Fiendish (19 page)

I was considering the way the fiends had all gathered in the meadow, like they were coming out of the darkest corners of the hollow to find me. I guessed that Fisher was probably thinking about how he’d been able to get some measure of control over his craft, but not enough.

From the road, we could see a fallen oak tree that had washed up onto a little slab bridge that spanned the creek at the back of the Heintzes’ property. The bridge was two inches underwater and the tree’s branches made a kind of net where little heaps of trash had floated by and gotten caught. Beside a tangle of wire and a mayonnaise jar with the label half off, a pale shape lay in the water.

My heart leapt, slamming in my chest. I was so afraid that it was something strange and wrong and awful. Something with teeth.

I dropped Fisher’s hand and took off toward the creek, already thinking how to kill it, to hide it like Shiny had done to the fish. I was halfway to the bank before I saw that the thing in the water was no monster. A woman lay facedown in the tangle of branches beside the bridge. From where I stood, her skin was bluish. Her hair looked white.

I splashed out onto the bridge and dropped to my knees, leaning out into the water to catch hold of her. Long strands of willow root and waterweed had wrapped around the woman’s wrists and ankles, sticking to her bare legs. She had a length of rope tied tight around her neck like a snare.

I knelt there on the slab, drying my hands on the front of my shirt again and again. She lay with her head to one side, hair fanning out like a web in the current. It was the fiend who’d come to us in the hollow the day I’d followed Fisher. She’d licked his blood off the screwdriver and warned me about the reckoning star. Now she floated in front of me, cold like twilight. Like creek water.

Fisher moved behind me, splashing closer. After a second, he touched my shoulder.

“Is she drowned?” I said, but even before I said it, I knew it was a stupid question. The rope around her neck was horrible. She’d been dead before she ever went in the water.

Fisher didn’t answer. He pulled her out, laying her tenderly on the bridge, where the bottom end of the splintered oak trunk had fetched up onto the slab. Her head rested against the tree, so still she almost looked like she was sleeping. Her hands were long and gnarled as claws.

I stood over her. Before, she had seemed cold and alien and monstrous. Now she looked like a fairy or a mermaid. She looked magical. Not like something that could ever die.

“What are we supposed to do?” I said, shivering in the water.

Fisher didn’t answer. After pulling her out and laying her down, he’d turned away. He sat on the edge of the slab with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Close her eyes.” His voice was hoarse and ferocious, breaking.

I got down on my knees and rested my hand on her face. Her skin was cold. I touched her eyelids, pressing them closed with my thumb and finger, but they just fell open again, sorrowful and cloudy.

“Do you have any money?” I said. “Any coins?”

Fisher dug in his pocket and tossed a handful of change at me without turning around. I crawled across the bridge, picking quarters out of the water. I set them carefully over the fiend’s staring eyes. They glinted silver in the daylight, bright like falling stars.

I brushed the hair back from her face and tried to undo the rope, but the knots were wet, too solid to move, and I left it.

“What do we do now?” I whispered.

Fisher didn’t answer. He was sitting on the flooded bridge with his head in his hands. Water ran and lapped around him, washing over his boots, tugging at his jeans.

I reached out to the fiend, holding her hand in mine. It was limp and cold. Her claws were smooth, digging into my skin.

“We have to bury her,” I said. “It’s the only way to keep the hollow from spreading.”

Fisher nodded, but didn’t open his eyes or look at me.

“I’ll go and get help. Will you stay with her?”

“What do you think’s going to happen to her
now
? Nothing can get at her, nothing can hurt her.”

I held the fiend’s hand tighter, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “Please.
Please
stay. I don’t want to leave her like this.”

Fisher looked up at me, but he didn’t answer as I got up from the muddy water and started back toward the flooded bank. He didn’t move from the bridge.

THE FUNERAL

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

S
hiny was out behind the house, sitting on the tire swing and shoving herself back and forth with one foot. Rae was perched on the rusty seat of the hay rake, with her ankles crossed and a giant cardigan sweater tucked around her like wings. A red bicycle with rainbow streamers on the handlebars and a wicker basket was lying next to her, tipped over in the grass.

I ran up to them, rumpled and muddy, my damp dress sticking to my legs. “Shiny, we have some bad trouble.”

She looked up with her hair in her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s a fiend lying dead at the back of Greg Heintz’s property. She’s out there in the creek with a rope around her neck, and it’s pretty clear that someone killed her.”

Shiny brought the swing to a stop and stood with her knees locked, holding onto the ropes, looking off toward the high, muddy creek. She stared so long, I wasn’t sure she’d understood.

Then she turned back to me. “What’s it doing to the creek water? Is it doing anything? Is the water going bad?”

“I don’t think so—at least, not yet. But I don’t know how long that’s going to last.”

“Okay,” she said. “Here’s what we’ll do. There’s a little cemetery down at the south end of the hollow—just an acre maybe, and just for the old families. The ground’s rocky enough down there that we should take a pickax, and there’s some shovels in the barn.”

“Fisher would help,” I said, although I wasn’t so sure. He’d looked pretty discomposed when he dragged the body from the water. “He’s waiting at the bridge.”

Shiny climbed off the swing and stalked across to the barn, grabbing the garden shovel down from the wall and shaking her head. “We don’t need him.”

“Shiny, we have to do this fast and I don’t know if we’ll manage without him. You think that two of us and Rae are going to be able to dig a grave and get a body across the creek before dark? We need all the help we can get.”

Shiny scowled, but Rae got to her feet, brushing the grass off her dress. “We should get Davenport first,” she said. “She’s going to need to hear this.”

Shiny and I both looked to Rae with our eyebrows up and our mouths open.

“What? You say somebody killed one of those things on her daddy’s property, and I’m saying that her daddy is a maniac and likes to kill things.”

“You really think we should just knock on the door and tell her?” Shiny said.

Rae’s face was stony. “She lives out there in that house all by herself with a man who hates fiends louder than anyone I’ve ever met and who might now have killed one. I’m not saying he’s going to hurt her. All I’m saying is, for the love of God, do you really trust him
not
to?”

Shiny was still looking doubtful, but I knew Rae was right. If there was one thing that worried me more than the thought of what Greg Heintz had done out in the birchwood, it was what he might still be inclined to do. Isola had as much as said that Davenport was tied to the star just like the rest of us, and if the pronouncement was right, it could mean she was in a whole lot of danger.

“Okay,” I said finally, tipping my head back and raking my hands through my hair. “But we have to hurry. Let’s get the tools together and go get her.”

* * *

When we got to the zoo, I was surprised to see how bad the property still was. Even with the creek down and the roads clear, the ground around the Heintz place was wet and muddy.

As we crossed the stretch of soggy yard, I glanced around me, keeping my eye out for Mr. Heintz, but I didn’t see any sign of him, and his truck wasn’t parked in the driveway. I could only hope that he hadn’t had an itch to go roaming around out in the woods to check how his craft shed had weathered the flood.

The little house looked faded and lonely, sitting tucked back under the cedars. I stepped up onto the porch and called in through the open door. “Davenport? Hey, you in there?”

She came out in a cotton print dress that looked homemade and about a million years old. She was tangle-haired and barefoot, looking like a completely different person than the girl who paid money for Myloria’s needle or scooped ice cream in a stupid paper hat.

“What’s going on?” she said, sounding dim and sleepy.

I was more than a little nervous about how we were all standing there in the middle of the yard, worried that her dad would come back at any second.

“Get shoes,” I said. “I’ll tell you when we’re away from the house.”

She gave me a long, bottomless look, then disappeared into the house, coming back with a pair of cracked rubber boots with the tops cut short.

I waited till we were out in the road before I stopped and turned to her. “Davenport, how much do you know about what your dad does out in the birchwood?”

She stood looking at me like I’d asked if her daddy owned an airplane. “They’re woods,” she said simply. “He fishes and hunts, puts out trip wires, and finds things. You can do a lot of stuff with woods.”

“Well, you know about the fiends, right?” I said. “You know they’re like demons or little gods, and they’ve got a kind of craft that can stir up the whole world?”

She nodded, watching me with her face half-turned away. “I know your family is supposed to be in with them some kind of neck-deep.”

Beside me, Shiny let her breath out between her teeth, but I just nodded. “Yes, that’s about the shape of it. But listen—”

I was meaning to explain about the body in the creek, but Shiny got there first, talking over me. “Look, there’s a situation in the woods, and it’s really important to get it under control before someone finds out and comes raging down into the Willows again with a gas can. Whatever happens, you can
not
tell your dad.”

Davenport’s eyes flicked down and away, then back to Shiny before she nodded. The glance made her look small and scared, but by now, I knew she was no stranger to keeping secrets from her dad.

I moved closer, trying to sound low and reasonable. “We found something out on the slab bridge.”

Davenport backed away, shaking her head. Her eyes were suddenly big and unfocused. “What do you think you were doing, coming on our property?”

“Davenport, listen to me. We found one of the fiends from Wixby Hollow, murdered in the creek behind your house. She’s out on the bridge, and someone needs to get her in the ground before all the craft seeps out of her and starts spreading.”

Assuming it hadn’t already, but I didn’t see how it would do anyone any good to mention that.

Davenport shook her head. “No, no way. I’m not having anything to do with any bodies, and certainly not with any kind of fiends.”

Rae turned on her, and for the first time since I’d known her, she looked mad. “Are you soft in your head? You think any one of us
wants
to do this? But we’re in it now, just the same as you are, and if you have even a scrap of love for this town, or the Willows, or your own skin, then you are going to help us put this thing to bed.”

Davenport flinched, hugging her shoulders, shaking her head again and again, like she could never stop shaking it. “I can’t. Rae, I
can’t
.”

The way she said it was shaky, though, like a wall of tears was welling up inside her, and I couldn’t tell if she was just that scared to be punished for even being out in the road with us, or if she was truly that sorry she couldn’t help us.

Beside me, the air around Shiny was going white-hot, how it did when she started to lose her temper. “Look, I just think it’s pretty low, how you can’t be bothered to keep all of us down in the Willows safe from crazies like your own father! He killed that fiend, as sure as shit, and now the body is lying out there messing up the creek by the second, and you won’t even help?”

Davenport looked nearly anguished. “What are you
talking
about? He never—” Her voice broke and she tried again, nearly choking on the words. “He’s—”

Then she stumbled back from us and took off running back to the house, tripping over her old boots, down the road and away from us.

Shiny turned back to me with an aggrieved look, shaking her head. “Well, shit. That went well.”

“Come on,” Rae said heavily. “These things don’t bury themselves.”

* * *

We left the road at the edge of the Beekman property and waded out through the flooded birches in single file, more or less headed for the slab bridge. I kept my eye sharp for hooks or traps or buried TV tubes, but we made it through the woods with no incident

Fisher was sitting where I’d left him, with his elbows on his knees and his head down. He’d been good as his word and hadn’t left her alone, but he was at the far end of the bridge from her, as far away as he could get, and had his back to her.

When I splashed out to him, he looked up. I stood over him in the water, trying to see the shape of what he was feeling but I couldn’t. If it had a color, it was muddled, like he was lost in his own head. Maybe it wasn’t a clear feeling at all.

“Can you help dig a grave?” I said, waving to the bundle of tools that Shiny carried. “We’ll get her there, if you can dig.”

Shiny started over to us with the shovels, but stopped short, ankle-deep in the creek.

As soon as she’d stepped up onto the slab, the muddled feeling coming off Fisher was not just a feeling anymore, but a solid thing. It churned around us, spreading through the water. Below the surface, willow roots were rippling and twisting their way onto the bridge, crawling over the cement like snakes, and out to where the fiend lay, pale and still.

“Shiny, get back,” I said in a tight whisper. “But just leave one of those shovels.”

When she’d retreated back into the trees, the water settled and went calm around us. Fisher was holding very still, the way he had in the hollow when he was trying to keep the dogs from coming out.

“We need you to go down into the bottom of the hollow and dig a place,” I told him. “Shiny says there’s an old graveyard there.” I glanced over into the water, where the roots had sunk below the surface again and were waving gently in the current. “When you’re done, you shouldn’t wait for us.”

Fisher didn’t answer, just took the shovel, then splashed out across the slab to the other side of the creek.

After he was gone, Shiny took off back the way we’d come, splashing noisily along the creek. I followed her, being careful not slip off the edge of the bank and into deep water.

It took a ways, but Shiny found what she was looking for. At the place where the creek curved south, she waded out onto the little wooden dock. The dock was lower than the slab bridge, so that only the tops of the posts showed above the water. Shiny wrestled with the rope tied to the rickety flat-bottomed boat I’d seen the other day. The boat was riding high on the current, knocking into the corner of the dock.

We untied it and floated it down to the bridge, where we let it fetch up against the slab. Rae was standing ankle-deep in the middle of the bridge, looking up at the sky so she didn’t have to look anyplace else.

The fiend still lay against the fallen tree. I wondered if maybe Fisher and I should have tried to pull her farther up out of the creek, but we wouldn’t have known where to leave her. The water went on forever.

She had little cuts all over her hands, and her legs were scraped and bruised, but she’d been in the water so long there wasn’t much blood to run out of the wounds. Or else, she’d never had much in the first place.

Between the three of us, we laid her in the bottom of the boat, me and Shiny doing most of the lifting and Rae standing in the bow with her feet braced against the sides to steady it. The fiend’s body was heavy and her hair stuck to my arms and tangled between my fingers. Her skin was cold, slippery with a film of plant scum.

We got her arranged, then took turns pulling the johnboat along by its rope while the others pushed. The whole production was the strangest thing, the three of us wading through the trees, leading the boat between us, and the creek fiend lay in the bottom, still and peaceful and sad.

When we reached the back edge of the birches, where the woods opened out into the bottom of the hollow, we dragged the boat up the hill. The ground was still muddy there, but out of reach of the water.

Once we’d got the boat above the creek, Shiny straightened and popped her neck. “We should get her ready,” she said softly, looking down at the boat. “For her funeral.”

Shiny and I sat with the johnboat between us, picking twigs and leaves from the fiend’s hair. In the knotted tangle behind one of her ears, I found a beetle, black and squirming. I pulled it loose and threw it into the weeds.

Rae held the fiend’s head in her lap, working at the tangles with Shiny’s comb.

“I feel like we should maybe have a prayer,” Shiny said. “Or sing, or something.”

I looked down at the body between us. Her face was strange and delicate. “What song?”

“I don’t know. A hymn maybe?”

But I didn’t know the words to any hymns. The only song I could think of was Clementine, and since the words were all about drowning, it didn’t seem right.

Before either of us could pick something, though, Rae began to sing softly, almost to herself. The song was “Shall We Gather at the River.” The sound of her voice was clear and sweet, ringing through the trees.

Shiny was bent over the boat, fishing around in the pockets of her shorts. She pulled out a spool of ribbon and began to unwind it.

The ribbon was printed in a faded cabbage rose pattern, and she cut a length off with her folding knife. Then she got down on her knees and set about braiding the ribbon into the fiend’s wet hair. Then Rae and I did the same.

I didn’t ask what we were doing it for, but Shiny answered anyway. “For safe passage,” she said. “So on the other side, they know that she had people.”

Afterward, we dragged her up to the top of the little hill, leaving a wide gouge where the bottom of the boat cut through the muddy ground.

The graveyard was barely even a yard at all, just a tiny clearing in the trees, dotted with leaning headstones and full of weeds. The graves were untended, some so old that the ground had started to sink, reminding you that there were bodies buried there.