Disappearance at Devil's Rock Page 11

  “How much of him did you see this summer?”

  Luis looks up and to the left. “Like . . . five times at Split Rock, I think. And we ran into him sometimes kinda randomly at the 7-Eleven, too.”

  “Randomly?”

  “Yeah. We never really planned anything with him. We were there a lot with nothing to do and sometimes he’d show up and we’d go to Devil’s Rock.”

  “You mean Split Rock.”

  “Yeah, same thing, I guess. Detective?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you asking me about Arnold because you think he has something to do with Tommy disappearing?”

  “I’m asking to find out as much information as I possibly can. Why hasn’t Arnold come up before today? You and Josh were very forthcoming in providing a list of Tommy’s other friends’ and classmates’ names. Why not Arnold?”

  “I—uh—I didn’t think of him like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a friend.”

  “So he’s not a friend? What is he then?”

  “No, I guess he is. That’s not what I mean . . .”

  “How did you mean it then?”

  “I don’t know, it’s hard for me to—to describe, I guess? I thought you were asking for kids our age, you know, for places Tommy might go to.”

  “Really, Luis?” Allison tries to muster the right amount of sarcasm to lighten the blow but at the same time make her point. Why didn’t he and/or Josh give up this guy’s name days ago?

  “Yes, really,” he says, and his voice goes high-pitched whiney and he’s a little kid all over again. “We hadn’t seen him in a few weeks and we don’t know where he lives or have his phone number or anything like that. Tommy wouldn’t know where to find him even if he wanted to.”

  Mr. Fernandez blurts out, “I can’t take this. This is bullshit. You and Josh didn’t tell the police about this Arnold guy because you were covering your own asses, not wanting to get in more trouble for sneaking out and drinking and doing who knows what else with some goddamn loser. Probably, what, your drug dealer too, right? Is that it?”

  “What? No! It’s nothing like that, Dad!” and all three Fernandezes are yelling over one another.

  Allison doesn’t interrupt and waits for the storm to pass. It does only after Luis throws his cell phone on the table and dares his parents to check the phone numbers and text messages. The three of them stare at the phone and are breathing heavily. Luis lifts his feet onto the chair, wraps his arms around his knees, rolled up tight in a little ball of anger.

  Allison locks eyes with Mr. Fernandez when he reaches out for his son’s phone. She says, “Is it all right if I continue?”

  He says, “Yes. Sorry about that.” He has the phone in his hand but places it in front of Mrs. Fernandez. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Thank you. I understand this isn’t easy. Luis, to be clear, I’m not accusing Arnold, you, or your friends of doing anything wrong. I’m trying to get all the information I can. I appreciate you being so helpful. Okay?”

  Luis nods and loosens back into his original posture.

  She says, “Let’s go back. I’d like you to tell me more about that first time with Arnold at Split Rock.”

  “Okay.”

  Now that Arnold was up on the rock with them, he seemed bigger than he did when they were sitting on their bikes at the 7-Eleven. He wasn’t huge, there were some guys bigger than him at the middle school, but he was a shade taller than Tommy’s five feet eleven and three quarters. Luis wouldn’t let Tommy call himself six feet until he was actually six feet. It was only fair. Arnold was thicker and outweighed Tommy by a good forty pounds, which wasn’t saying much given how stick-man thin Tommy was. Arnold had on jeans that weren’t tight but not quite baggy, either, and were too long in the leg; the bottoms pooled around his feet and were all dirty and frayed from being dragged across the ground. He wore black Chuck Taylors on his feet, the logo scratched off, and a tight long-sleeved shirt, black with green stripes, the sleeves pushed up past his hairy forearms and over his elbows. He had one of those survival bracelets that you could unravel into ten feet of camo-colored emergency nylon rope. Luis had had his mom buy him one for his birthday in the spring, insisting she get a regular adult one, not kiddie-sized. He didn’t wear it because it was like a hula hoop for his wrist and he could slide it up to his elbow. Arnold didn’t have a beard but maybe what he had would be considered a full-blown beard if he didn’t shave tomorrow. If not for the facial hair, he could pass for high school, or college, or whatever came right after college. Luis didn’t know for sure as he categorized anyone more than a few years older than him into a nebulous, vast galaxy of adults younger than his parents and teachers. Arnold’s dark brown hair was short on the sides and slightly longer at the top, pushed up into a faux hawk, a point at the top of his head. His chin came to a sharp point, too. His lips were pulled tightly over his sizable front teeth. He had thin but clearly delineated eyebrows, like borders on a map. His eyes were dark and always up, never down, and you knew when they were looking at you.

  Arnold said, “Drink it or don’t. No pressure. Not a big deal. It’s all good.” He plucked cans from the six-pack like he was choosing the ripest fruit from a tree.

  Luis almost dropped the beer when Arnold tossed it to him underhand. Tommy caught his with one hand and then opened it right away in a show-off motion that was pretty cool until the foam volcanoed out. Tommy laughed and started drinking, trying to catch it all. After he pulled the can away he covered his mouth with the back of his hand and his eyes were big, blinking, and watery.

  “Sorry about that. The long walk in here shook them all up.” Arnold smiled and he looked at Luis and said, “Tap on the top of the can like this for a little bit before you open it. Helps calm down the suds.” Luis did as instructed and tapped the can with his pointer finger, tapping hard enough that his woodpecker-like fingertip went pleasantly numb. He stopped when Arnold stopped. Josh did the same. Luis dug his fingernail underneath the tab and pried it up. The crack and fizz was loud, and there was no foam. The smell hit him right away, and it smelled like the recycle bucket his dad used to keep in the garage and now kept out by the shed. The first mouthful expanded and filled Luis’s head, and it was too warm, too bitter and sharp. His throat, with some limbic mind of its own, constricted, and he struggled to swallow it all. He was abnormally aware as it slid down through him and then leached out from his middle. That people enjoyed drinking this seemed like a secret he’d never be privy to. But the second sip was a little better than the first. The same with the third. He could do this.

  Arnold said, “Welcome to Devil’s Rock, guys. Cheers!”

  Tommy: “Cheers, sir!” He looked to Josh and Luis for a reaction. His goofy smile dimmed, and his sip was nowhere near as enthusiastic as his first.

  “Yeah, let’s hear it.” Josh sat down on the rock, totally fish-lipped his beer and put it down, hiding it under his tented legs.

  Luis was going to stay standing and make sure he would take bigger sips and be the first one to finish his beer. Maybe he’d even crush the can with his hand, or better yet, stomp it flat under his heel. His next sip was too big and hurt his chest going down.

  Arnold stayed standing, too, and he stood in the middle of the triangle of the three boys, the split in the rock as a boundary to his left. “This is a good story. It gets a little long because I like to tell it, but we’ll deal. It’s a story about an old friend, of course: the devil. Or Old Scratch. He has lots of names but that one’s the coolest. Old Scratch sounds sexier, meaner.”

  Josh said, “Old Scratch,” in his deepest voice. “Hey, he’s right.”

  Tommy laughed, but Luis cringed at the self-proclaimed future politician trying to be . . . what? Political? Luis couldn’t really put into words how it was Josh acted around adults, but it annoyed him. Why couldn’t Josh be normal, or at least normal around this guy? Luis dismissively threw “Hardo” at Josh from the side of his mouth and po
inted an open, karate-chop hardo-hand at him, too.

  Arnold says, “This story goes back to the Puritans, yeah? They were always screaming about the devil and blaming him for everything bad they did and everything that went wrong. Which was fine by him. The devil’s in the coincidence? Right?”

  Josh: “Isn’t it ‘the devil’s in the details’?”

  Arnold: “Same thing. And I like my saying better. It’s more accurate. You’ll see. Anyway, without the devil even doing anything, they could already see his hand in every action, hiding behind every tree, crouched in every shadow. No deer in the woods, bad year for crops, unfaithful husband, sick and dying kids, all his fault, right? Those Puritan dickheads were the perfect marks. And sometimes Old Scratch would make things more interesting, stir up a little chaos, you know. Tell them what he could see.” Arnold arched his eyebrows and took a sip of beer.

  Luis took a sip, too.

  Josh, again: “Like what?”

  “He’d tell ’em how their neighbor was the one who stole potatoes or a chicken, or that guy over there, he poisoned your crops and was saying stuff about your wife, too. He’d tell ’em what should be done about that cute minister’s daughter, or that so-and-so’s wife wanted to fuck you and if she wouldn’t, no worries, you could accuse her of being a witch and stay in the Lord’s good graces. He’s good at pushing you into doing stuff that you only daydream or think about, yeah.

  “There are stories about the devil everywhere you go in New England, but these woods in this area here were feared more than any other. Especially the old quarry. You guys been there yet?”

  Luis answered for the group. “No.”

  “You should go. So cool. Almost two hundred years ago, when a local railroad company used the granite from the quarry to build a huge bridge, the workers told stories about seeing the devil hiding in the surrounding woods or down in the rocks, peeking out through the gaps. They said he had secret caves and he would whisper to them, telling them terrible things. Everyone was spooked. Except Oakes Eastman.”

  Josh: “Oakes? What kind of fucking name is Oakes?” He laughed that fake, little high-pitched laugh, a combo of voice crack and fake stoner.

  Luis sighed. A little buzzed and too annoyed to feel guilty for wishing that they had left Josh at home.

  Arnold: “One of the Eastmans, the famous Eastmans, you know, the same one who bought all this land and built the estate. He was a weird guy; a botanist or some shit like that—with a name like Oakes, guess he was destined for that bullshit, huh? No such thing as coincidence, boys. Like I said, coincidence is where the devil lives, man. And hey, his wife was an artist and into drawing freaky stuff, too. The perfect couple to buy up a bunch of creepy woods and call it Borderland.

  “Before he built the mansion Oakes went for walks all up and around the ponds to do whatever a botanist does, and he saw the devil watching him. He could only see the devil out of the corners of his eyes. You know what I mean? You know how to look out of the corners of your eyes, right? You can only see him when you’re not really looking at him.” Arnold turned so that he wasn’t looking directly at any of the boys. “But Old Scratch was there, dancing around in the edges, and getting closer. On one of Oakes’s walks he found this boulder, the one with the split in it like it was a door to Nether, right.” Arnold stopped and started coughing. “Dry throat. Anybody want another beer?”

  Tommy and Josh said no. Luis could tell their cans were still practically full. He had maybe a quarter left. Luis said, “Almost ready.” He took a deep breath to gird himself up for the big finish.

  Arnold grabbed himself a second beer. “So, before they moved limestone one to start building his mansion and the natural pool and all the rest of it, Oakes decided he’d fix his devil problem, and he came up with a plan. He invited anyone and everyone who said they could help. Priest or rabbi or pagan or one of his folklore Harvard professor friends, didn’t matter, and like I said, Oakes and his wife knew a lot of weird people. He took them all to Split Rock when the sun was bright and as high above their heads as possible and he had all of them bless or put spells, not on the rock, but on the ground, the dirt between the split, down there. You can’t bless or un-devil—” Arnold laughed at his own made up word, and Luis did, too “—a rock. But you can bless dirt and clay, though.”

  Josh chimed in again. “Why not?”

  “Ever heard of consecrated ground?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Ever heard of consecrated rock?”

  Josh shrugged and made a face. “No. I don’t know, I have no idea. I—”

  “Dude. It’s just a story. Almost done.”

  Arnold walked over to the split, the four-foot-wide gap between the calved boulders, and pointed down. “No one really knows which one out of all the prayers or rituals or spells exactly worked. It doesn’t matter, I guess. What does matter is that Oakes like napalmed the ground down there with all sorts of hocus pocus.”

  Luis said, “Hocus pocus? Was the guy Harry Potter or a kid’s birthday party magician?” and he gave Arnold a wiseass smirk. His chirp was cool, well timed, not annoying like Josh. Josh was like the auto-correct on his cell phone.

  Arnold returned Luis’s smirk. “Abracadabra?”

  Luis groaned and shook his empty beer can at him.

  Arnold didn’t ask Luis if he was sure he wanted another or if he could handle another, and he didn’t suggest that Luis slow down because he wasn’t a big guy. Arnold laughed, slapped Luis on the back, and handed Luis a second can. Luis turned so that his back was to Arnold, puffed himself up, and flexed his arms for his friends. He said, “Come get some.” Tommy and Josh rolled their eyes, but they were also visibly uncomfortable while looking at their own still-not-empty beer cans and not really doing anything with them. Luis had the wild urge to jump one of them, slip behind them and put them in a headlock, and then roll them off the rock and be king of the hill. He stayed close to Arnold, sitting a few feet away, then opened his beer and took a greedy sip, big enough that he felt a little dizzy after.

  Arnold continued his story. “Later that night Oakes went for a hike in the woods. He carried a lantern”—Arnold held out his can in front of him, pantomiming lantern—“and a walking stick, and made his way to Split Rock. The whole way there he felt Old Scratch nipping at his heels, and he heard him whispering into his ear, telling how he could make sure his family was rich forever, how he could make him governor like he made his father governor—that one freaked the hell out of Oakes—promising Oakes anything he wanted; make him stronger”—Arnold held his beer in front of his crotch—“or longer, all he had to do was say the word. Oakes was careful not to say anything, and he walked straight to Split Rock. He climbed up to the top and stopped right before the split. Old Scratch followed, and his feet sounded like they were scratching up the rock. Might be one of the reasons why they call him Old Scratch. I’ll show you later, but there’s a spot down there that looks like one of his footprints in the rock.” Arnold paused and walked in a circle, then he put one foot over the split, straddling the gap. “Oakes turned around to face the devil, like this. He made sure to keep the split between his feet.

  “He told the devil that before he agrees to anything, he wants to know if the offer is legit. Oakes said he’s heard stories of the devil cheating folks. The devil heard that kind of stuff all the time, so that didn’t bother him. He laughed and said that a deal was a deal, his word was his word. Then he said, ‘I can show you.’ Oakes asked him how he could show him. And the devil said, ‘I’ll come over there and make my eyes your eyes. Oh, the things I can show you.’ Oakes could feel Old Scratch say that, like the devil was already inside of him this whole time. Oakes was shaking scared but held his ground as the devil came closer and closer, and then the devil reached out for him, and right as those cold claws were about to touch him, Oakes shuffled his feet back quick—” Arnold moved backward, too, hovering his torso above the split “—and with the devil leaning forward, off balance,
Oakes swiped the devil’s feet out from under him with that walking stick and he fell down into the split. He landed hard but got right up and started scrabbling around down there like a trapped animal, and he was screaming and yowling, so loud, the worst sounds ever. The devil wasn’t hurt, but he was stuck. Couldn’t climb up the walls and he couldn’t just walk out between the boulders into the forest. It worked. Whatever spell it was they put down there, or the combo of all of them together, it worked. The devil was trapped.

  “That night everyone who lived in Ames could hear his howling and crying all night long. The next morning, Oakes went back and the devil was gone. There was nothing there.” Arnold walked away from the split and sat down in the middle of the boulder, held his beer can up, and took a long sip.

  Luis said, “That story is the awesome. Should be a movie.”

  Tommy: “Okay. Devil’s Rock it is then.”

  Josh said, “That’s it? The devil just went away?”

  If Luis’s can was empty, he would’ve thrown it at Josh.

  Arnold said, “Sort of. Oakes built his mansion and cut the walking paths through Borderland and everything was fine for years, decades even. Then, later when they were both old, Oakes and his wife started seeing someone peeking into their windows at night, watching them sleep. They could see it out of the corner of their eyes, but when they went over to the window and really looked there was nobody there, and no footprints or nothing outside below their window or anywhere on the grounds. His wife even thought she saw someone standing actually inside their bedroom, standing there and watching. Oakes, when he was an old, old man, like a year or so before he died, went back to the rock for the first and only time since that night he tricked and trapped the devil, and he found this tree, right there, reaching up and out above the crack like a claw.”

  Josh: “Pfft. That tree isn’t a hundred years old.”

  Luis: “Shut up.”

  Arnold held up his hands. “I’m telling you like I heard it. And legend has it that you need to keep away from the tree. If you touch it, it’s like you’re calling the devil, inviting him for a visit.”