Fiendish (18 page)

The thing she described was like the empty memory of who shut me in the cellar. The work of someone more powerful than anything I could imagine. “How can a person be made to forget something like that?”

“It wouldn’t be hard with craft,” she said. “Especially not during the reckoning, with all that light blowing things up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you, fool’s light works like an electrical charge or a battery. It makes any other craft way stronger than it would be otherwise. People who know how to gather it up from the hollow and distill it down can use it to do crazy things.”

I thought of the shack in the birchwood behind Greg Heintz’s house, stacked with jars of strange billowing smoke, hissing and crackling, going to rot.

“You’re saying I’m like a poison that makes everyone else’s craft go crazy.”

“Not like that, just something that makes us . . . more. I mean, I feel like just being near you makes me stronger. Not wild or out of control—my temper’s a little worse, maybe—but mostly I just feel brighter.”

I nodded. “But it doesn’t even seem to be that big of a deal. I mean, you’re never so unwound that you’re going to start burning things up on accident, and Rae doesn’t seem bothered by me at all.”

Shiny smiled. “Well, with Rae, it’s hard to tell if
anything
bothers her. I think maybe you make her more distracted—or farther away. That’s the thing about air, though—it’s all ideas, and ideas can mess up the world big-time, but they don’t go ruining the animals or making the creek rise. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about Rae. I think the worst you can do to her is just making a smart person smarter.”

“So, you think the real problem is Fisher, then,” I said, and even saying it made my heart sink.

Shiny took a deep breath, and then another, like she was trying out all the words she wanted to say before she said them.

“We have to stay away from him,” she said finally, and none of the breathing or the reconsidering of her words had made any difference. It still hurt to hear.

“You mean,
I
have to.”

“Listen to me. His humor is dirt, and dirt is the realest, rawest thing in the world. Around you, he doesn’t get vague, and he doesn’t get mean. He
changes
things. Real, living things that can tear down houses or hurt people. And maybe he’s kept his craft pretty low so far, but last night was out of control. What if it gets worse?”

I shook my head. “You don’t know that it will. I think it’s the first time anything like that’s ever happened around him unless he was down in the hollow. Maybe that, what happened at the fair, maybe it wasn’t even him. What about the fish? He didn’t do
that
!”

And I remembered, too, what Isola had said about five being a terrible number. Even if Shiny and Rae and I had a better hold on our craft than Fisher did, he might not be the only place to lay blame. There were five points on the star, and that meant there was still the power of creek.

But Shiny’s eyes were fixed far off out the window, past the barn, past the dark hay fields. “Clementine, craft gets wild in the hollow because there’s all the fool’s light down there.” Then she reached across the table and touched my collarbone. “Fisher gets like that with you, because of all the fool’s light in here. And you want to run around with him like it’s no big deal?”

The thing I didn’t know how to make her see, though, was that it
was
a big deal. He and I were tied together by something I didn’t understand, but it hummed at me like a radio signal. I couldn’t untangle myself.

“I didn’t choose him,” I said. “But I’m not going to abandon him, either. There has to be a way to keep it low. Maybe he can find a way to rein it in. Maybe he can figure out how to control it.”

Shiny sighed, covering her face with her hands. “Maybe. Maybe he can control it, or maybe he’ll try and fail and everything will go to hell, and you’ll be there to suffer for it, because you couldn’t stay away.”

“I’m sorry. I just—I like him.”

“I know,” she said, but when she looked up, her face was tired. “Too bad he’s probably going to be the death of us.”

THE BRIDGE

CHAPTER TWENTY

I
n the morning, we didn’t talk about it.

The ground around the Willows was still muddy and waterlogged, but things were already starting to dry out. The chicken seemed no worse for wear, and Shiny and I watched it peck around in the wire run along with the rest. I wondered how long we were going to keep not talking about it.

The fiend by the creek had said that the hollow was leaking out, finding a hold in the natural world, but the incident of the lilies at the fair had seemed a lot more like the natural world was working through Fisher, and if that was true, then he had gotten the fuel for it from me.

The idea made sense up to a point, but no matter how I turned the particulars over in my mind, there was more to it, because when it was just the two of us, he was fine. If the other night was any indication, it was when the others were around—Shiny and Rae—that things spun out of kilter. Two of us together weren’t enough, but three or four, and it was a different situation. I didn’t like to think what would happen with five.

Five kinds of wrong blood. Five kinds of full-scale craft that added up to the reckoning. The only humor missing was creek, but Isola had seemed to have her own ideas on that account. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if she wasn’t right.

At first glance, Davenport was not the clearest candidate for someone born crooked, but after what I’d seen out in the birchwood, nothing I could learn about Greg Heintz was likely to surprise me much.

It was just after ten when Fisher’s Trans Am came screaming into the driveway. The sky overhead was a watery blue, and I had already made up my mind what we had to do.

“Are you here to take me back down to the hollow?” I said when he came to the door, sitting down on the floor in front of him and pulling on my secondhand galoshes.

His eyebrows went up and his mouth opened like I had asked if he would take me to the moon. “
No
. Why the hell would I want to do that? You saw what happened last time. You know—that day it nearly killed me? For what earthly purpose would I want to take you back there?”

I pulled a ratty sweater out of the orange crate and put it on over my dress. “Because what you’ve got, you’re going to learn to control it. And it seems like it would probably be better to practice down there where no one can see.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were dangerous at the fair,” I said. “But then you came to your senses and got it low. If you did it once, you can do it again.”

* * *

We were quiet on the drive up to Harlan’s pasture. Fisher seemed lost in thought, but I could tell just from the way he clenched his hands on the steering wheel that he didn’t like where we were headed.

“This is a really bad idea,” he said finally, when we’d slid down the side of the bluff into the boggy stream bed that led through the hollow.

“It’s only bad if you can’t figure out how to control it. And you have to, because losing hold of it in town again is going to . . .” I didn’t like to say the rest, though, so all I said was, “You just
have
to.”

Fisher led me through the moss and cattails and out into the meadow. It had bloomed since the last time we’d been there, full of cherry-red poppies bending gently in the breeze. The flooding hadn’t touched a thing down here. All over the dogwood tree, flowers opened like butterflies as we came up the tiny hill. They started out pink and then bloomed other colors, slowly and completely, seeping red, blue, purple in the soft, hazy light.

“Are you okay, still?” I asked, keeping a close eye on him for any sign of mayhem.

“Yeah,” he said, toneless and stone faced. “Yeah, I’m good.”

The way he squared his shoulders told a different story, though. It was the same way he’d looked that night at the fair, standing horror-struck over the tarp, like he was barely hanging on. I didn’t like the way he kept himself so still, like he was breathing too carefully, or was a bomb that could go off at any minute.

We settled ourselves in the meadow, and I looked up at him. “Okay, so when you change the color of the tree or make something grow, how do you do it?”

“Down here, it’s easy,” he said. “I just think something, and then it kind of happens. On its own, almost. Like it always wanted to do exactly that, and I’m just there to . . . let it.”

I nodded. I was beginning to believe that my own kind of craft was the same. Last night, the chicken had wanted to be alive, and once I was seeing the heart of it, I could just move the parts to give it that, because everything in it had wanted to be better.

“Do it then,” I said. “Make something happen.”

“Okay,” Fisher said, but he kept glancing around the meadow, looking nervous. “Once it gets started though, it doesn’t want to stop.”

“Well, how did you stop it at the fair the other night?” I tried to sound offhand and only succeeded partway.

Even though I understood his reasons for it, I could still feel the slap of how he had turned his back, like
I
was the one who’d conjured up the monstrous flowers and let them out into the world.

He laughed softly, even though the question wasn’t funny. “I didn’t really think it through. You were telling me to get it together. I thought about you. I thought how you’d been walled up so long, and that if you could keep cool and figure out how to get rescued after that many years, I could do it for thirty seconds.”

“Okay, so make something happen and remember that I was in a cellar for a really long time, and if I can do that, then you can keep your craft low. Whatever wants out, let it come.”

“That’s going to be pretty dangerous.”

Even as he said it, he was already up and restless, pacing circles around the trunk of the tree, his boots leaving a fairy ring of mushrooms as he walked. They started as harmless morels and went straight to spindly white destroying angels in about two seconds.

“Your mushrooms are turning poisonous.”

Fisher nodded, keeping his lips pressed together. The grass was going brown around his boots now and he paced faster, raking his fingers through his hair.

“I think you should go,” he said under his breath. “I can feel the hell dogs coming. They’ll be here in a second if you don’t get moving.”

“Don’t think about it. That’s as good as you calling them.”

“I can’t
help
it.” He was breathing fast and shallow, clenching and unclenching his hands.

“Stop!”

As soon as I said it, he went very still. He was shivering, looking past me to the edge of the trees. My eyes darted to the shadows there, following his gaze.

The whole wood seemed to be moving, alight with tiny glowing embers—the itchy red eyes of the hell dogs.

“Fisher,” I whispered. “You have to stop
now
, before they come out here.”

But it was too late.

The dark, low-slung shadows of the hell dogs were creeping around the edges of the clearing. The clouds were coming in.

“It’s time for you to run,” he said in a low, hopeless voice.

The pack moved around us, flitting between the trees, making a wide net. They had us completely surrounded.

Then something caught my eye behind them and I froze. A fiend was standing in the tall grass at the edge of the meadow, looking straight at me. Her face was long and birdlike, and she didn’t speak or move, just stood with her hands clasped against the front of her dress, watching as the dogs circled. Every time their course drew near her, they snarled and shied away like she was poison.

Even as they skirted her, though, their eyes were still fixed on us, and I half-expected them to bolt from the woods.

Fisher stood with his shoulders squared and his hands in fists, like every muscle in his body was devoted to holding them back, keeping them at bay.

Then he glanced at me, just once, just for a second, and it broke.

One of the hell dogs came darting out across the grass, all claws and jaws and dripping teeth. Then it lunged, careening up at me through the sea of poppies.

I kicked it. The impact when my foot connected with its side was heavy and solid, knocking the dog away.

“You better get this situation under control
right
now,” I yelled, scrambling back through the crumbling flowers, away from where the dog crouched, black and oily. “
Now
, Fisher—there are more of them!”

But as he turned to face the woods, I saw the strangest thing.

A row of pale shapes was appearing out of the trees. A whole crowd of fiends were gathering around us, watching like ghosts as the scene unfolded. Their eyes were bright and curious.

There was no time to wonder at their sudden appearance, though. Already, the hell dog had shaken itself off and was back on its feet. It crouched to spring again and I turned to run.

Even as I did, the grass was growing longer, going to bindweed and brambles all around me, catching at my legs. The dog hit me in the shoulder, knocking me into the sea of blackening poppies.

There was the swampy reek of its breath, its weight on my chest, and I swung my arms up and caught it around the neck. As soon as I touched it, it seemed to go insane, slashing at my face as I tried to hold it back.

Fisher ran across to me, turning his back on the woods, and I was so terribly sure that in a minute, the dogs would swarm us the way they had on the day they’d almost killed him.

On top of me, the hell dog thrashed and twisted. Its fur felt matted, greasy between my fingers, and I was sure I might scream. The hot cloud of its breath was in my face, and its eyes were red and oozing and mad.

Then, the toe of Fisher’s boot came flashing down, catching it in the side of the head and sending it tumbling away from me.

For a second, I lay on my back and the dog lay next to me, writhing on the grass, trying to right itself. Before it could get to its feet, though, Fisher slammed the heel of his boot down on its throat. There was an awful crunching sound and then it stopped moving. I sat up, already bracing myself for the onslaught of the hell dogs, but it didn’t come.

The fiends stood all through the meadow now, arranged around us like sentries.

I’d been so sure that down here in the hollow, this was Fisher’s place—his world—but he wasn’t the one calling them.

The day I’d first come down, the creek fiend with the blurry eyes had told me that it was my wise, old blood drawing all the fiends out of the trees. Then, the whole state of affairs had seemed like just another feature of being where I shouldn’t, but now I knew that what she’d really been talking about was the fool’s light. I could feel the warm, electric tug that drew them, pulling like a magnet, humming in my bones.

They had come to see me.

I searched their faces, each one strange and wild and distinct. Some looked like people, and some more like animals, but all of them were lovely and terrible. The white-haired fiend from the creek was not among them.

The one closest was broad, heavy through the shoulders with a thick jaw and flared nostrils, almost like a bull, and as I raised my head to meet its gaze, I understood why the dogs still hadn’t reached us.

Every time one of them tried to slink past, the fiend caught it by its scuff, turning and flinging it back into the woods. On the other side of us, the woman on fire stood wrapped in her bed sheet, burning so bright that the pack all retreated, cringing in the shadows. Farther back, under the dense canopy of leaves, another fiend glowed faintly in the dimness, standing so still the air around her seemed to crackle. It was the same one I’d seen in the bedroom mirror the night before, with her face stark and empty and her eyes full of light.

By the head of the path that led back up the bluff, a man in a white church shirt and black trousers stood in the shade of a sycamore. He was wearing a blindfold and a flat-brimmed preacher’s hat, and his face was thin and sallow, with no hair or eyebrows as far as I could tell.

He grinned at me, showing row upon row of jagged teeth. Every hell dog for an acre seemed to be slinking over to him to crouch at his feet like pets. His smile was full of a manic light, and I thought that I had never seen anyone so hungry.

“Fisher,” I whispered, “I know it doesn’t really look like it, but I think it’s all right now.”

He was standing over me with his fists clenched and his feet planted, waiting for the pack of dogs to lunge at us. But when they didn’t come, and he understood that they wouldn’t, he let himself breathe and sank down next to me.

I rolled onto my hands and knees. There was a scrape on my chin that was settling to a low throb. The skin felt hot and raw, but I wasn’t really bleeding.

Fisher crouched over me, examining my face. His hands were shaking and I was scared that in a minute he would try to touch the black ooze smeared across my chin, stinking and stinging where the dog had scratched me.

Around us the air crackled with a dry, frantic electricity, like at any second the lightning would start, but the hell dogs were slinking away.

“It’s okay,” I said, catching him by the wrists. “Calm down. I got it all over my hands the other day and it wiped right off. It’s not poison. At least, probably not to anyone but you. It’s like you practically wished yourself a place that could
hurt
you.”

Fisher didn’t answer, but after a second, he nodded. He bowed his head and then the panic seemed to run out of him. The air lightened. He pressed his hands against his face.

Over in the trees, the fiends had faded back into the shadows. In the clearing, everything was impossibly still.

* * *

When I’d held my hand against my chin long enough that the little bit of bleeding had stopped altogether, we started back toward the Willows, cutting down through the bottom of the hollow and out onto Foxhill Road.

The flooding had receded everywhere except over at the north side of the Heintzes’ property line, where the Blue Jack Creek wound through the birch woods. There, the standing water was just as a bad as it had been yesterday, with no signs of going down.

As we headed for the car, both of us were quiet, though I suspected for different reasons.