I wasn’t.
I waited ten seconds and then went down the stairs and opened the front door. Wink, pale face shining in the dark. She gave me a look, and I gave her a look. She nodded. I nodded back.
“Wink,” I said, loudly, so Poppy could hear.
I led her into the music room, my arm around her little waist, my lips by her ear, playing the part.
Past the sagging wallpaper, past the green sofa.
Up to the grand piano.
I leaned Wink against it, and the Rachmaninoff pages fluttered. The piano made a deep, guttural sound, like pedals shifting and wires stretching. But it didn’t budge.
I kissed her. I kissed her to keep up the ruse. I kissed her so Poppy would see. I wanted her to see. I slid my hands up Wink’s back to the base of her neck. She leaned her head into my palms.
I took my time.
“Here we go,” I whispered in Wink’s ear. And felt her head nod against my cheek.
“Wink, I want you to close your eyes,” I said, out loud. “And keep them closed. I have a present for you.”
“Okay,” she said, softly, softly.
I pulled my arms away, and Wink stayed where she was, head back, tips of her red hair touching the top of the piano.
I glanced toward the corner by the bay window, quick. I couldn’t see Poppy, not even a faint outline. But I knew she was there.
I thought about the scurrying sounds I’d heard earlier, and hoped the rats were crawling over her feet and licking her ankles.
And then I felt bad for thinking that.
I kneeled down and got the rope out of the backpack.
I looped it around Wink’s wrists, quick, and snapped it tight.
Her eyes flew open.
“What are you doing, Midnight?” And her voice was perfect. Small and apprehensive and starting to get scared. “What is this? What are you doing?”
“I’m tying you to the grand piano,” I answered, nice and easy. “I’m going to leave you here by yourself, all night long.” I looped the other end of the rope around the piano leg and pulled. Wink’s arms flew out and she fell to her knees.
She started to cry, quiet, then louder.
“Why, Midnight, why? Why? Why?”
The Bells never cried. That was the thing about them. If Poppy had ever paid any attention, she would have guessed. She would have known.
But, instead, she laughed. She laughed, and then came running out of the corner. She laughed and pointed and practically danced with glee. She was supposed to stay hidden, but she just couldn’t help herself.
And I’d counted on this.
“Feral Bell, tied to a piano, spending the night with the ghosts. Serves you right. Do you think the spirits will like your unicorn underwear? Do you? I can’t wait to tell the Yellows about this. They are going to die.” Laugh, laugh, laugh.
I gave it a second. Wink’s performance was flawless. I wanted to keep watching. I couldn’t help but keep watching.
Wink shrunk back, away from Poppy, pulling at the rope and scuttling along the floor like she’d been kicked. She curled herself into a ball, her knees under her chin, arms above her head, tangled red hair. Her green eyes glowed in the flashlight’s beam, and they were wild. Wild, wild. Her lips drew tight, sucked in between her teeth.
“You’ll regret it, you’ll regret it.” Her voice was high and clear, and I could barely recognize Wink in it at all. “They’ll come for you. They’ll find you. They’ll slice you open and lap up all your blood, lap lap it up like a cat with milk . . .”
Poppy wasn’t laughing anymore.
Wink coughed and coughed, and her whole body shook, legs and head and hands.
Then she went still again.
“The unforgivables are so hungry, so hungry . . .” Her eyes darted to the corner of the room, then shot back, and something in them was . . . wrong . . . so wrong . . .
Goose bumps up my spine, into my scalp.
“They . . . they want to open your head, pop it open, pop pop Poppy, dig out all its little secrets, wriggling, wriggling like maggots, dig them out and crush them, squish, squish, pop . . .”
Wink’s voice got softer and softer.
“They told me things about you, Poppy. Come closer . . . come closer and I’ll tell you what they said. You want to know, you need to know . . .”
Poppy went to Wink. She went right to her, step, step, step, creak, creak, creak. She leaned down . . .
And Wink shot forward.
She grabbed Poppy’s arm, squeezing until her knuckles went white.
“Take her other arm,” she said, calm, calm.
I took it. I wrapped my fingers around the elbow I’d been kissing earlier, upstairs. I did it even though it made me feel sick. Weak and sick, deep inside.
Wink was stronger than she looked. She bent Poppy’s arm behind her and shoved it up hard against her spine. I wound the rope around one wrist, then the other, quick, before Poppy could fight back. I pulled . . .
But it was Wink who pushed Poppy to her knees. Wink who tied the knots, three deep and so hard Poppy’s hands were smashed up against the piano leg.
Poppy looked up at me. One long, comprehending look.
And then she screamed.
I’d counted on this too.
“There’s no one to hear you,” I said. “You can holler your heart out and no one will hear you.”
And I kind of felt like crying, after I said that. Just a little bit.
Poppy stopped screaming and started sobbing instead. It was messy and loud, full of tears and chokes and sobs.
“How can you? How can you leave me here?” Her big gray eyes were staring and pleading, lashes wet and shadow-black. “You know how afraid I am. Midnight, please.”
I looked from Poppy, to Wink, to Poppy, to Wink.
I couldn’t do this.
Wink would say I wasn’t the hero.
And Poppy would say I was a coward. If I let her free she would call me a coward for it later. I knew she would.
But . . .
I reached in my pocket and got out my jackknife. I flipped it open and grabbed the rope—
Wink stepped in front of me, both hands up, like I held a gun.
“She’s not Poppy. She’s The Thing in the Deep. And you just struck her with your sword. She’s the monster and you’re the hero. This part of the story is over, Midnight. It’s time to go.”
She reached her small freckled fingers out to me.
And I took them.
We stood there facing the monster, side by side and hand in hand.
“I love you,” Poppy whispered. She choked, sucked back a sob, and then said it again. “I love you, Midnight.”
Tears slipped off the tiny crook in her nose, down her perfect chin, down her slender neck. Strands of blond hair stuck to her cheeks. She looked helpless, her arms in the air, her face wet, her eyes wide and scared. She looked young. Young as Bee Lee. Younger.
She said it again. “I love you, Midnight.”
I shook my head. And I did it with my chin held high and my knife in my hand. “No, Poppy. You never did. You never, ever did.”
And we left.
THE DARK. It was thick as drying blood, so thick I could have held it in my hands, if they were free, palms filled with it. I could feel the blackness breathing, panting, panting, the dark, the dark, the dark.
Not much longer now, it wouldn’t be much longer, my wrists were itching, burning, my arms were falling asleep, they felt dead, dead weights on the ends of my shoulders, but I wasn’t going anywhere, not yet. The scratching sounds came and went with the breeze, the breeze cleared the air, leaves and dirt and dew covering up the dust and dank and death, and I drew it in, sucked it in, like it was meant for me, like it would save me.
I screamed again.
Scream, scream, scream. I was losing my voice, but it blocked out the dark, and the scratching, and the whispering, when had the whispering started? Had it always been there? Whisper, whisper, words I didn’t know, stupid words, lumpy words, swampy words, the unforgivables, Wink made them up, I knew she did, I’d known all along, but then who was whispering?
My wrists hurt, my heart hurt, it was beating so fast, so fast, I couldn’t keep up, Leaf was whispering to me, we were in the meadow, and I was beside him on the grass and he was whispering, whispering that I was ugly on the inside, but he was kissing my wrists anyway, kissing them hard, so hard they were burning from it, burning up, and my arms were wrapped around him, so tight they were going numb and this was why, this was why, whispers and heartbeats, whispers and heartbeats, all around me. I wanted to put my hands over my ears but I couldn’t, the whispers drew in closer, so close they were touching me, inside me, through my skin, into my insides, into my inner deeps, I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t bear one more second of it . . .
I screamed. And screamed.
I tried to keep counting, counting my own flashing heartbeats, just to make sure, one two three, one two three . . .
But then, just like that, like a door slamming in the wind . . .
Everything went quiet.
Everything, for once, was quiet.
I COULD HEAR her screaming. We were half a mile away from the Roman Luck house and I could still hear. Midnight could too, he tensed each time. I felt it.
Bad people still put out traps in the woods. Leaf and I found a coyote once, his back foot caught in the metal teeth. The coyote screamed and screamed. He tried to bite Leaf, and did, on his upper arm, a deep nip, but Leaf got him free all the same. The coyote ran off on his three good feet and didn’t look back.
Leaf stayed out in the forest for two days straight, waiting for the trap man to return to his snare. When Leaf finally came home the front of his shirt was dripping blood. Mim didn’t ask questions. She never asked Leaf questions.
I see the coyote sometimes, standing in the trees at the edge of the farm, looking at me with his big ears and bushy tail. I know it’s him, because of the limp. He watches us for a while, and then retreats into the woods, back to doing his coyote things. He’s looking for Leaf, but I don’t know how to tell him that Leaf is gone.
I’d put out a trap in the woods.
I’d caught a wolf.
And now it was screaming.
If Poppy was the Wolf, and Midnight was the Hero . . .
Then who was I?
WE WERE GOING to leave her for an hour.
Just an hour.
Wink said that’s how long it would take. At least an hour, to kill a monster. We went to the hayloft and she gave me a cup of Earl Grey and read the leaves after I’d sipped it all. She held the cup in her hands, elbows sticking out, and said my leaves spoke of witches and beasts and princes.
It started raining, soft at first, then harder and harder, thunder snapping across the sky.
I asked Wink about what she’d said, when she’d been tied up. About the hungry unforgivables and the lapping up the blood and the popping open Poppy’s brain.
“Where did you come up with all that, Wink? I believed it. I was scared of you. I was.”
Wink smiled, and her ears popped out. “Sometimes I put on plays with the Orphans. Hops and Moon love madmen. They want all our plays to have madmen in them, so I usually play a character that’s wandering a barren moor or locked up and screaming in a dungeon, or a tower, or an attic. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Mim says we shouldn’t pretend to be mad people, she thinks it draws bad spirits . . .”
Wink shrugged, then pointed up at the ceiling. “I string up a curtain between the beams here in the hayloft to make a stage. Peach wants to play all the roles and Bee Lee doesn’t want to play any and Hops and Moon laugh right through all their lines. It’s fun.”
I sighed, my arms beneath my head, my body feeling heavy in the hay.
I tried not to think about her. Poppy. Out there in the house. Alone. Scared.
I was here with Wink in the hayloft. Exactly where I wanted to be.
As if she could read my mind, Wink came over and cuddled hard into my side. She started talking about Thief. About how he wasn’t just another boy with a sword on a journey. She talked about how he walked through the Hill Creeps, and didn’t go insane, and only the bravest could do such a thing. She talked about the first time he saw Trill, how she was running from the black Witch Wolves, long white veil streaming behind her, bare feet making small dents in the snow.
Wink put her hand up the back of my shirt, and ran it up my spine, up and down, up and down, up and down, softly, softly, slowly, slowly, and it was making me sleepy . . .
I stretched in the hay and sighed.
I kept an eye on the hayloft opening, on the night sky, trying to tell time by the moon like you do with the sun . . .
Poppy screaming. Poppy crying. Pulling at the rope, wrists bleeding, Roman Luck standing next to her, looking lost, Martin Lind collapsed on the floor, groaning about his children, rats running over his body, Wink opening the book, The Thing in the Deep, showing it to me, showing me how Thief had changed, how he looked different now, how he had shifty eyes, and slouched shoulders, and straggly hair . . .
I opened my eyes.
Closed them.
Open. Close. Open.
I’d fallen asleep.
I’d fallen asleep.
“How long has it been, Wink? How long since we left her?”
Wink yawned. Her head was under my chin and her arms nestled into my chest. “I don’t know. I fell asleep too.”
I looked outside.
It was still dark, but dawn was coming. I could see it on the horizon, clawing at the night.
WINK PULLED AN apple out of one of her deep pockets and we shared it on the way there. I didn’t feel like eating, but I just kept taking bites, hoping the crisp, familiar taste would make me feel normal again.
The path was wet from the storm, and my shoes sunk into mud and old pine needles.
I wanted to run to Poppy, run like something was chasing me, like one of Wink’s Witch Wolves had its teeth at my heels, heart thudding, sweating, panting, wind on my cheeks.
Why wasn’t I running?
I wanted to cut her free, and tell her I was sorry, so, so sorry. I wanted it so much I could feel my fingers on the rope, the cold metal of my knife, her messy blond hair, her look of relief . . .
But my steps got slower and slower, the closer we got.
The apple was tart and juicy and this felt real.
This.
Walking with Wink, the apple, the fresh air.
Not before, in the house, with the scurrying sounds and Wink’s unforgivables and Poppy, oh Poppy . . .
The Roman Luck mansard roof. There it was suddenly, peeking out between branches and leaves.
I stopped walking.
“Did I dream it?” I asked Wink. “Did I just dream it all up, what we did?”
She looked at me and shook her head. “No, Midnight.” She took the apple, one last bite, and then threw it into the trees.
I couldn’t go in. I stood on the broken, splintered steps, and couldn’t go in.
It was lighter already. The sky was gray, not black.
I wondered how long Poppy had screamed before finally giving up.
I’d never get the sound of her screams out of my head, or my heart.
Is this what it meant to be the hero? Is this what Wink thought it meant?
I wondered if Poppy tried to chew her way through the rope. I wondered if she pulled at it until her wrists bled, like in my nightmare.
I wondered what kind of person she would be now.
I wondered what kind of person I would be now.
Wink to
ok my hand and pulled me through the Roman Luck door.
Down the hall.
Into the music room.
Poppy’s arms were above her head, smooth and translucent in the murky dawn light. I could see the veins running down the inside of her elbows. Her right cheek rested against her shoulder. I couldn’t see her eyes.
There was blood. Dried flakes of it on her chin, and down her neck.
“She must have cried so hard she bit her tongue,” Wink whispered. Her voice was soft and calm and normal . . . but her face looked worried.
“Poppy,” I called out, keeping my voice low, and strong, like a hero’s. “Poppy, wake up. We’re going to let you go. We’re sorry we left you here all night, but you can leave now.”
She didn’t move. I took out my pocket knife, flipped it open. I stepped forward. The floor creaked.
No eyelids fluttering. No moaning. No squirming. Nothing.
I looked back over my shoulder at Wink. And she was . . . she was . . . she looked . . .
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wink ran forward. Down to her knees, her cheek on Poppy’s chest, ear to her heart.
“The knife,” she said. “Quick.”
I cut the rope, hacked at it, hacked and hacked, why had I used my knife to cut up all the cardboard moving boxes? Alabama had told me that cardboard would dull the blade—
The rope snapped in two.
Poppy’s arms dropped, heavy, like lead. Stone. Her skirt was pushed up and her hands smacked against her bare legs before hitting the floor.
Wink wrapped Poppy in her arms. She leaned her head against her shoulder, gently, gently.
I stopped breathing.
The edges of the room blurred.
Wink was staring at me. Her eyes seemed huge, big as saucers, like the dog in the story she read in the hayloft, the one about the tinderbox and the soldier.
Poppy moved. Just a little, just her lips.
“Midnight.”
Her voice came quiet, like a thief in the night.
“Midnight.”
Her eyelids fluttered . . .
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