He hears the steel door whisk open and a person enter the room.
“How did you sleep?” a voice asks him. It's the voice of the man who
calls himself Raven, the only real, live person the boy has seen or heard for
. . . he doesn't know how long. Certainly he must have seen other people,
talked to other people, sometime before. A mother and father, at least. But
he can only remember Raven. Raven has always been his entire universe.
The young boy refuses to answer. He doesn't feel like talking. Instead he
listens as Raven returns to the door, knocks, then wheels in the metal cart
holding the syringes. The young boy doesn't need to see this to know what's
going on, because he's seen it so many times before.
After a few moments he feels a pinprick, this one in the bottom of his
bare foot. Without meaning to, he speaks. “A bee,” he says, not quite real
izing he's said it out loud.
“What's that?” Raven asks him.
The young boy opens his eyes, stares at the man injecting a purple liquid
into his foot. “The needle. It feels like a bee sting.”
A smile creases Raven's face, the horrible smile the young boy has seen
too often. “Funny you should say that,” Raven says, returning his attention
to the syringe.
“Why?”
Finished, Raven pulls the needle out of the boy's foot, sets down the syringe.
“Because this medicine,” Raven says, “is something like bee venom. More of a
wasp venom, a synthetic version we've been able to produce in the lab.”
Raven pauses, smiles again as he pats the top of the young boy's foot.
“But of course, you don't need to know all that. You only need to know it's
medicine that will make you feel better.”
The boy watches in silence as Raven wheels the cart back to the door and
knocks again. Raven always tells him the injections are medicine to make
him feel better, but he knows this is a lie.
He knows, because he never gets better.
AN HOUR LATER, LUCAS WAS BACK AT DONAVAN'S APARTMENT. AFTER letting himself in the front door, he went into the kitchen, checked the phone messages (nothing new), and spent a few more minutes exploring the apartment. Surely there was more to be discovered here, and it would probably be another hour at least until Donavan was back; Lucas had left while they were in the middle of the meeting. As he searched the apartment he thought about the Creep Club, the pull he was feeling from two directions. Was the Creep Club dangerous, unsavory, deadly? Yes. Was it exciting, enticing, intoxicating? Yes.
As he pondered, he heard the deadbolt of Donavan's front door turning for the second time that day. He froze in the middle of the living room. Quickly, he looked around; no immediate hiding spots.
Donavan had returned from his meeting, and Lucas was about to be discovered. He listened as the door swung open, then shut again.
The deadbolt slid back into place.
He could hear Donavan humming; obviously he had his iPod cranked once more. That meant he couldn't hear. Lucas could slip down the hall, get into the back bedroomâ
But then Donavan strolled around the corner, a bag of chips in his hand. He looked up as he entered the living room and flipped on the lightsâ
And saw Lucas, prompting him to drop the chips.
Lucas smiled as Donavan popped out his earbuds. A few moments of silence, then Lucas nodded toward the bag on the floor. “Those things will kill you.”
Donavan stood, staring and speechless. His eyes darted around the room for a few seconds before they held Lucas's gaze again. “I think you're what's gonna kill me. What, do you make it your mission to pop out of dark places and scare people?”
“One of my missions.”
“What are you doing here?” Donavan bent down to pick up his bag of chips, then moved slowly to a chair opposite the sofa.
“Tell me about Creep Club.”
Donavan took a handful of chips, stuffed them in his mouth.
“Creep Club? Hmmm, doesn't ring any bells.”
“Rings a few bells on your computer. You seem to visit the forums quite a bit. How was the meeting, by the way? Lovely space, that Stranahan Building.”
Donavan slowly munched his chips, studying Lucas. After a few moments, his shoulders slumped and his body relaxed. Lucas could tell he was going to come clean. Or at least pretend to.
“Snake said some bad juju was gonna happen. You bad juju?”
“Nah. I'm Humpty, remember?”
Donavan started to dig around in his teeth with his tongue, trying to dislodge food stuck there. Lucas had to admit, the man made a quick recovery; he didn't seem too surprised or flustered to have a stranger sitting in his living room.
Donavan held out the bag of chips, offering some to Lucas. Lucas shook his head, but continued to stare. Waiting.
Donavan sucked air between his teeth a few times, dislodging more food, before speaking again. “How much do you know?”
“How much is there to know? Let's start with Snake. Who is he?”
“He's kind of the de facto head of the . . . um . . . organization, I guess. Pulled the original members together. Recruited me a few years ago. Well, didn't really recruit me, but let me in.” He paused. “Guess it's like a family, because we understand each other. Most of us, we've been doing this for years. Since we were kids. I bet you did too.”
Lucas ignored the remark. “What about Hondo, Clarice, Hoffman, Boomer?” he said, reciting all the names he'd picked up online and in the meeting.
Donavan did a better job of hiding his shock, but Lucas saw a flash of it. “Man, you got the membership roll memorized?”
Lucas thought of the contact list he'd found on Donavan's computer. A membership roll.
“They're all members, but Snake's the one you gotta talk to if you want in. The Creep Club was kinda his idea. A way for us to trade techniques, stories, ideas. A way for us to get inside places we never been inside of, you see? I can creep into a lot of places on my own, but I can creep into a lot more places with the others in the club. You know, live it through their eyes.”
“So it's a support group. A twelve-step program for Peeping Toms.”
Donavan made a sour face. “Please. You creeping into spaces so you can get a peek at women changing their bras? This is . . . this is a way of life, man.”
“I don't infiltrate homes. Just public buildings.”
“Yeah, and that's why you broke into my apartment, and you're quizzing me about the club. You're not interested at all, huh?”
Lucas stayed silent.
“Well,” Donavan continued, “we do the public places. I meanâyou saw me in the steam tunnel, didn't you? Trying to do a bit of old school, and look what it got me.” Donavan shook his head, leaned back in his chair, getting more comfortable.
“Look, after a while, you need a bit more of a rush. There's something . . . I don't know . . . magic about being in someone's house. On the opposite side of the wall, listening to a husband and wife argue about finances. Overhearing little Johnny at the dinner table, talking about the game he pitched. So much of this”âDonavan swept his arm around the roomâ“this stuff around us is fake. Fake ads, fake news, fake lives lived in the public. I'm fake, and you're fake when we know we're around other people. But in their homes. That's when people are real.”
Lucas understood what Donavan was saying. Understood it a little too much to be comfortable.
“You get hungry for reality. And then, once you taste it, you get addicted to it.”
Despite his effort at aloofness and coolness, things that usually came to him so naturally, Lucas felt himself being drawn in by the pep talk. He'd felt these things inside his own mind, inside his own body, but never allowed himself to acknowledge them. The public buildings . . . the thrill wasn't exactly wearing off, but he'd been hungering for something different. Something more. He just didn't know what. Until now.
And now that he knew, he wished he didn't.
Donavan grinned. “Yeah. You know just what I'm talking about. I can see it in your eyes. You gotta join us.”
“I'm not part of any club. I work alone.”
Donavan picked up his bag of chips again, rummaged round in them, stuffed a few into his mouth. “No, seriously. I saw that stuff you did in the steam tunnelâthe parkour moves. You're, like, ten times better than anyone else in the club. You'd kill, man. Everyone would be asking you to show them how to do your stuff.”
Lucas pondered. Parkour. A cousin of free running, both of them dedicated to moving through urban environments as quickly as possible. He wasn't into parkour or free running any more than he was officially a creeper, but he identified with the people who were. In an odd way, Donavan's offer sounded . . . enticing. It would be nice to be appreciated by someone for this thing he'd never been able to share with anyone else. When he noticed Donavan staring at him expectantly, he shook his head and leaned back in his seat.
“I'm gonna get a beer,” Donavan said. “You want one?”
Lucas nodded and Donavan left, leaving him alone with his own questions for a few moments. Question #1: Did Donavan know something more? Was he the one who uncovered his hiding spot in the steam tunnel? Had he led someone else to that hiding spot? Was this whole Creep Club involved in some way?
Okay, that was four questions.
And he hated to add the fifth: Was Sarea also part of it?
Donavan returned and handed him an uncapped microbrew.
Lucas smelled the sharp tang of the hops wafting out of the bottle, masking the apartment's odor of leftover food just a bit.
Donavan tipped his bottle, keeping his gaze on Lucas as he drank.
“Like I said, we need to talk to Snake. But I can get you in. Be your sponsor, since you seem to like the support group concept.”
Lucas stared at the floor, took a drink of his own beer.
Donavan leaned forward again, dropped his voice as if revealing a secret. “Tell you what. Before you make up your mind, let me show you something.”
“Show me what?”
“The drug.”
LUCAS AND DONAVAN STOOD IN A GARAGE, NEAR THE INTERIOR WALL with exposed two-by-four studs. Only a thin layer of gypsum board was between them and the home on the other side.
Lucas could feel the Dark Vibration cycling deep inside his body, reaching an entirely new harmonic. Something inside him, something dark, loved what he was about to do. It scared him.
Donavan pointed to a small nail in the backside of the gypsum board, then expertly grabbed the nail and pulled it. It came free easily. Next he retrieved a small, flexible tube from his hip pack and snaked it into the tiny hole, motioning Lucas to come over and see what the pack held.
A small monitor revealed a fish-eye view of the home's interior, obviously from a kitchen wall since Lucas could see the sink curving into the bottom of the frame.
Inside the house, a man and a woman were eating somethingânachos, maybeâat a built-in counter on the far side of the kitchen. The man's lips were moving, but Lucas heard nothing.
Donavan's hand reached out toward him, and Lucas stepped back in surprise until he saw what was in it: one of the earbuds Donavan was so fond of wearing. Lucas took the earbud and put it in his own ear, immediately surprised at the clarity of the sound.
The man was in midsentence.
“âknow we have to do it. And we have to do it at Split Jacks.”
The woman stayed silent, looked down at the plate in front of her.
“Come on,” the man continued. “We've talked about this . . . I don't know how many times.”
Lucas noticed Donavan nodding his head in agreement, a smile on his face and a manic energy twinkling in his eyes. As if he were on a drug high.
“Are you listening?” the man asked.
The woman finally spoke. “It's no good. I mean, he has people everywhere. You know that. And if we screw up something like this . . .”
“His car.”
“His car?”
“Yeah. He has a few drinks at Split Jacks, gets in his car . . . you fill in the blanks.”
The woman stood up and carried her plate toward the camera. Lucas and Donavan stood absolutely still, watching as she came to the sink. Her face was now filling the fish-eye lens as she rinsed her plate. Lucas saw she was under duress, debating, making a decision she wanted and didn't want at the same time. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, kept her eyes closed.
“You sure about this?” she asked weakly.
His voice came from behind her. “I already told you: it's perfect.”
She opened her eyes, and Lucas saw a change come over her face.
She was going to say yes, he could tell, even before she spoke.
“Okay. I'm in.”
She turned around, the back of her head now filling the frame of the camera.
“Yeah, you're all in, baby.”
The woman receded from the camera, walking across the room and disappearing around a corner. She said something from down the hall, something Lucas couldn't hear because she was too far away, prompting a laugh from the man, still sitting at the counter.
“Oh, you can count on it,” he said, then stood and left the frame.
Quickly Donavan pulled the tube out of the small hole and replaced the nail. He stuffed the tube camera back into his bag, paused, and looked Lucas in the eyes. Lucas could see that manic energy still there, dancing.
The only problem was, he could also feel that same manic energy burning behind his own eyes.
BACK IN HIS ABODE, LUCAS UNSCREWED THE BOTTOM OF HIS ELECTRIC candle, slid out the batteries and replaced them with fresh ones, then turned it off and put it in his backpack. Outside the window on the back wall, streaks of pink and purple were painting the eastern sky.