chapter EIGHT
0 Days, 12 hours, 18 minutes
Dominic didn’t play in the second half, and with Buff now on the field, Pueblo won the first league game of the season twenty-six to twenty-five.
Back at home, Aaron scrubbed his arm over the bathroom sink. The wound had scabbed over, but the tension in his flesh threatened to rip it back open. He wrapped his wrist tight with gauze.
In twelve hours, he was due at the Chamber of Halves. In twelve hours, Amber and Clive would join as halves, and their souls would intertwine forever. Aaron forced himself to breathe, to exhale—and a nerve-racking moment followed when he wasn’t sure he could fill himself back up again.
They had known since childhood.
His mom appeared in the doorway. “Phone call,” she said, tossing him the cordless.
Nobody called him on their home phone.
“Hello?” said Aaron.
“Walter Wu speaking.”
“Who?”
“Dreadfully sorry for the late call,” he said. “I’m your authorized correspondent from the Chamber of Halves.”
Aaron’s stomach gave an odd shudder. “What’s this for?”
The man cleared his throat. “Mr. Harper, how are you feeling?”
“Just dandy.”
“Sick?”
“Yes.”
“Stomachache?”
“Absolutely.”
“Any pain at the back of your head?”
Aaron’s mouth was already open to give an answer when he froze, and felt the hairs on his forearms slowly stand on end. “Mr. Wu, what’s this for?” he asked again.
The man cleared his throat one more time then spoke in an high, oddly strained voice. “I think that just about does it. Tomorrow at eleven then, Aaron.” And he hung up.
For several seconds, Aaron held the phone to his ear, listening to his heart’s echo over the dial tone, before he set it down.
“You should get to bed soon,” said his mom from the doorway, his dad behind her. “You want to feel rested in the morning.”
“Get sleep while you can,” said his dad, winking. “You’ll be up all night tomorrow.”
They both smiled at him, doing their best to act like he was normal, exactly like any other seventeen-year-old on the eve of his birthday—about to experience the best day of his life. It wasn’t that easy, though.
Other parents spent months and thousands of dollars on their kids’ eighteenth birthdays. But with all the MRIs and visits to the doctor, no one had time to prepare for Aaron’s birthday. Here he was twelve hours from his appointment without a suit to his name, and all they could do was smile at him.
Though his intestines felt like they were being threaded through a needle, he managed to focus on Amber, on a final glimmer of hope. And as soon as his parents went to bed, he hurried out to his car.
***
The muddy sky had begun drizzling, and warm, oily droplets sprayed his cheeks.
His Mazda sputtered, caught, then lugged him up the street. Houses slunk by, dark as specters, and the liquid on his windshield glowed neon from their porch lights. The hulk of Mission Ridge loomed ahead of him, crowned with a strip of golden lights—Loma Sierra drive.
Amber’s house.
She was Clive’s half. Aaron counted raindrops, straining to numb the sting in his heart, but it was hopeless. He clutched the steering wheel and squeezed the color from his knuckles. At the game, Amber said they had known since childhood.
Pain exploded in his right arm, making him wince, and he watched as fresh blood soaked the gauze. The salty stench of an open wound coiled up his nostrils. But the pain was nothing compared to the rage and envy gnawing in his gut.
But Amber had lied before. In fact, she always lied. Aaron downshifted and sank his foot to the floor. No one knew their half before their birthday.
The sleek blue body of Mr. Lilian’s corvette glistened in the rain. Aaron braked too late and plowed into its bumper. He cringed, jumped out of his car, and assessed the damage. Flakes of paint floated in the puddle between their cars. He leaned closer. Blue paint—thank God.
Amber didn’t pick up her phone, so Aaron scooped up a handful of gravel, snuck around back, and trudged up a muddy hill until he was directly under her balcony—he hoped. Then he chucked pebbles against the sliding glass doors. It was absurd.
He heard a gasp, followed by a splash. But not from the balcony. The noise came from the hillside, from close by, from within arm’s reach—
“Aaron?” It was Amber’s voice. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness under the balcony, they focused on the wall right in front of him, where she stood inexplicably in polka dot pajama bottoms, rain boots, and an open hunting jacket. She was also holding a rake, sort of how you’d hold a baseball bat—
“Were you about to hit me?” he said.
“I should have,” she muttered, reluctantly lowering the rake.
He looked her up and down. “And this is how you dress when I’m not around.”
“You sound excited.”
Then he noticed the plastic bin in a puddle at her feet, spilling cans and cardboard boxes into the mud.
“Taking out the trash?” he said, unable to prevent himself from smirking.
“Recycling,” she said.
“No servants?”
Amber stepped in close, and he could see her eyelashes fluttering in the rain. “You just think I’m too pretty to be doing this kind of stuff.”
“Makes no difference,” he said.
“So you’re admitting it?” she said.
“It didn’t get you out of chores, did it?”
“Aaron, why are you here?” she said with a hint of impatience. Droplets sparkled in her hair, dripped off, and ran down her nose. The humidity brought out her smell, intensified it.
“Because you’re lying about Clive,” he said finally.
“And you’re sneaking around in the middle of the night outside my bedroom,” she said. “Want me to tell my dad?”
“Go. I’ll wait right here,” said Aaron. “It’s about time he and I had a word.”
“Fine. Don’t move.” She turned to leave, but Aaron grabbed her arm and tugged her to face him.
“Tell me you’re not his half,” he said.
Amber’s eyes were luminous as they scanned his face. “Why do you care, Aaron? It’s not like you wanted to be my half.”
“So this is about last night then?” he said.
“When you broke my heart? Maybe,” she said.
“I liked you better when you didn’t listen to me.”
“And I liked you better before you started trying to protect me,” she said. “Because you can’t.”
“Amber, you don’t want to be my half,” he said. “My channel’s about to break. I don’t get to have what everyone else has.” He reached up and wiped her dripping hair off her cheek. “You do.”
“So all this meant nothing to you?” she said, watching him in disbelief. She sighed and pushed away his hand. “Can you go now? I have to get ready for tomorrow—” her gaze fell to the bloody gauze around his arm, and she stopped abruptly.
“I’m fine—”
“Clearly not, Aaron,” She yanked him through a back door into her house, despite his protests. As soon as they were inside, Aaron heard shouts from another room. But not at him. It was Mrs. Lilian, hysterical, screaming herself hoarse at Mr. Lilian.
“Ignore them,” said Amber, blushing as she pulled him up the stairs.
“Right.” Aaron raised his eyebrows at the muddy footprints they left on the carpet. “And when they see me?”
“You run,” she said, seating him on her bed. A piercing crash from downstairs made them both jump. The parents were hurtling china now.
Amber avoided his eyes and busied herself with the gauze around his arm, unwrapping it. Her hair tumbled loose and covered half her face.
Aaron caught pieces of her parents’ argument before they lowered their voices, and they chilled him . . . illness is getting worse, it’s not my fault the potentate can’t make the wedding . . . Oh yeah? Well unless we want to disgrace our bloodline, now our daughter has to spend her honeymoon at the potentate’s palace . . .
Amber’s hands trembled as she peeled the last of the gauze off his arm.
She went to her bathroom and brought back a warm washcloth. “Take off your shirt,” she said.
“Amber, I really don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Fine.” She knelt in front of him and cleaned his arm. Her parents stopped fighting, and an unnerving silence followed. Amber rubbed the wound with Neosporin, and her fingers soothed the fire in his nerves.
And lit all different ones.
“You’re making it worse,” he said.
“This hurts?”
He stared at her. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
She smiled. “Do I ever?”
There was a knock on the door.
“Sweetheart, what are you doing in there?” It was her dad.
“Having sex,” she said.
“I heard a man’s voice.”
“Could you come back later?” she said, her voice biting.
“Amber—”
“I’m naked!”
Aaron tensed, waiting for the door to open, but her dad’s footsteps moved on down the hall.
“Now you really have to go,” she whispered.
“I thought you wanted me to talk to your dad,” said Aaron.
“I changed my mind,” she said, a ghost of a smile crossing her face, and she raised her head to kiss him. “I like you better alive.”
There was a creak outside her bedroom door. And then it burst open. Aaron jumped up.
“God dammit, I knew it,” said her father, stepping into the room. “Trespassing on my daughter and my property.” He carried a semi-automatic rifle in his hands. It was all black, polished metal.
And Aaron was staring straight down the barrel’s throat. “Shit,” he said.
“Dad—NO!” Amber leapt in front of him.
“Baby, if you do not step aside, I will fire at him above your head.” His eye narrowed behind the gun sight. “Son, I will escort you now to your vehicle. I did notice you were parked rather close to my Vette—I hope that’s incidental.”
***
It occurred to Aaron, as he scribbled out an uncashable twelve-hundred dollar check at gunpoint for the scratch on Mr. Lilian’s bumper, that without Amber, life wasn’t even remotely appealing. He wanted her to be his half.
As soon as Aaron made it home, he collapsed fully clothed onto his bed and stared at the four digits on his alarm clock. Two minutes until midnight. Then it would be Saturday, March 30th.
And he would be eighteen years old.
He switched off his bedside lamp . . . darkness, except for the green glow of the clock’s display. He pulled his arm back, and the gash itched painfully. His fingers scarcely resisted tearing into it.
One minute. Exhaustion weighed on his eyelids, but he strained to keep them open. All those nights he and Amber had stayed awake, all that time, and now the last of it had drained away. Gone. He couldn’t fall asleep now.
Ten seconds. He counted the blinks of the colon between the eleven and the fifty-nine. Five seconds—four—three—two—one—
A violent crash from the front door jolted him upright. The sound of shattering glass. Instinctively, he clutched the back of his head.
Aaron stared at his bedroom door, toes tingling. He heard the distant toll from the Chamber of Halves, officially announcing his eighteenth birthday.
He listened carefully, his heart pulsing in his throat—and then he heard another sound from the hallway. Footsteps.
Aaron held his breath as the floor outside his door groaned under the weight of an intruder.
The door banged open.
***
Two figures rushed inside. They wore black beanies stretched over their faces.
“Surprise!” yelled one of them. He laughed, flipped on the lights, and yanked off his beanie—Dominic Brees.
The other one laughed too, and Aaron knew the voice—Clive Selavio.
Aaron stood up, adrenaline flooding his veins. “Get out of my house,” he said. “I’m sleeping.”
“Not anymore,” said Dominic. “This is your payback for what happened at the game.”
Clive rushed in from the side and clamped his hand over Aaron’s mouth. “Shhh,” he said, and Aaron could taste his sour breath. “Don’t cry!”
Aaron slapped his arm away, grabbed his throat, and shoved him against the wall. “I said, get out of my house.”
Clive snorted with laughter and squeezed Aaron’s wrist, dipping his fingernails into the open wound. Aaron winced and yanked his hand back. He threw in the weight of his other shoulder. They both fell.
Aaron seized the bedside lamp, snapped the cord free. Eight and a half pounds of hard porcelain. But Dominic caught him from behind. The rugby player’s thick forearm coiled around Aaron’s throat and dragged him backward.
Aaron slammed his foot into Clive’s face and squashed Dominic against the other wall. They toppled over the bedside table, and his choke loosened. Aaron broke free, twisted, and buried his elbow into Dominic’s jaw.
But Clive’s clammy fingers closed around his ankle and yanked him off his feet. He crumpled onto the carpet and his attackers swarmed over him. A knee crunched into his back, and he felt the ice-cold prick of the switchblade poised at his throat.
“Don’t move,” Dominic hissed, his saliva splattering against his ear. Aaron twisted, but the blade pried into his skin, dangerously close to his jugular. He froze.
Dominic panted. “You made a mistake, number eleven, and now you’re paying for it.”
Aaron felt rope uncoil on his back. While Dominic held the knife to his throat, Clive bound his wrists and ankles and yanked the knots tight.
Dominic waved for Clive to switch the light back off. They were still for a moment, and they heard the creaking mattress from his parents’ bedroom.
Of course. They weren’t alone in the house.
“Dad!” Aaron yelled. “Call the police—” But Dominic smashed his head into the floor.
“Shut your trap!” he hissed.
Then they hustled him to his feet and out of his room. Aaron stumbled in front of them, his feet tied, praying he didn’t trip—because Dominic didn’t know just how close the blade was to slicing open his throat.
Outside, moonlight flooded the front yard through a gap in the rainclouds. They had driven the Beamer onto the grass and smashed the flowerpots. Dominic forced Aaron into the back, handed the switchblade off to Clive, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
It felt like a bad dream.
Dominic floored it and popped the clutch, and the Beamer lurched forward. They missed the driveway completely, bounced off the curb. He shoved the stick into second, and for a heartbreaking moment, the screech of stripping gears rattled the car. The smell of burning clutch hissed from the vents.
“Want me to drive?” said Clive.
Dominic snickered. “You can’t drive stick, Selavio.” He checked the rearview mirror, and the car swerved. “His head, you idiot!”
Aaron felt Clive’s slippery fingers drag a pillowcase over his face.
They drove for twenty minutes, and Aaron worked at the knots around his wrists. They were already looser; apparently, Clive was never a boy scout. Even blindfolded, Aaron knew where they were taking him. He could feel the static electricity when they entered Dominic’s gate. He was aware of something else too. A sore spot, an itch. At the back of his skull.
Halfway up the driveway the Beamer pitched to the left, and they bounced along the lawn. Bushes whacked the bumper and scraped the sides. Through the pillowcase, Aaron saw tall, spindly shadows.
They were taking him into a forest.
A second later, he freed his wrists. And he didn’t wait a second longer. In one fluid motion, he tugged the pillowcase off his head, yanked the door handle, and threw himself from the car.
Bad idea.
The car was moving faster than he’d thought. Much faster. His shoulder crashed through tree roots and splinters tore his skin. He tumbled, ate dirt, and collided face first with the trunk of an oak tree.
Numb with pain, Aaron leaned over and clawed at the knots binding his ankles, but the fingers on his left hand felt weak, feeble. The gash in his arm had reopened. The wound pulsed, and he couldn’t get the rope around his heels.
Two pairs of hands seized his arms, and once again, the pillowcase smothered him. They hauled him into the woods, in and out of the toothed hollows beneath tree roots. Clots of fungus yielded under his face, squishing and splattering him with pus. The sugary odor nauseated him.
Then they jerked him to his feet, and the ground beneath him was solid—a slab of concrete. His toes hung off a ledge. Dominic pressed the knife to his throat, and Aaron realized they had taken him to an old water well.
Clive’s hands fished through his pockets and removed his cell phone. He breathed into Aaron’s ear.
“This is so you’re not a nuisance on my birthday,” he said. “While I fulfill my duty as Amber’s half, you can cry your heart out in a dark hole—”
Aaron elbowed him in the solar plexus, and Clive keeled over, wheezing. He felt Dominic’s foot crunch into his spine, and he lost his balance.
Aaron tumbled down the well’s black throat.
***
His stomach squeezed up into his windpipe as dank, rotten air whistled past him. He crunched into the opposite wall, twisted, and kept falling. When he finally hit the bottom, his legs crumpled. His ear gouged into the stone.
Then, except for the violent agony in his limbs and the slosh of moldy water, everything was silent. But at least his bones weren’t sticking out of his kneecaps. The well walls must have broken his fall.
Aaron pulled the pillowcase off his head, but it didn’t help. Perpetual blackness caved in on all sides. He reached forward and his fingers collided with cold, grimy rock, inches from his face. The well was hardly wider than his shoulders. His eyes adjusted, and he became aware of the dark circle of sky, twenty feet above him.
Aaron untied his feet and tried to climb. He wedged his fingers into the slimy cavities between stones and then kicked off the ground. He hung for a split-second, his body trembling with exertion, before he collapsed.
As he panted to catch his breath, decay soaked into his lungs, chilled his heart. The walls were too slippery. He’d never climb them.
In eight hours, he was due at the Chamber of Halves. Eight hours. And here he was at the bottom of a well. Clive and Dominic were not coming back to get him.
He was going to miss his appointment.
It was that simple.
Aaron pictured his nameless half waiting all alone in a dungeon at the Chamber of Halves, and he pitied her. Did she already know, as he did, that their channel was going to break?
Then the girl in his mind changed to Amber, and his stomach did cartwheels. He needed to be there in the morning for her. Suddenly, Aaron balled his fist and swung at the walls, tearing skin from his knuckles.
No way in hell did Clive deserve her, not in a billion years. In eight hours, Aaron would be there to teach him that lesson.
Just as soon as he got out.
Aaron squatted and raked the mud with his fingers. The air down at the bottom was heavier, weighed down and humid with infection, morgue-like. He half expected to find bones. But there was nothing so useful. He took inventory. Shoes, six feet of rope, shirt, pants, belt, and a pillowcase. Somehow, they added up to his escape.
But seconds passed. Minutes. His body cooled, and it became hard to think. The cold numbed his fingers, crept into the marrow of his bones. Then the shivering began. And it occurred to him, between convulsions, that he could die in this well.
Ten minutes passed. It was a terrifying kind of time, impaling him silently. Nothing came to him. He raked the bottom again. Still nothing. He searched the walls, probed for indentations, anything he could grip. Always nothing. Slowly, inexorably, the walls of his tomb were closing in.
After he traced the contours in the slimy walls enough times to memorize them, reaching higher and higher, Aaron finally discovered an irregularity.
Almost out of reach, he could just feel the lip of an opening in the side of the well. Maybe he could haul himself up. But then what? He’d still be fifteen feet underground. Still, it was worth a try.
Aaron stood on his toes and curled his fingers over the lip. He strained his forearms, and gradually, feeling like his tendons were going to peel from his wrists, he lifted the weight off his feet. But then his fingers slipped and he crashed backwards. When he held up his hands, they were frozen in the shape of claws.
Aaron tried everything. He backed into the wall, jammed his feet against the stone for leverage. He spread his arms and wedged his fingers into crevices. He untied his shoes and stood on top of them. But the inside of the well was caked with squishy moss. He always slipped.
And the blood had withdrawn from his cold fingers, the nerves throbbed. Aaron gasped for breath, and his chest stung with each lungful of frostbitten air. There was only one more thing to try.
Aaron squatted, tensed his thighs, and jumped as high as he could. He slapped his palm over the ledge. For a moment, he gripped the ooze, then everything slipped and he collapsed painfully to the bottom.
It was like volleyball. To get maximum elevation, you needed an approach, you needed to build momentum. But even if you were directly under the ball, you didn’t just jump straight up. You executed footwork. You shifted your weight, and that got you a little higher.
Aaron closed his eyes and visualized a volleyball sailing over the net. An overpass. The other team’s middle was already up, his arm cocked. Aaron had to get it first, he had to set his outside hitter. He’d done this a thousand times.
Aaron swung his arms and exploded upward. He got both hands over the top, kicked off the back wall, and pulled himself up until his eyes were level with the ledge.
It was a tunnel leading out of the well, scarcely large enough for a human. He was clinging to the bottom edge. Before his strength gave out, he wiggled inside the opening and collapsed onto his stomach, hands near his waist. His body shook from the exertion, but he had done it.
Except the tunnel went deeper underground.
Hopefully it surfaced eventually . . . as opposed to plunging three-hundred feet to tap an aquifer. He would just have to find out.
There wasn’t enough room to swing his arms around in front of him, so he shifted his weight and scrunched forward. Darkness swallowed him, and the stale, extinct smell of moist concrete eroded his nostrils. With what little space he had, he made steady progress downward, half sliding, half crawling—deeper into the Earth.
Too deep. Aaron was about to turn back, thinking it was a dead end, when the tunnel leveled out. He breathed a sigh of relief and squeezed himself into the level portion of the tunnel. It was a tighter fit, and he felt his shoulders wedge against cold, damp concrete—and he had a terrifying realization.
It was only with the help of gravity that he had been able to slide down the tunnel. He would never be able to backtrack the distance he’d come. Either the tunnel led to the surface or—
There was a splash in front of him, and then liquid slipped under his torso and trickled between his fingers. Aaron lay still, panting. Had there been water in the tunnel all along?
He wiggled, moving only inches, and more water splashed against his chin. It was flowing from somewhere in front of him, submerging his hands and pooling underneath him. Sweet, icy droplets dribbled onto his lips—he knew the taste. Fresh rain.
It must have been raining again—no, pouring. The runoff from the hillside twenty feet above him was somehow draining into the well system, filling it up. Water gushed around him, drenching his shoulders now. Aaron strained against the cement, anxiety oozing in his stomach. He needed to lash out, tear the walls apart. But his arms were straitjacketed at his side.
And what if Clive and Dominic had already returned to find the well empty? They would assume he escaped and never check again. He was going to drown in this tunnel, alone.
Hours before meeting his half.
Aaron squirmed into the blackness, thrusting himself slug-like into the icy flood. Water rose in the tunnel, trickled down his back and sloshed up his nose. He stretched to keep his nostrils above the surface, but his head scraped the ceiling. His windpipe tightened in his throat. He coughed, but he couldn’t fill his lungs. It was terror that kept him moving, terror that kept him arching his back and jamming himself deeper.
Then white foam crashed around him, and before he even had the chance to hold his breath, his face was plunged underwater.
***
Amber stuffed her hair straightener, skin lotion, and shampoo—the last of her essentials—into the duffel bag, and was all ready to run away. Except the zipper wouldn’t close. She took out her socks. She’d be better off without the useless things anyway.
She took one last look around her bedroom, and the hollow feeling in her stomach deepened. Tomorrow, Aaron would meet his half and forget all about her while she would be trapped forever with Clive.
Unless, of course, she was nowhere to be found.
Amber hauled her bag down the stairs. Her mother was waiting at the door.
“Amber, darling, where do you think you’re going?”
Her mother’s voice made her flinch. “Isn’t it like a hundred years past your bedtime?” said Amber, stopping right in front of her.
“André will be here at six.”
“In the morning?” said Amber.
“You do want to get ready before your wedding, don’t you?”
“Who says I’m going?”
Her mother ignored the comment, but her lower lip twitched. “Clive says he hasn’t been able to reach you.”
“That’s because I blocked his calls,” said Amber.
“You did what?”
”You heard me, mother.”
In one sudden movement, her mom slapped her across the cheek. Amber glared at her, though the sting made her eyes tear up.
“The potentate arranged this for you. It’s your duty. Now go to bed.”
As her mother walked away, Amber could see the tattoo under the deep v-back of her nightgown—the tattoo they carved into her nine days after she was born that said she belonged to Amber’s father.
Amber would get one too.
Defeated, Amber walked back upstairs and collapsed onto her bed. Her mother was right. The idea of running away from her half, from Clive, was almost laughable, like trying to escape from her own body. There was a part of him inside her—in a place she couldn’t reach, otherwise she would have torn it out already. Their bodies were linked. No matter where on the globe she fled, he could always track her.
And now that their channel was mature, prolonged separation would be agony. After a few months of evading him, her body would start to wither. After a few years, they would both die. Being with her half wasn’t a choice—it was a biological need.
Amber buried her head in her comforter and screamed. Why couldn’t she choose her own half? She wanted Aaron.
And she wanted to hear his voice. Right now.
Hands trembling, she dialed his number. Maybe she could sneak over to his house and feel his arms around her too. Maybe they could run away together, abandon their halves and live like outlaws for a few bittersweet months—
“Hello, Amber,” said a cruel, cold voice. Clive’s voice.
Her stomach shriveled into a knot.
“Where’s Aaron?” she said, her heart sputtering.
“Don’t you want to talk to me?” he said.
“Clive, where is he?” she repeated.
“He’s fine.”
“Then put him on.”
There was silence. “Why do you hate me?” he said.
“Why do you think?”
“But you love me too.”
“Can we talk about this later?” she said.
“Amber, we were chosen to be halves,” he said. “The potentate wanted us—”
Amber hung up the phone. Just like her mom said. The potentate arranged this for you.
What did it matter what the potentate arranged? She was Clive’s half because of her own bad luck, not because the potentate arranged it. Halves were born, not chosen—
Or could they be chosen?
Suddenly, what both Clive and her mother said made perfect sense—not chosen . . . faked. She scrambled off the bed and brushed her hair from her eyes. She had to get to Aaron before tomorrow, before it was all too late.
Then her skin prickled. She felt breathless, like cold water was closing around her lungs.
Aaron.
***
Aaron was twenty-five feet underground, trapped in a tunnel full of water. His lungs writhed for oxygen. He thrust his head back, struck concrete, and raked his scalp to shreds. He scratched the walls, terrified, but there were no air pockets.
The closest air was back in the well, minutes away.
Aaron opened his eyes underwater, felt the sting, and glared up the submerged tunnel—wondering only which thought would be most fitting for the last few seconds of his life.
He chose Amber, fixed his mind on her, and just for a second pretended they spent their lives together. He imagined finding out tomorrow, on their birthday, that they were halves, that they always had been, always would be, forever—a spasm in his chest jarred him back to the tunnel. He couldn’t hold his breath any longer, he had to breathe.
But he felt warm despite the death congealing in his skin. There was light up ahead, conveyed through the water like clairvoyance. But how far? Too far. And how long before his chest was rent wide open? Aaron fought the current and crawled forward, buoyed by the liquid, his brain slurry. Then his breathing reflex took over, his mouth sprang open.
He thrust his head back one more time. But this time, there was no ceiling. His mouth cleared the water and he filled his lungs with air. He felt a breeze on his face, raindrops. A circle of sky glowed twenty feet above him, pearl gray at the top of a vertical maintenance shaft. Fastened inside the shaft, a rusty ladder led to the surface. He grasped the first rung and climbed.
Aaron burst through a layer of roots and sprawled out on the grass under an oak tree, just beyond the meadow behind Dominic’s house. He had never loved the taste of air so much. As rain kissed his cheeks, he gazed at the mansion through the trees. Golden strips of light sprinkled the meadow from tall, radiant windows.
Somewhere in there was Dr. Selavio, the man who could supposedly cure half death and treat a ruptured channel. Now that Aaron was here, he might as well investigate. Today was his birthday, after all. It was now or never. Plus he needed his cell phone back.
Still panting, he untangled himself from the roots and climbed to his feet, but before he took a step, something odd caught his eye off to his right, in a clearing between two oak trees. An oddly shaped mound glistened in the rain.
Aaron breathed in slowly, and he noticed the smell. Odor didn’t carry in the rain. He shouldn’t have smelled anything from that distance, just wet soil. Yet he did—a wretched smell slinking through the rain, impervious. And Aaron was certain the mound in that clearing was its origin.
Aaron edged closer, and details materialized under the raincloud’s feeble silver glow. A glossy plastic sheet had been stretched over a lumpy mass. Droplets splattered on the material and drizzled off in the folds. A shovel stood propped against a tree beside a pile of mud, and an unfinished hole—a grave.
Suddenly, Aaron choked on the stench of rotting flesh. He clutched his stomach as the black fumes pried into his nostrils, scorched his sinuses. His knees jerked and he lost his balance, tripped forward and caught himself inches from the plastic. By then he knew what was underneath, and he realized it would be a mistake to visit Dr. Selavio.
The mound was a corpse wrapped in cellophane and turned on its side, a boy; he couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Blisters festered on his waxy skin.
It was like someone turned up the volume inside Aaron’s head. His heart drummed. The oak leaves crackled beneath him as he stumbled backward.
The boy had to be Justin Gorski.
But there was one thing about the body that disturbed Aaron more than anything else. Under the faint light from a nearly full moon that beamed above the clouds, it was clear.
It couldn’t have been any clearer. Justin’s head had been shaved, and a dark “X” had been drawn across the back of his scalp. And in the very center, scabbed over and crawling with maggots, a hole had been drilled into the back of his skull.