Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 25

EATHER’S WORDS WERE STILL RINGING IN HER HEAD as Angel began the walk back home. Seth had come with her as far as the corner of Black Creek Road, but when he asked if she wanted him to walk her all the way out to the Crossing, she shook her head, afraid of what might happen if her father saw her with him.

But as she left the streetlights behind and the darkness of the night began to close around her, Angel once more had the feeling that she was being watched, and wished she’d let Seth come with her. It was too late to change her mind — when she looked back, he’d vanished into the darkness.

She tried to ignore it, to pretend that she felt nothing, but as a cloud passed over the half moon hanging low in the sky, and the blackness seemed to wrap around her like a shroud, she felt her pulse quicken along with her stride.

Then, from somewhere off to the right, she heard a sound.

Angel froze, listening.

Silence.

She resumed walking, but hadn’t taken more than three steps when she heard the sound again. It was closer this time, and more distinct, a rustling sound from somewhere toward the creek.

“Houdini?” she called out softly. “Is that you?”

The rustling stopped.

“Come on, Houdini,” Angel called again. “Here, kitty, kitty. Come on!”

More silence.

Angel stood still, listening, but the night had gone deathly silent.

In the terrible stillness her heart pounded so hard it seemed it would drown out anything else.

But there isn’t anything else, she told herself. It wasn’t anything but a mouse or something, poking around in the leaves. But when she began walking again, she crossed the road to the other side.

Now another sound came out of the darkness — a low, faint hooting. An owl, she told herself. But still, she stopped to listen.

The sound came again, closer now.

But there had been no fluttering of wings.

The hooting changed, becoming a moaning sound, and Angel shivered, pulling her jacket tighter around her throat. Then, hearing the sound again, she felt an awful crawly feeling on the back of her neck.

Something was behind her.

Something dangerous.

Crack!

A twig snapped, so close that Angel jumped, and she whirled around to peer into the darkness behind her.

There was a flicker of movement, gone in an instant, swallowed by the darkness so quickly that Angel wasn’t sure she’d seen it at all. She backed away, turned, and began to run.

A scream burst out of the night, so loud it stopped Angel in her tracks, but it died abruptly, cut off at almost the instant it began. Now she stood trembling in the darkness. All around her the night had fallen eerily silent after the scream, the silence almost as terrifying as the scream had been.

If it had really been a scream.

It was the owl, Angel told herself. It was a screech owl.

Yet even as she reassured herself and headed toward home again, the sounds returned.

Leaves rustling.

Twigs cracking.

She heard a low whistle off to one side, and crossed the road once more, but a moment later there was a moan from the forest — as if someone were in pain. Her heart raced as tendrils of panic slithered out of the darkness, creeping toward her. Then she heard a whimpering sound, and a moment later realized it had come from her own lips.

Another moan, this time from somewhere behind her, and she whirled once more, only to see another shadow vanish into the black depths of the forest.

She turned again, and caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of her eye. Her breath catching in her throat, she felt the tendrils of panic tightening around her, and now she tried to look in every direction at once, frantically searching for the shapes whose shadows seemed always on the periphery of her vision.

There was nothing but darkness. The lights of the village had disappeared behind her, and the lights of the house at the Crossing weren’t yet visible. She looked up into the sky, but it too was darkening as the layer of cloud over the moon grew denser.

Home, Angel thought. I’ve got to get home before I can’t see anything at all.

She started running, but the toe of her left foot caught on something and she plunged forward. She threw out her hands to protect her face, and a moment later felt a terrible stinging as the asphalt of the road tore the skin from her palms.

This time there was no mistaking the cry of pain as coming from anywhere but her own throat, but she managed to choke it into silence almost as quickly as the scream she’d heard moments before had died. She scrambled back to her feet, brushing the dirt from her jacket and jeans. Her eyes blurring with tears, she stumbled on through the darkness. Now there were sounds all around her — leaves rustling and twigs breaking as if some beast hidden in the darkness and the trees were keeping pace with her, preparing to launch itself at her. She veered across the road still another time, but there was no longer any escaping the terrifying cacophony.

Running again, her heart pounding, her lungs heaving, she tried to escape the terrors that surrounded her in the darkness. Now the night took on the quality of a nightmare. Her feet felt sluggish, as if bogged down in thick mud, and the road itself threatened to mire her. A moan escaped her lips, nearly echoing the moans that had come from the forest earlier.

Then, as she came to the bend in the road, she saw it.

The house at the Crossing, light pouring from its windows, washing away the darkness. Angel hurled herself toward the light, veering across the road and onto the small expanse of lawn that wrapped around the house.

The sounds began to die away.

And then, once more, silence.

A silence that was suddenly broken by laughter.

Loud, raucous laughter, rolling out of the forest and across the road and the lawn. Angel felt it crashing against her as she stood on the front porch.

Zack. Now she understood what had happened. Heather and her friend must have told Zack what had happened. Now he was laughing.

Laughing exactly as they had laughed earlier.

Struggling against the tears that now threatened to overwhelm her, she turned her back on the mocking laughter, slipped through the front door, and headed for the stairs, wanting nothing more than the refuge of her room, where she might blot out the laughter still ringing in her ears.

But as she passed the living room, her mother said, “Angel? Are you all right?” She hesitated, wanting to tell her mother what had happened, what Zack Fletcher had done. But remembering what had happened when she’d told her mother about her father coming into her room that night, she changed her mind. Besides, if her mother believed her, she would tell her aunt Joni, and her aunt would talk to Zack, and…

And everything would be even worse than it was right now.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m just going upstairs to finish my homework.”

“All right,” her mother said. “I’ll come in and say good night in a little while.” Upstairs, Angel washed the blood and grime off her scraped palms, winced as she dabbed the cuts with iodine, then went to her room. Instead of turning on the light, however, she went to the window and peered out into the darkness. The moon was obliterated now, and it was like looking into the blackness of eternity itself. For a moment she wondered what it would be like to simply disappear into that blackness, to float forever in silence and nothingness.

At last she drew the curtains and turned away from the window, but still didn’t turn on the light. Instead she took off her clothes in darkness, and in darkness she slipped into her bed.

When her mother came in to kiss her good-night an hour later, Angel pretended to be asleep, and carefully kept her injuries hidden beneath her blankets.

Zack Fletcher was still two blocks from home when he heard a faint rustling sound, just like the sound he himself had made half an hour ago when he, Chad, and Jared caught up with Angel Sullivan as she walked home, making noises in the woods and scaring her so badly she’d started running. So he ignored it as he continued to walk along Haverford Street.

The sounds continued, a distinct rustling in the leaves off to the left, and finally, when he’d passed two more houses, Zack stopped.

So did the sound of rustling leaves.

He resumed walking again.

The sounds began again too.

Zack stopped again. “Okay, Chad!” he called out. “You can come out now — I know it’s you.” Nothing.

He began walking again, and the sounds started up again, keeping pace with him.

“Come on, Chad!” he shouted. “You’re not scaring me!” But even as he spoke the words, his voice betrayed the lie.

He walked faster, and heard the sound again.

Something, or someone, was moving along next to him, keeping pace with him.

But why couldn’t he see them? There were lights on in the houses along Haverford Street, and porch lights were on, and streetlights. Yet he couldn’t make out whoever was following him.

Then, as he crossed Prospect Street, he caught a flash of movement.

A cat! Nothing but a stupid cat, like the one that was always hanging around with Angel. His fright vanishing, Zack stepped up onto the curb and started down the last block.

Now the cat was moving alongside him, making no effort at all to stay out of sight.

But strangely, though he could see the cat clearly, moving over the leaves that had fallen from the huge canopy of branches that spread over the lawns along Haverford Street, it was no longer making any sound at all.

The rustling had stopped.

It was as if the cat were somehow floating over the leaves, not even disturbing them.

He stopped.

So did the cat, turning to face him.

Zack took a step toward it. “Shoo!”

The cat only crouched, its tail twitching.

“Stupid cat,” Zack said. “Get out of here!” He charged toward it, raising his arms and waving them.

But instead of springing off into the darkness, the cat launched itself straight at him, and a second later Zack screamed as he felt the claws sink deep into the flesh of his face. As his howl of agony rose, the cat dropped away, and as Zack clutched at his face, it darted off, to disappear silently into the shadows.

His face burning with pain and his eyes stinging with tears, Zack ran the rest of the way home, charging up onto the front porch of his house. Opening the door, he lurched inside, then slammed it shut behind him, leaning against it for a moment as he caught his breath.

“Zack?” he heard his mother say from the living room. “Honey, everything OK?” Feeling tears streaming down his cheeks, Zack moved toward the living room. “It was a cat,” he said, his voice quavering. “Angel’s cat! It tried to kill me!” Joni Fletcher gazed at her son, whose face was twisted into a mask of fear and pain. “What?” she asked, rising to her feet. “What cat? What do mean, it attacked you?” “My face,” Zack wailed. “It practically ripped my cheeks off!”

His mother was looking at him with bewilderment. “Honey, what are you talking about? There’s nothing wrong with your face.” Zack put his hand to his cheek.

The stinging was gone.

He looked at his fingers.

No blood.

Turning, he looked in the mirror that hung on the wall over the table by the front door.

His face looked perfectly normal — not even a scratch, let alone the deep slashes that should have been there, given how agonizing the pain had been when the animal’s claws had sunk into his skin.

He gently touched his cheek with his forefinger.

Nothing — no pain at all.

But a few minutes ago—

He turned back to the living room, where his father had joined his mother, both of them on their feet, looking at him uncertainly. “I’m not lying,” Zack said, his voice uneven. “It happened right down at the end of the block.” “What happened?” Ed Fletcher asked.

As best he could, Zack recounted everything from the moment he’d first heard the sound of rustling leaves as he was walking home to when the cat launched itself at his face.

“You’re sure it actually attacked you?” Ed Fletcher asked when his son was finished.

“I’m telling you, Dad!” Zack exclaimed, his voice rising in response to the doubt in his father’s voice. “It tried to kill me!” “Well, it certainly didn’t succeed, did it? Seems like it did a better job of scaring you than it did of hurting you.” Zack’s eyes narrowed and he turned truculent. “You don’t believe me.”

Ed Fletcher spread his hands as if to ward off his son’s angry words. “I’m not saying nothing happened — I’m just saying it doesn’t seem to be as bad as you think it was.” “And even if a cat did attack you, why would you think it was Angel’s?” his mother asked. “They don’t even have a cat. Marty’s allergic.” “As allergic as he is to work?” Ed Fletcher interjected, engendering a dark look from his wife.

“It’s Angel’s,” Zack said. “It follows her everywhere. It’s all black and—” “You’re claiming you recognized a black cat at night?” Ed Fletcher broke in.

“I did!” Zack was nearly shouting now.

“All right, all right!” Ed said, once more raising his hands as if to fend off his son’s anger. “I’m just not sure I would have even seen it, that’s all.” “You’d have seen this one,” Zack said. “It’s huge, and its eyes were glowing, and—” “All right, that’s enough,” Ed Fletcher said, his tone imparting his doubt as much as his words. “Even if we agree that this cat attacked you — which, frankly, I doubt — I don’t see why you think it belongs to Angel. They don’t even live around here, and—” “It followed me!” Zack blurted, before considering the implication of his words. But it was too late.

“Followed you from where?” Ed Fletcher asked. “Is there something you’re not telling us, Zack?” “No, I—” Zack began, but his father didn’t let him finish.

“Why don’t you tell us exactly where you were tonight, and what you were doing?” “I was just hangin’ out with Chad and Jared and Heather! And Angel was there, and her stupid cat, and—” “Why do you keep saying it was Angel’s cat?” Joni broke in.

“Because it’s always with her! I’m tellin’ you—”

“I’m going to call Myra,” Joni said.

She picked up the phone, dialed, and when she hung up a few minutes later, her eyes had taken on the same look as her husband’s.

“Zack, the Sullivans don’t have a cat,” she said to her son. “So whatever happened tonight had nothing to do with your cousin. Now, what really happened?” Seething, but knowing there was no use arguing with both his parents, Zack turned away. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing happened, all right?” He headed up the stairs, and when his mother called after him, he didn’t answer. A moment later he was in his room, slamming the door shut behind him.

As he got ready to go to bed, Chad Jackson was still laughing about the sight of Angel Sullivan running terrified through the night. For him, the best part was when she’d tripped and fallen on her face. He could still remember how much it had hurt two years ago when his bike skidded out of control, across the asphalt in the street right outside. He’d had scabs for weeks, and when his mother insisted on putting iodine on the scrapes — He winced even now, just thinking about it.

Leaving his clothes piled in a heap on the floor, he climbed into bed and was just reaching for the light switch when his eyes fell on his backpack, full of textbooks, and he remembered the math homework he hadn’t done.

Well, no point in doing it now — he’d either do it in the morning or make Seth Baker let him copy his. Too bad Seth hadn’t been with Angel when they followed her, moving through the woods, where she couldn’t see them, making noises. The only thing that would have been better was if Seth had been there too, getting so scared he’d wet his pants.

That would have made it perfect — if they’d been able to figure out a way to give Seth as good a scare as they’d given Angel.

Angel—what a stupid name.

A stupid name for a fat, ugly, stupid girl.

So stupid she even liked Seth Baker!

And stupid enough to fall for the sounds they’d been making too.

Grinning, Chad softly repeated the hooting sound he’d made in the woods that night. It didn’t actually sound like an owl — at least not any he’d ever heard — but it had been good enough to send Angel running for home. He was about to repeat it, and improve on it, when he heard something.

Something from outside the room.

He listened, and heard nothing.

He decided he must have been wrong.

Relaxing, Chad reached for the lamp on the bedside table.

The sound came again, but this time he recognized it. It was the same sound he’d just made.

He lay still, not even breathing, his hand hovering near the lamp.

The sound came again.

What was it? An owl?

But it didn’t sound like an owl — it sounded like him trying to sound like an owl!

What—

And then he knew! It had to be Jared — or maybe Zack — playing a trick on him.

Or maybe signaling him to come out! He and Jared had snuck out at least half a dozen times last summer and never come close to getting caught. Chad slid out of bed and pulled on his clothes. Going to the door of his room, he listened, then opened it a crack and listened again.

The hall outside was dark and silent, but he could hear his father snoring even through the door to his parents’ bedroom.

Closing his door, Chad went to the window, unlatched it, and raised the lower casement. It creaked a little, and the counterweights in the frame rattled, but he knew that even if his mother was awake, she’d have her earplugs in to cut down the racket of his dad’s snoring.

“Jared?” he called softly.

There was no reply, except for the same strange hooting sound that had brought him to the window. A cold draft of air flowed in the open window, a draft unlike anything Chad had felt before. The cold seemed to reach inside him, and for a terrible instant he had the feeling he was dying.

Holding perfectly still, he strained his eyes and ears, searching for the source of the sound that had caused him to suddenly freeze.

But he saw nothing, and a moment later realized he heard nothing either — not even the last of the crickets and frogs that were so loud during the summer that they kept him awake, and which he’d still heard outside when he’d gone to bed tonight.

Now the night was utterly silent.

Why? What had silenced the frogs and crickets?

He listened with concentration, and then, from no more than a few feet away, was startled by a loud screeching.

Chad jumped, banging his head against the frame of the open window.

What was it?

An owl? A cat?

He turned in the direction from which the sound had come, and at first saw nothing. But then he saw something glimmering in the blackness, barely visible.

Chad’s pulse quickened as he strained to see better.

The glimmer turned to a glow, and then the glow came into focus.

Eyes.

Two darkly glowing eyes, the pupils huge, were peering at him from a branch of the tree that was just far enough away to be out of his reach.

An owl. That’s what it had to be — a screech owl! He’d imitated it better than he thought!

Chad waved his arms toward it, certain it would leap from the branch and fly away. But instead of seeing an owl burst out of the tree’s canopy in startled flight, something as black as the night outside came through the window. For a terrible instant Chad felt as if the darkness itself was reaching for him, but a fraction of a second later he knew he was wrong.

A cat!

A black cat, with a single white blaze in the middle of its chest.

Angel’s cat!

Claws that felt like acid-tipped scalpel blades suddenly slashed deep into the bare flesh of his shoulders, and teeth sank into his neck.

A scream of pain and shock choking in his throat, Chad lurched backward, tumbling to the bedroom floor. He tried to get his hands on it to tear it away from his throat before it killed him, but before he could, the cat was gone.

Gone so quickly and so completely that for several seconds Chad wondered if anything had actually happened at all. But then the pain of the cat’s claws sinking into the flesh of his shoulders began to burn, and he pressed his hands against his neck, terrified that the animal might have torn open his throat. Stumbling from his bedroom down the hall to the bathroom, he turned on the cold water and began washing his neck and shoulders even before turning the light on.

The coolness of the water soothed the burning of his wounds, and after using a washcloth to wipe most of the water away, he turned on the light and looked at his reflection in the mirror.

Nothing.

Not a cut anywhere — not even a scratch!

Then, as he stared at his image in the mirror, he saw it.

The cat’s face, its lips pulled back to show its teeth, looming behind him, just over his right shoulder.

Spinning around, Chad raised his arms to fend off the cat’s attack once more.

And again he saw nothing.

For almost a full minute he stood trembling in the bathroom, his heart racing, too terrified even to turn off the light and go back to his room.

He searched the bathroom then, even looking in the shower and behind the old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub, for any sign of the cat, but the cat had vanished even faster than it had vanished from the tree outside.

If it had been in the bathroom at all.

As his heart finally slowed back to normal, Chad told himself he couldn’t have seen anything in the mirror, that it had to have been his imagination playing tricks on him.

But what about before, when he was peering out the open window and the cat had attacked him and he’d felt the pain of its claws sinking into his flesh?

Could he have imagined that too?

How?

How had it happened?

Maybe nothing had happened.

Maybe he had imagined it all.

But when he went back to his bedroom, Chad left the light on in the bathroom, and when he went to sleep, he left the light on in his room too.

The black cat slipped through the night like a wraith, moving silently in the darkness, no sound at all betraying its presence. Rather, it was the silence itself that signaled every living thing within its reach that something was wrong.

That danger was nearby.

And sensing the danger — the presence of the wraithlike creature — every living thing took on a stillness that lay over the night like a cloak so dense that even the light breeze of the autumn night died away.

But even the cloak of silence wasn’t enough to slow the cat as it moved toward its prey, for there was nothing in the night the cat could not hear.

Nothing it could not see.

Nothing it could not sense.

After it had passed, the silence slowly lifted.

Crickets concealed beneath the bark of trees once more rubbed their wing covers together.

Tree frogs in the gardens began to puff out their throats once more.

Birds in their nests and on their perches twittered softly in their sleep.

Even the leaves dying on the trees began to rustle as the breeze in the air came back to life.

Moments later farther down the street, the black wraith slithered silently up a tree, then moved out onto a limb.

Dropped onto a steeply sloping roof.

Crept around to a gable.

Peered through the window.

Saw Jared Woods asleep in his bed.

A moment later, though Jared had left no window open, and locked his bedroom door, the cat named Houdini was inside the room.

In his dream, Jared Woods was once again in the forest near Black Creek Crossing, barely able to contain his laughter as he heard Chad Jackson hooting softly in an almost perfect imitation of an owl.

Perfect enough to send Angel Sullivan veering back across the road to the other side, where Zack Fletcher was waiting to crack twigs again.

As he watched Angel hurry her step and veer first one way and then another to escape the ominous sounds coming out of the darkness, Jared felt the same thrill that always came over him when he saw the frightened look in Seth Baker’s eyes whenever he and Chad were about to subject him to some new humiliation.

Terrifying Angel was even better, because she had no idea what was happening or who was hidden in the darkness.

Now, as she veered away from the fear of Zack’s cracking sticks and started back toward him, he readied himself, his lungs filled with air, his mouth opening.

Just when he was certain she would come no closer, Jared unleashed the scream.

Which lasted only a split second before something slammed into him.

As the scream abruptly died, Jared jerked awake, still feeling the sickening sensation of something having struck him in the stomach, knocking the breath out of him.

For a moment a wave of panic washed over him as he realized he couldn’t breathe, then his diaphragm began to function again and his lungs filled with air.

And then he felt a searing pain in his stomach, as if someone had just plunged a knife into him and was twisting it in his guts. Howling as a second stab slashed at his belly, he tried to reach for the lamp on the table beside his bed, but as a third stab struck him, his whole body went into a spasm and he tumbled from the bed, dragging the bedclothes with him.

Screaming, he thrashed at the sheet and blanket that were tangled around him, but even as he tried to free himself, he knew there was something else in the jumbled mass too.

Something that was twisting and writhing as frantically as he, but not because it wanted to escape.

It was thrashing and twisting and writhing because it wanted to kill him, and as another scream built in his throat, he felt it tear at his belly yet again.

Panic erupted inside Jared as he felt teeth and claws sinking deeper into his flesh.

He was going to die!

He was going to die right now on the floor of his own room.

Now, he could feel his limbs starting to go numb, and a strange kind of darkness — far blacker than the night — was starting to gather around him.

A nightmare!

That was it — he was having a terrible nightmare, and in a moment he would wake up.

But the nightmare went on and on, and the darkness was closing in on him, and he knew that if it finally gathered him in its folds, he would never see again.

Never breathe again.

He rolled over, still flailing to free himself from the tangle of bedding.

Then he heard a voice.

“Jared? Jared — what’s going on in there?”

His father!

The jaws at his throat were suddenly gone, and Jared sucked in a huge gulp of air. He rolled over once more and tried to stand up.

“Jared?” his father called out again.

It was as if his father’s voice had freed him from the bedding, and he pulled himself to the bed table, reached up, and switched on the lamp.

The room filled with light, and a cat — the black cat he’d seen before, weaving around Angel Sullivan’s feet and rubbing against her legs — sprang to its feet. As Jared managed to stand and started toward the door, the cat’s back arched, and it hissed menacingly and tensed as if it were about to leap at him again.

“I’m coming,” Jared called back to his father, but the pain in his torn belly was so bad he could barely get the words out. His eyes never leaving the cat, Jared backed toward the door, reaching behind him and groping for the key. His fingers closed on it, but it wouldn’t turn.

He struggled with it for a moment, terrified that if he turned his back, the cat would strike, but when the key still wouldn’t turn, he knew he had no choice. Spinning around, he twisted at the key frantically, and this time it clicked open. A second later he flung the door open.

“It’s a cat!” he cried. “It tried to kill me!”

Jared’s face was pasty white, and Steve Woods could see the terror in his son’s eyes. But as he scanned the room, he saw no sign of a cat, though the covers were pulled half off the bed, and the rag rug Steve’s grandmother had made for him when he was about Jared’s age was rumpled up the way it used to get when Steve and his friends used it for a wrestling mat. Steve scanned the room once more, then looked again at his son. “A cat? What are you talking about?” “Over there—” Jared began as he turned to point at the spot where the cat had been crouched. But the cat had vanished.

He looked around the room, searching for the cat.

Nothing.

“There was a cat!” he insisted. “It attacked me! Look! Look at my stomach — it almost killed me!” Steve Woods cocked his head, and a small smile played around the corners of his mouth. “Sounds to me like you had one hell of a nightmare,” he said. He began straightening out the rug with his foot. “I’m not sure I ever had one so bad I was fighting on the floor, but—” “It wasn’t a nightmare!” Jared cried. “It was a cat!”

His father’s smile faded. “Jared, take a look around. Do you see a cat?”

Again Jared scanned the room, searching for someplace the cat might be hiding. But the closet door was closed, as was the one to the hall.

The window was closed tight as well.

Crouching down, he looked under the bed, and under his desk, and behind the chair, and anyplace else the cat might be hiding.

It had vanished so completely it might as well never have been there at all.

Then, as he rose to his feet again, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on his closet door.

There wasn’t a mark on his stomach, or anywhere else.

It was as if none of it had happened.

But it had.

He knew it had.

And he knew whose cat it was that had attacked him…