Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,48

and some kind of squatter living in it. Possibly, it could be some harmless Boo Radley type—or it could be Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th parts one through twenty. In fact, I’d passed a boarded-up summer camp on the way there. Sure, it might just have been closed for the winter, but what if it wasn’t?

I got back in the car.

But then, I remembered Rachel, saying she thought there was something she was destined to do, trapped in a tower over her poor, murdered mother. Who had put her there? And why? Would she ever get away? There was something weird going on in this town, and finding the guy who had given Danielle those creepy leaves seemed like the key.

I thought too, of Mrs. Greenwood, all alone. I needed to find out what had happened to Danielle.

Then, someone tapped my window.

I jumped. It was just like Zombieland! And me without my shotgun. My feet searched for the gas pedal, not finding it.

“Can I help you, son?”

The face at the window was an old guy, but he in no way looked dead. In fact, he was sort of a harmless old guy, older than anyone I’d ever seen, blue eyes surrounded by a spiderweb of wrinkles, looking out from under a Yankees cap.

Running him over would probably be considered an overreaction. I rolled the window down, which took a minute because Mrs. Greenwood’s car had these crazy window cranks you had to turn. Despite this, the old guy left his hands on the glass the whole time. On the up side, I could see his hands, and he didn’t have a knife.

Still, it could be in his pocket. I put my right foot over the gas, just in case. I shivered. The air was cold now.

“Yeah, do you live here?” I asked.

“That, I do. Are you lost? Need directions back to the Northway?”

I relaxed a little more. Zombies didn’t usually offer directions back to the Northway. They just ate your brains.

“Um, no. I’m okay. But do you know anything about this place?”

“The Red Fox? Sure, I’m the owner. At least, until it burned to the ground—Poof! One second it was there, the next gone. I didn’t have money to fix it up. It was named after me, Henry Fox. I used to have red hair.” He flipped up the Yankees cap to show his balding scalp. “Back when I had hair. But you won’t find much around here except ashes and memories. There’s Mahoney’s about a mile down Route Eight if you’re looking for someplace to watch the bowl games. In fact, I was headed there myself.”

“Oh, thanks. No, I was just wondering. If you’re the owner, maybe you know a guy that used to work there. His name was Zach, played in a band there. It would have been about seventeen or eighteen years ago.”

The old man looked confused. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Then, a glimmer of recognition filled his eyes. “I do remember Zach. Nice kid. But that was a long time ago. You couldn’t have known him.”

“No, I . . . that is, my mother knew him. From school. She’s on the reunion committee and trying to find people. Zach hasn’t been to the Facebook page.” I knew as I said it that the old guy had never heard of Facebook, but that was okay. Harmless babbling was okay. “Do you know any of his relatives? Does he still have family in Gatskill?”

“Who’s your mama? I know most people in these parts.”

“Emily Hill.”

“Emily Hill . . .” He got a strange look on his face, then smiled. “Nope, don’t know her.”

“It’s okay. She hasn’t been here in a long time. I’m staying with an old friend of hers, just for the Christmas holiday.”

I didn’t know what made me lie except, in that second, I realized that not a single car had come down the road in the time we’d been talking. And something about his questions was making me nervous.

He asked another one. “Who you staying with?”

Again, I lied. “Astrid. Astrid Brewer. She’s my cousin.”

“I thought you said she was a friend.”

“Well, she’s like a cousin because we’re such close friends. I need to get back soon, for dinner. So do you know anything about Zach?”

The old man shook his head. “No, can’t say we’ve kept in touch. But he was friends with my brother, Carl. Maybe he would know something. If you give me a phone number, I could call if he does.”

“Great.”