Sawkill Girls

by Claire Legrand

  The doctor was his favorite form for this kind of thing. Kissing fascinated him; he liked to experiment, and practice made him all the more convincing.

  The kiss deepened. Val let it happen, craved it, welcomed it, fought ferociously against the tears rising behind her eyes. With one arm looped around her back, he lifted her to her feet. He would kiss the Althouse girls right out of her brain, then send her home, dazed, with a tender pat on the head.

  He was such a softie when he carried buckets of blood in his belly.

  Zoey

  The Spinney

  There were five distinct woodlands on Sawkill Rock, a dark patchwork of wind-beaten trees hugging dozens of horse pastures:

  The Down Woods, on the southern curve of the island, dense and wild, where Val had her parties.

  The Stony Woods, which hugged the northern shore, sparse and boulder-strewn, ending in sheer slate cliffs that dropped off to choppy slate water.

  The Spinney, inappropriately named because a spinney is a small cluster of trees, a mere thicket, and the Spinney was the largest woodland on Sawkill. Lazy and innocuous, it was on the western side of the island, facing the five tiny uninhabited islands called the Smalls, which lay about a mile out into the water. The western side was the soft side, the people of Sawkill called it, because it faced the mainland.

  There were the Heart Woods, at the center of the island, thinner and sweeter than the others. Sheltered by the other woods, the town, the dead spot in the island valley where the winds couldn’t reach so well.

  And then there were the Kingshead Woods, stately and cold on the eastern shore. Named for Kingshead, the Mortimer family estate and the largest single-family property on the island.

  Naturally.

  That’s where Zoey and Marion had stumbled upon that circle of stones—in the Kingshead Woods, downhill and down-wood from Kingshead itself.

  Zoey had been hiking through these woods with Search Team A for three hours, flashlights and whistles and walkie-talkies at the ready, before she managed to give her dad the slip and go off on her own.

  He’d requested she stay near him. Scared, maybe, that another girl had gone missing and that his girl might be next? He wasn’t the only one. Something had shifted in the two days since Charlotte’s disappearance. Another girl gone, so soon after Thora? The air snapped quietly, like a bad winter come early. The streets hushed at twilight. You walked into a coffee shop, a restaurant, the grocery store, and jumped at the shadows of familiar shapes and looked at everyone who got too close with dread leaping up your throat.

  Would you be next?

  Zoey was not immune. Will I be next? she wondered, trudging through the woods a few yards from her father.

  But if she hovered around him, she wouldn’t be able to find the stones again, and finding the stones was the priority.

  She needed to see them for herself, alone, with her own two eyes, in the clear afternoon light. Was there really a tree wet with blood? Was there really some force that could throw girls off their feet?

  As Zoey slipped away from the search party, her traitorous brain whispered: Thora would have loved this.

  Not the fact of a missing girl, but the mystery of it, the potentially supernatural intrigue. First of all, Thora would have been able to say potentially supernatural intrigue with a straight face and a blazing conviction. She was a Believer. She saw the extraordinary in the ordinary, the magic in the mundane. It was, Zoey thought, why Thora’s writing thrummed the way it did.

  She could almost hear Thora’s voice, rumpled from staying up too late reading aloud under Zoey’s quilt: Someday, we’ll write real books together, Zo. You and me. We’ll travel the world. We’ll write stories that matter. Stories that save people.

  That word was awful: Someday. Once, Zoey had loved it. An authorial future, writing stories with Thora? Bashing about the world and turning over stones to find the secrets they sheltered? And then writing about them? It had been her greatest, most fervent dream. But now . . .

  Now, Zoey couldn’t imagine writing again. Not for a long time. Maybe not ever. Not when even looking at books made her feel sick to her stomach.

  She certainly wouldn’t write again until she found some actual goddamn answers.

  Was her gut onto something, or was her gut full of shit?

  The stones will know, thought Zoey, stepping into the Thora-owned part of her heart that she hadn’t dared touch for months.

  She could almost hear Thora’s voice say it: The stones will know.

  But when Zoey found the right spot—she would never forget that piece of land, how the earth turned down along that well-worn path that led to the stones, how the trees surrounded the circle like people come down from the mountain to pray—she found no path at all. Some thin grasses, some black Sawkill boulders. A small thicket of bone-dry trees gray as gulls.

  Zoey ran her finger down the nearest tree. The bark scraped her skin. She pressed her finger harder, and the bark scraped harder, and when she finally pulled her hand away, it was brown and clean.

  No blood this time.

  Maybe no blood ever?

  Zoey stood there, in the center of where the stones should have been, breathing hard. She looked around without moving her feet, checking the trees, the afternoon sky, her place on the island in relation to Kingshead itself.

  If she looked back up the hill, through the whispering woods, she could see the top of Kingshead’s peaked black roofs. Yes, this was the spot. This was it.

  So what did it mean, then?

  Zoey asked herself the question over and over as she scoured the woods, looking for her lost fairy circle.

  What did this mean?

  Thora, she thought, into the ether. What does it mean?

  There were three possible answers:

  One. She was in the wrong spot. But she knew she wasn’t. She wasn’t.

  Two. She’d been hallucinating the stones. But she hadn’t. Marion had been thrown from the stones. Zoey had touched a bloodstained tree.

  Three. Someone—or something—was hiding them from her.

  Thora’s ghost whispered: Because you weren’t supposed to be there.

  Because that place wasn’t yours to find.

  When Zoey stopped walking at last, she had reached the edge of the Kingshead Woods. She watched as Val and her mother drove toward town in their silver Porsche SUV.

  A branch snapped behind her.

  “They’re going to pass out sandwiches to the search teams, I think.”

  An electric shock snapped up Zoey’s legs. Her fists clenched without her permission, and she dropped her phone. The hair on her arms stood up, and she had the sudden unquenchable desire to punch something.

  She whirled, then froze. “Marion?” She exhaled, clapped a hand to her forehead. “God. You scared the hell out of me.”

  Standing a few feet away, Marion smiled. Amber afternoon light flooded the woods; branch-shaped shadows whispered across Marion’s pale skin.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to.”

  Zoey’s heart was pounding way too hard for her to know how to talk to a girl whose sister had gone missing. She glanced down; her arm hairs were seriously standing on end.

  “Hey, so . . .” Zoey shook herself, tearing her gaze from her arms. “Are you . . . you know . . . okay?”

  I really should not be allowed to speak to people, Zoey thought, wondering how weird it would seem if she thunked her head against the nearest tree a few times.

  “I’m a little tired,” said Marion quietly, “but that happens from time to time.”

  “I just . . .” Zoey tried to imagine losing a sister, and her body revolted, her stomach clenching up tight. Such thoughts were too close to Thora, too close to the long fugue of months through which Zoey had been dragging herself. “I’m so sorry, Marion. I don’t even know what to . . . We’ll find her. I know we will. My dad’s got everyone out looking.”

  The words felt flimsy on Zoey’s tongue, like gho
sts of the words they should have been.

  “It’s fine,” said Marion, shrugging.

  Zoey blinked at her. “It’s fine?”

  “I saw you, and I thought it would be fun to walk with you.” Marion moved a step closer, watching Zoey keenly. A tongue of wind snapped through the trees, pulling thin black strands of hair across her cheeks. “What are you looking for?”

  “The stones.” Zoey, her heart rate picking up speed once more, felt torn. On the one hand, Marion was grieving, and most likely needed the comfort of a friend.

  On the other hand, Marion was acting really fucking strangely, and Zoey kind of wanted to not be there anymore.

  She took a step back. Her shins burned, like she’d scratched them too hard and irritated her skin. “You’re acting weird.”

  Marion tilted her head to the side. “How?”

  “Uh . . . that?” Zoey waved her hand at Marion and took another step back. Marion followed—a step for a step. “Also, you’re not blinking.”

  “You mentioned stones,” said Marion, blinking with great emphasis—once, twice, thrice. “What stones are those?”

  The back of Zoey’s neck prickled. “The ones we saw the other night? The ones that threw you through the trees?”

  Marion smiled kindly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe we should go look for them together. Maybe you can show me?”

  “You don’t . . .” Zoey’s mouth went dry. “You don’t remember?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Marion reached for Zoey’s hand. “Are you sure you aren’t imagining things?”

  “How can you not remember?” Had she really imagined the whole thing? But they’d talked about it, after. They’d talked on Marion’s porch. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “Just come here.” Marion’s gentle voice suddenly had a slight edge to it. “Come here, and we’ll go together.”

  “Zoey?” The voice of her father’s deputy, Sergeant Montgomery, came booming through the trees. “Where’d you go?”

  Marion whirled, black hair flying. She recoiled, like an animal caught rooting through the trash cans.

  “Right here!” Zoey waved, hurrying away from Marion. She saw the sergeant’s hat, suddenly ready to burst out crying with gladness. “Over here, Marion and I were—”

  A shift in the air behind her made Zoey turn with a yelp.

  Marion was gone.

  “Zoey?” Sergeant Montgomery sounded not too pleased with her. “Your father’s looking for you. You really shouldn’t go running off, considering the circumstances.” His walkie-talkie crackled to life, and he turned away to answer it.

  Zoey thought she saw a dark shape that could have been Marion’s swinging, shining hair flitting away through the trees. She retrieved her phone, half crawled up a ridge blanketed with damp leaves—away from the distracted deputy, away from where Marion had been standing.

  Or . . . not Marion?

  Zoey’s vision pitched from side to side; the citizens of Wonderland were rearranging the planes of the world so she could never find her way back home. She clamped her right hand over her left arm, tried to rub away the goose bumps.

  Then, thumbs shaking, she texted her father:

  Staying at Grayson’s tonight. Be home for breakfast.

  To Grayson she sent:

  Meet me in the woods at the bottom of Kingshead Drive as soon as humanly possible.

  Bring your lock picks. Just in case.

  Marion

  The Mansion

  Marion couldn’t stay inside the cottage for one more minute.

  With Charlotte gone, the whole structure seemed to be shrinking. She’d be crushed in this house of ever diminishing returns.

  “Mom?” She slipped into the master bedroom on the first floor, a tray of food in her hands. “You awake?”

  Pamela Althouse lay flat on her bed, the heavy drapes drawn shut. At Marion’s approach, she turned away, let out a tearful moan.

  “Charlotte,” she murmured. “Please, Charlotte. Please, come home.”

  Marion set the tray on the nightstand. Dry-eyed, her thoughts thin and gummy, she stroked her mother’s shivering back.

  “It’s okay, Mom.” She said it again and again, this mindless lie. “She’ll come back. They’ll find her. It’s gonna be okay.”

  She lied through her teeth until her mother had fallen asleep. She did this every few hours—soothe her mother back into a fitful sleep with cuddles and falsehoods.

  Because she knew—the moths had told her—that Charlotte was gone. She wasn’t just missing. She no longer existed. Marion didn’t know how, or why, but she knew that much. She knew it like she knew her own name.

  With the Mortimers gone to the police station to help the search parties, Marion had Kingshead to herself.

  Ms. Mortimer had told the remaining Althouses—two down, two to go!—not to worry about the housework just now. They needed time to rest, to work with the police.

  But Marion liked the work. It occupied her cells and kept them from endlessly spinning.

  And besides that, she wanted to investigate.

  Investigate what, she wasn’t altogether sure, but she couldn’t stop thinking about what Zoey had said: My gut’s telling me that there’s a connection between the Mortimers and the girls who’ve vanished.

  Which, honestly, sounded like something of a wild conspiracy theory to Marion, but her sister was gone, her Charlotte, and the heart-hole her father’s death had left in her chest had been pushed open so wide she felt like one false move could send her splitting into two irreparable pieces.

  So she started off dusting, because Kingshead was flush with ornamental wood carvings, ancient chests and chairs with clawed feet, banisters thick as serpents.

  Clean one railing, one leg, one tabletop, and move on.

  Scan the books, the art, the furniture, the walls. Suspicious papers left untended? Significant artifacts that could double as murder weapons?

  Marion worked her way through the house in her bare feet. She felt along the main hallways, looking for cracks in the dark wood paneling. Secret entryway, leading to some lair that revealed all?

  Marion laughed, which was a mistake. It knocked loose a few tears, and she leaned heavily against the railing on the second-floor landing, overlooking the green-and-glass winter garden. She clutched the polished banister so hard she wondered if she’d bruise her palms.

  She thought Charlotte’s name on repeat until she could think it without wanting to throw up.

  She retrieved her dust cloth and kept moving.

  Art hung on the walls in dark gold frames—renderings of Sawkill, mostly. The Down Woods, the Spinney, the Black Cliffs on the western shore.

  A thin and far-off whine ground against the gears of Marion’s brain, dragged its claws along the chalk of her bones.

  “Quiet,” she told the bone cry, but it didn’t listen.

  Instead, it pulled at her stomach, like it had the night Charlotte had disappeared, when she’d followed the bone cry into the woods and found Zoey, and the stones.

  It was like a resonance, fisting in the soft skin of her belly and tugging her on. She resisted, dug her heels into the carpet.

  The resonance remained, waiting. Respectful, though. It didn’t pull her against her will.

  Marion swallowed, shook her head to dislodge the grinding metallic shriek reverberating up through her skeleton.

  The vibrations thrummed to her: Follow me.

  Marion swallowed, and agreed.

  She hurried through the house, following the bone cry’s moaning trail. Guest rooms, a study, a small parlor decorated in pastels, a music room with mirrored walls and a grand piano. Another set of stairs, on the house’s east side, and another, by the kitchen.

  Closed doors, marking the Mortimers’ bedrooms. The bone cry grew louder still. Marion put her fingers in her ears; that made it worse.

  She paused outside a closed door that stood all alone at the end of a wide hallway. The
bone cry jerked to a halt, making her stumble, and then fell silent.

  Val’s room?

  Marion’s fingers caressed the door. They hovered over the door handle, considering.

  What would she find inside?

  She touched the latch, ready for a peek.

  Something cold and urgent pinched her fingertips, like the air around them had snapped in two.

  “Ow!” She sucked on her fingers. Val’s door latch grinned a metal grin.

  Downstairs, a door opened—an explosion in the vast, freshly dusted silence.

  Marion turned and listened. When she heard voices, she hurried downstairs, remembering with a sudden burst of alarm that she’d forgotten to lock the back door. She came to the bottom of the stairs right as the intruders started up them.

  The boy jumped so hard Marion thought he’d fall over. His hand flew to his chest. He blew out a startled, “Good God.”

  “Marion!” Zoey stared at her, frozen on the bottom step. She looked as though Marion had dropped some cursed relic into her lap. “How long have you been here?”

  Marion glanced at the grandfather clock ticking ponderously against the wall. “About an hour, I guess?”

  “But I just saw you. Like, twenty minutes ago. In the woods.”

  “I haven’t been outside today,” Marion said. “Just here and home. It must have been someone else.”

  “But I talked to you.” Zoey’s face was crumpling fast. “We had a conversation. I saw you, right there.” Zoey waved her hand around. “Right in front of me, just a few feet. We spoke.”

  A slow chill pattered across Marion’s arms.

  The boy Marion didn’t know frowned at Zoey. “Somebody in one of the search teams, maybe?”

  “No. No.” Zoey gripped chunks of hair in her hands. “It was Marion. If it wasn’t . . .”

  Zoey’s distress was contagious. Marion glanced at the boy, her own panic rising fast. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  “Oh, sorry.” The boy stepped forward, extended his hand. “Grayson Tighe. Zoey’s best friend.”

  Zoey blew out a slow breath. “Marion, you swear you’ve been here for an hour?”