“Mommy, Mommy, go fast, go fast!” she trilled.
If the ride wasn’t enough to give Bennett heart failure, the climb would finish the job, and by the time she’d reached the top again, she was gasping for breath and desperate for a cigarette.
“Mind if I sit this one out?” she asked Nest as they lined up for another run. That creepy guy Ross was standing off to the side, looking like he was about to be jumped or something, and if he didn’t have to go with his kid, then Bennett didn’t see why she should feel obligated to go with hers.
“Sure,” Nest agreed, peering at her. “Are you okay?”
Bennett shrugged. “Define okay. I just need a cigarette, that’s all.” She looked at Harper. “Honey, can you go with Nest, let Mommy take a break?”
The little girl gave her a questioning look, then nodded and turned away to say something to Kyle. He appeared to have hit it off with her, even if Little John hadn’t. Creepy kid for a creepy father. She felt sorry for him, but that’s the way things worked out. She should know.
Deliberately avoiding John Ross, who was looking somewhere else anyway, she moved away as the others took their place in line. She took a deep breath, her lungs aching with cold and fatigue, fished in her pocket for her cigarettes, knocked one loose from the pack, and reached for her lighter.
Someone else’s lighter flared right in front of her face, and she dipped her cigarette tip to catch the fire. Drawing in a deep lungful of heat and smoke, she looked into Penny’s wild green eyes.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Penny said, snapping shut the lighter.
Bennett exhaled and blew smoke in her face. “Get away from me.”
Penny smiled. “You don’t mean that.”
“Try me.” Bennett began to move away.
“Wait!” Penny caught up to her and kept pace as she walked. “I got something for you.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Sure you do. It’s good stuff. White lightning and mellow smoke. It’ll make you fly and glide all night. I took some earlier. Let me tell you, this town becomes a better place in a hurry.”
Bennett sucked on her cigarette and kept her gaze turned away. “Just leave me alone, all right?”
“Look, you hate it here as much as me. Don’t pretend you don’t.” Penny brushed at her wild hair, eyes darting everywhere at once, feral and hungry. “This town is for losers. It’s nowhere! I keep trying to find something to do besides sit around listening to Grandma snore. There’s not even a dance club! Bunch of bars with redneck mill workers and farmers. ‘How’s the crop this year, Jeb?’ ‘Oh, pretty fair, Harv.’ Like that. Only way to get past losing your mind is doing a little something to keep sane.”
“I’m off drugs.” Bennett stopped at the edge of the trees where the darkness grew so heavy she couldn’t make out even the trunks. She was already too far away from the light. “I’m clean and I’m staying clean.”
“State of mind, girl,” Penny sniffed. “There’s clean and there’s clean. You do what you want, what you need. You still stay clean.”
“Yeah, right.”
Penny shrugged. “So now what? You gonna go back up there for more toboggan fun?” Her eyes were on the platform, clearly outlined in the light. “Gonna join your friends?”
Bennett glanced up. Nest, Robert, and the children were standing on the platform, waiting to go next. “Maybe.”
Penny laughed, her angular frame twisting for emphasis. “You lie like a rug. You wouldn’t go back up there on a bet! But you make believe all you want, if it gets you through your pain. Me, I got a better way. Have a look at this.”
She took out a plastic pouch filled with brilliant white powder, took a little of the powder on her finger, and snorted it in. She gasped once, then grinned. “Mother’s milk, girl. Try a little?”
Bennett wet her lips, eyes fixed on the pouch. The need inside her was so strong she didn’t trust herself to speak or move. She wanted a hit so bad she could hardly stand the thought. Just a little, she was thinking. Just this one time. Penny was right. She was all twisted up inside, fighting to stay straight and not really believing there was any hope for it.
It wouldn’t hurt anything. I’ve used before and kept going. Besides, Harper will be all right, no matter what. Nest is here. Nest is looking after her, probably better than me. Harper likes Nest. She doesn’t need me. Anyway, doing a little coke would probably give me some focus. Just a little. I can take as much as I want and stop. I’ve always been able to do that. I can quit anytime. Anytime I want.
Oh, God, she thought, and squeezed her eyes shut until it hurt. No. No. She folded her thin arms against her body and looked back at the toboggan slide. “You keep it.”
Penny kept looking at her for a minute, then tucked the pouch back into her coat pocket. She glanced up at the platform, where Nest and the others were climbing onto the sled.
Her smile was a red slash on her pale face. “Better get back with your friends, take another ride down the chute,” she said. She smiled in a dark sort of way, giving Bennett a look that whispere of bad feelings and hard thoughts.
Then she walked over to the edge of the rise and looked down at the bayou. “Be a good mom, why don’t you? Keep your kid company.” She reached into her pocket, brought out a flashlight, pointed it downhill, and clicked it on and off twice.
She turned back to Bennett, stone-faced. “Maybe later, girlfriend,” she said. “There’s always later.”
She waved casually over her shoulder as she walked off.
Standing in the shelter of the big oaks and scrub birch bordering the bayou’s edge, back where the lights from the toboggan run didn’t penetrate, Findo Gask watched Penny Dreadful’s flashlight blink twice from the top of the rise and smiled. Time to start demonstrating to Nest Freemark the consequences of engaging in uncooperative behavior. He’d wasted enough time on her, and he wasn’t inclined to waste any more.
He stepped from the shadows to walk down to the water’s edge. The water was all ice just now, of course. But everything was subject to change. It was just a matter of knowing how to apply the right sort of pressure. It was a lesson that Nest Freemark would have done well to learn before it was too late.
Garbed in his black frock coat and flat-brimmed hat, he might have been a preacher come to the river to baptize the newly converted. But the demon had something more permanent in mind than a cleansing of the soul. Baptism wasn’t really up his alley in any case. Burial was more his style.
Aware of the clutch of feeders creeping hungrily out of the shadows to be close to him, he knelt beside the ice. Feeders were fond of Findo Gask; they could always depend on him for a good meal. He saw no reason to disappoint them now.
He reached down and touched the ice with his fingers, eyes closing in concentration. Slowly, a crack in the surface appeared, broadened and spread, then angled off into the darkness toward the clearing on the ice where the sleds usually ended their runs, close to where the levee that supported the railroad tracks rose like a black wall. He lifted his hand away from the ice and listened carefully. Out in the darkness where the crack had gone, dispatched by his magic, he could hear snapping and splintering, then the soft slosh of water.
A nice surprise would be waiting for Nest Freemark and her friends when they came down this time.
He stood up in time to catch a glimpse of a large bird streaking out of the trees behind him, bolting from cover toward the slide.
Atop the loading platform, the locking lever released.
The toboggan slid out of the starting gate with a crunching of ice crystals under wood runners, easing down the chute, quickly picking up speed. There were only five of them riding the sled now, Robert in front, gloved hands fastened on the steering ropes, Kyle behind him, Harper and Little John next, and Nest in the rear. Hunched close against each other, legs looped over hips and around waists, arms clasped about shoulders, and heads bent against the rush of wind and cold and snow, they watched the landscape of dark trees
and hazy trail lights gradually begin to blur and lose shape.
“Hang on!” Robert shouted gleefully, grinning back over his shoulder.
“Hang on!” Harper repeated happily.
The chittering sound of runners pounding over packed snow, ice, and wooden boards grew louder as their speed increased, mixing with a rush of air until they could only barely hear themselves shouting and yelling in response to their excitement. Nest clutched at Little John, trying for a response, but the boy continued his stoic silence, blue eyes fastened on something out in the night, his pale child’s face expressionless and distant.
“Eeeeek!” Harper screamed in mock horror, burying her face in Kyle’s parka. “Too fast! Too fast!”
They were halfway down the slide, the darkness of the ice drawing steadily closer, the toboggan flying over the packed surface of the chute. Nest grinned, the burn of the wind on her cheeks sharp and exhilarating. It was a good run. Even with only five of them to give the sled weight, they were getting a smooth, fast ride, one that should carry them all the way to the levee. Ahead, Robert was bent all the way forward toward the sled’s curled nose, trying to cut down wind resistance, anxious for more speed.
“Go, Robert!” she yelled impulsively.
They were almost to the end of the chute when a dark, winged shadow streaked out of the night, angling close, pulling even with Nest as she rode the sled. Huge wings and a barrel body hove into view, barely within her line of sight, and Pick’s voice cried out in her ear, “Get off the sled, Nest! Gask’s cracked the ice right ahead of you! Get off!”
At first she thought she was imagining things—catching a blurred glimpse of the owl, listening as Pick yelled at her out of nowhere, hearing words that sounded crazy and dangerous. She turned her head in response, half expecting the shadow and the words to disappear, to prove a figment of her imagination. Instead the shadow swung closer, barely clearing the heads of riders pulling their sleds uphill for another run, shouts of surprise breaking out as the sled on the chute and the trailing shadow swept past.
“Nest, get off now!” Pick screamed.
She felt a jolt of recognition, a moment of deep shock. She wasn’t mistaking what she saw or heard. It was real.
The toboggan launched itself clear of the chute and onto the ice, tearing away through sudden darkness as the trail lights disappeared behind.
“Robert, turn the sled!” she screamed at him.
Robert glanced over his shoulder, confused. She reached forward with a lunge, jamming all three children together as she did so, grabbed Robert’s right arm, and hauled back, causing him to jerk sharply on the steering rope and yank the sled out of its smooth run. But the ropes gave only minimal control, and the sled continued to rush ahead, skidding slightly sideways, but still on track.
“Nest, stop it!” Robert shouted back, yanking his arm free. “What are you doing?”
The darkness ahead was a black void beneath the clouded, snowy sky, and only a pair of very distant track lights provided any illumination. Nest felt her stomach clutch as she imagined what waited, and she yanked on Robert’s arm anew.
“Robert! There’s a hole in the ice!”
Finally, in desperation, she grabbed him by both shoulders, the children locked between them, shouting and screaming in protest, and launched herself sideways off the sled, pulling all of them with her. The toboggan tipped wildly, careened on its edge for a moment, then went over, spilling them onto the ice. Riders and sled separated, the former skidding across the ice into a snowbank, the latter continuing on into the dark.
Lying in a pile of bodies, gasping for breath and fighting for purchase on the bayou’s slick surface, with Harper crying and Robert cursing, Nest heard a sudden sloshing of water. A dark premonition burned through her.
“Hush!” she hissed at the others, grabbing at them for emphasis, needing their silence in order to hear what was happening, but fearful of what might be listening for them as well. “Hush!”
They responded to the urgency of her words and went still. In the silence that followed, there was a rush of freezing wind across the open expanse of the bayou, and the temperature dropped thirty degrees and what little warmth the night had provided was suddenly sucked away. Ice cracked and snapped, shifting and reforming as the cold invaded its skin. Swiftly, the gap closed. There was a crunching of wood as the ice seized the toboggan, trapped it like a toothpick in a giant’s dark maw, and sealed it away.
Nest took Harper in her arms and soothed her with soft words and a hug, quieting her sobs. Kyle was staring out into the darkness with eyes the size of dinner plates. Little John was staring with him, but with no expression on his face at all.
“Damn!” Robert whispered softly as the last of the terrifying ice sounds died away. “What was that?”
You don’t want to know, Robert, Nest thought in the dark silence of her anger and fear.
Chapter 14
They trudged back up the slope from the now empty ice, Nest and Robert herding the children in front of them, no one saying much of anything in the aftermath of the spill. Toboggan runs had been suspended after they went over. Now the slide attendant, a twenty-year park employee named Ray Childress, a man Nest had known since she was a little girl, had dropped the locking bar across the chute, emptied the loading platform of people, and hurried down the hill to find out what had happened. On reaching them, he fell into step beside Robert, warned off of Nest, perhaps, by the look on her face. Robert did his best to explain, but the truth was he didn’t understand either, so the best he could do was improvise and suggest that further runs that night probably weren’t safe and the park service could investigate the matter better in daylight.
Bennett was next on the scene, bounding down the slope in a flurry of arms and legs, snatching up Harper with such force that the little girl cried out.
“Baby, baby, are you all right?” Still hugging and kissing her, she wheeled angrily on Nest. “What did you think you were doing out there? She’s just a little girl! You had no right taking chances with her safety, Nest! I thought I could trust you!”
It was an irrational response, fueled by a mix of fear and self-recrimination. Nest understood. Bennett was an addict, and she viewed everything that happened as being someone else’s fault, all the while thinking deep inside that it was really hers.
“I’m sorry, Bennett,” she replied. “I did the best I could to keep Harper from any danger. It wasn’t something I planned. Anyway, she did very well when we tipped over. She kept her head and held on to me. She was a very brave little girl.”
“Sorry, Mommy,” Harper said softly.
Bennett Scott glanced down at her, and all the anger drained away in a heartbeat. “It’s okay, baby.” She didn’t look up. “Mommy’s sorry, too. She didn’t mean to sound so angry. I was just scared.”
When they arrived at the top of the slope, Ray Childress told those still standing around to go home, that the slide was closed for the evening and would open again tomorrow if things worked out. The adults, already cold and thinking of warmer places, were just as happy, while the kids grumbled a bit before shuffling away, dragging their sleds behind them. Cars started up and began to pull out of the parking lot, headlights slashing through the trees, tires crunching on frozen snow. Flurries blew sideways in a sudden gust of wind, but the snowfall had slowed to almost nothing.
Nest checked the sky for some sign of Pick, but the sylvan had disappeared. Undoubtedly, Findo Gask was gone as well. She chastised herself for being careless, for thinking that the demon wouldn’t dare try anything in a crowd—no, she corrected herself angrily, wouldn’t dare try anything period, because that had been the level of arrogance in her thinking. She had been so stupid! She had believed herself invulnerable to Gask, too seasoned a veteran in the wars of the Word and the Void for him to challenge her, too well protected by the magic of Wraith. Or perhaps it had simply been too long since anything had threatened her, and she had come to believe herself impervious
to harm.
“You look like you could chew nails,” Robert said, coming over to stand beside her.
She put a hand on his shoulder and leaned on him. “Maybe I’ll just chew the buttons off your coat. How about that?”
“I don’t have any buttons, just zippers.” He sighed. “So tell me. What happened down there? I mean, what really happened?”
She shrugged and looked away. “There was a hole in the ice. I caught a glimpse of it just in time.”
“It was pitch-black, Nest. I couldn’t see anything.”
She nodded. “I know, but I see pretty well at night.”
He brushed at his mop of blond hair and looked over at John Ross, who was kneeling in front of Little John, speaking softly to him, the boy looking somewhere else. “I don’t know, Nest. Last time something weird like this happened, he was here, too. Remember?”
“Don’t start, Robert.”
“Fourth of July, fifteen years ago, when the fireworks blew up on the slope right below us, and you went chasing after him, and I went chasing after you, and you coldcocked me in the trees …”
She stepped back from him. “Stop it, Robert. This isn’t John’s fault. He wasn’t even with us on the sled.”
Robert shrugged. “Maybe so. But maybe it’s too bad that he’s here at all. I just don’t feel good about him, Nest. Sorry.”
She shook her head and faced him. “Robert, you were always a little on the pigheaded side. It was an endearing quality when we were kids, and I guess it still is. Sort of. But you’ll understand, I hope, if I don’t share your one-sided, unsubstantiated, half-baked judgments of people you don’t really know.”
She took a deep breath. “Try to remember that John Ross is a friend.” He looked so chastened, she almost laughed. Instead, she shoved him playfully. “Take Kyle and go home to Amy and your parents. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
He nodded and began to move away. Then he looked back at her. “I may be pigheaded, but you are too trusting.” He nodded at Ross, then toward Bennett Scott. “Do me a favor. Watch out for yourself.”