Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [4]
“Weez, a few minutes ago you were crying.”
“That’s because it was all bottled up. Now that I’ve let it out”—she gave him a weak smile and a pointed look—“now that I’ve told someone, I feel a hundred percent better.”
Still baffled, Jack shook his head. “You’re crazy.”
Her wavering smile faded. “Don’t call me that, Jack. Please. Not you.”
Her intensity took him aback. She was awful sensitive about the word.
“Okay. Sure.” He smiled. “How about ‘goth chick’? Can I call you that?”
She batted him on the arm. “I’m not goth!”
“No? Let’s see … you dress in black and you love Bauhaus and Siouxsie. Like my father likes to say—”
“Please don’t!” She jammed her fingers in her ears and began making nonsense noises that sounded like “Bobbitta-bobbitta-bobbitta.”
“—‘If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, odds are it’s a duck.’”
She removed her fingers from her ears. “Finished?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Those are simply my choices. They don’t mean I’ve joined a club. I don’t like labels.”
Neither did Jack, so he dropped it.
3
They’d walked their bikes back to the firebreak trail and were readying to head back to Johnson when Weezy held up a hand.
“You know, I’ve never been through this area.”
Jack smiled. “You mean there’s someplace on Old Man Foster’s land you haven’t seen?”
She shrugged. “He owns a lot of land. Let’s take a look around.”
He looked at his watch. “We should be heading back. I’ve got to get to USED—”
“Come on, Jack. Just a little. I’d go myself but…”
Jack knew what she didn’t want to say: After last night, she didn’t want to be alone in there.
“Okay. Just a few…”
But she was already walking her bike back up the path. He brought up the rear until she stopped and pointed.
“Looks like some sort of clearing over there.”
He followed her through a line of trees and, sure enough, a clearing.
A creepy clearing … almost perfectly square, the size of half a football field, with nothing growing in it.
Nothing at all.
“What’s the story here?” Jack said, inspecting the sandy soil. “Does somebody come by and weed this place? Or spray weed killer?”
“Weed killer would leave dead plants.”
Jack looked again. She was right: no sign of vegetation, living or dead.
“Check this out,” she said, kneeling to examine a bright green fern along the edge. She stretched one of the fronds and gave it a close look, then muttered something that sounded like “warts.”
“What?”
“Ebony spleenwort. It doesn’t usually grow in the Barrens because the soil’s too acid.”
Jack felt his eyes roll of their own accord. “How do you know this stuff? And why?”
She rose and faced him. “Because the Pines have lots of lost towns—villages and such that just up and disappeared.”
“Or were built over, as we well know.”
She nodded. “But one way to spot where a town once stood is ebony spleenwort. Pinelands soil is acidic and ebony spleenwort doesn’t like acid. So it grows over buried foundations because the old limestone and mortar reduce the acidity in the soil over them.” She gestured around. “We’re standing in an old foundation.”
Jack looked at the big square of naked soil. “Of what?”
Weezy stepped onto the bare earth and wandered toward the center of the square. Jack followed, scuffing the ground as he followed. Not a sign of life. Not a beetle, not a wormhole, not a single anthill. Looked like nothing had ever grown here. Something else seemed to be missing from the soft soil but he couldn’t say what.
Weezy stopped and turned in a slow circle, pointing. “See? The spleenwort runs all around the edges. A building once stood here—a big one.”
“Big is right. What was this place? And why won’t anything grow in the center? It’s like it’s some sort of dead zone.”
“Dead zone…” She looked at him. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“It’s a movie coming out.” Jack had seen a preview when he’d gone to see the animated Fire and Ice. “I think it’s about—”
“Shhhh!” Weezy said, pointing.
Jack looked and saw a pair of young Pineland deer walking their way. He froze and watched