Somewhere in that black sleep, I began to dream.
I dreamed Deb and I were going to the movies for date night. I can’t remember what we were seeing, but Deb was all smiles. I felt happy; I remember that with painful clarity. Whatever divided us had vanished, and we were whole once more. We joked, we laughed. I threw popcorn at her, and it got stuck in her hair. She broke down in giggles. She raised her hand and we high-fived—but it hurt. A rush of pain shot through my wrist and hand, just for a moment, enough to make the cinema lobby bolt and shudder. Deb asked me if I was all right, I said I was. She kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “I love you, Puggs.”
But her cheek against mine felt odd, felt different. It shifted in strange patterns, like cold and sticky fingers. When she pulled away, her face was a ruin of scarred flesh, slashed, the raw muscle of her face exposed. One of her baby blues stared at nothing, milky white. She grinned, and I could see her teeth through the hole in her cheek. Filed to splintered and fragmented points.
“Do we have a chance, after you’re done?” Her ruined mouth moved, but it wasn’t her voice anymore.
I shook my head, confused. “Deb? Babe, are you all right?”
She looked at me and smiled. The skin around her eyes bulged and warped, sloughing like a spider’s husk.
“The Woodkin feed the Feast.” She lunged at me, biting my hand, and the splintered ends of her teeth drew blood. I screamed. The dream collapsed around me.
Her words still echoed in my ears when I woke up.
Oak limbs outlined against the patchwork stars in many-fingered silhouettes. My head sagged and bounced. I couldn’t orient myself; the horizon dipped and wavered. I wanted the dream back—it hovered in the darkness beyond my reach, fading into the trees.
They clutched me by my limbs, grunting in unintelligible words, moving me over dead trees and across streams. A thousand splinters of glass twisted in my injured wrist. Something grasped it, holding it too tight. I groaned and pulled, trying to free it, but whatever held it tightened even more.
Their scarred, tight faces floated above me, spots of blurred white in the black shadow. Some as young as the boy who had chased me—young, why were they so young? Why me? Where were we going? I couldn’t focus on any one detail, couldn’t hold the strand of a single thought.
We stopped, and they dropped me like a sack of flour. I put my hands out to catch myself on instinct. Something hard beneath my palms, before the bolt of lightning shot through my wrist again. No scream, but a whimper. My throat burned from screaming. One of the men pulled something open beside me, and the squeal of rusty metal grated against my ears. Metal—a cage? The moon finally dipped below the mountains, stealing the last silver half-light. Silhouettes surrounded me, I smelled blood—mine—and the sweet rot of molding leaves. Something else lurked beneath the sweet rot, as well. It was distant, difficult to make out. Sweet at first, but bitter, far too bitter. I couldn’t say what it was, but it made my stomach churn. My pulse pounded in my ears.
They hauled me by my armpits, dragged me inside a room. I tried to fight and kick, but my limbs moved slowly, sluggishly. My legs slid over wood boards, and what little light I could see shrank to a rectangle. One of them gave me a kick in the gut for good measure, and I crumpled like an empty beer can. He spat, and something wet splattered against my cheek—I didn’t move to wipe it off, didn’t make a sound. Metal on metal screamed again. Footfalls moving away, then silence. No rustle of tree limbs, or chirp of crickets, or scurry of squirrels through the leaves.
I didn’t move for some time. I stayed curled in the fetal position, wet spittle cooling on my cheek. They would come for me again. This was a trick, had to be. One of them waited in the shadows, waited for me to relax. They would come for me, beat me, materializing out of the shadows like ghosts again. I stayed in the fetal position and twitched at my own imagination.
When no attack came, I cracked an eye. I clenched my gut, sure the boy would erupt from my peripherals, snarling and biting.
Nothing.
My eyes adjusted to the filmy black shadow, putting fuzzy and incoherent details in place. Distant starlight filtered through a grid-marked rectangle. An iron door. I was in a cell, a prison cell of some kind. The air tasted sour with the reek of strong mold, unwashed sweat, and iron, either from the still-wet pool of blood soaking down the front of my chest or the metal of the barred door. The line where the floor met the wall blurred. Dead leaves.
I grasped at these things, these pieces of logic and cold fact, clung to them. A gibbering, slack-jawed panic fomented at the edges of my thoughts. This wasn’t real, couldn’t be real. And yet, my wrist burned. My ear stank of hot blood. I could smell and taste and hear and touch.
More time passed, and nothing burst from the shadows or fell from the rafters. My pulse slowed, and I inched onto my back, moving to wipe the sticky spit from my cheek.
In the far corner of the room, in the darkness of pooled shadow, something stirred.
“Who’s there?” My voice cracked even at a whisper. I scooted backward until my back touched a wall. “Please leave me alone, please, I don’t want any more trouble, I’m sorry—”
A pale face appeared. Long, too long, and for a fraction of a second I thought it was inhuman until my brain clicked the shapes into place. It wasn’t long, it was framed by a beard, a white beard—and I’d seen the face before.
“Appletree?”
The face disappeared, shrunk back into shadow without an answer. I licked my lips, chapped and swollen.
“Appletree, is that—is that you?”
Still no answer. My eyes almost adjusted to the darkness of the room, but the corner he remained in stayed out of focus. A warped square of silver light spilled onto the wall above him. Unwilling to part with the security coming from having something solid against my back, I scooted along the wall. After about two feet, my hand scraped against a bundle of sticks, buried beneath the wet leaves.
God, if only I had my . . . the thought stopped me in my tracks. I fumbled with my good hand at a pocket, hoping against hope, clumsy with excitement. I pulled out my keys, dropped them carelessly, kept digging. It was still there. My little impulse-buy fire starter, still in my pocket.
“Thank you, God,” I whispered, kissing it. I could have a fire. Fire meant warmth, and light. Fire was safe. For the moment I forgot about Appletree.
It took longer than I’m proud of—even in a decent mental state, my fire-making skills sucked the big one. The sticks were thin, the thickest as big around as my thumb, and pretty wet. I spent five minutes shuffling through the deadfall, trembling with cold and pain. I scraped the fire starter three or four times, then leaned in and blew. I got a lot of wet, miserable smoke smelling of dead rot and no flames, but I kept at it. On what felt like my five-hundredth try, a tiny finger of flame curled upward. More smoke than fire, but it did the job. I fed it leaves one at a time with trembling fingers.
After a few minutes, a guttering orange glow lit the inside of the room, threatening to go out at any minute. I turned back to the corner.
It was Appletree. A tattered and stained blanket pulled up to his chin, blending his torso into the sagging wall behind him. His face turned away, staring at the waterlogged timbers. At first I thought the lighting changed his face. The eerie half-light from the fire cast dancing shadows across his cheekbones. He looked harsh, gaunt.
“Appletree? Bud?” I worked my way across the floor. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?”
It wasn’t the fire. His skin, tanned and leathered from hours of exposure on the trail, now looked pale, slack. It pulled away from the sharp lines of his sunken cheekbones like overboiled pasta. The flesh of his forehead sagged over his brow in heavy folds. Livid bags seared beneath his eyes, and a fine tremor shook the fingers clutching the edge of the blanket. Those, too, were thin, with the skin falling in folds over knobby knuckles. Like he was rotting away, right in front of me—like his body had died and decayed with him still trapped inside it. He looked . . . ill. But I’d seen him this morning. Just twelve hours ago.
“Appletree. What happened?” We were a dozen miles away from the PCT, at least. “Did they attack you?”
His mouth moved, small utterances too far below his breath for me to understand. I scooted closer, trying to make them out. I made sure to keep my hands out where he could see them.
The words spilling from his lips were breathy, incoherent. He babbled. In the slew, I made out two, strung together in the middle of a sentence.
“. . . the Woodkin—”
“Yes! That’s what the boy who attacked me kept saying!” I whispered. “Something about the Woodkin, and the mountain, and a . . . a feast, I think! Do you know what it means?”
“The Woodkin—”
I leaned in to hear but got nothing but mumbled gibberish. “I can’t understand you. Hey.”
I waved my hand in front of his face, trying to snap him out of it. His gaze ricocheted against the wall, darting here and there. I moved closer, clutched the blanket. We could work out an escape or figure out a way to get a signal to the outside world. If he knew their comings and goings, if he watched them, it was possible. “Appletree—”
He recoiled from my touch, crying out like I’d branded him. His bare feet scraped against the floor as he pushed himself farther into his corner, away from me, leaving slick rust-red trails. I glanced down.
Cuts, shallow and scrawling, covered his bare feet where they peeked out from beneath the blanket. A dozen, two dozen, along the toes and heels, ankles, all weeping thick strings of blood.
“Jesus,” I croaked. He looked at me, and with a single glance I understood. Saw it in his red-rimmed eyes, gleaming with tears of confusion.
Fear. Not the fear of a man, but the fear of a child. A child who sees but doesn’t understand. I knew the look, because I saw it once, a long time ago. In the mirror above the sink, in Mr. Neery’s bathroom, the day my mother was burned alive. Fear, because he knew something. Something he would never whisper to another soul, because there were no words. In the shadow beyond the fire, a truth long buried came back to the boy, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. A secret that should have stayed in the dark.
“What happened to you?” I whispered. Neither the boy nor Appletree responded. He whispered still, and this close I could hear it. I knew what he was going to say before he said it. The blanket writhed in a burst of motion and his hand gripped my wrist, white-knuckled.
“The Woodkin”—quiet, barely breathing the words—“feasts.”
Tears stole the rest of his words from him. His eyes locked on mine, pleading.
“I’m sorry.” All I could say, the only words. He whimpered and flung the blanket over his head.
* * *
I tried several more times but got nothing else out of him. I cajoled time and time again, assuring him I wasn’t going to hurt him, there was no one else but me. After a while his sobs quieted, and he lapsed into silence. I didn’t disturb the blanket; I doubt it would have helped.
My pathetic fire lasted another ten minutes or so before devolving into a pile of clumped ash. Autumn came early this high in the mountains. I wrapped my good arm around my knees, pressed them tight against my chest and shivered.
My body ached and my eyelids dragged, but sleep lay entirely out of the equation. Tired, but couldn’t sleep. Thirsty and hungry, but no food or water. Wrist pounding, heavier with every heartbeat, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at it.
“What the hell are we going to do, Appletree, old buddy?” I whispered. I didn’t expect a response. I leaned my head back; the wall behind me, slick with mold and fungus, gave a little. Outside, in an unseen tree, a pair of birds twittered to each other. If I closed my eyes, it sounded like every cool morning in the reaches of the cascades. If I closed my eyes, I could lie to myself, pretend I wasn’t here. Perspective, Dr. K whispered, across the years.
After a minute, another sound rose, barely audible beneath the chirping. Guttural, droning—like a river, or a waterfall, but sharper. I blinked, sat up. I knew that sound. It grew, rising in pitch until it drowned out the birds, sent them cawing and fluttering away. A car engine. I shot to my feet, staggered to the door, and stuck my good arm out, waving like a madman.
“Hey! Hey, over here! Appletree, get up! There’s someone here!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. I didn’t care if the whatever-they-were heard me. An engine meant the real world. Appletree, or the trembling half person he’d become, cowered beneath the blanket across from me and didn’t budge. An off-roader, out late? A hunter? I didn’t know, didn’t care.
The sound cut out thirty or forty feet away, and a door opened and closed.
“Over here! Please! Please help me!” Feet crunching over sticks and twigs, running. Tears of relief stung my eyes. The footsteps echoed over the wood boards, approaching the door. A silhouette rushed into view, breathless.
“Is someone there?”
I squinted, trying to pull the details of the face I knew would have round glasses and longish hair. “Ronnie?”
Ronnie Coors gaped at me, his expression almost a mirror of the one I’m sure was plastered across my face. “You? Oh my God, what are you doing out here? What the—” He shook his head, blinking like I’d disappear. He gaped like a fish out of water.
“I’ll explain later. Can you open this door?”
“Can I—yeah, of course, there’s a latch right here—” A familiar squeak of metal, and the door swung open. He stuck his head in. “What the hell is going on?”
I ran to the corner. “Appletree! Hey! There’s someone here, someone who can help us. We have to go, right now. Come on.”
No response.
“Appletree!”
“Who are you talking to?”
“He’s there, in the shadow by the corner, you can’t see him. Appletree!”
Still nothing. I ground my teeth, struggling not to panic. Ronnie showing up was a literal miracle, but we didn’t have much time; the Woodkin must have heard the engine, just like me. I grabbed the edge of the blanket, hauled it off my cellmate, hissing. “Appletree, come on—”
He shouted in fear, too loud, grabbed at the blanket in my hand. He whined, a deep-throat sound of misery, intent on nothing else but staying hidden from the world. Like he wasn’t even a person anymore. Like the last vestiges of the man I knew were gone, snuffed out.
“Appletree, please—”
“What are you doing? Let’s go!” Ronnie whispered. He peered out of the door, adjusted his glasses. Behind him the cloud layer grew a shade brighter, lighting the world in cold shadow. “We should get out of here, while the getting’s good.”
“I can’t leave him—” But the words sounded puerile, even to me. What did I owe Appletree that weighed more than my own life?
“We don’t have time for this!” Ronnie hissed. “Come on, let’s go.”
He jumped from the cell, broke right out the door. I threw one last look at Appletree. I owed him nothing—I repeated the words to myself like they could seal the breach of betrayal. Just a guy I met yesterday, nothing more. I was leaving him to die, and I knew it. But if I stayed with him, I’d die as well. Kill, or be killed, that’s how I needed to look at it. Josh would never leave a man to die. Switchback, on the other hand . . .
“I’m sorry.”
I left. The dawn chill surrounded us. Ice-cold drops of rain pattered against the dead leaves in a thousand tiny taps.
“Fuckin’ thing—I got no signal, I keep calling AT&T but they keep telling me there’s no way they can make it stronger. Oh my God I can’t believe it’s you, you’re here.” Ronnie clutched an old-school flip phone over his head, whirling it like service started six feet in the air. The white Jeep was parked at the end of an oblong clearing, and I made for it. Ronnie followed, raking a hand through his hair, talking at a breakneck clip. “I wanted to get out for a morning drive, before the shop opened. I saw a game trail through the woods I hadn’t seen before so I thought fuck it, why not, and then—”
“Can you call anyone? Do you have service?”
“I’m tryin’, I’m tryin’.” He had something in his hand, raising it over his head.
I spun in place, gaping. Cold dawn lit the clearing in shades of shadow and navy, and I saw my surroundings for the first time.
Mold-eaten houses, sagging to one side, roofs collapsing, dotted the clearing. A dozen or more, some so decrepit they had collapsed back into the forest and were covered in ivy and crawling weeds. Old, held up by sun-bleached and warped timber. Pale patches of rock-dotted clay or foraged sticks covered with dirt dotted the roofs. Trees grew close, punching holes in rotten timber walls. Hiding the town beneath the thick canopy. In the center of the clearing a single pine tree loomed, twice or three times the size of any other. A rope hung from one of the limbs.
An old mining town, had to be. Couple hundred years old, if not more.
“Ronnie, look at this. Where are we? This is—this is unbelievable.” I panted. We’d almost made it to the Jeep. We could turn around, drive out of here. Salvation, at hand.
“Believe it, dipshit.”
I didn’t see his outstretched foot until too late. It hooked under my ankle and sent me sprawling face-first with a shriek of surprise and pain. This time I didn’t stretch my hands out to break my fall—fool me once. Pine needles prickled and stabbed my face, and I spat out the bitter taste of dirt. I rolled over and he towered over me, an all-too familiar smirk on his face.
“You utter moron,” he snorted in his shrill, girlish laughter and adjusted his glasses. “Oh my God, you fell for it. Why do you fuckin’ people always fall for it? Dumbass. ‘Oh, my savior! Please won’t you let me out of this cage?’ Pathetic. This isn’t even a real phone! It’s a fuckin’ toy some kid dropped in my store!” He wiggled the cell phone-shaped piece of plastic in front of my face.
“What are you doing?” I didn’t understand. I rolled, still spitting dirt and pine needles. A boot pressed against my shoulder, put me back on the ground.
“Man you are a stupid hick, ain’t ya boy? Surprise!” Ronnie’s upper lip curled back against his teeth. He leaned in, the toe of his boot digging into the soft spot below my shoulder. I moaned and ground my teeth, but I didn’t cry out. Behind the round glasses his eyes shone with glee. He reached down and tried to haul me up by my shirt front.
“Get off of me!” I hammered a fist against his wrist, and he dropped me with a curse. I slithered backward in the dirt, trying to get away. I spun over, scrabbled for my balance, got to my feet.
I made a beeline for the trees at the end of the clearing, hooking around the Jeep. I’d make for the river, follow it downstream. A solid chance the river flower back to Bedal, I could get help—
A figure slid from behind a pine trunk twenty feet in front of me, silent as a shadow, his scarred face malevolent and still. In his hand he clutched a rusty piece of iron, jagged and lethal at the end.
I cried out and altered my course. I could still make it, I could outrun one of them, now that I knew what the alternatives were. I’d have to.
A boy manifested from the dark haze, stepping out of the forest, dead in front of me. He looked like the boy from last night, but he carried a rock lashed to the end of a stick.
“God damn it, leave me alone!” A bird squawked at my scream, but the forest swallowed my words.
Three more stood in front of me, shoulder to shoulder. I turned, and another shifted from the darkness of the woods.
I spun in place, panting, trying to find a way out. The bruised clouds pressed the sky low, stifled the air and made it heavy. I couldn’t breathe. Everywhere I looked, scarred and ruined faces glared at me. Filmy and sagging eyes full of raw anger. None of them wore shirts, only tattered shorts or pants. They were all thin as walking corpses. Each chest breathing with harsh angles of ribs pressed tight against sallow-looking skin. Within the shared disfigurement of their faces, cheekbones jutted outward.
They closed in from the clearing on all sides, weapons clutched close. They didn’t speak. Nowhere for me to run. They stalked me in almost-unison, closing the trap.
“Switchback, meet the Woodkin,” Ronnie called, spreading his arms wide.
“What—why are you doing this?” I pawed dirt from my face, shrank back from those terrible cold faces, those milky eyes. “What did I do to you?”
Behind me Ronnie snorted. “There you go, champ, start firing off questions, I’m sure that’s the recipe to success.”
A man stepped out from the ring of bodies. He held no weapon. His scar cracked his face, a livid red channel, showing white flecks of bone and threads of unhealed muscle gone to atrophy. On the left side of his face, his lips turned down in a perpetual frown.
“There you are.” All traces of mockery slid from Ronnie’s face. “Finally. I’ve been entertaining myself with this fool. I’m back—I need more stuff.”
The man said nothing. Ronnie waited, tapping a hand against his thigh. No one else spoke—only the birds tweeted, and the moan of a cold day’s wind blowing through the clearing. After a minute the corner of Ronnie’s mouth curled in, betraying his irritation. He spoke again.
“I, uh, see you’ve got yourself another one. Full house, so to speak.”
“We’re blessed by the Feast.” The man’s hoarse voice creaked like ancient floorboards. White stubble clung to his cheeks. His skin was so pale it looked like he’d never seen the sun. Like he manifested from the shadow beneath the trees.
“I know this one.” Ronnie jutted his chin toward me. “He stopped in my shop yesterday. Ain’t that a bitch? I mean, what are the odds? How’d you snag him? Trapped? Hunted? Come on, man, gimme some juicy details!” He clapped his hands, rubbed them together.
The man stood still, silent.
“He was on his way back to the trail, last I heard.” Ronnie held himself ramrod straight, mirroring the other’s stiff posture. “I know how much you guys like thru-hikers—ain’t nobody gonna miss him, right? Those people, out on the trail . . . nothing waiting for them.”
That wasn’t true. Deb would miss me, wouldn’t she? Maybe she would. Or she’d hear her husband went missing in the spine of the Cascades and she’d be relieved. Because then she could stop lying, stop sneaking around. She’d be free to fuck whomever she pleased.
The older man said nothing. A breath of air moved through the valley, and I shivered. Ronnie pulled his long-sleeved flannel a little tighter. None of the scarred men moved at all. Like the cold didn’t touch them. Like they were already dead.
The seconds ticked by, and the sick excitement in Ronnie’s eyes curdled to annoyance. He threw his hands in the air. “Fine, whatever. I need more stuff. I’m out.”
“You’re early.” No inflection in his words; not even the slightest hint of emotion or intonation. Flat, dull.
“I don’t care,” Ronnie snapped, pushing a strand of hair behind one ear. “I’m out, and I need more.”
“You took too much, last time. We haven’t had time to harvest—”
“No—no! Don’t say it like that, as if I stole it from you. You gave it to me, remember? I asked, and you gave it to me.” A hint of petulance now.
“We offered what we could spare, and you took more.”
“That’s because I needed it! We’ve talked about this! I’m—” Ronnie’s eyes darted to me. “The boys need more, you hear me? We’re out. Otherwise, you know what’s going to happen.”
“You’re early.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass!” His shrill voice cracked and echoed through the clearing. A red flush built in his face, along his neck. He glanced at me again, and the flush grew. “You know what? You aren’t showing me the suitable respect. Not working with me to further our plans, not addressing me by my proper title. I have always been a friend to the Woodkin, but it doesn’t seem like my friendship is being valued at all. Maybe I’ll take my support”—he lingered on the word, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips—“and go back to where it’s valued.”
He crossed his arms. The old man stayed silent for a heartbeat. I watched his face but got nothing. No flicker of irritation in his one working eye or clenching of his jaw. None of the microexpressions giving each of us away as living, breathing humans.
He nodded once. Incremental, like gravity forced the gesture. “As you say. We’ll collect it by this evening. It will be ready before the ceremony.”
I didn’t like the choice of words at all. I especially didn’t like the way Ronnie’s eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas eve.
“It’s tonight? No kidding. What timing I have, eh? Good thing I came out, I thought about skipping today, coming up later in the week.” He craned his head, looking around at the silent wall of broken faces around us. “Where are they? I want to pick a few out for later.”
“They have duties to attend to before—”
Ronnie shook his head, interrupting. “No, no. I want to see them now. I waited last time. Not today.”
Another pause. They stared at each other. Ronnie ran hot; excitement burned in his eyes and stretched a smirk across his slack lips. The old man was the antithesis of the emotions scrolling through Ronnie’s face. Even the wind seemed hesitant to ruffle the few strings of lank gray hair hanging by his temple.
The old man broke first. He turned his head to the side and muttered something the wind stole before I could make it out. One of the boys stepped out of the circle, ran toward the trees. The smirk on Ronnie’s lips widened. He turned to me.
“You see, Switchback—”
My fist cut off the rest of his words in a whoosh as the air rushed from his gut. He folded like a lawn chair, and I went down with him, punching and kicking with my good hand and foot.
“You son of a bitch! You knew? You fucking—”
My vengeance was short-lived. A dozen hands closed around my arms and mouth, muffling my indignance, throwing me to the ground. A foot connected with my ribs, and I cried out, writhing. Another kicked me in the neck, and my head snapped forward hard enough for my teeth to clack. A foot connected with my face and my nose crunched in a way it wasn’t supposed to. A warm spray burst onto my face, running down my mouth and chin.
“All right, all right that’s enough. Hey! I said enough!” Ronnie shouted, elbowing his way into the circle. “He’s no good to you dead. Back away. Back up, God damn it.”
His left cheek was swollen and puffy. Yeah, I thought as I spat blood and what I hoped was dirt and not teeth fragments, that’ll show you. A throbbing pain radiated from my left kidney up to my shoulder. Ronnie looked down at me, pressed a tentative finger to the swelling around his eye. His smile stretched, cold as ice.
“Good for you, Switchback. Keep that anger—you’ll last longer. Get him up. Hold on to him this time, for fuck’s sake.”
Three of the scarred men hauled me to my feet. I spat out more blood and breathed through my mouth.
Newcomers arrived at the other end of the circle. A group of women. I blinked, trying to focus on their features. Seven or ten of them, ranging in age from gray-haired to younger, my age. They didn’t share the same starved look the rest of their companions did. No bone-thin upper arms over swollen elbows. They wore normal clothes—none of the tattered rags the men and boys wore. Unscarred, each of them. If I squinted, they looked like regular people.
Except the harsh cheekbones casting shadows on their faces. Except for the way their eyes watched me, like I was a maggot wriggling in the dirt.
“There they are!” Ronnie spread his arms. “Ladies. So good of you to join us. Sorry you had to witness that. A little lesson in humility, for the boy. Father tells me the ceremony is going to be tonight. Imagine, imagine. Very exciting stuff, very exciting.” He turned toward each, weighing, analyzing. “Of course we all know what ceremony night means. I’m still sore from the last go-round. That was a good time, as we all know.” His high-pitched giggle made the hair on the back of my neck stand at end.
I could only see the back of his head, but it didn’t take much effort to imagine the way his piggish eyes leered, stripping the women’s clothes off one layer at a time.
One—no, two—of the ladies were pregnant, their swollen bellies pushing against their clothes. The shape didn’t match their faces; it was like they’d stolen the muscle and fat right off the others’ bodies. Sliced it with knives, slapped it on themselves. A build-it-yourself nightmare.
“I want the stuff in my Jeep before we get going tonight. Double what I needed last time. They’re proving . . . difficult to keep under wraps.”
The silence was palpable. It moved through the clearing like a thing alive. I hunted the older man’s face for an emotion—any emotion, any betrayal of actual humanity.
Nothing. Still as a silent lake. Not so much as a ripple.
The man Ronnie had referred to as Father bowed his head. “As you wish, Reaper.”
My skin chilled at the nickname. It didn’t match the ever-widening grin on Ronnie’s face, or his overall air of almost childish exuberance. If anything, I would have guessed that the old man was the Reaper. And Ronnie was just . . . Ronnie.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Ronnie clapped and whooped loud enough to make me flinch. “Hot damn! And you called me by my title. Look at you, finally learning the new order of things. Better late than never, right? Is everything ready for tonight? Need any help from the old boss man?” He cackled.
For the first time, Father’s face moved. His thin lips spread into a smile colder than the touch of frostbite. Pushing high up his face, cutting into his pale skin like a pair of razors. A wave of goose bumps spread across my belly.
“His fear is sharp. He is ready.”
Ronnie’s answering grin attempted to match the casual maliciousness of the old man’s. It failed in spectacular fashion; he looked like a buffoon. “Excellent. You three! Take him back to the cell. You have yourself a good time there, Switchback. While you still can.”
They did as they were told, ignoring my injured thrashing. The door squealed shut, and the sound of the pin falling into place echoed in my ears.
“Hey! Hey! Let me out of here! This is bullshit!” I hammered on the rusted iron door and screamed until my voice grew hoarse and scratched my throat like nails. “Ronnie! God damn you!”
My words turned into raw screams, which turned into shaking sobs. The darkness came for me, rising within. I fell to the floor, curled into myself.
This was it. This was how it would end.
His fear is sharp.
They were going to kill me. I stuffed myself into the corner, listened to Appletree’s whimpering, and tried not to imagine the creative ways my death would find me. A razor blade, whispering along the veins in my feet. My skull shattered with a rock. Hanging from a tree struggling for the evaporating breath in my lungs.
His fear is sharp.