Sawkill Girls

by Claire Legrand

  Marion squinted at the photo—a sketched little girl, hair in pigtails, eyes round and solid white.

  A chill scraped across her arms. “Yes, like that, exactly! One moment her eyes were normal. They were mine. And then . . .” She gestured at the phone. “Where did you get that?”

  Zoey hesitated.

  “The secret room?” Marion reached for Zoey’s hands, but Zoey flinched, her expression closed. Marion backed off, her hands in the air. “Please, will you show it to me? If there’s something in there that helps explain any of this . . .” Yes. She was going to say it. She set her jaw, made herself look Zoey in the eye. “Zoey, I teleported last night.”

  Zoey went very still. “You what? Wait, no, hold on.” She looked around the quiet neighborhood—freshly painted mailboxes and trimmed hedges, waterfront bungalows topped with lazy spinning weather vanes. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Okay,” said Zoey, once they’d climbed down into the secret room. She sat at a desk, in front of a computer that was asking for a password, and stared Marion down. “Continue.”

  Marion inhaled. The air was too close down here, too still and damp. “Remember, behind the police station, when you threw Val away from me like you were a superhero or something?”

  “No, I’d forgotten all about that,” said Zoey blandly.

  “The same thing happened to me last night,” Marion whispered. “I mean, not the exact same thing, but . . . I was walking around because I couldn’t sleep”—because after kissing Val, the world flipped on its axis, and how could I possibly sleep after that?—“and one of the Mortimer horses, he totally freaked out, busted out of his fence, went running.”

  Marion told her the whole story—the horse jumping off the cliff, how she teleported to the snow-covered beach, seeing not-Marion in her mother’s arms.

  When she finished, Zoey stared at her, expressionless.

  Marion deflated. “You don’t believe any of this.”

  “No, I do, actually, and . . .” Zoey’s eyes widened. “Wait. ‘There is such a thing as a tesseract.’”

  “A what?”

  “You tessered.” Zoey pounded her fist against the chair’s arm. “That’s what you’re describing. You tessered. That can’t be a coincidence. I wonder . . .”

  She swiveled around in the chair, typed carefully into the password box. With a soft chime, the desktop appeared, tiled with neat rows of folders.

  Zoey let out a shaky laugh. “Tesseract. He left the clue for me.”

  She opened a file labeled with that day’s date. A video appeared—a frozen image of Chief Harlow, sitting where Zoey was sitting now.

  “Those are the clothes he was wearing this morning,” Zoey said quietly. “He recorded this right after I ran away from him.”

  Marion wanted to ask what had happened, why Zoey had run, but then the recorded Chief Harlow began to speak: “Zoey, record this video on your phone, and then delete the file from my computer.”

  He paused, waiting. Zoey pointed her phone’s camera at the screen and started recording.

  “This message, first and foremost, is an apology,” the recorded Chief Harlow began. “I didn’t mean to scare you this morning, Zo. I know I did, and that’s unforgivable.”

  Marion glanced at Zoey. She had pressed her lips together in a tight hard line, her eyes bright and unblinking.

  “Second,” the recording continued, “I must apologize for this: I’ve been lying to you for a long time, and it’s time to come clean. I hope you can understand why I kept this from you, even if you can’t forgive me for it. I’ve screwed up a lot, sweetie, even as recently as just ten minutes ago. I could’ve handled so many things so much better. And I should have.”

  He paused and looked away from the camera, his jaw clenching. “I work for an ancient organization called the Hand of Light, along with thousands of other men around the globe. Some of them will arrive on Sawkill shortly. Some are already here.”

  “Briggs?” Zoey whispered.

  “Our mission,” Chief Harlow went on, “is to hunt down the creatures that have invaded our world. The world is bigger and older than you think, Zoey. There are many pockets of it, inaccessible to most humans, full of beings both remarkable and terrifying.”

  Chief Harlow drew in a deep breath. “One of these monsters lives here, on Sawkill. It has been hunting girls for decades. I believe it killed Thora. And Charlotte. And Jane.”

  Marion felt like she had been punched. She gripped the edge of the desk, leaned heavily against it.

  Charlotte.

  “The creatures can’t be killed by any conventional means,” Chief Harlow went on. “We—the Hand of Light—have tried for centuries. Even modern weapons barely slow it down. We have devised a particular method of extermination that has a high rate of success, but not without great cost. Zoey . . .”

  Chief Harlow leaned a bit closer. “I let you move to Sawkill because I thought you would be safest near me. Given my knowledge of the monsters, and my connections with fellow soldiers like me who live all around the world, I thought having you here, potentially dangerous as it was, would be better than not knowing where you are, wondering every morning if—somewhere, in some town—you’d been taken by one of them. I was wrong. This is all happening more quickly than I’ve ever seen it. I think that the rate at which these girls have been disappearing means we’re all in immediate danger.”

  His voice broke. He looked down at his phone, wiped his face. “Zo, why aren’t you answering your phone, sweetie? I’m gonna come find you. If you see this message before I find you, then you’ve got to leave. You need to get off this island. Take our boat, get to shore. I’ve bought you a ticket from Boston to San Francisco for tomorrow morning. Go stay with your mother, and don’t ever come back here. Don’t worry about Grayson, or Marion, or anyone. Get as far away from Sawkill as you can. Stay indoors. Don’t go out at night. Don’t talk to strangers. Run, Zoey.”

  Marion, rigid, stared at the screen. The world had shrunk to the sounds of Chief Harlow’s voice and the ragged push and pull of her own breathing.

  Then, from upstairs, came the sound of the front door slamming shut, and a man calling out, “Zoey?”

  “Oh my God.” Zoey leaped up from the desk. “My dad’s home. Shit. Shit.”

  “Wait!” Marion grabbed her arm. “He left this video for you. He obviously wanted you to find it. Why would he be upset that we’re down here?”

  The sound of a man’s voice drifted down through the ceiling—a voice Marion didn’t recognize.

  Zoey froze, listening.

  “Who is that?” Marion whispered.

  “No clue.”

  The sound of brisk footsteps tapped a countdown across the ceiling.

  “I’ll go stall them.” Zoey ran for the exit. “Delete the file, turn off the computer, then hurry upstairs and move the dresser back.”

  Marion nodded, deleted the file, emptied the trash, then switched off the computer and turned—

  And stopped.

  Zoey was standing by the bottom step, gazing up at the secret door with a carefully closed-off expression.

  A pair of boots walked down the stairs. They became a pair of legs in blue jeans, then a torso with a holstered pistol at the belt, then a white man with a shaved head and piercing blue eyes. He smiled first at Zoey, then at Marion.

  “Excellent,” he said. “I was getting tired of your father stalling, Zoey. Come into the kitchen, both of you. I’ll make tea. We have much to discuss.”

  The sight of Zoey speechless lit a fire in Marion’s belly. She stepped forward, fists clenched. “Where’s Chief Harlow?”

  “Right here, Marion,” came the voice of Chief Harlow, upstairs in his bedroom. “It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Nothing to be afraid of. It was almost enough to make Marion laugh. Instead, she clasped Zoey’s hand and led the way upstairs.

  Zoey

  The Truth

  In the kitchen, Zoey f
illed up four orange cups with water from the tap, brought them one by one to the table, then flung herself into a chair, crossed her arms, and glared back and forth between her father and Agent Briggs, fingernails digging into her flesh.

  Marion held her cup between her hands but didn’t drink from it.

  Zoey’s father gulped down his entire glass.

  Neither Briggs nor Zoey touched theirs.

  Outside the kitchen, in the foyer, the old family cuckoo clock struck one in the afternoon.

  “All right,” said Zoey’s father, setting down his cup. “The situation is this: you know the island tales about the Collector.”

  Zoey remained very still, watching her father closely. In her father’s message, he had seemed panicked, ready to shove her off the island at the next possible opportunity.

  But now he was sitting placidly at the kitchen table, like she hadn’t just watched that terrifying video, like everything was the same as it had been before she’d run from the house this morning. And as far as he knew, maybe she hadn’t watched the video.

  Maybe he didn’t want Briggs to know he had left it for her?

  Maybe, thought Zoey, suddenly queasy, he doesn’t trust Briggs.

  What had he called that organization in his message?

  The Hand of Light.

  “Zoey told me about the Collector,” said Marion. “A local fairy tale. An urban legend.”

  He nodded. “And one rooted in truth. There is indeed a monster on this island, and—”

  “And he eats girls.” Marion looked at Briggs, her gaze steady and clear. “Doesn’t he?”

  Zoey couldn’t help it; she glanced over at her father, wishing she could tell him right then and there that they’d watched the video, wishing she could have him to herself for a moment, to ask him what was going on without Briggs nearby. And for a second, their eyes locked, and something about the expression on her father’s face—that careful placidity, the steadiness of his gaze, the square wall of his shoulders—told her what she needed to know:

  He guessed that she’d watched the video.

  And he was glad.

  Briggs nodded. “He does eat girls, Marion, yes. And he’s not the only one. There are many, all across the world.”

  “Where do they come from?” Marion asked.

  Briggs leaned closer, like a professor excited to lecture on his favorite subject. “Imagine, if you will, a sponge—”

  “Animal, cleaning, or Bob?” Zoey interrupted.

  Her father gave her a Look. Marion exhaled a soft laugh.

  “What?” Zoey returned her father’s Look with one of her own. “I assume specificity is important here.”

  Briggs’s small smile did not meet his eyes. “Let’s go with cleaning.” He retrieved a flat orange sponge from the sink. “Exhibit A: a sponge. If you consider it from a distance, it looks fairly solid.” Briggs backed away from them, sponge resting flat in his palm. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Zoey bristled at the overly patient quality of his voice, but Marion simply nodded. “Yes, all right.”

  “But if you look more closely,” said Briggs, returning to them, “you’ll see that the sponge is full of holes. This is also true of the world.” He set the sponge in the center of the table. “If you looked at it from afar, you would see a solid globe. But if you know what to look for, you’ll find that it’s full of craters and divots, pockets and tunnels. Some big, some small. We call them obscurae, plural. Obscura, singular. They are old, and they are many. And some of them are full of monsters.”

  Zoey kept her face a mask of careful disinterest. But her blood raced and roared, and she was beginning to feel dangerously light-headed. The world was expanding too quickly for her to keep up.

  “Where did the obscurae come from?” Marion picked up the sponge, turned it over in her hand. “What made them?”

  “We’re not sure,” Briggs replied. “It’s possible they’re entry points to a multiverse. Other scholars subscribe to a more fantastical theory—that the obscurae are lingering remnants of an old magic we can’t possibly understand, which originates in a place completely inaccessible to both us and the monsters. In our lore, we refer to this realm as the Far Place.”

  “Whose lore is this, exactly?” asked Zoey. “And what scholars?”

  Briggs opened his mouth to answer, but Marion cut him off. “The monsters . . . They live in the obscurae?”

  Chief Harlow nodded. “And, now, they also live here. Some of them, anyway. We don’t know if the invasion is deliberate, or if some of the creatures have accidentally wandered out of their worlds and into our own.”

  The map. Zoey thumped her clenched fists against her thighs. The red dots are where the monsters live.

  How much red had dotted the map? Thirty cities? Forty?

  Her father glanced her way, then back at Briggs.

  “So, if the monsters can travel between our world and theirs,” said Marion slowly, “can we travel to the obscurae, too?”

  The kitchen, which had already been quiet, seemed to grow an extra layer of silence.

  Now Marion’s voice was the one to return to Zoey: I was in this other . . . place. I don’t know where. I’ve never seen a place like that.

  Teleportation.

  Tessering.

  Zoey, veins suddenly sizzling, fought to keep her face devoid of expression.

  Briggs leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs until they bumped into Zoey’s. “It has been attempted. Not successfully, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, then . . .” Marion sandwiched the sponge between her hands, then looked at Briggs with wide, innocent eyes. “Can they be killed?”

  No. They couldn’t. Zoey’s father had said as much in his video. But of course Marion wouldn’t know that, because Marion hadn’t seen the video, because there was no video, as far as Briggs was concerned.

  Zoey wanted to plant a big sloppy kiss on Marion’s cheek.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Briggs, with a sigh. “We’ve tried many different methods over the centuries, but the creatures are clever and fast, and they take many forms. They can essentially regenerate faster than we can hurt them. They self-destruct and disappear into hiding to recover, then respawn in a different location, and the process begins again.”

  Zoey clenched her jaw so hard her teeth hurt.

  In her father’s video, he’d said there was a way to kill the monsters: We have devised a particular method of extermination that has a high rate of success, but not without great cost.

  So Briggs was lying.

  Or else, her father was.

  “Who’s we?” Marion asked. “You said, ‘We’ve tried many different methods.’ We who?”

  “The Hand of Light,” Briggs answered, his posture straightening. “We are an old organization. We hunt the monsters, and we try to prevent as many deaths as possible.”

  Zoey’s father shifted in his chair, cleared his throat, slumped a little, and clasped his hands on the tabletop.

  Was he trying to act like he was ashamed, to have kept this revelation from his daughter for so long?

  Or was he praying that she wouldn’t spill the beans about his video? Maybe this was information only Briggs was authorized to share?

  Marion looked at Zoey’s father. “You’re one of them, too?”

  He gave her a tired smile. “I am.”

  Zoey planned to make a scene, pretend that this was the first she was hearing about the Hand of Light, that she hadn’t been suspecting monsters all along.

  But when she opened her mouth, what came out was this: “If you’re going to try to catch it or something, or at least track it, I want to help.”

  “Absolutely not!” Her father’s voice exploded, making Zoey jump. He pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m done sitting here. I’m done with this. Every minute we sit here is a minute closer to his next kill.”

  “Now, Ed, there’s no need for shouting,” said Briggs. “You’re going to frighten the girls.” />
  “Good, they should be frightened—”

  “Shut up.” Zoey placed her hands flat on the table and stood. “Just shut up, Dad.”

  Both men fell silent. Marion watched her quietly from her seat.

  “For months, I’ve been wondering what happened to Thora,” Zoey said. “I theorized, I asked, I ranted, I cried. I wanted answers and couldn’t find any. Nobody could. Except you had them the whole time,” she said, pointing at her father, “and never told me.”

  “I wanted to protect you.”

  Zoey scoffed. Her hands were shaking, as was her voice, which really pissed her off. A shaking voice made her sound frail, breakable, and she was neither of those things. She was furious.

  “So you didn’t think I could handle what’s really going on?” she muttered.

  Her father’s expression grew bleaker by the moment. “I didn’t want you to be afraid—”

  She cut him off. “My best friend disappeared. I was already afraid. But if you’d trusted me enough to be straight with me, maybe I would have been less afraid. Or at least I would have known the truth and could have looked my fear in the eye.” Zoey’s cheeks flushed hot as she glared at her father. His eyes were bright, and his mouth wobbled like he was trying not to cry, but she wouldn’t feel sorry for him, she wouldn’t. “You’ve made a fool out of me. You treated me like some dumb, fragile kid.”

  “Zo—” Her father’s voice cracked. He held out his hands to her in supplication.

  “This thing killed my best friend,” said Zoey, ignoring him to look at Briggs instead. “I’m gonna do whatever I can to help you hunt it down.”

  Briggs smiled gently. “Well, Zoey, that’s a really nice offer, but . . .” He scratched the back of his head, wincing a little. “The thing is, sweetie, your dad and I, and our friends . . . We know what we’re doing, we know our procedures, and this is really something we’d rather you left to us—”

  Zoey spun away before he could finish, before she could fly at him and slap him for talking to her like she deserved nothing more than a pat on the head.

  And before the tingle building up her arms and legs detonated into something like whatever it was that threw Val into those snapdragons.