The Well Part 23

Sam shook his head. "Oh, he's not dead. There's still time. As long as he has your blood before the sun goes down, the destiny can be fulfilled. All it takes to continue his legacy"-Sam advanced on me-"is for the chosen one to take his place before sundown. Go ahead, Cooper. As you can see, he's been waiting a long, long time for you." Sam pointed over my shoulder with the blade. And smiled the kind of reverent smile you gave the pope.

I turned. The monster hung over the edge of the well, his thin frame barely clinging to the stones. His skin draped off his body like loose wallpaper and his mouth hung open, slack like a thirsty dog's. A thick red gash ran down his chest, exposing the wide, yawning pus-filled hole opened by my knife the previous night. Vines cradled him in place, ma.s.sive webbing keeping him upright.

He hadn't died.

He was still here.

Waiting.

For me.

I tried to step back, but branches poked into my back, shoving me forward, closer. The ground beneath my feet undulated, an ocean of dirt forcing my feet to stumble another step closer. Another.

The creature smiled, but it was a weak grin. One that said he wasn't doing so well. Those same eyes as before looked back at me, but the spark inside them had dimmed a little. In the light of day, the creature seemed ten times worse paler, deader. Or maybe that was only because I had wounded him so badly the night before. I hoped, at least, that was why.

Whipple circled the well, barking and yelping. My mother still lay off to the side, but I could see her stir.

"Cooper, meet your father, Auguste." Sam crossed to the creature, getting almost close enough to touch him. But not quite. Was Sam scared of the monster, too?

Wait. Father? Had he said father? What the h.e.l.l?

"This thing here, this creature," Sam went on, "has lived in this cesspool all these years so that we could live like kings. I know he's a hideous, pitiful thing to look at, but he has power. Power you can only imagine."

I shook my head, tried again to back away from this horror. From the truth I still didn't want to face. "I'm not related to him."

"Oh but you are," Sam said, beaming with pride, and my stomach turned over. "It's a great honor, Cooper. A great, great honor."

Maybe in Sam's sick mind. "But a why me?" I started to realize that this time, there was no way out.

I was going down there. To stay.

"Because you were made for this," Sam said, as if he were explaining to a toddler that babies came from the stork. "I had to have a blood descendant, one of Auguste's, because that's what the land demands. An heir to the creature in the well every two hundred years. It's the price we pay, and the land gives back." He looked over his shoulder at the well almost reverently.

"You go down there, then," I said. "You're a Jumel. You're so set on this." I looked behind me, but the ground and trees kept up their wall.

"You couldn't pay me enough to do that." Sam chuckled. "Besides, the power is strongest from Auguste's own progeny. I, unfortunately, am descended from Gerard. But you, my dear Cooper, come straight from Auguste."

If this wasn't so horrifying, I would have laughed. But I didn't. What the monster had said to me in the well-"child of my loins"-had been true. Auguste raised his head and smiled. "Cooper," he whispered, his voice cracking into almost nothing. Breath wheezed in and out of the pus-filled cavity in his chest. "Dear Cooper."

"I had to find a carrier for his seed," Sam went on, ignoring the labored breathing of the creature. "I tried so many women, and they all failed me. Lost the babies, those idiots. Then your mother came in one day. A little wine to help her relax-a bonus of coming to my practice, I told her-and presto, she's asleep. That was my chance to impregnate her with Auguste's children."

I needed you, Cooper. Needed you to set me free. And now when you take my place, I live again as a man. My seed a for the return of my life.

The creature had gone back to talking in my head. I knew it was because he was weaker, having been wounded by me. But that didn't stop the horror of his words. "I don't understand. How is that thing still alive? After two hundred years?"

Sam grinned. "You are what you eat, Cooper." And then he laughed, a laugh that almost made me puke. "Or maybe it's 'you eat what you are."'

Repugnance shot through me as I realized what the creature had been eating for centuries. I thought of Sam's specialty when it came to delivering babies. Twins.

"Twins." I would have ralphed, but the trees had crowded in even farther, pressing me within touching distance of the creature.

"They aren't so easy to get, you know," Sam said, still keeping his distance from the creature. He gave it a wary glance every now and then. "But when you work my job, sometimes a accidents happen."

The bundle. The b.l.o.o.d.y blanket. "B-b-babies? More than just the one last night?"

Sam shrugged. "Not too many, Cooper. Just enough to keep Auguste alive until you turned fifteen. It's a magical age, don't you think?"

He was raving. A lunatic. I didn't think he expected an answer.

"Of course, your twin was vital to his existence. Your twin gave him the strength to survive the past fifteen years, gave him the knowledge and proof that his sentence was almost finished. It was perhaps his most important feeding. And now here we are; you're finally fifteen. In other cultures, fifteen is the age for change. For girls in Spain, it's their quinceanera. In the Baha'i faith, it's the year a boy becomes a man. In j.a.pan, they have a genpuku ceremony for teenage boys." He tipped the knife under my chin. "But here, dear Cooper, we have a ceremony of a differa ent sort.

"You're insane. I'm not going down there."

You will, the creature whispered. It is your destiny.

Sam chuckled. "It's October tenth. Two hundred years since Auguste was sent into this h.e.l.l on the special and sacred ground that has fed his existence. Poor you will have to wait two hundred years for your turn to live again."

The creature reared up on the edge of the well, throwing forward what seemed like a last-ditch effort of energy, his eyes glittering. "Stop talking a and a do it now! Give him to me!"

Sam spun toward the monster. "Shut up, old man. I'll do what I want."

"You a work a for a me," the creature rasped. "I a am a your"

"You're my meal ticket, and that means you don't need to talk," Sam said. "So shut your mouth, you stupid beast."

"Watch a how a you a talk to me."

Sam leaned toward Auguste. "I can talk any way I want to you. I don't even need you anymore, you hideous troll." He reached out and grabbed me by the s.h.i.+rt. "Cooper is the future of this vineyard, not you. As long as he's in that well, Jumel lives on. And you can just die."

In the creature's eyes, I saw hatred. Not for me. But for Sam.

Sam ignored it all and instead closed the gap between me and him. "You will be sacrificed today, Cooper. There's no escape. Consider yourself a a business expense. Just like Paolo and those babies." He laughed, then thrust me against the well. I tried to twist away, but Auguste grabbed my arms from behind. The vines twined around him and me, knitting his grip tighter. He pulled me back, exposing my neck to Sam's blade.

"Give up the fight, Cooper. Accept your destiny," the creature whispered, well water dripping from his mouth and puddling on my neck, the stench emanating off him in waves. His claws dug into my shoulders again, opening old wounds. Blood burst from my cuts like grapes being popped open.

I struggled but got nowhere. My dog bit Sam's ankles, but Sam kicked him in the head. The dog cried out. Fury blinded me. "Leave him alone!"

Sam swung the knife across. I jerked to the left, but it wasn't enough and the knife nicked my throat. Pain raced through my body and I screamed.

Auguste's web closed around my throat, cut off my breath. The world began to go black. "Stay still," the creature whispered, "and the change will be almost painless."

He lowered his head to my neck, and the vines danced up my skin, slithering along my arm, my throat, my cheek- Just then, a burst of orange erupted around us. Flames? I couldn't tell. I heard the trees crunch and stomp, moving away. Whipple started barking. The screaming doubled. Was that me? The creature? Whipple?

"Don't stop!" Sam ordered the creature. He raised his arms back, palms out, ready to shove me down there. I tried to turn to the right to get away, but the creature's grip tightened even more and he let out a gasp, as if he was pouring every last ounce of strength into the effort to hold on to me and drag me down with him. No escape, no way out.

I saw Sam's hands coming toward me and braced myself. I closed my eyes and thought of Megan.

Ponytail.

Pink dress.

Box of Crayolas.

Blue eyes.

Her smile.

"Cooper! Run!"

I opened my eyes, and there was- My mother. Holding the lighter I'd dropped earlier in one hand and a thick sheaf of branches in the other, the leaves aflame. She used the homemade torch to hit the trees, forcing them back. It was enough to clear a hole and let her in. Then she lunged at the monster, flames first.

Fire licked at the creature's body and he cried out, loosening his grip. At the same time, Whipple leaped onto Auguste, biting one of his arms. Auguste went to smack the dog, which gave me just enough time to jerk away from the creature.

Sam wheeled toward my mother and raised the switchblade. He screamed his hatred with a burst of expletives.

He was going to kill her.

I dove for Sam's knees, trying to tackle him as I'd tackled a dozen soph.o.m.ores and juniors in football, knowing if I hit him hard and low, I'd take him down. When I plowed into him, Sam teetered backwards, staggering several steps.

But he wasn't a high schooler. He was an adult. A very angry, very determined adult, who recovered his balance and started toward my mother again. I was still on the ground, too many seconds from another tackle.

I kicked out, sending the closest thing I saw sailing under Sam's feet. He stumbled, then began to go down, tripping and falling- Right over the skull I had left there a few days before. Way to go, Paolo.

Sam, with his arms pinwheeling, turned, reaching for someone, something to help him, but there was no one there. No one who cared. "Auguste! Grab me, you idiot!"

"I don't need you anymore, you hideous troll," the creature said, then reached for Sam and yanked him onto the edge of the well.

Sam's eyes widened in surprise, then anger. "If I die, you die!" He grabbed Auguste around the neck and plunged the knife into the creature's heart. The two of them hung there for a moment on the edge of the well, caught in the vines' hold. The creature clawed at Sam and Sam stabbed him back, each of them roaring in fury and agony, before the vines finally gave way and they both disappeared, falling down, down, down, into the inky darkness of the well.

Silence. And then the call of a bird. The flutter of wings, the scuffle of squirrels in the trees. The world slowly coming back to life in the forest.

I looked around. The trees had gone back to their places, the disruptions in the earth looking like freshly turned soil. A few branches and leaves smoldered in piles here and there, quickly becoming ashes. My mother stood beside me, breathing hard. "Are you okay, Mom?"

"Yeah. Are you?"

I nodded.

She drew me to her side and breathed in the scent of my hair, placing a soft kiss on my forehead. "I love you, Cooper," she said, her voice the one I knew, the one I remembered. "And I'm so, so sorry. For everything."

I leaned into her. This was my mom. Really my mom. Whipple came up beside us and pressed his body to our legs, giving his seal of approval. "I love you, too, Mom. And it's okay. It's all okay."

We stood like that for a long moment. I think one of us cried.

"Do you think that thing is gone?" my mother asked.

I took the torch she'd fas.h.i.+oned out of branches, feeling a hundred times more grown up than I had two weeks ago. "Let's make sure it is." I walked over to the well, lighting all the champagne-colored grapes that grew along the perimeter, then firing up the vines crawling over the edge, letting the flames carry down and into the dark depths. Then together we grabbed a second branch, lit it afire, and threw it down, watching its path. We saw the flames flicker, then go out. And we heard a Nothing.

No laughing. No scratching. No movement.

Then we laid the torch to more dry autumn leaves. Just as they began to catch and turn the woods to bright orange, my mother took my hand and together, with Whipple trailing behind us, we ran home.

It was over.

Mr. Ring." My father let out a sigh. "Tell me you have something intelligent to say."

Mike grinned. "I can tell you that, but it doesn't mean it's true, Mr. Warner."

My father rolled his eyes and went back to the chalkboard. He started writing, causing a mini snowstorm to start falling onto his shoes. "Don't forget your final papers for Hamlet are due tomorrow-"

Collective groan.

"And since you all loved Hamlet so much, I thought we'd do another Shakespearean cla.s.sic for our next selection." He wrote seven letters on the board in his precise script. "Macbeth." Then he turned back to us and beamed, as if he'd announced we'd be reading comic books.

"Dude!" Joey said, elbowing me. "Will you talk to your father? Get him some happy pills or something? The guy is torturing us."

I smiled. "Joey, you don't know my dad that well. He is happy right now. He could be a walking ad for suns.h.i.+ne." Lately my father had been singing in the shower, cooking pancakes in the morning, smiling on the way to school. And all because my mother was back home. Things were back to normal, which meant Faulkner barely talked to me, my parents read the paper together every night, and we all lived in the house near the playground and down the street from Megan.

It was as if the past two years had been erased. Almost, anyway. When I went to sleep at night, I could swear I still heard laughter and my name being called, but those were nightmares, and what was happening during the day was just too perfect to worry about a few leftover bad dreams.

Joey shook his head. "You are so weird lately. What has gotten into you?"

"Nothing." I traced the outline of "Ken Luvs Lisa 4-Eva" on my desk with my fingernail. They still loved each other, and that meant the world was still all right. I tugged a pencil out of my backpack, and beneath Ken's permanent declaration, I leaded one of my own.

Cooper Luvs Megan.

Forever.

"Mr. Warner?"

I popped my head up. "Yeah?"

"Do you have anything meaningful to add to this conversation?" my father asked.

I thought for a second. "Does Macbeth end better than Hamlet? I'd like to see the good guy live in this one."

My father grinned. "You have a point." He turned back to the chalkboard and swiped away the seven letters. "Let's rethink that choice, shall we?"

My eyes met my father's. He might not be my dad by blood, but heck, when had that ever counted? Where it mattered was where it mattered. In my head, in my heart. "Yeah, Dad. Let's do that."

Joey slapped me on the back, called me a hero.

He had no idea.

After cla.s.s, Megan caught up to me. She slipped her hand into mine. Her touch felt right, perfect. I squeezed her hand and gave her a smile.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey." I grinned. Like an idiot. But come on, I was still a high school freshman. I hadn't exactly grown a lot of new brain cells overnight. "Megan, I need to ask you something."