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Jordan paused at the edge of the clearing, where the grass collapsed down to river shingle, a wide stretch of it, then the river itself, flowing smooth and sinuous like a turquoise snake. Her body trembled, and she clutched at the soft cotton of her shorts, picked at them unconsciously like a girl with a nervous tic.
Teddy glanced up at her and bared her teeth in something Jordan supposed was meant to be a smile.
‘Teddy?’ she asked, faltering on the word and retreating to silence again.
The woman blinked at her, stretched her mouth wider, into a terrible clown smile, the lower half of her face smeared red. Jordan didn’t have to ask what the red stuff on Teddy’s face was. Her eyes moved quickly over the skin, avoiding the eyes glinting with the look of madness. No broken skin. The blood wasn’t hers, then. Which left...
Except Jordan wasn’t done staring at the woman her father was going to marry. Had been going to marry. She didn’t expect the wedding would ever happen now, and the pang of regret for that was so strong it threatened to make her double over in pain. Even though she hadn’t wanted to be bridesmaid, and Teddy had picked out the most terrible dress for Jordan, even though she’d told her she didn’t like it, didn’t like Teddy.
Her eyes drifted down over Teddy’s naked body – trying not to take in the particulars of the woman’s full breasts – and jammed on the smears of blood on her stomach. The spittle in her mouth dried up and desert sand took its place.
She’d seen that symbol before.
Shock made her stagger, and she reached out to steady herself, but there was nothing, and she fell with a hollow whump, to find herself on eye-level with the woman who was supposed to become her stepmother.
But Teddy wasn’t looking at her. She was squatting on the sand, gold pan in one hand, garden trowel in the other, bending back to her digging in the area Jordan’s father had selected as promising. He’d talked about river washes, and other stuff about finding gold that Jordan hadn’t listened to. He’d looked it all up online, of course. Jordan had allowed herself to be dragged down here to the river, pan in hand, for a lesson on finding gold, but it turned out to be hard work. With nothing to show for it other than a few of the tiniest specks she’d ever seen.
She shook her head. Teddy was scooping up river sand, muttering to herself. The woman was demented. Discarding one scoop of grit and sand for another, Teddy was apparently satisfied, tipped it into her gold pan, and scuttled off to the river’s edge, crowing and babbling. Jordan caught the word momma but that was all. She shivered, and tears blossomed at the corners of her eyes.
Teddy was going to be no help. Already the naked woman was parked on her knees at the water, hunched over her gold pan. Something inside her mind had snapped. The demon had reached in between her ears and tightened one or two of the cogs in her mind and something had snapped. Jordan hugged herself and, finally, looked out at the river at her father.
Her gaze wanted to shy away from the sight of him with no clothes on. It felt wrong to see him there, dangling over the water. She tightened her grip on herself to stop from shaking.
Something had gone wrong with her father as well. She’d kind of known it had, but what was she supposed to do without him? Even though he’d never been the best father, he was an adult, and supposed to take care of her. Blinking back tears, Jordan rocked to and fro, lips pressed together so she wouldn’t start sobbing. Her father stood up to his thighs in the river current, leaning over, head cocked to one side, staring down into the water. Jordan didn’t know what he was looking at and she decided she didn’t want to. It wouldn’t be good.
He was bleeding as well. Now she knew where the blood on Teddy’s face had come from. His face was torn, lip hanging low off his mouth, a slow drip of blood seeding the river water.
Jordan couldn’t breathe. She leant back on her heels and stared up at the sky, trying to suck air into her lungs. It wouldn’t come. The air had turned to water, and someone was squeezing her chest, clamping it into the grip of some unforgiving vise, and above her the sky swung around, then around again, and she didn’t know which way was up or down anymore. A tiny mewling sound escaped her lips, and she panted, trying to breathe, trying not to die.
Her hands dropped from her sides, and clutched at the grass, nails digging into the soil underneath and she lowered her head, tucked her chin down and hunched there, a little snail trying to get back into its shell. She wished she had a shell she could hide in. Anything to hide in.
There was silence from the trees behind her, as though the thing that stalked them knew it didn’t need to scream at her anymore, make its laughing barking noises. She was terrified. There wasn’t anywhere to run to. Nowhere to hide. It knew she was done for. All it had to do now was sit back and watch her fall apart; one by one the bits of her would snap and fall, and in the end she would be a pile of clockwork bones.
She dug at the ground, feeling a splinter pierce the tender skin under a fingernail, and the pain speared white light behind her eyes and brought her back. Heaving in a deep breath of air – finally – she bent over the dirt and let a sob escape from her chest, the panic loosening its grip around her ribs. Blinking, she peered out from behind her hair and saw her father again. This time though, only a whimper of loss from her throat; then her gaze turned from her father to Teddy, who was standing licking something from her finger. Jordan’s eyes dropped to the woman’s stomach and the symbol painted there.