The Well Part 5

Not even my name, really, just something that croaked two syllables out in a long, screechy whisper, the kind that sounded like nails on a chalkboard, only worse. I stumbled back a step, looking around.

Cooper.

"What's the matter?" Megan asked.

I spun in a circle. Whipple barked and backed up, his body low to the ground, a growl rumbling in his throat. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Come on down, Cooper.

This time louder, like that guy on The Price Is Right. Inviting me to play the game.

"That voice." But even as I asked her and the whisper built in volume, I knew.

Knew it was only in my head. Knew it was meant only for me to hear.

I looked at the well. Felt everything inside me fall to my gut with a sickening realization.

Come back. Bring her with you. Paolo's already here. We'll have a party.

There was something in that well. And it wanted me. What was worse a it wanted Megan, too.

Megan's eyes were wide, her face pale. "Cooper. You're freaking me out. What's going on?"

"Don't touch me!" I took two more steps back, hands going to my ears, but it did nothing to block the sound, to keep it from crying now, like a wolf on a hill.

"Cooper?" She sounded truly alarmed now.

I shut my eyes and swallowed hard, even as the voice kept calling me, its tone changing now. It was taunting me. Laughing. I had to get Megan out of here, get her away from me, because anyone who came near me was in as much danger as I was.

I kept my eyes shut because I knew I couldn't look at Megan and do this. "Megan, just leave. Get out of here, d.a.m.n it. I a I don't ever want to see you again."

"You a" Her voice broke. "What? How could . .

But she never finished her sentence. By the time I opened my eyes, Megan was gone. Whipple scuffled forward in the leaves and pressed his little body to my legs in sympathy.

The voice had stopped calling my name, and all that was left was the trailing of its laughter in my head. I bent over, picked up a rock, and hucked it into the well.

The laughter stopped.

For now.

Twenty-four hours later and I still had no solutions.

Megan ignored me, like I'd told her to. But still, the cold shoulder stung really badly.

I told myself it was for the best, even as everything within me hurt like h.e.l.l and I missed her as if I'd had part of myself amputated. I might have ruined the best relationship I'd ever had, with the person I cared most about in the world.

Keeping her away from me was right, though, until I figured out what to do. Had a plan. A solution. Or woke up from this nightmare.

Still, it hurt. Every minute of every day. And a hundred times over, I wanted to call her, write a note, apologize. Just to see her smile again. Instead I suffered.

Faulkner was out with Sh.e.l.ley, at some senior yearbook planning thing, leaving me to fend for myself at home. I hadn't been able to come up with an excuse to leave and sleep somewhere else, so I stayed in on Tuesday night, figuring I'd stick to my room and lock the door if I had to. But so far, all had seemed pretty normal.

Joey showed up a little after eight. StepScrooge Sam grudgingly let him in, and only because Joey said he was there for homework help. Joey burst through my bedroom door, cursing my father's name. "Dude, you gotta help me write this paper. If I fail English this quarter, my parents will keep me on house arrest for the rest of my life."

"I thought you had a date," I said.

Joey shook his head. "Lindsay bailed on me."

"Joey, I don't want to-"

"Coop, I'm begging you here. Besides, you owe me."

"For what?"

He stared at me, face blank. Thinking. Something Joey tried not to do too often. "Uh, maybe it's the other way around. Doesn't matter. We're both failing, and you want a new cell phone, right? So you can have a link to the free world, like the rest of us?"

"Yeah."

"Then man up and let's get this paper done."

Translation: Joey would sit on my bed while I did all the work. I was in no mood for that, so I pointed at my computer. "Do a Google cruise on Hamlet and see what you get."

He shrugged. "All right. First, I gotta check my vitals. My mother's got my parental block up so high, all I can visit is Mickey Mouse."

I flopped onto my bed, picked up a Hacky Sack, and tossed it from one hand to the other, waiting while Joey ran through his Mys.p.a.ce page and his e-mail. I pretended to listen to Joey's rambling account of life as an online stud. Finally, he managed to stumble onto the website for the CliffsNotes. "It's got, like, four sentences on that stupid play," Joey said.

I flipped open my copy of Hamlet and skimmed the pages of act three. The words swam before me, a mountain of Old English gibberish. A ghost appearing before Hamlet, terrifying him and telling him someone was out to kill him. Then the play, mimicking murder. Murder. I didn't want to think about that. English wasn't a good alternative, but it was the only one I had right now. I ran a finger down the page, looking for something that would make sense.

"The whole play would have been a lot shorter if someone had just told Hamlet to quit whining and do something already," Joey said.

I laughed. "Yeah."

Joey read some more, clicking from site to site. "Hey, what's this supposed to mean?" he asked. "They keep mentioning this in the Google stuff. 'The lady doth protest too much.' What's the big deal about that line?"

"I think it means that the queen in the pretend play keeps on saying how innocent she is, and when you keep saying it over and over, that means you're guilty."

Joey thought for a minute. "Like when Melissa Felton kept telling me she wasn't doubling up with Eric Brown. Every time we were out somewhere, that girl was totally shoulder surfing, always looking for someone else when she should have been looking at me."

"Yeah, like that," I said, not really listening as Joey kept going on about Melissa and his broken heart. "Joey. Joey."

"What?"

"Dude, we should write this paper."

"No, we should go back to my house and get buzzed. I know where there's some bonus beers from when my parents had a cookout on Labor Day. Back of the fridge in the garage. They're Heinies. My dad hates those. He'll never miss *em."

"No. I don't feel like it."

"Dude, are you, like, dying or something?"

I just might be. "Or something." I got off the bed and switched places with Joey, who hadn't typed a word anyway.

"Man, get some sunshine. You're making me depressed."

"Lot on my mind, that's all. Let's get this paper done and I'll feel better."

He shrugged. "Plagiarize. It works for me."

I shook my head. "My dad has this computer program or website or something where he feeds in a few lines and knows in a minute if you copied. It's like a lie detector for papers."

"What is he, the paper police?" Joey cursed. "We actually have to write this thing?"

"Man up, Joey," I said, repeating his words. And for twenty minutes, I did get Joey to do that-or at least, he typed while I did all the mental lifting. We worked out two separate papers-pretty much the same ideas, just different wording. I blathered on about how the play within a play was Hamlet's way of proving guilt or innocence and helping himself make a decision, but that at the end he was no more decided than before, because when it came to family, murder was never an easy decision.

Except, apparently, in my house.

"Cooper, you're a total Einstein," Joey said, reading over the words we had on the screen. "Even I think this sounds good. An easy A, for sure." He squinted at the paper. "Well, your dad is grammar Hitler. Probably a B."

"Yeah." While the printer spewed out the pages with a coughing whine, I checked Mys.p.a.ce. I'd visit Megan's page. See what was up. Make sure she wasn't telling the world what a total loser freak-out I had been yesterday.

"Hey, I'm gonna go raid your fridge. You want anything?"

"No. I'm good." I typed in my log-in information. Joey ducked out of my room. I waited for my page to come up. At first, it started to appear. The regular black and red punk background I'd pimped from another page filtered over the DSL.

Then, like a virus, a web of green began spreading over the red and black, inching its way past the slashes of color, slipping beneath the comments section, under my friends section. It took over my background, leaving the photos and words. What the h.e.l.l?

I'd been hijacked. I cursed. I didn't have time to rebuild my page and fix the background. There were more important things on my list than this. Forget it. Let whoever had flipped me to green win for now. I clicked over to the comments, looking for Megan.

Her face appeared, flickered like a TV going bad, then- It was gone.

Looking for someone?

A new comment. With a new picture.

Of a well.

Not just any well, but the well in the vineyard. The well that I'd been thrown down. The well that had tried to kill me. The same well that had very likely eaten Paolo, leaving half his brains behind like some sick little Hansel and Gretel trail for me to find.

I jerked back, the chair nearly toppling over, my feet scrambling against the oak hardwood to keep me from going headfirst onto the floor. My mouth opened, closed. No. No. That wasn't real. I'd imagined the picture of that stone thing sitting in the middle of the woods, looking just as it had the day before, when I'd been there with Megan. I shook my head, then refocused on the computer.

The picture of the well was still there, and now it had begun to expand-no, not expand-breathe. The well's picture spread out and up, seemed to grow and shrink, pumping with the regular rhythm of a heartbeat. Then it tilted, going on its side to show me the yawning opening at the top.

The dark hole opened wider, like a mouth saying, Feed me. Feed me.

I reached out a hand but held back, not touching the screen, not touching the living, breathing-that was impossible; a picture on a computer couldn't live, could it? image.

I'm here, Cooper. Missed me?

Holy mother of G.o.d.

I popped out of the chair and backed up until my knees. .h.i.t the bed. I fell onto the unmade jumble of sheets and blankets, shaking. I scrambled back until my head hit the headboard, but it wasn't far enough. Not nearly far enough.

I could still see the monitor. Fingers of slime pulsed and reached, spreading across my Mys.p.a.ce page, first out of the image of the well, as if the mouth was spewing the slime, then over it, until every inch of the screen had been devoured.

Sweat broke out on my face, my neck, everywhere.

Leapfrogging over itself just like before in the cla.s.sroom, the slime inched up the monitor screen, a twisted screen saver from h.e.l.l, and then, as I watched, my jaw somewhere on my chest, the jade tentacles climbed right out of the monitor, skeletal limbs feeling for the black plastic perimeter, latching on to the edge and hauling a hunk of green out, onto the monitor stand. Up one side, then the other, then across the top, spreading, always spreading, across, down, then onto the floor, crisscrossing, knotting, strengthening, and growing, until the green was as thick as cement.

My spine became ice. My hands started to shake, the tremors spreading through me, until I'd become a human earthquake. Oh G.o.d. It was going to get me here. Grab me now. Right here, in my room. There was no running. No getting away.

Then the smell, like a stink bomb, blasted out of the screen-so bad, I saw it floating across the room, a yellowgreen cloud of death. I cut off my breath and held it tightly, refusing to inhale, to let that cloud touch my lungs.

I had to move, but fear pinned me in place. Move, I told myself.

Move.

Now. It's coming.

Move, moron, move.

It's coming, it's coming, it's- I charged off the bed and ran toward the monitor. I reached for it, wanting to smash it, kill it. But even through the web of jade, the one part I could still read were the comments, as if the well wanted me to get the message.

Come on down and see me, Cooper. I'm waitingforyou. I've been waiting a long, long time.

"No! You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, leave me alone!" I swallowed back the chunks of fear in my throat, then tried to yank the monitor up, but it wouldn't move. The slime had become Super Glue, holding on tightly. "Let go! Let go!"

I need you, Cooper. And you need me. We're special.

"Get away from me!" In answer, the web spun off the monitor, arcing out like a loogie, spewing onto my hands. I shrieked and leaped back. G.o.d no, it wasn't going to touch me again.

I was too late. A piece had already latched on to me. I tried to pluck it off, but it stuck like tar.

And then I heard the well laugh again. It laughed like Santa Claus. A happy laugh. Friendly.

That scared me more than anything.

I clawed at my hand, trying to sc.r.a.pe the piece away, but it only tightened its grip. One end spiraled outward, toward the monitor, reaching for the parental slime. It was going to connect. It was going to drag me back there. Back to the- My bedroom door opened. I spun around and saw Joey, a bag of Doritos in one hand, two c.o.kes in the other. "Dude. What's wrong with you?"

"There's a a a a" I turned back, pointed at my computer. But there was nothing there. Just my normal Mys.p.a.ce page. A few comments from Megan from a few days ago, asking where I was.

I looked down at my hand. Plain old skin, red streaks running down the back from my fingernails scratching at it. The only sign that this had really happened. Sweat trickled down my back, spreading in a circle across my chest, and my fingers shook.

"What'd you see? A mouse?" Joey laughed at his computer pun. His very bad computer pun. "Man, you're all sweaty. What were you doing, pushups while I was gone?"

"Yeah, uh, pushups. Trying to stay in shape. You know, for football."