When the executioner raised his arm for the eighth lash, a shudder of alarm suddenly ran through the crowd. People began screaming and pointing, and words were whispered from mouth to mouth: “The witch … Katherine … the witch … Katherine … the witch is here…” Everyone on the west side of the intersection looked up at the same time and saw Katherine van Wyler standing on the center balcony of The Point to Point Inn. Maybe it was a burst of collective delusion, or maybe it was a dark miracle, because as soon as they noticed her, every soul in the crowd saw the same nightmarish vision: The witch’s evil eye was open. Like a shepherd over her flock, she looked out over the torture unfolding at the intersection … and laughed.
In a heartbeat, the vision vanished, but everyone was convinced that they had seen it. Had lived it. Katherine was indeed standing there, but of course her eyes and mouth were stitched-up, just as they always had been. Yet her appearance in their midst did not seem like an accident. From one moment to the next everyone knew with unshakeable certainty that the witch had set this all up, that with her degenerate whispering she had somehow brought out the very worst in all of them as part of some diabolical plan. How else could they, such righteous people, have unresistingly become entangled in such savage, depraved, and immoral practices?
This realization evoked such a primordial fear in the throng that they scattered in blind panic, stumbling about and trampling each other underfoot. It was total pandemonium. The people on the east and south sides of the intersection didn’t realize what had happened, but soon the tumult spread there as well, and everyone began pushing back to get the hell away. Even Colton Mathers did nothing to stop the fleeing crowd.
Only the executioner appeared to be unaware of the sudden change in atmosphere. He had finished his work on Burak and Justin. They hung from their chains, writhing in pain, their backs a chaos of open flesh, the seats and legs of their jeans dark purple, and their heads drooping down like an imitation of the passion of Christ. With undiminished vigor, the executioner continued to flog the bloody, unconscious body of Jaydon Holst, which shook like a puppet with every lash.
When the executioner had finally counted twenty lashes, the church bells fell silent. The large number of people still present at the intersection slunk away in disgrace and shame, following the crowds who had stampeded off at the sudden appearance of the witch. Some looked up at Katherine and made a gesture to fend off her evil eye, but most just gazed in the direction they were heading: away from there. No one spoke. Many wept. Everyone wanted to erase the event from their memories and no one, no one, would mention it once they got home.
The security guards climbed onto the scaffold to release the mangled bodies. They were carried away on stretchers—facedown—and taken in a van to the office of Dr. Stanton, general practitioner, for proper treatment. It took a long time for the van to clear a path through the throngs of people. The scaffold was destroyed—the blood-spattered planks would meet the wood chipper that same day. Street sweepers came in to clean up the intersection. The Point to Point Inn hung a canopy over Katherine, and the roadblocks at Route 293 were taken away. By about nine o’clock, there was no sign whatsoever that earlier that morning almost three thousand people had gathered at the intersection and had unanimously been swept away in mortal fear.
A new day had dawned in Black Spring.
TWENTY-TWO
NOVEMBER PASSED LIKE an unwanted guest, overstaying its welcome. When the first day of December finally came, Tyler felt exceptionally relieved. He had wrestled with his midterms, but luckily the drop in his grades wasn’t as bad as he had feared. Only Spanish was a fuck-up. During the spring semester he’d have to pull out all the stops to get a satisfactory grade on his finals.
Like everyone else in Black Spring, Tyler was trying hard, bit by bit, to resume normal life after November 15, to forget the events of that day, as well as to shake off his guilt. Eventually he succeeded, more or less. The tension between his parents had been palpable throughout the house during that period. It was probably unreasonable to blame himself for saddling his father with his secret, but he did anyway, and no amount of rational thinking could change it.
Matt had nightmares for a while, and one afternoon Jocelyn confided in Tyler that Matt had wet his bed. Tyler felt sorry for his little brother. He helped him brush Paladin and Nuala that evening, and although they didn’t talk about it, they both valued the rare moment together. Not long after that, Tyler asked if he could use Matt’s laptop to google some homework. When he opened Safari he saw a gay porn site in Matt’s history. Tyler bit his lip, pretended he hadn’t seen it, and realized he loved Matt more than he would ever say out loud.
A week after the fifteenth, Robert Grim came over to return his laptop and iPhone. He took Tyler aside and told him with a meaningful look, “No matter what you did, if you do it again, I’ll see it. Is that clear?”
Tyler turned full sunset and looked at the floor in silence. Did Grim know? Of course he did. Or at least he had strong suspicions. He must have seen the quarantine for the OYE website URL. Why hadn’t he taken action, or at least said something to Tyler? It was beyond him—until that evening, as he lay in bed and realized that if OYE had leaked, the conservative Council probably would have shut down the entire Internet in Black Spring in response. Grim, that badass son of a bitch, had kept his mouth shut to prevent Black Spring from turning into a second North Korea. Tyler fell asleep with a smile on his face, and the next day his conscience felt just a little lighter.
There came a day, early in December, when only after coming home from school and seeing the empty spot that had once been occupied by Fletcher’s basket was Tyler reminded of the dog’s death, the nightmare in the woods that had followed it, and the horrific stoning. Tyler was surprised and felt a little guilty, as if he would be held accountable for trying to leave it all behind. But time passed, and some wounds healed faster than others … although there would always be a faint scar to remind him.
On Jocelyn’s birthday, December 4, the weather was stormy and bleak. The house, which had been so highly charged for so long, felt as warm and cozy as ever. The VanderMeers came over with a birthday cake. Laurie came, too, and was allowed to stay overnight. Tyler had put effort into making a photo collage of the family—including Fletcher—and Matt had written a hilarious poem for Jocelyn that made her laugh until she cried. After Jocelyn opened her presents, Tyler was surprised to discover two early Christmas presents for the kids, which they unwrapped in front of the fireplace. Tyler’s came in a flat box. When he tore off the paper and saw it was a new MacBook, he looked at his dad with his mouth open wide. Steve nodded with a warm smile. This one’s without keyloggers, the smile said. Tyler was deeply moved by his dad’s trust, and did his best to keep from tearing up. He swore with boyish loyalty never to betray that trust, and he gave his dad a big hug.
There was a lot of hugging that night. It was as if everyone in the family felt a need to touch skin. At one point Tyler saw his parents sitting together on the couch, their hands tightly interlocked. They didn’t notice him looking. For a while, Tyler had hardly dared to wonder how things would go between them from here on out, but at that moment Katherine seemed very far away.
After Jocelyn’s birthday, the depressing and somber weather broke and they had a week of moderate frost. It had snowed, and during the sunny days that followed, the woods glistened crisp and clear in all their splendor. The horrific events that were bearing down not only on the Grant family but on all of Black Spring with the slow certainty of approaching asteroids would bring an end to the beautiful week, and every possible beautiful week that was to come. But that week, everything still seemed fine. Not exceptional, the way some days in every human life are exceptional, but just normal, and perhaps that’s enough. TylerFlow95 made a video blog on his YouTube channel for the first time in two months. Regular viewers may have noticed that Tyler didn’t laugh as much as he had before, but he did a pretty good job, and Tyler himself was proud o
f it. He and his girl saw a lot of each other that week, kindling renewed passions. Tyler was loyal in every way he could be, and it was exhilarating not to have to think about honesty for a while.
That Saturday Steve told him that Jaydon, Justin, and Burak were finished with their stretch at Doodletown and would be returning over the next few weeks under psychological supervision. Tyler absorbed the news mostly untouched. Until then, the only emotion he had allowed himself to feel was a vague missing of Burak, the way you missed an old friend who’s grown apart over time, maybe even beyond repair … and Doodletown wasn’t exactly the place you’d send a get-well card to. He didn’t give it much thought until the following Wednesday, when he was biking through town and saw a broken figure lurching through the snow along Deep Hollow Road, hunched down in his coat, his face overshadowed by a baseball cap. At first Tyler took it for an old man oddly dressed in a young dude’s clothes—until their eyes met in one frozen moment and he saw it was Jaydon. A shock jolted through Tyler’s body. Jaydon was badly emaciated, his cheekbones jutting out like a skull, and he walked slowly, his body slouched over. His hands trembled as if he were suffering from Parkinson’s. His eyes were dull and dead, and there wasn’t even the slightest sign of recognition in them. Deeply upset, Tyler stood on his pedals and raced home.
That night, after Jocelyn had gone upstairs, he and Steve were on the couch watching TV when Tyler suddenly burst into tears. He cried long and hard and Steve calmed him, held him tight, told him everything was all right. But nothing was all right, nothing could ever be all right, because it was the last time they would hold each other, and what would they have done differently if they had known? What could have been less perfect than that intimate embrace of a father and his son? Jocelyn came hurrying down the stairs in her slippers and gazed at Steve with worried eyes, but Steve nodded to her and she left them alone. This was a moment for the two of them. For a long time they sat there, enfolded in each other’s arms. Tyler didn’t need to talk, and that’s the way he preferred it. His dad understood. He loved his dad. His dad loved him.
Looking back, that may have been the only thing they’d be sorry for later on: that they hadn’t said it out loud.
* * *
JUST BEFORE FOUR o’clock the next morning, the casement stay in the bedroom window, which was slightly ajar, was lifted up by a long, slender instrument. The window was carefully pulled open. Cold air rolled into the bedroom. The hinges squeaked softly, like a watchman’s futile warning, but Tyler slept through it all.
Pale hands took hold of the windowsill and a shape hoisted itself laboriously into the room. It moved with much greater difficulty than Tyler had a few weeks before, after his nighttime adventure in the woods, but it succeeded nevertheless, driven by a distinct willpower. The shape lowered itself onto the floor and stood there, unmoving. Then it crept up to the bed.
A floorboard creaked.
Tyler moved in his sleep, turning away from the noise.
The shape didn’t move.
After some time, it crept closer.
Tyler was lying on his stomach, one naked arm raised above him, his left cheek flat on the mattress. He slept when the figure took something from its pant pocket, something that lit the room with a pale, artificial light. Fingers groped over the touch screen, searching for something that everyone else had overlooked.
They found it.
As the shape brought the iPhone to Tyler’s ear, its hands trembled so violently that it had to grasp its wrist with the other hand to hold it still. It pressed the iPhone against Tyler’s ear and pushed PLAY.
Tyler mumbled in his sleep. After a while the mumbling turned to moaning, but he didn’t wake up.
When it was over, the shape played the file again.
And again.
And again.
PART 2
2NITE? #death
TWENTY-THREE
AS IN SO many fairy tales, the cruelest part is often overlooked: It’s not the depravity of the witch, but the mourning of the poor woodcutter over the loss of his children.
As a doctor, Steve Grant knew that being prepared for the death of a loved one dulled the sharpest edges of pain by helping people gradually adjust to the idea of losing someone precious, not only by allowing them to take in the mourning process in small doses, but also because the willingness to accept the worst would soften the blow. Psychological bullshit, of course, and not a luxury Steve had been permitted. The horrors had struck with such sudden and relentless force that they had blasted his brain into a place of darkness with one terrifying stroke. The man who woke up on that fateful Friday morning of the fourteenth, shaved, and went to the Newburgh Mall with Jocelyn after work was simply no longer present in the man who laid himself to rest that night on the floorboards beside Tyler’s bed—not in it, because Steve couldn’t bring himself to erase Tyler’s imprint from the mattress.
What had completed the darkness was that last ghastly torment, that unsavory, fairy-tale cruelty: that they hadn’t been able to cut his body loose … because she had been with him.
He was vaguely and somewhat disturbingly aware that they ought to be together as a family now, but in the twilight realm that Steve inhabited, such an idea had little meaning. Comfort and support were mere concepts. Steve was lost in shock, far removed from a stage of manageable grief, and was simply unable to offer or receive consolation. Besides, there was no family, as such, anymore—that unit had been destroyed. Right now, Jocelyn was sitting in a bucket chair in the coldly illuminated waiting room of St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh—her child was still alive, Steve thought spitefully—and Mary VanderMeer was seeing to her, as was her father. She would have to manage on her own for the time being.
Sometime that evening the phone had rung, and moments later Pete had come in with red-rimmed eyes. Steve couldn’t say exactly when that was because his sense of time had been knocked for a loop, but the mortician from the funeral home (which had the oddly macabre name of Knocks & Cramer) had already left and he had sat at the dining room table, facing an untouched plate of Chinese takeout. It was mid-September, Tyler and Matt were sitting across from him and provoking each other with Tyler’s GoPro.
“They were able to clean out most of Matt’s right eye,” Pete said. “They pumped his stomach, and he’s out of danger. But his left eye is a different story, because the adhesive has settled in the cornea. It had hardened even before he was brought in.”
“Yes,” Steve said. The late summer sunshine slanted into the room. I bet you don’t want to know what I think, Matt was saying into Tyler’s lens, and Tyler said, No, I do not, brother-who-smells-like-horse. I’d rather you took a shower.
“Steve?”
Steve suppressed a grin, then looked up at Pete in confusion. “Yes?”
“There’s a real chance of permanent injury, do you understand that? It started etching onto his cornea. He may be blind for life.”
“Right, okay,” he said. He had absolutely no idea what Pete was talking about. In his mind, Tyler said, Let’s bring the question closer to home. If you had to let somebody die, o padre mio, who would it be: your own kid or the rest of our town?
All traces of the grin instantly disappeared from Steve’s face.
“Did you hear what I just said?” Pete asked insistently.
“Yeah, right.”
Pete grabbed his hand. Curious how delicate and soft his neighbor’s hand felt. Curiously unbecoming, he thought. “Steve, you’ve got to go to them,” Pete begged. “I’ll drive you to Newburgh. They need you now. Your wife needs you. I know it’s a mess, but damn it, man, you have another son and he’s in the hospital fighting for his life.” He raised and dropped his hands. “Goddamn it, it’s not good for you to be here right now.…”
He started crying again, and Steve, who had been oblivious to most of what Pete had told him, slowly raised his head. His consciousness had reached a rare here-and-now moment, and he knew that he had to cling to the here, althoug
h he wasn’t sure why. “I can’t go, Pete,” he said. His voice was calm and polite. “I have to stay here.”
But Pete’s shoulders were shaking uncontrollably. Steve put an arm around him and thought, I’m comforting my neighbor for the death of my son. The irony was absurd, and Steve had to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud. Laughing would be considered inappropriate, he supposed. He felt a stab of pain and his face twitched. Oh, that’s right: His lower lip was swollen, purple, torn. He had bit it to shreds before they had found him that afternoon, crouching against the banister on the landing upstairs, knees drawn up, fist jammed into his mouth, eyes bulging, throat swollen, hair standing on end. Now the blood was seeping into his mouth, and its taste of copper wire was good, pulling his dangerously drifting mind back to reality. If he were to laugh now, he’d probably start screaming soon afterward, and then he’d lose his mind.
That’s politically correct, Dad, said the Tyler in his head, and that set off the time loop all over again, except now Steve tried to remember what the last words were that he had heard Tyler say that morning … and he couldn’t.
* * *
WHAT HE DID remember with crystal clarity were the infinitely trivial moments before they came home. Like sheets of tracing paper, his mind tried to lay them over what had taken place at home in an effort to find reference points and similarities: What was he doing when we left Walmart? What were we doing when he took the rope from the stable? Nothing came of it but the hellish refrain of fragmented memories: If only … If only … If only … A torture machine that lashed into his brain and fed on his feelings of guilt.
He and Jocelyn had both finished work early and had decided to do some Christmas shopping, although they ended up mainly strolling in and out of coffeehouses and candle shops. They had already given the boys their big presents on Jocelyn’s birthday after the November low, so for Christmas they had decided to keep it simple but festive. Steve wanted to pick up some special meat at the Walmart Supercenter, and Jocelyn was looking for a nice outfit to wear the day after Christmas when they were due to fly to Atlanta to visit her father for a few days. There was no indication that today wouldn’t be like any other day. The air wasn’t any heavier or more oppressive than usual; the people who elbowed their way through the mall were as inconsiderate as they always were. Steve and Jocelyn took a minute to watch and clap politely as a group of street dancers coalesced from the crowd and performed an impromptu routine in front of The Bon-Ton. And all the while, an unspeakable drama was unfolding at home.
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