“Don’t sell yourself short, EmmaRae,” says Charles, who thinks she was talking to him. “You’re a very grown-up girl. A very grown-up fourteen.”
The car is stopped now, and Charles’s seat is pushed back from the steering wheel.
“I wasn’t stupid,” she says, and touches her face, surprised to find she can still cry. She wasn’t stupid. She was just sad. And young. So full of life, she thought she could afford to lose some.
“You are so, so pretty,” Charles says, as if he can’t see her tears at all, and can’t hear her words. Then he puts his hands on her.
“It won’t be the same as my beast,” she says. It won’t be anywhere near as gratifying as it was to see her beast’s face, that special face that only she could get him to make. Shock. Denial. Terror. A sweet mix of all three. It won’t feel like it did when she walked into his house, and Charles’s screams won’t be the song that his screams were. She might not feel so white hot and almost alive when she slices through Charles, not quite so alive as she did when she felt that first coil of her beast’s intestine give way under her fingers. When she pulled. His blood won’t taste as good neither, but that’s okay. Beast blood is the only thing that tastes like much of anything anymore, and after that depressing apple pie back at the Flying J, EmmaRae is ready for any kind of taste at all.
“It won’t feel as good,” she says, and Charles promises that it will feel good. He lets his mask slip just a little bit, and tells her that it will feel good, right up until it won’t.
It annoys EmmaRae that he still thinks she’s talking to him, and she wonders if he’s ever in his life just listened. If he’s ever really seen.
But not even Charles can ignore how cold she’s become as she slips the last of her living-girl mask, and when he touches her bare flesh, he pulls his hand back. When the cold spreads up his wrist, he starts to whine.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. He tries to get away. He presses himself against his door. EmmaRae doesn’t know how she looks now, but it must not be so pretty anymore, judging by the way his eyes bug out.
“Shut up,” EmmaRae hisses. The swollen, black handprints return to her throat. She can feel them. They hurt. And it only makes her angrier. “You shut up and don’t say things! Like it was my fault. Like I had it comin’.”
Charles babbles about getting out of the car, her or him, she isn’t sure which. It doesn’t matter. He’s still not listening. All that talking and all that looking, so he certainly has need of his eyes and mouth. But his ears EmmaRae figures are fair game, and she reaches up and rips them clean off the sides of his head. After that she doesn’t talk anymore, because she at least knows what ears are for. Charles still talks, though. Talks and screams, while he can. Then he just sort of gurgles.
It doesn’t feel as good as it did with her own beast, but she imagines all those girls spread out in the rivers and the deserts and the forests and the fields would say it’s a fine day’s work, and that, she guesses, is good enough for her.
EmmaRae pulls her arm out of his abdomen, red and slick to the elbow and looks at it. Such a skinny thing.
“You were right about one thing, mister,” she says. “I am grown-up. As grown-up as I’m ever gonna get.”
× × ×
EmmaRae drag-walked the dead girl a long way, out of the dumpster and through the parking lot, traveling for miles beside the road, far enough from the lights to keep from being seen. They would look quite the pair, a bruised-up dead girl and EmmaRae, her arms coated with drying blood. There aren’t many hours now before sunrise. She had to walk all the way back to the J, and then had to get the girl up and out of the trash all quiet like, and it took a while. Would have been nice to have driven Charles’s car back, but she never learned how.
EmmaRae sets the girl down. They’ve made it. This little patch of land, this nothing strip of ground before dawn with not a thing to distinguish it from the rest. But it’s right. EmmaRae kneels and leans forward to dig in the dirt. It’s easy at first, and then harder; her fingernails rip on tricky bits of rock, but that doesn’t matter. She can’t feel it, and it’s sort of a nice change from the ease of tearing into bellies and throats.
The night is cold on her shoulders as she digs. She left the beast’s sweatshirt on the side of the road after taking care of Charles. It was soaked with Charles’s blood, all sticky and sunken in deep, and it felt wrong to have the two beasts’ blood mingling. Like they were commiserating. Like they were thick as thieves. If she’d had a lighter, she’d have burned the damn thing.
“But I s’pose I left you waitin’ long enough,” she says, and the dead girl watches as the hole in the dirt grows deeper and slowly forms a rough oval. “Wonder how they got you,” she whispers. “If they grabbed you, or if you were dumb like me and just climbed on in.” She wishes she knew the dead girl’s name, and thinks that maybe she’ll get to, afterward. That maybe there is a special heaven for murdered girls and she might meet her there, after both their tasks are done. She wonders if Momma and Gran might visit there one day too.
“In you go,” says EmmaRae. She rolls the girl in with a shoe and makes sure she lies faceup. It doesn’t seem right, booting her in, but EmmaRae’s hands are torn fairly to bits from digging the hole in the first place. That’s a good thing too, about her hands. One more clue, so the girl will know what she has to do, later on.
She pushes the dirt back in, and pats the mound smooth when she’s done, like Momma used to do in the seedbed back home.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” she says. “You think this is for you, but it isn’t.” She taps the dirt. “We dig our own holes around here. And you better gardamn know that when you come out. You better not leave me to bake in the sun. It only takes a few minutes, to roll a person in and cover them up.” But EmmaRae isn’t really worried. When EmmaRae crawled out of the shallow ditch and saw the corpse of the girl who came before lying beside it, she’d shoved her in and buried her first thing. It was only afterward that she stopped and stared and wondered why she’d done it. The dumpster girl will do the same thing for EmmaRae.
EmmaRae plops down on the ground. She listens to the cars go by on the interstate and looks up at the stars. Nothing to do now but wait. And not a single cigarette to her name to smoke while she does it.
“Starting to get tired,” she says, and tugs her knees up to her chest. “Do you think, dead girl, that there’s a special place for girls like us? Do you think we always to go heaven, no matter what we done before?” The dirt doesn’t move, and EmmaRae frowns. “Wish I’d buried you different. With your hand sticking out to hold. Somethin’.
“I think we do,” she says. “I think we had our share of pain and scared. I think we’re right with God. I think maybe we’re his angels.”
The girl will wake up soon. Night is almost over. And EmmaRae’s bones ache to be finished.
“You won’t be scared. Time for that’s passed. And you’ll know just what to do, and where to find him, like I did. The look on his face . . .” She giggled. “When I showed up, breathin’, with no bruises. My beast. He couldn’t believe it. Right up until all the blood ran outta him, he couldn’t believe it. And your beast won’t believe it neither.”
EmmaRae lies down and stretches her body beside the mound of dirt. She doesn’t put an arm over it protectively, even though she wants to. It doesn’t feel quite polite, when she doesn’t even know the girl’s name.
Her gran always said that places like Los Angeles ate little girls alive. But Gran was wrong about that. The whole damn godforsaken world eats girls alive, and EmmaRae should be glad to leave it. To get away forever from bitter exhaust in her nose and people yelling and hating her and tired and ugly looks from girls and boys alike.
“Wish I hadn’t gotten into that car,” she says. “Wish I’d never left home at all.”
The sky overhead turns pale and then paler. She does
n’t suppose she’ll be around to see the true sunrise, but in the dim pre-dawn she can see the land around her, and the smoothness of the dirt. All the vast heavens, and the wisps of clouds. Not such a bad place to spend forever, all things considered.
“Looked at another way, Momma,” she whispers, “you could say I almost made it.”
Beside her, the mound of dirt trembles, and the not-as-dead girl begins to push her way through to the morning. EmmaRae smiles, or at least she thinks she smiles, and even takes a breath to welcome the girl back, and maybe introduce herself. But before she can, EmmaRae Dickson stops being EmmaRae Dickson, and goes back to being a corpse on the side of the highway.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
STEFAN BACHMANN is the author of steampunk-faery-fantasies The Peculiar and The Whatnot, and the upcoming YA thriller A Drop of Night. He was born in Colorado, but spent most of his formative years in Switzerland, where he lives in a very old house and moonlights as a student of classical music at the Zürich University of Arts. Find him online at stefanbachmann.com and on Twitter @Stefan_Bachmann.
LEIGH BARDUGO is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Grisha Trilogy: Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising. She was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University, and has worked in advertising, journalism, and most recently, makeup and special effects. These days, she’s lives and writes in Hollywood, where she can occasionally be heard singing with her band. Her new book, Six of Crows, arrives October 2015. You can find her at leighbardugo .com and on Twitter @LBardugo.
KENDARE BLAKE is the author of six novels, including Anna Dressed in Blood, Antigoddess, and most recently, Ungodly. Her work tends toward the dark, is sometimes humorous, and is always violent. Everything she writes turns to guts. Sort of like the Midas touch, only with viscera. Connect with her at kendareblake.com.
A. G. HOWARD was inspired to write Splintered, the first book in her bestselling Splintered series, while working at a school library. She had always wondered what would’ve happened had the subtle creepiness of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland taken center stage, and hopes her darker and funkier tribute to Carroll inspires readers to seek out the stories that won her heart as a child. You can learn more about her and her books at www.aghoward.com.
JAY KRISTOFF is an award-winning sci-fi/fantasy author. He is 6'7" and has approximately 13,220 days to live. He abides in Melbourne with his secret agent kung-fu assassin wife, and the world’s laziest Jack Russell. His new series, ILLUMINAE (with Amie Kaufman), a YA sci-fi . . . thing, kicks off in 2015. He promises it’s like nothing you’ve ever read before. Find Jay online at jaykristoff.com and on Twitter @misterkristoff. He does not believe in happy endings.
MARIE LU is the New York Times bestselling author of the Legend trilogy and The Young Elites. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as an art director in the video game industry. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she spends her time writing, reading, drawing, playing games, and getting stuck in traffic. Visit Marie online at marielubooks.tumblr.com and on Twitter at @Marie_Lu.
JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. He writes in multiple genres, including thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, action, and steampunk, for adults and teens. His works include Rot & Ruin, The Nightsiders, Patient Zero, V-Wars, Captain America, and many others. Several of his works are in development for movies and TV. Find him online at jonathanmaberry.com and on Twitter @jonathanmaberry.
DANIELLE PAIGE is the New York Times bestselling author of Dorothy Must Die and its upcoming sequel, The Wicked Will Rise. In addition to writing young adult books, she works in the television industry, where she’s received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She is a graduate of Columbia University and currently lives in New York City. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram, both @daniellempaige.
CARRIE RYAN is the New York Times bestselling author of the Forest of Hands and Teeth series, Daughter of Deep Silence, Infinity Ring: Divide and Conquer, as well as the Map to Everywhere series co-written with her husband, John Parke Davis. Her books have sold in more than twenty-two territories and her first book is in development as a major motion picture. A former litigator, Carrie now lives in Charlotte, NC. Visit her online at www.CarrieRyan.com or on Twitter at @CarrieRyan.
MEGAN SHEPHERD is the author of the Madman’s Daughter and the Cage trilogies. She has lived all around the world, but now resides in a 125-year-old farmhouse in the Blue Ridge Mountains that is most definitely haunted. If you ask her nicely, she might tell you your fortune. Find out more about Megan at meganshepherd.com.or @megan_shepherd.
NOVA REN SUMA is the author of the YA novels The Walls Around Us, 17 & Gone, and Imaginary Girls. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and lives in New York City. Visit her online.at novaren.com.
MCCORMICK TEMPLEMAN is the author of The Little Woods and The Glass Casket. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Visit her at mccormicktempleman.com.
APRIL GENEVIEVE TUCHOLKE’s debut novel, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, was a 2014 YALSA Teens Top Ten nominee and received numerous starred reviews. Its sequel, Between the Spark and the Burn, was published in 2014. Her third novel, a stand-alone entitled Wink Poppy Midnight, will be released in 2016 from Dial/Penguin. Tucholke has lived all over the world and currently resides in Oregon. Find April on Twitter @apriltucholke.
CAT WINTERS has been a fan of horror since she stumbled upon a book about real-life haunted houses in her elementary school’s library. Her debut novel, In the Shadow of Blackbirds, was named a 2014 Morris Award Finalist, a School Library Journal Best Book of 2013, and a 2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Her other novels include The Cure for Dreaming and The Uninvited. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Visit her online at catwinters.com and on Twitter @catwinters.
THE BIRDS OF AZALEA STREET Inspired by the 1954 film Rear Window and the 1963 film The Birds
IN THE FOREST DARK AND DEEP Inspired by the 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and the 1951 animated film Alice in Wonderland
EMMELINE Inspired by the 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front, Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 short story “Kiss Me Again, Stranger,” and the 1922 film Nosferatu
VERSE CHORUS VERSE Inspired by Nirvana’s “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle”
HIDE-AND-SEEK Inspired by the 2000 film Final Destination, the 1994 film The Crow, and the 1991 film Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
THE DARK SCARY PARTS AND ALL Inspired by the 1976 film The Omen and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
THE FLICKER THE FINGERS THE BEAT THE SIGH Inspired by Stephen King’s Carrie and the 1997 film I Know What You Did Last Summer
FAT GIRL WITH A KNIFE Inspired by the 2009 film Zombieland and the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead
SLEEPLESS Inspired by the 1960 film Psycho and Mudvayne’s “Nothing to Gein”
M. Inspired by the 1931 film M and the 1970s television series Upstairs, Downstairs
THE GIRL WITHOUT A FACE Inspired by the 2000 film What Lies Beneath and the 2010 film Los Ojos de Julia
A GIRL WHO DREAMED OF SNOW Inspired by the 1968 film Kuroneko
STITCHES Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
ON THE I-5 Inspired by the 2007 film Death Proof and the 1986 film The Hitcher
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