The Garden of Darkness (38 page)

And then, at the back of the room, Clare saw Bear. The enormous dog had his hackles up and was growling softly.

Bear’s first leap took him halfway across the room. His paws scrabbled on the floor as he landed and, for a moment, he lost his footing. Then he was up. Mirri was in his way, but with his bulk he pushed her aside.

Now he was facing the Master.

But the Master did not look afraid; he didn’t even look angry. He shouted out and then filled the room with his weird laughter. The Master pulled up the flimsy cot she had been lying on and held it out like a shield.

Bear lunged forward, shattering the wooden frame of the cot and then leaping through it as if it were a hoop at the circus. The Master fell back against the wall. With one hand, the Master somehow managed to take Bear by the throat and hold him off. With the other, he stabbed at the dog.

Bear yelped, but he did not fall back.

“Somebody get us loose,” said Jem.

“Can’t you see?” said Mirri. “We’re
busy
.”

There was a noise in the hallway, and then Dante was with them.

“Untie us,” said Jem. “Hurry.”

Bear yelped again, and then he twisted in the air and broke the Master’s grip. Now he was snarling. A spray of blood spattered the floor and wall, and Clare felt the droplets on her face. Clare didn’t know if the blood were the Master’s or Bear’s, but she thought she knew what would come next: Bear would tear out the Master’s throat. But Bear was off-balance, and the Master fell back against a tapestry, still living, still breathing.

And then, in an instant, the Master was gone.

B
EAR CRAWLED TO
Clare and, as they lay there, he licked her pitifully changed face. Jem, newly freed by Dante, ran to them both.

“Save Bear,” said Clare. Jem ran his hands over the dog without once taking his eyes from Clare. Bear heaved himself to his feet, shook off Jem, and started licking Clare again.

“Bear’ll heal,” said Jem. He sat down next to Clare and took her hand.

Meanwhile, Bird Boy pulled down the tapestry to reveal a door. Abel tried it. It was locked, and, like the door to the basement, it took a Yale key.

“Damn,” said Ramah.

“
Ramah
,” said Mirri. “You
never
swear.”

“He got away,” said Ramah.

“Or
we
got away from
him
,” said Mirri.

“Clare’s not in good shape,” said Jem. He squeezed her hand. “We need to get her to Thyme House. I want to get her to Thyme House. Once we’re there—” He broke off.

Once they were there, Clare thought, she would be able to die quietly, with all of them around her. With Jem beside her. And maybe, if he were there with her, she could die without fear. Was that too much to hope for?

It seemed that it was.

Clare watched their faces change as each of them—Mirri, Sarai, Abel, Bird Boy, Tilda—took in her appearance. She saw shock, anger, fear, and, in Mirri’s face, a kind of triumph that she did not understand. But in Jem’s face, she saw only a deep anguish and defeat.

“Hurry, Mirri,” said Sarai.

“I’m
hurrying
,” said Mirri. “She looks
terrible
.” And Mirri was suddenly fumbling with a box. She opened it and reached in without hesitation, but—

“This is
so
gross,” she said.

Then she was applying leeches to Clare’s arms and chest.

For the first few moments, Clare felt nothing, and then there was a tingling sensation. She realized that Jem had his arm around her. But memories crowded out the present. She saw into her deep past. She saw her own real mother dancing with her in the kitchen; Robin’s face as they bicycled down the dark streets; her father walking away from the wreck on the highway; the first earth she had shoveled on Noah’s body. The memories came faster and faster. And then she was two beings: an almost-grown who was no more than a small reflection in Jem’s eye, and, at the same time, an infant, far, far away and long ago.

Clare came back to the present. She watched the leeches impartially as blood oozed out from around the places they had embedded their mouths.

“I was starting to wonder about those leeches,” Clare murmured.

“Mirri’s been feeling so terrific, you see,” said Sarai.

“And no more rash.” Bird Boy nodded sagely. “Not after the leeches.” He unzipped his sweatshirt and obligingly showed his chest, which was free of any mark. “So we came.”

“I’m not going to die?”

“No,” said Mirri and Sarai and Bird Boy and Tilda and Abel. “You’re not.”

“I feel strange. But not bad. Good.”

Jem tightened his arm around her.

Clare lifted her hand, meaning to touch his face, but she couldn’t seem to find him in the dim light.

D
ARK TIME PASSED
before Clare stirred in Jem’s arms again. He helped her sit up.

“I feel better,” she said. “Better than the last time I felt better.”

“The Pest welts are already going down,” said Mirri. “I can’t tell you how
awful
you looked.”

“Then don’t,” said Jem.

“We came as fast as we could,” said Tilda quietly. And Clare saw that they all looked very dirty and very tired—there were deep circles under Sarai’s eyes.

“We didn’t sleep
at all
,” said Mirri.

“
You
slept, Mirri,” said Abel. “Bird Boy carried you for hours.”

“She was tired,” said Bird Boy.

“We are
so glad
you’re not dead,” said Mirri.

“How did you find us?” asked Ramah. “This place is a labyrinth.”

“I was talking to Britta and Doug,” said Dante, “when your friends arrived. Clare’s dog knew them right away, and I brought them here.”

“Thanks,” said Ramah to Dante. “You came through.”

Dante looked down, but he was smiling.

And then they were all chattering, like the ragtag band of ill-disciplined almost feral children that they were. They weren’t particularly clean, like the Master’s children. But, thought Clare, they had come through. They had pulled together. They knew what love was.

“I hate to interrupt all this,” said Ramah finally, “as I always seem to do, but the Master’s still out there. Somewhere between us and home.”

“And what about his children?” asked Dante. “You can’t just leave them. Us.”

It occurred to Clare that, always and already and forever, everything was complicated.

She looked around. The Master’s collection room looked completely different to the last time she had seen it. It was just a room with some paintings and statues, its mystery gone. She liked one of the paintings: children in a looming room.

“That’s a Sargent,” she said.

“You’re wandering,” said Jem.

“Maybe,” said Clare. “It’s kind of hard to focus.”

“But we have to,” said Ramah.

“Master must be somewhere close,” Dante said. “He wouldn’t leave his stuff behind. He likes his stuff.”

They searched the room. Mirri kept trying to use a plastic wand with sparkles in it as a divining rod.

“What are we looking
for
?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” said Bird Boy. The feathers in his hair bobbled as he spoke.

“Better look at this,” said Dante. He held up two enormous scrapbooks. The first was packed with newspaper articles and magazine clippings about Pest, often accompanied by a photograph of ‘Doctor Andrew Sylver.’ It was the Master. In a number of articles, he was quoted as saying not to panic, that a cure and a vaccine were imminent—that the cure might be something as simple and painless as a patch, like the ones people used to stop smoking.

In all of the pictures, even in one about the stages of Pest, he was smiling.

The other album was very different. The early pages also contained newspaper articles, but these were widely dated, and were all pre-Pest and all were all about missing children.

“Read the names,” said Clare.

Ramah and Mirri took turns.

“Samantha Eckert.”

“Elizabeth Mendel.”

“Martina Hans.”

“Sally Long.”

Ramah looked up from the book. “That’s a lot of children. Even for a serial killer.”

“You think he
killed
them?” asked Mirri.

“I do.”

“What kind of world do you come from?” Jem asked Ramah. She ignored his question.

“He has packets of hair next to the articles,” said Ramah.

“What for?” asked Bird Boy.

“A collection,” said Ramah.

“So these were his victims,” said Jem. “In the pre-Pest days.”

“There’re probably others,” Ramah said. Ramah slid the book over to Jem and Clare.

On one page, the Master had pasted in the side of a milk carton. On it was depicted one Andrea Laughlin, who had been eight years old, with blonde hair and blue eyes. The grainy photograph looked up at them. At the bottom of the page was a little glassine envelope, like the kind stamp collectors use. Only this one contained a lock of very blonde hair.

Clare felt sick.

The rest of the album was post-Pest and contained no articles at all. Instead, the Master headed the few used pages with a name, followed by a description below. There was a complete entry for Eliza.

The elect of the Master’s blue-eyed girls had probably never had much of a chance. Of course, none of them had ever had much of a chance, really. All the roads had been hard roads.

“The leeches come off now,” said Mirri. “They’ll’ve done their work.” She heated a metal pen in the hurricane lantern and poked the leeches, after which she peeled them off, one by one. “
Yuck
,” she said as the leeches curled in her hand. Then she put them back in their little box.

“We still have to get back to Thyme House,” Clare said. “And I suppose we have to do something to help Master’s children.”

“As soon as you’re ready, we’ll go,” said Mirri. “That is, as soon as we find a way
out
. Those
awful
children locked the door behind us.”

“I heard them piling up stuff behind it, too,” said Abel, mournfully.

“I don’t see why we have to help them,” said Mirri. “I really don’t like that bossy one. And they haven’t helped us
at all
.”

“We can’t just leave them,” said Clare, wishing very much that they could.

As they walked into the hall, the hurricane lantern she was holding cast huge shadows before them. She leaned on Jem, but instead of keeping up with the others, the two of them lagged behind.

“The swelling’s going down,” said Jem. Clare felt her face, and it was true. Some of the marks of Pest were still there, but her skin was mostly smooth.

“Jem,” said Clare. “I have something I have to say to you.”

“Clare,” said Jem. “If it’s about gratitude or eternal friendship, I don’t want to hear it.”

“I love you, Jem. I’ve loved you for a long time, only I didn’t really know it. Not at first.”

“I’m glad you figured it out,” said Jem finally. “As for me, I’ve loved you since we first met.”

“That’s not true.”

“Look down at the ring on your finger.”

Then Jem leaned down and kissed her.

“I suppose any sane adults would say we’re too young to know what we feel,” said Clare.

“There aren’t any sane adults. And I know exactly what I feel.”

Then he slipped his arm around her back and pulled her to him and kissed her some more.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

GETTING AWAY

R
AMAH HAD NO
trouble unlocking the door that opened onto the hallway that led to the stairs, but behind it was a mound of boxes and chests and furniture and mattresses blocking the way out. Two chairs fell off the mound and landed at Abel’s feet. Clare couldn’t see beyond the barricade, but she could hear the Master’s children clearly.

“We want Clare’s body,” said a thin voice. “The others need to see what happens if you turn your back on Master.”

“That’s the snotty one,” said Mirri.

“Britta,” said Dante.

“Whoever. She doesn’t seem too upset about Clare, even though she thinks that Clare’s a body now. I mean a
dead
one.”

“I don’t think Master’s with them,” said Sarai. “He’s probably hiding.”

“Why would he hide?” asked Dante. “I don’t understand.”

“Because we’re scary,” said Bird Boy. “And we’re not afraid of him.”

Clare looked at the bunch of them. Bird Boy had sewn more feathers into his clothes, or what was left of his clothes. Mirri wore rabbit fur attached to the back of her shirt like a small cape, and she had her plastic wand at the ready, as did Tilda. Sarai was resplendent in a sequined T-shirt that spelled out ‘DANGEROUS.’ Her jeans were rolled at the bottom to reveal a flannel unicorn-print lining. Abel looked as if he were dressed in the colorful rags of a deeply disturbed person. And she loved them. And she loved Jem with all her heart. It was odd to think that there was a time when that fact wasn’t obvious to her. Poor shallow Clare. She was gone now, forever.

They were gradually dismantling the mound that blocked the doorway.

“If we tell them we have the cure,” said Sarai, “maybe they’ll help us out.”