They left us in the cell to rot.
Midmorning it began to rain, drowning the forest in white noise, cutting us off from the rest of the world. Rainwater dripped from holes in the roof above us, tapping on the floorboards. Outside the cell door, hazy forms stalked through the downpour. They seemed like ghosts. Wraiths from the spaces between the trees.
Fingers of rainwater streamed through the pine needles, moving south. South, toward the river. Toward Bedal.
At first I paced, too jittery to sit. I stuck my face between the bars. Shouts ripped at my raw, dry throat. No one even threw me a glance. They shuttled through the fog.
Maybe they weren’t ghosts at all. Maybe I was the ghost. Panic tightened in my chest, squeezing my voice to nothing. Maybe I’d be the one to just . . . fade away. An in-between, haunting the forests forever, locked behind bars. Rust ringing my fingernails, ripping grooves into wood.
I gave up. Something sharp stabbed my mouth every time I swallowed. When was the last time I drank water? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember a lot of things. I hunched in a corner, tried to sleep. Nightmares of split-faced men cracking my skull open with a rock came in waves. My skin crawled and I slapped at writhing centipedes that seemed there one second, gone the next. Reality dipped inside-out, and for a moment I stared at the world through my dream-eyes, trapped in the wrong side. Fingers clawed at my feet through the dark, here. Whispers that smelled like smoke and ash screamed from a great distance.
“Think we’re going to die here, bud?” I spoke so I’d hear something, pretend I wasn’t alone. Appletree hunched in the corner, an empty shirt. He couldn’t help me. No one could help me.
“We’re already dead.”
Did I say that? Did he? A hoarse whisper, a shadow of its former self. I scrambled to my hands and knees.
My voice started and died in my throat, spasming, twitching like an animal in death throes. “Holy shit, you’re awake. I thought you were . . . I don’t know, catatonic or something. Sweet Jesus, man, what happened to you?”
“A kid.” He stared through the wall, a thousand yards into nothing. He groaned, a high-pitched whining, pulled the filthy blanket tighter around himself. “A kid, I thought . . . I thought he’d gotten lost, needed help. I reached out to hold his hand.” He looked at me, the loose skin of his face dead white, eyes shimmering. “I wanted to help, man. He attacked me—I screamed and ran, but he caught up, so fast, I—” What little coherence he’d possessed devolved into whining sobs.
“It’s okay man, it’s okay. Stop crying. You gotta stop crying.” The razor-thin margin of sanity I’d managed to scrape together narrowed. We needed to come up with something, come up with a plan. And here he was, crying like a little kid.
“God damn it, dude, shut the fuck up!” He recoiled like I slapped him, pressing his head into the corner, trying to retreat. “That’s not helping. Now that we’re both here, we can think of a way out.”
“No. No.” Appletree sniffed, shaking his head. “They’ll come for us, they’ll chase us, bite us and eat us.”
“Eat—what are you talking about? Come on, they’re not going to eat us. I didn’t mean to yell, I—”
He turned to me. His wet eyes drilled holes into my soul.
“We’re already dead, you and I. Ghosts.”
The filthy and stained blanket shifted, moved, fell away.
His hand was gone. In its place where the hand met the wrist gaped a mess of ragged yellow tendons, weeping blood onto red and swollen skin. There, a dozen tiny, semicircular puncture marks, buried deep. Teeth marks, but too small to be an adult’s.
Baby teeth.
“Oh my—” The paltry contents of my stomach emptied, climbing the torn ladder of my throat. His bloody wrist seared into the back of my eyelids, haunting me with every blink. I shook, my arms weak.
The air reeked of iron, now that he’d taken the blanket off. Like the clearing with the buck. Tortured. Left to die a slow, wheezing death. Were they going to stick a hunting knife in my throat, or cut my hand off?
Another wave of watery vomit forced its way up my throat.
Ronnie said it himself, elbowing through the Woodkin members that were kicking me into submission.
He’s no good to you dead.
A cold pit that had nothing to do with hunger grew in my gut.
Behind a thick layer of clouds, the sun set. Shadows pooled at the bases of the trees, growing thick and deep.
The smell hit me first. The same one I smelled when they dropped me in front of the cell door. Spun sugar, flowers. Cloying, like my mother’s perfume . . . and beneath that, a bitterness. Like getting a faceful of smoke at a campfire. It smells sweet from a distance, but when it blows into your face, you realize it’s not sweet at all. The sweetness is a lie, a cover. It’s the bitterness that’s real.
“Appletree, you smell that?” I stood with a groan. A blue-black bruise had spread over my ribs, and a dozen other places creaked with every movement. I walked over to the iron door, looking out at the deserted clearing, sniffing. Stronger now. “It smells like . . .”
Through the navy-blue shadow, through the spitting rain, torches winked. In, out, in, out—through the trees they wound closer, coming for me. Like predators’ eyes, exposed by a flashlight beam. The cold in the pit of my stomach grew colder—the touch of what lay in wait.
“Appletree, get up. Get up. Something’s happening.” I pressed my face against the bars. They wound through the forest, nearing.
A group of hunters entered the clearing. Beneath the smoking, guttering light, their faces were swathed in hard shadows. They approached the cell, drew the bolt back with a heavy clunk. Surrounded the door, silent and still.
“It is time,” one of them said.
“You will come with us.” Their voices were the same timbre of apathy—flat, uncaring. As though they were taking me to the bank. Beneath the uncertain torchlight they looked the same. Set apart by the differences in the scars that traced the left side of their faces. Based on the twin reflections of fire, one of the men had the use of both eyes,
“Me?” I swallowed sharp bile and panic. My hands shook, even balled into tight fists. “Or both of us?”
“Both.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t think he—” I stuttered. Words failed me. I looked back at the blanket. It shook like a leaf; no way he didn’t hear us, didn’t know what was happening. “He’s—hey, hey! Be careful!”
One of them, a boy no older than sixteen, slipped past me, crossing over to Appletree’s corner in two huge strides. He ripped the blanket away. The old man cried out in rusty terror, covering his face, curling into a ball of whimpering cries. The kid said something angry and short, a command too quick for me to catch. Appletree didn’t respond. He stared into the floorboards. I wondered if the fat droplets tapping around me were rain or blood.
The kid struck so quickly I almost missed it. I caught the impression of blurred limbs, heard Appletree’s cry of pain and surprise. The old man sprawled on the floor. The left half of his face gleamed scarlet.
“You didn’t need to do that!” I flung toward Appletree, but a pair of hands clamped down on my upper arms. The other Woodkin dragged me out the door, inexorable as a machine. I kicked and struggled, but with the use of one wrist it wasn’t exactly a fair match. “Hey! Come on, leave him alone, he’s an old man!”
The kid knelt over Appletree. It looked like he was whispering. I craned my neck, trying to see, but the hunter pulled me out the door. I caught my foot against a rogue root, twisting it in the wrong direction. I hissed a sharp inhale of pain.
“God damn it, getoffme!” I grunted, punching behind my head. My knuckles brushed something hard, and I got a knee in the hamstring for my trouble, sending me sprawling for the third time that day.
I rolled over, red-faced, angry. “He wasn’t hurting anyone! You could have just picked him up. That kid didn’t have to hit him!” I couldn’t hear the old man, but that didn’t mean they weren’t doing something awful to him, muffling his muted struggles and choking the scream from his lips. “He probably would have come along just—”
The rest of my sentence stuttered to a wheezing stop.
A group of scarred men stood, shadow-eaten in the darkness. Five of them, twisted features distorted in the shifting blackness. My words turned to ash on my chapped lips. I stopped thinking about Appletree and started thinking about myself.
“What do you want?”
“Get up,” one of them said. His one working eye glared at me, but didn’t flicker, didn’t track my movements. As if he stared through me. Like I wasn’t even there.
Already a ghost.
Another jutted his chin toward the edge of the clearing, the direction they’d come from.
“Walk.”
I got to my feet slowly, bones snapping into place, muscles screaming for water. In the unsteady light a rough path wove between two crumbling houses, leading into the forest. At the edge of their firelight, the world vanished into rain-soaked darkness. A dim hum began building in the back of my brain, like a swarm of far-off hornets rising. I bit down until I tasted copper, a whine of low panic in my throat.
“Walk.” Someone shoved me and I stumbled forward, off balance. We walked together, following the path between the shells of abandoned mining huts. A window, or rotted-out slab of wall, had collapsed under the weight of decades of rain. Dead leaves covered the floor, rustling as if a specter paced inside. The shadows traced our footsteps, running in front and behind us. Slipping into nothingness behind rock, moss, and the corpses of dead trees.
The rain came back, drizzling in a thousand bursts of applause against the canopy overhead. My shirt clung to my shoulders, rain soaking through my skin to chill my bones. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering. The path undulated across the uneven valley floor, meandering. I found and lost the trail half a dozen times—it blended with the ferns and shrubs underneath, impossible to find if you didn’t know where to look. We climbed one side of a hollow before dropping to cross a dry creek bed.
I thought about making a run for it. There were only a handful of them, right? I could outrun them if I had to . . . but even in my head, the thoughts rang hollow. No, I fucking could not, that little voice whispered. I couldn’t even outrun a single one of them last night.
North, following the walls of the valley as they surrounded us, closing into a narrow gully. The air pitched cooler, the smell of shale rising from wet earth. I kept my head down, careful of where I put my feet—the footing shifted, nebulous, ensnaring. I stumbled a handful of times, catching myself on the gully walls. Why bother, I thought, after stumbling yet again. They only needed me for another few hours? Fine. Maybe I’d break my ankle on purpose, force them to carry me. I had a vision of two of them grunting with effort, sweating as they picked over the rocks. Fuck ’em. The fantasy gave me a hateful joy, bitter as smoke.
Time wound away from me. My shirt clung to me from shoulders to hem, and my hair was plastered to my forehead, dripping onto my face. I shivered. We turned a corner.
A box canyon half a mile long at its widest sprawled in front of us like hands cupping a ravine. The walls rose tall enough to rub shoulders with the sheared-off slopes of the pitch-black mountains. Somewhere, a waterfall roared in blank static, close enough to drown out any speech. The rain clouds rolled close overhead, sealing the sky in roiling charcoal gray.
Trapped.
A path split the darkness, lit in pinpricks of flickering orange. Torches. At its end, a bonfire rose ten, fifteen feet into the air, winking at me from between the trees. A clearing, at the high end of the canyon. Lit like the pits of Tartarus.
A slab of granite so large it almost appeared to be a mountain hunched over the clearing. The edges gave it away—too sharp, too thin, like knife blades. A sullen orange glow from the bonfire spat fluttering light along its black depths, sending pockets of shadow dancing along the imperfections in the rock face. The smell I’d caught back in the cell grew stronger here, cloying and sweet.
My feet slipped and skidded, the muscles in my legs locking up. An animal led to slaughter, unwilling to move another inch.
“Move,” one of them growled.
The path twisted down, steep and dangerous, cascading over boulders, sliding down tree trunks. A split-log tree bridge spanned a frothing white rapid, slick from spray. Patches of electric-blue mold grew where the spray lightened, offering decent footing. I tried not to look at the water fifteen feet beneath us, carving its way underground. Tried not to let my balance shift. I could see my fate if I fell, shattered against the rocks. Perhaps it would be a mercy, drowning in slow-motion, clutched in the black water.
Perhaps it would be better that way.
I don’t know what kept my feet on the bridge, as I slipped from one patch of mold to the next. Cowardice, or the cold and perpetual bubble of hope that something or someone would save me. Some miracle. My shoes touched dirt on the other side, and I exhaled the breath burning my lungs.
But there was no rescue party. No helicopter blades spearing the air.
Crude torches made of bundled sticks lit the path on either side. Moving past one, I caught a glimpse of a torn and burnt collar. The gleam of an ivory button winked at me.
Clothes. They’d topped the torches with clothes.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. I shot a look over my shoulder. The Woodkin accompanying me wore some combination of shorts or long-legged capris, cut ragged. I remembered Green-Eyes from just a few days ago; rotting bare-chested in the river.
I heard the music first, long before I saw the first signs of the clearing. Wordless, hammering in harsh bass and quick, irregular rhythm, joined now and then by ear-piercing vocals that made the skin on the back of my neck shrivel. I couldn’t quite place the music; something about it had an eighties vibe, but in a series of cascading minor keys. An indistinct voice growled, blown out and grainy. The speakers hung from trees, wound with nooses of black wire. Looking at them—the joining of two things that should have stayed separated—caused a schism in my brain. This lurking, scarred cult didn’t deserve technology. It felt . . . asynchronous, looking at it. Like it didn’t belong there.
Or I didn’t.
Black silhouettes danced in front of a huge bonfire to the music, heedless of the pounding rain. Round and round they whirled, shuffling like lost souls on their way to hell, limbs akimbo.
More members of the Woodkin gathered around the edges of the flame, watching. Above us all, the towering piece of granite stood sentinel. I didn’t like looking at the huge piece of rock; something about it made me uncomfortable.
“Switchback! You made it!” A familiar voice split the music. At the opposite end of the clearing, a bench of sorts was dug into the joined roots of three trees. Here sat the familiar scowl-faced patriarch, cracked face silent and angry. And . . .
Ronnie’s pale face flushed tomato red beneath his glasses. He staggered off the bench, sending the woman on his lap to the ground in a heap. Judging by the way she shot up and scampered back to sit on the opposite side of the clearing, she didn’t mind too much. He clutched a flask in his other hand.
The men who escorted me drifted off. Their eyes kept flickering to me, tracking my position. No doubt if I took off into the forest, I’d make it about eight feet before they’d catch me. Good odds they’d break something to keep me in line.
“I was just saying how long you were taking to get here.” He stank of trapped sweat, his breath ripe enough to trip my gag reflex. The bottle I’d seen in the backseat of the Jeep, if I had to guess. Even looking at me, he swayed in place. He adjusted his glasses with a clumsy hand. “Any later and you’d miss all the festivities!”
He gestured, staggering off balance. I didn’t reach out to catch him; if he fell, maybe I could kick him where it counted before anyone grabbed me. My satisfaction would be short-lived, no doubt, but hurting Ronnie would be worth every split second.
Ronnie threw a companionable arm around my shoulders, treating me to a close-up of his pit stains. The flask in his other hand sloshed, spilling all over his fingers. God, he smelled terrible. He leaned in close, whispering.
“I have personally fucked three women tonight. Took them right into the woods and bam! They can’t say no—they love it. A chance—just a chance to have a son of Ronnie the Reaper. That’s me—you like it? Ronnie the Reaper.” He beamed, his grin slippery and loose. “I gave it to myself. Being with the Reaper is like, their whole dream, these women. Isn’t that awesome?” He leered at a woman standing across the fire about twenty feet away. Her black hair fell across her shoulders in thick ripples. Dark shadows flickered along her arms as she stood near the fire. She was one of only a few not dancing. She watched everyone else. I narrowed my eyes—yes, she actually watched them. Her eyes traced their movements, their furious pace as they writhed around the bonfire. Unlike the hunters who’d grabbed me, whose eyes drilled into the soil and trees behind me, unseeing. Ronnie leaned on my shoulder, whispering too loud in my ear: “See her? I’m gonna—”
“Get the hell off me.” I smacked his arm from my shoulders. The heads of a dozen men whipped in my direction, eyes narrowed. Careful, be careful.
“Don’t be such a sourpuss, Switch. It’s a party! Lighten up, man, you look like you’re at a funeral or something.”
“What is all this? What am—what am I doing here?” I stumbled on the question, like it glued my tongue in place. My mouth still tasted like carpet. But I had to know.
“This”—Ronnie gestured to the clearing again—“is the night. The night, you hear me? The Woodkin call it the Feast.” He looked over at me, grinning. “Like that one, dontcha? My suggestion. Or, well . . . yeah, sure, let’s say it was mine. ‘The Feast.’ Sounds like a movie title or some shit.” A rogue belch rocked his whole frame. “They think they’re all big and bad, but really they’re just a bunch of podunk pretenders,” he whispered, “but don’t tell ’em I told you that. The women are fine enough if you close one eye.”
I tried to hide my recoil, a gag searing hot in my burned-out throat. I muscled through it. More important things to worry about. “What is the Feast?”
“What is the Feast?” The mocking, high-pitched voice made me want to punch him in the throat. “God, what are you, a parrot? Asking all these questions. Calm down man, get a drink. Enjoy yourself! This is a hedonist wonderland. Take a lady for a stroll around the trees, if you know what I mean.”
People left together, dipping into the velvet darkness of the forest hand in hand. Sometimes two, three, or more, faces tight with anticipation. Some came back, loose-slinking, relaxed. Everyone partied, everyone cut loose . . . but the only drink in the clearing was in Ronnie’s white-knuckled grasp.
A scar-faced man pitched too close to the bonfire and staggered backward with a surprised shriek. He collapsed, trying to slap away the fingers of fire eating the ragged hem of his trousers. Ronnie burst into squeals of laughter, slapping his thigh and pointing.
“Oh my God, look at that fuckin’ guy. What a moron!” He laughed alone, snorting in drunken hilarity, too loud; he drowned out the music. They turned to him, too quick; a second or less before they turned away, back to their dancing. How can he not feel it? I wondered. Feel the weight of two dozen eyes on his skin, the combined condescension.
I stepped away. Sidled a few inches to the side as if to say, It’s him, not me.
Ronnie raised the flask to his lips, taking a deep swig.
“Want some, Switch? Old boy Switchie? Suh-weetchback?” He tried out my name on his tongue, thick and clumsy with the cheap whiskey rising from the open mouth of the flask like a redneck genie. He giggled and swayed where he stood.
I shook my head, tuning him out. The music slamming from the speakers thrummed their menacing beat faster. Two circles of revelers whirled dizzily around the bonfire at a fever pitch, their eyes glassy, pupils blown wide and dark.
A second party entered the clearing. A shuffling figure, hunched, still wrapped in the filthy towel I’d left him with. Appletree’s one working hand wrapped around himself, tucked deep in his armpit. He didn’t even look up at the cavorting black shapes spinning around the flames. His gaze dug into the dirt at his feet, and he shook.
Ronnie’s hand on my arm stopped me before I realized I’d moved.
“Don’t do that, Suh-weetchie. Uh-uh. Not smart.”
“But look at him, he needs—”
“What he needs, you can’t give him. Leave him, Switchie.”
“No, I can’t, he’s all alone over there. Get off me, I have to—”
“Look!” Ronnie snapped. He shook me hard enough to rattle my teeth. The smile slipped off his lips. “You look. Not at what’s-his-face, forget him. Look around you. Look at the trees. Use your eyeballs and not your mouth. Concentrate.”
I looked at the trees.
At first, I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about; they were trees. Pine, some scattered oak, I don’t know. I wasn’t a fucking tree scientist—
I squinted. Now that I looked at them, really looked at them, something seemed off. A trick of the light, that’s it, or my perspective fucking with me again.
Something shifting. The shadows pulling away from the bonfire tangled in patterns, tap-dancing across the patches of bark. Like a sculpture of darkness and light. Except the shadows didn’t look quite right; they weren’t forming in the right tree-like shapes.
But no. No, the longer I looked, the more I saw. It wasn’t the shadows that were off.
It was what they were forming against. The shadows were merely the negative space. I blinked. My perspective shifted, the world adjusted just a degree to the left. I blinked and peered closer, trying to see. The twining rivulets, curved into ovals about two inches wide: faces.
They were faces.
Hundreds, thousands of them, covering each tree as far as I could see. Spreading beyond the torchlight, surrounding us. Carved with mouths open in silent screams, black eyes full of suffering. They shrieked at me, eyes boring into my soul. Michelangelo couldn’t have put more emotion into those twisted and agonized features. They wore earrings, piercings, scratched tattoos.
The detail packed into their tiny, tormented features raised the hair on the back of my neck. A man with pinched jowls and deep eyes howled for his life between two branches of an oak tree. Beneath him, a woman’s face twisted in guttural, bone-deep surprise. I could see her shock in the scratched corneas of her eyes. I’d blink, and those mouths would start moving. I’d start to hear those silent screams, echoing in a crushing wave. Rivers of agony, flowing from the trees.
“What the fuck?”
Thousands of eyes, glaring at us from the darkness. These faces, frozen in their torment. These faces, watching me. My breath caught in my throat, keen as shattered glass.
“You see ’em?” Ronnie clutched at my arm, using me to balance his drunken swaying. He glared at me—or at least, in my general direction. “See? Each of them, each of those faces—they’ve been right where Appletree was. They stood right where you stand. There’s nothing you can do. Nothing any of us can do. If you get in the way—”
“What?” My turn to snap, spinning on him. “They’ll kill me? Is that it, Ronnie Coors? I’m sitting in the batter’s box for the spot, aren’t I? I’m next in line. They go through him, then it’s my turn. It’s true, isn’t it—don’t you fucking lie to me. I see you about to try. What’d you say earlier? He’s no good to you dead? You son of a bitch!” The wafer-thin tether to my self-control slipped beyond my reach. I shoved Ronnie in the chest, hard enough to send him stumbling, arms flailing. “Don’t help him, because no one’s going to be around to help you.”
No one paid attention to us, this time. They turned to Appletree, who stared at the ground and shook.
“Feast. Feast. Feast.” Their mouths moved as one, in whispers of horror.
I didn’t hear the chanting over the roar of blood in my ears. I didn’t notice the music stop, or the dancers freeze in place, dead eyes staring unblinking at Appletree. Only their mouths moved, forming shapeless words in my peripheral hearing.
“Feast.”
Appletree shrunk away from them, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders. Trying to disappear beneath it. Trying to hide.
I surged toward him. If nothing else, I could stand beside him. I could walk with him all the way down. He wouldn’t be scared alone, not if I was there.
“Hang—hang on there, big fella.” Ronnie lurched to his feet, hands held out. He swayed, dangerously close to falling on his ass without any help from me. The flask in his hand gleamed silver in the firelight. He took a big mouthful, gulped, wiped the amber liquid from his chin with the back of a wrist. “Look—listen. It’s already started. Here comes Priest.”
“Feast.”
Then I noticed the lack of music blaring from the speakers. Too late to run in and protect Appletree, standing there shaking, all by himself.
Writhing behind the kitchen door, all aflame.
He came from the darkness beyond the bonfire, walking as silent as the dead. Greasy hair hung from his head in twisted ringlets, colored amber from the fire. The priest’s torso looked distorted, full of sharp edges and curves. His ribs looked like the sharp lines of a xylophone, his collarbones pushed up from the skin, creating twin bowls at the top of his chest. He wore black pants that fit snug to his legs and a creased jacket of oiled leather, open over his scrawny body. His chest was bleached white like he’d never seen daylight. Like an upside-down version of the priests from my childhood—the pace, the costume, the gospel just behind their teeth. The Good News, but this time, all wrong.
The priest’s scar engulfed his face, deeper and crueler than any of the others. White bone glinted in the firelight. Twisted, atrophied muscle, wide pores cratering its surface.
Then he entered the circle of light and I saw the skull in his hands. A stag head, bleached white, complete with an enormous set of antlers, stretching a full two feet on either side of him.
As soon as he set foot in the clearing, the chanting rose, quickened. The world shrank to the snarling of the bonfire, the combined voices of the Woodkin, and the blood roaring in my ears.
The buck, bled to death and left to die in the woods. Left for me to find. Now it came back, back to haunt me a second time. Death, coming back for me, as a bleached skull stretched in a perpetual grin. The buck’s teeth gleamed in the firelight. I’d been running from that skull my whole life.
The priest stopped at the edge of the clearing. Waiting. One of the Woodkin approached, holding a leather bag like it contained a pit viper. He reached in—maybe the bonfire played tricks with the air, but it looked like his hand trembled. He pulled out a finger-full of something I couldn’t make out and held it up to the priest’s lips. The priest opened his mouth, and the man dropped his offering on his tongue, communion-style. Whatever it was, it didn’t go down easy. The priest chewed, staring at the ground with twin lines of effort scratched into his narrow face. It took more than one swallow to choke it down.
“I love this part.” Ronnie turned to me, heedless of the icy stares he drew. He didn’t bother to whisper. The woman from the other side of the fire had moved closer to us, only a few paces away. Ronnie motioned at her, trying to get her attention. When she didn’t respond, he hissed. “Psst! Hey, you. Girl.”
The skull-bearing priest wound partway around the other side of the clearing. Marching toward the center of attention: Appletree.
“Hey. Psst!”
She stood resolute as a statue, letting Ronnie’s words rush past her. Her eyes stared at Appletree like the rest of them, her mouth moved with the rest of theirs, following the same words. Except . . .
Her shoulders stiffened.
Such a minute gesture, so small it shouldn’t have mattered. But it was the first sign of normal behavior from one of them. It almost looked . . . human.
Ronnie noticed. The corners of his lips curled up, digging divots into his cheeks. “I know you can hear me. I know you know who I am. You can—hey.”
Her head turned, ever so slightly. This close, the fire turned the edges of her raven hair auburn tongues of red-orange. This close, she didn’t look like one of them. She almost looked normal.
“You know the weight of your refusal. You know what it could cost you if I decide to make it so.” He dug an elbow into my ribs, a snicker clutched tight in his face. “Come here. I’ve got . . . I’ve got an itch I need you to scratch.”
She parted with the circle with reluctant steps. I craned my neck over the whiskey-soaked shopkeeper, trying to keep Appletree in view. If only he would look up, look over here, we could make eye contact and he’d know at least I was here. He wasn’t alone.
The priest continued his march, closing the distance to Appletree. His cracked and warped lips moved, and it almost looked like he was caressing the skull in his hands—
“Oh yeah,” Ronnie sighed. “That’s right. Just . . . there.”
I heard a pause the length of a single heartbeat, and then a sudden hissed intake of air, stretched around a hoarse scream. When I spun around, Ronnie’s face was red as a tomato, with lines of agony etched into the flesh.
“What’s the matter, Reaper?” the woman whispered. Her hand closed around something in the vicinity of his groin, the muscles of her forearm stark with effort. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Heads turning, eyes catching glimpses of our little drama. I wanted to sidestep, wanted to back away, but I also wanted to make sure Ronnie got everything that was coming to him and more. Ronnie whispered something, but it disappeared in a fizzing gasp as she squeezed harder. He dropped the flask, dancing on his tiptoes with pain.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” she whispered.
“Please.” His words were smoke. He looked like he was about to vomit. Personally I hoped he would.
Another second, and she released him. He sagged backward, falling to his knees. Something pale and shriveled flapped through the open zipper of his jeans. She turned back to her fellows
“Traitor!” Ronnie screamed. A vacuum sucked the air out of the clearing. The priest froze in his steps. The old man shot to his feet.
Ronnie pointed a finger at the woman, staggering back to his feet. “She’s not one of you, Woodkin. She’s faking it. She’s a liar!”
The woman’s face went as white as a sheet. She turned, protests falling from her lips.
“I’m—I don’t—don’t listen to him, kin, he doesn’t know—” She turned her gaze to the old man. “William—I mean, Father, I swear to you, I’m not . . .”
The Woodkin closed in around us. Around the woman.
“Ooh, girl you done fucked up,” Ronnie whispered, radiating sharp-cornered glee. “You know what your refusal cost you. Beg me to save you. Go on. Offer me anything I want. You know I can do it—quick, girl, quick, he’s coming, and I’m the only chance you’ve got. Offer me whatever I want, and I’ll think about saving your life.”
She looked at him like he was a cockroach, tears in her eyes. Back to the old man, closing in on her.
With a cry of shock and pain, the priest recoiled. He clutched the buck skull to his chest, bent over it, muttering nonstop. Slammed both hands over the empty eyes, like he needed to keep something inside.
He chose the perfect moment. Confusion, chaos. All eyes on the woman and Ronnie.
No one was watching Appletree. No one but me.
I looked over—and Appletree’s eyes were on mine. Wide, pleading, desperate. And then a swift motion, like he was miming cutting off his own head. There was a loud crash, and the clearing exploded. Appletree disappeared. I thought he fell, then I thought someone attacked him. The three men surrounding him collapsed to their knees, crying out. One of them tugged at the old man’s fist, pulled something out of it.
My keys, covered in blood. The keys I’d dropped in the cabin, fumbling for my fire starter. They hauled him up, trying to stem the red river flowing down his shirt, with little success. I could see the punched red weals spreading across the white cartilage of his windpipe. He did it himself—he’d waited until the last minute. The bonfire danced in his blank eyes.
He was dead.
Appletree. My heart broke for my campfire companion. He didn’t deserve this. No one deserved this.
I spun away from the grisly sight and collapsed to my knees, holding the contents of my stomach back with gritted teeth. A hive of bees buzzed inside my head, threatening to take me apart at the seams. People screamed, the priest shouted. The old man watched, his face as still as the corpse lying in the dirt. No surprise, no anger, no emotion reflected in his split and deformed face. And above it all, Ronnie.
Laughing.
“Ho—holy shit, Switch, did you—did you see it?” he wheezed, bent almost double. The drunken flush turned his cheeks scarlet, and there were tears in his eyes, he was laughing so hard. “Just—whoop! One and done! Bravo, sir, Bra-fucking-vo! Way to stick it to the man!” He applauded, still chortling.
His applause floated over a silent clearing. The men and women, the old man—they all stared at Ronnie, held in a moment of icy stillness. The drunk man swallowed his laughter with much effort, raising his head to return their glare.
“Can I fucking help you? What are you all staring at? Come on, it’s funny. Switch, don’t you think it’s funny?” He turned to me. The expression on my face must have finally keyed him in to the vibe. I watched the drunk hilarity drain from his eyes. He spun back to the Woodkin, hands up, empty apologies scrawled on his slack features.
“Take him.” The old man’s flat, dead voice rang around the clearing.
They sprang like jackals. He fought, or at least tried to, but there was only one of him and a lot of them. They dragged him to the ground, seized his thrashing limbs.
“Switchback! Help me!” He writhed, looking up at me. “Stop! You can’t do this! I’m the Reaper! Hey! God damn it!”
I didn’t say anything. A sick squirm of vindication swirled in my gut. He deserved the worst, but a quiet voice in the back of my head whispered that he might not deserve this.
They carried him kicking and screaming to the priest, whose gaunt face was shiny with sweat. He hadn’t opened his eyes once or moved his hands from the eye sockets of the deer skull. They shook with effort, pressing hard against the white bone.
“Get off! Get off! I—you—I’ll kill—!”
The Woodkin began to chant again, pressing close around Ronnie’s thrashing form.
“Feast—Feast—”
“Please!” Ronnie squealed, the righteousness and rage churning into panic. “Don’t do this to me! Please—!”
The priest leaned his head back and sighed, utter relief lowering his shoulders. He took his hands from the eyes of the skull.