Sawkill Girls

by Claire Legrand

“I swear,” Marion replied. “Maybe a little less than that? But not much.”

  “But this doesn’t make sense. I was in the Kingshead Woods, I was searching for—”

  Zoey stopped talking. She watched Marion carefully.

  Marion glanced at Grayson, unsure of how much to say around him. She’d been so preoccupied with Charlotte, with her mother, that she hadn’t had a moment to think about it for the past couple of days, but now, with Zoey here, the memory returned to her in shadowed flashes.

  “The stones?” Marion said quietly.

  “You remember.” Zoey’s eyes glittered with tears. “You saw them?”

  “Of course. I’ve got a giant bruise on my butt from where I landed.”

  Grayson’s eyebrows knotted. “Wait. You saw these stones, too?”

  “See?” Zoey grabbed Grayson’s sleeve. “I told you! Oh, Marion. Oh, thank God.” Zoey flung her arms around Marion’s shoulders and held on tight. “When I saw you in the woods, you didn’t remember. You were acting so weird, I thought I was losing my mind, but— Hey.”

  Marion, without realizing what was happening until it was too late, had begun to cry. It was as though she’d been wandering through a mist that blocked the sun, and now Zoey’s arms around her had ripped away the gray, leaving the world too bright, too sharp, too painful.

  Charlotte.

  Not even death can part our souls.

  Sisters two and sisters true.

  She clutched the starfish charm at her neck, let out a choked sob.

  “Hey,” Zoey said again. Her hand cradled the back of Marion’s head. “Hey, it’s okay.”

  “She’s gone,” Marion whispered against Zoey’s soft abundance of dark curls, once she’d found her voice. “She’s gone.”

  “We’ll find her. My dad’s out looking, the whole force, the whole island.”

  Marion shook her head against Zoey’s shoulder. How could she explain the moths?

  “I don’t think they will,” she mumbled.

  Zoey pulled away, searched Marion’s face. “Why do you say that?”

  Marion couldn’t meet her eyes. They’d shared the experience of the stones, but as far as Marion knew, Zoey hadn’t seen any talking moths, and . . . maybe that was one bridge too far. “Just a feeling,” she said simply.

  “They never found Thora, either.” Zoey crossed her arms miserably over her chest. “Sorry. That isn’t helpful. God. I need to stop talking. I’m a really awkward person. It’s a chronic condition.”

  “Well, that’s painfully true.” Grayson, coming in from the next room, held out a glass of water and a handful of tissues. “I found a box in the kitchen.”

  “Thank you.” As Marion wiped her face, she noticed how Zoey looked at Grayson—her eyes shining, her smile tiny and adoring. “You two are dating?”

  “Used to,” Grayson said, pushing his glasses up his nose in a Clark Kent–ish fashion that made Marion instantly like him. “Now we’re friends.”

  “Best friends,” Zoey corrected.

  Grayson smiled softly at her. “Best friends.”

  Marion, aching a little as she watched them, suddenly remembered a strange thing. “Wait. You said, when you saw me in the woods, I didn’t remember the stones. What did you mean by that?”

  Zoey hesitated. “It’s gonna sound nuts.”

  “Tell her, Zo,” said Grayson. “Tell her what you told me.”

  “I saw you, a little while ago, in the Kingshead Woods.” Zoey squared her thin shoulders and looked Marion straight in the eye. “I talked to you. You didn’t remember the stones, but you wanted to go with me to find them. You wanted me to show you. You . . .” Zoey shifted uneasily. “You weren’t blinking. You were moving in this weird way that didn’t seem like you. Then my dad’s deputy came over and you ran away.”

  Marion’s heart pounded drums of doom in her ears. “But I didn’t. I’ve been here. I don’t . . . I don’t remember any of that.” She stepped back, a little dizzy. “You saw wrong.”

  Zoey shook her head. “I didn’t.”

  “Then . . . what? I just don’t remember? I’ve lost the memory?” Marion laughed bitterly. “It would make sense, I guess. I fell, I hit my head, now my memory’s shot.”

  But she didn’t believe that. She remembered absolutely everything since waking up two days ago in a world without Charlotte. She could account for every last excruciating second.

  “But you don’t believe that,” said Zoey, watching her.

  Marion shook her head. “No.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Grayson scratched the back of his head, frowning.

  “If you saw me, but it wasn’t me,” said Marion, “then logic suggests—”

  “It was someone else,” Zoey finished.

  Grayson sighed, staring despairingly at the ceiling. “What’s that quote?”

  “‘When you have eliminated the impossible,’” Marion suggested, because she’d been thinking the same thing, “‘whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

  Grayson smiled at her. “I knew I liked you.”

  “Some of the stories Thora told me about the Collector,” Zoey said quietly, glaring at one of the nearby Sawkill paintings, “is that the monster could take different forms, depending on who he was trying to catch.”

  At Zoey’s words, the drafty house air twisted across Marion’s skin. “These stories, they’re just things everyone knows?”

  “Local Sawkill legends. Every place has them, right? People create their own folklore based on where they live and what actual real-life things happened there.”

  “Like girls who go missing?” Marion suggested, her voice hollow.

  Zoey took Marion’s hand fiercely in her own, which made Marion feel a little less like she might float away on the tide of her own grief.

  “Thora loved the stories,” said Zoey. “She adored creepy shit, loved how legends form and change. She was like the resident expert on the Collector. And . . . Oh, what was that one rhyme? Beware the kind face you see by the gate. He’ll sidle up close and it’ll be too late.”

  And then Marion could think of nothing but trusting, openhearted Charlotte being called out of her room by a friendly face, someone she thought she could trust, someone she wouldn’t think twice about leaning out the window to say hello to . . .

  She heard herself make a terrible noise, but didn’t realize she had moved away from Zoey until she stubbed her toe on the bottom stair and yelped in pain.

  “Zoey,” Grayson said gently, “can we maybe not with the creepy rhymes right now?”

  Marion ignored him, tears in her eyes. “So you think there’s a monster who can disguise itself?” she asked Zoey. “And it’s . . . out there, somewhere? You think it got Charlotte?”

  Zoey nodded, shoulders hunched. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “And you think Val and her mom are somehow involved?”

  “Val was friends with Natalie Breckenridge, who disappeared. And Thora Keller, who disappeared. And now Charlotte, who’s . . . who has disappeared.” Zoey’s eyes were bright. “You tell me.”

  Marion nodded slowly, then glanced at Grayson. “And you think this, too?”

  Grayson shrugged. “Honestly, it all sounds ludicrous to me, but . . .” He looked at Zoey with such unwavering focus that Marion lost her breath a little. “I trust Zoey.”

  Zoey marched over and embraced Grayson hard enough to make him stumble. Face buried in his shirt, she said, muffled, “Thank you.”

  Grayson’s arms went around Zoey as automatically as breathing. “So now what?” he asked, his voice a little rough.

  “I was searching the house when you came in,” Marion said, turning away from them before her heart imploded with jealousy—but she didn’t get far.

  A set of colossal double doors stared her down from the far wall, across the foyer. As soon as Marion laid eyes on them, the bone cry pitched back into her skull like a crash of glass that wouldn’t end.

&n
bsp; There.

  Marion moved across the polished brick floor. She hadn’t been in that room yet, she didn’t think. It was hard to keep track of such a labyrinth, especially when her sister had up and vanished.

  Eyes blurring, ears ringing from the horrible rattling cry clogging her every vein, Marion reached for the latch on the right door—a grooved metal knob—and then lurched to a stop.

  She hunched over like someone had kicked her in the tenderest bend of her gut. She opened her mouth for a scream that never came.

  The bone cry vanished. In its place, something mean and soundless and foreign gripped her, rooted her down.

  She could go no farther. No, this was the end of the line. A bilious feeling rose up in Marion’s insides, following the old track of horse hair:

  Trespassers will be taken out back and hanged.

  Marion

  The Library

  Marion forced her eyes open, even though something hard and heavy was pressing them down, trying to keep her blind.

  The doors, the double doors a few feet away from where she stood—black and monumental they were, carved shapes covering their every inch. Vines and peaches one minute; then the lamplight shifted, or maybe Marion’s brain shifted, and they metamorphosed into tongues and plump hearts.

  Marion tried to move away, but the doors held her in their gravity.

  Heat skewered her, temple to temple. Her world was static—black, white, and crackling.

  This was different than the bone cry. This was a warning, and a punishment. Something was trying to keep her away—but from what?

  The double doors slammed against Marion’s head. Trying to flatten her, clamp her like a vise, squeeze out her juice to serve at suppertime.

  And then Marion remembered. Lucy Mortimer’s instructions floated blithely back to her.

  The double doors in the north foyer. This is my private space. My library. Please leave it untouched.

  Marion gasped out a shrill bite of laughter. Oops.

  “Marion. Marion! Look at me.”

  Marion forced her eyes back open. Squinted through the pain to see Zoey crouched before her, Grayson at her side.

  “I can’t,” Marion gasped, squeezing her eyes shut once more. It hurt too much, to exist in this static-filled world. The noise was digging into her every orifice, clogging her lungs and blocking up all the exits.

  “We should call an ambulance,” came Grayson’s frantic voice.

  Zoey snapped, “Chill out, Grayson, she’s fine.”

  “She’s not fine! Look at her!”

  Marion broke free of Zoey’s grip, slammed her head into the library doors. It hurt, but if she cracked her head open, she could never break the rules again.

  “What the hell?” Grayson cried.

  Something small but strong grabbed Marion, yanked her back into a soft surface. Arms came around her, legs hooked over hers.

  “Let me go!” Marion shrieked, thrashing in the grip of her captor.

  “No,” Zoey said firmly, her lips next to Marion’s ear. “I’m not going to let you hurt yourself. Grayson, get her legs.”

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” muttered Grayson, obeying.

  Marion began to sob. Her limbs were being pulled in twenty different directions. “Zoey?”

  “I’m right here, Marion,” said Zoey.

  Through chattering teeth, Marion inhaled. “I’m scared.”

  “It’s okay. You can be scared. Just hold on.”

  Minutes passed. Marion’s energy seeped away, water spiraling down a long dark drain. Her body relaxed.

  She wilted in Zoey’s arms, turned her cheek into the warmth of Zoey’s shoulder.

  “You okay?” Zoey asked quietly.

  “I don’t know.” Marion’s voice was ruined. “I think so?”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t crack your head open,” said Grayson, holding his own head, his eyes wide.

  Like father, like daughter. One lucky, one not. Marion let out a shaky sound. “I guess I am.”

  “What happened?” Zoey’s expression was grave.

  Marion sucked in a breath, hesitating. Surely she couldn’t say such a thing aloud? But Zoey’s big brown eyes held neither judgment nor skepticism.

  “The doors didn’t want me to touch them,” Marion replied.

  Zoey nodded at once. “Like the stones didn’t want you inside them, so they threw you out.”

  The relief of discussing the impossible made another impossible thing—Charlotte’s return—seem a fraction more likely. The fantasy of that gave Marion the strength to rise to her feet. Zoey jumped up to support her.

  “Ever since the accident,” Marion began, “I’ve been hearing this sound.”

  “The crying bones,” Zoey said matter-of-factly.

  “The bone cry,” Marion corrected.

  “Semantics.”

  “Well. Sometimes I hear the cry in my sleep and it wakes me up. Sometimes I hear it randomly in the middle of the day. And when I hear it, I have to follow it. Like you know when you’re in danger and you have to run. I don’t know what it means, but I think . . . I think it’s trying to tell me something.” She glanced at the library. “It told me to touch the doors.”

  “But then the doors . . .” Grayson waved his hand at them. “They tried to hurt you.”

  “Which means they have something to hide,” Marion decided.

  Zoey nodded grimly. “I agree.”

  Grayson looked back and forth between them. “You want to go inside, don’t you?”

  “I do,” said Marion, as Zoey said, “Of course.”

  Grayson blew out a breath, then slid his hands into his hair. “Why is this happening?”

  Zoey looked affronted. “You’re not chickening out on me.”

  “No, I meant this,” Grayson clarified, gesturing at Marion, at the doors, at the island itself. “Why is all of this happening?”

  Marion stepped toward the doors, then hesitated. “Maybe someone else should try opening it.”

  Zoey took her place at once, but Grayson stopped her with a gentle hand on her elbow.

  “Please, Zo,” he said quietly. “Let me?”

  Zoey glared up at him, looking prepared to scold, and then her expression softened. She relented, stepping back and letting Grayson approach the doors. He reached for the right handle, paused, reached again.

  Marion tensed, her skin prickling.

  His fingers touched the metal, depressed the latch—and nothing happened.

  “It’s locked,” Grayson reported.

  Zoey hurried over. “So pick it.”

  Marion crept closer. With each step, the doors seemed to loom taller, like a cartoon with its proportions gone wrong. “You know how to pick locks?”

  “He’s a man of many talents, my Grayson,” said Zoey, chucking Grayson lightly on the arm. “You look at him and think he’s all virtuous, but don’t be fooled by those baby blues.”

  He frowned at the door, scratching the back of his neck. “You know, on second thought, Ms. Mortimer is not a woman I want to piss off. And I’m sure Marion doesn’t want to get in trouble—”

  “Grayson,” said Marion calmly, “if there’s something past these doors that could help me find my sister, or prove that Val or anyone in her family have information about what happened, I’m sure you can understand why I’m not concerned about getting in trouble.”

  Grayson slid his glasses to rest on top of his head, scrubbed a hand over his face, and sighed. “Why do I let myself get dragged into situations like this?”

  Zoey beamed at him. “Because you love me.”

  Grayson stiffened. An instant later, Zoey did, too. The smile faded from her face. She stepped carefully away from him.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, fists clenched at her sides. “Grayson, I’m—”

  “It’s fine,” he said quietly. He pulled picks from his pocket and got to work. A few tense minutes later, the lock clicked open.

  Marion braced herself as she led the w
ay inside, expecting the furious static to return, or some many-eyed monster to come leaping out with fangs bared.

  But it was just a library, like one might find in any old ancient mansion—bay windows, shelves from floor to ceiling, a ladder on wheels for the higher-ups. Cushy red velvet chairs, one with a cozy throw draped over the arm. A quiet hearth.

  “We should not be in here,” whispered Grayson. “This is trespassing.”

  Zoey snorted. “You’re just now worried about trespassing?”

  Marion moved past them, scanning the shelves for some kind of proof, any kind of proof—something that would leap at her, itch at her, something she would have to look twice at, something about missing girls, something that would wake up the bone cry again and make that strange fist grope once more at her belly, tugging her toward the answer.

  She walked along the bookshelves, ghosting her fingers through the air beside the books’ spines, too wary to touch them.

  “What percentage of these books do you think Their Royal Highnesses have actually read?” Zoey mused. She picked up a marble horse figurine from an end table. “Eight? Eight point two?”

  Something sharp snagged on Marion’s drifting hand and yanked her to a halt. A vibration rocketed up her legs, straight to her fingers. A whine began, deep inside her ears, like the rub of a dry bow against an out-of-tune string.

  Here.

  She inspected her buzzing fingers, the same ones that had touched Val’s door. No wounds. She peered more closely at the bookcase before her, touching every shelf and spine.

  “What’d you find?” Zoey whispered, coming up behind her.

  “Not sure. I had this feeling, though. Something stopped me, right here.”

  “Oh my God. Look.” Zoey shifted, squinting at the row of books at eye level.

  Marion followed her gaze, pivoting until she achieved the right angle of lighting—an uninterrupted line of dusty books, except for four.

  They were marked by fingerprints.

  Marion and Zoey exchanged a glance.

  Grayson whispered, “Please don’t.”

  But Marion did. She reached out and slid the closest fingerprinted book back against the shelf.

  It caught on something, clicked, and locked into place.

  Grayson swore quietly.