"For thinking you were..." She closed her eyes, counted to three, and opened them again. The body was still there. "You know. Nuts."
Fitch shrugged. "I've been called worse."
"What the hell was it?"
"Don't know. I just gave it a name so I didn't have to pretend it was a monster." Fitch wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, like he'd tasted something foul. "Big question is, what did it want with you?"
"He said-"
"Not the clicker. The thing that sent it. I need to ask some questions... Better you get inside and wash up before that man of yours gets mad. You've got mud all up over you."
Kimberly scowled. "He's not my man."
"He's all you got, until you figure a way out of this place-"
The slam of the front door was as loud as a pistol crack. Kimberly spun as Peter stomped across the wet lawn, hands bunched into fists by his sides. "Who the fuck are you?" he growled. "You leave my wife alone-"
"He saved me!" Kimberly jumped between them, hands out, holding Peter at bay. "Goddamnit, didn't you see?"
"Was this him? Was this the guy you were fucking around with?" Peter tried to push past, and Fitch retreated as far as the road. "I see you here again and I'm calling the police, you hear?"
"Sure, sure." Fitch smiled uneasily, his left hand back in his pocket. "Won't see me any more." He met Kimberly's gaze. "Watch out for this one, lady. He'll leave you crying, I bet."
"I told you-"
But Fitch was already retreating. He eased back until he was obscured by shadows and rain, and vanished altogether. Peter relaxed. "Asshole," he spat. "You okay? He didn't hurt you? I heard you shout."
"You're the asshole! He was saving my life!" Kimberly fought the urge to punch her so-called husband in the face. Her hands were still slick with ichor, slivers of chitin sharp beneath her fingernails. "Why didn't you come help? Are you deaf or just stupid?"
Peter only looked confused. "Honey, I have no idea-"
"Didn't you see?" Peter shook his head. "It's right there!" She stomped over to what was left of the creature, the blackened carapace crushed down into the mud, leaking sickly yellow pus. "It tried to eat my fucking face and you were just-"
"Are you sure you're okay?" Peter reached out, withdrew, and finally rested a hand on her shoulder. "Kimmy, it's a dead cat."
She shrugged him away. "What?"
"That's been lying in the gutter since yesterday. Probably got hit by a car. I don't get it. A hobo throws a dead cat at you and you defend him? Why do I always have to be the guy who gets things done? What's going on in your head, Kimmy? First I've gotta drag you out of some tenement house where you were snorting coke with your boyfriend or whatever the hell you were doing there, and now you... We have a kid, god dammit!" For a moment he looked as if he had something more to say, and then he shrugged his collar up and stomped back towards the house.
Kimberly's mouth opened and closed without sound as Peter slammed the door behind him. The baby began to wail, a long siren whoop carrying over the rooftops.
He'd forgotten. Less than a day later, and he'd already lost what had happened in the house. Like a dream turned to dust upon waking.
She chased him into the dry, shaking the water from her hair. "Peter!"
He was stopped at the top of the stairs, glaring down at her. "What now?"
"Have you ever left Rustwood?"
Peter's mouth opened and closed. "What's that mean?"
"Have you ever gotten out of town? A holiday? The beach? Anything?"
A pause. Peter's brow furrowed. He scratched behind his ear. "I... Yeah, I guess."
"When?"
"Sometime, I don't know." He bit his lower lip, almost like he was holding back tears. "Is that what this is about? You're sick of the place? If we have to move, we move. We can deal with that."
"Where'd you go, then? Last time you left the town, where'd you go?"
Peter's lips thinned to fine white lines. "Don't change the subject, Kimmy. I won't take that sort of bullshit." He slipped into the nursery and slammed the door behind him.
Kimberly didn't move from the doorway. She flicked the curtains aside with shaking hands, peering out into the shadowed yard. The corpse was still there, a black husk glimmering in the rain, lit up by the headlights of passing cars.
She watched it and waited, daring it to disappear.
* * *
She hid in the bedroom while Peter fed and changed the baby. The burbles and giggles carried through the thin walls, followed by half an hour of wailing, followed by more burps, and then silence. The stairs creaked. Peter was retreating.
She waited.
Finally, when the bedside clock read midnight, she eased out into the hall. The house was dark. Snoring echoed from downstairs - Peter asleep on the sofa already. The wooden bannister was slick under her hands. Almost electric, like an illusion of light. She was still twitching from the adrenaline rush that came with almost having her face eaten off. Nothing made sense. The more she thought about police ignoring a house full of bodies, or monsters made of black plates and spiny legs and wet human lips, or how the stranger had looked right at the corpse and seen nothing but roadkill, the more she wanted to scream. It was like everyone had been let in on the joke except her.
What scared her most of all was that she hadn't gone mad. Even with Fitch stomping the bastard thing into the ground, she hadn't freaked, hadn't let the panic overwhelm her. Almost like she'd decided that Rustwood was a bad dream, and she was still waiting to wake up.
But those claws had been real. Its breath on her cheeks had been real. And this house, the carpet under her feet, the rustling of nappies as Peter changed the baby, were real.
The baby. The one thing she couldn't believe.
Right on cue, something twinged in her belly. She clutched herself, breathing through the pain, the hard lines of the scar standing out against her fingertips.
No chance, she thought. No way. But her feet were already moving, carrying her across the landing to the nursery door. It was painted pastel blue, the word CURTIS printed in pink, curving like a rainbow.
Don't. Don't. If she stepped through then she couldn't pretend any more. Couldn't make believe that the baby was just another part of the fiction, a figment of a shitty dream she'd snap out of before sunrise.
But there was truth, and then there was the truth hidden beneath that, one that would fester if she didn't look it in the eyes, and before she could reconsider she pushed open the door to the nursery.
The room was dim, the pastel-pink paint job rendered muddy by shadows. In the centre of the room was a wooden crib, and Kimberly inched across the room, hesitant, ready to turn and run. Something squirmed behind the bars, and she knew that if she saw it then some things would be made concrete and undeniable.
Her footsteps were whispers on the carpet. Her hands slipped on the lip of the crib.
The baby was wrapped in a blue blanket, pinned tight to the mattress. He was fat-faced, his crown dusted with blonde hair, lips pursed, a bubble of spit rising with each breath.
As Kimberly watched, the baby blinked and arched. His eyes were a bright sea green. He had her eyes, Kimberly realised. The stranger's nose, and her eyes.
The baby had one arm free of the blanket. It reached up to her, tiny fingers grasping at the air. Kimberly couldn't speak. She reached into the crib and let the baby take her finger.
The baby squeaked and burped. Kimberly blinked hard. There was an uncomfortable heat behind her eyes.
"You're not real," she whispered, but she didn't pull away. "You're... psychosis. You're not even here."
The baby gripped tight, and Kimberly felt tears on her cheeks.
She sat alone in the bedroom for a long time, silent, listening to the rain drumming on the roof, waiting for anything to make sense. It didn't. The world was all twisted and it felt like she was the only one who knew which way was up. Did Goodwell even know what was going on, or was he as blind as her husband?
>
There. That word again. Husband. She hated the sound of it but it kept creeping into her thoughts. Like something she'd forgotten, finally boiling up out of the darkness of memory.
"He isn't," she whispered. "He isn't, he can't be, he can't." The mantra didn't help. Somehow, when she thought of the stranger downstairs, she thought of his taste. His hand on her waist. The pressure of his lips on hers.
"No."
The smell of his sweat in the evenings. Him stretching up to retrieve a tub of peanut butter from the top shelf in the supermarket, just beyond her reach, smiling as he passed it down to her. His hand enveloping hers as she lay in the hospital bed breathing antiseptic, the doctors lowering the mask, her belly swollen so far that she couldn't see her knees...
The birth. Jesus Christ, she remembered.
Then, very dimly, she heard the rustle of leaves outside.
She ran to the window. For a moment the shadows were conflicted, the spidery limbs of trees tossed by the wind, casting long slivers of black across the grass. The chittering creature was back, a hundred legs twitching in sequence as it wended through the bushes, coming for her, coming to crawl down her throat and build a nest in her gut, to parade her through the town like a bloodied marionette...
The bushes parted. It was Fitch, slashed by moonlight. He'd traded his ragged coat for a woollen jumper and a fisherman's hat, wide enough to keep the rain out of his eyes. His left hand was deep in the pocket of his jacket.
He looked up at her window and crooked one finger.
Kimberly eased the window open, careful of how the latch squeaked. "What're you doing here?" she whispered. "Are you crazy?"
"Crazier to sit alone in this place and wait for the beast," Fitch replied. "I had to clean house. Buried the clicker deep. Salted it, too. I hear they hate that."
A creak echoed downstairs. Her husband... the stranger... taking a midnight trip to the bathroom. "I remember things," she said. "I was there when the baby..."
"It eats at you, doesn't it?" Fitch called. "They put things in your head!"
"I just don't understand," she whispered. "Everyone keeps talking in circles. Goodwell and Keller and..." Her knuckles were white on the windowsill. "I'm not going to wake up, am I?"
Fitch shook his head. "Took me time to believe, too."
"Do you know what's going on here, or are you just guessing?"
"I know bits. Some things I can't tell you under open sky. Others... I need to take you to Mrs Rosenfeld. Real modern witch doctor, she is. She's seen things."
"Can she get me out of this place?"
Fitch's smile fell, but only for a moment. "No promises. But if anyone can, it's her."
"When?"
"Whenever you want. But I'll tell you, the longer you stay in one place, the longer they'll have to sniff you out."
The toilet flushed downstairs. Footsteps crossed to the couch. Springs creaked. Peter was asleep again. She glanced around the bedroom, at the scattered clothing, the unfamiliar bed, closets full of clothing she'd never worn, photographs propped atop an oak dresser showing her in places she'd never been.
But the longer she stared at those photos, the more she wondered.
"I can't stay here," she said. "Not with him."
"I've got a place," Fitch replied. "Not nice, but it's big enough for two."
"I don't even know you."
"You know me better than that man."
She hated to admit it, but Fitch was right. She'd been fed nothing but bullshit for the past weeks and Fitch was the only one who was willing to admit that he didn't know what was truly going on. She even trusted the ragged man more than Detective Goodwell.
And yet, she hesitated. "How do I know you're not going to kill me and stuff me in a garbage can?"
Fitch's brow wrinkled. "Why'd I do a thing like that?"
"Mom always told me to be careful of strangers," Kimberly replied. "She always said I'd end up in a ditch or something."
"You think I'm a killer?"
Kimberly shook her head.
"Then you're wrong." A branch creaked and Fitch spun, surveying the bushes. Nothing moved there. "Bad things happened here, long time ago. Bad things happening now too. You come with me, you better know that they'll catch up to you."
Kimberly swallowed hard. "I just want to go home."
"Doesn't everyone?" Fitch stepped back into the shadows, letting himself be swallowed by the dark. "I'll wait."
Kimberly closed the window and looked around the tiny bedroom that had, over the past week, been her prison. The faux-fur duvet, the carpet stained by spilled wine, the impossible snapshots.
Memories of camera-flashes. A wineglass slipping from her fingers.
She couldn't believe. She wouldn't.
Kimberly didn't bother to pack - it seemed to only bring her bad luck. The baby didn't wake as she crept past, and neither did Peter. She was outside within moments.
Fitch was waiting across the street. "Did you leave a note?"
"I'll call some time." She shivered in the chill, pulling her jacket up around her face to protect from the drizzle. "Do you have a car?"
"Not any more." He jerked his head. "Stick close."
She didn't know why she obeyed - only that it seemed the best of several terrible options. With the rain pattering on her head and road lit only by the pale orange cast of street lamps, she followed Fitch into the night.
* * *
Behind them, in the shadows, a figure unfurled from behind a willow. It was tall and slim and wrapped in black, and as Kimberly and Fitch receded into the dark it raised its wrist to its mouth and bit deep into the soft flesh below its palm.
Skin parted like butter. Blood flowed sluggishly from the tear, mixing with the rainwater and running in thin streams down to the figure's elbow.
"Yes," it said. "They're together."
The blood pearling on its wrist bubbled in response.
"She's made her choice."
The blood hissed, blackening and scabbing.
The figure smiled. "Of course. Show her what it is to hurt." It licked the wound, cleaning its skin of blood, and the link was broken.
It followed, gliding between the raindrops as silent as a ghost, a creature not of meat or bone but air and shadow.
It followed, and grew hungry.
Chapter 19
The call came in at seven AM. The Archer woman was missing again. Goodwell wasn't surprised - he'd seen it in her eyes that day in the car. She wasn't going to settle in any one place for long, not with her head twisted around the way it was.
Kimberly Archer confused him, just like she'd confused the rest of Rustwood, but he had a feeling that wherever she was hiding she was doing okay. She'd be out on the streets again, or at the hospital begging meds off Doctor Keller. Maybe walking through those damned tunnels again, like that ever did anyone a lick of good.
There were other men and women on duty that day who could chase her around town. He had other business to attend to. A mission from a higher authority.
There were vandals to find.
He cruised the streets for near an hour before he found Dylan Cobber slouching his way along Central Avenue, head down, hands stuffed inside the pocket of his hoodie, hood pulled up against the rain. He recognised the kid instantly - there was no way to mistake that bright jacket, or the racial slur stitched across the back, exactly as Mrs Archer had described.
He pulled up beside Dylan and leaned out the window. "Hey."
The kid was fifteen, pale-faced, the dustings of teenage stubble on his chin. He stared at Goodwell vacantly. "Yeah?"
"You know what this is about." Goodwell jerked his thumb at the back door. "Are your buddies out today, scrawling on walls? What're their names?"
"Taram."
Goodwell frowned. "And?"
"Martin. Jeez." Dylan climbed in without argument. His gaze was fixed on some distant point, far beyond the police car, the street, or even the hills.
"And where would the
y be?"
Dylan shrugged. "Old bridge, I guess."
The old bridge, crossing over the Pentacost River, not far from the convent. It made perfect sense to Goodwell - the bridge had always been the go-to place for disaffected teenager to smoke hash and drink stolen whiskey. He turned off Central and looped through the streets towards the quarry. Dylan was quiet in the back, but when Goodwell listened close he was sure the boy was mumbling, almost below the level of hearing.
It sounded, he thought, like a prayer.
Five or six kids were slumped beneath the bridge when Goodwell arrived, passing cigarettes back and forth, smoke twining around their heads. All but two of the boys scattered when Goodwell pulled up. Martin and Taram, he assumed.
They saw Dylan in the back seat and climbed to their feet. Their eyes, like Dylan's, were glazed and distant.
"In," Goodwell said, and they obeyed.
It was a half hour from the old bridge to China Road. From there, Goodwell pulled on to the thin dirt track that led up McCarthy Mountain, knocking his patrol car back into second gear as it rumbled over the potholes. Gravel spat beneath his tires as he slid between the pines. Out the driver's window he could see the Hill family farm, the old stone well beside the rotten barn, great holes opened in the roof, the back corner of the barn bashed in completely by a fallen pine.
It'd been twenty years since the Hills had abandoned the farm and moved into central Rustwood. Long before Goodwell's time, but he was still grateful. Nobody went to the farm any more but him. It was the perfect place to sit alone and watch the sunset.
Plus, there was the well.
He looped down the hill, pulled up behind the barn and ushered the boys out one by one into the rain, lining them up against the weatherboard wall. Dylan, Martin and Taram stood side by side, rocking back and forth on their heels in a curious rhythm. The kids couldn't have looked more different - Dylan was pale and freckled, his hair a ginger mop over his eyes, while Martin was chubby and pimpled and Taram was a rail-thin Pakistani kid, his eyes dark and shadowed. Even so, the way they swayed made Goodwell uneasy. Their synchronicity put him in mind of ravens on a telephone wire, twitching at unheard noises.
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