They convoyed down midnight roads, the other police car in the lead, red bubble light flashing. Behind it came Miss Wellwood’s station wagon driven by Dr. Vincent, then Nurse Kent’s VW Bug, and finally the police car with Fern in the back. Through the windshield, she could see Holly’s head in the passenger seat of Nurse Kent’s car, and she assumed Zinnia was in Miss Wellwood’s.
Coach raised his eyes to the rearview mirror.
“A lot of parents picking their girls up from police stations these days,” he said. “I’m glad I don’t have a daughter like you.”
“Easy, Frank,” Latin Teacher said, for Fern’s benefit. “She probably saw that little girl have her baby and it scared the life out of her. It’d make my hair turn white if I saw Joanne that way.”
Fern didn’t answer because it didn’t matter what she said anymore. She stared out the side window, watching the trees go by, stained with flashes of red from the bubble lights. There weren’t any houses on this road. Just darkness and trees. Red, black, red, black.
For one minute, she thought they’d done something that mattered. She thought they’d had a chance. They never had a chance. From the moment they were sent away nothing they did mattered, because this only ended one way: Holly would give her baby to Reverend Jerry and he’d take her home, Zinnia would give up her baby and go home, Fern had given up her baby and she’d go to the police station where her dad would pick her up later that morning and she’d go home.
What would happen to her next?
The worst thing was, probably nothing. She’d go back to her old life and pretend this never happened, and the more she pretended the more it would seem like something that had happened to somebody else. She’d forget about Holly and Reverend Jerry, and Rose raging to keep Blossom, and Zinnia, and that night when they flew. None of it was her business. Her business was to get As, and be in the senior play, and be helpful and friendly, then go to college, date a good guy, get married, have children, and forget.
But she didn’t think she’d be able to forget Charlie Brown. She didn’t think she’d be able to forget that soft heaviness in her arms. She didn’t think she’d be able to forget her smell. No one would want to talk about her daughter, no one would want to remember her, so she’d become a secret that Fern would turn over and over in her mind for the rest of her life, like a knife with no handle, a knife that was all blade, a knife that would make her bleed every time she took it out.
She would bleed whenever she saw a pregnant woman in a store. She would bleed whenever a friend asked if she wanted to hold their baby. She would bleed when she didn’t turn the newspaper fast enough past the birth announcements. Guy wouldn’t bleed. Reverend Jerry wouldn’t bleed. Carlton Sinclair the Third wouldn’t bleed.
But she and Rose, and Holly, and Zinnia, and Clem, and Hazel, and Myrtle, and Jasmine, and Briony, and Flora, and Daisy, and Ginger, and Laurel, and Willow, and Violet, and Iris, and Tansy, they would all bleed and bleed and bleed.
“Was it worth it?” Coach asked over his shoulder. “You almost killed your friend and her baby and for what?”
“That’s the problem with these kids,” Latin Teacher said. “They never consider the consequences.”
Fern felt too tired to answer, too tired to speak, too tired to tell him that she understood consequences better than he ever would. The police mumbled to each other in the front seat, the engine rumbled under the hood, the road rumbled beneath the tires, and Fern leaned her head against the window. All Zinnia’s plans were useless. Her heart’s desire was nothing but words. Fern felt embarrassed she’d ever thought this might work.
A man’s voice crackled over the radio and Coach unhooked the handset and put it to his lips.
“Roger that,” he said, and hung it back up. “They want us to wait at the Home in case that baby has to go to Flagler.”
Latin Teacher nodded. Coach rolled down his window and night air roared in. He tossed his cigarette and it whipped past Fern in a shower of sparks. He rolled it back up and Fern heard the steady ticking of a turn signal and through the windshield she saw Nurse Kent’s brake lights flare and they slowed and one by one they turned at a mailbox labeled 462 and drove down a tunnel of trees, and finally pulled up in front of Wellwood House.
It loomed over them, bright white, flattened by headlights. They had run and they had run but they just kept winding up back here.
They watched Dr. Vincent help Miss Wellwood out of her station wagon, and Nurse Kent get out of her VW Bug carrying the bundle that was Holly’s baby. The front door of Wellwood House flew open and a man burst out, looking white and made of paper by the bright headlights, and he ran down the front steps, making straight for the baby, and Fern saw his mustache and sideburns.
Reverend Jerry.
He reached Holly’s baby, taking her, pulling her to him, asking Dr. Vincent questions, so concerned for his child, his property, this Respected Member of the Community, and in the glare of headlights Fern saw the side of Holly’s head in Nurse Kent’s VW, watching Reverend Jerry fuss over her baby, and Holly’s face looked dead.
“I wonder if this makes them worse?” Coach said. “You lock all these little girls up together in a place like this, and they’re going to give one another ideas.”
Fern watched Reverend Jerry rock Holly’s baby against his chest, Hagar’s towel hanging loose, one hand on the baby’s bare back, the other cupped around her bottom, and his fingers looked so hungry.
“What else are you going to do?” Latin Teacher asked. “You can’t let them be around normal kids.”
He bounced Holly’s baby, nuzzling her with his mustache, burying his face against her neck.
“I’m going to be sick,” Fern said.
They acted like they didn’t hear her, so she said it again, louder.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
Coach looked over the seat, then looked at Latin Teacher.
“Please,” Fern said, and Latin Teacher sighed and Coach pulled his door handle and pushed his shoulder against it and the car rocked as he got out.
“You make a mess, you’re cleaning it up,” Latin Teacher said, and the door beside Fern clunked open and Coach pulled it wide. Fern hauled herself up by the doorframe, stepped past Coach like she was going to be ill, then ducked around him and ran for Wellwood House.
They said everything was going to be all right. They said it would be like this never happened. They said it was all going to be okay.
They lied.
The bright headlights made the yard too dark in some places, too bright in others, and Fern stumbled as she ran past the hood of the cop car.
“Hey,” Coach said behind her, not overly concerned because where was she going to go?
She heard the driver’s-side door of the cop car open.
“Where’s she going?” Latin Teacher asked Coach.
Fern ran, past Nurse Kent and Dr. Vincent and Reverend Jerry holding Holly’s baby, and Miss Wellwood looking up as she passed.
They said she could go back to her old life. They said it wouldn’t hurt. They said she’d never have to think about it again.
They lied.
She heard other people getting out of their cars. She heard Coach’s belt jingling as he came after her. She saw her shadow looming huge against the front wall of Wellwood House.
They said she was wayward. They said it was all her fault. They said she had done something wrong.
They lied.
Fern fell to her knees at the porch steps and her stitches pulled and a sharp pain twanged through her core, but she didn’t stop because she heard their belts jangling behind her, she saw their huge shadows stretching across the front of the Home. She jammed her hands into the dirt and began to dig.
“What on earth is that girl doing?” a soft Southern accent said, and she recognized the voice of Reverend Jerry.
Who had Holly’s baby in his arms.
Everything has a price, Miss Parcae said. And every price must be paid.
So why did none of them ever pay it? Why did someone else always pay? Someone like Holly. Like Fern. Like Zinnia. Like Rose.
I don’t deserve to cry, Rose said, slapping herself. I don’t deserve to cry.
Fern felt the bottle under her fingers and tore it out of the ground.
“Okay, girlie,” a man said, as Fern pushed herself up and turned around to face the headlights.
They framed the policemen, who stood in a loose circle around her. They looked bored and irritated that she’d made them move so fast in this heat. Behind them, Fern caught a glimpse of Reverend Jerry walking around the side of the house, carrying Holly’s daughter, clutching her to his body, clutching her with his hands.
“Enough fooling around,” Coach said. “Let’s get back in the car.”
Fern took one step backward, feeling behind her with her heel. She stepped up on the porch step. The cops shifted, waiting to see which way she’d go.
“Miss,” a different cop said. “It’s really too hot to play games.”
He sounded young and his voice was kind and Fern realized she didn’t feel the storm.
She looked down and in her hand she didn’t see magic, she just saw a dirty Nehi bottle with some old string wrapped around the top and nothing inside but an inch of crusty water.
“Sweetheart, come on, now,” Latin Teacher said. “You’re acting crazy.”
Fern saw the cops around her, easing forward, and she saw how she must look: a little girl with messy hair and desperate eyes, wearing a dirty dress and old sneakers, pimples on her chin, stomach heavy and slack, holding an empty soft drink bottle in her muck-encrusted hands.
There was no magic here, no power, nothing that made her special. She should drop the bottle, let them take her to jail, let her dad pick her up, stop fighting, stop struggling, go back to her old life, pretend this never happened.
Fern reached up and pulled Hagar’s pouch out of her collar. All she had to do was wear this for another few days and she’d be safe. All she had to do was put the bottle down, get back in the car, and go home. All she had to do was nothing, and nothing would happen. It wasn’t too late.
She tore Hagar’s pouch off her neck and threw it away.
She looked down at the bottle and now she saw it, dark and roiling behind the glass; she could feel it churning in her hand, straining to get out, pressing against the glass, and she raised the Nehi bottle high overhead and in the headlights’ glare she brought it down hard on the edge of the brick step and a small silver crunch tinkled through the hot front yard. Fern faced the cops, holding the jagged neck of the bottle in one hand.
Cops reached for their belts.
These were terrible choices. She shouldn’t have to make these choices. But bad choices were all she had left.
“Okay,” Coach said. “That’s it. End of the road.”
Fern raised the broken glass to her mouth and put out her tongue.
“Hold on now!” the cop with the kind voice said.
“Stop!” Latin Teacher said.
Shadows shifted as they all moved toward her at once, and Fern felt the smooth blade of broken glass against the soft muscle of her tongue. She tasted grit.
“Don’t!” the kind cop said.
How much pain are you willing to endure to achieve your heart’s desire?
Fern bore down from her shoulder and felt a sharp sting in the center of her tongue and she dug in deep, yanking it forward and down and it happened so fast that at first she didn’t feel anything as she slashed the muscle inside her mouth. Then she let the neck of the bottle drop and a faucet of blood turned on and poured down her chin. Pain blasted her full in the face. Fern tried to scream but screaming moved her tongue and it hurt so much, and blood spattered down her dress, and the neck of the bottle dinged off the edge of the brick step and salty, thick blood choked Fern as it flowed back down her throat and she gagged and her tongue felt huge, swelling until it filled her mouth, blocking her throat.
Cops closed around her and she had to do the hard part now, she had to close her eyes and focus, and the lower half of her face was a howling hole of pain but Fern always remembered her lines.
With my pain, I call you, Hecate. See me here, asking for you. Find me by the smell of my blood.
Oh, God, it hurt so much, what had she done
Terrible One of the Earth
she never knew pain before.
Torchbearer
her face, her mouth, her mutilated mouth, burning blood raining down
Queen of the Crossroads
her tongue squirmed
Queen of the Witches
and every twitch was agony
Aidonaia, Apotropaia, Chthonia, Dadophoros
but she couldn’t make it stop moving, squirming, twisting
Enodia, Kleidouchos, Kourotrophos, Melinoë
arms grabbed her, jolted her, sent lightning forking through her face
Nyktipolos, Perseis, Phosphoros, Propolos
men seized Fern with their hands and she let her mouth fill with blood and she gathered her anger and let her rage build
Hecate, Goddess, give me strength
then she leaned her head back and spat, a great mouthful of blood, misting the air, lit by headlights. Agony split her skull in half, a spike sinking into her face.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Dirty slut!”
They locked her arms behind her and Fern couldn’t move, and she felt their hands on her ankles yanking them backward and she panicked as she fell forward, then they lifted her into the air, holding her helpless, face down, drooling blood into the dirt.
And nothing happened.
No storm came. No power thickened the air. Fern was just an unwed mother in dirty sneakers who’d made a mess in the front yard. She’d been so close to going home and now she’d cut herself—mutilated herself—and ruined everything.
“Do whatever is necessary, officers,” she heard Miss Wellwood say.
Arms rotated Fern upright and salty fingers invaded her mouth, pulled back her lips, forced open her jaws.
“Aw, it’s not too deep,” Coach said. “Must hurt like a sumbitch, though.”
“Hey,” the cop with the kind voice said. “Ladies are present.”
“She’s the one spat on us,” Coach said.
He let go of Fern’s face, and her head hung low. She saw dirt and shuffling feet, moving her through the headlights, taking her back to the cop car.
“They don’t pay us enough,” Latin Teacher said.
Her head joggled with every step, bouncing on the end of her neck, sending agony screaming up the root of her tongue, into her shrieking, pain-addled brain.
Please, she thought. They had all lied to her, but please don’t let the witches be liars, too.
They reached the cop car.
“I’ll get Doc,” the cop with the kind voice said, walking away.
Fern thought about Rose screaming as Nurse Kent picked her up and Dr. Vincent sank a needle into her arm and Reverend Jerry’s hands crawling all over Holly’s baby, and nothing they did mattered, and they ran and they ran and they always wound up back here, always bleeding, always paying the price.
Every price must be paid.
So why do the same people pay it, over and over again? Why do the same people always bleed?
Something rattled high in the trees. A sharp, cold breeze skated across the front yard, slithering around ankles. Then Fern heard the door of the cop car open and felt herself shift and swing and they slung her into the back seat. A knife made of pain pierced her jaw as she landed. A pair of hands shoved her legs inside and slammed the door.
Fern sat up as fast as she could and pressed her dress collar to her bleeding mouth. On the radio, the woman’s calm voice recited numbers. Through the windshield Fern saw cops walking back to Miss Wellwood, where she stood beside her station wagon talking to the sheriff, who held his big-brimmed hat in one hand. Gooseflesh prickled Fern’s arms. It was cold in here. Over the stink of overflowing ashtray and old vinyl, Fern thought she smelled something damp.
The cops stood around lighting cigarettes, and Fern thought about their daughters. She thought about their wives. She thought about these men in high school, kings of the football field, going to parties, cutting the weaker girls off from the herd, leading them to dark rooms, away from other people.
The sheriff talking to Miss Wellwood hunched his shoulders like someone had poked him in the middle of his back. One of Miss Wellwood’s hands flew to the side of her head and she looked up.
pek
A raindrop tapped the hood of the cop car.
Cops glanced into the canopy of branches overhead. One of them brushed a hand over his forehead. Now something went Tok against the metal hood of the police car.
Cops dispersed, strolling for their cars or the front porch. Coach and Latin Teacher came toward Fern, heads down, as everyone got out of the rain.
TAK!
A silver crack appeared in the windshield. Fern wondered where it had come from, and then a hundred hammers came down on the cop car as hail played the roof like a drum. Hail hit the hood and bounced into the yard and Latin Teacher and Coach switched direction, running back toward the Home as hail smashed down like it was being poured out of a bottle. Fern flinched as it pounded the car.
She felt the storm. It had been trapped, raging against the glass walls of the Nehi bottle, battering itself against the container, but with no place to go it had curdled, turning in on itself, getting denser and angrier, working itself up into a fury. Now it was unleashed.
The hail came down with a vengeance.
The sound of hail smashing into metal was so loud Fern thought she might lose her mind if it didn’t stop but it kept coming, showing no mercy, getting harder, getting louder.
The air flashed once, electric white, and in slow motion an enormous branch of the live oak peeled from its trunk and plunged straight down as thunder stabbed Fern’s eardrums. The branch embedded itself halfway through the windshield of the other cop car, its wet leaves thrashing madly, then they were all snapped to the right by a sudden wind.
The wind swooped down on the Home like a hawk, tearing everything from the ground and hurling it across the yard, sending the hail sideways. Through the cop car’s blurry, rippling windshield, Fern saw one of the palmettos along the side of the house keel over slowly like a stately lady in a faint and crash into the underbrush.
Fern pulled her feet up on the seat and made herself as small as possible, pressing her bloody collar to her tongue. A new sound cut through the relentless rattle of hail. A howl, long and hollow, rising up all around her, issuing from the depths of the storm, rising and rising, a great and terrible shriek that went up forever.
Fern felt the back of the police car shift. This storm wanted to scrape them from the face of the earth and suck them spiraling into the sky. Leaves and branches whipped across the yard. Fern saw Miss Wellwood standing on the porch, clawing at one of the screen doors of Wellwood House, and the storm tore it from her hands and sent it pinwheeling across the front wall, then pulled it around the corner.
Latin Teacher grabbed the back of Miss Wellwood’s dress and pulled her down as glass exploded across the front of Wellwood House.
Fern had birthed Holly’s storm.
Around the back of the Home hail drummed against the plywood over the windows, screaming through its cracks, then dug its claws into their edges and ripped them away, sending wooden sheets sailing into the trees. Girls screamed and crowded into the second-story hall. Cold air blasted down the corridors behind them as doors exploded from their hinges and slammed into walls and the great storm poked its fingers into the center of the Home.
The storm’s scream rose higher, spiraling up in an endless escalation, a great black mouth bent low over the treetops and sucking everything into its maw. Pine trees that had grown for fifty years found their roots torn from the sandy soil in seconds. The wind pulled at live oaks, found them too deeply rooted, and stripped the leaves from their branches, the branches from their trunks, tried to yank the trunks from the ground. The St. Johns River, swollen with rainwater, boiled over its banks.
Inside the Home, hail punched through the windows room by room—the kitchen, the dining room, the classroom, the front parlor, the music room, the Cong—and yanked their curtains out through shattered panes, making them dance.
Wind rampaged through the halls of Wellwood House, ripping the six portraits of Dr. Wellwood from their walls and tearing them to canvas shreds and gilded splinters.
The wind peeled the roof off the Smoke Shack in a roll and tossed it against the Barn, then sent its two-by-fours cartwheeling into the madly dancing trees. One long spear of lumber whipped end over end across the backyard and sliced into the windows of Miss Wellwood’s office, letting in a battering ram of rain that tore all her paperwork to tatters. Her grandfather clock disappeared in seconds, thrown into the corner, where it collapsed into cogs.
The storm crashed through the rooms, unstoppable, inescapable, attacking the house in a fury. It found Diane’s office and turned her files to pulp. It tore down the chandelier in the front hall.
It dragged parked station wagons and vans backward down driveways. Johnboats were lifted from the river and thrown upside down into yards. It stripped telephone and power lines from their poles, leaving them sparking, and lashing asphalt. It picked up a red-and-white Coca-Cola vending machine from the Gas-Go and spiked it down hard by the highway. It nudged a house from its foundations and shoved it halfway across the road.
On the porch of Wellwood House fragile human bodies held on to one another, pressing themselves close to the ground. Inside, girls clung to the carpets, clutched doorjambs, hugged walls, tried not to be sucked away. The wind screamed around corners and Miss Wellwood lifted her head and keened like a mother losing her child as her father’s Home came apart around her.
The storm seized the porch roof and strained. Nails screeched from wet wood as the roof slewed sideways in an explosion of shingles and lumber, falling forward in a ragged arc, riding its broken columns down in a twisting descent until it sliced into Miss Wellwood’s station wagon like an executioner’s blade. Then it sloughed to one side and crushed Nurse Kent’s VW Bug.
Fern felt her chest fill with ash. Had Holly gotten out? Was she in the Bug? Had Zinnia? She reached for the door handle but a falling palmetto made the ground shake and she yanked her hand away. Somewhere in the storm she thought she heard a dog barking madly. This was too much. It was too strong. She wanted to take it back. How did she make it stop?
The high-pitched drumming of hail on metal slowed, replaced by the lower notes of clattering rain, and the howl dropped its volume to a simple scream.
NOK-NOK
Someone knocked on the window beside Fern. She jumped, pressing herself to the other side of the back seat. Someone was bent over outside, peering through the glass, squinting against the rain, wet strands of hair blowing across her face.
It was Miss Parcae.
She could see Fern.
They faced each other through the glass and Fern understood.
Everything had a price. The witch had come for hers.