“You lie!”
Diederick Smit lunged for me, but Brom was too fast for him. Brom had been looking for an excuse to punch the blacksmith in any case, and he hit the man so hard that a moment later Smit was laid out on the front porch.
Katrina had moved in front of me as soon as Smit was in motion, and she stayed there, protecting me. The top of her golden head was just under my nose, and her hair tickled. I felt so much love for her in that moment that I thought I would burst. Little Katrina—my tiny, delicate grandmother—standing in front of her giant Van Brunt grandchild with all the fierceness of a mother wolf, and I had no doubt that if Diederick Smit had run into Katrina’s fists instead of Brom’s, he would have regretted it just as much.
I remembered then that Katrina used to sing to me when I was small, and that she would hold my hand as we walked outside and name all the flowers. When had that changed? When had she stopped doing those things? Or was it that I had changed, and started running when she tried to hold my hand, more interested in chasing after Brom than learning flower names?
I dropped my chin to her hair, and she reached back for my hand again, and squeezed it tight.
She didn’t move from her place in front of me. No one was going to hurt me while Katrina was around.
Not that I was scared of being hurt, really. I could take care of myself. I wasn’t scared of Diederick Smit, any more than I was scared of his son.
Sem Bakker glared at Brom while Diederick Smit lay stunned on our porch.
“That’s assault, Brom,” Sem said with an air of triumph. “And I witnessed it.”
“No, you witnessed Smit charging at a helpless child and I defended her.”
I resented the definition of myself as a “helpless child” but I appreciated that Brom was trying to gain the upper hand in the argument. Not that Sem Bakker was going to arrest Brom for anything. The idea was beyond laughable.
“It’s not the time for petty disputes, Sem. And Brom is right—he was only defending the child.” This was the third man at the door, a man standing just out of the circle of light. His slow, serious tone told me it was Henrik Janssen, our neighbor. It bothered me that he’d stood in the shadows this whole time, but I couldn’t say why.
Diederick struggled to his feet, shaking off any attempt by Sem Bakker to assist him. Brom’s punch seemed to have enraged Diederick more, rather than sobered him. His face was a horrible contortion of fury—eyes squeezed into slits, lips pulled back into a snarl. He started toward the door but Brom blocked it with his body. Diederick shouted at me over Brom’s shoulder.
“What did you do to my Justus? What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said, then guiltily remembered pushing his face into the horseshit. It wasn’t the time for those sorts of confessions, though. “I told you—
I saw something in the woods. A monster.”
“The Horseman?” Henrik Janssen asked. “It’s not the damned Horseman,” Brom said, his tone laced with disgust. “How many times do I have to say it?”
I realized then that at least one thing Schuler de Jaager had said was true—Brom had pretended to be the Horseman once, and this was why he always treated any mention of the Horseman with so much contempt. How could he not? To admit that the Horseman was pantomime would be to put his own self under suspicion for any crime attributed to the Horseman.
“It wasn’t the Horseman,” I said. “It was . . . something else. Something horrible.”
Brom gave me a strange look. “Are you sure you saw what you think you saw, Ben?”
“I wouldn’t lie,” I said, stung. I had many faults—Katrina had listed them all for me that very day—but I would never tell a lie about something this important. I wouldn’t let a parent think their child was dead if it wasn’t true.
“Of course not. But you said you were asleep in the tree—perhaps you had a nightmare, and it scared you? You’d just had a fight with Justus and there was the sheep yesterday . . .” He trailed off.
“It wasn’t a bad dream,” I said. “It happened just as I said. When you found me, Opa, on the road—I was running from it.”
I said this last in a very tiny voice. I was so ashamed to admit to Brom that I’d run from anything.
“If all this is true then why didn’t you say anything earlier, girl?” Sem Bakker said. I hated the way he called me “girl,” like I didn’t have a name, like that was what I was. “Why didn’t you raise the alarm?”
“I was going to. I was going to tell Opa.”
“And?”
“And some other things happened,” I said. No need to air our family business in front of these men. “I wanted to tell him quietly, when there was no one else around.”
Sem Bakker’s mouth twisted in disgust. “If you’d spoken right away, we might have been able to find the boy in time to save him.”
“No,” I said. “No, Justus was already dead when I saw him. The monster—it was . . .”
I didn’t know if I wanted to explain exactly what the monster was doing to Justus Smit’s father. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d want to know about your child.
“Well?” Sem Bakker demanded. “Tell us just what the monster was doing.”
It was clear that he didn’t really believe me, or that he might even believe that I had something to do with Justus’ death. Bakker was such a puffy little rooster at the moment that I wanted badly to punch him the way Brom had punched Diederick. Perhaps that was the problem with us Van Brunts. We hit first and talked only when necessary.
“It was eating Justus’ head,” I said. “And his hands were already gone. Just like Cristoffel van den Berg.”
Diederick stared at me. “Like Cristoffel?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head from side to side, like a dog trying to dislodge a flea. “You lie.”
I stepped out of Katrina’s shadow then, my hands curled into fists. “I’m tired of being called a liar. Get on your horse and I’ll take you to your son, and you can see what’s left of him.”
I should have had more sympathy for him. He was a parent. His child had been taken from him. But I was exhausted and scared and I didn’t like any of the Smits anyway.
Brom gave me a long look, then said, “I’ll bring Donar around, and we’ll go and see.”
“Fine,” Sem Bakker said, and herded the other men off the porch.
Henrik Janssen stood there for a moment, giving me a thoughtful and too-interested stare, before following the other two. I wondered what he was doing there in the first place. It made sense for Diederick Smit to call for Sem Bakker’s help, but Janssen didn’t live in town.
Brom shut the door behind them and said, “I’m going to get my horse. You wait in the front, Ben.”
He took his coat from the hook, picked up his boots, and went through to the back of the house. The stables were closer to the kitchen entrance.
Katrina grabbed my arm, her face white. She spoke in a low voice for my ears only. “You can’t go out there. Not if it’s back again. I can’t—I can’t—”
To my horror her blue eyes filled up with tears. I never really knew what to do with tears, my own or anyone else’s. But I knew what she was afraid of. I knew a lot of things about Katrina all of a sudden, things that I’d never wanted to see or acknowledge because they conflicted with things I wanted. It was so much easier to pretend that it was always her who didn’t understand me and not the other way around. I’d never tried meeting her halfway, either.
“It won’t be like my father,” I said, pressing my forehead to hers. “I’ll be with Opa, and the other men. Even if Sem Bakker is useless.”
She choked out a laugh, swiping at her tears with an impatient hand. “You’re so much like Brom.”
“I’ve only ever wanted to be like Brom,” I said softly. “I’m sorry that it makes you sad.”
She reached up and stroked her hands over the remains of my hair. “Your beautiful hair.”
“Come now, Oma. Even you have to admit that I wasn’t very good at keeping it nice, and you aren’t going to brush my hair for the rest of my life.”
Her fingers caught one of my curls, and I felt her pull it gently and watch it spring back. “I wanted to. I wanted you to be my little friend and companion, just like Bendix was for Brom. I never had a daughter, and I longed for one. I loved your mother, and she was like a daughter to me. But she came to me as a grown woman, and it wasn’t quite the same. I was so happy the day you were born.”
The backs of my eyes were burning. “I’m sorry I disappointed you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be.”
“I’ve never been disappointed in you,” she said with sudden fierceness. “Never. But it’s hard to give up on dreams. The more you pulled away, the more you ran toward Brom, the harder I tried to pull you back. That was my mistake. You weren’t a horse to be broken. I should have remembered that. I’m sorry that I made you think I didn’t love you just as you were.”
I heard Brom’s voice then, calling me to come out.
“I have to go,” I said. I was reluctant to leave her, and I couldn’t recall ever feeling that way before.
“Be careful, Ben,” she said, and kissed my cheek.
It was only after I closed the door behind me that I realized she’d called me Ben for the first time.
* * *
It was a strange ride through the night, with nobody speaking and more than half the party seething with hatred for other members of the same party. The only person who seemed to take it all with equanimity was Henrik Janssen. I wanted to ask him what he was doing with Sem Bakker and Diederick Smit in the first place. There was something fishy about his presence. In my mind, he didn’t belong. And the way he looked at me, when he thought no one else was looking, gave me the same itchy feeling I’d had around Schuler de Jaager. But it was not for nosy children to ask questions of adults, at least not when other adults who might scold them were around.
I sat behind Brom on the saddle, my arms around him. I could feel the tension in his back, the way the muscles flexed and his shoulders rolled. He was trying not to say anything, not to shout at Diederick Smit and start another argument. Brom never repressed his opinion unless he had to, so I knew he was holding back because of me.
He hadn’t said anything about my hair. I wondered if he hadn’t noticed or if he thought it suited me or if he just didn’t care about such things. Probably the last, I decided. Brom was never one to worry about what anybody looked like, even himself. He did the bare minimum to keep himself presentable, and that was only because of Katrina.
Sem Bakker held a lantern aloft as we rode. The moon was half-full and the sky cloudy, so without it the road would have been impossible to distinguish. Even though I knew this, I wished he would put the lantern away. I felt it was drawing attention to us, attention I’d rather not have.
Whatever is out there, the lamp hardly matters one way or the other. It can see you in the dark, I thought, and shivered.
“All right, Ben?” Brom murmured. “Are you cold?”
“No, Opa,” I said.
There were so many other things I wanted to say to him, so many things I wished we’d had a chance to talk about before we ended up on the road going to find a body. I wished I had just asked him about Bendix instead of waiting for the perfect moment.
I wondered if Brom was thinking about his son as we rode to find someone else’s son, and if he had any sympathy at all for the man he despised, a man who would soon grieve his son the way Brom had grieved his own loss for a decade.
Brom pulled Donar’s reins. “It was here, wasn’t it, Ben?”
The other three drew their horses to a halt and looked at me expectantly.
I felt my cheeks flame under their scrutiny. I honestly wasn’t certain. There was a thick layer of bush and brush that ran along the road for about half a mile. I could have come through it anywhere.
“Let me look,” I said, and slid off Donar’s back.
I walked closer to the tangle of branches and leaves. My legs were trembling. I hoped the others didn’t notice. I tried very hard not to think about long fingers brushing my nape, long fingers that might reach out of the darkness for me. I felt very alone with my feet on the road while the rest of them were on horses.
Sem Bakker’s horse sidled near as he raised the lantern high. Sure enough, there was a clearly visible break, a place where several broken branches and twigs had fallen into the road. I was amazed that Brom recognized it in the dark.
“Yes, I was here,” I said, pointing.
They all climbed down to look.
“It’s hardly a space for a man to go through,” Diederick Smit said. “I don’t want to whack through all these bushes. There are thorns, see?”
I’d hardly had a moment to be astonished that Diederick Smit was worrying about thorns while his son’s body was in the woods when Brom spoke, his voice dripping with disdain.
“My grandchild crossed through here without worrying about thorns. If it bothers you, you can wait here and hold the horses, Smit.”
Diederick’s chest swelled, and I was sure he was preparing for another argument with Brom, but Henrik Janssen cut in.
“Someone should stay with the horses in any case. There isn’t a good place to tie them up. I’ll do it, unless you want to stay here, Diederick.”
Obviously Diederick couldn’t stay, because it was his son we were looking for, and he’d been trapped very neatly by Henrik Janssen’s mild offer.
“Of course I’ll go. You stay here, Janssen,” Diederick said.
They all climbed down and handed their reins to Henrik Janssen. Brom moved close to me.
“Let me go first, all right, Ben?”
“But you don’t know the way,” I said.
“I can see the signs of your passage well enough,” he said, giving me that Brom Bones smile, the one that always made my heart fill up with love. “And you’ll be right behind me, in case I make a mistake.”
He wouldn’t make a mistake. Brom was a very good tracker, but that wasn’t the real reason he was going first, and I knew it. He wanted me behind him in case there was danger, and I was ashamed to admit, if only to myself, that I felt safer behind him. I should be brave enough to walk by his side.
Brom probably is in less danger than you are, anyway. The creature in the woods has only attacked children.
(and one sheep)
Why, though? I wondered. Why does it want children?
Not just any children, either. Thus far it had only taken children of a certain age—my age.
Brom took the lantern from Sem Bakker, and the justice fell in behind me. Diederick brought up the rear. I glanced back before the pool of light left Henrik Janssen and the horses in darkness and saw him watching us with a strange expression on his face.
I turned back, feeling uneasy. I’d never thought much about Henrik Janssen. Why was he suddenly everywhere? He was a farmer, and not even an important one like Brom. There was no reason for him to be out here in the middle of the night.
Sem Bakker walked too close to me. Several times he trod on the heels of my boots and didn’t even apologize. I heard the harsh pants of his breath, so loud that it was difficult to hear anything else. It was obvious to everyone that he was terrified and doing a very bad job of hiding it. Any uneasiness I felt soon faded into irritation.
“Stop making so damned much noise, Bakker,” Brom said. “I can’t hear myself think.”
Brom was moving slowly and carefully, following my trail. The pace actually made the passage through the thorn bushes worse, for there was more chance that they would stick and hold our clothes. But Brom didn’t complain, so neither did I. I hoped stupid Sem Bakker would have to spend the next day picking thorns out of his coat.
Diederick Smit said nothing. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered if he was dreading what we would find in the woods.
What if it was Brom we were going to find? How would you feel about it then?
I shook my head hard, trying to dislodge that terrible thought. It seemed like a curse to even think it. Nothing could ever happen to Brom, anyway. He was proof against all harm.
(Please let him be proof against harm)
I was seized by a sudden impulse to grab Brom’s arm, drag him backward, make him hide behind me.
(Don’t let anything happen to Brom)
Brom would never let me protect him. I didn’t even know if I could.
What would Katrina say if you returned home without him?
That would never happen. Brom would always return home, would always be standing in the foyer with his arms wide open for Katrina and me.
Brom broke through the last of the thorn bushes. His bulk had protected me from the worst of it.
Sem Bakker blundered out, cursing and pulling thorns from his clothes.
“Shut up, Sem,” Diederick said, before Brom could.
Sem gave me a filthy look. “Why’d you run this way, you stupid girl? You couldn’t have picked a path instead of barreling through the bushes?”
“Don’t call me a stupid girl,” I said.
He appeared shocked that I’d spoken to him in such a tone. “You ought to learn some manners.”
“I know my manners. I’ll use them on you when you deserve them.”
Behind me I heard Brom snort and then cough, doing a bad job of covering up his laugh. He raised the lantern and said, “Which way, Ben?”
It was hard to make out the shape of individual trees in the dark, but I knew for sure that I’d been heading toward home when I encountered the creature in the woods. When I threw myself out of the tree I’d run in the opposite direction from home and then through the thorn bushes.
“This way,” I said, gesturing to the right.
The forest rustled all around us—the sounds of little creatures scampering and dead leaves tumbling from branches. I walked beside Brom, the other two following a few feet behind. Sem Bakker was muttering to Diederick Smit. I was sure he was casting aspersions on my character, but Sem Bakker’s opinion meant nothing to me.
“You know your grandmother would tell you to be more polite, even if you don’t like him,” Brom whispered.
“I know,” I said.
“But I think he’s a little worm, myself, so don’t worry about it.”
I grinned, but a moment later I caught a whiff of something rotten and stopped. I reached for Brom’s hand and he closed his giant one over mine.
“It’s like the sheep,” I said. “It smells like the sheep.”
I didn’t want to go any farther. I was afraid of what we might see.
“Opa,” I said. “You never told me. What happened to Cristoffel?”
He shook his head. “I never found out, Ben. When I brought the body to the van den Bergs they took him inside and nobody has seen them come out since. They haven’t even answered for their neighbors.”
I thought about Cristoffel rotting inside the Van den Berg home. I wondered if it had happened as fast as the sheep. Then something else occurred to me. If the bodies started rotting quickly after death, then that meant Cristoffel hadn’t died long before Justus found him and went for his father.
Never mind found him—Justus was probably there when it happened. The two of them were likely playing in the woods, just like me and Sander were doing that day.
A chill ran through me. The creature in the woods—the Kludde, if Schuler de Jaager was to be believed—could have taken Sander that day instead of Cristoffel.
Or it could have taken me.
Schuler de Jaager said that the Kludde only took one victim at a time. But this time it’s taken two—three, if you count the sheep.
(You don’t believe anything Schuler de Jaager said, do you? Because this thing took your father, and he wasn’t a child when he died)
Why hadn’t that occurred to me at the time? Bendix was not only an adult, but an adult with a child of his own.
Schuler de Jaager had fed me a bunch of strange stories along with his bread and butter, and now I suspected that most of them were false. But why? Why had he deliberately tried to lead me astray? Was there any truth in his tales?
“What’s the matter?” Sem Bakker asked, then made a choking sound. “What’s that smell?”
I’d gotten so caught up in my speculations about Schuler de Jaager and the Kludde that I’d half-forgotten where I was and what we’d come to do.
I glanced at Diederick Smit, who’d come up beside me. His face was so white it practically glowed. A muscle in his jaw twitched. I didn’t want to be the one to say that the smell was coming from his son.
We moved forward slowly, Brom taking the lead again. I think he didn’t want Smit to be the first one to see Justus’ remains, or maybe he just didn’t want us to trip over them in the dark.
The smell was almost unbearable, like we were trapped inside a bubble with it. The wind didn’t freshen the air at all, only wafted the rotten tang deeper into my nostrils. I covered my mouth and nose with my hand but it somehow made the smell worse. It was seeping into our clothes, into our skin, a poisonous miasma.
Brom raised his hand so we would halt, then he said, “I don’t know if you want to see this, Diederick.”
Smit pushed past me and Brom, running into the little clearing ahead. I didn’t want to see, but I felt like I had to.
I crept forward, peering around Brom’s arm. There was a boy’s body there, or the shape of one, anyway. The head and hands were gone, and just like the sheep, the remaining flesh seemed to be melting away. The white bones of Justus’ ribs already showed, and between them the wriggle of worms inside the pink muscle.
His clothing seemed to have melted, though by what craft, I couldn’t determine. Had the worms eaten his clothes, too? The only thing that was identifiable was his shoes. His heavy leather shoes had very worn-down heels, because when he walked he slammed the back of his foot hard into the ground with every step. His father was always having his shoes resoled and the shoes were always worn again less than six months later.
It seemed like something was very wrong, even more wrong than the simple fact of the murders. The creature’s effect on Cristoffel’s body had taken more time, the sheep much less, and Justus even less than that.
Why is that? Is its power becoming more potent?
I shivered, realizing how close it had come to harming me earlier, how just the very pointed tips of its claws had scraped across my neck. What would have happened to me if it managed to actually touch me?
Diederick Smit stood over the mess that used to be his son and stared.
I looked up and saw the same branch that I’d perched on earlier. I wished I could climb up there, escape the inevitable outpouring of grief to come.
But there was no howl of pain, no crying for his boy. Instead, Diederick Smit grabbed me by the arm and yanked me away from Brom, into the clearing.
“What is this? Some kind of trick? Where’s Justus? What have you done with him?” He punctuated each sentence by shaking me so hard my teeth rattled.
“Let go of her, Smit,” Brom said. I sensed him stepping toward us but all I could see was Smit’s face, twisted up in rage.
“Not until this little bitch tells me what she’s done with my son!”
I heard Brom’s intake of breath, knew that in a moment he’d rip Diederick Smit off me and beat Smit until he couldn’t move. Brom was at the limit of his patience, and I didn’t want him to hurt Smit on my account. Especially with that fool Sem Bakker gaping at the three of us. He’d probably try to arrest Brom, and then there would really be trouble.
I stomped Smit’s foot with all of my strength, and when he shouted and released me, I raked my nails over his cheek, drawing blood.
“You stay away from me,” I said, giving Diederick Smit my best Van Brunt glare. I’d had enough of him calling me a bitch, and a girl. I’d had enough of him trying to bully me.
Brom laughed, and later I decided it was the laugh that really set Smit off. Smit knocked me aside and charged at Brom, his head down like a bull’s. Smit was strong, and about twenty years younger than Brom, but my grandfather had forgotten more than Smit would ever know about brawling. He saw Smit coming, grabbed the other man’s shoulders and used Smit’s own momentum to heave the other man to one side before the blacksmith ever touched him. Smit rolled in the dirt and landed pressed up against the mass that used to be Justus.
He screamed then, rolling away, and bits of flesh clung to Diederick Smit’s clothes, stretching out like long bands—almost as if what was left of Justus reached for his father, trying to hold on to him.
Horrified, I covered my mouth and looked away, anywhere but at Diederick Smit now struggling out of his coat, screaming.
My gaze landed on the tree branch that overhung the clearing. It had been empty a moment before.
Now there was someone there.
Someone made of shadow, with eyes that glowed.
I stared, and the monster stared back at me.