Chapter VI, Part II

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What was the magic of that first year? What was it that propelled them on, flying by the soles of their tennis shoes, pursuing a creature they didn't understand? Where did it start? And where did it end?

If asked, Shannon Malone would say that it started the day in September when she told Caleb Vance all about the creature in Dyer's Park. Allison Groves might've said it started much earlier than that, at least for her. It started before the summer, when she lost her best friend. And Caleb Vance...

Well, for Caleb Vance it started in Winkie's in October over a milkshake Allison Groves had bought for him. That had been Allison's opening gambit when trying to convince Caleb to come. He realized he was being bribed, but free ice cream was free ice cream. He figured there was a pretty important reason she wanted to ensure he was there, as well.

It had been raining for two days, off and on, and Caleb was soaked to the bone as he followed Allison into the parlor. Her hair hung in a sopping yellow rope that flicked water droplets onto the floor. She'd dragged him by the arm all the way there, half-jogging, half-running, trying to keep between the raindrops. Mr. Walker looked up when they walked in, looking slightly amused to see their state.

"Wet enough out there for ya?" he asked, leaning over the counter. Two teens sat on the high stools, holding hands and splitting a sundae.

"Oh, sure," Allison said. Mr. Walker got right down to business, and Allison placed their orders almost absent-mindedly, craning her neck to see around the backs of the booths. Finally, her gaze settled on what—or rather who—she was looking for and she waved. Shannon Malone was sitting in a booth, eating a hot fudge sundae.

"Hey, Shannon, glad you could make it," Allison said as she and Caleb slid into the booth next to her. She was considerably drier than the two of them, so Caleb figured she'd either gotten a ride or had had the sense neither Allison nor Caleb had had to use an umbrella. Caleb smiled at her, swallowing uncertainly, sneakers squeaking on the black and white tile. Shannon returned it, gentle and sweet, but a bit uncertain herself.

"Well, you seemed awful serious this afternoon," Shannon said, looking at Allison. "Figured it must be important."

Caleb's own assessment. He knew Allison very well by now, and even in his still developing sense of people's deepest thoughts and wishes he thought he understood Allison much better than she realized. In that, he was probably correct; whereas Shannon Malone found Allison something of an enigma, Caleb Vance could see through her. At least he could in the early days. He could that day, and he had a feeling he knew what she was going to say. Perhaps it was better that she never knew the full extent of this.

"Yeah," Allison said distantly. "Yeah, I think so."

But that Caleb already knew. He looked at Shannon and all at once was reminded of the Follower. He remembered what Charlie had told him. But there was no black mark on Shannon's hand. Not now, not that he'd ever seen. And he had looked, stealing glances every chance he got, checking both right and left, just in case. There was nothing there, he was sure of it. That was the only reason he hadn't told anyone.

"Don't keep us in suspense, Al," Caleb said.

Allison bristled. "Don't call me Al." She flicked her wet hair over her shoulder. Caleb caught Shannon suppressing a grin. Allison looked at Caleb significantly, her irritation suddenly and inexplicably abated. "I want to find Mabel."

All the breath was sucked out of him even though he'd known, in some way, on some level, that that was what she intended to say. Hadn't that been what she was gearing up for since the beginning of the year? Even before? The beginning of summer, perhaps?

Almost definitely, the more he thought about it. That's when the magic started for her, after all, though she probably wouldn't have called it that. Not magic, no. Something worse. But perhaps that was the whole point of the thing.

And again, not the first time and not the last, Caleb found himself in understanding while Shannon found herself in confusion. That wasn't her fault; there was no way for her to know what Allison was talking about. Not unless she'd heard, in early June, about the disappearance of Mabel Starkowski. But that had mostly been dealt with in Medula, had stayed far, far away from Shannon Malone. The only missing persons case that Clearwater had really investigated since the turn of the century was Kitty Sinclair.

"You mean your former roommate?" Shannon asked, the only thing she had to offer. When Allison nodded, it was sullen and pensive.

"You want to find Mabel?" Caleb asked dumbly. He supposed he should be reasoning with her, but the words would not come. It was so far-fetched, and Allison was stubborn. That was something he knew very well.

"Yeah," Allison confirmed. Shannon looked between their faces, words forming on her lips but never passing them.

"I don't—I don't understand," she said.

"Shannon, you live here in town," Allison said. Shannon nodded, confirming what they all already knew. "Did you know Sarah Benadine?"

Shannon frowned, looked at Allison for a long minute. "Yeah. Yeah, she was my neighbor."

Allison eyes widened, tiny planets, and she let out a small exhale of breath. "Holy crow, she was your neighbor? I didn't know that. I knew you'd be able to help."

"I—um, I'd like to, but I don't know—" Shannon began.

"Wait, Allison, just hold on," Caleb said, finally gathering his wits about him. "You want to find Mabel. I—uh...just...think about that. That's...that's not...how do you think you're gonna do that? It's been months, and the police haven't gotten anywhere."

"Exactly!" Allison said, her eyes a stormy fury. Her face was red. "They haven't gotten anywhere! But I think we could get somewhere if we tried."

"What?" Caleb asked, staring at her stupidly.

"Don't you see—?" Allison started.

"Um, Allison? Caleb?" Shannon interjected, playing with her fingers. "I've got no clue what you're talking about."

Allison and Caleb stared at each other and then Shannon, almost like they hadn't understood, and then Allison gave a laugh that wilted as it left her lips. Her eyes were over-bright, trying too hard to appear casual.

"Oh, right. Of course. Right." Allison drew circles on the smooth tabletop with her finger. She didn't say anything for a long, pregnant moment, time stretching on like taffy as she sat making pictures on Formica. Neither Caleb nor Shannon spoke either, Caleb knowing and Shannon sensing the magnitude of what was to come. When Allison spoke, her finger moved more frantically across the table, and her eyes never left the spot.

"Mabel Starkowski was my best friend. We knew each other in Medula. She lived just down the street from me, and we did everything together. Her parents and mine were pretty good friends. Our dads worked together."

Shannon listened to her speak with blue eyes that dug into Allison's scalp. Caleb felt disquieted, sensing the presence of ghosts that had never been laid to rest. Without fanfare, Mr. Walker appeared at their booth, holding two milkshakes.

"Here you go, kiddos," he said, setting them down.

"Thanks, Mr. Walker," Allison said, looking up at him but not seeing him. Mr. Walker raised an eyebrow but walked away. Allison studied the whipped cream of her shake, plucking up the cherry and pulling it with her teeth from the stem. She grimaced.

"Can't stand cherries." She continued chewing anyway.

Shannon sat calmly but Caleb could tell it was teasing her to push. Shannon was patient, though; Allison would've shut down with too much provocation. Caleb supposed Shannon realized that. Finally, Allison met Shannon's eyes.

"Anyway," she said. "Mabel." She toyed with her cherry stem, tying it in knots and untying it again. "We ended up going to Briargate together. Obviously. I think she was pretty grateful to have me around because she was so new to it, and all my siblings had already attended. She, um...she was cool."

It was such a lackluster adjective and yet both Caleb and Shannon registered the depth of feeling. It was a child's word, a child's description, because a child has no vocabulary to illustrate every emotion connected to something as raw as this. It is perhaps out of the grasp of many adults, as well.

But even as children, Caleb and Shannon did not need any more words to understand. To know.

"At the end of the year, there are always a few buses that come to pick up all the kids that need a ride home," Allison said, for Shannon's benefit. "It's usually Madison kids that ride—most others, kids from nearby, have a parent or somebody who comes to pick them up—but there's always a few from Medula or Steam Rock or some other town nearby. Mabel rode at the end of last year because both her parents work and there was nobody else that could get her. We would've taken her, but the car was already so packed with my stuff and Sophie's and Rebecca's and Claire's. There just wasn't any room."

It was not hard to deduce that Allison was trying to convince herself of that.

"Mabel never made it home," Allison said quietly, tying her cherry stem. "No one's really sure if she even got on the bus. She just...disappeared somewhere."

Shannon gaped, sympathetic and shocked. Her mouth worked on its own accord, obviously searching for the right words to say. She never got the chance to say anything, though; Allison spoke first.

"But," she said, louder now and unaffected, like what she said was of no consequence at all, "I think we can find her."

"You think we can find her?" Caleb asked. Shannon looked doubtful. "How?"

Allison leaned in, her voice low and purposeful. "You guys heard about the butcher's shop being broken into, right?"

Caleb and Shannon nodded together.

"And Sarah Benadine," Allison continued. "I think it's all connected. Mabel, Sarah, the butcher's. And don't forget Dougie Wein."

"Dougie Wein?" Shannon questioned. Allison looked at Caleb pointedly.

"Dougie Wein was a kid who went to Briargate a couple years ago," Caleb explained. He knew where Allison was going with this. "A fifth year, I think. He disappeared like Mabel did. End of the year. Was supposed to take the bus home but never made it."

"To the bus or home?" Shannon asked.

"No one seems to know," Allison said. "Just like Mabel. Everyone says they're not connected but I think they are. Sarah, Mabel, Dougie, all of it. I think something's here, in Clearwater, and it's doing all this stuff."

"Like what?" Shannon asked. She wasn't looking at Allison. She wasn't looking at anything; her eyes stared over the top of the opposite booth, unseeing. She was thinking about the creature, Caleb figured—the Follower. The thing that had nearly killed her. Thinking about Sarah Benadine, and Mabel Starkowski and Dougie Wein, too, even though she'd never met them. Wondering if that thing had gotten them.

Caleb wondered himself.

"Something, I don't know," Allison said. "But I'm not sure it's human. I think it's some kind of...monster. I don't know what it wants but I think it's here."

"You believe in monsters?" Shannon said incredulously, her voice raspy and strange. Allison looked confused.

"Of course I believe in monsters. Why wouldn't I?" She looked at Caleb again, but he shook his head. Shannon didn't answer.

"Okay," Caleb said slowly, as delicately as he could manage, "so say you're right. Some monster's here, and it got Dougie and Mabel, killed Sarah, and broke into the butcher's shop. It's been months, Allison. How do you think you're gonna find Mabel? How do you...know that you can?"

"Because," Allison said. Her voice was hard, driven. Her hands were fisted. Her eyes were ablaze. "Sarah was left out in the middle of everything. In the library. Nobody—or no thing­—was trying to keep her hidden. But Mabel's still missing. She's gotta still be out there somewhere. I know it. We're gonna find her."

Shannon frowned. Her gaze drifted over to Caleb, but he had no reassurance or explanation to offer. Allison's face was set.

"What exactly do you mean, we're gonna find her?" Shannon asked, keeping her voice even. Her brows were pulled so tightly together that it looked painful. "How do think we'll be able to do that?"

Allison seemed less confident at that. The cherry stem twisted restlessly in her hands. Her face stayed set and firm, but there was something indefinite in her eyes and the quirk of her tiny frown that betrayed uncertainty.

"We'll have to figure out what sort of monster would do things like these," she said. A new knot on the cherry stem. "Different creatures have different goals, you know? If we figure out what kind of monster it is, and what it's after, then I think we'll be able to find Mabel."

"I think I already have an idea," Shannon said, her voice small, not even seeming to come from her. Her face was a veil of helplessness; her hands were folded in front of her hot fudge sundae, holding so tight the knuckles were white. Allison's eyes narrowed in her appraisal of her. The cherry stem was fraying.

"What do you mean?" Allison asked.

Shannon met Caleb's eyes briefly, and something abstract passed between them. They were thinking the same, of course, though Caleb had the words to describe it and Shannon had not, but all the same. They thought of the Follower together, again, as they had done just moments before. Shannon drew in a deep breath of air and let it go as steadily as she could manage.

"I saw something," she said. "One night in August. I saw a monster."

With a slow, deliberate pace, Shannon began her recitation of what had happened the night of Sarah Benadine's memorial. As Allison listened, her face grew more animated, painted in something that looked disturbingly like recognition. She waited until Shannon was done, however, to say anything.

"That sounds familiar," she breathed. Her eyes raked across the table like secrets were hidden there. "That thing you described, that sounds familiar."

"It's called a Follower," Caleb said. Shannon and Allison both looked at him in surprise, as if he'd just shouted or made a scene. "The creature, it's called a Follower. The best I can figure, anyway. I asked Charlie Mouser; that's what he thinks."

"Charlie Mouser?" Shannon asked. "The kid with the big glasses?"

Caleb nodded.

"He's kind of an expert," Allison said as a sort of explanation. "He does a lot of reading. No one really talks about it but...he knows the most about the different types of creatures and monsters."

Shannon frowned, looking at Allison—for the first time—distrustfully. "Are you joking around with me?"

Allison looked honestly surprised. "No..." Allison looked questioningly at Caleb once again. As if rehearsed, he shook his head again.

Shannon sighed, shaking her head and mumbling something under her breath. Caleb watched her in curiosity; her disbelief was real, even in spite of what she'd seen with her own eyes in Dyer's Park. He wondered what she was thinking, what she was considering herself. He wondered what she did believe.

In a strange display of disconnection, she spoke. "So this—this Follower, do you think that that's what's been doing all this stuff in town? Killed Sarah, got Mabel and Dougie, broke into the butcher's?"

Her question did not seem finished; it appeared to Caleb that there was more she wanted to say. She held her tongue.

"Well, maybe," Allison said, but she was frowning, thinking hard. She had the same doubt Caleb did, though she may not have realized it. Caleb shook his head.

"No, I don't think so," he said. He could remember Charlie's words almost verbatim; they circled in his ears. "Charlie said Followers have only one job: they kill."

Allison gasped. "That's right! I remember Oscar—" she glanced at Shannon— "my older brother talking about it. That's why it sounded so familiar. A couple years ago, he was talking to one of my sisters about it. I can't remember why—and, of course, he wasn't really supposed to be talking about it. But I remember him mentioning the six fingers, and that its one job is to kill. It has a target or a goal or something. There's a spell you cast that sends it after someone."

"We're not really supposed to be talking about this, either," Caleb pointed out.

"Hang on, a spell?" Shannon asked doubtfully. "That's like storybook stuff. It's not real." She looked beseechingly at Caleb. "Is it?"

There was a spark behind Allison's eyes, and Caleb thought she was beginning to understand. She frowned thoughtfully, worrying her lower lip and idly twisting her cherry stem around and around.

"I think it must be," Allison said carefully. "You saw the creature yourself, Shannon. Spells and all, I think it must be real."

Shannon swallowed. Her knuckles were harsh and white.

"But Charlie said there aren't any left," Caleb added quietly, almost apologetically. "The Followers, I mean. He said they were wiped out after a war."

"At least one of them made it, apparently," Shannon said, with a wild kind of humor that Caleb found unsettling. It was the kind of unstable emotion that left no way of knowing if a person was going to laugh or cry. For a moment, Caleb wouldn't have been surprised if she had done both.

"I think Caleb's right, though," Allison said. "If it was a Follower you saw that night, maybe it killed Sarah, but I doubt it broke into the butcher's shop. There'd be no reason for it to do that. Something else did that, I think."

"And something got the Klines' dog," Shannon said, more to herself than to either Caleb or Allison.

"What?" Allison asked sharply. The cherry stem snapped.

Shannon shifted uncomfortably. A kind of nervous surprise seeped onto her face, like she was only now realizing that she'd spoken at all. Allison's eyes were upon her with an intensity that filled even Caleb with anxiety. She seemed nearly angry. Shannon looked away—down, down to her clasped hands, the skin stretched taut over bone.

"I'm not supposed to say anything," Shannon said weakly, knowing it was a poor excuse, one Allison would never accept.

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