CHAPTER 25
Thirteen-year-old Mike Ferguson stretched his
neck as far as he could without lifting the heels of his boots off
the floor, pushing the top of his head to the ruler placed on his
crown. His gaze was glued to the TV set across the bedroom, which
was nearly obscured by the baseball jacket he’d tossed across the
room that had gotten hung up on the shelf above. One sleeve dangled
across a portion of the screen, which was airing the evening news.
“How tall?” he demanded, never moving his eyes.
“Five foot six,” his brother James said
in a bored voice.
“Bullshit.” He put his finger to the
top of his head and twisted away, holding his place. “Five-eight!”
he yelled.
“Whatever, Mikey. You’re still a dwarf.” James was six foot one and
growing.
“It’s Michael,” he said, as he always
did when his brother tried to stick him with that same nickname.
He’d grown five inches since he’d become a local celebrity a few
years ago. No more was he Little Mikey Ferguson. Now, he was
thirteen and a half, which was almost fourteen, and his face had
lost its baby fat, and girls were starting to act stupid around
him, which made his head swell even while he pretended he didn’t
notice.
Now Mike glanced to the left and the
mirror mounted on his chest of drawers and smoothed his hair across
his forehead, Justin Bieber style.
“God, you’re stupid,” James declared,
groaning. It felt like he could ralph right here and
now—ralph being his new favorite word (lots
better than puke or upchuck or vomit or the really lame “tossed his
cookies”). And because he was nearly three years older than Mikey,
James definitely wanted to ralph when his
mind even brushed on the idea that his little brother might be
considered hot.
He had a gag reaction just thinking
about it, and he made a bunch of disgusting sounds in front of both
Mikey and Woofy Larson, James’s best bro since his last best bro,
Kyle Baskin, and his family had moved to California. But Mikey had
moved from absorption in the TV and his own face to his cell phone,
where he was texting like mad.
Woofy ran a hand through his mop of red
hair and asked, “Who ya texting?”
“It’s not a text. It’s a tweet. Channel
Seven.” Mike’s thumbs moved rapidly across the tiny
keyboard.
James said, “Mikey’s a
butt-face.”
“That would be Michael’s a butt-face,”
Mike said, looking up.
“Fuckin’ A,” Woofy said,
impressed.
“Why are you on Twitter?” James
demanded. “Get off that.” He made a grab for the phone, which Mike
deflected with a sharp turn.
“You sound like Mom.” Mike, unfazed,
turned back to his phone.
“It’s all you do!”
“Yeah, like you don’t use your phone
twenty-four-seven.”
James kicked at a soccer ball that was
lying on the bedroom floor and sent it crashing into the wall. It
rebounded, hit the shade of Mike’s bedside lamp, sent it spinning
to the floor, where the bulb promptly made a fitz sound and popped, sending shards of glass out like
tiny shrapnel.
“Nice,” Mike said, too cool to flip
out, like James wanted him to, though he certainly felt like
it.
And James did want him to explode, that
was for sure. Mike witnessed the fury rush to his head and turn his
skin a dull red. James wasn’t normally so quick to anger but
everything just seemed to piss him off. “What the fuck,” James
muttered, then, after a few tense moments, bent down to pick up the
slivers of glass.
Woofy, who was good-natured and
easygoing as a rule, made a halfhearted attempt to help him, though
he wasn’t known for his cleaning skills. He always wore the same
rugby-style shirt and jeans, enough to convince half the school he
was dirt poor, when in reality he just didn’t give a rat’s
ass.
Mike said after a moment, “I’m just
trying to figure out where he went.”
“Who?” Woofy asked, but Mike could tell
James knew.
“That killer, dude,” James said in a
long-suffering tone. “Justice Bullshit, or whatever. Mikey’s
obsessed.”
“Justice Turnbull.” Mike finally lifted
his eyes from his phone, switched it off, stuck it in his
pocket.
“Oh, yeah.” Woofy screwed up his face
in deep thought. “The dude they caught who killed that girl, the
one with the hand you found.”
“It was sticking out of the ground,”
Mike reminded. “Skeleton fingers. Turned upward, reaching for
help.”
“Like a hundred years old!” James said,
bugged in a way he couldn’t define.
“Twenty years old,” Mike
corrected.
James snorted. He thought his brother
was becoming a real pain in the ass.
“He escaped,” Mike said. “You know
that, right?”
“Of course, dude.” Woofy sounded
miffed, but Mike suspected he didn’t really know what he was
talking about.
“From that high-security hospital,”
Mike insisted. “Nobody thought he could get out. Nobody. But he
did. He’s like a ghost. Whispers through the night . . .” He spread
his hands out as if he were parting a curtain. “He’s kinda . . .
ethereal.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Woofy
asked.
“Like insubstantial, man,” James clued
him in.
“I’m gonna find him,” Mike said with
certainty.
“Bullshit,” James shot
back.
“I am. He lived in that lighthouse
before. He’ll go back. For sure! But it’s a little ways out. We’ll
have to go by boat, I think.”
James stared at his younger brother as
if he were the psycho.
But Mike knew differently. He was one
of those guys who just knew what he wanted to do . . . and then
went and did it. James, who second-guessed anything and everything,
found him a little scary and just short of completely
weird.
“Oh, yeah,” James mocked. “That’s just
what we’re gonna do, butt-head. Drive to the coast. Rent a boat.
Motor to the island and check out the old lighthouse where the
psycho used to live!”
“I think we’ll have to use a rowboat
and oars,” Mike explained earnestly. “I don’t think anybody would
rent a motorboat to us.”
James threw up a hand in disgust.
“We’re not going, shit for brains. You can’t even
drive.”
“But you can,” Mike retorted, staring
at James through blue eyes. “I’ll navigate.”
“Jesus, you’re serious,” Woofy said,
blinking in disbelief.
Mike added, “I think a rowboat is the
answer.”
“I thought we were playing Guitar
Hero.” James glared at him.
Mike’s eyes flicked back to the TV, and
he noticed, from the corner of his eye, that James let his gaze
wander there, too. That hot, bitchy, dark-haired reporter was
coming on.
“Turn it up,” Mike
demanded.
“I’m not your slave, asshole,” James
muttered, but Woofy, who was near the remote, hit the
volume.
“Call themselves Deadly Sins. Seven
privileged teenagers who found a way into other people’s homes . .
. homes that belonged to the parents of their classmates . . . and
who helped themselves to their possessions . . .”
“Shit,” Mike muttered. “She’s not
talking about badass Justice Turnbull! Everybody’s forgetting
him!”
“They’re not forgetting him,” James
said, long-suffering. “They just can’t find him. He’s probably in
Canada by now.”
“Or Mexico,” Woofy put in.
Mike turned to James. “Mom and Dad are
leaving on Tuesday. They’ll call us on our cells. They won’t know
we’re not here. We can head to the lighthouse on Tuesday or
Wednesday.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Woofy said again, full of
admiration.
“We’re not driving to the beach!” James
glowered at his brother.
“I bet we could find him. I bet we
could be heroes,” Mike insisted.
“Hey, moron. The guy’s a psycho. Did
you forget?” James demanded.
“You get me there. I’ll do the
rest.”
“You’re gonna really go out to that
lighthouse?” Woofy asked, his eyes wide with
anticipation.
“No. He’s not.” James was
repressive.
“Yeah, I am. Just gotta get a rowboat,”
Michael said.
“Find yourself a kayak, ’cause you’re
going alone!” James yelled. “God, you are such a
’tard.”
“I think you mean nerd.”
“Nope.”
Mike’s attention swung back to the set,
where a picture of a woman’s face filled the screen. No one could
identify her, apparently. Since the news wasn’t about Justice, Mike
turned back to James. “School’s out Tuesday. Mom and Dad’ll take
off and be gone until the next week. We got nothing but
time.”
“You’re as much of a psycho as he is!”
James was sick of the whole mess, especially of Mike. He strode out
of his little brother’s bedroom and yelled from the hallway, “If
you don’t want to play Wii, then I’m not gonna hang out. And you’re
a fuckin’ idiot. We’re not going to the beach.”
Heroes. Ha. This was just another way
to get into trouble. Another bad idea. James had no interest in
taking his determined little ass of a brother
anywhere.
Woofy wandered out to meet him in the
garage, where James had picked up a paddle and was shooting a line
of table tennis balls over the low net to the other side of the
table. Beneath the flickering fluorescent lights, the balls bounced
once and then flew off the Ping-Pong table and onto the floor. Some
ricocheted into the exposed rafters; another hit the old fridge,
where Mom kept extra sodas and beer; another smashed into the
workbench. Woofy picked up another paddle, the dropped balls, and
served to James. They went at it for all they were worth for twenty
minutes; then James slammed a Ping-Pong ball straight into the
garage door and flung down his paddle. “He really pisses me off!”
he declared.
Woofy grunted. “Yeah?”
“I’m not doing it.”
Woofy shrugged. “Didn’t say you
were.”
“He thinks I’m gonna do
it.”
“Why do you care? You’re not gonna.”
There was a silence, and Woofy, who wasn’t known for his
perception, nevertheless picked up the vibes radiating from his
friend. “Are you?”
“No,” James stated.
But a little kernel of interest had
been planted. Even while James railed long and loud that he wasn’t,
wasn’t, wasn’t going to drive his little brother to the coast so
that he could get involved in the search for some sicko, psychotic
psycho, a part of him liked the idea of being a hero. James could
see himself on the news with that hot bitch reporter, telling the
world how he’d captured the guy. . . . It would be so intense . .
.
If the fucker didn’t kill
them.
The dream evaporated in a puff. James
valued his life, even if his obsessed little brother
didn’t.
Woofy left a few minutes later, and as
James returned to the house, his cell phone rang. To his disbelief,
it was Belinda Mathis. Only the hottest girl in the school! They’d
exchanged cell phone numbers one day, though he’d suspected she was
just humoring him to be nice. But now she was calling . . .
!
“Yeah?” he answered
cautiously.
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m doing
this.” It was a breathless little girl’s voice. Not Belinda Mathis,
for sure. “This is Kara Mathis, Belinda’s sister,” she explained.
“Is this James Ferguson?”
“Uh-huh.” He tried not to sound too
disappointed.
“I’m using my sister’s phone. Your cell
phone number was on it. Um . . . I know your brother, Michael? Do
you . . . could you . . . give me his cell number?”
The nightmare that never
ended.
Closing his eyes, James mentally
counted to ten, then rattled the number off to her. Minutes later
he heard his brother’s cell ringing and Mikey picking
up.
James headed to the refrigerator,
opened it, hung on the door, and gazed inside unseeingly. He could
really use a boost to his own status with the women, that was for
sure. He could use a little hero worship of his own.
And well, this psycho Justice dude . .
. if he didn’t kill them, they would
definitely be heroes. . . .
Huh, James
thought.
That would be
really cool. Even Belinda Mathis would have to take notice. At
least she had his number.