Insanity (12 page)

I tried to tell myself the roots came from the real world—but they didn’t look like any roots I’d ever seen. They reminded me of huge, gnarly fingers with dirty nails. The thorn around my neck had to be branding my skin, it was so hot against my chest. These roots were black like that thorn. They went on forever, and I couldn’t imagine the size of the tree they were meant to feed.

Hungry
, my grandmother’s voice whispered just as the crying kid let out a shriek, and I jammed on the brakes because a brick wall sealed the path in front of me.

“Damn,” I wheezed, bouncing the flashlight all around the bricks. A solid wall, from the looks of it. Again I heard my grand-mother’s words, the ones she spoke before she died.
You always see the truth ... Look hard.

I narrowed my eyes like I did when I wanted to see through something, see around it and into it, catch what most people missed. Nothing but dark, stained brick and those awful roots. I tapped at a place where the mortar looked loose. A few crumbles fell away, but the wall felt solid everywhere else I punched and poked.

Look hard.

Grateful that the stupid music hadn’t started again, I stared to my left, running the flashlight up and down the seams of the corner. Nothing there but more roots, spilling down the brick and biting into the floor. I turned as much as I could in the little space and shined my light on the right wall.

Part of it moved—only it wasn’t the wall. It was a solid coating of bugs.

“Jesus.” I stepped back, banging into the roots, and my insides lurched from the dirty, poking touch of the cold wood. My skin crawled like those roaches were climbing toward my head. Somebody was swearing, and I guess it was me as I crammed my jeans into my socks so nothing could run up my pants. Couldn’t do anything about closing my sleeves or collar, though. If they got on me and got that high, I’d probably piss myself and fall over dead, anyway.

I flashed the light in that corner over and over so the nasty little things would stay away, and that’s when I caught ... something. A shimmer. A strange, darker darkness at the wall seam. I looked hard, just like Grandma told me to. The air in the right-hand corner of the tunnel had an oily sparkle, like it wasn’t solid, like it didn’t have bricks behind it, except it did. I could see
them. Sort of. They seemed lighter than the bricks on the left, or those in the wall in front of me.

I focused on the kid’s pitiful crying and made myself inch forward. The whole time my eyes kept yanking to the side, checking for that moving curtain of roaches.

Man, I didn’t want to, but I had to keep moving, jamming my bulk right up in that corner until my cheeks touched the chilled bricks and the scent of dirt and a billion rotten bug parts flooded my nose. I pushed forward into that greasy-looking black and thought I felt ten thousand roach legs scratching my skin, and—

I stepped through the wall, scraping my elbows on both sides, dropping my flashlight and stumbling and stomping to get my balance, jerking air into my lungs and hoping I didn’t breathe in any roaches. I stood straight up in a big basement room, maybe as big as the field stretching from the Rec Hall to the woods surrounding Lincoln Psychiatric.

It was old. The walls—when there had been walls—had been made from wood, like the floor. All of it was rotten now, with plants growing through the boards, and bugs ...

Yeah, there were bugs. Probably rats and mice and all kinds of other stuff I didn’t want to see, too.

The thorn around my neck burned me so fast and hard I had to grab it. My eyes hurt from the weird red light that filled the place. It was coming from the base of a tree in the middle of the room that had to be the size of a whole building. Thirty feet across, maybe, and at least as deep, with hundreds of scrubby branches winding together and tangling all over each other. It
had huge thorns and clumps of weird white flowers that gave off a sweet stink, like something that died in the sun.

The top of the tree reached high into the darkness at the basement’s ceiling.

At least now I knew what those disgusting, twisty roots attached to. And where the crying was coming from.

Huddled against one of the biggest, fattest roots was a little kid with dark brown hair and dirt all over his bare feet and arms. He was wearing jeans and a striped shirt, and he looked just like a messy version of the kid I saw on the news this morning.

“Hey,” I said to him. “Jonas. Come here. I’ll get you out of this place.”

His sniffles choked away to nothing, and the kid twitched, but he didn’t unlock his hands from around his knees.

“Jonas,” I said. “I don’t know how you got down here, but I’m with Security at Lincoln. I’ll take you to your mom and dad.”

The red glow coming from the tree flickered as a cold breeze swept through the chamber. The kid whimpered and huddled into a smaller ball.

Okay, fine. That’s why God made big people big and little people little. I didn’t want to scare the kid, but I needed to pick him up and get him out of this nightmare place. Refusing to look around too much or think more than I had to, I strode forward, bent down, and grabbed Jonas.

He didn’t struggle as I lifted him, but he didn’t grab me back, either. He just kept his arms wrapped around his own legs like if he let go, he’d disappear forever.

I couldn’t make myself turn my back on that tree, so I inched
away from it, trying to aim for the weird corner in the solid wall that hadn’t been so solid after all. The red light flickered again, and another burst of cold air whipped through the giant chamber. Gooseflesh broke out across my neck, and Jonas let out a low whimper. I kept backing up.

The wall shouldn’t be so far away. I hadn’t walked that far to pick up the kid. I glanced over my shoulder. The wall was a few feet behind me.

When I looked back at the tree, there was a man standing beside it.

My breath hitched so suddenly my ribs hurt, and I stopped moving.

The man was wearing a tuxedo with tails, like people at prom who want to look badass. He was tall, with dark skin and long legs and knobby, puppet joints. I couldn’t tell much about his nose or chin, because the left side of his face was missing. Part of his left arm was gone, too.

A horror like that couldn’t be standing up, much less be alive. It definitely couldn’t take a step toward me, or whistle “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

But it did.

I squeezed Jonas to my chest so hard I made him cry.

The thing that had been my grandfather laughed, and my skin crawled like all those roaches had jumped on me at the same time. Red light danced off pulpy parts of the horror’s face as it said, “Darius. It’s about time we got to meet you.”

We?

What the hell was it talking about, “we”?

The thing rested its good hand on the trunk of that monstrous tree, and something in the center of the tangled mass of branches shifted. It moved slow, like a piece of wood sliding or rolling or pulling upward.

The little boy in my arms screamed.

As the tree’s single eye opened and blazed a bloody, hot red, I screamed, too.

Chapter Fifteen

I stumbled and smashed backward into the brick wall. Jonas writhed in my grip and screamed again.

My grandfather moved toward us. His feet didn’t touch the floor. He flew straight at me, his half mouth open in a snarl.

If I had looked at the wall, I might have seen the opening, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing streaking across the chamber, or that tree—my God. That eye! More bark shifted, and a mouth opened. It let out a creaking bellow that shook the walls and rattled my skull and made my bones ache.

It sounded desperate. It sounded insane.

Hungry ...

I spun toward the wall, squinting and sweating and weeping and shaking so bad that nothing made straight lines.

“Darius.” My grandfather’s hot breath snaked across the back of my neck. “You got my blood in you, boy. I can smell it.”

I stared at the wall in front of me. I looked hard, but I saw only brick.

Fingers closed on my shoulder, and thick yellow nails dug into my skin. “Your mama came out weak, but you got what it takes.”

Jonas screamed and screamed and kept on screaming. My mouth hung open. I yelled but no sound came out as I jerked away from the thing trying to claim me. Jonas and I reeled sideways—and suddenly fell forward out of the rotten basement into the tunnel.

Darkness shrouded us, but I ran. Things scuttled across the walls. Roots stabbed through the bricks, cracking and groaning as they twisted. I didn’t know where my grandfather was, if he was following, if he
could
follow. The thought of that half a face flying toward me made me run harder. Crumbling bricks and dirt exploded beneath my big feet. All I could see was black. All I could hear were Jonas’s shrieks and my own cowardly yells. Some part of my mind registered the walls getting farther and farther apart.

Power rippled up the tunnel after us, cold and sharp and hateful. It chewed into my skin. It smelled like death. It felt like rage and starvation.

It whispered,
Mine
...

I ran.

Up ahead, I didn’t see much light. Was it dark outside? How was that possible? I had only been in the tunnel for a few minutes. It was still afternoon.

Whatever.

If I could just get the boy to the entrance—if I could just get us outside, I could save Jonas. A hundred feet to go. Fifty. I could see the yellow tape now, crisscrossing over the entrance.

The tape I tore to get in here
?

Something rough bit into my ankle and yanked me off my feet. I went down hard, throwing Jonas ahead of me so I didn’t crush him. Ribs cracked as I smashed into the brick. I heard them but didn’t feel them.

“Run!” I yelled at the kid, who was scrabbling forward on his hands and knees. He glanced back at me. His face was bleeding. Blood from his mouth coated his neck and shirt.

“Run!” I tried to shout again, but couldn’t manage anything but a wheeze. I kicked at whatever had my ankle. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to know what it was. My bladder turned loose as roots wrapped around me, dragging me backward, down into the darkness and the roaches.

“Monster!” Jonas screamed. He got to his feet. His knees almost buckled, but he took a step toward the tape. Another. And another. Then he started to run, shouting, “Monster! Monster! Monster!”

The roots slithered across my throat. They poked at my ears and scraped my eyes. They clawed my arms and my legs and slipped in and out of my jeans pockets.

From way down in the hell of a basement, I heard my grandfather laughing.

Then I heard voices, a lot of them. Flashlight beams stabbed into the darkness. The roots flinched away from the lights and turned me loose, sizzling as they curled away down the tunnel.

I tried to suck in a breath, but my ribs hurt so bad I couldn’t. The world got fuzzy. When hands grabbed me and turned me over, I swore.

Captain James’s skull-face loomed over me, frowning. A
couple of other guys in black hats and yellow shirts stared down at me.

“You were right,” one of them said to the captain. “He had the kid all along.”

That didn’t compute. Not at all.

“Blood will out,” Captain James said. “People like him need to be shot at dawn. Why waste money on a trial?”

I stared up at him, trying to make sense of what was happening as new faces came into view. Bigger flashlights. Police uniforms. One of the policemen called for an ambulance on his radio. Another knelt beside me. He looked into my eyes and frowned as he took in the blood on my shirt. He pulled on latex gloves and cut off a piece of the fabric, slipping it into a plastic bag.

Wait
, I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t talk. My breath whistled in and out, in and out, but it didn’t feel like enough. I started seeing spots. I needed to explain. I needed to tell him—

What?

How I heard Jonas crying and ran down the tunnel and found a rotten basement with my zombie mass-murdering grandfather and an insane giant tree?

A tree with an eye. A tree with a mouth.

A tree that was hungry.

“Tree,” I choked out. “The tree did it.”

The officer checked my pockets. I had a little change in there, my keys, and my phone, but that’s not what he pulled out first.

His frown got bigger as he shined his flashlight on his palm, and he tilted his hand to show me.

Two little white teeth, pointy on the ends.

Chapter Sixteen

Wake him up.

Levi. Be nice.

I don’t do nice, Forest.

But it makes me happy.

...

...

Fine. I’ll be nice for you.

That girl could be Trina. That guy could be me. For Trina, I’d try anything. If she were here, I’d pull her close. She’d smell like flowers, and she’d tell me I hadn’t seen my dead grandfather or a tree with a bloody eyeball and a gaping mouth.

She’d tell me I hadn’t hurt a child.

I imagined Trina’s head on my shoulder and lifted my arm to hug her. Metal clanked against plastic. I jerked my hand but couldn’t move it any farther. Handcuffed. I was shackled to a
hospital bed—both wrists and both ankles, too. My body throbbed from a dozen cuts and busted ribs and the place where the doctor had stuck in a tube to reinflate my lung. My chest hurt because my life was over.