by Kat Ellis
“What?” I can’t move. I think of that gnarled, dead tree, and the white jitterbug I found nestled between its roots.
“We need to go now. Mister Jitters is coming. I’ve seen him,” she hisses. “He stares in through the keyhole when you’re gone, and the jitterbugs all make that horrid sound. I heard them while you were dreaming.”
I might still be asleep. I used to drift out of my dreams like this sometimes when I was little, with Mary Ann whispering adventures in my ear, and we’d creep from room to room until Nolan started locking me in, worried I’d wander off and never come back.
“We need to go to the Bone Tree,” she says impatiently. She’s not lisping the way she was before.
“Mister Jitters isn’t real,” I say, as though I’m reciting something I’ve said a thousand times before. I imagine for a moment I see the sticklike figures bleeding through the top layer of the wallpaper, but it’s just the beetle patterns and my eyes being tricky.
“He caught a taste of you, and now he’s coming. You have to hang your hair from the Bone Tree.”
“My hair?”
In the moonlight, I see Mary Ann hold up the hank of hair I cut off when I was trying to turn myself into Little Bird. I thought I’d thrown it in the trash.
“And my tooth fell out,” she says. Now I know why she sounds odd. She holds out the front tooth Larry knocked loose, a square white peg in the palm of her hand.
You’re not real, I think.
But she grabs my hand, pushing the tooth into it. My stomach does a dry rinse.
“Mister Jitters knows you’re looking for Lorelei,” Mary Ann whispers. “He doesn’t want you to find her.”
Stop wasting your time on this nonsense! Nolan snaps in my head, but it’s becoming harder to focus on his voice.
“I don’t think Mister Jitters really gets a say in what I do,” I tell her with a Little Bird smile—all surface, and sharp at the edges. But Mary Ann shakes her head slowly.
“Pretending won’t work, Lola. He’s already inside.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The knitted shawl I took from Lorelei’s closet isn’t warm enough in the night chill. Mary Ann’s freshly strung tooth swings from her hand. The hank of my hair has been bound with yarn I found in the cross-stitch bag next to Grandmother’s rocking chair, and sits like a dead rodent in my pocket.
I thought my head might feel clearer once I left the house, but Mary Ann followed me. Every little sound makes me jump.
Shards of starlight bounce from the polished bodywork of vintage cars, from the curved glass in the window of the Easy Diner, from the freshly swept sidewalk where dozens of Harrow Lake residents strolled just a short while ago. It’s hard to picture them here now. The whole place feels forgotten.
I stop when I hear a clicking sound.
“Do you hear that?” Mary Ann’s eyes show the whites all the way around the iris.
A voice whispers from the darkness:
“He got trapped underground for a really long while,
Then he fed on the dead and got a brand-new smile . . .”
The record plays through the hidden sound system, so softly it’s like it’s being whispered right in my ear. The fine hairs on my nape stand on end.
“Rat-a-tat-tat—such a terrifying sound!
With a jitter-jitter-jitter, he’s stirring underground!
Tick-tock, tick-tock—better watch out, he’s gonna snap-snap-snap your bones . . .”
* * *
• • •
The song stops as abruptly as it started. I hold my chest to keep my heart from ricocheting around my rib cage.
Now I can picture Lorelei singing it softly as she rinsed shampoo from my hair, covering my face so the suds wouldn’t make me cry. The way her lips moved, the way she smelled.
It’s like having my skin peeled back.
Mary Ann tugs at my sleeve. “We need to go faster.”
I nod. Maybe if I follow her to the Bone Tree like she wants, she’ll leave me alone.
The empty street is more unnerving than if I was walking through a room full of serial killers.
We reach the high gates of the fairground. For a moment, I think I catch a few stray notes of Little Bird’s song carrying on the breeze, and I lean in, straining to hear.
“Be careful!” Mary Ann points up to the sign: CAUTION! ELECTRIC FENCE.
Backing away a little shakily, I head on, keeping a safe distance from the chain links guiding us up the stony slope. The trees hang back from this part of the hill, so the light reaches me well enough. Finally, the almost-circle appears ahead. The Bone Tree looms up at its center and my shadow stretches along the road to meet it. I catch a pebble with my toe, sending it clattering across the clearing. There’s no wind to bother the trees.
A flicker of movement.
I freeze.
Is it Mister Jitters?
No.
Stop it, Lola. Get your head out of the clouds. Nolan’s voice is harsh, reassuring.
“Lola?”
Thank god. “Carter?”
He jogs over and a bird shrieks in the branches of the Bone Tree. It flies off in a rush of torn leaves and wings.
“What are you doing here?” I say, casting a glance toward Mary Ann—but she’s vanished.
The moonlight pencils Carter in without color. His hair falls around his face in a tangled mess.
“I got called out to deal with some kids trying to shut down the electric fence at the fairground,” he says. “They usually try to climb over the gates, but tonight they went for the fence instead. It happens this time every year. Whoever plays Little Bird in the parade is supposed to write a message inside the entrance to the caves to stop Mister Jitters coming out to look for her.”
Even in the dark, I see his eyes cut to me quickly before he looks away.
“What kind of message?” I ask.
Carter clears his throat before muttering a response I don’t hear.
“What?”
“Lorelei is gone,” he repeats, and it feels like he’s punched me in the stomach. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just some ass-backward superstition. Probably based on half the folks in this town being jealous your mom found a way to leave this place behind. Anyway, they hardly ever make it past the fairground fence.”
“Shouldn’t you let them in?”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Why?”
In case it’s true. The words stall before leaving my mouth, thank god. What if those missing Little Birds Cora told me about are the ones who didn’t get to leave their message inside the caves?
I shrug. “Seems like the kind of tradition this town would embrace.”
“I guess,” Carter says, pulling something from his pocket and letting it dangle in the space between us. “In any case, I decided while I was out I should hang this for you.” Moonlight glints from the tethered tooth.
“Is that the tooth that was in my arm?” He’s already inside.
“Yeah. I know it isn’t technically your tooth, but it was inside you, so I figured better safe than sorry.”
“How . . . thoughtful?”
Carter laughs at my unappreciative tone. “Hanging teeth from the Bone Tree is a tradition we definitely do embrace.”
I pat the pocket that holds my hair. “I brought my hair to hang. I wasn’t sure if it counted or not.”
“Can’t hurt,” Carter says. “I didn’t know if you knew about the Bone Tree.”
“Your mom told me.” I step past him to the base of the trunk, where pale rocks nestle between the thickly gnarled roots, like they’re held in a clenched fist. If I reach up as high as I can, my fingertips just skim the lowest branch.
Not high enough, I think. It needs to be out of Mister Jitters’ reach.
“I’ve never climbed a tree before,” I
say. I have no idea how it’s done.
Moving like water, Carter is up in the branches in seconds. He offers me his hand. I hesitate only a moment before taking it. With my free hand, I grab hold of the lowest branch, but something moves under my feet and I slip. Only Carter’s grip keeps me from falling. Then the something runs over my shoe. And another something scurries over to where I’m half dangling, followed by another and another. I kick one and it squeaks.
Rats.
As though that movement has woken the rest of the creatures nesting among the roots—I put my hand in there!—a swarm of black, furry bodies rushes out from the gaps.
“Jump!” Carter yells. Shrieking, I launch myself at him, feet sliding and scrabbling against tree bark until he catches me around my ribs and hauls me up onto the branch next to him. My hands clench in the fabric of Carter’s shirt, and I feel his heart thudding against my fingers.
“Can’t rats climb?” I say.
“Shh, don’t give them ideas.” He snickers, and it cuts through some of the tension.
“Of course, if the rats did climb up here and eat us, the town would probably cover it up.”
“Oh, for sure. That would be bad for our tourist trade,” Carter agrees.
“So they’d burn whatever was left of us down to ash. Except they can’t burn everything when they cremate you, did you know that? Nolan used to keep an urn on the mantel in one of our old apartments, one he’d bought at an auction with some random dude’s ashes inside. I peeked in there one day when I was bored, and it wasn’t just ashes—it was human gravel, and lots of teeth.” Shut up, Lola! But I can’t. “Teeth don’t burn, you know. That means when the villagers burn whatever’s left of us after the rats are done, they’ll still have to deal with the teeth. Maybe they’ll just hang them up here with all the rest.”
“You sure do have quite the imagination, Lola Nox,” Carter says, the warmth of his breath against my cheek making me aware of just how close we are.
Mary Ann appears on the branch next to me, staring down at the swarming blackness.
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t,” I mutter.
It’s impossible to make out the rats’ shapes as they wriggle and squirm all over each other, but they don’t leave the base of the Bone Tree.
“I guess we should hang your hair and this tooth while we’re up here,” Carter says. Mary Ann watches me over his shoulder. I swallow thickly and nod.
Carter knots the gross old molar around a branch above our heads, then holds out his hand. I reach into my pocket for the lock of hair.
Mary Ann stares down at the ground. “I dropped my tooth,” she says hollowly.
“Oh, no . . .”
“Are you okay?” Carter says. He looks concerned, like he’s reading something in my face that I don’t mean for him to see. “It’s just an old superstition, Lola. No need to be afraid of Mister Jitters . . . or rats, for that matter.”
The creatures seem to have scurried back into their holes now.
Carter touches my hand. “Come on, we should get you back home before your grandma releases her flying monkeys.”
Mary Ann is gone.
Carter and I shuffle out along the branch and jump down, avoiding the roots in case we disturb the rats again. Almost as though we agreed it, neither of us speaks until we’re on the rough track leading to my grandmother’s house. I wait for Mary Ann to reappear, but she doesn’t.
“I’d better not go any farther,” Carter says. Here, under the overhanging blanket of leaves and forest noises, his voice is quieter. “Your grandma might look out.”
“All right.”
“Oh! I meant to tell you earlier—I found your phone. It was stuck in a bush near where you fell. It’s at my house.”
“You did?” My only connection to my old life—to the world beyond Harrow Lake. The real world. And without even knowing how important it is, Carter has saved it for me. My voice is choked when I tell him, “I thought I’d lost it.”
“Can you come over to my house tomorrow after I finish work so I can give it back? I don’t think your grandma would like me stopping by.”
I remember how she flipped out when she thought I was Lorelei talking to a guy on the phone, and decide Carter’s probably right.
“Okay,” I say, but it’s not enough, so I add, “Thank you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“And where did you go so late last night? It was after midnight when I heard you come in,” Grandmother says across the breakfast table.
Mary Ann hasn’t reappeared since she vanished at the Bone Tree last night. I don’t know whether I should be glad she’s gone, or worried.
Maybe she was never here in the first place.
I watch Grandmother eating her peaches on toast and try not to retch into my coffee: our new morning ritual.
“I . . .” How do I tell her I went to the Bone Tree? I’m amazed Grandmother’s even talking to me. Nolan certainly wouldn’t be. “I went for a walk.”
“A walk? Alone?”
“Yeah. Well, I bumped into Carter. Why?”
Grandmother’s tone becomes sharp. “Just as I thought. I told Grant how it would be.”
“Grant?” What does he have to do with anything?
“I called him up last night and gave him what for about that nephew of his. When I heard you sneaking out in the middle of the night, I told Grant he was sure to be to blame.”
“To blame for what?”
She gives me a look that’s pure exasperation. “People talk, Lola. And no granddaughter of mine should be out tomcatting around with Billie Crane’s boy,” she snaps. “That woman has no respect for this town. Thinks she can act however she pleases, and hang the consequences. You know she was never actually married to the father of those kids, don’t you?” My grandmother makes a disapproving sound in her throat. “Not to mention the fact that Billie Crane’s great-grandfather was one of the men who brought on the harrowing back in twenty-eight.”
I blink. “Are you . . . are you talking about the landslide?”
“Yes. Caused the deaths of ninety-nine innocent souls when their tunnels collapsed, and it made the whole hillside unstable. That’s not even counting the flood it caused further downriver—a whole community of people was lost there: men, women, children, all found cold in their beds when the waters receded. So many dead. Those greedy fools mined too deep and almost buried us all.”
I notice she hasn’t mentioned any bootleggers caught in the landslide.
“The quarry has nothing to do with Carter or his mom, though.”
“Quit arguing with me, girl!”
I glare at her in silence. I’ve had enough. If I’m stuck here, I’ll do whatever the hell I want with my time.
Grandmother stirs her tea and it slops onto the saucer. She doesn’t notice. “Whatever they unleashed in that mine never went away.”
“What they unleashed . . . ?” My heart stutter-steps. She means Mister Jitters.
But her expression shifts, hardening. “Don’t start that nonsense again. Honestly, Lorelei, what would your father say?”
“Grandmother . . . I’m Lola, not Lorelei,” I say slowly.
“Don’t you think I know that?” she snaps, as though it’s the worst thing in the world. She slams her tea down on the counter and storms out. Her footsteps thud up the stairs and stop as her bedroom door bangs shut.
Her teacup has a hairline fracture running down the porcelain. I pick up the discarded spoon next to it and start to tap-tap-tap it against the crack. It spreads, growing deeper. I give it a final TAP and watch the cup split apart, tea spilling out across the counter and dribbling down onto the checkerboard floor.
I have to get out of here.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Grandmother is bustling about the kitchen when I get back an hour later. I went walking to try to clea
r my head, but I couldn’t stop looking for sinkholes in the forest floor, and every snapped twig or rustle of leaves made me jump.
There’s no sign of the smashed teacup now, and Grandmother doesn’t mention our argument. She hands me an apron.
“Ever made cherry cobbler?” she asks. I shake my head, still frowning at the apron. “Well, you might as well learn. Put that on, girl.”
I have nothing better to do until Carter finishes work, so I follow Grandmother’s instructions without protest. I weigh ingredients using her ancient scales, stir fruit until it gets pulpy on the stove, and watch with some bewilderment as it all comes together into a sickly-sweet-smelling cobbler. When it’s done, she dishes up two big bowls of it and sets them on the kitchen table. She takes off her apron, so I copy her, and we both sit and eat in silence. It tastes exactly like it smells.
Grandmother smiles thinly. “Not got much of a sweet tooth, have you?”
“It’s very . . . sticky,” I say, distracted. Mary Ann has appeared behind her, sitting on the kitchen counter and staring out the window. Her fingers clutch the edge of the counter, knuckles white. It makes the cracks in her skin stand out starkly.
She’s waiting for Mister Jitters to come.
“I suppose you’re used to fancier food, living with your father,” Grandmother says drily, forcing my attention away from Mary Ann.
“Why are you letting me stay here?” The question is out before I can think better of it.
“You’re my granddaughter.”
“Yes, Lorelei’s girl. But you and Lorelei aren’t close, so why would you want her daughter staying with you?”
Mary Ann’s eyes snap to meet mine, her lips curving into the ghost of a smile.
Grandmother seems genuinely taken aback by the question. “You think I didn’t love my daughter?”
“Well, you say it in past tense, so . . .”
“That’s what you do when someone you love is gone. I can’t keep talking about her like she’s coming back!”
I realize with a shock that she’s on the verge of tears.