John Saul - Black Creek Crossing

Behind him, he heard a low hiss from Houdini, then a voice.

Jared Woods’s voice!

“Jeez! It’s that cat!”

The silhouetted figure moved closer, and now the razor-sharp blade of broken glass was just a few inches from Seth’s face. He could almost feel the glass tearing into his flesh, laying his face and neck open, slashing at his arteries—

From behind Seth came a muted scream, just loud enough to break the strange spell the broken glass had cast on Seth. He whirled around to see the barely visible figure of Jared Woods clutching at his face.

Houdini! The cat must have leaped at Jared and—

The thought was cut off by another scream, and once again Seth whirled.

What he saw made him stagger back a pace. The figure holding the broken bottle — who Seth was now sure had to be Chad Jackson — was standing stock-still. The broken bottle was still clutched in his right hand, but even in the dim light coming from the streetlight at the end of the alley, Seth was certain he could see something dripping from it.

Blood.

What had happened?

Had Chad slashed himself? He remembered, then, the last lines of the verse whose instructions he and Angel had followed only an hour earlier: … the payn will turn from thee and fall upon thine enemie.

As Seth stood frozen and gaping, Chad moved again, and then was hurling himself toward Seth, the broken bottle raised high. Even in the darkness he could see an insane light glowing in Chad’s eyes, and he knew what was about to happen.

Chad was going to kill him.

Seth’s reflexes instinctively took over, and his mind conjured a single image.

An image of Chad’s attack turning back on him, just as the verse had said.

At almost the same moment, Chad lurched backward, as if an unseen force had pulled him from behind, and then he was writhing on the ground as he tried to escape the weapon that was wielded by his own hand. Out of the corner of his eye Seth saw Jared Woods, staring in stupefaction at the struggling figure thrashing in the alley, then turning to stagger away into the darkness.

A moment later, just as the lethal point of the bottle was about to rip into Chad’s neck, Seth let go of the vision he’d conjured in his imagination.

And as the image of Chad slashing at his own neck vanished, Chad dropped the broken bottle. Then he lurched to his feet and stumbled after Jared.

As they disappeared into the darkness at the far end of the alley, Seth turned back to the gate to his own backyard, but paused to look for Houdini.

The cat had disappeared.

With the image of Chad struggling in the darkness to avoid the ravages of his own weapon still etched in his memory, Seth pushed through the gate, slipped into his house, and went up the back stairs to his room. He closed the door, dropped his backpack on his bed, then looked at himself in the mirror.

On the outside, he looked exactly as he had this morning when he went to school.

But on the inside, he knew something had changed.

He could have made Chad Jackson kill himself just now, could have made him use the broken bottle to slash his own throat.

Instead, he’d let Chad go.

But now, in a small dark corner of his mind, all the things Chad had done to him over the years rose up out of his memory, all the humiliations and all the beatings, and he found himself wishing that he hadn’t let Chad go.

He wished, instead, that he’d finished what Chad had begun.

In his mind Seth Baker began to visualize what he could have done, and as the images of Chad destroying himself grew clearer, Seth felt a strange power growing inside him.

Maybe, after all, it wasn’t too late.

Maybe he could still have a day of reckoning with Chad.

Focusing his mind, he once more turned his enemy upon himself…

E TRIED TO KILL ME!” CHAD JACKSON HOWLED. “THAT little shit tried to fuckin’ kill me!” He and Jared were in Chad’s bedroom.

The broken bottle was gone — dropped somewhere as he’d fled down the alley to the safety of his house. As he stared at the blood covering his right hand, he felt as if he were going to throw up. He hurried to the bathroom and got there just in time to drop to his knees in front of the toilet before a violent contraction seized his stomach and he felt the remains of his lunch rise in his throat and spew out of his mouth.

Gagging and retching, Chad hung onto the toilet, and three more times the nausea overwhelmed him. When his stomach was finally empty, he dropped down onto the bathroom floor, half panting and half sobbing. What had happened? How had Seth — Seth Baker, for Christ’s sake — done it? He and Jared had spotted him half an hour ago, and it hadn’t take them long to figure out what he was up to. They followed him almost all the way, concealed in the darkness in the park, then cut down Elm Street and through a couple of yards when they saw him heading for the alley.

It should have been easy — Jared was ahead of Seth, and Chad was behind him.

He was caught.

Caught!

Caught all by himself, except for that stupid cat.

Where had it come from? And how could it be alive? They’d killed it, all three of them, and stuffed it in Angel Sullivan’s locker. It boggled Chad’s mind to the point where he could only dismiss it, stop thinking about it. And anyway, it was nothing but a stupid cat! If Jared had just kicked it or something—

That was it — it was Jared’s fault.

The last of his nausea giving way to anger, Chad scrambled to his feet, intending to find Jared, and—

Jared was standing in the bathroom door.

Standing there staring at him.

“What are you looking at?” Chad snarled.

“Jeez, Chad,” Jared breathed. “All that blood — I thought we were just going to scare him!”

Now it was Chad who was staring. “I should have killed him!” he screamed. “After what he did to me!” He put his finger to the cheek the broken bottle had slashed only a few minutes ago, and yanked it away as he felt the sting of his own touch. “He coulda killed me!” He turned and gazed into the mirror at the throbbing, burning wound. But he also saw Jared Woods gazing at him, and he saw the doubt in Jared’s eyes. What was going on? “You saw him,” he said to Jared’s image in the mirror. “Jeez, Jared — you saw what he did to me!” As he turned to face Jared directly, he saw his friend pull away. “You saw it!” he said again.

“It — it was dark,” Jared stammered.

Chad’s voice rose. “He came at me! He grabbed the bottle and—”

“I didn’t see that,” Jared said, taking a step backward. “I only saw you holding the bottle.”

“So what are you saying?” Chad demanded. “You think I did this to myself?” Again he put his fingers to his throbbing cheek.

Jared shook his head. “It was dark, and… Jeez, Chad —you had the bottle.” Chad moved toward him, but again Jared backed away.

“You saw it,” Chad said, the fury in his voice dissolving into a whine. “You—”

“It was dark,” Jared said. “I couldn’t really see—” He licked his lips nervously, then: “I think I better go home.” He turned and hurried down the stairs. A moment later Chad heard the front door slam.

What had happened? Why didn’t Jared believe him? He turned back to the mirror and gazed once again at his face.

How had it happened? It was Seth’s face the broken bottle should have laid open, not his own. How could Seth have gotten hold of him and twisted the broken glass around like that?

And why couldn’t he remember it happening?