The Devil Crept In Read online

  Except that now Jude was in more danger than ever. Otto was impulsive, and for all of that lacking intellect, he offended easily. He knew that Jude was trying to get away, and for that the child would be put in his place.

  Rosie turned her back to Jude as she continued to take reversing steps, closing the distance between herself and Otto’s latest obsession. If Otto lunged, he’d have to go through her before getting to the kid, and she hoped that he wouldn’t want to hurt her. Perhaps he really did love her. But she was still afraid.

  “Otto,” she said, her voice trembling, her hands groping behind her, searching for Jude. “Go to your room!”

  But Otto wasn’t in the mood to take orders, not when his most favorite thing was hidden behind her back. He leapt forward and shoved Rosie into the hallway wall, jamming Jude against it in turn. Rosie let out a yelp, reached out and grabbed Otto’s hunched shoulders before throwing forward all her weight, partly to fend off Otto, but primarily to let Jude wriggle away and find someplace safe. Jude, however, didn’t move.

  Otto snapped his teeth. He hissed and clawed at her arms as she shoved him back. Saliva hung from his blackened teeth like glistening spider’s silk. She could hardly look away from those blue-tinged eyes. They looked positively murderous now, holding no loyalty. To Otto, Rosamund was no longer his mother. She was the enemy, keeping him from what was rightfully his.

  “Jude . . .” The name escaped her before she realized she was saying it. “Run away!” The whole point of this confounded plan was to set Jude free, and she’d be damned if she ended up dead with nothing to show for it. But when she shot a look back toward the hallway wall, Jude was gone. His absence was a relief, albeit a temporary one. She looked back to Otto, who was still fighting her with all his might, and gave him another backward shove. With Jude out of the picture, it all came down to how long she could suppress the savage before her. If she let him burst out of the house and give chase, he’d catch the boy in no time flat.

  “He’s gone!” she yelled. “I told you, never again!”

  But Otto wasn’t making a move for the front door, which didn’t make sense . . . at least not until she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Jude hadn’t left. Rather, he’d disappeared somewhere into the house to seek out a weapon. And now he came at them both, swinging a rolling pin like a Louisville Slugger. For a second, Rosie wasn’t sure who he was aiming to hit, but she chalked that up to Jude’s poor sense of balance, his weakness and delirium. Nearly a week abducted, anyone would have come unhinged.

  Jude reeled back and brought the rolling pin down hard against Otto’s shoulder and, in turn, Rosie’s hand. She yelled out in pain, but rather than letting Otto go, she used her son’s momentary bewilderment to fuel her strength. Bearing down, she clamped her teeth and gave him one final push. Otto stumbled backward, his already poor balance further compromised as one twisted foot slid out from beneath him, slipping on a streak of blood decorating the floor. He went flailing backward into Ansel’s hidden room.

  Otto roared in outrage as his back hit the reinforced wall. He came at her again as she struggled to get the door closed, but all his effort afforded him was a set of fingers gnashed against the jamb. That howl of anger suddenly turned into yowling yelps of pain. His fingers retreated into the room with a jerk, leaving skin and blood upon the frame.

  Rosie slammed the door closed. She stood with her palms flush against it for a long moment, trying to steady her breathing, realizing the scope of what she’d just achieved.

  Maybe she’d never let him out and this was it—this was the end. Her gulping breaths morphed into a dumbfounded laugh. It’s over. Feeling empowered after all these years, she had saved Jude. She had saved herself.

  Putting the secret door to her back, she stared at the boy before her. Jude was still holding that rolling pin high over his head. The kid was in shock, ready to swing. “Jude . . .” She continued to struggle with her own raspy breaths. “You’re safe now. It’s time to go home.” As soon as he made it back, he’d tell the police everything. She could only hope that he’d tell them she had saved him, that she had nothing to do with the ambush, with the captivity he had endured.

  But rather than bursting into relieved tears or bolting out of the house—two reactions that would have made perfect sense—Jude continued to stare at her, his expression strikingly blank. He took a forward step, as if ready to shatter that pin into a thousand pieces against the door behind her, wanting his captor dead. But there was no way Rosie was letting him in there, no matter how justified his rage. “It’s okay.” She caught the rolling pin in her grasp and slowly pulled it from his hands. “Let’s get you home.”

  Jude still said nothing. He only stared at her like she was the bad guy. And again, she could understand. Because without her, Otto wouldn’t have existed at all.

  28

  * * *

  STEVIE WAS GOING out of his mind. He felt like, at any second, his restlessness would have him crawling out of his skin. The day dragged on. He spent most of it with his nose pressed against his window glass, staring at Aunt Mandy’s place, his nerves sizzling with edgy eagerness. Because he knew, as soon as the sky shifted from blue to gold-trimmed gray, Jude would make his move. And when he did, there’d be no turning back.

  He’d spent the day trying to stay patient. He reread a quarter of the first Harry Potter book, ate half a bag of Oreos, downed five Mountain Dews, and—to his horror—had fallen asleep with his chin on the sill . . . twice. Thankfully, Jude was still next door. Stevie could see the shifting shadows inside Jude’s room, creeping beneath the ever-growing brightness of the aquarium’s glow.

  Just a week ago, Stevie would have marched himself across the yard and demanded to know why his cousin had run back to that house on his own, why he had abandoned him in the woods like that. After hours of contemplation, Stevie was almost certain he’d imagined everything beyond Jude’s strange retreat: the way his face pulled into that horrible chapped-lip smile; the shouting he’d heard behind him, more than likely coming from inside his own head rather than from his once-best friend. But still, Stevie remained fixed to his mattress rather than knocking on Aunt Mandy’s door. Because Jude had run in the opposite direction of Sunset Avenue. Stevie had booked it toward town. He hadn’t stopped, not even for a second. So how was it that Jude had beat him home?

  Because he’s faster now. The thought curdled as soon as it surfaced. So much faster. Jude had always been quick, an expert at climbing fences—better than Stevie could ever hope to be. But the way he had leapt down from the fort, arms outspread like flightless wings, feet hitting the dirt without the crippling shock wave familiar to long-distance jumps; the sunburn and peeling skin; the bite that had healed itself in the time it had taken them to march home. All of it was proof that Jude had changed. Physiologically changed. That fact kept Stevie rooted to his bed, only leaving his room to choke down a few bites of Crock-Pot chicken. But he wasn’t hungry after all the soda and cookies, and his mother didn’t seem to mind. Terry was in a mood, grumbling about some “dickhead shit-stain asshole shift manager” who had cut his hours “because he doesn’t like my attitude. My attitude. Motherfu—”

  The Tyrant was too busy hissing through his teeth to notice Stevie excuse himself from the table. Stevie’s mom gave him a faint smile and a nod. Good night, sweetie.

  “I ought to track that son of a bitch down,” Terry threatened. “Teach that pompous little prick a lesson.”

  Stevie ducked into his room and quietly shut the door, hoping Terry wouldn’t hear the latch click. Sometimes, that’s all it took to set him off. Tonight, he wouldn’t need much more.

  By the time the sky started to bruise, Stevie was sick with nerves. And yet, Jude remained in his room, as if not planning on leaving at all.

  Stevie’s mom peeked her head in a few minutes before bedtime. “What are you doing in here?” she asked. “You aren’t in your pj’s yet? Have you taken a bath?”

  “Yeah,” h
e said. “This morning, I did.”

  “You took a bath this morning.” His mom didn’t look even close to convinced.

  “No,” he said. “A shower, not a bath, a shower in the morning glory, gory . . .” His eyes shifted back to his window. “Ghost story,” he whispered. That could have been what had happened to Jude. What if he really was dead? A zombie, just like he’d wanted.

  Stevie’s mom gave him a suspicious look when his attention drifted back to her. “I swear,” he said. He didn’t like lying, but he was coming to realize that the older you got, the more you had to do it.

  “Well, it’s bedtime.” She surprised him by dropping the subject. “Shut it down.” Mom speak for Close the curtains, turn off the lights, get into bed.

  “I just want to finish this chapter.” He lifted his Harry Potter book up from the sheets for her to see. She nodded and left the room, but she’d be back. Stevie shot a look toward Jude’s room again. Leaving the window meant the possibility of missing his cousin’s escape. But Stevie’s mom always checked on him twice, like he was a baby or something, so he abandoned his novel, darted across the room to his closet, and replaced his T-shirt with a pj top. He kept his pants and shoes on—risky, but necessary if he intended to sneak out in a hurry. And that was another thing: if he needed to leave fast, he wouldn’t have time to grab supplies. Hesitating for only a moment, he searched his room, then grabbed a mini flashlight off his desk and jammed it into the back pocket of his shorts. Jumping back onto his bed, he shoved his fully clothed legs beneath the sheets and stuck his nose against the window once more, all the while straining to hear his mother’s footsteps over the muffled cheers of Terry’s football game.

  When the doorknob began to turn, he threw himself backward and reflexively drew the sheets up to his chin. The flashlight dug into his butt cheek, and he winced. His mom paused as soon as she stepped into the room, as if sensing that something was up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Huh?” Wrong? What was she talking about? There wasn’t anything wrong.

  “You made a face,” she said. She watched him from the doorway, then scrutinized the open closet door and the T-shirt he’d left on the floor. Stevie’s heart thudded once. For a moment, he was sure that her mom telepathy was in full effect—her witchy way that made hiding anything impossible.

  “My stomach hurts.” He threw it out there, hoping it would be enough to make her lose the scent.

  “Really? You hardly ate any dinner.”

  “Because my stomach hurts,” he said.

  “Yeah?” She stepped across the room to sweep his T-shirt off the floor, then tossed it into the plastic laundry basket inside the closet. “Maybe it’s all that Mountain Dew,” she suggested, nudging the little trash can next to his desk with her foot. “We’ve talked about that before, haven’t we?”

  Stevie squeezed his eyes shut. He really didn’t need this right now.

  “And what’s with the light?”

  The light? At first he thought she meant the flashlight in his pocket, the one making his right butt cheek go numb. How could she possibly know? Until he blinked up at the fixture overhead—a frosted-glass dome with two lightbulbs and a couple of dead moths inside. He’d left the stupid thing on. If she made him get up to turn it off, he’d be forced to reveal his shorts and sneakers and then he’d really be in trouble. The mere thought of running off while his mother slept and The Tyrant stared dead-eyed at the TV made his pulse beat a little faster. Kids who did that sort of stuff were the types of kids who ended up on investigation shows. Kids who chased their crazed cousins into dark forests ended up hacked to bits.

  “I forgot,” he said.

  “Forgot.” He hated how skeptical she sounded. “Like how you forgot to put your T-shirt in the hamper?” If she looked in that laundry basket for his shorts, it was all over. But it was way too late for laundry, and the light in the closet was off. To Stevie’s relief, she slid the accordion door closed and scanned his room—always looking for something to nag at him about. At his desk, she grabbed the container of Oreos and continued to scrutinize the empty soda cans in his trash bin. “No sugar tomorrow,” she told him. “You’re way over your limit.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, probably a little too quickly than he should have.

  “And I want you to clean this desk. Half of this stuff is probably nothing but trash and food wrappers. You’re going to bring in ants again. We don’t have the money for another visit from the exterminator.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” The ants had been in Dunk’s room, too, but Stevie got the blame. Leave a slice of pizza on the floor just once and you’ll never hear the end of it.

  The Oreo bag crinkled in her hands. She leaned down and grabbed his trash bin, taking a painfully long amount of time to vacate the room. He wanted to yell at her to hurry up and go. Jude could be halfway to the fort by now. You gotta get out, get out, gotta get outta here, you! But all he did was clench his teeth and wait.

  “I know you’ve had a hard past few days,” she said.

  Oh God, he thought. Not now. “I’m just tired,” he told her. “And I don’t feel good.” So get out. Go! “Just tired, fired . . . is . . . is Terry getting fired?” A masterful change of subject. He watched his mom blink at the inquiry.

  “What? No, of course not.” Except she didn’t look so sure about that. As a matter of fact, she looked pretty worried, probably nervous that she’d be the sole breadwinner on whatever money she made answering phones at Duncan’s school. No money for an exterminator, indeed.

  “It’s just all the stress,” she said softly, as if reassuring herself that everything would work itself out. “Everyone has been stressed. Even Terry. The whole thing with Jude has been—” She cut herself off. Go ahead, Stevie thought, just say it. But she didn’t, because words like crazy and insane were taboo when you had Stevie for a kid. She hovered in the doorway, then nodded as if deciding on something—yes, everything would be fine. She was sure of it. “Don’t worry about Terry’s job, sweetheart,” she said. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, Mom,” he told her. And he did, he really did. He just wished she’d be a little more like how she’d been before his and Dunk’s dad had taken off, before The Tyrant had moved in and blown up their lives.

  It was only when she hit the light switch and closed the door that he breathed again, a rush of air bursting from his lungs as he scrambled to sit up in bed. He kicked away his sheets—a risky maneuver. There was a chance she’d turn right back around and open the door again. One more thing, she’d say, only to stare at him as he kneeled beside his window in his sneakers and shorts. But it felt like he’d been lying there for an hour—way longer than Jude needed in order to leave Stevie in the dust.

  But Stevie startled at the sight of his cousin as soon as his hands hit the sill. Just like the night before, Jude was standing at his own window, staring ahead, his silhouette blotting out the bright blue of Cheeto’s aquarium light. It looked as though he had watched the entire exchange with Stevie’s mom the way Stevie had seen Aunt Mandy deliver Jude’s lunch hours before. But the more Stevie squinted to see through the dark, the more he came to realize that Jude wasn’t staring into Stevie’s room. No, he was staring at something just outside of it, beneath the window, hiding in the nooks and crannies of Terry’s junk.

  Stevie smashed his nose flat against the glass, trying to spot what it was that held Jude so thoroughly transfixed, but he knew what it was without needing to see it. Struggling to swallow the wad of phlegm that had collected at the back of his throat, he couldn’t help but make the conclusion.

  That thing was there. It had to be. Whether Jude was seeing it for the first time or the fifteenth, what was important was that he was seeing it. And if that creature had been the thing that was responsible for Jude vanishing the way he had, it was here to take him back again. And that was something Stevie couldn’t allow to happen, no matter how much he suddenly wanted to puke.

  He braced himself, thought of
all the superheroes he wished he could be, and shoved open his window before sticking his head out into the night. As soon as his windowpane slid upward, there was commotion in the side yard. A cat bolted from out of the shadows and toward the front yard, leaving Stevie breathless and blinking. Had that been Mr. Greenwood’s tabby? He didn’t have time to wonder. The sound of Jude’s window sliding open stole his attention.

  Jude leapt out of his room, pausing not to look in Stevie’s direction, but to where the cat had come from. Something’s there somewhere. Stevie opened his mouth, ready to call out to his cousin. Go back inside and hide! But before he could find his voice, Jude was at his own back fence. He paused, as if waiting for something—for Stevie to clamber out his window and follow?—then climbed the planks, launching himself over the top edge like some sort of amateur crime fighter.

  This is really real. Those words screamed like a tsunami siren inside his head. Every nerve in his body buzzed with refusal to believe his eyes. He must have lost it; finally, really, truly lost it. Jude was going back to that house. No way, no how, no no . . . He was going to get himself killed.

  Stevie forced himself to move. He squirmed out his bedroom window before he had a chance to reconsider, and he would reconsider, because this was nuts. Completely insane.

  Running across the yard, he launched himself at the fence, caught the top edge, and struggled to pull himself up. Splinters bit into his hands, burying themselves into the flesh of his palms. He fought against his own weight at the very top, then tipped slow-motion over to the opposite side with the grace of a newborn colt. His sneakers hit the ground hard, the shock wave of the impact traveling up his calves and pooling into an agonizing ache behind his kneecaps. He winced, the pain dulled by a darkness so far-reaching it made his throat close up; an allergic reaction to a newfound fear of the dark.