Feral (23 page)

The pack of ferals was still there, still at the cemetery. But the cats weren't snarling, weren't menacing.
Drawn by the crowd, Claire
, she told herself.
That's all. And by the smell of the garbage.
In fact, their faces were all pointed in the same direction: toward the overflowing Dumpster near the church. Garbage still left from the warming center. They meowed, the hungry strays innocently racing each other, trying to be the first to get there, to scavenge.

But how could the cemetery have changed so drastically—so quickly?

A hiss poured at her from the wall. When Claire turned, she saw her—the old calico—
No
, she thought,
not the cat. Serena.

She had something in her mouth—a small gray lump. She lowered her head, dropping it beside her. The mouse began to scurry, racing to make a getaway. But the old cat swooped, dropping down onto her front elbows and covering the mouse with both paws.

She turned her head to the side and hissed at Claire as if to taunt her.

The town wasn't just peculiar—it was sinister. And no one saw it but Claire. But after everything she'd been through, it only made sense that Claire would see the world differently. Didn't it?

Casey's ghost was in the basement. It was clear, too, that no one in Peculiar was dead—their spirits were alive in the fog. And now, Serena's spirit was staring out at Claire through the eyes of the cat. She freed her mouse once more, only to catch and torture it all over again.

She smiled wickedly at Claire, the victim she had clearly chosen to play her next game of cat and mouse.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

C
laire slept fitfully, tossing her sweaty body about beneath the blankets as she dreamed repeatedly of the terrifying events of the Sims funeral.

Midmorning on Friday, she rolled to her side, hugging her blankets, glad that school had been canceled once more, this time for a “day of reflection.” She wasn't sure if Becca and Owen had actually seen her fall into the grave—but she did know that small-town word of mouth would have informed them both by now. She also knew that she'd never be able to stand the look Becca would surely flash her, the girl who had been inside Serena's grave: concern and grief mixed with an unmistakable splash of horror.

It was almost like cheating death, actually—the idea of being inside a grave and then fished back out. Then again, Claire had cheated death once before. She was good at it.

The more Claire thought about it, the more it seemed as though Casey and Serena had cheated death, too. Here they both were, two spirits who had somehow outlived their own bodies
and
somehow escaped the fog, the spirits of the town dead whose job seemed to be ushering the newly dead to the afterlife—whatever that consisted of.

She knew it—she knew what she'd seen in the cemetery and the basement of Peculiar High. She knew that Casey was talking to her.
People get hurt when they're not where they're supposed to be
, he'd told her, all while showing her the alley that had led to the parking lot where
she'd
been hurt—the alley that Dr. Cain had no idea Claire would try to use as a shortcut. Serena was talking, too—the way she'd shown herself to Claire at the funeral, and even when Claire had found her body. The way the world had switched up on Claire back in the woods, the way she'd felt certain she was staring into her own brutalized face and not Serena's—Claire felt absolutely certain that Serena was behind that, every bit as much as Casey was responsible for the Peculiar basement turning into a Chicago alley. Casey and Serena were manipulating the surroundings in order to get Claire's attention, to tell her something. At least, that was what she hoped. But that awful look on the cat's face back at the cemetery hadn't begged for help. It had threatened.

Claire knew, too, that if she told anyone any of this, they'd back away from her slowly, the same way she would have backed away from an injured tiger that had escaped from the zoo.

Sure, it sounded crazy. If Claire hadn't seen it with her own eyes,
she
would have thought it was crazy. But it wasn't her—it was the town—this awful town. She also knew she had to keep the real Serena story to herself until she figured it out—until she saw the full picture. She'd learned that after she'd spread the story of what happened to Rachelle on the Chicago evening news. You kept your mouth shut until you made sure no one was on your tail. You kept your mouth shut until you knew
everything.

She pulled herself from her bed, headed downstairs, and found Dr. Cain curled over his computer at the kitchen table.

“You didn't go to work?” she asked.

Dr. Cain smiled at her. “I had a bunch of paperwork to get done. Notes to be transcribed.”

Claire touched her queasy stomach. She could smell a lie on her father, every bit as clearly as soured milk. He was worried. He'd stayed to keep an eye on her.

“I planned to meet Rich this morning,” she lied.

“After yesterday?” he said, his face drooping. “Don't you think you should stay and rest?”

“I'm fine,” she said hastily. Why didn't anyone seem to realize that there was nothing restful about being stared at as though you were about to crack and shatter? She hadn't liked Rachelle looking at her that way, and she didn't like her father looking at her that way now.

“How's that bump?” Dr. Cain asked, standing and reaching for the back of Claire's head.

Claire fought the urge to let out an exasperated sigh. She bristled against being babied.

“Oh, please,” Claire said, rolling her eyes. “It's just a bruise.” She hugged her dad tightly, grabbed a banana off the counter for breakfast, and scooted out of the kitchen, up the stairs.

She dressed quickly, tossing on a pair of jeans that rubbed like sandpaper against her ankle. The scratches that cat had given her were more tender than she'd expected them to be.

No
, she corrected herself,
the scratches
Serena
gave me.
She paused, eyeing herself in her bedroom mirror as she prepared to tug a baggy black sweater on over her head. The cameo still dangled from her throat. Knowing the necklace had belonged to Serena gave Claire an undeniable urge to get to the bottom of whatever Serena had been investigating in the days leading up to her death. Had Serena seen Casey? Had she known about the town dead when something happened to her? Was that why she didn't want to go with the fog? Or was she unwilling to go because she had unfinished business here on earth?

Maybe, Claire thought, Serena's business had something to do with her.

She shuddered, remembering again the fiendish look Serena had flashed her, shining through the cat's ancient face as she sat atop the cemetery wall.
Cat and mouse . . .

“Can't be,” Claire said, dismissing the thought as she tugged her sweater on the rest of the way. “What could she possibly have against me? I haven't done anything to her.

She finished dressing and thundered back down the stairs. “See you later, Dad!” Claire called out, sliding into her naval trench and hurrying through the front door before her father could say anything else.

When Rich appeared in his own doorway, Claire felt any remaining queasiness lift from her gut. There was something about him that made her feel like she could talk to him, really
talk
, like she could blurt out all those thoughts that had just been racing through her head, and that he would help her—without judgment.

Not yet
, she reminded herself.
You don't have the whole story yet.

What she did wind up blurting was, “My scratches are really sore. And we don't have anything to put on them. Thought you might.”

“What scratches?” he asked through a frown.

“On my ankle. That cat—one of the ferals—scratched me yesterday, at the cemetery. That's why I fell in that grave. I was trying to avoid her. I don't want them getting infected.”

“Let's take a look,” he said, stepping out on the front porch and squatting down toward her, ankle level.

Claire hiked the leg of her jeans. A sense of relief flooded her—a kind of peace that she had not known, not since that awful day last spring. All because she'd shown Rich a silly little wound.

“They're a little red,” he assessed, staring at her scratches. “That can actually be dangerous—you could get cat scratch fever.”

“That's not a real disease,” Claire said. “That's some old song.”

He chuckled, turning his eyes up toward her. “Actually, it is a real disease.”

“Maybe 'Bout Out has something,” Claire suggested. “One of those great old-fashioned remedies.”

“Prid salve, maybe,” Rich offered.

“Prid what?”

He grinned, grabbing his coat from a hook just inside the door. “Salve. Prid salve. It's an old-school first aid remedy. People here swear by it. Ought to help draw out any infection that might be in there.”

As they walked, Rich tugged his stocking cap out of his pocket and stuck it over his head, letting the wavy ends of his brown hair stick out like unruly weeds.

They trudged toward the general store, their breath floating hazily through the cold morning air, their feet making a path through the fresh two inches of snow that had fallen the night before.

She and Rich walked in a kind of uneasy quiet as they approached the little wooden building. Today, the rusted signs looked like faded tattoos on old skin—tattoos that advertised Mobiloil and Campbell's Soup and Coca-Cola “In Bottles.” Claire felt she could come to 'Bout Out every day and never be completely finished reading all the signs.

Claire turned a hesitant eye toward the church and cemetery on the opposite side of the street—afraid to find the fog swirling about, but more afraid of turning a blind eye toward the churchyard just long enough to be snuck up on.

For the first time, she noticed that the white steeple of the church pointed toward the sky at an angle, as though the building had begun to lean because of a rotting foundation. Smoke seeped from a roof vent, swirling and curling toward the cemetery. The oldest headstones appeared crooked, too, like teeth growing every which way. The mound of exposed earth on Serena's grave, visible from the street, looked like a fresh wound on the earth.

And the fog slithered between the rows, swirled among the trees.

Claire shivered, the church suddenly seeming to lean under the sheer weight of Peculiar's history—its sadness, its unending misery. Its dead that could rise back out of their graves.

A clank closer to the stone wall that surrounded the cemetery drew Claire's attention toward the church Dumpster, overflowing with the trash that had accumulated during the ice storm, services that had grown in popularity since Serena's disappearance, and the funeral. Hordes of hungry ferals had jumped to the lip of the Dumpster, following the unmistakably sour smell of garbage, as they had at Serena's memorial. They edged their feet into the center, where the trash was packed tight enough to support their weight. They nosed their way about the containers, picking their way through.

A lone cat stood atop the stone wall, watching the others scrounge. The same scraggly old feral that had been under the tarp on Claire's woodpile—
The dirty feral that scratched my leg. The same mangy calico I saw Serena fall into
, she thought, as her skin grew uncomfortably tight beneath her goose bumps.

None of the cats paid much attention when a lone gray tomcat hoisted himself onto the lip, then edged his way across the overflowing Dumpster. Or when another calico jumped and began to forage.

But when the calico that had scratched Claire launched herself toward the open Dumpster, the ferals turned to face her, crouching low. They flashed their teeth. Snarled and wailed. They hissed, tails swollen. They opened their mouths, the afternoon sun reflecting against their teeth as though they were knife blades.

The ancient cat teetered precariously on the lip of the Dumpster, fighting to hold her ground.

A black feral narrowed his green eyes, snarled, and threw his paw out, taking a swipe at her. The calico skirted away, not quite fast enough to miss his claws completely. Blood poured from her aging skin, a bright vibrant red against the white and tan fur on her leg.

She fell from the Dumpster, her body swiveling and twisting in midair as she tumbled toward the ground. When she hit, she staggered in a way that made Claire remember her own disorienting fall into Serena's grave, how hitting the ground had made her body vibrate, turning her bones into the keys of a xylophone.

The calico hoisted herself over the stone wall and scurried across the street, right across the path that Claire and Rich were taking to 'Bout Out.

“
Sereeeennnnnaaahhhh
,” Claire heard, the hiss like a hundred whispers exploding all at once. When she turned toward the cemetery, the fog thickened. It swirled, heads pulling out of the white clump, their mouths moving in unison. “You will not win,” the fog warned.

As the old cat scampered to get away, more ferals perched in the 'Bout Out lot yowled at her, flashing their teeth.

“The cats don't like you, Serena,” the fog warned. “You're not natural; they'll stop you, they'll kill you, destroy the body you've stolen. And we'll take you. You cannot stay here forever.”

“Claire,” Rich called, the sound of her own name interrupting the horror playing out around her.

She followed his voice to find him standing on the weather-worn front porch of the general store, icicles clinging to the corrugated tin roof above his head. “Are you coming?” he asked, in a tone that said he'd already asked her more than once. He pointed at the entrance. “It's warm in there.”