by Sarah Jude
He walked again. So much blood covered us both. I didn’t dare guess how much he’d lost, but a trail of sloppy, red footsteps followed us from the barn into the road. Outside with the torches, I laid Rook beside a horse fence and stripped off his shirt. A gash down his shoulder blade flayed his skin, a scarlet line along a white sliver. Bone.
The daze of panic crawled over my brain, but I took his head in my lap and looked at the opaque cartilage left from his ear before tearing my sleeve to bandage him. I prayed the pressure would stop the hemorrhaging. Blood painted the lenses of his glasses. We needed help, more help than anyone in the Glen could give. There were few vehicles on the land, but even if someone brought a horse . . .
I was reaching for the bells strung on the fence when a sickle reared in the air and ripped downward, clipping the alarm bells. I rolled onto my backside and screamed as August stood over me. Journey’s mane on his head stank of rot; the furs knitted together on his back were worse.
August stepped closer. “All those stories about a madman and his girl goin’ off in the woods? We can live them. You like stories. I never hurt you ’cause Violet said not to. But she’s gone.” He glanced to Rook on the ground. “He’ll be dead within the hour.”
I crab-walked back until my elbows gave. August advanced, sickle in one bloodied hand and the other stretched to me.
Was this it? If I took hold, what happened then? Would he kill me? Would he force me into the woods? I’d never stay with him. He’d have to kill me. There was no other choice in joining him.
My fingers were hesitant in meeting his. Taking August’s hand was accepting my death. I could pray he’d kill me quickly, but there would be pain. He would see to that.
Rook’s dried blood was embedded in the ridges of our fingerprints. Blood made the Glen go mad. The hillfolk locked themselves away after dark, and now it was August and me and the wet breathing behind me. I walked with him past the torches. I walked with him past the field where the scarecrows watched.
I didn’t want to be a story.
I wanted to be me.
An owl circled overhead. I looked up. August did as well.
I had a chance. My hold broke from August’s, but he grabbed me again, biting hard to tear off my fingernail. I shrieked from pain, at the surge of fire in my nerves, but my scream stunted as he swallowed the fingernail. I peered past him to Rook’s too-still body. My legs shook with rage, and I wheeled my other arm around to stick my thumb into August’s eye. It was wet and marble-like. I kept pressing until I felt it yield. August gave a yell, and I ran. He ran after me. Get him away from Rook. Get him away from hurting anybody else. I ran toward the outside.
The highway.
I breached the Glen’s boundary, and the country highway stretched long past hayfields and cornrows. Pellets of gravel flew around me. The whup-whup-whup of his boots closing in spurred me on, but I kept going over the hill until the glare of headlights drilled into my eyes. I ran at them, cringing, tears glistening so the lights grew spikes and shone like stars. I looked over my shoulder. August rounded the hilltop. He was so close.
“Ivy! Stop!” he screamed.
The truck’s lights blinded me. All I saw was white and dark blue dots. My muscles tightened in anticipation of collision, closer and closer. Five, four, three . . .
I leaped to the left.
Brakes screeched, and a thud pounded the road, a crunch of bone or metal, I didn’t care, except that the sound made me smile.
My elbow hit the road’s shoulder, and I rolled until a wire cable stopped me from winding up in the ditch. Ringing filled my ears. Grit clung to my lip and crunched against my teeth while I lay still. Blood dried into the red thread circling my wrist.
The truck’s engine hissed. A man shot out to the front of his truck and screamed.
My body resisted standing, but the cable fence made good leverage. I crept along the fence and staggered toward the crinkled truck. Fissures spread across the windshield. August was a busted heap on the ground, his head twisted backwards on his neck, blood oozing from his mouth.
A second truck drove up. My body fought any movement. A cry deepened in my throat and pushed past my lips, growing louder. Someone ran toward me, seizing my shoulders, and I screamed and batted my hands to get away.
“Ivy, it’s Milo. Stop! What happened?”
Milo’s blue eyes grounded me, forced me to realize I had survived.
He gawked at the blood on me, and then he noticed August dead in the road. He tightened his hold on my arm, gently squeezing.
The headlights beat back the night’s shadows, and I fell against Milo, bloody and exhausted.
Chapter Twenty-two
I lie awake at night, wonderin’ if the Glen did right by Birch Markle. If someone had spoken up, even helped him, maybe Terra’d still be here. Lives would be different. But askin’ for help means inviting others in, and there’s a right good fear of letting in too much. When you let people in, something in you gets let out.
The truck rambled down the road and halted near the Donaghys’ barn. Rook hadn’t moved from where I’d left him. The story of what happened haunted the truck’s cab. Emmie sat on one side of me at the wheel, while Milo rode beside in the passenger seat. Air from the vents blasted my face. Some part of me understood it was cold, but I didn’t feel it. The cold within me iced every layer of my skin.
Milo wrenched open the door and climbed out to offer me a hand. I took it and let go, approaching Rook’s body with muted sorrow tightening my chest.
“He’s dead,” I said.
“I’m sorry.” Milo looked down.
I dropped to my knees. Rook’s eyes were closed, and I slipped off his glasses to better see his face. His jaw had relaxed, and his mouth had fallen open. My fingers combed through his hair, black as fertile earth. I drew his head into my lap and traced his eyebrows and the refined angle of his nose, the curves of his lips I’d memorized for years and had only felt against mine recently. Not nearly time enough.
I held him and smiled. I smiled because I’d known love with him.
“I’ll send my sister to find his daddy,” Milo said.
I handed over Rook’s glasses for safekeeping. “Please. Sheriff was at my house.”
Milo went back to the truck. A moment later, the truck’s wheels ground against the dusty road. He found a water trough and brought back a bucket. Then he tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt and doused it in the water. I took the rag and wiped away blood from Rook’s cheeks. My head slumped forward, mine to his.
I couldn’t hold back.
Cries poured out of me, and my body convulsed as I couldn’t breathe fast enough to let loose the anguish inside. “H-he’s still warm.”
I hadn’t expected him to have some heat left. I didn’t know how long it took a body to go cold. He died so suddenly, maybe his body didn’t know it. My lips touched his forehead. He smelled too much of blood and not enough of the boy I knew.
Milo took the cloth away from me and dipped it in the water. He wiped the rag across Rook’s mouth, his wet fingers hovering under Rook’s nose. His brow furrowed. “Shit. Ivy.” He jostled my shoulder. “Put your hand over his mouth.”
Milo took my wrist. A puff of air so faint I should’ve missed it pushed against my skin.
“He’s breathing.” I sniffed. “We need help.”
Milo pulled out his cell phone, only to toss it down in disgust. “Goddamn middle of nowhere.”
We waited. Both of us monitoring Rook’s breath, his pulse, his color. He was graying. He’ll be dead within the hour.
No. It wouldn’t be fair to find him alive and let him run out of time.
The truck bumbled down the pitted road. Milo scrambled to his feet and motioned for Emmie to speed up, jumping up and down. “Hurry the hell up! C’mon!”
The truck came to a stop.
Sheriff darted from the passenger side and rushed over to Rook. His eyes were wide, and he fell to his knees, holding Rook’s bleeding head in h
is bare hands. “No! My boy!” His shouts to God to be merciful echoed across the field.
“H-hospital,” I blurted. “He’s alive.”
Sheriff’s mouth fell open. His gaze was unfocused, confused, until it rested on my face. “But that girl said he was gone.”
“He will be if we don’t get him to the hospital,” Milo said. He glanced at me. “There was a wreck on the road. Someone was hit. There’s gotta be an ambulance up there.”
“Get him. Take him.” Sheriff hustled to his feet and picked up Rook beneath his limp arms. “Please. You got a car. Take him!”
Rushing and barely speaking, Milo and Sheriff hauled Rook to the truck. Never minding the blood soaking through Rook’s clothing and his own, Milo shoved Rook into the passenger seat, leaving Emmie to adjust him, and turned back to me with streaks of red on his clothing. “One of you should come.”
“Just take him,” Sheriff ordered. “We’ll be there shortly. Drive as fast as you can.”
Milo climbed in and slammed the door, and Emmie gripped the steering wheel tight. With clouds of dust billowing around the tires, the truck turned around and bounded down the road. My hands clasped together in prayer, dirty air sprinkling my face and drying my eyes and all the red and wet on my body. They were on their way.
“Where’s the Glen’s truck?” I asked.
“By my station,” he said.
I began running, with Sheriff a few paces behind me. We had to get to the hospital soon. My only prayer was that Emmie drove fast enough. The county police would be up at the highway, looking over the mess of August and the truck that hit him. They’d see Rook more than half dead in Emmie’s truck. If they stopped her to ask questions . . . Rook didn’t have that kind of time. Get him there. Get him well.
“You think he’ll make it?” I asked over my shoulder.
“I pray he does,” Sheriff answered. “Not sure about you, though.”
I stumbled and turned around. “Wh—”
The question hadn’t left my tongue before Sheriff threw me to the ground. I yelled, but the noise cut off as the air was suddenly choked from me. My fingers tore at the dirt. Sheriff’s weight bore down on my back. I reached behind my head, scratched down his cheek with my bloody fingernail.
“Stop!” I wheezed.
“I can’t let you live,” Sheriff said. “You know too damn much.”
His hands wrung my neck, and no matter the breath I tried to draw in, it never found my lungs. My limbs turned heavy and fell to the earth.
I never expected the ground to be so cold before I felt nothing.
My eyelids flickered. I lay face-down with my limbs sprawled around me on a wood floor. My throat ached, and I tried to cry; the pain was so great nothing but dry air came out.
“Jay, what the hell are you doin’?”
“Cleanin’ up your mess. Same as before.”
Footsteps passed close by. I didn’t dare move, no opening my eyes, no breathing. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. Milo and Emmie would notice if Sheriff and I didn’t arrive at the hospital soon, but would they return?
“Twenty-five years is too long to keep secrets, Marsh,” Sheriff said. He’d brought me to the station. “When you told me what you’d done to Terra, who helped you? Who got that Markle boy out of his cellar and let him loose? You were so drunk you couldn’t think straight, but I took care of it. You know she still had a pulse? She didn’t after I was done, though, and I made sure that bastard was found by the body and everybody listened to the story I told.”
My eyelid cracked to spy Marsh Freeman in the Glen’s only jail cell. He leaned against the metal bars, his arm wrapped in a sling, and snorted. “Don’t forget I know what you did to Birch Markle, Jay. I helped you track him through the woods, helped you put his body in a tree after you shot him. I never told.”
Sheriff nudged me with his boot. “This one ain’t telling, either. I’ll get her buried in the woods before sunrise. No one’ll find her. The Donaghy boy is dead. Guess he went and killed all those animals and poor Heather. Just a shame Ivy dug around. Scaring her off with the Birch Markle costume didn’t work. She was running with Laurel Markle’s kids, just like your stepdaughter. It wouldn’t have been long before she figured out what went down years ago. My family needs a good life, and I’ve given it to them. I ain’t lettin’ anyone take away everything I’ve built. They’ll say it was a bad year in Rowan’s Glen.”
A bad year and nothing more.
“What’s that blood on you?” Marsh asked.
Sheriff let out a roar and picked up a chair, throwing it across the room. “My boy’s dyin’, Marsh! All ’cause of this shit! He’s cut up and lost so much blood that I don’t know if those townie doctors can save him.”
“So go! Be with him. I’ll still be here, and we can have it out then.”
“No.” Sheriff picked up Marsh’s belt from a box on his desk, crossed the floor to meet him, and unlocked the cell. “I have things to finish up here, and when I get to the hospital, I’ll tell those county police that the killing spree you and the Donaghy kid went on is all over with. Guess I forgot to take your belt when I caught you and put you in your cell, Marsh. Sorry ’bout that.”
The cell door clanged as Sheriff closed it. Scuffling noises and shouts came from within, and I made out the shapes of the men shoving each other, the belt tightening around Marsh’s neck as Sheriff held the ends. My own neck ached, but I pushed myself up to sitting. Sheriff shoved down Marsh, and in a few movements, he hoisted Marsh off the ground and secured the belt where a horizontal bar met the vertical ones. Marsh’s feet banged on the metal as he kicked.
Leave. Go now.
Inch by inch, I backed away on my bottom. My hand groped the doorknob. With a swivel of my wrist, the door fell open, and I clambered to my feet to rush out of Sheriff’s station.
“Ivy!” Sheriff shouted behind me.
I didn’t look back.
My lungs burned, but I couldn’t care. I couldn’t think about the cramping in my thighs, muscles so overworked I no longer felt them. All I felt was fire. The cold in me was gone. Rook’s acorn swung from side to side, smacking my jaw as I crossed the distance to my home. The fence and back steps were in sight. A light glimmered through the window.
“Mama!” My voice was a rasp. “Papa!”
I tried screaming for them, but the hoarseness was stronger than my voice, too much damage from Sheriff’s hands. Wednesday leaped onto the windowsill. Her paw came up to the glass. I stretched out my fingers while I charged up the steps.
A hand clamped across my mouth, an arm snaking around my waist. Sheriff dragged me back from the door. My knees scraped against the front ledge of the bottom step. Suddenly, I was off the ground. Sheriff pulled me into the road. That strong hand silencing my mouth wormed down to my throat, but I tucked in my chin and set my teeth on his fingers before biting. Hard. I bit until my teeth came together and the taste of dirt and pennies spilled into my mouth.
Sheriff screamed.
A quiver of hope shivered through my belly as a black crack formed around the door frame. The back door opened, and Mama appeared in the doorway. “Bonita? ”
The point of my elbow dug into Sheriff’s side, and again my voiceless throat tried to shout, “Mama!”
She saw me and barreled down the steps, shrieking for my father.
Yet Sheriff swung me back around. Gut first, I smashed into the horse fence. My legs sailed over my head as I toppled across the fence and crashed to the ground. His grip lost on me, Sheriff reached through the fence and wound his fingers into my hair. I dug my heels into the earth and clawed at his hand. Yet he refused to let go.
The awful shredding sound of each hair ripping filled my ears. The locks gave up, and I rolled away, gawking at the dark rope in Sheriff’s hand. He bared his teeth and leveled his boot on the fence, ready to propel himself over. I ran again. If I found somewhere to hide until my parents caught up, I might live. My scalp where the hair had t
orn away was raw and slippery, but my only care was escape.
I charged across the fields and ducked under a leaning scarecrow’s arms. Voices behind me shouted my name, shouted for Sheriff. I ignored the insects bouncing off my face as I tore through their hovering clouds. The empty stable where Whimsy used to live was close, and I could burrow into the shadows there.
My feet carried me through the field, and when I reached the barn, I threw myself over the threshold. Much of the stable was filled with hay, feed buckets, and some stall rakes that had yet to migrate to the newer home for the horses. I staggered to Whimsy’s old stall, turning the corner to hide before slumping on the ground with my head against the wall. My knee bumped a pail with abandoned grooming tools—brushes with grooves to comb the horses’ coats, a metal hoof pick, a sweat scraper. I grabbed the wobbling bucket to keep it from falling over.
It wasn’t so long ago I had spied Heather dancing by lantern light in this barn. I supposed that was the moment when I knew for certain things between us were different.
That first fracture.
It’d never heal. It wasn’t meant to. Heather was why I was here. I’d learned everything she kept, everything there was to know. And if Sheriff found me, then I’d die for uncovering things that were much deeper than just two girls, one with a secret, one with a promise that she’d uncover it.
I saw Sheriff’s shadow before I heard him. Moonlight framed the outline of his body in the doorway. His boots stepped onto the floor. I brought my knees to my chest, balling myself. My parents had to be close. They had to come soon. If they didn’t, I was dead.
Sheriff rounded the corner of the stall and looked down at me. “This was the best place you could hide?”
“Y-you can’t k-keep killing.” I pressed my back into the wood. “My papa’ll know. My mama—”
“I can make y’all disappear. Like I told your daddy, woods are wide. Nobody knows what all lives there. It wouldn’t be the first time some family left the Glen when the name’s been disgraced, and I do believe having a murderer in your family’s enough to drive you out.”