The Shadow Club Rising (17 page)

There were three kids up there now, all clinging to an edge of the ladder, pushing at the hatch with their arms and with their shoulders. Finally the hatch broke and flung open, letting in that wonderful light of day. The water was up to my knees now, and the flooding hull got dimmer and dimmer as more and more flashlights submerged and shorted out. Once it was open, those kids on the ladder didn't look back; they went out through the hole and the rest began to follow.

The water was up to my waist and rising fast—I could see it spilling in from between the weak, rotten boards of the hull, and still there were more than a dozen kids to get out.

None of them looked at me as they passed, they just kept their eyes fixed on that ladder and freedom. All the while, Tyson stood next to me, one hand on the ladder, the other grabbing floundering kids, helping them to the ladder. The last one to go was that chess-team girl—the one who had been so anxious for me "to get back at Alec."

"Checkmate" I wanted to say, but I didn't. Instead I just pushed her up toward the ladder, and she grabbed the rungs.

The water was up to my chest now, and that's when the cold really hit me. I could feel my muscles knotting, balling up in shock. I thought the ocean was cold in October when I had taken the plunge and saved Tyson, but that was nothing compared to this.

When all the others were gone, and Tyson and I were ready to go up the ladder, something occurred to me with a sense of dread that was sinking faster than the ship.

I hadn't seen Alec on the ladder.

I told Tyson, and he hesitated for a second. The water rose past my armpits.

"He must have gone up. Right? We got everybody out. He must have gone up."

"One of us would have seen him."

I wasted no time and did a surface dive, swimming as far down as I could go in that sunken hull, but even with the flashlight I couldn't see anything clearly in that murky water. I found nothing but loose timber, dead flashlights, hats—so many hats—then my own flashlight shorted out, leaving me in darkness.

I was at the end of my breath, and I realized I hadn't saved enough air to make it back to the ladder. With my chest aching and my head pounding, I swam forward, but when I got to where I thought the ladder was, I came up, bumping my head against a crossbeam, and I was still underwater.

The air is gone, I thought. The boat is entirely underwater now. How deep was the marina? How far down would the boat sink? And if I did find the hatch now, how far would I have to swim to reach the surface? Twenty feet? A hundred? With my lungs ready to explode, I propelled myself forward, my head still bumping against wood, then finally I surfaced into a pitch-black space. Coughing, sputtering, gasping deep breaths of air, I tried to get my bearings. I had no idea where I was, but as my breathing came under control, I heard just to my right someone else breathing.

"Alec?"

"Leave me alone!" His voice came through what must have been clenched teeth. I knew, because I was clenching my teeth to keep from shivering my fillings out. Now I had felt around enough to get a good idea where we were. We were in an air pocket at the very tip of the bow.

"Come on, the hatch is only about ten feet back," I told him. "We can make it, easy."

"Fine. You can go," Alec said.

Now, considering the fact that I was freezing and scared out of my mind, I was in no mood to deal with a pouting five-year-old, which was exactly how Alec sounded.

"Alec!"

"You wanna know why we moved here?" Alec said. "You wanna know why?"

"Alec, this really isn't the time for some deep, personal conversation, OK?"

"It's because they hated me there, too. We moved here so I could get a fresh start in a place where all the other kids didn't hate me."

"Not everyone hates you—just half of everyone." I couldn't believe I was being dragged into this. "Can't you just shut up long enough to save your own hide?"

"I hope they all drown," he said. "Every last one of them."

"No you don't—and don't even
think
it, because if any of them do drown, you'll never forgive yourself for thinking that."

"If
they
don't drown," Alec said, "maybe I should."

There was a splash next to me, I felt something brush past me, and for a bizarre moment my mind filled with the image of a shark—but instead someone surfaced and began taking deep breaths.

"Jared," said Tyson, struggling to clear the water from his lungs. "I felt you swim past me before. You missed the hatch."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"I'm going to kill you for not teaching me how to swim underwater," Tyson said.

"I was going to get to it, eventually," I told him. "Alec's here, too." I moved over and bumped my head against an iron crossbeam that felt uneasily loose.

"So, are we just going to sit here and drown ourselves? Is that the plan?" Tyson asked.

"Alec's feeling sorry for himself," I informed Tyson. "Says he wants to die."

I could hear Tyson's teeth chattering now. "He might get his wish."

Just then I felt the boat hit bottom, shifting again. The jolt shook loose the crossbeam. It came plunging down, clipping my shoulder. I heard Alec yelp as he was struck and forced under by the weight of the beam. Suddenly the water that was just below my neck was up to my chin.

"Tyson!" I called.

"I'm OK," he said. "But Alec—"

"Alec!" I called. No answer. "Alec." But my voice was silenced as the last of the air emptied from the air pocket, and the old tugboat shuddered as it finally gave up the ghost.

Dead
Reckoning

I WISH I could say that Tyson and I performed a heroic underwater rescue and saved Alec's life . . . but I can't.

As for the tugboat, its fall to the ocean deep wasn't exactly of
Titanic
proportions—in fact, the hatch was only a few feet underwater, and the tug's pilothouse still poked out of the bay like the conning tower of a submarine. But you see, it doesn't matter how much water there is; people can drown in one foot of water as easily as they can drown in a hundred feet.

I came up through the hatch, surprised by the short distance I had to rise until breaking the surface. My eyes quickly adjusted to the light, and when I looked around, I could see that the other kids had already made it to safety. Now they all clung to the edge of a dock no more than twenty yards away. They looked like a wet pack of stray dogs.

"We need help!" I screamed to them. "Alec's still underwater! He's pinned under a beam. I think . . . I think he might be dead."

Nobody moved—not a single one of them. I was furious, but not entirely surprised. Having just gotten off the tug with their lives, death had just been close enough without them having to haul it out from the depths.

Brett was the first to speak.

"The suction!" Brett yelled, clinging to a piling like a barnacle. "We got to stay away on account of the suction when it goes down."

"It's already sitting on the bottom, you idiot!"

Still we received no help, and Tyson—well, being the weak swimmer he was, it was all he could do just to tread water and stay afloat.

Cold as it was, I took a few deep breaths and went back down the hatch alone. My lungs held out as long as they needed to—a minute, maybe more. Then I surfaced, and the others watched as I came out from behind the pilothouse of the tug. Tyson, who had waited for me, labored to dog- paddle himself to the dock. I, on the other hand, had a much more grim task. With my arm across his chest, I pulled the limp, lifeless Alec in a slow, cross-chest carry toward the dock—just as I had done to Tyson four months before. Only this time, there was no fighting or kicking or struggling. Alec was a dead weight, putting up no fight at all. When I got halfway there, a few others jumped into the water to help me. We hauled him up onto the dock. I never knew a human body could be so heavy, so awkward. We let him go, and his head hit the wood with a
thud.
Water spilled from Alec's mouth. His lips were blue. His eyes half open. I don't know if any of the kids had ever seen a dead body before, but if they had, it was in much saner circumstances, in a funeral parlor surrounded by flowers and organ music. Half the kids there stared in disbelief; the other half looked away, unable to face what they saw. I labored to give him mouth-to- mouth, but nothing made any difference. Finally I stepped back from him and turned to the kids shivering around me.

"You got what you wanted," I said to the water-logged members of the new Shadow Club. "Alec Smartz won't be bothering anyone anymore."

No one said a thing. Brett looked as if he might pass out, stumbling for an instant, then he turned and he ran off the dock as fast as his legs could carry him, and kept on going.

"We're sorry," said Tommy Nickols. He'd been the ninth grade's best student until Alec came along. "We're so, so sorry—"

"Sorry?" I said. My voice growing louder as I spoke. "Tell his parents. Maybe it'll make them feel better, you think?" I couldn't tell whether the moistness in his eyes was tears, or just seawater. "You're gonna feel sorry for the rest of your life—all of you—and you know what? The feeling only gets worse."

Tommy finally burst into tears. "I'm sorry," he said. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

By now Tyson had climbed up onto the dock as well and was catching his breath, his gaze fixed on Alec. "Someone ought to close his eyes," Tyson said. "It's not right leaving them open like that."

I looked around until I found the one girl who seemed to be trying to hide behind all the other kids, trying to be just a spectator and not a culprit.

"Jodi, you get yourself over here," I demanded. "Close his eyes."

"No," she said sheepishly. "You can do it."

"You owe it to him, Jodi," said Tyson, with more conviction in his voice than I had ever heard. "You do it, or nobody here will ever forgive you."

With that kind of pressure, Jodi finally came forward. The other kids parted for her, as if she had suddenly become an untouchable. With everyone watching, she knelt down in front of Alec's body. There were other kids crying now— some sobbing, others sniffling quietly. Jodi looked around one last time, hoping there was someone who would give her a last-minute reprieve from having to do this, but no one would. So, on her knees, she reached forward with two fingers spread like a peace sign toward Alec Smartz's half- opened eyes. Then, just as she was about to touch his lids, Alec said:

"Get out of my face."

If ever in the history of our town there was a Kodak moment, this was it. Jodi shrieked, and the skin on her face seemed to peel back as if she was under fighter-jet G-forces. She stumbled backward with the shock and fell on to the wet dock with a
splash
and a
thump,
receiving what I hoped was a whole constellation of splinters in her rear.

Like I said, I wish I could say that Tyson and I performed a heroic underwater rescue and saved Alec's life, but I can't. Because Alec didn't need saving. Like everything else, he was good at swimming. He had been hit by the falling crossbeam, but freed himself, and when the last of the air was forced from the air pocket, he was the first one out of the hatch. But I had a brainstorm on the way out—a brainstorm that turned Alec into a much-needed silver bullet; the very silver bullet we needed to deal a mortal blow to that monster called the Shadow Club. Alec was more than happy to play his part, because he got all the benefits of dying without actually having to go through with it.

He had hid in the tugboat's pilothouse when I went back down the hatch. The hardest part for him had to be not blinking and not flinching when his head hit the dock. I swear, for a moment there even I thought he was dead.

"That's not funny," said the chess-team girl, as Alec stood.

"It wasn't supposed to be funny," I told her.

Jodi got to her feet. "You're sick," Jodi said. "Both of you."

I had to laugh at that, but the laugh quickly faded. She actually thought
we
were the sick ones.

"You think your twisted little joke makes any difference?" she said. "The Shadow Club still has plenty of things left to do."

But I shook my head. "The Shadow Club is dead," I toldher.

She looked around, unsure of her own support and, facing each other, we drew our lines in the sand as well as one could on a wooden dock.

"How many of you think the Shadow Club is dead?" I asked.

It was like a trick question in math class. Everyone looked to one another, no one wanted to make the first move, but Tommy Nickols, who was quite often the first to get any right answer, stepped forward. Then came another and another, until it became an entire mob moving over to stand beside Alec, Tyson, and me. I can't say Jodi was left alone—she wasn't. There were five or six kids who still stood beside her. I suppose there would always be those kids who found hate too tasty a flavor to give up. But the others— well, let's just say they lost their appetite.

Jodi broke off her cold eye contact with me and turned to Tyson, softening up a bit. "You don't owe him anything, Tyson," she told him. "You don't have to pretend to be on his side."

Tyson shrugged. "And just because we
were
going out doesn't mean I have to pretend to be on yours."

The police arrived quietly on the hill, no sirens, no rush. It was a single cruiser probably sent to investigate a call from a hillside neighbor who claimed boats were falling from the sky on this cold Presidents' Day. By the time they saw us, half the kids had run off—including Jodi—and the ones that remained were ready to confess whatever deeds they had done. These weren't the ones who needed to talk to the police, however. They needed to talk to their own parents. They needed to talk to Mr. Greene—to stand in his ruined house and confess to him. If we brought the police in now, we'd have nothing but hard feelings and headlines. Neither would do these kids any good.