Gravestone (42 page)

105. One Moment

I started this year angry and desperate and searching for answers. I didn’t wait for them, either. I went out to search. Yet before I could get to anybody, I ended up being saved from the creepy mountain man by Jared.

Jared who happened to be there and who proceeded to fill me with lies.

I never got a chance to follow through with what I wanted to do. I wanted to not only find out the truth. I wanted to hurt whoever was responsible for Jocelyn’s death.

Now, without any doubt whatsoever, I know.

That’s why I’m skipping school today. What are they going to do? Threaten my life?

That’s why I’m holding a rock in my hand.

That’s why I’m throwing it through the glass window and then taking the rest of the shards out with a stick.

And that’s why I’m climbing through the window at the back of the little, seemingly abandoned and desolate cabin. The one wearing the mask, just like everybody else around here. The one with a false front, just like the guy I’m pretty sure owns it.

I stand there with misty light coming through the windows. It rained earlier, but now it’s clearing and sun is drizzling down. There’s a desk and a computer and files and books.

I guess if it was the middle of the night I’d be creeped out. Maybe it should be pouring rain or something. But no. It’s bright and I’m angry and the only fear that I have is what I’m going to do. What I might end up doing to hurt myself.

I find a bunch of files about the church, confirming that this office does indeed belong to Pastor Marsh.

Another drawer is full of cards—the same type of cards I saw a bunch of kids playing with at Ray Spencer’s party the first time I ever went over there. They have different images on them, strange images. A leaf or a flower or an animal.

Another drawer reveals a knife, which I decide to take. I wish I still had Uncle Robert’s gun.

There’re a lot of things I wish.

The bottom drawer is locked. I find a letter opener that I use to unlodge the drawer and break through the wood. It’s not even wood, just particle board. The lock that’s hiding whatever secrets are behind it breaks easily.

Inside are folders stacked on top of each other. Ordinary manila folders. Each one is marked in black pen. The folder on top says #6.

I take them out and then look out at the woods. Nothing. Nothing but nature talking back at me and sunlight spilling in.

You don’t want to see what’s inside these.

But I open the folder marked #6, and I see her looking back at me. Jocelyn. It looks like a school picture. She looks younger.

You don’t want to do this, Chris.

I keep going through the file. Pictures, information, copies of emails, more pictures, information on Aunt Alice and Wade. There’s a stack of pages paper-clipped together that are all about my mom. Copies of a birth certificate, driver’s license, family photos back when there was a family to photograph.

My hands are shaking.

I have to keep looking. I want to know. I want to see.

I want to know why they killed her.

Then the door behind me opens, and the folders in my lap spill out as I stand.

At the door is the man responsible for this. His evil eyes behind the slivers of his glasses don’t appear surprised.

“Hello, Chris,” he says, his voice as casual as the white polo shirt and jeans he wears.

The fan of pages that litter the top of the desk from where they spilled out show enough. For just one brief second, I see.

She’s hurting and bleeding but she’s still alive, at least in those pictures.

The man at the door just stands there. “I have a lot more than just photos I can show you,” the pastor tells me. “I have video, too.”

I swallow, but my mouth and throat are dry. My body goes numb, hot and cold, my eyes fill with dizzy red rage.

“She screamed your name, Chris. Over and over again.”

With that, I find that knife on the top of the desk and take it out of its sheath.

As I do, the pastor bolts away from the doorway. I hear hurried steps rushing through the woods.

I think of Wade, the monster who was hurting Jocelyn.

I dealt with him, and I can deal with this.

I follow him, knowing exactly what I’m meant to do.

Whatever—whoever—was left of Chris Buckley after Jocelyn died stays in that little cabin next to those horrific pictures I only saw for a moment.

But one moment is all you need in this life.

And that one moment is all I need to end the pastor’s.

106. The Big Bad Wolf

Evil wears a mask, and I can finally see its face.

The rushing waters surround us as sunlight plays tricks on my eyes. Gold glitters in these woods, damp from the earlier rain, foggy from the temperature change. My legs splash in the cool stream that comes up to my shins.

He’s standing on the edge where the water drops fifty feet to the jutting rocks below. He faces me with his sick smile. “What are you going to do now, Chris?”

I’m no longer scared, no longer running away.

“It’s done,” I say. “You’re done.”

The voice talking is not mine. The hand holding this knife doesn’t belong to me.

Chris Buckley is gone. Long gone.

It’s been six months, but I can still taste it in my mouth. The anger, the bitterness, the absolute hunger for revenge.

You don’t have to do this, not here, not like this.

He smiles. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

“Whatever you’re doing to this place and these people—it’s over. Right now.”

His laugh twists into my skin.

“There are things you need to know,” he says.

“I know enough.”

“You know only what you’re supposed to know. That’s why I brought you here.”

“I
followed
you.”

“I could break your neck if I wanted to.”

I smile. Because something in me says he’s wrong. Something in me believes that if he wanted me dead, I’d be dead already.

“You’re not going to do anything to anybody ever again,” I say.

“So what happens after you kill the Big Bad Wolf?” he asks. “There are others lurking in these woods and in this town. I’m just the obvious one. Killing me achieves nothing.”

My hand shakes, but I steady it as I walk closer to him. Streaks of sunlight circle us like a laser show.

You can’t really do this, Chris, no matter how you feel and how right it is.

“So the pastor stands at Marsh Falls,” he says. “How ironic. How fitting. And how utterly predictable.”

“You killed her,” I say to him.

He laughs and looks at me through his short glasses, and I want to take them and break them just like I want to break him.

“Six months and you’re still seething,” Pastor Marsh says. “That’s good.”

“People are going to know.”

“Haven’t these past months taught you anything? You’re smart, but you’re not
that
smart. You’re not here because you’re some bright young star chosen because of your intelligence, Chris. You’re really rather unremarkable, to tell you the truth.”

I inch closer.

He’s now about five feet away from me. He looks behind him, then glances back at me.

This is the first time I think I see fear on his face.

Because maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t see fear in mine.

One more step.

The echoes of the falls smother all other sounds.

Hell is not dying, Chris. It’s knowing and living.

Whoever said that was right.

I think whoever said that is standing before me right now.

“Do you want to know the truth?” he asks.

“I
know
the truth. The new church. I know where it is. I found the folders. The pictures. I have proof. Everybody is going to know about Solitary. Everybody is going to know what’s really going on.”

“Have you ever been surprised, Chris?”

“You’re a sick man.”

“Have you ever believed in something with all your heart, only to discover it was an ugly little lie?”

“Shut up.”

“Everything you think you know about this town and about your mother and her family—all those things are pretty little lies covering up the ugly, awful truth.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes, Chris. Maybe this has all been some elaborate test.”

I move closer.

“Maybe we never wanted Jocelyn. That sweet but dirty little thing you professed to love.”

I curse at him.

“Maybe all we ever wanted was you.”

My hand is steady and I know it’s because I’ve used a weapon before and I’ll do it again. Even though a gun’s a lot different from a knife, it doesn’t matter.

I’m not Chris Buckley because that boy died on New Year’s Eve along with something far more precious.

Stop before it’s too late.

“We’re watching, but all you see is the scene before you,” Pastor Marsh says. “You don’t see anybody but a face you hate and fear and a boy you hate and fear even more.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

He smiles. “If you do, Chris, we will watch and applaud and await.”

Then the pastor opens his arms as if giving the benediction at church.

And that’s when I plunge the twelve-inch hunting blade deep into the place where I imagine his heart might have been at one time.

I see Jocelyn’s face as I move the knife and feel the softness of skin and hear the gasping, choking breath as I thrust down.

I let go and see him looking surprised. Not in horror, but almost in utter delight.

“You want to know the truth, Chris?” a draining, coughing voice asks.

And then he tells me.

And suddenly I realize that he’s right and I’m wrong.

I realize this just as he staggers over the falls and drops below.

107. Defy

Somewhere in these woods I stagger. I know now it doesn’t have to be night to see darkness all around you. I understand that you don’t have to be drunk to be blind. I get that a single act and a single statement can leave you breathless and hopeless and reeling.

The trees watch me. Like those students in the hallways at Harrington. Like those walls in the cabin in Solitary. Like the unseen ghosts that are laughing at me. They watch as I stumble and hold on to them and walk in circles.

I still hold the bloody knife. I’m scared of what I just did. I’m scared of what I still might do.

There’s no way you leave these woods. You can’t run from this. You can’t escape what you just did.

I hear his last words and try to will them away from my mind. But I can’t. I can’t.

“Where is God?” Pastor Marsh asked. “Where is your father? Tell me.”

He just stood there, almost triumphant, with the blood gushing out of his chest, his face delirious and crazy.

“They call him God the Father for a reason. The reality, Chris, is that they both abandoned you. They both left you alone to live and die in this place. But I can show you—I can show you that you don’t have to fear death. Look at me. What do you see, Chris? What do you see on my face? I’ve been waiting all this time for you to make a choice. To see what I see. To believe what I believe.”

He spat out something dark and then said his final words. “We can live and die afraid, or we can live to defy, Chris. It is up to you.”

Then he fell back and out of my life.

I crumble to the forest floor and lean against a big tree. I look at the knife.

For a long time I just stare at it, wondering what to do and where to go. I know it doesn’t make sense, that it sounds crazy, that I should be running and sprinting and bolting out of here, but I can’t.

I’m just so tired. I stay there under that tree and drift off. And sometime, maybe minutes or hours later, I don’t really know—when I wake up, I find the knife that had been in my hand is gone.

Just like that.

Just like Pastor Marsh. Gone.

I’m not scared.

If someone had wanted to get me, he could have already done so.

If someone really wanted that knife, let him have it.

“I don’t care!”

I hope whoever took it hears me. I hope he hears loud and clear.