Val hurried to the latch. “I should be with her—”
“No, Valerie,” said her mother. “You’ll stay right here, and you’ll explain your negligence to me. You’ll explain why you left that girl’s hand out for anyone to find.”
Val hovered at the window, unable to move. Mrs. Althouse’s scream of grief tore through the morning air like the rending of the earth. The woman sank to her knees on the porch, Marion catching her right at the end, while Chief Harlow stood over them with his hat held against his heart.
Val’s eyes filled with tears. She stepped away from the glass and pressed her back against the door. She leaned into the unyielding wood and struggled to gather her breathing.
Her mother appeared beside her, gazing out the window. “Hunters have come to our island. They’re going to try and sniff us out. They’re going to try to kill him.”
A wild hope erupted in Val’s heart. “Hunters? Who are they?”
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll fail.” Her mother glanced at her. “But they’ll know he has hosts. That’s what he told me. He told me they know how this works, at least enough to be a danger to us. They’ll be looking for us, and could very well discover everything—if, that is, we continue to carelessly leave body parts lying around.”
Heat climbed up Val’s body, which thrummed with the desire to run, but she didn’t dare move.
“We existed for generations on this island,” her mother continued, “undisturbed and untroubled. Until you came along, that is. My daughter, the one to bring ruin down upon me. Well.” Her mother laughed softly. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Her blood roaring in her ears, Val watched her mother quietly turn the locks on the front doors.
“If you’ll join me in the library, please?” Lucy Mortimer murmured, then glided past Val through the foyer, to the heavy double doors at the other end.
Val considered running. She could sprint down the driveway, throw herself at Chief Harlow, point back at Kingshead and scream, In there! That’s where the killer is!
But then what?
He would find her. He would make her life even blacker a hell than it already was.
So Val followed her mother. The cold brick floor shocked her bare feet like the jab of tiny swords. Her skin tingled sharply; she was allergic to the very air. Normally, she wouldn’t be trembling. Normally, she wouldn’t feel a thing. She would bear her punishment in silence, then hide herself away in her room until she felt capable of looking people in the eye and keeping her mouth shut.
But that morning, every breath Val sucked in reminded her of the new lines of her body—awakened by Marion’s hands, baptized by Marion’s lips. By the time her mother closed the library doors behind her, Val felt completely unstitched.
She heard the turn of the key.
She closed her eyes, hoping it would be over quickly.
It wasn’t.
Her mother yanked her around with a fist in her hair, backhanded Val once, twice, then threw her to the floor.
Val couldn’t move—head spinning, ears ringing. She tasted blood and swallowed it, because the rug had cost thirty thousand dollars, and her mother might actually kill her if she stained it.
This, though? The beating? It was nothing. It was simply a lesson, and one Val knew she deserved.
“Get up,” her mother ordered. “Get up and look at me.”
Val obeyed, but she was still grabbed by the throat and shoved against the nearest bookcase. Pinned there, her mother’s soft hands around her throat, Val let herself be half strangled. Her face swelled with blood; she lost all sensation in her fingers except for a strange sizzling heat. She choked, gasping, and the heat traveled first up her arms and then dropped down to rest in her stomach like a swallowed star.
When her mother released her, Val slumped to the ground, heaving, and realized too late that she was crying. Crying was not a thing that the women of her family did. He did not abide frailty; he suffered no weak links.
But her mother had seen, and yanked her to her feet, slapping her once more. Val stumbled and caught herself on the back of the chaise longue. She glimpsed her own tear-streaked, bloody-lipped face in the mirror against the far wall, and felt so utterly, blazingly sorry for that poor girl, so desperate to protect her, that her body spasmed, as if she’d stepped out of frigid darkness into a scorching desert at midday.
The world shifted and sharpened against her skin. The ground was hot coals beneath her bare feet.
She whirled on her mother and rasped, “Get the fuck away from me.” Then she planted her right hand on her mother’s chest and electrified her.
The blistering heat detonated from beneath the floor and sliced up through Val’s limbs like lightning. It gathered white-hot in her palms and made her glow—every strand of hair, every carefully cultivated muscle, every bead of sweat.
For two seconds, Val was nothing but energy and rage and blood and bone. She gripped her mother and branded her. The front of Lucy Mortimer’s blue silk blouse caught fire and turned to ash. She screamed, and Val staggered away a second later—no longer illuminated, a mere girl once more.
A red handprint remained on her mother’s chest.
Glistening. Smoking.
Cooked.
Val stared. Her mother stared back.
For a moment, the known order of things flipped upside down.
Twin thoughts exploded in Val’s mind:
Like Zoey?
Like Marion.
A girl with incredible strength.
A girl who can vanish.
A girl who burns.
Val hurried to her mother, hands dim and outstretched. “Mom, I’m sorry! I don’t know what happened!”
An instant later, Lucy Mortimer returned to herself. “Look what you’ve done,” she said hoarsely, tears shimmering in her eyes, her face tight and pale. “You’ve made him angry with me.”
She grabbed Val by the collar, opened the secret door behind the bookshelves, and dragged her daughter down the stairs.
“No!” Val screamed, raking her fingers across the wood-paneled walls, her nails catching on each groove. Not the red room, not the red room, it wasn’t her time yet!
But she was too frightened to fight very hard. What had happened, up there in the library? Whatever it was, her skin still tingled from it. Her vision swirled with glowing shapes, like she’d stared too hard at the sun. Memories returned to her: Herself, flying back from Zoey, scraping her skin across the ground. Marion, seen from Val’s bedroom window, flickering out of existence like someone almighty had switched her off.
Val’s palms burned her clenched fingertips. If she opened her fists, what would happen? Would that light return? Would she torch the mansion to ashes?
She kept her fists tightly shut, and closed her eyes, and gasped out a little sob. She would contain herself. She would swallow, and swallow, until the burning feeling in her chest, in her limbs, in her gut, subsided. Because if she hurt her mother again, and too badly for her to survive, then it would be Val’s turn.
Val’s turn to lie with him in the red room.
Val’s turn to host him, to anchor him in this world that was not his own.
Val’s turn to bear the mark that her mother wore low on her belly, where no one else could see but him. And at the thought of that, with the electricity still faintly coursing through her body, Val threw up the toast she’d nibbled on, giddy and not at all hungry, in Marion’s kitchen that morning.
Her mother made a disgusted sound, released her, and let her fall. Val landed in a puddle of her own sick beside the bed.
“Get a hold of yourself,” her mother ground out, her hair fallen loose now, her cheeks flushed. “When I come back, I expect you to be my daughter again.”
Then she turned and left, not looking back even as Val crawled after her, pulling at her skirt.
“Mom, please! Don’t leave me here!” The door slammed shut in Val’s face. She screamed for help, even though she
knew the walls of this room were too thick for any sound to escape them. She beat against the walls, in the damp, still dark, until her fists were raw.
Val tucked herself into the corner farthest from the bed and hugged her knees to her chest. She prayed, to any god who hadn’t written her off as completely lost, that he wouldn’t come sniffing around and find her.
When she fell asleep at last, blistering white light hurtled scattershot across her dreams, like the veins of a pitiless universe.
THE BEAST’S HOWLS COULD NOT be heard in this world, not by human ears, but the Rock heard every one.
It heard the furious hunger in the sound, and knew the beast would feed again, and soon.
Before the moon filled in two days’ time, fresh blood would once more paint the Rock’s woods a bright shivering red.
The Rock sensed all this, as it watched the girl huddled underground. Encased by walls of the Rock’s own stone, carved to stand cruel and unfeeling, the girl wept. When each of her tears hit the floor, the Rock felt the impact like the drop of comets from the sky.
The Rock wished, not for the first time, that its hands were solid enough to cradle the lost and lonely.
The Rock wished it had the power to banish the evil and the profane to the farthest, darkest realm, all on its own, without asking such tasks of its young.
Courage, the Rock hummed through its deep roots of sea and silt.
Courage.
Courage, dear heart.
Val
The Scent
The next day, Val felt him awaken.
She sat in the corner of the red room with her knees drawn to her chest, her stomach tight and empty, her eyes swollen and red. His hunger came on suddenly, as if her veins formed the curve of a fragile egg, and suddenly the shell was splintering. Two minutes later, the door to the red room opened, revealing her mother—hair curled, high-necked blouse shielding her burned décolletage.
Val’s gaze fell at once to the spot where her scorching hand had fallen.
Her own chest tightened, remembering.
Was it a thing to fear, that power?
Or a thing to find again?
And, churned her tired thoughts, is it a power I share with others?
With Zoey?
With Marion?
“Clean yourself up,” Val’s mother instructed, watching Val stagger to her feet. “Don’t keep him waiting.”
Silently Val obeyed, her eyes lowered to the ground but her heart wide-awake and pounding. Her mother flinched away from Val when she passed.
Val said nothing, but as she climbed the stairs to the library, she touched the finger-shaped bruises on her throat. She recovered the memory of her mother’s fists and allowed them to strike her again, and again, and again. She walked up the stairs to her bedroom: One step, punch. Two step, punch.
With each remembered strike, Val’s tired head cleared.
With each phantom burst of pain, the dying fire in Val’s heart grew and sparked.
In her room, Val took the time to shower.
If she showed up in the stones smelling of vomit, he’d make her pay before she could even begin to try anything. She examined her reflection in the mirror as she combed the knots from her wet hair, and then, as she bent over with the hair dryer blasting, hoping the noise would confuse his senses, she dared to think, Are you there?
She didn’t know what she expected to answer her.
But something had happened in the library, and if she could make it happen again, maybe soon her mother wouldn’t be the only creature to bear Val’s bloody brand.
Keep a morsel for yourself, her grandmother had instructed.
Don’t lose yourself to him.
Not all of you.
Val stood in silence, her hair falling frizzy and golden down her back. She glared at her reflection and tried to remember: What had she been feeling, in the library, right before she had hurt her mother?
She closed her eyes, fists clenched, and after a moment of reconstructing the scene in her mind, the feeling returned to her:
Pity, for her own tired self.
Anger, at the life she had been forced to live.
And a desperation to change it, even if the thought terrified her.
Heat gathered beneath Val’s feet, then traveled up her shins, her quads, her abdomen, her sternum.
Something stung her palms, and when she dared to look down, uncurling her fingers, she saw, in the center of her hands, two white knots of light, crackling like tiny twin galaxies.
They blinked once, twice, and disappeared—but their heat lingered, warming her.
Trailing her fingers along one of the black Mortimer pasture fences and humming Sylvia Mortimer’s lullaby, she found Quinn Tillinghouse walking home from John Lin’s house.
Who is the fellow with the bright clean grin?
Do you want, fairy girl, to weave a spell for him?
Val felt him behind her in the woods, following her. She kept her fists closed, tried to measure her breathing so he wouldn’t see anything was amiss.
Could he sense it, though?
Could he read the map of her blood and sniff out the scent of her treachery?
Quinn had her phone out, and her keys. She held the long ignition key between two fingers, notches out, like a knife—just in case a child snatcher happened by, Val supposed.
Tears sprang to her eyes, despite how hard she was working to stay calm. Quinn was an unbelievable moron. Sneaking out to grab a quick shag with John while everything on the island was in such a state?
Val wanted to scream at her: Ever heard of masturbating, Quinn?
Even more than that, she wanted to scream: Run! Now!
She hurried over, looped her arm through Quinn’s before she could even try to run. And why would she? They were friends, had been for years.
“Quinn!” Val smiled brightly. “Hey, girl.”
“Oh!” Quinn jumped, laughed a little. “Val, Jesus. You scared the crap out of me.”
“You really shouldn’t be out by yourself, you know.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “John said he was too tired to drive me home.”
“Ugh, he’s such an ass.” Val leaned playfully close but kept her voice low. She glanced down at her own hands—nothing. She swallowed against a swell of panic. “Quinn, listen to me. No matter what I say, you need to not react and stay calm, all right?”
“What?” Quinn’s arm tensed around Val’s. “What do you mean?”
“When I tell you to run, I need you to run home, straight down this road, as fast as you can.”
“What are you talking about?” Quinn’s voice turned shrill. She looked back over her shoulder, eyes wide. “Is someone—”
“God, Quinn, you’re so paranoid!” Val said loudly, cringing at the manufactured quality of her voice. Then, quieter: “If you don’t want to die tonight, then run when I tell you to. Stay out of the woods, stick to the road.”
From behind them sounded the snap of a twig, the thud of something falling to the ground. Val nearly recoiled. The sound of him existing in the world was so solid now. Once, he had been a shadow only she could see.
Quinn whirled, squirming in Val’s grip. “Who’s there?” she cried. “Stay away from us! Oh, God.” Quinn fumbled for her phone, let out a frantic sob. She started to run while dialing, tripped over a crack in the ground, stumbled.
Val knocked the phone out of Quinn’s hands, shoved her down the dark road toward town. “Go! Now!”
Quinn ran, screaming for help.
Val turned to search the darkness. She tried to remember the library and recover that hot, invincible feeling, but Quinn was screaming, and Val’s palms remained dark and useless, and then it was too late.
A hand smacked into Val’s belly. It gripped her dress and threw her to the ground. Her jaw knocked the hard earth. She bit her tongue and tasted blood.
“You faithless bitch,” growled a wheezing, alien voice—he must have been too hungry, too exhilarated,
to assume a proper human form.
Val tried to push herself up, but her vision spun, and she collapsed. She raised her head in time to see a flickering darkness, bat-shaped and human-size, lunge through the air and tackle Quinn. It latched on to her face, smothering her cry of horror.
Silence. The woods and their creatures had gone still.
Then Val heard the sound of Quinn’s body being dragged nearby. He yanked Val to her feet, pushed her forward into the trees. He moved with ease, like ink sliding through water. His grip on Val’s wrist was sickeningly solid, his footfalls hitting the velvet forest floor like boulders flung from catapults.
“You’re looking well tonight,” she forced herself to say, grasping desperately for a handle on the situation. “I’ve never seen you so strong—”
“Remember that,” he rasped, tongues flicking wetly at her ear, “the next time you consider disobeying me.”
Val shook her head, tears blinding her. “I wasn’t—”
He squeezed her wrist so hard the pain snatched her breath away. His form towered over her; the air, the ground, Val’s entire existence bent toward him, sucked in by the singularity of his anger. “Walk faster.”
Val fought to stay upright as she led the way home. Her use to him as navigator was the only thing keeping her alive—and she knew that this might be the last time he had need of her for such a thing.
She stole one last look at her unlit palms, and hope crumbled like ash under her feet.
There was a nicely shaped gray stone, just inside the perimeter of white ones. It was low and flat, and it was, her mother had once joked, Val’s throne.
“Mine was bigger,” Lucy Mortimer had remarked, upon seeing it for the first time. She’d cupped Val’s cheek, her eyes flat and cold. “But I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything.”
That was where Val sat, as he pinned Quinn to the ground in the center of the stones and got to work. He ripped and he clawed, he carved and disemboweled, he slurped and he drank, he flayed and he peeled. By the end of it the stones were red, the ground was red, and Val was reddest of all.
Splashed from head to toe with it, Val sat with charm-school posture, and thought distantly of Jackson Pollock paintings. (Perhaps she would ask her mother to acquire one for her bedroom.)
Sawkill Girls Page 20