If There Be Thorns (Dollanganger 3)

Real night started coming. Darkness could bring out the ghosts. Emma tinkled her little crystal bell to call me in to dinner. Wanted so badly to go, but couldn't do it.

Something rotting was in the hollow tree behind me. I turned and crawled out of my cave and peeked into the dark hole in the tree. Rotten eggs inside! Phew! I put my hand in slowly, feeling around for what I couldn't see. Something stiff and cold and covered with fur! Dead thing had a collar around its neck with points that cut my hand--was that barbed wire? Was that rotten dead thing Clover?

I sobbed, wild with fear.

They'd think I did it.

They were always thinking I did everything that was bad. And I'd loved Clover, I had. Always wanted him to like me more than Jory. Now poor Clover would never live in that wonderful doghouse I'd finish someday.

Jory came down the main garden path, calling and searching for me. "Come out from where you are, Bart! Don't make waves now that we're all ready to leave."

Found me a new place he didn't know about and lay flat on my stomach.

Jory left. Next came my mother. "Bart," she called, "if you don't come inside . . . Please, Bart. I'm sorry I slapped you this morning." I sniffed away my tears of self-pity. I had only accidently dumped a whole box of detergent in the dishwasher thinking I could help. How was I to know one small box could make a whole ocean of suds? Foamy suds that filled the kitchen. This time it was Daddy. "Bart," he called in a normal voice, "come in and eat your dinner. No need to sulk. We know what you did was an accident. You are forgiven. We realize you were trying to help Emma. So come in."

On and on I sat, feeling guilty for making them suffer more. Panic had been in Momma's voice, as if she really did love me, and how could she when I never did anything right? Wasn't fit for her to love.

The pain in my knee was much worse. Maybe I had lockjaw. Kids at school had told me all about how it made your jaws lock together so you couldn't eat, making doctors knock out your front teeth so they could put a tube in your mouth and you could suck in soup. Soon the ambulance would come screaming down our street, and, with me inside it, would sound its siren all the way to Daddy's hospital. They'd rush me to the emergency room and a masked surgeon would shout: "Off with his rotten, stinking leg!" They'd hack it off short, and I'd be left with a stump full of poison that would put me in my coffin.

Then they'd put me in that cemetery in Clairmont, South Carolina. Aunt Carrie would be at my side, and at last she'd have someone small like her to keep her company. But I wouldn't be Cory. I was me, the black sheep of the family--so John Amos had called me once when he was mad about me playing with his "choppers."

On my back, with my arms crossed over my chest, I lay just like Malcolm Neal Foxworth, staring upward as I waited for winter to come and go and summer to bring Mamma, Daddy, Jory, Cindy and Emma to my grave. Bet they wouldn't bring me pretty flowers. Down in my grave I'd stiffly smile, not letting them know I liked the killer Spanish moss much better than I liked the smelly roses with prickly thorns.

My family would leave. I'd be trapped in the ground, in the dark, forever and ever. When at last I was in the cold-cold ground, and the snow lay all around, I wouldn't have to pretend to be like Malcolm Neal Foxworth. I pictured Malcolm when he was old. Frail, with thin hair and a limp like John Amos, and only a little better looking than John Amos, who was very ugly.

Just in the nick of time, I was solving all of Momma's problems and Cindy could live on and on in peace. Now that I was dead.

Wounds of War

. Dinnertime came and went. Bedtime was drawing nearer and still Bart didn't show up. We had all searched, but I was the one who kept it up longest. I was the one who knew him best. "Jury," said Mom, "if you don't find him in ten more minutes I'm calling the police."

"I'll find him," I said, not nearly as confident as I tried to sound. I didn't like what Bart was doing to our parents. They were trying to do the best they could for us. They weren't getting any big kick out of visiting Disneyland for the fourth time. That was Bart's treat, and he was too dumb to understand.

He was bad too. Dad and Mom should punish him severely, not indulge him like they did. He'd know, at least, that they cared enough to punish him for his wicked ways.

Yet when I'd mentioned this to them once or twice, both had explained they'd learned in the worst way about parents who were strict and cruel. I'd thought it odd at the time that both of them had come from the same kind of heartless parents, but my teacher often said that likes were attracted to one another more than opposites. All I had to do was look at them to know this was true. Both had the same shade of blonde hair, the same color blue eyes, and the same dark eyebrows and long, black, curling lashes--though Momma used mascara, which made Daddy tease her, for he didn't think she needed any.

No, they wouldn't punish Bart severely even when he was wicked, for they had found out firsthand what harm it could do.

Boy did Bart love to talk about wickedness and sin. A new kind of talk, like he'd been reading the Bible and taking from it the kind of ideas that some preachers screamed out behind the pulpits. He could even quote passages from the Bible--something from the Song of Solomon, and a brother's love for his sister whose breasts were like .. .

Gee, I didn't even like to think about that kind of thing. Made me feel so uneasy, even more uneasy than when Bart spoke of how he hated graves, ole ladies, cemeteries and almost everything else. Hate was an emotion he felt often, poor kid.

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nbsp; I checked his little cave in the shrubs and saw a bit of cloth torn from his shirt. But he wasn't there now. I picked up a board meant for the top of the doghouse Bart was building, and stared at the rusty, bloody end of the nail.

Had he hurt himself with this nail, and crawled off somewhere to die? Dying was all he talked about lately, excluding talk of those already dead. He was always crawling around, sniffing the ground like a dog, even relieving himself like a dog. Boy, he was a mixed up little kid.

"Bart, it's Jory. If you want to stay out all night, I'll let you, and won't tell our parents . . . just make some noise so I can know you're alive."

Nothing.

Our yard was big, full of shrubs and trees and blooming bushes Mom and Dad had planted. I circled a camellia bush. Oh, golly--was that Bart's bare foot?

There he was, half under the hedge, with only his legs stretched out. I'd overlooked him before because this was not his usual place to hide. It was really dark now, the fog making it even more difficult to see.

Gently I eased him out from the shrubs, wondering why he didn't complain. I stared down at his flushed hot face, his murky eyes staring dully at me. "Don't touch me," he moaned. "Almost dead now . . almost there."