The Garden of Darkness (13 page)

Clare thought of the body upstairs. She went over to the bound Cured and looked down at him.

“Who’s that in the bed?”

“My wife.”

“Is that a grave in the cellar?”

“It’s the neighbor. He died of Pest. I didn’t kill him.” He smiled gently. “But I ate most of him.”

“Instead of
ham
?” Mirri was incredulous.

“Go outside, Mirri,” Clare said, turning to her.

As they approached the gold house on their final trip, Sarai and Mirri stopped chattering. Jem looked grim.

They entered the hallway and Bear’s hackles rose.

The Cured was gone. The yellow cord lay in coils on the floor.

“I want to go home,” Sarai said.

“It looks like he cut the rope,” Jem said.

“He didn’t have a knife,” said Clare. “I’m sure of it.”

“Let’s get home,” Jem said. “We’ll be all right.”

“We have Bear,” said Sarai. “He’s a secret weapon.”

“From what happened in the house,” said Jem wryly, “it would seem that our best secret weapon is Clare.”

On the way back, they skirted the edge of the road, weaving in and out of the woods, and that’s when Clare smelled it. Sweat, stink, something rancid.

“He’s here,” she said.

The sun was low now, and as the trees moved in the wind, their shadows flickered across the road.

“There,” said Jem, pointing.

The Cured was slumped under a tree, unmoving. Clare went and stood right in front of him. Bear was by her side, but he was no longer bristling.

“He’s dead.” Clare looked into the damage of his face. The eyes were open, and the whites of his eyes were marked with pinpricks of blood.

“This is
really
creepy,” said Mirri.

Jem had joined Clare. “Maybe he just died. Who knows how long the Cured can live?”

Clare leaned forward and touched the patch she had seen before. She gently pulled it off, making sure to use only her fingernails. It was the size of a quarter, and there was a trademark on it in tiny print: ‘SYLVER.’

“Don’t let it come in contact with your skin,” said Jem.

“No,” said Clare. “I don’t think that’d be a good idea.” She threw it next to the body.

“I
REMEMBER SOMETHING
more about that movie,” said Clare later, as they were headed for home.

“What movie?” asked Jem.

“The one that had the two Nazi brothers in it. I remember that the woman skiing into Switzerland—”

“Austria.”

“The woman skiing into Austria is called Freya.”

“You’re right,” said Jem. “Freya. I would never have remembered that.”

“But I still don’t have the slightest idea of what the title might be.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

They walked for a while in silence.

“You know, Clare,” said Jem finally. “It’s time to move on. It’s time to find the Master. We can’t wait until it’s too late for you.”

“I know.”

But Clare was pre-occupied. She was still wondering about the title of the movie, and then she realized that Jem really was right. Like so many things, it didn’t matter anymore. Perhaps it had never mattered—the idea that in the pre-Pest days she could have googled the title by typing in ‘Nazi brothers Freya’ seemed only decadent. The time to live fully in the new world had come. She remembered from English class, and she had been very good in English, that Faulkner had written that the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past—but Faulkner had been wrong. Things past were best forgotten; they were engaged in the now; they were united in a fight against death; they were caught up in the mortal storm.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE PIG

A
S THE DAYS
slipped by, Clare’s hand began to heal, the Cured-in-the-blue-dress began sleeping in the barn, and the first frost came. One morning they woke to see feathers of ice on the windowpanes. The greenish tomatoes that they hadn’t yet picked hung limply from the vines. Clare noticed that Bear’s coat had become thick and dense. And all around the house, leaves scudded in whirlwinds of color as the cold wind blew.

Jem talked about the master-of-the-situation, and all of them began to have a sense that their time at Fallon was drawing to a close. Scavenging had become a hard, desperate frustrating task.

There was nothing fun about Fallon anymore.

“You think it’s time to leave,” said Clare one bright cold day as Jem was slicing ham for lunch.

“Yes. It’s time to think about how we’re going to find this Master. If he’s organized, he’ll have food. And we have to get the cure. For you. And then for me.”

“Before I met up with you,” said Clare, “I kept hoping for an adult who would take care of everything. Now I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“Clare, you still have the rash.
I
have the rash. We’re
all
marked.”

“I know.”

“You’re already fifteen.”

“I don’t think that’s so old. Even for Pest.”

“Besides. If we can stay with the Master, it might be a good thing.” Jem cut the fat away from the ham slices as he spoke. “I don’t want to settle into one place and eat everything that’s there and then move on to a different place and eat everything’s that’s there and then—”

“I get the gist.”

“The Master may have a place where we do more than just try and survive another day and search for food and go to sleep every night bone-tired.”

“Yeah. But what do we do with all that free safe time?”

“Exist.”

“That’s it?”

“We could play a lot of chess.”

“What about me?”

“You could write a book. Like your father.”

He finished slicing the ham as Mirri and Sarai came into the kitchen. They sat at the counter and ate without taking off their jackets. The house was drafty, and the wind rattled the windows. Bear lay at Clare’s feet and looked up as the ham was doled out.

“Give him a bit,” said Clare. “That dry dog food we found is disgusting.”

“Then you shouldn’t eat it,” said Jem.

“Seriously. He needs meat.”

“Clare,” said Jem very seriously, “we can’t support him if he doesn’t hunt.”

“A little ham?”

Bear had not taken his eyes from Jem. Jem gave a slice of ham to Clare.

“You give it to him,” Jem said. “With you, he’s gentle. The last time I tried to give him a treat, he almost took my hand along with it.”

Clare gave Bear the ham, and he nuzzled it out of her hand.

“That dog loves you,” said Jem.

“I know.”

Clare wondered how the Cured-in-a-blue-dress was coping out in the barn. She knew that Mirri had smuggled the pink sleeping bag out of their bedroom to her. How Jem managed not to notice was beyond Clare—he had noticed right away when she had put an extra comforter on her own bed. He had even said something about it, although she couldn’t remember what.

Mirri and Sarai finished eating the ham using their fingers.

“Let’s go find a house to break into,” Sarai said.

Her suggestion met with instant approval. It had been a slow day, and they were bored.

“Maybe I can find some more Breyer horses,” said Mirri. Mirri scavenged horses and unicorns, ranging from cheap plastic models as small as the tip of her little finger, to bronze sculptures heavy enough to bring down a strong Cured. Sarai collected children’s books, which she would sometimes read aloud to Mirri. They were in the middle of
Tuck Everlasting
and Mirri was very doubtful about the way the plot was going.

“Eternal life is the
right
choice,” she told Sarai. “And I plan on living forever
no matter what
.”

Mirri and Sarai kept their collections by the side of their beds. Clare sometimes kept treats for Bear next to hers, but she had never seen much by Jem’s, except for an earring that at first she thought must have belonged to his mother, but that turned out to be hers. He had found it on the floor.

Today, it was Mirri’s turn to pick the house they were going to pillage. They walked into Fallon, and she chose one near the playground where they had all first met. Sarai heaved a rock through the windowpane.

“Maybe we’re letting them run a little too wild,” said Clare to Jem.

“Could be.”

The Cured-in-the-blue-dress watched all this from the edge of the playground.

“Have you noticed how close she’s getting to us?” said Jem.

“Yes. But Bear seems to think she’s all right.”

The house was empty of food. Bear sniffed around the kitchen and then lay down on the floor.

“
I’m
going to look at the garden,” said Mirri. “Maybe there’s fresh stuff.”

“Wrong time of year,” Jem said.

“Not for
pumpkins
. We could have pumpkin pie. My mother—” Mirri trailed off. She looked at each of them as if, for a moment, she didn’t know where she was. Then she went out the door.

“
Jem!
” Mirri came running back a second later, barging into Sarai, who almost fell. “You’re not going to believe this. I found a
pig
! There’s a real live
pig
digging around in the garden. It’s eating the squash.”

They all went to see and, sure enough, there it was, a huge pink thing rooting through the garden.

“Let’s catch it,” said Jem.

Mirri, Sarai and Clare stayed in the garden while Jem went into the house to look for a rope. Clare kept one hand firmly entwined in Bear’s fur. The dog was trembling with excitement, intent on the pig, and quietly and steadily drooling.

“I read somewhere,” said Sarai, “that you can eat every part of a pig. Except the squeal. That’s a joke, of course—about eating the squeal, I mean. Because of course you can’t eat a squeal. A squeal’s a sound.”

“I don’t want to try to eat a whole pig,” said Mirri. “Especially this pig. I want a pet pig.”

“What about bacon?” asked Sarai.

“I’d eat bacon,” admitted Mirri.

“It’s lucky I was raised Hindu,” said Sarai. “We eat pork, but not beef. I bet my parents would relax the rules, though. If they were here.”

“They wouldn’t begrudge you a steak—if we could come up with one,” said Clare.

“Well,” said Sarai dubiously. “A steak. I don’t know.”

“What about you, Clare?” asked Mirri. “What can’t you eat?”

“Supposedly no pork,” said Clare. “But we ate it anyway. And we ate an unfortunate dessert called kugel.”

“I eat anything,” said Mirri.

Jem returned with the rope.

“Here we go,” he said.

“I’m taking Bear inside,” said Clare. “He’s way too excited about the pig.”

Jem nodded. The others were already approaching the big pink sow. Clare saw Sarai slip in the muddy garden and almost go down.

Inside the house, for a reason she couldn’t articulate, Clare decided to go up the stairs. Bear was close by her side. At the top, there was a door on the right.

Clare opened the door. She saw a vase with a tangle of dead flowers in it. A gilded mirror. Part of a bed. She opened the door wider.

There was a dead little girl on the bed.

The girl carried no mark of Pest, but she was terribly wasted away, and her lips were cracked and parched. There was something odd about the shape of her legs under the covers. Clare lifted the sheets and saw that the girl was wearing leg braces. When she saw the crutches in a corner of the room, she realized that the girl had probably been left behind to die when everyone else was fleeing Pest. She may even have still been alive when Clare was in the Loskey cabin. Clare suddenly felt weak.

She heard footsteps on the stairs, and Jem entered the room.

“We’ve got the pig. Then we found Bear, but not you.”

She watched him take in the scene. She heard yet more footsteps, and then saw Sarai and Mirri standing behind Jem.

There was a flutter of blue outside the door, and then it was gone.

“Someone left her. Just left her,” Clare said. “And she didn’t have Pest. We could have saved her. We could have—”

Jem pulled a sheet over the girl’s face and put his arm around Clare.

“Let’s go home. Come on, Clare.”

“We could have done something.”

“No. We couldn’t have. We didn’t know.”

They went down the stairs, into the garden, and started herding the pig into the road.

“Do you like the pig?” Mirri asked Clare shyly. Clare was too shaken to answer her, but Sarai did.

“I like it,” said Sarai. “It trundles along like a big pink barrel, don’t you think, Clare?”

“We could call it ‘Barrel,’” said Mirri. “Or maybe ‘Wilbur.’”

When they got home, Sarai and Mirri went to pen up the pig while Jem took Clare into the bedroom.

“You need to lie down,” he said. “I don’t think you’re okay yet. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I just need to settle Mirri and Sarai and do something with that damn pig before your dog eats it.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t faint on me.”

“I’m not the fainting type.”

He closed the door behind him. And standing there behind the door, half hidden in the murky light, was the Cured-in-a-blue-dress.

Clare was terrified.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.