If you re brave enough, that is.

I had seen what had happened to Faulkner. What if the same thing had been done to Megan, only multiplied one hundred times? Or worse?

What if she wasn't alive and the creature was doing a total head game?

Didn't matter. Megan might be down there, and I had to get her out.

I crawled back to Faulkner, feeling the ground. My fingers finally latched on to the blade I'd dropped when the creature had freaked me out, but once they closed around the hilt of the knife, I was ready.

I stopped beside my brother one more time. Hoping for something, anything. But he never moved. I had no time to allow my emotions in, to even think about whether Faulkner was dead or alive. Right now I had to concentrate on the one person I could save. Megan.

I dug the flashlight out of the backpack, slipped it onto my wrist, then got the rope and tied it around a tree. I took a deep breath, climbed onto the edge of the well, and braced my feet on the inside. 'Rasta luego, amigo. "

I didn't think Faulkner heard me. But it made me feel better to say it.

And then I started down.

The stench from the well swam over me, a ma.s.sive "how you doin"' coming at me hard and heavy.

Shallow breaths. Keep going. Don't think about it.

One foot down. Two. Three.

I flicked the flashlight's switch and the yellow beam sprang to life. The laughter died down, dwindling off to nothing, echoing for a few seconds, then ebbing away. There were a few scuffles from below, and then a Not a sound.

At first, all the light showed were the slime-coated stone walls of the well, the vines climbing up the sides like a green racetrack running to Faulkner. Then I swung the light to the bottom. Half wanting to see what was coming.

And half not.

But there was nothing below me. Nothing but the reflec tion of the beam in the water and the white glint of the piles of bones. I swallowed back the bile in my throat. I shook my head and looked away for a second. Those guys were dead. There was nothing I could do about them now. I had to get to Megan.

I started down again. Move. Breathe. Concentrate. Deal with the rest later.

"Megan?"

No answer.

"Megan, I'm on my way. I'm not leaving without you." I prayed she could hear me. That she was still alive. When I was done saving Megan and Faulkner, I was going to kill that thing. Twice, if that was possible.

My Vans slipped against the side of the well, but I held tightly to the rope. My wrist ached, and I knew I was going to pay later for the damage I was doing to it. Probably never be able to play baseball again. But I didn't care.

Two more feet. Three. Four. No sounds from below. That was no comfort to me. I'd rather have heard a Dora the Explorer CD stuck on the same track than nothing.

The quiet meant one thing.

The creature was somewhere waiting. Waiting for me to arrive.

And then the showdown would start. Like in those old cowboy movies. Like in The Matrix. Like in Hamlet. Good versus evil. Me and my knife, me versus it. Someone would walk out of here, and someone would stay at the bottom.

I slid down the rest of the way and hit the floor. Water splashed up, soaking me with the scent of the well. I moved to wipe the mud off my jeans, then stopped. What if the creature was like a dog and the more I smelled like him, the less he could sense me?

I swung the flashlight around, past the piles of bones. The walls were coated with a thick, white bubbly fungus that seemed to a breathe. Vines covered every inch of the walls, pulsing back and forth as if they were alive. Then, spattered here and there, darker splotches.

Dried blood.

I was sure as s.h.i.t never going to watch another horror movie again. I had seen more in the past few days than Wes Craven could ever dream up.

I turned away, swinging the light around the small s.p.a.ce. And this time I found what I thought had been there all along.

A tunnel.

Nothing sophisticated, and nothing made by human tools, I saw, when I got closer. The sides of the stones were rough, broken in some places. And then, along the edges, claw marks. The tunnel had been dug by hand. Stones yanked out, torn away by fingers, rubble piled beside it, deep ten-digit grooves cut into the walls.

G.o.d. What was this thing?

I shuddered and ducked down into the tunnel. It was only about four feet tall and two and a half, maybe three, feet wide, like a hobbit lived here, although I knew this was no happy Tolkien creature. The flashlight beamed off the walls. I had the knife raised and ready in an unsteady grip.

One step forward. Another. Deeper into the creature's lair, knowing that I was probably walking toward my own horrible fate. The sacrifice Gerard had written about. That my mother had been trying to push me toward. That I was pretty sure Sam was wrapped up in, too.

All around me, the walls pulsed as though they had their own heartbeat. The white stuff bubbled, and the vines seemed to watch.

The well was alive.

"Megan?" I whispered.

"Cooper!" Relief sang in her voice. "Thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d!"

"Where are you?" I swung the light around, up, and down, and at first all I saw were more stones, water, mud, vines. And then two familiar blue eyes.

She was in a prison made of vines, their green webs locked together tightly and thickly. But she looked okay. Dirty and scared, but okay. "Megan." I started to move forward.

"Stop, Cooper. He'll get you!"

The entire New England Patriots defensive line couldn't have kept me from running to Megan. I didn't care if it was a trap; I didn't care if the entire army of vine men was there or if the creature was waiting with open jaws and open arms. I charged forward, my heart somewhere in my shoes.

Just as I reached her, just as I saw her blue eyes widen and her smile begin to take over her face, something came out of nowhere and tackled me, taking me to the ground. I lunged, hands extending toward Megan, calling for her. She screamed my name, but the word died in the air as I landed in a shallow puddle of filth, the knife falling from my hand for the second time that night. I let out a curse, tried to catch the knife-and missed.

"Welcome home, Cooper," the creature screeched, his breath hot on my neck, his body heavy on mine. "I have waited so long for you. So, so long."

I tried to squirm away, but he held tightly. He smelled like death, like that rotting-bodies farm, and I knew, I knew, if I didn't get away now, I never would.

I rolled hard to the right. The creature rolled with me, his claws digging into my back. I rolled to the left, then back to the right. "Get off me, you freak!"

"Oh, you think I am a freak, Cooper? You don't understand what I am or who I am. Or what you are." Then he pulled back, enough that I could flip over. And with me, my flashlight flipped, too.

Big mistake. Because now I saw what I was dealing with.

As they had the first time, the eyes. .h.i.t me the hardest. Green eyes, just like mine. It was like looking at myself. But that was where the similarities to anything human ended.

Those eyes were sunk into skin as pale as a dead pig's, as loose as a sheet flapping in the wind. As rotted as a forgotten orange in the back of the refrigerator. The same white bubbling foam covered his skin, as if he was molding, rotting, right before my eyes. His face seemed to be melting off his bones-if there were even any bones left on his stick-thin frame. And when he opened his mouth to laugh, I could see inside the yawning cavernous hole that should have held teeth and held instead honed points, the jaw of a shark.

He wore no clothes, and his body was hunched, like an old, old man who'd spent a lifetime living in a wheelchair. But I knew that beneath the Jell-o squishiness he had Superman strength. I had felt his grip more than once, seen what he had done to that wall. Underestimating him would be a mistake.

He reached out a hand to me-skeletal fingers that seemed as long as yardsticks, with fingernails that flexed with his every movement. Almost as if they had a life of their own. And then I saw his fingernails weren't nails at all, but vines that grew and curled, hissing in the air as they extended his reach. "Oh, Cooper, I've waited a long time for you to come home." He brushed at my hair and I jerked back, trying to escape the touch, but I wasn't fast enough.

When his skin met mine, a jolt of electricity ran from my head to my chest. I leaped up as if I'd been defibrillated, and then slammed back down again, water splashing on the ground beneath me. "What the-"

"Ah, yes, just as I thought." He cackled, then smiled, the shark teeth gleaming yellow in the flashlight's beam. "You felt it, too?"

"Get away!" I tried to back up, but the tunnel was small, cramped.

"Don't fight it. When it's all over, you won't even remember a"

I scrambled to the left, pushing off with my feet, grabbing at the vines on the walls, anything I could, searching for the knife in the water as I did.

"Cooper!" Megan screamed. "Behind you!"

I spun back, and there in the water was the glint of silver. I dug down but missed the first time. The second. Refraction of water-I'd forgotten about that. I vowed to pay more attention in science next time. When Mr. Spinale had said that that c.r.a.p could one day save my life, he hadn't been kidding.

This time I shifted to the right and came up with the blade. The wooden handle, made slimy by the filthy water, slipped in my grip, but I held on. Letting go would mean losing the battle-and becoming it.

And I wasn't in the mood for that.

I waved the knife at the creature, coming within a centimeter of what would have been his nose if he had had one. "Back up, freak!"

The monster didn't move. He leaned forward, his green eyes boring into mine. "You don't want to do that, Cooper."

"I did it once; I'll do it again." I sounded a lot more Clint Eastwood than I felt. Because when the creature was looking at me like that, I felt- That connection again. Almost like the electricity when the thing had touched me, but not as strong. As if he knew me. As though he could read my mind.

A smile curved across his face, exposing those shark teeth again. The grin of something that would eat you and not think twice. The knife wavered in my hand. My legs began to shake.

Stab it. In the heart. Now.

"Of course I can read your thoughts," he said. "And you don't want to stab me, Cooper. Because doing that would kill a part of you, too. It would kill this land. Ruin all that we have worked so hard for. You're a part of this, Cooper. You don't want to do this. You, my dear boy, have already lost so much."

"Stop it!" I closed my eyes. "Get out of my head!"

"Think of something else," Megan yelled. "Don't think about what you're going to do. It can't-"

The creature sprung off his two legs like a jaguar, lunging for Megan. She shrieked and shrank back against the stone walls. The vines closed around her and the dirt below her opened up, covering her legs, tightening her prison. The earth began to pulse, as if waiting for another command.

I lashed out, sinking the knife into the monster's leg. The blade sank deep, as if I'd cut into cotton candy.

An earsplitting scream ripped through the tunnel. The creature spun toward me, green eyes now red with fury. "You don't know what you're doing, Cooper," he hissed. "What a terrible mistake you're making."

He dropped to all fours and advanced on me, breathing hard, lips peeled back in a snarl, those razor teeth ready.

I threw my pack onto the ground and flipped up the nylon flap. Reached in with my left hand and rooted for a rock. But before my hand could close around a stone, the creature was laughing.

"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but none of those will kill me." He inched forward, menacing, lethal, drool spilling from his lips. "I know what you're thinking, Cooper. I know everything about you."

I tried to do what Megan had said and think of something else. But what? I was a teenage boy, for G.o.d's sake. Deep thoughts didn't exactly come with the hormonal changes.

So I thought of Megan. The first time I had met her. Kindergarten, Miss Sarah's cla.s.s.

Megan, in a ponytail and a pink dress she told me her mother made her wear for the first day, plopped down beside me. "Do you like basketball?"

I shrugged. "Yeah. "

"Good. You can be my friend. "She handed me a package of cheese and crackers. Shot me a smile. Got out her Crayolas. Started to color a picture of a huge basketball and two kids playing hoops. And probably stole my heart right then, though I was too stupid to know it.

Megan, ponytail, pink dress, box of Crayolas.

Over and over, I repeated the thought, until that was the only image I saw in my head. The creature hesitated, watching me. Slightly confused.

Megan, ponytail, pink dress, box of Crayolas.

Then I leaped forward, the knife fisted in my right hand, and drove the blade toward the creature. My body weight hung for one second in the air, then fell forward, propelling the force of the blade even further.

Megan, ponytail, pink dress, box of Crayolas.

The silver sheath sank deep into the creature's side, slipping beneath his skin before he saw it coming. As soon as the knife met his body, I twisted to the side, pulling the blade upward as I did.

The monster screamed, the sound like a thousand lambs being slaughtered at once, like every rabbit in the world dying under a guillotine. The piercing cry went on and on, echoing in the small tunnel, the pitch so high and so loud that I was sure my ears were bleeding.

Megan had her eyes closed, tears streaming down her face. "Make it stop, make it stop! Please, just kill it. Please, please!"

I yanked the knife back, and with it came a trail of gore and thick, pale, stringy guts. I tried to fling them off, but they stuck. The creature wheeled on me, his fingers and nails now no longer vines but dagger-shaped weapons.

He roared, betrayal and shock on what features he had. "Stop fighting me, Cooper. You must take my place. It's your destiny."

"No! My only destiny is to kill you." I kept thinking of Megan and crayons and pink dresses, but I could feel him trying to pry his way into my mind. He suddenly jumped, his claws sinking into my shoulders.

I screamed. A pain worse than anything I'd ever felt shot through me. The creature began to laugh and locked his gaze with mine while he sank those claws even deeper.

Now, "he breathed, and I could smell death in what escaped from his mouth, "now I live again. You, my progeny, take my place and become one with this land." Something resembling a smile curved across his face. "My blood. Child of my loins. My resurrection."

His fingers went deeper, pushing past bones and into my veins, and now the electricity between us began to pulse in time with my heartbeat. I could feel myself beginning to weaken, my knees buckling, the world going black. Around my feet, the dirt began to shift and rise, coating my feet, my ankles.

His words-what had he said? They had made no sense-faded away.

"Let go, Cooper," the creature whispered so very temptingly. "Let me live."

The pulses beat harder, a steady drum pounding over my thoughts, making it hard to think of anything but sleeping a sleeping forever. Sleeping here, letting go, just letting go a I began to let the knife slip from my fingers.

"Cooper! Don't!"

Like a lifeline, Megan's voice caught me just as I wanted to give up. If I surrendered, if I let this thing win- She would die.