Good Girls

by Glen Hirshberg

  Was this, Caribou wondered, why all the not-monsters—all those pathetic creatures out there roaming or sleeping away their pallid nights beyond the Delta—loved driving so much? Was this why Mother’s jabberer sang and whistled so many songs about it? Because every single trip away from home was a passage through everything that made a place home to begin with?

  Especially if you knew, as he knew, that this would be the last time? That after tonight, he really might not be back? That this was home no longer?

  So many places had resonance, for him, it turned out, a surprising number, given how infrequently he had stirred from the tents by the riverbank. There: the ruins of the juke joint where Mother’s Whistler had learned so many of the songs he sang. And, there, just as the gravel turned to macadam and the first streetlights lowered themselves over the glowing, clayey dirt in the fields and baked it ordinary: the bus stop where he and Mother had broken down together, in this very car, and had had to walk the long miles back to camp, not talking to each other, but also not minding or being jealous of each other, for once. Where had they even been going?

  The miles unspooled down the hours, down the charts in his head. Here it all was: gas stations; nighttime barbecue stands with their furtive customers packed around picnic benches in the shadows like moonshiners; a trailer park; a single subdivision, developed years ago but never populated; little towns, Brattleford, West Brattleford; the abandoned shacks of Grace Holler—the former lynching capital of the Delta—all sinking now beneath their kudzu shrouds as they melted into the ground. That was the only place, in all these decades, that Policy had ever directed Aunt Sally’s children to visit twice. At the time, that had seemed cruel to Caribou—only right, maybe, but also cruel—until years and years later, when the Whistler had returned to camp one day with the ballad that had surfaced about it all, out there in their world.

  Such a beautiful, haunting song, a terrible thing, especially in the Whistler’s greedy, reedy voice, in his Whistle that penetrated skin like teeth.

  They had ripped out the heart of a cursed town, Aunt Sally’s children, and replaced it with a nightmare, a myth for the ages, a fresh Crotoan. Grace Holler, where no one plays, and none dare go. The heart of a town seemed a small price to pay, in the end, for that.

  So fast, too fast, his Mississippi fell away in the rearview mirrors and vanished behind him. He would have stopped or slowed to watch it go. But Aunt Sally was awaiting her guests. And there was never enough dark.

  Even he was surprised at how little trouble he had spotting the turnoff, which he’d used exactly once before, on the night he’d found this place. It came up right where remembered, a little opening in the longleaf pines, deeper into the Piney Woods than he should ever have had reason to venture in the first place. How had he found it originally? Caribou couldn’t remember. What did it matter, anyway?

  More important, why was he stopping the car now, switching it off and just sitting, despite his time concerns, half a mile down this barely rutted track that hardly qualified as a lane, amid these skeletal, towering trunks that looked more like dock pilings than forest, the foundations for some massive, unimaginable ruin? Moonlight rolled between them, pouring over the ground cover, turning it that glowing, perfect Piney Woods green, that green of nowhere else.

  And what was this stinging sensation, all of a sudden? This stab of … something about this place. These trees, this light. The crumbling white plantation house he knew was back there, a mile or so farther down the lane.

  The fact that it was all too beautiful for what it was, perhaps? Or maybe that that house, and the people who inhabited it, had been out here so long that the world had all but forgotten they existed, which made them and it more than a little like Aunt Sally’s camp full of monsters?

  That last thought startled him, made him sit up straight and touch his own cheeks with his fingertips. And then he had another thought: what if this place was reminding him not just of his home now, but his home before? His birthplace? Was that even possible? Or did it just feel possible tonight, because tonight promised to be so momentous?

  All at once, he gasped, actually sucked in air, an old and meaningless reflex. Apparently, there was magic in Policy, still. Oh, yes, there was. So much more than Aunt Sally professed to believe, maybe more than she knew. Because the only reason he had stopped just here was that he’d been seized by these feelings, and by the moonlight. And they had seized and transfixed him in this precise, Piney spot, at this exact moment. And that was the only reason he saw her.

  Actually, all he saw at first was her eyes, little green pinpricks in the new dark, just there behind the trunk of a pine five feet or so to the left of his driver’s-side window, blinking closed-and-open, closed-and-open. As soon as whatever was back there saw him looking, it skittered off, low to the ground, like an armadillo burrowing through the needles and leaves, away and farther left, deeper into the pines: a wood creature, surely, a squirrel or badger or wolverine, except he knew it wasn’t any of those things even before he stepped out of the car. Silently, leaving the car door open, he glided over the ground cover into the woods, never quite losing sight of the movement, the little figure barely stirring branches as it ducked between and beneath them. He tracked her less by her movements than by those eyes that glanced back from time to time, greener even than the piney green dark, opening-closing.

  He finally cornered her against the bark of a lightning-blackened stump, and she froze as he approached, as he stopped and stood staring at her, this miraculous barefoot apparition: a girl, maybe seven, eight years old, brunette hair heavy on her shoulders and down her back like moss, hanging to her waist, bestrewn with wood chips, pinecones. Her feet were bare, her blue jeans smeared with forest, green sweater hanging lopsided almost to her knees. She stared back at him—not at his eyes, but his hands, his mouth—shyly, not quite fearfully enough, like a kitten peering out the top of a bag. A kitten someone had meant to drown.

  Kneeling, Caribou hooked his gaze to the girl’s. Hers slid instinctively away at first. Then he had her.

  “You’re from the house,” he said, nodding to his right, into the dark.

  “Ju,” she said. Or, Jew?

  Caribou blinked, had to conquer an impulse to edge backward. He had her—knew he had her, he could feel it—but she hadn’t answered what he’d asked.

  “Short for June,” she said.

  At least that made sense of the word. And now, even more strangely, Caribou felt himself smile. “I didn’t know there was a short for June.”

  “Are you here to take me back? I don’t want to go back, yet.”

  “Well, all right, Miss Ju. Why don’t you come with me? Let’s go tell them we’re going. Do you want to come on an adventure? You can even … invite a few friends. If you like.”

  Moments later, she was in his car. The thrill of that was almost overwhelming, and Caribou had no idea why. Part of it was simply the eyes on this girl, the bits of tree and ground cover all over her, as if she were ground cover itself, walking. She was afraid of him, yes, hunched against the passenger-side door, and when he smiled at her, she shuddered the whole grass-blade-length of her frame. But then—tentatively, as though trying it out, as though this was her very first time—she smiled back.

  He stopped the LeSabre in the lane twenty feet or so from the house, just outside the halo of glowing green and red cast by the strings of Christmas lights that drooped from the cracked, leaf-engorged gutters above the veranda like old skin off older bones. Of course those lights would never be taken down, Caribou realized, probably hadn’t come down in years. Who, in that house, could do such work? And of course they would be lit, every night, for as long as at least a few of the bulbs worked, because there were children in there who would want them lit.

  Because this girl lived there, and would want them lit.

  Oh, yes. Aunt Sally was going to like this one. Aunt Sally was going to take this one herself. The thought of presenting Ju to Sally set off shoc
k waves in Caribou’s skin and loins and throat, made his tongue tingle. What a present she would make, this Piney-green-eyed girl, who was still smiling at him.

  He smiled back and let her go, and she danced through the droplets of light toward the already-open front doors, the old-woman caretakers, the other children emerging from behind them in their Spider-Man pajamas, their pigtails and braids, opening together into the dark like night-blooms on a single, ancient Delta plant. Grinning, still tingling, Caribou eased out of his car and gathered them to him.

  20

  Kaylene had been conscious for some time before she realized she was holding her breath. What alerted her, finally, was the squeezing in her cold, constricted chest, the involuntary clawing of her hands against the dark. Also, despite the fact that she could see absolutely nothing, her eyes were open; she could tell because she’d just felt herself blink.

  So she was already dead?

  Then she inhaled, and pain exploded all over her face, shooting firework-ribbons of red and yellow across the blackness around her without illuminating anything. She heard herself gasp, instinctively smashed her teeth shut to cut off the sound, but there wasn’t much sound, anyway. Because after he’d finished with her face, the bastard had got hold of her throat again. And now she couldn’t get it un-crumpled.

  This time, when she breathed, she did so through her mouth, between clenched teeth, sucking air over the blood on her gums. That worked better.

  She was thinking clearly enough by this point to know that the room was spinning. How she knew that, she had no idea, since she couldn’t see a goddamn thing. But it was, around and around. Kaylene’s stomach lurched, lurched again, and fluid bubbled out of her mouth and forced her to breathe once more through her shattered nose. Shards of bone pricked her mucous membranes like broken glass.

  At least this time she didn’t even try to make a noise. She just went on grabbing uselessly at the ice.

  The ice.

  So she was still in Mrs. Starkey’s barn, and therefore not dead. Whatever dead was, Kaylene was pretty sure it wouldn’t hurt this much. Not in this many places. And she wouldn’t be listening this hard, and she wouldn’t be this cold. Or this scared.

  Breath sluiced through her teeth as the room slowly, slowly steadied. The rush of air seemed thunderous in her ears. Abruptly, she curled into a ball, everything in her body screaming at her to hide, play dead. She lay there a long time, feeling like a roly-poly waiting to be squashed.

  Then she’d had enough of that. Kaylene, she ordered herself, MOVE.

  But she didn’t move, couldn’t even imagine moving. She listened instead, heard nothing. Was it really possible that he had gone? The asshat in the hat?

  Memory surfaced, set her clawing at the ice and gasping all over again. And then she remembered Marlene.

  She opened her mouth to scream, didn’t scream, somehow held both the impulse and the memory back just far enough, just for this second. She waited, curled up, frozen and still. If her attacker was still in the barn, he had to know where she was by now, given the racket she was making while trying to stay silent, even if he hadn’t known before. Even if he couldn’t somehow see in the dark like a cat. Like the fucking monster he was.

  But all she heard was the hum of the rink, and she didn’t so much hear that as feel it in her ribs, like a murmur in her heart, which was still beating. Still beating. The ice kept tilting under her hands as the room seesawed. But she thought she might sit up.

  The whisper was out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Jack?”

  Again, she curled into herself, clutched the ice as best she could, waited to be torn apart, or for Jack to call back if he could. If he was still here.

  Nothing.

  And because there was nothing, more memory swelled to fill the empty space. His voice, this time. The monster’s voice, whispering right in her ear as he smashed her face again and again into the door she’d been trying, with all her trembling, shrieking might, to drag open.

  Except he hadn’t been whispering, was mostly singing. He’d been singing her a nonsense-song as he held her off her feet by her hair, swung her like a doll.

  “Tell your friend … (SLAM) … your sweet operator friend … (SLAM) … I’m overcoming the blow. Learning to take it well. And this won’t be the way it feels.”

  And even as he’d hurled her one last time into the steel door, driven the bridge of her nose up into her forehead and dumped her on the ice and dragged or kicked her across it until she lost consciousness, Kaylene had realized he’d meant Rebecca.

  Who had never seen the Sombrero-Man, and had no idea what was coming.

  Too fast, Kaylene scrambled to her knees, shoving her hands into her pockets in search of her cell phone. The wave of nausea almost pummeled her prone again. But she stayed up, somehow. Gagging, she thrust her hands deeper into pockets, patted herself all over, but found nothing.

  He’d taken her phone. Or—just as likely—it had flown from her pocket and was probably lying all the way at the other end of the ice (from whichever end she was on, whichever way she was facing), or maybe it was right beside her but completely invisible in the smothering dark. Sweating, shivering, still nauseous, Kaylene freed her hands from her jeans and dropped them to the ice. That felt surprisingly good, like caressing a bumpy, stubbled face. A face she knew. Plus, the cold was clarifying.

  She had no idea which way to point herself. But she realized, woozily, that it didn’t matter. Any direction she crawled, she would eventually reach a wall. Any turn she took from there would lead her, sooner or later, back to the door. And even if Sombrero-Man had managed to lock that, and even if she still couldn’t stand, by then, she would raise such a ruckus that someone from Starkey’s would have to hear, sooner or later.

  Assuming Sombrero-Man hadn’t gone in there, too. And that he wasn’t still here, right behind her.

  This time, as she ducked, Kaylene actually punched the ice. She’d moved too fast again, and the room spun some more, churning the slosh in her stomach. But she managed to stay up on her hands and knees instead of curling into a ball, and she held on, and nothing jumped on her.

  There was no point, whatsoever, in thoughts like the ones she’d just had. She was still here. Sealed in the dark, smashed to shit, but here, and therefore a threat to Sombrero-Men, wherever they lurked. Oh, yes, she was. All she had to do was figure out how to move.

  Like a Dig Dug, she decided, and somehow she scraped up a sort of laugh that hurt all kinds of everywhere. If the monster really was still here, and if he hadn’t heard her before, he’d heard her now. So be it.

  “Come on,” she hissed to the dark, the Sombrero-Man, her own limbs.

  Then she was moving. And that went fine, at first. Better than fine. The icy wetness on her palms, seeping through her pants legs, restored more everyday sensation with every sideways slide she took. I am just a little Dig Dug in the dark, eating a path to the surface, to all my other fellow Dig Dugs prowling right nearby, so close. The movement itself calmed her stomach, smothered her thoughts, at least until she put her hand down in pulp.

  Splinter of jawbone. Shank of hair.

  Marlene.

  Or Jack? Or both of them? It could easily be. Was this his hair, here? And this his flappy Jack-earlobe?

  She could hear—feel—her brain screaming at her hands to STOP, lift away. But her hands ignored the command, went right on pawing through the slop, all these stringy, shardy bits that might or might not be all that was left of both of her friends. They were definitely Marlene, because Kaylene had seen that happen.

  Marlene hadn’t frozen, the way Kaylene had (because Marlene hadn’t yet had the Sombrero-Man’s hands on her). Marlene hadn’t panicked (because she didn’t yet understand how useless absolutely anything she might do would turn out to be). Marlene hadn’t whirled for the door to run.

  Or rather, Marlene had run, all right, at full tilt, straight down the ice, skidding out of the cone of light into the dark, to
save Jack, while Kaylene had turned and fled, and failed even to do that successfully.

  Apparently, to her own astonishment, she was the coward.

  Or maybe—simply because she’d already had the Sombrero-Man’s hands on her—she already understood what actions might be possible, which movements had the potential to distract that guy, at least, or bring help, and thereby save at least one or two of them. And so she’d reached the door, yanked it, turned around to scream a warning, and seen. Watched.

  She still couldn’t see anything, now. But she was looking down at her hands, anyway. They were still smearing around on the ice. Her right forefinger and thumb were rolling something slick between them, painting her palm with whatever they’d found.

  Get up, she screamed inside her own head. GET. UP.

  She got up, or started to, coaxing her hands back toward her sides. She put her right palm down again to push all the way to her feet and caught the edge of the flying saucer, Jack’s flying saucer, which tilted up and set the roundish, heavy things resting inside it rolling toward her like apples in a bowl, and she burst out weeping, burst out screaming, felt her brain dive back inside itself again, and she was falling even as the dark swarmed her.

  21

  Even as she fought it, grabbed hold inside herself of everything she could call up about Natalie—the blue eyes under long black bangs at age seven, and under short black bangs at twenty-one, the smell of Waffle House that clung to her hair, her sweet Natalie-skin—Jess could feel it happening. Really, it had happened, or finished happening, an hour or so ago, right as she left her horrible, crumbling house and turned and saw Rebecca, sweet and lost, needing someone, just standing there in the doorway holding Eddie. It had been happening, really, from the second Jess had pulled the trigger on that nightmare beach. There was nothing she could do, it turned out, to stop it from happening or, at least, nothing she would do.

  The world was coming to get her, to suck her back out into it. And there was no memory she could grab that was strong or stable enough to keep her where she was, no matter how much she wanted to stay.