Lil hasn’t seen Sasha like this for a long time. Sasha is usually well-veiled, concealed beneath her humor, the casual drape of her facade. Now there’s something irrepressible in her, a hope busting through her seams.
Autumn and Sasha returned from their walk together holding hands, declaring that they were going to the party—if Lil didn’t mind babysitting, of course. Lil’s idea of a good time is certainly not the festival’s party on the riverboat, surrounded by people who don’t know the frightening truth. But she empathizes a little with why they’re happy to have found a spot of joy in their wasteland. Why they want to spend their frozen time with each other.
Yeah, of course, she says. Take all night if you want. Just be safe.
No one in town called today to ask where the Clearwater girls have been. No one’s called at all.
Jason hasn’t called.
The past days have left her burned, and she can’t think of a single thing to do to fix it. Going to Honeysuckle House accomplished nothing. Going to town to look for help was even worse. Lil’s fear, her anger, her grief, they’re overwhelming her. But at least Sasha and Autumn can have one night to be happy. In order to make that happen, Lil would sacrifice much more than one evening to babysitting. Besides, Wyn is a pretty interesting child.
She catches Sasha in her room getting ready and leans in the doorway. Down the hall, Autumn and Wyn are in their room, Autumn’s laugh bursting out here and there.
“That’s a good color on you,” she offers.
Sasha has delved into some of her clothes from New York, from those moldering boxes in her closet, that don’t quite fit in in town. She’s wearing a tailored suit in emerald velvet. The long jacket is slung over her arm as she stands in her shirtsleeves and stares out over the dark yard. She turns to give Lil a rueful smile. “I know this is kind of a strange time for this,” she admits, drawing closer. Lil can follow the bow of her dark brown lip liner. There’s a bolo tie at her throat, clasped with one of Mom’s broaches—an amber tiger’s eye. “But, you know, there’s never really a good time, or much space for—for us.” She sounds a little apologetic nonetheless. “You sure you’ll be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” Lil crosses the room, fiddling with the tie even though it’s perfect. “This is a good thing.” In another life, she and Jason would have been the queen and king of the Pecan Ball. She would have worn that slippery lavender dress and a spritz of her best perfume. Surrounded by lights and happy, tipsy people, she would have danced with him. They’d have been the last to leave, the Clearwaters and their dates. But that won’t happen. Jason isn’t here. She can’t even voice the horrible idea that’s begun to creep into her head, heavy the way only truth is, that maybe—no. She can’t. “Seems like nothing here has been real. For a while. You deserve something real,” she says instead.
Sasha steps in, wrapping her arms around her. They’re two halves, together, a complete whole. “This is real,” she promises, against Lil’s ear. “Us. And the orchard. We’ll figure this out. I swear.”
Lil nods against her shoulder. There’s the creak of footfalls in the hallway behind her.
They pull apart to see Autumn. With the help of a couple of safety pins at the bodice, Lil’s old dress from junior homecoming fits her well: off-the-shoulders mauve satin with ruffled sleeves. It’s distinctly out of time, but she’s charming with her sneakers, a wide grin, and her eyes falling full and awed on Sasha.
“Hi,” she says, without looking away from her. “Here to pick up my date.”
Sasha skids across to her in sock feet, grinning all over. She leans in the doorway to say something to her, very quietly, but Lil hears it anyway: “You’re kind of perfect, you know that?” Autumn tilts into Sasha’s space like she’s a gravitational center.
“Go on then,” Lil says. “I’ve got Wyn. And everyone will be lining up for the boat by now.”
“Thanks, seriously,” Autumn says, sobering a little and glancing at Lil. “We’ll try not to be out too late.”
Sasha shrugs noncommittally. Her smile is a little roguish. “Well, time is fake, so…”
They go downstairs, where Wyn is stirring the Rice Krispie blob he and Lil have been putting together. He looks up at them for a moment, but he’s busy with his project, which is best. He seems to do pretty well with tasks, little steps to focus on, to keep his mind calm.
Sasha takes the truck keys from the peg and steps outside, waving to Lil from the porch.
She watches the truck trundle down the dark rows of trees until they reach the fence and the turn off to the road. Lil flips the porch light on to illuminate their way back and returns to the house.
The night deepens, but Lil and Wyn are both too alert to sleep. He’s kept night-owl hours his whole life, knowing the dangers that come out in the dark, so she hasn’t the heart to send him to bed. Instead, they retreat to the kitchen, where they’ll be able to see the moment the front door opens—maybe Autumn’s return will allow him to drop his guard and rest. Lil teaches him to play Go Fish with their battered old deck, some novelty thing with oversized cards and colorful cartoon fish. Some are stained with indefinite substances, but Wyn stares at them with deep concentration.
“You have—um—do you have—seven,” he asks.
Lil hands over her sevens. “You’re getting good at this, kid.”
He offers a small smile, just a slip of his gap teeth.
Her mind will drift to Sasha and Autumn if she doesn’t distract herself. It takes her whole stubborn will to ignore the dark premonition that anyone who steps foot outside the Clearwater orchard will be gone like they never existed.
“Sixes,” Lil calls. With that same tiny smile, he shakes his head. Lucky the kid knows how to count. Neel taught him, he’d explained and then gone very quiet.
Wyn knows the secret darkness she has been blind to. Lil wishes she could ask about it. Something like: Do you think people can just disappear here?
Waking up alone in an ashy relic of a house has altered something in her. Some anxious piece of herself is unbound now, whispering warnings in her head. But any insight he could give her isn’t worth how it would further terrorize him to relive it.
“Do you want more hot chocolate?” she offers instead. “I’ve got—”
Beyond her, beyond the house, beyond the trees, she feels the heavy tread of footsteps. She’s always felt it on some level. When she’d wake in the night disturbed, or look out the window just before a car flashed past. When she’d feel eyes on her neck and turn to see him haunting her gate. Someone is approaching. That sensation heavy in her ribs is the oily press of an unwelcome presence at the boundaries of her land.
Lil stands and lays her cards as calmly as she can on the table. “Wyn, I’m going to step outside for a couple of minutes,” she says. He stares up at her with narrowed eyes. He is not a tender child and is not fooled. “Stay here,” she adds, a plea in it. “I’ll be right back.”
Lil steps into her boots and casts a look over her shoulder to make sure he’s staying put. He’s perched on the edge of the couch, watching her. “I’ll be right back,” she promises again and grabs the old fireplace poker she left by the door. Just in case.
Out in the night, the trees rage, a gust of leaves slapping against her as she strides down the road toward the gate. And standing outside the barrier, he waits, shrouded in shadow.
Lil refuses to be goaded into shouting. She keeps her pace, steady and unrelenting, and keeps her silence too.
Theon shows up in pieces: the white of his wrinkled shirt, the glint of eyes in the darkness, the sharp cut of his jaw. He isn’t smiling this time. One hand stays in his pocket. On anyone else, it would look relaxed, but she sees the heart of him. He is never relaxed. He is a coyote sleeping with one eye open in tall grass, ready to break a deer’s heel in his jaws.
She stops within arm’s reach of the gate. Lets him look, taking in her expression, her weapon.
“You can’t come in,” Lil says with no small sense of satisfaction; the wind flares against her back. “You aren’t welcome here.”
His mouth twitches. “I just want to talk.”
All of her instincts rear. She wants to rebuff him, bowl him over with her refusals if she can. But she won’t. She knows better now. In a way, he must love the fight as much as she does. As Jason does. What else could be keeping him here? “So talk,” Lil says.
Theon’s expression softens. Maybe he’s confused.
“Well?” Lil prompts. She forces herself to stay calm. In her mind, she is as cool and still as the pond in its peace.
“Every time I try, you leave.” He watches her every breath.
“You’ve got permission. Talk. This is your only chance.”
Theon is too still today, she realizes again, too still and too proud. He isn’t standing in his usual lazy slouch. “You don’t like me. But this isn’t what you think. There’s a lot I can explain to you.”
When she doesn’t respond, Theon leans forward, something like hope in his eyes. “I’m not what you think I am. When I came here, I knew this place, your place, was special. I thought…it doesn’t matter what I thought would happen. But I changed.” His face transforms, and flicker of passion and righteous—
Lil blinks.
For a single moment, she thought she saw—but no. Theon is back to normal. He is himself again, the familiar face she’s come to dread. But the whispered warning in the back of her mind is beginning to rise.
“I changed, Lil. Because of you.” He grips the fence with both hands, eyes wide and pleading. “So many years, so many cycles of this, this same old story with you,” Theon continues.
A flash: his dark hair changes. It burns blond.
“I’ve been everywhere. I could tell you everything—” His mouth is suddenly plush and loved. Then it is Theon’s again. “I’ve never felt like this before.”
Lil sees, even if she can’t comprehend. But she can’t deny it.
She’s incapacitated with horror that is quickly congealing into grief. She can’t even hear his words. They don’t matter. Because Theon is changing. He is flickering like a burning-out light bulb. With each awful flicker, each impassioned word—there, hateful eyes turn to eyes that smolder in her dreams—he doesn’t notice it. He doesn’t know what he’s showing her, clear and damning as a death knell.
“I can’t explain it,” Theon breathes. “It isn’t even just the land anymore.” And for a startled moment, his face changes, all at once in dreadful harmony. Lil holds her breath and forces herself to look, breathe in the sight that makes her want to rip out her own ribs. Counts. One. Two. Three.
“God, Lilith,” Jason whispers, clutching the fence with one hand, reaching for her with the other. “I don’t know how to make you understand the way I feel about you.” The poker slips from her hands.
And from behind Lil, Wyn screams. Nothing but that could have jerked her away. He’s followed her, his toothy mask bravely balanced on his head, but he’s pale now, shaking all over. Lil whirls to him.
“Hey,” she breathes. “Hey, it’s okay.” She catches him in her arms.
“It’s”—his breath is hummingbird fast—“him. It’s. Him. The hungry man.”
Their boogeyman. The thing that stalks children in the night. Lil whips back to the specter at her gate, putting Wyn behind her. He holds tight onto her hand. The intruder is Theon again, the moment over, and he glares at the boy in her arms.
“Don’t listen to that mutt,” he snaps, petulant. “Send him away.”
“Tell me one thing,” she demands. The face looks wrong on him now. Elongated, ill fitting. Like there’s something under the skin he wears. “Was Jason ever here? Or was he always you?”
Theon blanches, utterly caught out. “I—” He can’t deny it. “Look,” he says, almost desperate. “The two of you kept cycling through the same old story. The same empty year. The same harvest. The same people leaving. You don’t even know you’re the only ones left here. Everyone else is gone, Lil, there’s no one left but us. Let me in.”
Shock electrifies her. Everyone? It can’t be…
But how many times had she stopped in town to find no one there? How many times has she felt like she and Sasha were all that existed?
“Can you even remember this town’s name? The state you’re in? What’s the name of the river? You don’t even know, do you? It’s all eroding. You’re ghosts living in a ghost town, living the same year over and over again for thirty years,” Theon says.
Lil picks Wyn up and holds him as fragments of Theon’s whole insidious speech find her. They burrow under her skin like poisoned needles, a stain she may never be free of.
“And Jason? Coming for the funeral? Staying in town for you? Bringing up the Pecan Festival? That isn’t what happened. Is it?”
Suddenly, blood pulses in her ears. She sees Jason, standing on the tired porch of Honeysuckle House. “I’m sorry, Lil. The Pecan Festival is a great idea. You have so many great ideas.”
Of course. The banners in his attic. She’d shown him, the first time. It was her idea, her appeal to Jason. To get him to stay. And he’d said—he’d said—
“But I can’t stay. This isn’t my home anymore.”
“Jason hasn’t been here for thirty years. He’s been a ghost,” Theon snaps. “Until…this time, he became me.”
Jason hugging her one last time. Her steely anger. “Don’t come back this time, if you don’t intend to stay,” she’d said, only she hadn’t meant it, and by his sad smile, even Jason knew it. His car, vanishing down the horizon. She’s been trying to bring him back and find a way to make him want to stay ever since.
It was the last nail in the coffin. The morning after their thirtieth birthday, she’d seen it, hadn’t she? The sign on the Finch orchard, red letters on the white and blue Realtor’s sign. SOLD.
One of the last great houses, gone. To Theon.
“I’ll never leave,” she’d promised the trees, the water, the earth, the house that night. “Even if everyone else leaves, I’ll stay.”
“We’ve been caught in this cycle so long, I thought I’d change it up. Try getting you to let me in as him, rather than me,” Theon murmurs. “This time, when I met his echo at the funeral, I had the idea. To become him. I slipped into his skin, bit by bit. I showed you the fires from the hill. And it was different. You and I felt something. It was us. Let me in—”
She wants to vomit. It wasn’t Jason with her that night at Honeysuckle House. It had been a lie, Theon wearing his skin and she’d—believed. Heart, body, and soul, she’d believed. He made her trust him. “You sicken me,” she breathes.
Theon hunches like a kicked dog. But he isn’t. He isn’t. He is a monster. She sees it now, the strangeness of him, the feeling of him, like he is rage and hunger barely contained in a paper shell.
“I loved Jason,” she spits, with all the hatred burning her up inside. “I will never love you.”
Raw hurt shines in his eyes. Almost like tears. He looks lost with it.
Lil takes a breath and locks her knees, because if she doesn’t, she might crumple. “No matter how many times you come back or how you trick us, what form you take, Sasha and I will drive you out. Every time.” She tucks Wyn’s face into her shoulder and stares their monster down. “I don’t want you, you—you thing.”
Theon’s struck dumb one moment. And the next, fury morphs over his face. Without a sound, he disappears.
In the silence, Lil could weep. She can’t. There’s someone who needs her more, shuddering against her collar. Wyn is too young for this.
She shifts him in her arms enough to check on him and wipe a few tears from his eyes. “It’s okay,” she says, over and over again. “It’s okay. It’s okay…”
But it isn’t. She’s never seen Theon angry like that. He’s always played human before, but never made such a vulnerable play. Now she’s coldly aware that all bets are off.
And she doesn’t even know what he is.
Sasha has the truck. But the Smiths next door have a tractor. And they never lock their barn.
“We need to go get Autumn and Sasha,” she says, putting Wyn down. “Can you be brave with me? A little longer?”
After a moment, he lowers the mask over his face. It glowers up at her. She takes his hand and they start running.