“Nice to meet you,” she said, and I shook her hand.
“I’m glad you came along when you did,” I said, still feeling like a loser for almost getting beat-up. “Thanks for the help,”
“Think nothing of it,” Lisa said. “Greg’s always looking for trouble. He deserves worse than a broken mirror and windshield.”
“Who was that guy?” Alex asked.
“That,” said Marty, “was one-half of the dreaded Crewes brothers. Greg and Hatch Crewes are the worst bullies in the county. They used to go to school with us, until they both got expelled for beating up one of the teachers. They’re meaner than copperhead snakes in a frying pan.”
“Good thing they weren’t together,” Lisa said, “or this would have turned out differently. We might be able to get the better of one of them, but not both.”
“Still, that was pretty smart thinking,” Marty said, tapping his forehead, “shooting at the car. No way was he going to let you shoot out all the windows of his car. That car is their most prized possession.”
“If you say so.” Lisa brushed past me—she smelled like peppermints—and started searching the road. “But he’ll come looking for us one of these days, and there will be blood in his eyes.”
“You know,” I said, “you broke a mirror. Seven years bad luck.”
“Not for me.” She didn’t look up but continued searching the gravel. “I’m not superstitious.”
What is she looking for? I wondered.
“Hey, Lisa,” Marty said. “I was just taking my cousins down to the creek. You want to come with us?”
“Sure,” she said. “You’ll need someone to look out for you. Just give me a second, okay?”
She paced back and forth, looking down like she was counting rocks.
“There it is!” Lisa said, plucking a single rock from the ground. It was one of the stones she’d beaned Greg with.
“There are rocks all over the place,” I said. “What’s so special about that one?”
Lisa tossed it straight up, then snatched it out of the air again. “This is my lucky rock.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious,” I said.
She smiled. “When it comes to this rock, it’s not superstition—it’s fact!”
She grabbed a small leather pouch that hung from her belt. As she undid the drawstring, the contents rattled. The bag was full of stones, and she dropped the lucky rock in with the others.
I let the matter drop. After all, the rock had certainly been lucky for me. Without it, I would have been nothing more than a smudge in the dirt.
After walking forever, we passed a familiar-looking path. The Widows mailbox stood by the side of the road. If Marty wanted to take us to the creek, it would have been much quicker to follow the road rather than trek through the woods. He must have wanted to show us the Bleeding Rock. Fine by me, but I wondered why he didn’t just say so in the first place. He hadn’t thought I’d be scared, had he?
Lisa unbuttoned her shirt pocket, reached inside, and withdrew a handful of striped peppermints wrapped in plastic. She unwrapped one and popped it in her mouth.
“Want one?” she asked, mumbling with her mouth full. She held out her hand, offering the candy to the three of us. Alex and Marty each took a piece, but I shook my head.
“Don’t like peppermints?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Lisa likes peppermints better than anyone I know,” Marty interrupted. “Eats them all day long. They keep her hair red.”
“Very funny.” Lisa made a face at him.
Rounding a curve, I saw the concrete bridge we’d crossed the day before. The clear creek water rushed beneath the structure, and branches and leaves and other debris gathered around the sturdy legs. The bank was covered in tiny pebbles that crunched beneath my feet, and the water lapped at the shore.
Marty unslung his backpack and opened it up. He tossed a pair of trunks to my little brother. The swimsuit struck him in the face. Marty started to undress, but Alex’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. He looked from the trunks he held in his hands... to Marty... to Lisa.
“Um,” he said. “We’re not going to change clothes right here, are we?”
Marty tugged his shirt off. “Huh?”
Alex jerked his head toward Lisa.
“Oh.” Marty nodded. “Guess it wouldn’t be polite changing in front of a girl.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Lisa said, “if you found some place a little more private.”
Marty and Alex shuffled into the trees and out of sight. Lisa shook her head and raised her eyebrows at me.
“Thought it was too hot for jeans, huh?” She nodded in the direction of my bare legs. “Didn’t Marty warn you about chiggers?”
“I probably wouldn’t have listened,” I grumbled.
“You might want to leave your shoes on,” she said. “Some of the rocks in the creek bed can be awful sharp.”
“Won’t we ruin our shoes?”
“It’s either that or slice up the bottom of your feet.”
Marty and Alex came out of the woods, dressed in their trunks... and shoes. Guess Marty offered my little brother the same piece of advice about jagged rocks. Marty didn’t even slow down as he came barreling out of the trees. He built up speed with every step, splashing into the creek and sending a shower of cold water halfway up the bank.
“Woohoo!”
I pulled my tee-shirt off and put it on the shore along with my watch. As I waded into the shallows, minnows rushed away from my feet. It was a lot chillier than I expected. It took my breath away as it splashed up to my shins. It stung against the scratched chigger bites for a couple of seconds, but it still felt great on such a scorcher of a day. As I waded farther out, the water started tugging at me as it flowed beneath the bridge and beyond.
Alex waded in. “Brrr!” he said, wrapping his arms around his body and shivering. His lips were turning blue.
“You’ll get used to it,” Marty said.
Because she wasn’t dressed for swimming, Lisa stayed at the shoreline. She only waded in about ankle deep. The water never even touched the bottoms of her rolled up pants.
Water rushing into my tennis shoes and weighing them down took a little getting used to. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, like I had weights tied to my feet.
Laughing, Marty let himself fall to a seated position with the water rushing up to his neck. I did the same. The jagged rocks poked at me through the seat of my shorts. Marty splashed a handful of water into my face, starting a huge splash fest that lasted five minutes. Alex laughed at us, and Lisa scurried out of the water and away from the blast zone.
How awesome! In the city, we often went to the public pool, but swimming here, we had the entire creek to ourselves. No screaming babies. No prune-faced grannies sneering at you when you splashed a little too much. No grumpy lifeguards who were more interested in getting a tan than saving lives.
“In a couple of days,” Marty promised, “we’ll bring some inner tubes out and float on the rapids.”
That sounded great. I’d never done—
With a sploosh! Alex vanished. His entire body dropped like a brick beneath the water. He didn’t even have time to scream.
“Alex!” I jumped up. Water dripped from my body in sheets, spilling into the creek all around, sending ripples across the surface. I rushed to where he had been wading when he went under. “Alex!”
“He wandered into a deep pocket!” Lisa cried.
Now that she pointed it out, I noticed I couldn’t see the creek bed before me. Instead, it looked like a shadow covered the area. No telling how deep the hole might be, how far under Alex might have fallen. I didn’t see him anywhere.
I drew in a deep breath. I was a pretty good swimmer. I had passed a CPR and life-saving course and everything. I just never expected to actually need it, especially not to rescue my brother.
Just as I was about to dive into the deep, cold darkness, Alex broke the surface, coughing and sputtering... and laughing. His hair was plastered to his forehead in several pointy wedges, and his eyes were bright and surprised. I hauled him into the shallows. Marty gave me a hand.
“You all right?” Lisa called from the shore.
“I’m okay,” Alex coughed.
I should have known he’d be all right. Like I said, I was a pretty good swimmer, but Alex could backstroke circles around me. He was on a junior swim team back home.
“Something tells me,” Lisa said, “hanging around with the three of you is going to be nothing but trouble. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take care of you.”
Marty and I looked at each other. An unspoken idea passed between us. At the same time, we jumped up and seized Lisa. I grabbed her left wrist, and Marty took her right.
“No!” she shrieked. “Don’t you dare!”
But it was too late for her. In time, Marty and I swung her arms.
“One!” we cried together.
“Don’t do it!” she yelled.
“Two!”
“I mean it!” Lisa thrashed against us.
“Three!”
We hurled her into the creek, clothes and all. Water burst into the air and rained down around us. We howled with laughter. Alex clapped his hands and cheered.
Lisa surfaced, her hair matted down in her face. A few individually wrapped peppermints bobbed in the water around her. At first I thought she was going to come out after us. I had the feeling she could probably beat both Marty and me in a fight if she wanted to. But instead she started laughing, too, and splashing water up at us.
We swam for a while longer, and Marty impressed (and soaked) us all by cannonballing off the concrete bridge into one of the deep pockets. I wasn’t quite ready to try the stunt, but it sure looked fun.
After our swim, we collapsed on the bank for a while, letting the sun warm us. I took my shoes off, hoping to let them dry a little more quickly, but it didn’t seem to help much.
I closed my eyes and let my mind wander a bit. After all was said and done, being in Crooked Hills wasn’t so bad. I missed my friends back home, sure, but I enjoyed my cousin’s company and I’d made a new friend in Lisa. And I had to admit, all of the strange occurrences and ghostly happenings of the area excited and intrigued me. While Marty shared my fascination with the strange, Lisa seemed to think it was a foolish interest.
“All the ghost stories are just made up to scare little kids,” she said. “They aren’t true at all.”
Marty waved toward the red-headed girl as if presenting her to an audience. “Lisa Summers, ladies and gentlemen, the world’s biggest skeptic.”
She rolled her eyes at him and stuck out her tongue. I noticed her tongue was a deep shade of red, much more red than any normal person’s tongue, probably because of all the peppermints she ate.
“What about Maddie Someday?” I asked.
I forgot to spit twice, but Marty did it for me.
“She’s just a myth,” Lisa said.
“But we saw the Bleeding Rock.”
“That’s just a place where high school kids party on the weekends. Somebody told me the town council wanted to encourage the legends to beef up the tourist trade.” She muttered under her breath. “For all the good it did.”
“You want more tourists around?” I asked. “Why would you? I’d think it would ruin everything, all those noisy, pig-headed sightseers.”
“At least it would bring some interesting people around,” she said.
“Oh, how cold!” I feigned withdrawing a dagger from my heart. Maybe some of Marty’s theatrics were rubbing off on me. “My brother and I aren’t interesting enough for you?”
“The jury’s still out.” She wrinkled her freckled nose. “But come on. You guys are from the city. You must be bored to death here.”
“I kind of like it,” Alex said.
“I’ll admit,” I said, “I thought I’d go stir crazy out here in the country, but I haven’t been bored yet.”
“You’ve only been here for, what, a couple of days.”
“But look at all that’s happened in the short while we’ve been here. I’ve seen a rock where an old witch was killed.”
“Ahem!” Lisa said.
“Okay... where a witch was rumored to be killed. I was almost clobbered by a speed-crazy thug, but was rescued by a cagey warrior princess.”
Lisa blushed.
“And,” I continued, “my brother fell into a bottomless underwater pit.”
“It’s not bottomless,” Marty said. “It’s not even all that deep.”
“Seemed pretty deep to me,” Alex mused.
“This is just a little creek, really. There are some pretty deep ones around here. Some guys with scuba gear came around a few years back, and they dove down in the river hundreds of feet. They said they saw catfish at the bottom almost as big as a man.”
Without even realizing it, I pulled my feet away from the water.
“Yeah.” Lisa had a dreamy look in her eyes. “Those guys were neat.”
“Don’t mind her.” Marty sneered. “She had a crush on one of the divers.”
“I did not!” Lisa said.
Marty snickered.
We relaxed on the shore, letting the sun bake us as we talked. The rest of the afternoon passed at a quiet, peaceful pace. All in all, it was a great day, despite the encounter with Greg Crewes. If I could go back in time and freeze us all in that moment, I would, because what came after was awful.
Just awful.
“CHARLIE? YOU SLEEPING?”
“Trying to,” I muttered.
Actually, I was pretending to sleep, and obviously botching the job if I couldn’t even fool my little brother.
“I’m not very tired,” Alex said.
Great, I thought. I rolled my eyes, certain he couldn’t see me in the darkness of our room. Until he fell asleep, I couldn’t sneak out undetected. Marty and I planned on catching a glimpse of the spectral dog tonight, and we didn’t need Alex tagging along. Unfortunately, my brother was more talkative than sleepy.
“I had a pretty good time today,” he said, “didn’t you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“This place might not be so bad after all.”
“We’ll see.”
“I was a little scared today,” Alex said. “The Bleeding Rock... and Greg Crewes... and almost drowning... those things all scared me pretty bad... but I’m glad you were there with me. I knew you wouldn’t let anything bad happen.”
His words stung. I felt awful for being so irritated with him. Here I was, wishing he’d just shut up and pass out, and he goes and says something nice.