Fiendish

  Fisher didn’t even bother with the door. Instead, he hooked his fingers in the wire and yanked. Wood creaked and then the staples popped out in a silver spray all over the ground. The whole side of the coop peeled away in one big sheet.

  When he went to throw it away, the edge of it sliced across his arm, leaving a neat row of gouges, like the dotted line in a book of paper dolls. He hissed and dropped the screen.

  For just a second, there was nothing but that patch of torn-up skin. Then blood rose in round drops all along his arm. In the moonlight, it looked black.

  He wiped the blood away, and when he did, I nearly gasped aloud. His skin was closing as I watched, sealing up as easily as it had torn.

  Almost without thinking, I grabbed his wrist, pulling his arm up close to my face, but the marks were gone. There was nothing left but that smudge of blood, already drying. In my hand, his skin felt rough and warm and I let him go so fast it was like I was flinging him away. “How did you do that?”

  “What?”

  I stared up at him. “You must be out of your mind, saying what at me! You just cut yourself open and now there’s nothing.”

  The power to heal was a power of the dirt, and I thought of Rae saying in her prim, clever way, He has a particular skill with living things. What I had just seen was a lot more than that, though. This was no run-of-the-mill dirt-work like Myloria and my mama had liked to do, but pure, undiluted craft. This was the living, breathing body of the world.

  For maybe five seconds, neither of us spoke. Then I moved closer. “What are you?”

  Fisher didn’t answer right away. In the light from the moon, his face looked ghostly and far away. After a minute, he laughed, but it wasn’t a good sound. “That’s a pretty personal question.”

  “Well as that may be, I think it’s one worth asking. Are you trying to tell me that that what just happened is normal?”

  “Let me put it another way. That’s a pretty personal question coming from a girl who survived being buried alive. What are you?”

  At our feet, the birds were marching out of their ruined coop in a wobbly line—quail and pheasants and doves. They trooped past like they barely minded that we were there, and waddled off toward the middle of the yard, too stupid to know that they were free. The white peacock came last of all, pecking along the ground.

  “I’m Clementine,” I said, watching the birds scratch aimlessly in the dirt.

  But I said it to the darkness. To no one.

  Fisher was already walking away, heading deeper into the zoo. After a second, I kicked the screen out of my way and followed him.

  We wound between coops and hutches built from wire and the rotting salvage boards that used to be my house. There was something wholly satisfying about watching Fisher break them all to pieces.

  The badger was at the corner of the yard closest to the road, locked inside its small scrap-wood cage.

  Fisher stopped in front of it. “This is who you wanted, right?”

  I nodded, peering in at it, just a white stripe in the dark.

  “Well, let it out, then,” he said.

  When I tried the padlocked door, though, it wouldn’t budge. I got down on my knees and started pulling at the latch. The ground under me was rocky and shot through with tree roots.

  “Hurry up,” said Fisher, glancing toward the house. “They’re not going to stay gone forever.”

  I held the lock with both hands and closed my eyes. The inside was complicated, all little pieces of metal. I stared into the heart of it, looking for the part that would make it open.

  The way I felt when my eyelids came down was like every dream and vision I’d had in the caved-in cellar, like I was crawling outside myself and into something greater. Shiny might be fierce and forthright, and Rae might know the delicate truth in objects, but I had a trick or two myself, and I knew how things worked.

  “Can you break it?” Fisher asked in a voice so low it was barely louder than the sound of his breathing.

  “No,” I whispered back. “But I see how it opens, sort of. It has these . . . things—they go up and down and let another thing turn. Do you have something skinny, like a wire or anything?”

  “No. But we don’t need one. Move.”

  It took less than a second to see what he was going to do, and then I scooted away on my butt so fast the backs of my legs scraped the gravel.

  His boot swung right past my face, leaving a long, glowing afterimage. He hit the frame with his heel and the hinges tore away from the wood as easily as the staples on the bird coop had done.

  The door clattered into the yard.

  The badger trundled up to the edge of the cage and sniffed curiously at the opening before stepping out into the night. It stood over me where I sat in the dirt, a hulking shape against the starry sky.

  “Leave,” I whispered, but for a second, it just stood above me with its paws on my leg, sniffing the air around my face. I could feel its claws on my skin, leaving dimples where they pressed down. “You’re out now. Just leave.”

  Fisher gave a short, barking laugh. “Looks like you made a friend.”

  The badger didn’t move until I put my hand against its side and gave it a push. Its fur was bushy and not soft. It prickled against my hand, leaving a dark, oily smell. Then it turned and lumbered off into the dark.

  Fisher was already yanking open an old rabbit hutch, turning free a mangy fox with a torn ear. He took care to stay in front of it, steering it away from the milling flocks of birds and toward the back of the property.

  When every cage had been broken into and every animal set loose, Fisher turned and made a beeline for the tin-roofed shed at the back of the yard. It was set apart from the others, with a set of rusty bars across the front. The air around it was thick with the smell of something mean and hungry. The cougar crouched in a corner, staring back at me with eyes like kerosene lamps.

  “I’m turning that one loose, too,” Fisher said.

  I shook my head and took a step back. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Well, yeah.”

  I stared at him, but didn’t know what to say to explain how the idea was crazy, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Look, if you’re worried about it, go stand over there. No reason everything else should go free and that’s got to stay locked up. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to let out everything.”

  I took a step toward the gate and then, when it became fully clear that he was going to open the door, I took another.

  Fisher slipped back the bolt and eased the door open.

  For the first few seconds, nothing happened. The cougar sat crouched in the corner. Then, with its ears stuck flat back against its head, it slunk out, glaring around the yardful of empty hutches.

  I stood perfectly still as it crept past me, holding my breath, but it didn’t turn or come closer. Suddenly, it took off toward the back of the property, moving close to the ground. With a last backward glare, it bounded across the yard, then scrambled over the fence and away into the dark.

  Fisher turned to look at me. “There, nothing to it. Now, what are you so scared about?”

  “I didn’t feel like getting bit is all. But I think you must have some kind of death wish. Or maybe you just heal up so fast you don’t care.”

  He laughed at that and tossed his hair out of his eyes. “You don’t really lie about how you feel, do you.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have any reason to.”

  We stood looking at each other in the long, jagged shadows thrown by the trees. Above us, the moon shone down into the yard, making patterns of light and dark.

  His expression was complicated, and I had a sudden idea that he was going to ask me something else, something private, and if he did, I wouldn’t lie.

  He opened his mouth, closed it ag
ain. The moment stretched on and on.

  I was about to tell him to just go on and get it over with, when someone else spoke out of the darkness by the cedars— a tiny, fretful whisper. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  The nearness of the voice nearly made my heart stop, and we both whipped around. A pale shape stood in the shadow of the trees, looking ghostly. Then Davenport Heintz stepped out into the yard. Her feet were bare and she was carrying a metal bucket. Her hair seemed to glow almost white in the moonlight.

  Fisher and I stood in the middle of the ruined zoo, staring at her.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said, clutching the bucket. “Are you crazy? Do you think—”

  Then, up at the little frame house, the porch light went on.

  The glow was yellow, spilling down into the yard, and I saw on Davenport’s face that we were about to be in a whole lot of trouble.

  She darted past us and pointed toward the gate. “Hurry, before he sees what you did!”

  But even as she said it, her father was already shouting down from the house. “Davenport, is that you? If someone’s up on my property, in about three seconds, you will be very sorry.”

  For a moment, all three of us stood perfectly still. Then Davenport opened her eyes very wide, pointing to the gate again and mouthing the word gun.

  Fisher and I didn’t wait to be told twice. We took off running toward the road, pounding down the driveway, away from the house and the empty cages.

  I was halfway across the ditch when there was a terrible shriek, like a rabbit caught in a snare, and I stopped to look back.

  Greg Heintz was silhouetted in the light from the porch. He was ten years older than when I’d seen him last, tall and slope-shouldered, but I knew him, just like I knew everything about the Heintz place was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  He was down in the yard, standing with his back to the road. He had Davenport by the hair.

  As I watched, he shook her hard, then leaned down to bellow in her face. “What are you thinking, setting the critters free?”

  “I didn’t,” she said in a thin, pitiful voice that floated to me across the yard.

  He gave her another shake and her hands flew to her scalp, but she didn’t cry out, even when he dragged her toward the ruined zoo, her hair wound in a knot around his fist. She was bent over at the waist, stumbling along behind him. It seemed to me that she must dream a thousand times a day of running away.

  They disappeared through the little gate into the dark, but even as they did, I could still hear him shouting. “Where in the goddamn shitfire hell is my cougar?” he roared in a voice that echoed through the trees.

  My mouth was dry suddenly, and when I turned to Fisher, my voice came out in a numb little whisper. “How can he do that to her?”

  Fisher shook his head, and I thought that if he answered me the same way Shiny had explained about the zoo, if he told me that this was just what a man did in his own house, with his own things—if Fisher said that, I would lose my mind and scream.

  But he didn’t. Light glowed behind him in a pale circle, making it hard to see his face. I looked for the haze of colors that seemed to spill out of his skin sometimes, but I couldn’t tell if the glow around him was just the Heintzes’ porch light or if it came from my own eyes.

  “Come on,” he said finally, taking me by the elbow and turning me toward the road. His voice was low. His hand left a warm spot on my arm.

  We walked without saying anything, down the road, past the broken beech tree that marked the edge of the Heintz property, and I realized Fisher was leading me in the direction of Myloria’s.

  “What about the car?” I said, glancing over my shoulder.

  He shook his head. “I’ll come back for it. You’re just down the road and it’s no good making a bunch of noise for Greg to hear.”

  Then he stopped walking and caught my arm, yanking me around to face him.

  “Clementine,” he said. His voice was low and suddenly, I was very nervous about what he might say. “You never did tell me how you wound up behind that wall.”

  “My mother died and someone burned my house down.”

  I expected him to do any of the polite, regular things—offer his sympathies or say how terrible it was. But he didn’t. He stood in the road, looking into my face. Just watching me.

  The dark was closing in, making me doubt my own presence, and I needed to know that I was here with him and not still down in the closet. Not someplace else altogether.

  The way he was looking at me seemed too full of secrets. Like he already knew me.

  “Did you ever dream of me?” I said suddenly, even though it wasn’t the kind of question you were supposed to ask.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but he glanced away when he said it.

  I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “I’m talking about dreams. Any sort of feelings or visions—just something that might have told you how to find me.”

  According to Rae, the spell that had hidden me in the cellar had been powerful, made to keep anyone from ever setting me free. Now the more I thought about it, the more it seemed nearly impossible that Fisher could have stumbled upon me by chance.

  He didn’t say anything. The night was warm and still. Far away, an owl called out in its sweet, ghostly voice.

  Nothing showed on his face.

  I touched his hand because he was standing so still it was like he was too scared to move. I wanted to protect him from whatever was making him hold his breath.

  “What are you so afraid of?” I whispered.

  He only jerked away like he’d been stung. “Nothing.” But he kept his face toward the ditch when he said it.

  “I think you’re lying,” I said.

  He shrugged, but it was slow and tired. “Think all you want. I don’t care.”

  Around us, the frogs and crickets sang their sad nighttime songs, filling the air with their cries. I didn’t think that last part was true, but I didn’t say so.

  “Thank you for coming out to the zoo with me.”

  He laughed at that, his harsh, unguarded laugh, and shook his head. “Do you always just do whatever you want?”

  “No, but I do what I think is right.”

  He looked at me, that strange unfathomable look, painful around his eyes and blank everywhere else. “That’s an upright way of thinking, but around here, it can get you in an awful lot of trouble.”

  “I know how bad things can get,” I said. “I’m not a total fool.”

  Fisher didn’t answer. The look on his face was like he was wanting something—wanting and wanting until I was sure that nothing in the world could fix it.

  Then he hunched his shoulders and turned away, shaking his head.

  I’d thought he might walk me all the way to Myloria’s door, but when I started up the driveway, he didn’t follow.

  I left him standing in the road with his hands in his pockets and his head down. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was only a white smear where his shirt stood out against the black outline of the trees. Everything else had already sunk back into the dark.

  * * *

  In the house on Weeping Road, all the lights were out.

  I made my way through the maze of halls and into the back bedroom, keeping my hand against the wall, but it was only habit, a trick from when I was little and would crawl out of bed for a drink of water. I knew the shape of things now, knew the stained paper and the scorched walls by heart, like they’d been printed on the palms of my hands.

  Shiny must have lost her patience with town, because she was already in bed, cozied up under the blankets even though the night was warm. The room was full of the slow sound of her breathing. As I stepped inside, the chimes on the walls rustled and jingled to themselves, like a friendly little breeze had blow
n through. Then they stopped.

  I stood for a minute and listened, thinking how strange it was to be near another person. To really hear her. The room was dark—almost willfully dark. It made my breath turn hoarse, but strange enough, I felt at home there too.

  I peeled out of my dress and sat on the floor. Shiny had left me an old T-shirt and a pair of flannel shorts, along with a rolled-up camping mattress and some mismatched sheets and blankets.

  The room was so narrow there wasn’t much but a little space between the bed and the wall. I unrolled the camping mattress, then shoved the whole production underneath the bed.

  There was a dusty suitcase in the way and I had to push it down to the foot before I could crawl under.

  Up top, Shiny didn’t move. Her hand hung over the side of the bed, phantom-white in the moonlight. I lay on the mattress pad, which was too thin and full of lumps to really be comfortable, but after my willow roots and my pile of dirt and my ten years’ sleep, I wasn’t feeling picky. I pulled the blankets up, shivering a little. It had been so long since I’d slept in a bed, even a makeshift one, that I’d almost forgotten the way the sheets always felt a little damp at first, clammy against my legs.

  The space under the bed was dusty and cramped, and I was suddenly deathly afraid that if I woke up in the dark, I would think that I was still underground.

  When I closed my eyes, there was only the feeling of a great nothingness pushing in on me, getting closer. I was suddenly so sure that I would wake up to find this entire day had been just a dream and in my real life, I was still down in the cellar hole, forever and ever.

  Then I reached my hand out, sliding my fingers along the floor, reminding myself that there was a whole wide world out there. That I could always get out again.

  THE CREEK

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Even before I opened my eyes, the air hit my face in a damp wave, reminding me of where I was and what had happened. Outside, the cicadas were whirring, and I could tell the day was going to be a hot one.

  Shiny was already up, standing at the mirror and running her brush through her hair like the world was a hateful place and her reflection most of all.