Bonechiller

  The author acknowledges the support of the

  Canada Council for the Arts.

  Published by Wendy Lamb Books

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Graham McNamee

  All rights reserved.

  Wendy Lamb Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McNamee, Graham.

  Bonechiller / Graham McNamee.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Four high school students face off against a soul-stealing beast that has been making young people disappear from their small Ontario, Canada, town for centuries.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-97594-2

  [1. Monsters—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Grief—Fiction. 4. Simcoe, Lake, Region (Ont.)—Fiction. 5. Canada—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M232519Bon 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  ONE

  Don’t look for it on the map. This place is so small it doesn’t even get a dot. Once a year they get a new WELCOME TO sign put up, but it doesn’t last a week before it’s so full of buckshot holes you can’t even tell the name of the place, and you sure don’t seem welcome.

  Nowhere—officially known as Harvest Cove. Tucked away in the Big Empty that makes up most of Canada. On the shores of Lake Simcoe, the Cove is summer cottage country, or at least it’s trying to be. Only it’s a little too far from anywhere to be popular. Off-season, the population shrinks by two-thirds and the place turns into a ghost town.

  Turn off Highway 11, north of Barrie, then follow the road as it goes from paved to gravel to dirt.

  If you’re looking for somewhere to hide, this is it.

  TWO

  “Wild!” Pike shouts, his foot on the gas. “We’re gonna die!”

  We’re flying down some unnamed backroad in the deep black of the country night. The world through the windshield is a midnight blur lit only by the shaky beam from our one working headlight. Our speed is infinite, unmeasurable by the cracked speedometer on the dash.

  It’s freezing out, and this piece of crap’s got no heating. You can see Pike’s breath steaming as he laughs like a lunatic.

  “Hope this thing’s got power brakes,” I yell from the back.

  Gravel ricochets off the sides of the car like hail.

  “What brakes?” Pike fights the shuddering steering wheel. “We’ll stop when we hit something.”

  Meet the guys. Pike’s behind the wheel. His little brother Howie’s riding shotgun, feet braced on the dash like that’s going to keep him from going through the windshield on impact. I’m in back with Ash—technically not a guy, but she still acts like one.

  My heart’s ramming against my ribs.

  “Buckle up,” Pike calls out.

  “There’s no seat belts,” I tell him.

  “So, sue the manufacturer. Oh, wait. That’s me.”

  Pike’s the mad mechanic who built this monster from the graveyard of dead and mangled cars out by Sunset Speedway, where they have stock-car races and demolition derbies in the summer.

  These roads weren’t meant for speed. I’m banging my head off the roof as we’re tossed around like loose change in a dryer. The only thing distracting me is Ash’s hand on my right knee. She’s trying to hang on as we slide around. I’ve got a shiver running up my thigh that’s got nothing to do with the arctic blast outside.

  I look over and see Ash laughing in little swallowed gasps. And I know why she’s laughing. Because I can feel it too, that roller-coaster free fall that rips the laughs right out of you.

  The car fishtails and we do a full doughnut before stopping in the intersection of two empty roads.

  In the sudden quiet, I get a grip on Ash’s hand. She shakes me off and gives me a little backhand punch in the chest. Like I was making a move, like it wasn’t her with a death grip on me.

  Pike looks out through the trees at the lights from a building about a hundred yards away.

  In the dim interior of the car, the brightest thing is his red hair, catching some of the shine of the headlight reflecting off the snow. Pike’s got a regulation army haircut like his father’s, just a wide Mohawk strip of red bristle. When the sun catches his ’hawk, he looks like a lit match.

  Pike brushes his hand over it now, thinking.

  “Perfect. Wait here.” He pulls a pair of leather gloves out of his pocket.

  “Bad idea.” Howie’s voice is soft in the nervous hush of the car. “This is a real bad idea.” He’s staring at those lights shining through the trees. “Let’s just go, Pike. Don’t do this. Let’s go.”

  “We’ll go, bro. After I’m done.” Pike gets out, letting in a glacial gust. “Kill the headlight, Howie. But keep the motor running.”

  The door slams shut, and we watch in silence as he makes his way through the gray skeletons of the bare trees.

  Those lights he’s aiming for shine from the windows above the Stony Creek Convenience Store.

  Run by an fat old guy named Bill Clayton, who lives in the apartment above the store, the place is on its last legs. Peeling paint, with spiderweb cracks in the corners of the windows and sun-faded signs.

  I can’t make out Pike anymore from the shadows.

  “What’s he gonna do?” I ask.

  A shrug from Ash, a head shake from Howie.

  What am I doing here?

  All Pike told me on the phone was the guys were going out for a spin, and I was coming. I tried to get out of it, saying it was, like, twenty below outside and I had stuff to do. He told me to grow some balls, they’d be picking me up in half an hour. I asked who they was, and when I heard Ash’s name I said why not. Me and her, we’ve got a thing going. Only she doesn’t know it yet.

  Howie leans forward, breathing hard like he might puke any second. The guy’s a walking panic attack.

  While we’re waiting, let me tell you why Fat Bill’s got it coming to him.

  When I say fat, we’re talking close to three hundred pounds of blubb
er on a five-and-a-half-foot frame. The guy’s a midget whale, with yellow teeth and stained fingers from chain-smoking. And he’s got a thing for young guys.

  Stockboys, he calls them. They don’t last long, so he’s always got that sun-bleached HELP WANTED sign in the window. As pervs go, he’s mostly an over-the-clothes groper. From what I hear, Fat Bill even pays you for the “overtime” afterward. It’s not something you’re going to brag about after, so there’s always fresh meat applying for the job.

  Which is where Howie comes in. He wanted to make some extra money to get a new hard drive. Howie was there less than a week when he noticed how Fat Bill was always brushing up against him. But he thought it was because the guy was so huge he couldn’t help it, trying to squeeze by in the tight aisles and behind the counter.

  I’ll skip the details. But anyway, Howie freaked and quit.

  Fat Bill put the sign back in the window and hired Jeff Cameron, thirteen years old. But it turned out Jeff’s mother is an Ontario Provincial Police officer. And Jeff wasn’t going to keep his mouth shut like all the other humiliated kids over the years. Cop Mom went ballistic and now Fat Bill’s out on bail and under house arrest till his next hearing. Can’t go near schools, can’t be alone with kids, can’t run his store. The cops have been interviewing other stockboys, finding more victims.

  Howie wouldn’t talk to them, wouldn’t talk to anybody except Pike. His big brother.

  I look past Howie shivering up front, toward the darkened store and the glow from the apartment on top. There’s no movement above or below.

  We’ve been idling here a few minutes, and the exhaust is starting to leak in through the rusted holes in the floorboards. The fumes are making me dizzy.

  “Can’t you kill the motor?” I ask Howie.

  He meets my eyes in the rearview. “Pike wants a quick getaway.”

  “Then I’m cracking open a window.”

  I’m reaching for the handle when a thump on the roof makes us all jump. A face appears a couple inches from mine on the other side of the glass. I flinch from Pike’s deranged grin.

  “Got ya!” His breath clouds in the frigid air. “You’re dead.”

  “Right. And you’re nuts.”

  He’s always sneaking up to scare you.

  Pike opens my door and tosses a pile of boxes in my lap. Mars bars. Mr. Bigs. Juicy Fruit. “Don’t say I never gave you nothing.”

  He slams the door and gets in front.

  “Got your favorite, bro.” Pike turns to Howie. “Kit Kats.”

  I hand that box over to Howie.

  Pike takes a piece of jerky out of his pocket and starts gnawing on it.

  “How did you get in?” I ask.

  “I’m a ninja.”

  Ash rolls her eyes. “A ninja nutcase.”

  She cracks the box of Mars bars and takes one. I try a Mr. Big.

  We sit here chewing, getting high off the fumes. Then Pike hands out some scratch-em lottery tickets.

  “We’ll split the winnings,” he tells us. “Eighty–twenty. Me getting the eighty.”

  “Can we get out of here first?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” Pike says.

  “What are we waiting for?” Ash wants to know. “Let’s go.”

  “You’ll see.” Pike looks off toward the store.

  We follow his stare. There’s nothing moving in the gloom of the store, or in the apartment above.

  The car windows are starting to steam up from our breathing, so Howie wipes a patch of the windshield clear.

  “See what? I don’t …” My words die off.

  Because there’s a flicker of something inside the store. A flashlight? Or a candle? The light seems to grow.

  Not a candle. More like—

  “Fire in the hole!” Pike laughs.

  I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

  “No way. No way,” Howie mumbles.

  The flicker expands to a torch-sized glow. Too stunned to even blink, I see the flames start to consume the front counter.

  Howie’s box of Kit Kats falls to the floor. He whimpers in the back of his throat.

  “Oh man,” Ash groans. “What the hell did you do now?”

  Pike wipes away the condensation on the glass with his sleeve. “Just warming things up for Fat Bill.”

  “I can’t believe you did that!” I say. “You total psycho.”

  A minute passes in shocked silence as we watch the fire eat its way through the store.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Ash says.

  But Pike doesn’t move, hypnotized by the blaze.

  Black smoke leaks out through cracks around the door. The place is going up fast, the flames feasting on the old wooden building.

  Now a shadow moves past one of the windows in the apartment above.

  “Should we, uh …?” Should we what? Call the cops? The fire department? Harvest Cove is so tiny they don’t even have 911. The fire truck is parked in the garage of the community center, with one guy who sleeps on the couch inside overnight. If there’s an emergency, he calls the volunteers and they meet at the scene. By that time there’s usually nothing left but charcoal.

  A figure shows up around the side of the store. Short and wide. Fat Bill. It looks like he’s holding a cell phone to his ear.

  Pike snorts happily, shifting into drive. “Okay. Fun’s over. We can go.”

  He pulls out slow, with the headlight off. Me and Ash watch the blaze out the rear window. We don’t have to worry about Fat Bill seeing us. He’s busy watching his life burn down.

  “Never again,” I say. “Never going nowhere with you again. What if he didn’t get out, eh?”

  “What if he was sleeping or something?” Ash snaps at him. “You think of that?”

  Pike shrugs. “I guess then we’d have us a pig roast.”

  After the glow of the fire is swallowed by the dark, we pick up speed. Pike leaves the headlight off, driving by the faint shine from the sliver of moon playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. The road’s a gray smudge in the blackness.

  I feel a trickle of sweat icing down my spine. That Mr. Big bar I ate ain’t sitting right.

  “Man,” says Ash. “That was extreme.”

  “Want to know how I set it?” Pike asks. “Best way is to always use stuff that’s already there at the scene. Then they can’t trace anything back to you, right? So I used a Marlboro, just like Fat Bill smokes.”

  Now I realize why he brought us all along. Pike loves an audience. He needs someone to shock and awe.

  “I left the Marlboro on top of a stack of newspapers behind the counter. Even if they find the source, they’ll just figure Fat Bill got careless.”

  He pauses. Waiting for applause?

  But the only sound is the rattle of gravel against the floor of the car.

  “And don’t think about saying nothing to nobody. Because technically you’re all accessories.”

  “We didn’t do squat,” Ash says.

  “You ate the candy bars, didn’t you? Stolen goods.”

  “We’re not accessories to anything,” she says. “Just witnesses to one of your psychotic episodes.”

  He shrugs and keeps on smiling.

  I slide around in back, bumping into Ash as we hit teeth-cracking ruts and potholes. The gravel’s slick with snow and ice, and the tires on this junker are nearly bald. It’s a miracle we haven’t rolled into a ditch.

  Just as I think that, Pike makes a sharp turn and the car tilts to the right. For a second we just hang there, riding the edge. I hold my breath, waiting for the world to turn upside down. But the tires find some traction and we swing away from the drop.

  “Pull over,” Howie moans. “I’m gonna be sick.”

  He’s got a real nervous stomach—it’s why they call him Howie the Hurler. The car skids to a stop as Howie throws the door open and leans out.

  The sound of him retching makes my own guts start to heave.

  Ash nudges me with her elbow.
“Come on, let’s go.”

  “Go? Go where?” I ask. “I don’t even know where we are.”

  “That was Cove Road back there. We can walk home from here.”

  “That’s like two miles back to the lake. Ever heard of hypothermia?”

  “Don’t be a pussy,” she tells me. “We can jog it in no time. Besides, you want to keep riding with him?”

  I get out, feeling the arctic wind on my face. I pull up the collar of my leather jacket and yank the zipper to just under my chin. I would have worn a hat, but I didn’t want to mess my hair—gotta look slick for Ash. So now my frostbitten corpse will win best hair.

  I glance over at Howie spitting up into the ditch. He’s a skinny little stick insect, lost in the bulk of his parka.

  Pike climbs out to check on him. “You okay?”

  Howie answers with a groan.

  “Come on, bro. Let’s get you home. I’ll take it slow.”

  Ash tugs my sleeve and we start walking.

  “See ya, Howie,” Ash says.

  He gives her a little wave. “Sorry, guys. I didn’t know he was gonna do that.”

  Me and Ash crunch through the icy muck to Cove Road.

  “See you in hell,” Pike yells to us. His way of saying bye. Guess he thinks it’s funny.

  When I glance back, I see he’s got his arm around Howie’s shoulders. Somewhere under the rage there’s something human. Barely.

  Me and Ash reach Cove Road and start toward the lake. She turns to me.

  “Hey, Danny. Wanna race?”

  “Okay.” It beats losing my toes to frostbite.

  “On three.”

  Just as I nod, she barks—“Three!”—and bursts ahead.

  I sprint after her into the inky black.

  THREE

  First time I set eyes on Ash was in the gym on the base. That’s Canadian Forces Base Borden. Ash is an army brat, like Pike and Howie. Their fathers are instructors at Borden.

  Call it temporary insanity, but I thought it might be a good idea if I took some boxing lessons. Most of the time I feel like hitting something, so I thought I’d learn how. I’m not a rageaholic or anything, but I’ve had a real bad run these last couple years, and sometimes you gotta let the beast out before he eats you alive.

  So I took it out on the punching bag they kept for the amateurs. Rips in the old leather had been sewn up in half a dozen places, with duct tape holding it together in others. You might almost feel sorry for it. But everything I hated was stuffed into this faceless bag. I worked it till my wrists went numb and I could barely hold the soap in the shower after.