If it had been anyone but Megan next to me, I might have done just that. But a guy can't wonk out in front of his girlfriend. That's beyond pitiful. So we headed toward h.e.l.l while I pretended to be brave.

From five hundred yards away, the creature sensed the boy's approach. He halted, pouring every ounce of his strength into his olfactory glands, and turned, a centimeter at a time, as if he were an antenna tuned to one station.

Cooper Warner.

The boy approached. Coming toward a The well?

This turn of events took the creature by surprise, and for one long second, his thoughts scrambled and he lost the connection to the boy. He'd thought he'd have time to get ready, to orchestrate his little surprise to lure Cooper in here. But now Cooper was coming on his own.

Before, Cooper had gone to the one place the creature refused to touch. It was too sacred, too special. She had once been there, and he would not touch it because it was the only place on this earth that reminded him of when he used to be a human. A real man.

Someone who could love and care. And- Be loved.

But all that was over-very, very over. Now his focus was solely on the next generation.

But now Cooper was back on the creature's land. Hmm a perhaps he'd save his surprise for later. A treat.

The creature drew his hand across his head and sc.r.a.ped a long, deep wake-up call into the mushy skin.

He yowled. Yellow pus streamed onto the mossy, wet stones beneath him.

Pay attention. The boy. The boy is here.

He sent his mental vision traveling over, above, and into the air, drawing in with his lungs to pinpoint the boy's location. The earth responded, working with him, he and the land one as always, nature whispering the boy's path, translating every footfall back to the creature.

It hurt, oh it hurt so badly, to think this hard, but the boy was so close, and the temptation to use the vines and the trees to grab him, drag him down, and drink that life from him now nearly took the creature's mind away.

Now, his body urged. Now, the earth said. Do it now.

No, his mind whispered. Wait. The time isn't right.

Three more days. Three more days.

A rustle of leaves, footsteps approaching.

The creature began to pant, and he pressed his fingertips deeper into the spongy ma.s.s above his nearly blind eyes. In the darkness, they saw nothing, but under the control of his brain, the only thing about him that really worked anymore, they saw everything.

And here they saw not just Cooper, but the girl, too.

How nice of Cooper to bring me dinner, his body said, and his tongue, or what was left of it, came out to taste the air, to slither across what was left of his lips. And if I save a little of her for later a such a sweet, sweet dessert.

He raised his head and sniffed deeply, inhaling the air above, his chest rising and falling, hurting with the effort to draw from the world outside of his. But still, he breathed with a hunger that went deeper than any before, breathed in until he caught the scent he wanted.

Flowers and warm, sweet, innocent skin.

Her skin.

He rose, his length extending up, climbing with the vines that had become part of him so many years ago, when he had been put down here and the land had reached inside and joined his body, making them one, giving him powers he hadn't realized he could have. Powers that had made these two centuries bearable. His brain reached out, thinking, thinking, thinking.

And turned over a new idea. A way to use her. Oh yes, she would do. She would be perfect for his purposes.

Until Cooper was here.

He licked his lips. And antic.i.p.ated a meal like no other.

light glinted off the knife in shards, like some kind of otherworldly thing. For a second, I could believe I was in a Manga comic or one of those prisoner dudes in Battlefield Earth. Anywhere but where I really was.

But only for a second. Because I knew where I was. What I was doing. And right about now, I wasn't so sure why anymore.

My guts ripped into shreds, and my heart pumped like an oil rig. I kept looking up, looking for Megan's face. She smiled back at me, sending me a you'll-be-okay message. If I focused on her, I'd be okay, be able to breathe.

And not think about what was waiting for me at the bottom.

Was that thing down there? Or could I have gotten lucky in the past few hours and it had died or left for a bigger well?

Yeah, right. The monster went and looked for better digs. Get over the fantasy, Cooper, and get back to reality. That thing was down there, probably waiting with an open jaw to catch me.

Kept my eyes on the bright red of the bandanna in Megan's hair, the wide blue of her eyes. She smiled and whispered, "You'll be all right. I'll be waiting."

I sure as h.e.l.l hoped so. Then she disappeared, and the rope began moving again.

I inched my way down, bouncing my feet along the wall, that smell invading my lungs, my throat, my stomach, rising up inside me like a tank of vomit so thick that I felt as if I were seven years old again. I'd stayed home from school with the flu, missing the cla.s.s trip to the Maine State Aquarium. I'd been really p.i.s.sed off, too, because I'd wanted to see the shark tank. I remember being so sick, my mother had had to keep a bucket next to my bed.

I'd puked into it so often, my whole room smelled like a vomitorium. It took days and a whole freakin' can of Lysol to get rid of that smell.

But the well a The well was like multiplying my room by ten thousand, then raising it to the power of infinity. I wanted to pinch my nose and stop breathing, but I couldn't. To pinch my nose would mean letting go of the rope-no way.

And stopping breathing-well, that went without saying. My father may have thought I was stupid, but I wasn't that stupid.

"You all right, Cooper?" Megan's voice, as sweet as choral music, coming down to me from above. I held on to that as tightly as I did the rope. She was the real world. Normalcy. Something to come back to at the end of this.

"Right as rain on the plain," I shouted back, my voice bouncing off the walls. Forcing myself to make a joke. Not just so she'd think I was cool, but so I could focus on something other than ralphing.

Above me, she laughed, the sound almost like coins dropping onto me. "I cannot believe you're pulling a Mr. Hedden right now."

"Hitting every stone on the way down with myp's, too."

d.a.m.n, I loved the sound of her laughter, so I made another joke about our history teacher, giving it the full Elmer Fudd treatment.

Mr. Hedden had a bit of a sticky lip. Whenever he said that "rain on the plain" thing-and he said it a lot-those unlucky enough to be stuck sitting in the front row got hit by his oral. That p did him in every time. We'd leave history cracking up, stuttering "p-p-p" and plowing spit all over one another, forgetting every d.a.m.ned thing we'd just learned about the War of 18 r 2.

Megan said something else, but I didn't hear her. I dropped another few inches, and that was enough. Enough to cut off the jokes, to send a scream racing up my throat. I caught it before it escaped and swallowed the fear. No more funny stuff now. I tugged on the rope, our signal for Megan to stop lowering me. I didn't want to descend any farther.

Because I had started to hear the thing breathe. It was here. And it was waiting for me.

Oh G.o.d.

Pull me up, I wanted to scream. Pull me the h.e.l.l up.

But what good would that do? The thing would just come after me, or send my mother, or its green vine, and I'd be back down here again, on its terms, not mine.

I gripped the knife tighter, staring at the blade. I could do this. I had to.

Every meal I'd ever eaten seemed to surge up in my stomach and meet my lungs. I held the rope tighter, tugged on it again, and kept bouncing down.

I heard the thing's nails scrabbling against the bottom, the last bits of rainwater in the dried-up well splish- splashing beneath its paws or feet or whatever the h.e.l.l it had. The breathing was excited, like a panting dog waiting for a bone.

I stopped moving, bracing my feet against the sides of the well, and closed my eyes. I was still ten feet above it, maybe twelve, but I couldn't move. Every one of my muscles was frozen with fear.

What the h.e.l.l was I doing?

"Cooper? You okay?"

Megan's voice sounded far away. Too far.

I opened my eyes. Took in a breath. Tried another. "Yeah, fine." Liar. "Just hold on a sec."

Below me, the thing kept breathing.

just shut up; stop breathing. Stop moving. Stop it, stop it.

But the thing didn't read those thoughts. Oh, no. It just breathed louder. Moved more. Scritch-scratch. It was pacing. Antic.i.p.ating me.

Sweat coated my palms, dripped down my face. The knife slipped in my grip. I scrambled, nearly losing my hold on the rope, the knife pitching forward, my hand, my stupid hand, almost letting it go- And then, thank G.o.d, I had the knife again.

Beneath me, I swore I heard the thing laugh. Its claws ran across the bottom of the well and I braced against the wall, my back flat.

Where was it?

Was it coming for me?

Could it climb up here?

Please, oh please, tell me it couldn't climb.

I tried to reach around into the backpack for the flash light, but I had only two hands, and I'd been too much of an idiot to think about hanging the flashlight around my wrist so that I wouldn't need a hand to hold it. My bright idea had been to get down to the bottom first and then get the light out.

Yeah, well, Stupid clearly was my middle name, because I needed the light now and I couldn't get it.

I twisted, moved, grunted, then stopped.

And listened.

No more noise from below. No breathing. No scratching. Nothing. Was it gone? Or was it just a Waiting? Patiently and quietly?

I pushed off from the wall and tugged on the rope again, starting to make my way farther down. The rope jerked and I bounced twice hard, the bottom of the thick rope cutting into my a.s.s, the rough fibers chafing through my jeans. "Megan, hey, careful!"

She didn't answer.

"Megan!"

The rope kept jerking. Bracing my feet against the slimy walls, I tried to slow the movements, but the rope bounced again and yanked me down two feet at once. I looked up and saw a bright wide circle of end-of-day orange sun above. "Megan, hey! Megan!"

But all was silent and still above me.

And then, like a slow-motion movie, the end of the rope curled over the ledge and spiraled down into the well. Megan was no longer there.

Leaving me officially screwed.

I opened my mouth to scream, but it was too late. I fell like a stone to the bottom. Right into the thing's waiting, eager grip.

I n s.p.a.ce, no one hears you scream.

I watched an old movie once that opened with that line. I was eight when I saw it and it scared the c.r.a.p out of me, had me thinking aliens were going to slime through my walls and eat me alive. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, screaming my fool head off and waking up Faulkner. He threw a pillow at my head and told me if I didn't shut up he'd fart on my face.

That scream had been nothing compared to what came out of my throat now.

The thing had me, and no one was going to hear me scream.

No one was going to hear me be torn to shreds, my brains left in a little pile on the bottom of my stone coffin.

Just like Paolo.

Those piercing sounds kept coming, sounds I'd never made before and hoped I'd never make again, so loud they bounced off the walls. The scream tore at my throat, but I couldn't cut it off, couldn't stop the flood of panic that just kept telling me to get away, get out of its grip.

It was behind me, finger-claw things sinking deep into my sweatshirt. Deep enough to hurt, not deep enough to cut.

It had me. It had me. And it was going to eat me.

I was a wild animal, arms and legs doing an epileptic dance, which only made the thing laugh and sent my panic off the charts. My feet stumbled over something, then tangled, and I tripped, ankles jumbled together.

The vines.

Then, no. I'd gotten tangled up in my own d.a.m.ned rope.

I screamed louder and lashed out, my arms windmilling, but still the thing had its grip on my shoulders, its breath hot and heavy on my neck.

Smelling like death.

Pitching forward, I tried to get away, running-running where? I was in a well; where was I going to go?-scrambling, grasping at air, at nothing, at anything. And behind me, that laugh, that horrible, awful laugh, as the thing kept on clutching me like a spider on steroids.

"Where you going, Cooper?" Its rasping voice seemed to float, singsongy, like Trevor's little performance only at a super-high pitch, the kind of tone only dogs could hear. No longer in my head now but echoing in the small s.p.a.ce, bouncing back and forth, as if it had said it a dozen times.

"Where are you going, Cooper?"

It had a voice. And now it was using it. Speaking out loud, not just inside my head. Oh, holy c.r.a.p.

That must mean the thing was getting stronger. I better get my a.s.s out of there. Now.