by Tara Goedjen
Mae stood, pulled a phone from her pocket. “There’s no signal,” she said, her voice lost in the wind as she pounded at the screen, huddling over it to keep the rain out.
Cage’s body tensed but there was no choice, no time to think—they needed help and they had to get away from Lance.
“The house.” He bent down, heaved Fern into his arms, and started forward, half stumbling over the wet planks, Mae behind him. They hit the woods, just a little farther now.
“Fern,” Cage said, looking down at her as he ran. “Fern?” She coughed up more water, but her eyes stayed shut. He kept on, the extra weight slowing him down, the weakness still from when he’d gotten sick. “It’ll be okay,” he said, because he wanted it to be true. “It’ll be okay.”
His legs were burning and the girl was heavy, and he looked down and saw her, he was carrying Ro, her body in his arms, the sticky wetness of her hair.
“It’s okay,” someone whispered, “it’s okay,” and then Cage blinked and he was holding the girl. He ran forward, branches scratching against his face, the wind and rain flaying him. All of a sudden he remembered that day on the boat, and he could see it now, how Ro was standing across from him, on the other side of the deck, and how there was a jingling sound, like glass breaking, or like…keys? Then she was stepping back and slipping, and—
“Cage!”
It was Mae, she was ahead of him now, she’d passed him in the yard. Behind her the tall house rose up like some bluish thing in the sky, and everything inside him shrank back.
“No,” Fern moaned in his arms, but her eyes were still shut, so he kept going forward, straight for the house, for Mae, for help. He ran faster and the wind pushed against him, and then he heard footsteps behind him, something jingling, but there was no time to see what it was because Mae was running inside the house now and he had to follow her. He stumbled and looked down at Fern, at her little round face, and she was enough to propel him through the yard, past the fountain and the beech trees flailing in the rain and Sonny’s blue truck in the driveway.
He could feel the girl’s chest rising and falling, quick and shallow, and then he remembered holding Ro on the beach and the last thing she’d said to him. A breath came out of her mouth that she never got to finish, a long drawn-out Caaaaaaaaaaa…and that was it. He’d pulled her against him, but she was already gone—
“Dad, stop!”
Cage jerked his head up and saw Mae standing by the open door. He hesitated a split second, and then time snapped back full speed and his legs wrenched into motion as he charged onto the porch and burst through the doorway.
Her dad was there, pointing a rifle at him, and Mae stepped in front of it, just like she’d done before. “Get out of the way!” Sonny shouted, but she wasn’t moving and neither was Cage.
He heard the sound of dripping and realized it was him—the rain was running down his clothes and onto the wooden floor, the water puddling under his feet, and he could feel it everywhere, in his bones, his head, his mouth, but now he had to talk, he had to.
He held out Fern. “She needs help, sir.”
Sonny’s rifle was still trained his way, Mae blocking its path. “Give her to Mae.”
“Dad, put the gun down!” she yelled. “He didn’t do it!”
“Give her to Mae,” Sonny repeated. “Now.”
Mae shook her head. “I called the ambulance, it’s on the way. Set the gun down.”
“Move!” Sonny shouted. Cage could tell he was losing it, and had to do something.
“Here,” Cage said, holding out the girl. “She’s breathing fine, just hasn’t woken up.”
Mae stepped toward him, her arms open. He handed Fern over and then raised his hands. Sonny’s trigger finger tightened.
“But Cage saved her,” Mae pleaded, trying to step in front of the gun again. “Lance was—”
A gust of air hit Cage’s back as the door swung open behind him. Someone was standing just out of sight. He couldn’t turn to look, not with Sonny staring down a rifle at him. Cage tried to keep calm, but his heart felt like it was emptying rounds in his chest and he knew he was trapped.
Mae was shaking her head, tears in her eyes. “Dad, he—”
“He did it, Mr. Cole.” A lower voice now, interrupting Mae. “He killed Ro, and he tried to hurt Fern too.”
It was Lance behind him; he must have followed them back to the house. There was no time to explain now, no chance of being heard. He was cornered, no way out.
“Dad, please listen to me!” Mae begged. “Lance did this!”
Sonny kept the rifle raised. “Don’t move,” he said. “Either of you.”
“Mr. Cole,” Lance started again. Cage heard the creak of a floorboard as he closed in on his back. “Whatever he tol—”
“You got to help her,” Cage said, his fists tightening. He glanced at Mae’s arms. Fern seemed to be asleep on her shoulder, her ribs stuttering under her thin T-shirt.
“He’s dangerous, Mr. Cole,” Lance said, sounding so sure of himself.
“No, Dad,” Mae said, “he’s—”
“But I saw it.” An edge in Lance’s voice now. “I saw what he did to Ro.”
Anger was welling up in Cage, threatening to escape. He wanted to spin around and flatten Lance, pound his lying mouth, show him what to be afraid of. He sucked in a deep breath, let it out. One, two, three, four, and then on five it hit him.
“Sir, it’s true,” Cage said, “he did see it.” Mae sucked in a breath beside him, but he kept going. Sonny’s face hardened, and he aimed the barrel at his chest.
“Lance was there, watching her from the trees, like he always was.” As he said it, it all clicked into place. The jingle of keys the moment before Ro fell, the sound of Lance’s keys. He’d been there all along. “He saw that I didn’t kill her, that it was an accident.”
“Liar,” Lance said, taking another step forward. “You ran.”
“Hold still, both of you!” Sonny’s grip strained around the rifle.
“Listen to Cage, Dad,” Mae pleaded. “He’s innocent, I know it.”
“You’re just confused, Mae,” Lance said. “He’s tricked you. Just like he tricked Ro into falling for him. This is all his fault.”
“Enough,” Sonny said, his dark gaze boring into Cage. “Now talk. You.”
“I know it was wrong to run,” Cage said, looking Sonny in the eye, his teeth clenched to keep from shouting, “but I got scared and—”
The screech of sirens drowned him out. Doors slammed in the driveway, and then footsteps were pounding up the stairs. Sonny kept the gun on him as the shove came at his back, knocking him to his knees. Next came a pull on his wrists, the snap of flex cuffs. Someone behind him hauled him to his feet and pushed him through the open door.
Cage shut his eyes. Rain hit his face, wind whipped against him—it was slow going toward the cruiser in the driveway. Every muscle in his body ached and the wind tunneled around his ears. He was thrown into a cop car, the door slamming shut, the lock clicking. He turned and watched Childers hustle back to the porch, where the ambulance crew had Fern on a stretcher.
Behind her, red lights flashed across the windows of the house, across its painted walls. Rain thrashed down on it, water ran down its sides, and it looked to Cage like a sinking ship. This house that maybe—way back when—one of his ancestors had come from, and now he wasn’t welcome here. Not before, not ever.
A shadow fell across the window, and he glanced over. It was Lance, leaning against the vehicle, rain soaking him. Cage snapped up straight in his seat. The adrenaline was back, and he strained against the cuffs, the hard plastic digging into his skin.
“You know the truth.”
“Some of it,” Lance drawled out, his voice muffled through the glass and the rain. His gaze was on the ambulance loading up, the cops talking to Sonny and Mae on the porch. There was the sound of a bolt clicking as Lance opened the driver’s-side door.
“I know it’s yo
ur fault,” Lance said, and Cage could hear him clearly now. “She’s dead because you couldn’t save her.”
“Come back here.” The rage was hot inside him, and Cage kicked the seats, jolting them forward. “Come back here and settle this.”
Lance shook his head. “She would have been safer with me,” he said, turning away and jogging over to the ambulance.
Cage yelled when he saw him get into the back. He threw himself against the door and the grate and yelled again, but no one turned to look at him. No one saw Lance get in behind Fern, no one was watching but him.
Ro, help her, he thought, shouting out again as the ambulance drove away. And then the side door was opening, and the wind hit him in the face. Mae was reaching for him, dragging him across the wet seat and out of the car, into the rain, his wrists still cuffed behind his back.
“You’ve got to go,” she said, grabbing his elbow, shoving a small knife in his hand. “Go!”
He spun toward the house, but the porch was empty. The door was wide open, but no one was there, like some magic veil had been pulled down, like Ro had played one final trick. Mae tugged at his arm, but he shook his head, his legs locking up.
“Lance went with Fern,” he said, but she didn’t hear him, she was still yanking him away from the house, begging him to run, and then came the blast that thundered in his ears and he was falling, the gravel rising up in front of him, and Mae was falling too.
MAE’S ARM WAS SWEATY IN its sling as she turned away from the headstone. Sonny and Elle were already past the gate and making their way home. Her sister spun around, her lipstick bright enough to see, her hair chopped short, all the blond growing out. “You coming or what?”
Mae waved with her good arm, the one she hadn’t landed on when her dad had shot Cage and they’d fallen together, hand in hand. “Right behind you,” she called out.
Elle strode forward, catching up to Sonny, his neck sunburned from their fishing trip. Their first and last before the school year started, but they’d already planned another one—Elle beat them three fish to zero, and she wanted to win again. There was time for fishing now, since the reporters had finally lost interest in Blue Gate. In all the publicity over Fern’s near death, someone from the city council had come to the house and declared it a historical landmark. It’d been something good in the news instead of all the stories about Lance.
Lance had surprised Mae as much as anyone else. He eventually told his dad that he’d gotten in the back of the ambulance to make sure Fern stayed quiet for good. But she woke up from the pills he’d given her—the ones he got from her mother’s supply—and he realized he couldn’t do it. Not when she was blinking up at him, asking questions. It had been easier when she’d been asleep at the dock, he said. When his dad had pressed him, he claimed that something had made him try to drown her. Said he didn’t believe in ghosts, but that when he took her down to the water, he thought he was doing it for Ro. That he loved Roxanne Cole more than anyone and always would.
Mae knew the last part had gotten to her dad the most, though he was trying not to hold it against Childers, who came over every day to apologize for his son. Because Fern had told everyone her cousin’s secret when she woke up. That Lance had asked if she wanted to go to sleep and see Ro again. He hadn’t denied much; he’d even mentioned the green book—something he described as an old book of rituals that belonged to Ro. By talking of magic, Lance probably hoped to get a psychiatric examination instead of spending the rest of high school in jail. Either way, he wouldn’t be around Blue Gate next year.
Mae touched Ro’s grave and then turned and started down the path. The iron gate creaked as she pushed it open, its metal wet because it had rained again that morning. A humid dampness was rising in the woods, the smell of rotting leaves and new green shoots, that sharp stench of life and decay. When her arm healed, she might paint this: the moment after a storm, the little muddy path leading out of the cemetery.
She ducked past a low branch and shivered, shoved her good hand deeper into her thin pocket. Her Cons squelched in the mud, but she kept going, ignoring the tingle at her neck. It felt like someone was watching her, but it wasn’t Lance, and it wasn’t Cage. It couldn’t be him. She looked over her shoulder and then stepped off the trail and headed deeper into the woods. There was one last place she needed to go today, one last thing to be done. She would do it for him—she had to.
Mae walked until she heard the creek. Soon enough the trees opened into a clearing, the one with the stretch of kudzu and the old cement dome. The graves it shaded were still covered by vines, except for where the edge of a stone peeked out from the carpet of green.
Mae strode forward, careful not to trip this time. When she got to Hanna’s grave, she opened her bag and pulled out a bundle of wildflowers, setting it down by the small headstone. Hanna had given her life for her child, for her children’s children. For Cage. Everything she had was taken from her, her grave hidden by the very earth itself. But soon the historical society would find out—they’d dig into Hanna’s history, into the Cage Shaw family link, as they should. Until then she’d keep the secret. Keep this place green and wild and quiet, just the way it was now.
Mae looked over her shoulder again but didn’t see anyone. The sharp tingling at her neck was still there as she knelt down and used the trowel she’d brought to dig away the vines. After a few minutes, she’d cleared a small section of ground so there was only a round circle of earth at her feet. Then she pulled the book from her bag and untied the ribbon, fighting off the ache in her chest.
For a moment she closed her eyes and stood there, with the weight of the book in her hands and the necklace hanging over her heart. On a thin chain was Ro’s gold locket and Cage’s family ring—he’d asked her to keep it safe until he came back. She thought of what he’d told her, right before he left: that she was going to do something big one day, something people would remember. That he would always remember what she did for him. But unless he’d read the green book to the end, the half that her granddad had hidden away, he didn’t know there was one last thing remaining.
She glanced over at the cement dome, wanting to see him standing there. His dark hair, the tiny cut near his temple, his pale eyes. He’d already left the state, gone to visit his mom. He said she was sick and he hadn’t been to see her in a while. By this time he should have gotten to her house, should already be on his way back like he’d promised.
Mae stared down at the green book she was holding, at the etching on its leather cover. Two coffins, side by side, so the dead would never be lonely. There’d be no more raising anyone, no more enduring eternally on earth. And there’d be no more suffering for those who’d been raised, she’d make sure of it.
Because she had to. She’d read the book from cover to cover, the first part and the last, and she knew what needed to be done. She’d read Grady’s account of his life with Hanna and all he’d learned from watching her, all the rituals he’d written down with good intentions, to make the magic his. He’d seen the impossible happen at Blue Gate, and he’d tried to re-create it. Hanna had raised his mother when his day-old sister, Amelia, died. She’d raised his brother Jacob too, on the night Miss Etta died of a cold. But Hanna had never intended for the ritual to be passed on to those who didn’t understand its power. Both Grady’s mother and Jacob had suffered from walking between worlds, and they’d wished for nothing but peace, to go home.
Mae let out a deep breath and forced herself to open the book. A sudden breeze caught its pages and they fluttered and then settled, landing right where she needed them to. She stared down at them and felt her throat tighten. She wanted to go back to Blue Gate without doing it, she wanted to see him again. How was making things right so hard? But this was the only way to set him free, she knew that now. He deserved this much. She fumbled in her bag, found the beads and the bundle of herbs wrapped in muslin. She lit the dried sage like the ritual instructed, inhaling its smoke.
“Putting to re
st,” she started, and then swallowed down the knot in her throat. She wiped at her face, surprised to find it wet. She looked down at the page again, at the drops of tears staining it. “Putting to rest the raised,” she said, louder this time, and she thought of him. She thought of Cage and her sister, and her granddad, and Hanna too, and Pearl and Grady, and her mother. They were all swirling in her mind and her eyes were hot and stinging, but she made herself read the next line, her fingers working over the beads with every breath. She kept going, faster now, so fast she wouldn’t stop, the words tumbling into each other, all the way down to the end of the page. When she finished, she dropped the book; she was shaking.
Before she could change her mind, she pulled the tinder from her bag and placed it on the ground to make the firebed. Then she struck a match and held it beside the book, watching the flame lick the paper. It crackled and spit, and heat rose from it.
She stared at the fire as it took hold next to Hanna’s grave, and then she turned away, the brightness behind her. She could feel the power of it, calling her back. But Grady’s obsession with raising the dead would end with her; it wouldn’t be passed down to anyone else.
Mae didn’t want to look at the book burning, so we watched for her—just as we watch her now on the path back to Blue Gate. She’s wiping the soot from her hands and she has a sudden longing for her paints and canvas, to create something. She’ll start with Cage on the sailboat with Ro. Her granddad holding the stray black cat. And then it all seems too much—it feels as though her heart has been torn in two. But the heart is resilient and can grow back over time, stronger than before. Mae will find solace in her paints and her family; they’re waiting for her on the porch, they’re looking toward the woods and calling her name. She has almost found her way home, and she hopes Cage has too.
Right now he’s on the highway, going west, a paper map spread on the seat beside him. He’s late to visit his mother because his headache got so bad he had to pull over. Now he’s on his way again, heading to her apartment in New Orleans, and it’s one of the hardest things he’s ever done. He doesn’t want to smell the cat shit, see the dishes overflowing in the sink, or meet her new boyfriend, but what he really doesn’t want to see are those pill bottles of hers, the way they make her angry. She’s angry that she’s sick, always has been. The sickness has made her mean, but he’s been mean too. He gave up on her, even though she’s still alive, battling through her pain like she battles everything in life, never believing in even a shred of magic. He won’t say he’s sorry for moving out, because he’s not, but he can at least say hello, tell her she doesn’t have to worry about him anymore. He’ll start with hello and see what happens. Trace his steps home.