Jake looked scared then, his face pinched and white. “So, what are you saying? You’re inevitably going to die and there’s nothing we can do about it?”
“There might be something I can do about it,” she said. The silver ring David gave her felt heavy on her finger. She twisted it around and around in a nervous circle.
“What, you’re going to go out there with a machete and fight it? Don’t be ridiculous. Whatever’s happening in this town is not going to be fixed by one lone girl.”
“Why not?” she said, her temper flaring. “One lone girl always saves the day in those movies that Miranda likes—”
Her breath broke on the name, unable to finish.
“Lauren,” he said.
“No. I can’t explain it to you. You wouldn’t understand.”
Jake had a lot of good qualities, but she supposed it was too much to expect him to believe she was a witch. She’d hardly believed it herself, and she’d managed to do some strange things already. Not that she knew how to use her power or magic or whatever it was, really. She didn’t think the monster in the woods would respond to a direct order from her like the crowd at the fair.
Something shot through her then, something that was like electricity arcing through her. She cried out and everyone in the station turned to look at her.
Nana.
“No!” she shouted. “No, no!”
And she was on her feet and running out of the station before anyone had a chance to stop her.
29
The crowd filed out to the backyard. Her lovely, neat backyard that had been sullied by those murdered girls.
We’re going to put things right now.
No one talked. No one even whispered. There was a sense of understanding all around, a resolve to do what was necessary.
Nobody seemed surprised to find the pile of torches stacked neatly beside the porch. She herself was not surprised, though she didn’t remember putting them there.
They weren’t the kind everyone had in films—jagged sticks of wood with their ends lit. These were the sort that people used around their patio in the summer so they could feel like they lived in Hawaii or some such place. And next to the torches was a large box of matches.
Mrs. Schneider picked up the box and struck the first one.
30
Alex saw Lauren sprint out the door, followed by Jake.
“Goddammit!” he shouted, running after them.
Alex and Miller and Christie had just been having a quiet conversation about how they might keep Lauren safe, for it was clear that whatever was happening, Lauren was a target.
And then the target ran out of the police station and into the night without a care for her own well-being.
Alex ran out onto the sidewalk and looked in both directions, but Lauren and Jake were gone. It was like they’d been beamed away like in that sci-fi show Val watched sometimes in reruns—the one with the spaceship and all the different people traveling around meeting aliens on a goodwill mission or something.
“Shit!” he said. He could run in either direction in the hope that he might spot them, or he could get the car and drive around.
Miller and Christie pushed through the station door as Alex was coming back.
“Where did they go?” Christie asked.
“No idea,” Alex said. “I’m going to take the squad car and see if I can find them.”
“I’ll go with you,” Miller said.
“You’d better not,” Alex said, with a glance at Christie. “Between the fair, the murder, and all the regular nonsense that happens on Saturday night we’re stretched pretty thin as it is.”
Christie nodded. “I might need to call you back.”
Alex looked at his watch. “How about a half hour? I’ll try her house, her grandmother’s house, maybe a couple of other places.”
“Let’s just hope that whoever killed Miranda doesn’t find Lauren in the meantime,” Christie said grimly.
What does it matter? You’re only going to pretend it didn’t happen again, just like you did all the others, Alex thought.
Though he wasn’t certain that would work anymore. After the article about the murders had come out in the Tribune that morning, Alex had heard several people discussing it. He’d even overheard a couple at the fair talking about the “other girls.” And Christie had seemed, for lack of a better word, more awake than he normally did. So maybe whatever hold Touhy had over him was gone.
There’s something going on besides the murders, anyway, he thought as he headed around the station to get the car out of the small lot. Because it was not normal for people to act the way they had at the fair.
Whatever was happening, Lauren diMucci seemed to be in the middle of it. He would never forget the way that crowd had just turned away and gone about their business because she said so. And his heart had gone cold when he saw the message the killer left for her.
Alex felt that if he could just talk to her, all the disparate pieces of the puzzle would come together in a way that made sense. Right now he felt like he only had half the answer.
He thought it most likely that Lauren had gone home. He pulled out of the lot and headed in the direction of his own street.
31
Lauren heard Jake’s footsteps falter behind her, heard his ragged breathing.
“Lauren, wait,” he said, his voice fading as he fell farther behind.
She didn’t wait. She couldn’t wait. She had to get to the top of the hill because something had happened to Nana. She didn’t know exactly what
(though David probably knows, David sees everything that happens in this town)
but it was something terrible. In that moment when she’d cried out her grandmother’s name she’d felt a surge of power followed by a sharp pain. The pain had receded almost immediately and that was what terrified her, because it meant that Nana was fading away.
Not again, I never said I was sorry to Miranda and I never said I was sorry to you, either, Nana, so don’t die please don’t die hold on until I can get there.
The police station was less than a mile from the top of the hill, and Lauren climbed the steep ascent like it was nothing. Her legs were on fire and her lungs were scorched with fear and the silver ring felt like it was branding her hand.
She saw a car in front of her nana’s house, an unfamiliar car that was parked in the middle of the street, but she didn’t stop to examine it or wonder about it. She ran up the porch steps and saw that the door wasn’t closed quite all the way.
Lauren pushed the door open and called, “Nana! Nana!”
Then she stopped, because Nana was on the floor and there was blood all around.
She screamed then, because Nana’s face was gone and the only way that Lauren knew it was her grandmother at all was because her long gray hair floated in the pool of blood like Ophelia’s in the river.
“No, Nana,” she moaned. “No, no.”
Call the police, she thought, but she couldn’t make her feet move, couldn’t stop staring at the horror before her.
Somebody grabbed her shoulders, squeezed tight. Lauren cried out and looked up into the face of the mayor.
“Mr. Touhy!” she said. “My nana . . .”
There was a strange expression in his eyes. He didn’t seem to notice that Nana was dead at all. He stared down at Lauren and he looked—
Hungry, she thought. He looks hungry.
“I’m so glad that you’re here,” he said. “It makes things so much easier if I don’t have to hunt around looking for you.”
She tried to pull away from him, but his fingers dug into her shoulders.
“Let me go!” she shouted, trying to twist out of his grip. “Let me go!”
“Oh, no,” he said, pushing her toward the open door. “There’s something waiting for you in the woods.”<
br />
She struggled and fought and yelled, but his grip didn’t slacken.
They were down the porch before she knew what was happening.
If I get in that car I’m never going home again, she thought.
Lauren stomped down hard on his right foot at the same time that she pushed her elbow into his stomach.
She didn’t think she’d hurt him at all, only surprised him, but it didn’t matter because it was just enough to make him release her shoulders. Lauren didn’t hesitate.
She ran.
“Fucking little bitch!” he shouted.
She heard his leather soles slapping the pavement behind her, and a second later he tackled her to the ground. Her forehead bounced off the road and blood poured into her right eye.
He grabbed her by her wrists and yanked her up with a surprising amount of strength. Her feet twisted under her as he dragged her toward his car. The blood from the cut on her head made her eye sting and she couldn’t see and it felt like her limbs were made of soft wax. She couldn’t seem to get her body to struggle or fight or run.
“Hey!”
Jake’s voice, she thought, and tried to call his name.
Jake, don’t come here. He’ll kill you.
Touhy opened the passenger door and shoved her inside. She tried to lift her hand up, tried to reach for the handle so she could get out. But she couldn’t see, couldn’t make her hand do what she wanted it to do. Her head rolled forward to her chest.
There was noise outside, the thudding of flesh against flesh, grunts and cries. Someone slammed into the car and the whole vehicle shook.
I hope that was Touhy. I hope that Jake is kicking the shit out of him. But it was hard to keep her head up, hard to focus on what was happening outside.
Lauren slumped against the door, her eyes closed.
A moment later she heard the driver’s-side door open. Someone got in the car, someone breathing hard and angry. She felt the engine start, heard him mutter.
“That’s enough,” Touhy said. “It all ends tonight.”
The car backed up, turned around, rolled over something that made the wheels rise up and fall again.
Jake. Did Touhy just run over . . . ?
Please don’t let him be dead. Don’t let him be like Miranda and Nana and Dad. Let him be all right.
Lauren tried to open her eyes but they felt glued shut. She didn’t need to see to know where they were going, anyway.
There was only one possible place.
The ghost tree.
32
Alex turned onto his street, his eyes straining in the darkness for a glimpse of Lauren. Either she had run very fast or he’d guessed wrong about her final destination.
Or the killer got her already.
No, he wouldn’t think like that. He would find her, and he would keep her safe.
Ever since the two dead girls had been found, Alex had felt like he was three steps behind, struggling to catch up in a game where everyone but him knew the rules.
But this time the killer had actually warned them. He’d told them the name of his target. Alex wasn’t about to let Lauren become the next victim if he could do anything about it.
He pulled up in front of Lauren’s house. Before he could turn off the car, though, he noticed something strange at the end of the street.
It looked like a line of people filing out of Mrs. Schneider’s house carrying lit torches.
And they were walking directly toward his house.
Alex didn’t stop to think about what their intentions were. He slammed his foot on the gas, turned on the lights and sirens, and sped down to the cul-de-sac.
He thought that the sight and sound of a police car would make them stop. At the very least it ought to have made them pause. But he screeched to a halt just before his own driveway and found that the crowd didn’t seem to notice his presence at all.
Alex pushed the door open and ran across his front lawn. His weapon was drawn for the second time that day, and for the second time that day he had the unnerving feeling that nothing he said or did would affect these people.
They were walking slowly, deliberately, and their faces in the light of the torches had the same dead eyes and blank malice as the crowd at the fair.
He heard the front door open behind him.
“Alejandro!” Sofia called. “Get away from them!”
“Sof, take the kids and go out the back,” he said. “Go down to Karen’s.”
“I will not,” she said, coming out to stand next to him.
He didn’t shift his gaze from the steady movement of the oncoming crowd, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed Sofia held a large gardening spade in her hands.
Mrs. Schneider, he noted, was at the front of the group.
Of course she is. The Old Bigot has been dying for the chance to burn us out since the day we came here.
Then he thought, with a grim smile, She’d better not get in range of Sofia’s spade or else her head’s going to be caved in.
“Stop now or I will shoot,” Alex said, and aimed for the Old Bigot’s foot. She was the ringleader, he was sure. If she stopped moving, maybe the rest of them would too.
Although I don’t know about that, he thought. He’d never felt so helpless before, so certain that his authority was meaningless. Even if he shot them all, he had a strange notion that they would just get up again and keep trying.
To these people he wasn’t a police officer. He was a “dirty Mexican,” an outsider. And it wasn’t only about him. His family was in the house they wanted to burn down, his brother and his sister-in-law and his daughters and his nephew. They didn’t think he and his family were human.
He heard something clanging on the side of the house and risked a glance away from the crowd. His brother was unrolling the garden hose.
“Genius,” he muttered, then said more loudly, “This is your last warning.”
He only had a revolver, so he couldn’t shoot all of them even if he wanted to.
But I want to shoot Mrs. Schneider, he thought. I really do.
She was only a few feet away from him now.
“Alejandro!” Sofia shouted.
He pulled the trigger.
The bullet hit Mrs. Schneider just at the place where her ankle met her foot. Alex had been careful not to aim for an organ or a major artery, although it was likely that with her brittle old bones the bullet would break something.
She staggered, cried out, but she didn’t stop even though she was now limping. Her eyes blazed with hate and her torch blazed with a killing light.
Then Alex felt cold water dripping on his head as Ed turned the hose on. His brother arced the water over Alex and Sofia, aiming the stream at the nearest torch-bearers.
Some of the torches flickered and went out, but their owners kept moving inexorably forward.
Sofia took a better grip on the spade, turning her body like a batter getting ready for a pitch. Water dripped on them as Ed tried to douse all the torches.
Something moved to Alex’s left, a small shadow followed by a larger one.
Then David diMucci stepped in front of him. He heard Karen say, “David!” and Alex hastily reholstered his weapon. He was not about to accidentally shoot the little boy. Alex reached for David, ready to grab him and move him away before he got hurt.
“Stop,” David said to the crowd.
They stopped. Many of them swayed in place, side to side like dandelions in a summer breeze. Alex noticed that unlike the crowd at the fair there was no realization of where they were and what they were doing. Their faces remained terrifyingly blank.
“No more fire,” David said.
The flames disappeared as if a giant had blown out his birthday candles.
“What the—?” said Ed behind them. The shower of water
abruptly shut off.
Mrs. Schneider stared at David like she’d never seen him before.
“You’re one of them,” she spat. “One of the witches.”
“Go home,” David said.
Alex noticed then there seemed to be a kind of halo all around David’s body, like he was giving off a faint bioluminescent glow.
Everyone turned around and went away, shuffling along in the dark, some of them dragging their doused torches behind them. They looked, Alex thought, like children who’d been called home for dinner when they wanted to stay out and play.
But Mrs. Schneider didn’t go. Her anger had only been redirected—from the Lopez family to the very small boy staring up at her with no fear in his eyes.
“It’s your fault,” she said. She was leaning on her torch now like a cane, unable to support herself on the foot that Alex had shot.
Nobody moved. Nobody seemed to be able to move.
“You, and your family, and the curse that you put on this town,” she continued. Saliva ran out of her mouth and over her chin, the poison inside her showing for everyone to see.
Curse? Was this why all the girls kept dying? Is this why all of this crazy shit keeps happening? Alex thought, then I should do something. I should arrest this nutty old bitch before she hurts David.
But his feet felt chained in place. The air pulsed with a kind of energy, like the smell of lightning that came before a storm.
“It will all end if I get rid of these outsiders!” she shouted, gesturing with her free hand at Alex and Sofia. “If they go away, then we can all forget, the way it used to be.”
“No,” David said. His voice seemed deeper, more resonant. “You’ll never forget again. You, and everyone else, will remember.”
Her hand curved into claws. She screamed, raised it to strike him.
Karen diMucci shot out of the darkness and punched Mrs. Schneider in the face.
The Ghost Tree Page 33