22  

Two boys existed in dark solitude on a small stony outcrop hundreds of feet down the side of the cliff. One of them was splayed out, his tiny body broken and twisted in a tortuous heap on the rocks. His eyes were closed, and his head rested in the lap of the other boy. Reggie instantly recognized them both.

“Hi, Quinn.”

He did not look at her. He stared out into the swirl of gray in the vast sky beyond the mountainside.

“Hello,” he said, as if he’d been expecting her for some time.

Reggie knelt down next to them.

Kenny’s entire abdomen had been slashed open by something harsh and jagged. Flies buzzed around the gaping wound, and thousands of maggots undulated inside the split skin. The entrails that had guided Reggie downward had coiled back inside the boy’s horribly damaged body. But he wasn’t dead. His breath was shallow and ragged, but he remained alive.

“I’m here to take you home,” Reggie said.

“Don’t want to go,” Quinn answered.

“You heard me. You answered. You brought me here.”

“No. It wasn’t me.” Quinn shook his head. “It was him.”

“You don’t want to leave?”

“Can’t. Have to stay.”

Reggie looked at the baseball card and her heart wanted to break. Something truly tragic had happened to this boy, and Quinn had witnessed it. His guilt was deep, and here on this tiny cliff it stagnated. Spoiled. Grew rank in the air.

“Kenny was your best friend, wasn’t he?” Reggie inched closer, but Quinn shuffled nearer to the cliff’s edge, dragging the comatose boy with him.

“Still is,” Quinn said defiantly.

“I’m sorry. Is your best friend.” Reggie scanned the stats on the card. “Third baseman, right? Hot corner. Tough position.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he really hit thirty-seven home runs?”

Quinn let out a small laugh. “No. We just made those up. But he would have someday. I bet he would have.”

“Would have… if what?” Reggie asked. She poised herself to leap if Quinn tried to take himself over the edge.

“If this didn’t happen.” Quinn touched Kenny’s stomach, brushing off maggots and shooing flies. But the maggots only returned in greater numbers and the flies settled back down on the wounds. The effort was a tired and defeated one. The boy had sat on this cliff for years, Reggie realized, holding his dying friend and waiting. Just waiting.

The Vour kept the nightmare alive, having found the one thing that would keep Quinn forever paralyzed and unable to fight. Seeing him here, lost and hopeless, reminded Reggie of the moment she had discovered Henry in the cellar of the department store in his fearscape. He’d behaved much the same way. So had Keech, literally trapped in a more terrible version of himself.

Quinn was shackled by his own guilt and fear. No need for a lock and key anymore, not when he’d long given up. The only way to save Quinn now was for Quinn to save himself.

“Tell me what happened.” Reggie sat down and crossed her legs. “What happened in the bus?”

Quinn turned to Reggie. His eyes were glazed and dim from years of staring into nothingness.

“We didn’t mean it,” he said sadly. “It was just for fun.”

A fly crawled across Quinn’s left eyeball, but he didn’t notice. It buzzed there for a moment and then flew away.

“I would always bring packs of gum, enough for everyone on the team. And sometimes on the way back from games we’d get into gum fights. Nothing bad, but Coach and the bus driver told us not to. One time after a game in Wennemack, Kenny dared me.”

“Dared you to what?”

“To throw gum at the bus driver. He said he’d give me his Mayers rookie card if I did it. I said no at first. But Damen and Greg wanted me to do it, too. They chewed up their gum and made it into a big, sticky wad. And they dared me to throw it. I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen—”

Quinn choked up and looked away.

“He got so mad. It stuck in his hair and he started yelling. And the bus swerved when he turned around and screamed at us. I was looking at his red face and trying to hide behind my seat when the whole bus went upside down. I woke up on the roof of the bus. I was crying and holding my head. Other kids were crying, too. And Greg was bleeding out of his nose and screaming. But Kenny wasn’t in the bus.”

“Where was he?”

Quinn didn’t answer.

“Did you find him?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Outside. He got thrown out the window.” Quinn’s voice shook. “He got cut all open. I could see his insides.”

“You found him like this.” Reggie brushed Kenny’s cold cheek with her hand. Quinn pulled him away.

“Don’t touch him. I don’t want him to die.”

“Quinn?” Reggie touched Quinn’s hair. He had the same soft locks as a young boy. “Quinn, I need you to hear me. And I want you to answer me. Please. Did Kenny die?”

Quinn moaned and refused to look at Reggie or the dying boy in his lap. The entrails slithered out of Kenny’s stomach and grabbed hold of Reggie’s arm. They squeezed hard as she tried to pull away. They squirmed up her arm and around her neck as she fought to rip them off.

A young Quinn had been consumed by an overwhelming fear that he’d caused his best friend’s death. The Vour knew it. And it was silencing Reggie before she helped Quinn forgive himself.

“Quinn! Please!”

The boy turned to her, his eyes vacant.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said.

The baseball card fell from Reggie’s hand as she struggled and landed on the open wound in Kenny’s midsection. A broken, pale hand reached inside and pulled it out. Quinn stared at the photo.

“What happened to me?” Kenny moaned.

“You’re hurt, Kenny,” Quinn said. “You’re hurt real bad. But I’m going to stay here until you get better.”

“I don’t want to die, Quinn,” the boy wheezed.

“You won’t die. I’m your best friend, Kenny. I won’t let you.”

The entrails tightened on Reggie’s throat. She watched wide-eyed as Quinn and Kenny spoke, both of them—all of this—bizarre figments of a world inside Quinn’s childhood psyche.

“Don’t leave me, Quinn.”

“I won’t, Kenny. Not ever.”

The intestine grew, wrapping around and around Reggie, pinning her arms to her sides so she couldn’t struggle.

“Quinn,” she choked. “That’s not… your friend…” The entrails pulled Reggie toward the edge of the cliff. She wriggled fiercely, but the ropy organ was as strong as an iron cable.

Quinn bent down over his friend, the Vour, shielding him.

“Would Kenny want this for you?” Reggie cried.

“I don’t know,” Quinn said.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Shut her up, Quinn,” Kenny snapped.

The intestine tightened, but she battled against it. “I’ve been trying to reach you and save you, Quinn! The bear. The insect-boy. The scarecrow. I’ve fought them all to find you! But only you can defeat this one! This is your fight—I can’t do it for you!”

Quinn looked from her to Kenny, confused.

“I can’t fight Kenny,” Quinn pleaded. “He’s—”

“It isn’t your friend! It’s the monster!”

“She doesn’t belong here!” the Vour hissed. “Get rid of her. Then it will be the two of us again.”

The entrails pulled Reggie another foot closer to the drop-off.

“Would Kenny want you to kill?” Reggie asked.

“No…”

“Look at that thing. Does it really look like your friend?”

Quinn stared at the broken boy’s face, and it flashed and crackled like a bad circuit, giving Quinn glimpses of the bear, the insect-boy, the scarecrow.

“You’re not him…”

The intestine surged up around Reggie’s jaw before she could close her mouth and gagged her. She moaned and tried to spit it out; it tasted of slimy raw meat caked in rust and dirt. But it slithered tighter and she could not speak anymore. Her heels hung an inch over the edge of the abyss, but Quinn was staring down at the boy. The skin on his face melted away to reveal a gray skull.

“You’re not Kenny,” Quinn breathed. Then he jumped up. “You’re not Kenny at all. Let go of her!” Quinn blinked. “Let go of me!”

The boy on the ground burst into a hive of smoke particles that darted around Quinn like bees. He swatted at them furiously.

“Go away!” he yelled. “Go away!”

His breath blew out of his mouth like a jet of wind, and it swept the smoke away until it disappeared into the ether. The intestines that bound Reggie slackened, released, and then vanished.

The landscape around them faded away, replaced with empty whiteness. Ahead of them a baseball dugout appeared, a strange, solitary opening in the vacant halls of Quinn’s fearscape.

“That’s the way home,” Reggie said.

“What is this place?” Quinn asked. “Is it real? It feels real.”

“I wish I knew for sure,” Reggie said. “Part of it is in our minds, I think. But our minds are powerful things.”

Reggie felt relief wash over her. Quinn was almost free. But then he pointed above them.

“What’s that?” he asked. A tremble had crept back into his voice. Reggie looked up, but she could see only the whiteness all around them.

“What’s what?”

“That.”

“Quinn, I don’t see anything.”

“A black spiral, like a road. Far off. You can’t see it?”

Reggie shook her head. Quinn’s eyes sparked with worry.

“It’s okay,” Reggie said hastily. “This is the way out.”

As she stepped down inside the dugout behind Quinn, Reggie chanced one more look back. But there was only white, empty space.

What had the boy seen?