So beautiful.
The moon caught her, lit her up, and Caribou couldn’t help it. He laughed. And Ann, delighted, dazed, tilted her white head sideways and laughed with him. Such tingling, that caused. What a wonder life still was, just now and then, on rare, charged nights like this one when something—anything—changed.
“Grace Holler!” Ju called from the back, planting her hand against the window glass, lighting the dark with the green in her eyes.
Caribou shuddered and felt it again, whatever this was. Arousal, regret, tingling, wonder. Joy.
That was it, he suddenly knew. That was the secret of Ju’s magic, that intoxicating, impossible, and impossibly rare combination, even in children: real curiosity married to unpracticed joy.
“You know that story?” he said, couldn’t help saying, as they hurtled through this place that was now no place, with its sideways shacks slumping into the night-shadows of the magnolia trees, its gas station with no building, no pumps, no lights, just an arch and a cracked cement platform threaded with spiky weeds.
“It’s a terrible story,” Ann said, shuddering. And then—oh, wondrous night—she grinned. “We tell it every Halloween.”
The Spider-siblings laughed. Ann laughed. And Ju stared back at Caribou out of the rearview mirror like a will-o’-the-wisp, a fairy thing. They had the windows open so the night could pour in. And so, from fully half a mile down the dirt track to camp, Caribou heard the music.
Cretins, he thought. Buffoons. Thudding bass drums shook the grasses like dinosaur footsteps while guitars buzzed, deafening and ineffectual as chain saws waved in the air, and some cartoon-yowlerman grunted about his cat-fever, something. Why was Aunt Sally even allowing this? She usually didn’t. And why did they even bother, the monster-morons, with this non-music, this sludge of sound that could neither stoke nor accompany an Aunt Sally Party, because it was nowhere near wild enough?
Just as they reached the turn in the dried-mud track that would lead them into camp, Ju leaned forward and put a hand on Caribou’s shoulder, not to stroke him, not to communicate anything at all, but just to get a better look, take in more world. And that really did almost do it. Caribou felt his foot hit the brake, and he glanced around at Ann, the Spider-siblings, his Ju. He was remembering a story Aunt Sally had read him, once, her favorite, she claimed, about some doomed idiot family, the Misfit they met when their car broke down, the fates they had always deserved. That no one deserved. He was actually turning the wheel, starting to spin them around and away from this place, when the camp came into view, and he saw what the monsters had done.
It had been so very long, before tonight, since Caribou had been surprised. But tonight, the surprise seemed never to end. As though of its own volition, the car bumped forward over the dirt into the ring of glittering, sparking torches planted like flags in the ground, and juddered to a stop in precisely the place marked out for it.
“It’s beautiful,” Ann murmured, her voice audible because even the chain-saw-music had vanished abruptly. And in its place … a calliope? Was that what that was?
The tents—both the giant Party tent and Aunt Sally’s white pavilion—were festooned, everywhere, with red and white balloons, the balloons and tent fabric spangled all over with glitter. The glitter caught the torchlight and showered it all over the grass, creating firefly-sparks amid the fireflies, as though the stars themselves had accepted Aunt Sally’s invitation, come for the Party, and scattered over the Delta to dance. Between the tents, metal poles had been erected and red ribbon strung between them, creating a sort of gestural labyrinth. Off to the left, down near the bank, Caribou saw a new, gigantic, leaning structure that billowed and breathed in the barely-there night wind.
A bounce house? Bouncy castle? Whatever it was, there were monsters in it already. And they were bouncing, all right.
Leaning out his window, Caribou took it all in. Aunt Sally had even had them tend to the smells: the Styrofoam-sweet of circus peanuts; that newfangled sugarsalt popcorn; something else, too, acrid and fairgroundy, that he couldn’t identify; and underneath all of that, yet another odor, this one … animal? As though Aunt Sally had directed her monsters to rent tigers, just for the night. Or elephants?
At that moment, it seemed entirely possible that an elephant, or a great-maned lion, would surface in the river, part the reeds, wander out of myth into camp. All of this, just for a Party, intended not so much to disguise this night as to make it festive, like a birthday. To render the world new, or less old, or at least aglitter with firefly light, one more time.
The Spider-kids were already out of the car, and Ann, too, stumbling over the dirt toward … God, that idiot, Caribou couldn’t even remember his name, the stubbly, constantly leering one who’d just come lurching out of the bouncy house, his pocked face obliterated by clown makeup, complete with lit-up red nose, giant rainbow-lips so outsized that Caribou half-expected them to free themselves of that mouth entirely and hang in the air like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. But Ju, Caribou realized, was still behind him, still with her hand on his shoulder, her shallow breath at his ear. She was watching it all, this miracle he’d brought her and her housemates and her caretaker-mother to. On impulse, solely—moments later, Caribou wouldn’t even be certain when he had done it, let alone why—Caribou put his cold hand over Ju’s warm one, held her there against his skin through his white jacket. To his own amazement, he started to weep.
Together, they watched the others stream from the flap of the giant tent, arms outstretched, painted faces wild and wide with their smiling. They wore top hats, tailcoats, leotards. One of them called, “Step right up,” and then they were all doing it, sweeping around the children, around Ann, linking hands, elbows. “Step right up!” The Spider-sister was whisked—swung, really, her feet barely touching ground as the monsters dangled and tickled her, passed her around—toward the red-ribbon labyrinth. Her brother they took the other way, toward the bounce house. Ann, too, they led that way. There was a moment when she seemed to know, when she glanced back toward the Spider-girl amid her monsters and looked as though she might scream.
Maybe she’d known all along. They sometimes did, despite the spell Caribou worked so hard to cast on them.
Then he looked up, and there were Ju’s eyes on his eyes in the mirror, again, watching him, still. And that was too much.
“Ssh,” he said. “Sit back. Scrunch down.” And with his eyes closed—as though that would hide him, would somehow make the LeSabre’s engine quieter—he turned the key and started the car, which purred like a cat, seemed to stretch underneath him, ready to run.
Not one of the monsters turned. No one so much as glanced his way. Why would they? “Stay down,” he hissed, swung his head around to reverse out of the clearing, and saw Aunt Sally standing behind them.
The dress she wore was something new, or very old, thin and colorless as a rag, but spotless, clean as a hospital sheet for wrapping newborns. It clung to her like a coating. Like white tar, Caribou thought crazily, his foot poised above the accelerator, above the brake, touching neither. Like tar that had been feathered, and then ironed, the feathers into the tar, the whole dress into Aunt Sally’s glistening skin.
She was looking into the LeSabre, but not at him. She was looking at the mirror, Caribou realized. At Ju. And Ju was looking right back, and not at Caribou at all.
It was that—not the sight of Aunt Sally—that made Caribou’s decision for him. His foot drooped toward the brake as his fingers twisted the key, shutting down the car while the bloodless, beatless weight in his chest that passed for his heart folded in on itself, fell to pieces.
Aunt Sally had both hands at her mouth. She was moving forward, now, peering into the backseat, craning her head like one of those ancient dinosaur-birds. Terror-birds. That was something, anyway, Caribou thought. After all these decades, all their lovemakings, all the Policies and chartings and plans. At least, tonight, he’d finally amazed her.
“Oh,” she
was saying through her fingers as she reached the car, stood at Ju’s door. “Oh, ’Bou. Look what you’ve brought me.”
“No,” said Caribou. Even he had no idea what he meant, what he was denying. Nor did he know whether Ju opened her door or Aunt Sally did. Whether Aunt Sally had seized Ju already and directed the child, or Ju had acted on her own. Ju the green-eyed and curious and marveling. Her expression seemed almost like Aunt Sally’s, in that way. But in no other way.
Laughter and screaming giggles erupted from the ribbon-labyrinth, and shouting and laughter from the bounce house. Aunt Sally knelt in front of Ju and reached out slowly, threading piney-green needles out of the little girl’s hair and winding them into her own.
“Get along,” Aunt Sally said to Caribou, after some time, having seemingly just realized he was still standing there.
“Let me stay,” he croaked. He was pleading, hadn’t meant to.
Her eyes left Ju’s, just for a moment. “Poor ’Bou,” she said. “So sweet. So conscientious. So hungry.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Always seeing to the rest of us first. Never admitting your own needs.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Behind him, the giggles and shouts and laughter converged. The labyrinth-dwellers were already spinning the Spider-girl toward the big tent and the food they’d apparently laid out in there and the winking mirror-ball light reflecting down the canvas and the music from the calliope or whatever it was. The bouncers, too, were out of the bouncy house with the Spider-boy on their shoulders, waltzing him, and Ann along with him. They, too, moved toward the big tent.
“Go on, now,” Aunt Sally said.
She meant to sound kind, he knew. She tried to, sometimes. But she didn’t sound kind. Because she wasn’t. Whatever “kind” was, it could never be her.
Again, though, what set him stumbling toward the tent wasn’t Aunt Sally but the little girl. She did it by the way she turned, looked up, clearly saw the inexplicable tears he could feel massing once more in his eyes. And waved.
In a daze, Caribou moved away across the grass, following the others. The monsters, like him. They were just like him. Torchlight flickered all around, the Delta sounds still whirring and ticking and hooting and shuffling, still audible under the din everyone in camp was making. All that life, just continuing, no matter what he and Aunt Sally and her pathetic Policy-slaves did to it. It was more powerful, more awake than any of them would ever be, no matter how many flickering seconds of waking they got.
For the third time tonight, quite possibly the first three times since Aunt Sally had found—had made—him, Caribou wanted to leave this place. He could just slip past the tent while all the rest, even Aunt Sally, were busy, and disappear out of the Delta into the world, where he had been alone long before he was a monster. He could blend in, somehow, or hide out alone, become … not what he’d been, whatever that was, he had virtually no memory of that. Not one of them, the ones the monsters preyed on, either. The idea of that was too frightening, too pathetic.
But maybe he could be something else. Someone else. If there was—could be—such a thing. Could he?
Then he turned, not wanting to see, the air thick around him even though he wasn’t breathing, the smells permeating his pores: popcorn, peanuts, greasepaint, that acrid, awful something else, which was even stronger here by the tent. Much stronger.
There they were, right where he’d left them: Aunt Sally and Ju. Except that now, Aunt Sally was seated on the dirt in her spotless rag-dress, and Ju was on her lap like a cat. Were they talking? Just looking at each other? Ju reached up and smoothed a tendril of Aunt Sally’s hair against her forehead. Once more, Caribou wanted to run to her, to Aunt Sally, screaming, Don’t. Wait! Because somehow, Ju was still in there. Too aware. She would feel it all, everything that was about to happen to her.
How was that possible? Because she was a child, maybe? Because she was an orphan? Because she was whatever kind of orphan she was?
This time, it was Aunt Sally, not Ju, who saw him. And Caribou realized that whatever was happening over there—or might be happening—it wasn’t Ju’s doing, or might not be. Of their own volition, his eyes fell into Aunt Sally’s. His whole body went rigid, as though he’d been hit by lightning, singed forever into this moment, this place, this very air.
She held him paralyzed a few seconds, then let him go.
Where was there for him to go? Certainly not over there, where Aunt Sally and Ju were. There was no place for him there.
And anyway, he didn’t want to see. Not that. Not what came next.
And so, as always, he went where Aunt Sally sent him. With a last glance at the shining, twisty-haired creature on Aunt Sally’s lap—who was neither fairy nor wood nymph, just a green-eyed girl who’d strayed off the path in her woods—he turned and stumbled between the billowing canvas flaps into the tent, where the carnage had already begun.
25
How had she gotten out?
Even now, stumbling in the sudden moonlight down the bike alley between Starkey’s and the bank toward the trees, Kaylene couldn’t remember. She had no fucking idea. Had the rink door ever actually been locked? Had someone opened it, finally, and seen inside? Had she been conscious for that?
The truth was, she couldn’t remember a single second of the past … however long it had been. She wasn’t even sure whether she’d staggered into Starkey’s first, and gotten someone to call the cops before dragging herself toward Halfmoon House. The only plan in her head was to find Rebecca, warn her, huddle beneath that canopy of kindness Rebecca had draped over all of them for so long, now. Maybe then she could start to try, somehow, to stop remembering the other moments—the ones right before the ones she’d forgotten—or at least stop picturing them in such vivid detail.
Jack and his smile sliding through the light over center ice, on the saucer she’d shoved, straight into the arms of the thing in the sombrero.
And then the sounds. Not snarling, not spitting or roaring or hissing, just grunts here and there as the Sombrero-Man tore and raked and ripped, a sigh as he bit through, snapped off, slurped. He hadn’t sounded like an animal; the noises and shadowy movements were too practiced, specific, methodical. Artful.
That’s what those movements had reminded her of, she realized now: glassblowers, loom-weavers. It had been like watching a master craftsman at work. She’d thought that even before he started singing, and long before he’d killed Marlene.
Killed Marlene. Her beautiful, brave, brilliant best friend, roommate, partner in ’Lene-ing, who had gone stupid right at the end, had dropped her broom and taken off down the ice. The Sombrero-Man had barely looked up as he gathered her in. He hadn’t even stopped singing, that Johnny Cash song Kaylene already knew she could never listen to again, would never stop hearing, about getting a rhythm. That same rhythm buzzed in Kaylene’s head now, chopping up her thoughts, her self, everything she had ever been, like a table saw he’d set spinning inside her, leaving just the one coherent thought: get to Rebecca.
Right as she reached the trees, the ground tilted up on her, and the world yawed sideways. Kaylene had to grab for the nearest trunk, a birch, its bark slippery and useless, flaking away the second she touched it, like onionskin. Like people skin, she thought, picturing Marlene, Jack. She sobbed, felt the moon on her own skin, a cold laser that burned her clean through, froze her solid. Overhead, something leapt from the branches, and Kaylene ducked, yelled, banged her jaw against the trunk, which wasn’t so slippery after all, not underneath. She sat down hard in the baked and bristly summer grass at the edge of her woods.
Squirrel, she realized, somewhere in her chopped and chattering thoughts. It sat up straight in the leaves and gave her a look. If she’d had a spirit animal, Kaylene had always thought it might be one of these twitching, leaping, playing things. She was either a squirrel or a Dig Dug, burrowing forever, never sleeping, finding others.
Using the tree to steady herself, K
aylene started to push upright but stopped. She stared at the caked blood on her arms, black and glistening in the moonlight, like scales. She had gone to Starkey’s first, because she’d noticed her arms there, just like this, clutching the pizza parlor’s glass door. She’d gotten a glimpse of her reflection in that door, too, dripping dirt and blood and earth, hair sticking to her lips and cheeks, which were frozen through from lying on the ice, clothes cloying everywhere as they thawed, unleashing shudders that wracked her, flickered her in and out of conscious awareness, like buzzing in a fluorescent light.
Her only hope, as she had stumbled through that door, was that she looked as messed up as she felt. From the expression on Mrs. Starkey’s ageless Mt. Rushmore of a face, she’d been pretty sure she did.
“Cops,” she’d managed, her voice not just breaking but mangled, as though playing through a smashed speaker. “Don’t go in the rink.”
Before anyone could stop her, she’d headed right back out, through the alley toward these woods, the lake, Halfmoon House, so she could warn Rebecca, and then die alongside her.
* * *
“Shit!” Danni snapped, smacking at the branch Trudi had just let rubber-band back into her face. “Turd-i, slow down.”
“Trudi,” the little girl sang and sped up, burrowing through brambles, trampling pinecones and fallen branches like a puppy let off a leash.
“Not to me,” mumbled Danni, and stopped. The woods in the dark were almost shadowless back here. There was moonlight, but it got caught in the shivering branches surprisingly far overhead, which made Danni feel like she was standing not on the forest floor but the bottom of Halfmoon Lake. Knotting her long blond hair behind her head, Danni closed her eyes, went still, and just listened. What she heard was no-one-yelling, and what she felt was no-one-near-her. Both feelings lasted until the Tasmanian devil up ahead realized she wasn’t being followed and came whirling back.
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