acrid odor in the air.

“You guys smell that?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

Benji stood up, stretching slightly, his head hitting the roof. “Yeah.”

“Where’s it coming from?” Penny asked, a bad feeling crawling up her spine.