“I do.”
“Plus . . .” He inhaled slowly through his nose, as if his next words would take considerable effort on his part. “Loath as I am to warm to the notion . . . you have Cara.”
The sour look on Devon’s face suggested he might have had a difficult time swallowing after saying that last sentence, but he didn’t look as angry as I’d feared he would be. “Just so you know, we’re not just screwing around, Devon. I really care about your sister.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?” I said. His answer had surprised me. I thought that Cara and I had been pretty good at keeping us a secret—at least from her brother. Either she’d told him, which seemed unlikely given the icy state of their relationship, or he was an even better spy than I realized.
“Nobody wants their balls cut off. Or worse.” A small smile touched his lips as he twisted the cap off another bottle and passed it to me. “Now drink up. You look like you could still use a few swigs.”
I took a healthy swallow, not minding the way the liquor burned my throat and stomach anymore. Some things you just get used to. Even bad things. “This town, man. This town. No offense, but I wish we’d never moved here.”
He took the bottle from my hand and tilted his head back. Licking his lips, he handed it to me. His skin looked pale in the firelight. “What exactly bothers you about Spencer?”
“It’s just . . . nothing.” I groaned, so sick of everything. Even myself. “I hate my grandmother. And this place seems a lot like her. Old. Bitter. Stuck.”
Devon chuckled. “You, my man, have this place pegged.”
I wasn’t convinced that his words had been meant to offer me any kind of comfort at all. It didn’t matter, though. Nothing could comfort me at that moment. I was feeling angry and lost and restless and stupid. “Hey . . . Devon? I have a confession to make.”
“Oh?”
I knew that what I was about to do was either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid. I also knew the only way to know which it was lay in Devon’s reaction.
After swallowing another mouthful of the green stuff, I pulled his journal out of my back pocket and handed it to him.
One entry stuck out in my mind as I looked at him now—a confession from our fearless leader, apparently in his own words: I fear them, but long for their approval. I seek them out, but loathe the notion of them doing the same to me. Still, they are real. More real than anything else here.
His eyes lit up at first with surprise, then relief. Then the clouds rolled into his expression, darkening his demeanor like a storm.
“I found it. And I read it.” My words were calm, but I felt like I should be running out of the Playground in a sprint of terror, leaving Devon behind. After a single heartbeat, I added, “Please don’t kill me.” I hoped I was kidding.
He turned the small journal over in his hands, stroking the worn leather cover. The book obviously meant a lot to him. I felt bad that I hadn’t returned it to him the moment that I learned he was its owner, its author, its artist. With his eyes on the journal, Devon spoke calmly. “This is a grievous offense, Stephen. This journal is private. I must admit . . . I’m not happy.”
He clenched his jaw. “Most definitely not.”
A shaky breath escaped my lungs. He’d just given me a pass for being involved with his sister. But something told me that the journal meant more to him than even her. “I didn’t think you would be. But what’s done is done, right?”
He nodded after a moment. What was done was done. My move to Spencer. My relationship with his sister. And now this. “I meant for you to find it. And to read it. But not for you to keep it so damn long.”
Questions filled my mind, but I wasn’t sure how to ask them. Before I could form the words, he said, “Did anything in particular catch your eye?”
I sat forward, holding his gaze. “Tell me more about the Winged Ones.”
As the words left my lips, they caught the attention of the entire group, even though it had seemed that no one had been listening to us prior to that moment. The fun, it seemed, was over.
Devon spoke softly, not looking at anyone in particular, his head tilted up as if he were speaking to the moon. “Stephen wants to know about the Winged Ones.”
The gang was strangely quiet, the music had stopped, and it took Devon a moment to say anything else. “What do you want to know?”
I opted for the truth. “I guess . . . I mean, they’re just a story, right? You don’t seriously believe that a bunch of horror movie creatures control the fate of everybody in this town.”
Lighting a clove cigarette, Devon stood. With the ease of a trained acrobat, he hopped up on the tallest tombstone in the cemetery and perched there. When I struggled to stand, largely thanks to the booze, Markus stepped closer and helped me up. He held his free arm close to his side. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that his wrist was swollen some. His words from earlier echoed in my skull. “Devon would kick my ass if he knew.”
The rest of the boys crowded in, looking up at our fearless leader. After a brief nod at Markus, I followed suit.
“Spencer’s belief in the Winged Ones stretches all the way back to the early 1800s, when half of the original settlers went out hunting one day, then came back to find their families missing. Blood and enormous black feathers lined the streets, but the people were gone without a trace. It was one of the bad times.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“But that wasn’t the only bad time. There are countless other tales. There was a class field trip in 1913 that simply disappeared while exploring a maple syrup farm on the edge of town, there was a kid in the seventies who disappeared after breaking into the mansion, and many, many more. People have been passing down tales of the Winged Ones as bedtime stories for as long as the town has existed. I was raised on them. Everyone here was. Except Markus. And you, of course.” He inhaled on his cigarette and blew out, the smoke forming a foggy halo around his head. He was Saint Devon now. As the moniker entered my mind, he looked at me. Almost like he knew what I was thinking. “But there are other stories, too. Stories of good times, when the Winged Ones were appeased. And do you know how that happens, Stephen? It’s said that the only way to appease their fury, the only way to make the bad times go away again . . . is by offering up a human sacrifice.”
Silence surrounded me, surrounded us. No one breathed. Even the fire refused to crackle. My heartbeat thumped in my ears, the only sound over the sudden hush.
Finally, I said, “That’s scary as shit.” What a messed-up way to raise your kids, with the fear that monsters are real and might come devour them one day. Not for punishment or anything. Just because. I shook my head. “But still . . . do you really believe in the Winged Ones just because of some bedtime stories?”
Saint Devon shrugged. “People believe in a lot of things.”
“Do you?” I repeated.
Markus, Cam, Scot, Nick, and Thorne all set their eyes on me then, and I knew that I was asking questions that weren’t supposed to be asked.
The glow of Devon’s cigarette ember put a strange light in his eyes—one that sent a shiver down my spine. “Why are you asking, Stephen? You’ve seen my notebook. You know what I believe.”
Turning slowly, I looked at Markus. At Scot and Cam, Nick and Thorne. I could barely utter the question inside my mind. “Do all of you believe in them?”
None of them spoke, or even took the time to confer with one another before answering. Instead, they all nodded—even Markus.
From atop his story-time pedestal, Saint Devon flicked his clove cigarette onto the ground and, standing slowly, towering above us all, said, “Have another drink, Stephen. Markus and I will be sure to carry you home.”
The tension broke and the revelry resumed, almost as if I’d never brought up the Winged Ones at all. But I wasn’t fooled. I stood there on the edge of the group, wondering what the hell was happening to the small bubble of a world around me. Markus stepped over to me
, took a swig from a bottle of his favorite, peach schnapps, then held it out like it was the first night I’d drunk with them all over again. I took a swallow, but then I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and said, “I don’t need a babysitter, Markus. You guys don’t have to walk me home. I can get there on my own.”
Markus took another drink. The look on his face said he needed it. He kept his voice hushed as he spoke. “I’m not sure how long I want to stay tonight myself, Stephen. So give it a little bit and then maybe we can walk each other home.”
I lowered my voice, too. “Something wrong?”
He glanced over at where Devon stood, gazing silently up at the star-speckled sky, flask in his hand. “Meet me tomorrow at the library. There’s something you need to see.”
chapter 11
The library was just as empty as it had been the day before, but that didn’t seem to bother Ms. Rose, who greeted me with a smile from behind her desk. In her hands was a well-read copy of Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews. Sitting on the desk was a vase full of fresh wildflowers. “Hello, Stephen. What brings you in today? Let me guess. The basement?”
I offered her a smile and glanced around the room, once again cursing my lack of a cell phone. “Have you seen Markus? He told me to meet him here.”
She slid a bookmark into her book and set it beside the vase. “Not yet. But I’m sure he’ll be along soon.”
“Guess I’ll head downstairs to wait. There’s more than enough in the stacks to keep me occupied.”
Ms. Rose wrinkled her nose, her cheeks flushing some in embarrassment. “The dust doesn’t bother you? I’ve been meaning to clean up that area.”
I shrugged. “Dust doesn’t bug me. Spiders, on the other hand . . .”
“Did you find anything to catch your interest down there?” She moved from behind the desk and picked up a big stack of books. As she struggled to carry it to one of the shelves, I moved forward and took it from her.
“Quite a bit, actually. This town has an interesting history.” The stack was heavy, but getting lighter quickly as she took books from the top and placed them on the shelves. I had never figured out the Dewey decimal system, but she had it down pat. One of a librarian’s many superpowers, I supposed.
As she picked up a book called Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite, she said, “I imagine you found the story about William Spencer pretty intriguing. Most people do when they start reading up on Spencer’s history.”
I shrugged. “You mean about him murdering his daughter? I only know what was reported in the newspapers downstairs. Anything more I should know?”
She stepped up on a small stool and stretched to put a book away on the top shelf. The stool wobbled some, but she didn’t seem to notice. Maybe super librarians could resist the pull of gravity, too. “Only if you’re into gossip and mysteries.” She chuckled. “It’s a bit morbid, but the craziest part of the story is that he didn’t just kill his daughter. People say he sacrificed her.”
My heart beat solidly in my chest before quieting in horror. “Sacrificed? The paper said he strangled her. Or that somebody did.”
“Well, now, I don’t know all the details. But supposedly, after the girl died, a period of great prosperity fell on Spencer.” She glanced my way, and with a wink, said, “I guess the Winged Ones were appeased, eh?”
“The Winged Ones?” I tried to act as if I’d never heard the term—as if the Winged Ones meant nothing to me—but the words came out in a gasp.
“Oh, surely you’ve heard that old folktale by now. Haven’t you?” She peered over her shoulder at me. One of her eyebrows was raised, as if she was truly surprised that I might not know about them. As if it had been on the town’s website, right next to the euchre tournament.
I chewed my bottom lip for a moment. “I might have heard something or other.”
She plucked another book from the top of the pile in my arms and looked at its spine. As she put it on the top shelf, she said, “Well, they say when the Winged Ones are unhappy, they bring about bad times in Spencer until given a sacrifice.”
“Who are ‘they,’ exactly?” Images flipped through my mind like frames of an 8mm film. The hostess at Lakehouse Grill. The old men at Tom’s Hardware. The dollah-fiddy guy. Lane. Devon.
Ms. Rose lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug and dropped it just as quickly. “People around town. Small-town chatter. You know.”
She stepped down from the stool and moved up the aisle again, putting a book on Abraham Lincoln on a shelf to the left and a DVD called The Secret Life of Ferns on a shelf to the right. I took a breath and decided to ask her the question that was stewing in my brain. Deep down, I knew the answer already. I just wanted to hear her answer. If someone else said it, maybe it wouldn’t feel so much like I was losing my mind. “Does that mean we are . . . I mean, does that mean that Spencer is going through a bad time right now?”
She shook her head and grabbed a dictionary from the now much-smaller pile in my hands. As she set it on a shelf, she said, “Oh, no, not at all, Stephen. This is all just something that some folks used to believe and current residents use as a figure of speech or a scary story now and again. It’s not like it’s anything to worry about.”
“Of course not. That would be crazy.” It would be crazy. It would be completely nuts. So why wouldn’t the tiny hairs on the back of my neck lay down again? “But I mean . . . the people who did believe it. How did they think the sacrifice worked, exactly?”
Ms. Rose frowned.
“I couldn’t tell you. I was born in Chicago, and only came here three years ago. But it’s just one of those things. Urban legends. Or in this case, it would be rural legend, I suppose.” As she took the last two books from my hands, she smiled and sighed. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself down there. I don’t get a lot of regular patrons, so it’s nice to see that Markus is bringing me more.”
As if on cue, the front door opened and Markus appeared, framed by the afternoon sun. He saw me and nodded. “Hey. Sorry I’m late. Had a last-minute doctor’s appointment.”
I couldn’t help but notice the fresh cast on the arm he’d been nursing last night. “No problem, man. I hope your arm’s okay. You said there was something I needed to see . . . ?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at Ms. Rose before meeting my eyes with a strange glint in his. “Just thought you might wanna dig through the stacks some more. That’s all.”
“Well, after what Ms. Rose was just telling me, I definitely do.”
I smiled at her, still trying to act like this was all a fun little project and Markus and I were just doing some research. But the truth was, I was seriously starting to question the sanity of the town I’d moved to.
An hour or so later, my leg was starting to tingle with numbness from the way I was lying with it flung over the side of the wingback chair, but I wasn’t about to move—I was too immersed in yet another article I’d found in an old copy of the Spencer Gazette that mentioned the Winged Ones. It was the thirteenth such mention I’d found since Markus and I had come down here, and I was barely a third of the way through the pile beside the chair. I was starting to see where Devon had gotten his crazy ideas. It seemed plenty of people who’d called Spencer home over the years had either believed in the monstrous beasts or at least wondered if they actually existed. And I couldn’t blame them. Spencer’s history was dripping with blood—enough to ebb and flow through each period of so-called “bad times,” which seemed to pop up every few years around here.
Markus’s palm smacked my leg lightly. I growled and jerked away, shaking the numbness from my limb. “What?”
“We need to talk.”
I sat up and placed the newspaper I’d been reading in the new pile I’d started, featuring anything and everything to do with tragedies that might be linked to the Winged Ones. “Oh, you’re ready to talk now? About what?”
He shrugged his words into being. “I’m sure we can think of something to discuss. Can’t we?”
/>
I reached for the next paper in the pile. For my own sanity, I needed to keep the conversation light.
Markus knelt beside my chair, his eyes on me, his voice low. “How long have we been down here, Stephen? An hour?”
I sat the paper on my lap, giving him my full attention. “I guess, yeah. Why?”
“Found anything interesting in that time? I mean . . . anything that makes you really look closely at the people you surround yourself with?” He sounded almost like a teacher who’s frustrated with a particularly hardheaded student. Markus had piled the papers next to the chair in an effort to educate me. And now he was trying to tell me something. Something about the boys. Something about Devon. I opened my mouth to speak and Markus looked around the room, as if someone might be standing in the shadows, listening. Then he rifled through the stack of newspapers beside me and pulled one paper out. As he handed it to me, we held eye contact. He shook his head. “Don’t tell me what you’re thinking after you read this. Don’t tell anyone.”
The newspaper was dated July 6 of last year. At the top of the front page, in big bold letters, was the headline of an article that made my throat dry instantly. LOCAL SHERIFF BURNED ALIVE.
It didn’t take much reading for me to realize that the sheriff the reporter was talking about had been Devon and Cara’s dad, and that he had died in a pretty horrific way. Officer Bradley had apparently discovered the sheriff’s body floating in the reservoir, his hands bound, his skin charred, and large chunks of his flesh torn away. The autopsy had revealed that he’d been dead before he ever hit the water. Blood loss had been the apparent cause. The article went on to say that a local homeless man had been arrested and charged with murder, but the man insisted that he’d had nothing to do with the death of the sheriff.
It was horrible, and it made my stomach turn just thinking about it.
Once I’d finished reading, I sat the paper on my lap and looked pointedly at Markus. He said, “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell anyone I showed it to you. Just . . . just think about it. Okay?”