by J. W. Ocker
Fern was bending over her crutch and throwing things into a black duffel bag. Clothes, books, vials. Her elephant teapot. Her lettuce-and-tomato sandwich. “I think I know the fastest way to get me back to Gulf Shores. Maybe even push the science of stuck places forward half a step. I’ve got to get the Neighbors in on this, though. Now.”
“Where are they?”
“Not here.”
“When are you coming back?”
“Don’t know. Days, weeks, months?” Fern rushed through the kitchen. Noe followed her, confused. Fern opened a door that led to the garage. In it was an ancient Volkswagen Beetle. The car was bright orange and looked like a toy.
“What are we supposed to do about the Smashed Man?” asked Noe.
“I don’t know. Stay near adults? You probably know better than I do.” Fern slipped into the car, throwing the duffel bag and her crutch on the passenger seat. She turned the keys, and the car rumbled like it was about to fly apart. She then pointed a finger at Noe, like she was lecturing her from inside the car. Noe looked around and saw a switch on the wall beside her. She hit it. The garage door opened with a metal wail. Fern sped backward out of the garage.
She didn’t make it to the end of the driveway before she pulled back in as fast as she had left. She leaned across the front seat and rolled the window down with a lot of effort. “Here,” she said, holding out a small metal key. Noe took it. “To this house. Don’t clean my mess up.” She sat back in the driver seat. “Nighttime is the most dangerous for you. That’s still going to be when the Smashed Man is active.” And with that she was off again.
Noe didn’t see a Nonatuke on the car and wondered if anybody saw the funny-looking vehicle appear out of thin air at the top of the dead end. But the thought was dashed quickly from her head as reality set in. The Smashed Man was trapped in this neighborhood and there was no way to fight him and it was all her fault. Fern had been her only hope, and now she was gone who knows where for who knows how long. Fern hadn’t been helping her today, she’d been using her. Using her for her . . . cell knowledge. If that was even a real thing. Noe had her doubts.
She sat down in Fern’s dirty kitchen and cried. After about ten minutes of wringing herself dry, she rooted around the kitchen, looking for tissues or napkins or paper towels. But instead she found something that made her realize that there might be a way for the Dread Enders to protect themselves.
Twenty-One
This meeting of the Dread Enders wasn’t at Rune Rock. It was in Noe’s bedroom. Her palace of parasomnia, the starting line of her sleepwalking and the headquarters of her night terrors. It felt weird having them all in there, Radiah messing with her phone while sitting on Noe’s bed, Crystal looking at the posters of dogs on her walls, Ruthy playing with a stuffed Komodo dragon that Len must have left at some point. But it also felt good. She had just finished explaining to the other girls about her conversation with Fern and the meditation session.
“So, again, she’s no help at all,” said Radiah. It had been awkward seeing Radiah after their last encounter, but she seemed to have cooled a bit. She must have talked to Crystal since then. Or maybe it was the threat of the Smashed Man. They were all bonded by terror.
“Yeah, she’s awful. But she was a little help,” said Noe. “Even if she didn’t mean to be.”
“What do you mean?” asked Crystal, almost too quietly to hear. It was the first time she’d said anything since arriving. She was staring at a perplexing poster of a puli, a Hungarian breed that looked like a living mop. Crystal had been strangely silent since arriving at Noe’s house, choosing to be interested only in the posters so far.
“She told us about the Amberonks. And she has these.” Noe held up a vial of darkwash.
“Not again,” said Radiah.
“I know, I know. But this isn’t for offense anymore. It’s for defense. Fern said that the Amberonks keep the Smashed Man from escaping the neighborhood. That means they can keep the Smashed Man from . . . entering parts of it.” Radiah was off her phone, Ruthy had put down the stuffed reptile, and Crystal had stopped staring at the dog posters. She had all their attention now. “If we painted darkwash Amberonks on our houses, he won’t be able to get inside.”
“Unless he’s already inside one of our houses,” said Radiah.
“Fern said he’s trying to escape the neighborhood. So he must be out there trying to find a way through the Amberonks,” said Noe. “But if he is, we’ll just have to lure him out. And then he won’t be able to get back in.”
“Do you really think it’ll work?” asked Ruthy.
“I think so. We’d have to paint them on all four sides of our houses to make like a mini border around them,” said Noe.
“What about the roof?” said Radiah, her tone shifting. “Don’t we need to put one on the roof to keep him from getting in that way?”
It seemed like a weird thing to say until Noe remembered that the girl lived in an attic. “He can’t get over the Amberonks painted around the neighborhood, so he shouldn’t be able to get over the Amberonks painted around a house.”
“Since adults can’t see the darkwash, it should be easy to do,” said Radiah. “We’ll need a lot more than that, though.” She nodded her head at the small vial in Noe’s hand.
It’s hard to ransack a house that already looks like it’s been ransacked. Digging through all the old food and clothes and books and dirty glassware in the white house was disgusting, but it was harder trying to keep track of where they had already looked. Most of the mess in the house was on the first floor. Upstairs were empty rooms and a bedroom where Fern must have slept. There wasn’t much up there.
“What’ve we got?” Noe asked as they all stood in the living room.
“Five vials,” said Crystal, pushing them around on the brass tea tray. “Two of them only half full.” She stared at the vials like she didn’t want to look anybody in the eyes.
“How big do we need to paint the sigils?” asked Ruthy. “Can we make them small?”
“The smallest one we’ve seen is on the Dead End sign. I’m guessing the Amberonks will have to be at least that size,” said Noe. “But to be sure, we should make them bigger than that.”
Radiah was over by a door at the side of the living room. She touched the knob uncertainly and then opened the door a few inches and peered in. “Did anybody look in the basement?”
The basement of the white house didn’t look like it belonged in the white house. It was clean. It also didn’t look like it belonged in any house. It was a laboratory. The floor was tiled, and pristine white counters ran the length of one wall. On their surfaces were microscopes and other scientific apparatuses. Glass beakers and vials were arranged in orderly cabinets. Three whiteboards on wheels clustered together in one corner, covered in numbers and sigils. Cameras stood on tall tripods beside mounted studio lights. Noe rethought her image of the Neighbors meditating cross-legged on a floor.
The only part of the basement that seemed like it belonged in the basement was one of the walls. Unlike the spotless white plaster of the other walls, this one was dingy, bare concrete. Nothing was in front of the wall, and every camera and light in the room was pointed at it.
On its surface, covering almost every square inch, was a maze of cracks.
“This is what Fern has been up to,” said Radiah.
“Look at this.” Crystal held a large black notebook she had found on one of the counters. The girls gathered around her as she opened it. It was the notebook of sigils that Erica had mentioned in her diary.
“Not much help,” said Radiah. Noe had to agree. There were a couple dozen symbols in the book, about half of which were named with the same kinds of nonsensical names as Nonatuke and Amberonk. Those two sigils were the only ones with explanations of their purpose, though.
As Crystal flipped through the pages, Noe saw the Elberex flash by. It made her uncomfortable, so she moved away and started digging through cabinets. After rummaging around, she found what she was l
ooking for in a cabinet under the counter. Inside were large lidded white buckets labeled DARKWASH that, judging from their weight, were full of the black starry liquid. “We’re going to need bigger paintbrushes. And something to carry one of these around in,” she said.
The Dread Enders continued to poke around the laboratory, but there wasn’t much more to see: a few blank notebooks. A blocky laptop that looked like the first one ever invented. It was dead and had no power cord. And none of the cameras had memory cards in them. “Can they even record the Smashed Man?” Radiah asked.
It took two of them to lug one of the heavy buckets of darkwash outside to the front lawn. Noe tried to make as little eye contact with the other girls as possible, to avoid seeing their purple irises every time they glanced at where the house was. The group made a quick plan, then left the bucket on the ground and dispersed to their houses.
They met back at the white bucket ten minutes later, ready to graffiti Dread End.
Radiah and Ruthy had raided Ruthy’s garage for paintbrushes and a screwdriver. Crystal returned pulling an old wooden wagon behind her. Noe had a sheaf of papers in her hand.
“I guess we should do the white house first,” said Noe. “Nobody lives there right now, but we don’t want to give the Smashed Man a place to hide.” They’d set the bucket inside Crystal’s wagon. Noe went over to it and, using the screwdriver, popped off the plastic top. Then she dipped her brush into the paint. She looked up at her purple-eyed friends and said, “I guess I’m on my own on this one.”
Noe ran to the front of the house, holding the paintbrush like a melting ice-cream cone. She painted the Amberonk prominently on the red door of the house, equal in size to the Nonatuke beside it on the wall. The darkwash was thick and sticky but transferred easily from the brush to the door. It took only three quick brushstrokes to get it on there. When she turned around, her friends were still looking up at her with purple eyes. She made quick work of dashing back for more darkwash and painting Amberonks on the back and sides of the house.
They went counterclockwise around the neighborhood. Radiah’s house was next.
The work was absurdly quick. Four Dread Enders, four paintbrushes, four sides to the house. “That’s it?” asked Radiah. “I don’t feel safer.”
They moved on to Ruthy’s witch house next. The darkwash was so deeply black, it made the black paint of her house look faded. On her front door, which was red, the Amberonk looked like an accent to the rest of the house.
They continued down the street, painting Amberonks on the doors and sides of all the houses on Totter Court, creating barriers that the Smashed Man could not break and markings that the adults could not see. They decided to do every house on the block, even though only their own houses had kids in them. Adults couldn’t see the Smashed Man and seemed not to be in danger of him when he was in the basement walls, but the Dread Enders didn’t know if those rules had changed now that the Smashed Man was free.
All they knew right now was how strange it felt to paint sigils on other people’s houses. Like vandalism, but since nobody could see it, pretend vandalism, like Erica throwing a rock through the window of an invisible house.
Fortunately, they only got caught once.
They felt comfortable walking up to front doors and brazenly painting Amberonks on them. That was because the darkwash was invisible, but also because they had a cover story ready if they needed it. The sides and back of the houses were harder and a little trespass-y, but not impossible. Eventually they found themselves at the mouth of the cul-de-sac, where the Dread End sign marked the border of their neighborhood and the cage of the Smashed Man. They worked their way up the other side of the neighborhood toward Noe’s house and had just finished Crystal’s yellow house. They were moving on to her neighbor, Mrs. Washington. Her husband had passed away years ago, and she lived by herself. The girls hadn’t even had a chance to set foot on the walkway to the front door when they heard Mrs. Washington yelling from a wooden swing on her porch.
“What are you girls doing to this neighborhood?”
Crystal sighed and took the lead. Mrs. Washington was her neighbor, after all, and she had talked to Mrs. Washington lots of times before, although mostly just to say hi or to see if she needed help carrying her groceries into the house.
Crystal reached into the wagon and pulled out a piece of paper from a stack there. “Hi, Mrs. Washington,” she said flatly as she walked up to the porch. “We’re handing out these.” She gave Mrs. Washington the piece of paper.
On it, below an image of a bonfire on a beach, were the words:
You’re invited to the summer bonfire!!!
The Wileys (6 Totter Court) would like to invite all neigbors to our backyard for the seasonal bonfire to keep our neighborhood clean!!!
Noe had typed up the flyer, copied and pasted the photo from an image search, and then printed a dozen of them off Dad’s printer. It wasn’t until after she’d printed them that she realized the bonfire image was on a beach and that she’d mistyped “neighbors.” She also couldn’t remember the exact date of the bonfire and she hated exclamation marks, but all that didn’t matter. It was shoddy work, but it should work if somebody opened the front door when they were trying to paint an Amberonk on it, even if it looked like they were running a dry brush up and down the door.
Mrs. Washington took the flyer, read it, and then shielded her eyes as she looked past Crystal at the two girls by the wagon on the sidewalk.
“Which one of you is a Wiley?” she yelled across the lawn.
Noe raised her hand slowly like she was admitting to doing something wrong. Mrs. Washington squinted her eyes and nodded her head and then found the bucket more interesting than the new girl on the block.
“What’s with the white bucket?” she asked.
“It’s for pine cones. We’re gathering them for an art project. Ruthy’s idea.” Noe tousled Ruthy’s hair like she would do to Len if she wanted a reaction from her. Ruthy took the indignity well.
“Not a lot of pine trees in the neighborhood,” said Mrs. Washington. “Best place for those is closer to the edge of the woods, especially behind your house. And what’s with all the paintbrushes?”
“We’re going to paint the pine cones.” Noe twirled her brush in front of her like she was casting a spell with a wand, while watching a small glob of darkwash drip onto the grass in front of her. Mrs. Washington, of course, only saw a dry paintbrush.
Noe was about to go into even more detail about what a bunch of kids with pine cones and paintbrushes would be doing, even if she had no idea what those details would be, when she saw Radiah peeking around the side of the house. Radiah had a paintbrush gloppy with darkwash in one hand and was giving a thumbs-up with the other. They could see the Amberonk she had painted on the front of the house right there at the edge, where Mrs. Washington couldn’t see her do it. It was one of four that she had painted on its walls while the rest of the Dread Enders were distracting Mrs. Washington.
“Thanks!” said Noe. “We’ll look for pine cones at the edge of the forest after we finish passing out the flyers.”
Radiah rejoined them one house later. Five houses later, they were putting the final Amberonk on the side of Noe’s house. Noe painted the last one under the kitchen window while she stared defiantly at the black door through the glass. “That’s it,” she said, turning around. And then she started laughing.
“What?” asked Crystal as they all looked around to try to figure out why Noe was laughing.
“This stuff doesn’t come off easy,” said Noe, lifting up the hand that was still stained from her confrontation with the Smashed Man. The girls all looked at each other and noticed flecks and streaks of it on their arms and faces and even, in Ruthy’s case, in her bright blond hair.
“I think I feel it tingling,” said Radiah, looking at a streak of it on her left arm.
Noe kept laughing. “It does that at first. You can scrub it until it fades. Hopefully at some poi
nt it goes away. At least no adults can see it.”
“We’re filthy with this stuff and there’s no way our parents will get mad at us,” said Crystal, coming out of the strange funk she had been in all day and joining in Noe’s laughter. “I wish there were more things they couldn’t see.”
“Like a pet dog!” shouted Noe.
“Like me on my phone during dinner!” shouted Radiah.
“Like . . . like . . . like,” tried Ruthy before stomping her foot and giving up. The girls laughed even harder. For the first time, the Dread Enders felt safe in their own neighborhood. But the laughs finally tittered awkwardly into silence.
“Where do you think he is?” asked Ruthy, looking around at the forest surrounding them.
They all did the same.
“I don’t know,” said Noe.
“If there’s any day to not talk about the Smashed Man, it’s today,” said Radiah. “You guys want to play some video games at my house?”
Twenty-Two
Radiah stood in her old room with the attic door open in front of her. She looked up the stairs at the dimness above. There was only so much a single light bulb could do by itself in such a dark space. She looked around at her old bedroom, where she hadn’t slept a single night in three years. The bedding was clean and fresh—her mother kept it that way, hoping it would tempt her down from the mustiness of the attic, not understanding why she wasn’t coming down from the attic. But at least her mom let her stay up there.
What Radiah had never told her was that she was tempted every night to come down those stairs and curl up in those sheets. The attic was isolating. Which was why she stayed there. But it was hard. She rarely ever drew anymore.
Maybe tonight she should sleep in her real bedroom. Radiah looked out the front window at the neighborhood. She could see lights on in Noe’s house and the streetlamps on the road, but being surrounded by ravine walls and forest meant that the streetlamps were about as effective as the attic light bulb. Before it got dark, Radiah had walked around the house to make sure all the Amberonks were still there. Noe said they were difficult to wash off, but that didn’t mean impossible. All four were there, dark and glittery against the blue siding, and seeming completely inadequate to their task of keeping the Smashed Man away.