Between the Spark and the Burn (5 page)

“I'm Violet,” I said. “And that's Luke, my twin brother, and our next-door neighbor Sunshine, and our friend Neely.”

She looked at them in turn, and nodded. The cemetery was on a small hill, the gravestones leaning and crouching and huddled together. I glanced down the horizon. From up here the mountains seemed to be nestling the whole town in the crook of its arm.

Pine stepped up to the nearest gravestone, the sky behind her a dusky blue, edged in a scorching red-orange. She lifted the bowl and poured about a quarter cup of the blood right over the top.
“And thou shalt slay the swine, and thou shalt take its blood, and sprinkle it on the stones,”
she said, soft and slow, like a prayer.

It was getting dark, fast, but I could still see the stains of previous offerings, turning the worn, crooked stone an unsettling color, flaking off onto the ground like shavings of rust.

“Why do you do this?” I asked, moving with her over to the next stone, a tall one. I helped her lift the lip of the bowl and dribble the blood over the letters,
GRIEVE
, until they were coated. There were no other words carved on it, just Grieve.

She shrugged again, a tight moving up and down of her shoulders. “Because we always have. Whenever someone has a baby that's sick, or an Elderly that needs to move on, or a kid gone missing in the woods, we make a blood offering to our ancestors.”

We moved on down the line. Neely and Luke and Sunshine stood about fifteen yards away, watching from the edge of the cemetery at the base of the hill, not talking. Both Luke and Sunshine clutched the iron gate in their fists, like they couldn't wait to leave.

Three days ago we were singing Christmas songs in Citizen Kane, and now I was helping a sad girl in a dead-bird town pour blood in a churchyard. Life was . . . strange.

It was the last headstone, number nineteen, and we were down to the drops. I vaguely wished in the back of my mind for a spatula, something to scrape the last bits out of the bowl, like Freddie had done when we made Dutch Coffee Chocolate Cake.

And then I shivered. Shivered at the absurdity of scraping pig's blood from a bowl like cake batter. My shivering arms splattered the last red beads on the ground instead of the stone, and they made small, melted dents in the snow. Four little black holes.

This town was too quiet.

Too . . .
bizarre
.

Something was wrong. Off. Something worse than dead birds and blood.

I could feel the bowl in my hands, see the dead birds, hear the sound of my feet crunching on snow. It was real.

Wasn't it?

River, am I being glowed?

Or sparked?

Are we all?

I shook my head. Blinked.

River's glow felt good.

And Brodie's spark hurt like hell.

I would know. I felt sure I would know.

Pine took the bowl from me and set it on the ground. She stood up, and shuddered as the cold wind hit her small body. I took the scarf from around my neck, my new striped one, and wrapped it around her, moving her white-blond hair as I did it. “Keep this,” I said. “I've got another back home.”

“People will ask where it came from,” she said, not taking her eyes from the pretty white and black stripes.

“Just tell them you found it in the forest,” I replied.

She looked up at me. “Thank you.”

I stared into her light blue-gray eyes. “Pine, are all your ancestors buried here, in this graveyard? It's so small . . .”

She nodded. “A group of them came over from Scotland, way, way back when. Married each other. We . . . keep to ourselves.” She tilted her chin up, like she was ready for my scorn. “We used to go to a real school down the mountain, but Pastor Walker Rose stopped that. Now we go to school in the church right there, three days a week. Duncan Begg and his daughter Prudence teach us, ever since Widow McGregor died. It's mostly knitting and carving and carpentry, but they do reading and math too.”

“Pine, what do all the dead birds on the signs and doors mean? Does this have something to do with the devil-boy?”

She looked up at me, again. I wasn't that tall, but she was still a good six inches smaller. “The Droods, they caught the boy in their daughter's room. They tried to stop him, get him off Charlotte, but a flock of ravens swept in through the window and started pecking at their eyes and face and head and hands. They still have the sores. The herb woman says they're not healing clean.” She paused. “And then there's all the people, mostly older but some children too, who say they've seen him in the woods, dressed all in black, with a dark cloud of ravens flying above him, following him wherever he goes.”

I could picture him, clear as day. Brodie. Red hair. Midnight-blue sky. White snow. Black ravens.

Neely had joined me by this time, stepping up beside me, listening quietly. Luke and Sunshine still hovered by the iron gate, whispering to each other.

“So these Droods still have the sores?” Neely. “Then the birds aren't an illusion. It means he's controlling animals now too. That can't be good.” The grin was back on Neely's face like it was nothing, like it was just a bit of juicy gossip, like it was,
For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn.

“They think killing the birds will anger him,” Pine added. “Make him come out into the open so we can catch him. But he's gone. I know he is. I can feel it, in my insides, somehow. A . . . lessening. Ma made me bring the blood out here, to ask our ancestors for help. But I know he's already gone.”

Neely's eyes had that up-to-no-good glint that I'd seen in River's so many times. And that's when I knew we were going to stay.

And maybe part of me was scared, but the other part, the louder part . . . the Freddie part . . . was licking its lips in anticipation.

“Pine, do you know somewhere we can spend the night?” I looked up and down the small rows of houses that led off the main street, and her gaze followed mine. “A campground, maybe? Or a hotel?”

Pine shook her head, snuggling her chin into the scarf. “We had an inn once, a long, long time ago. A road ran through Inn's End, and a train too. We were the last stop before the big forest. But then Pastor Walker Rose started preaching against strangers. Soon the train disappeared and then no more inn either.” She was quiet for a moment. “You could stay at the Lashleys', I suppose. Their place is on the other edge of town. It's the biggest house in Inn's End—the one with the rope swing in front.”

“Do they rent out rooms?” I asked, with no enthusiasm. I liked Pine on sight, but the thought of sleeping in one of the houses in Inn's End, with the dead birds hanging on the door . . .

But Pine shook her head. “No one rents out rooms here. Not since Walker Rose. The Lashleys . . . they had a little boy. He was really pretty, great brown curls, fat rosy cheeks. Everyone loved him. And then one morning he wandered into the woods and didn't come back. They found him three days later, smashed to pieces at the bottom of a gorge. Little Hamish Lashley's ma threw herself off old Witch William's bridge. They told Ian not to marry an outsider, and a city girl at that, despite the money. But he would have her. He ran off then too. Who knows where, anywhere that's not here, I guess. No one lives there now. It's empty.”

A raven cawed from overhead. I looked up. It was perched on the steeple roof, sitting with its chest puffed out as if to say
I'm not dead like the others. Not yet.

“That will work for the night,” I said to Pine. “Thank you. Will people mind, though?” I added, as I saw an old bent woman step out of a small, dark shop with three dead birds on the door and no sign. She shuffled down the street and disappeared into the night, never turning her head, not seeing us.

Pine just shrugged again.

“Well, that's comforting,” Neely said, and grinned.

≈≈≈

We hid our car back by the covered Witch William's bridge, parking it into the trees a bit so the shadows would help hide it come daybreak. Just in case. Just until we knew what morning would bring. We grabbed sleeping bags, toothbrushes, clothes, and the picnic basket, and then headed back into town.

The Lashley house was beautiful. Even with the dirty windows, and the overgrown shrubs almost covering the steps and door. The neglect, the decay . . . it felt like the Citizen. It felt like home.

We stood in the dark, under the moon, watching the rope swing move this way and that in the frigid night wind. I could almost see the Lashley boy, curls and cheeks, sitting on it and laughing.

“Well, I guess this is where we sleep tonight,” Neely said, taking in the house and smiling. “Should be memorable.”

“No.” Luke stood at the edge of the lawn, shaking his head. “Vi, I can't do it. We can't stay here. We'll never be able to fall asleep, it's not safe, they don't want us here—that girl said so. What kind of town pours blood on gravestones? They'll come for us in the night, sis, they will, I just know it . . .”

Sunshine clutched her sleeping bag in her arms. “Luke's right. This town is stupid and this house is stupid. And we'll be stupid if we stay here.”

I could have teased them about being scared. They would have done it in my shoes.

“It's just for one night,” I said. “Where are we going to go this late? Inn's End is miles from a main road, and we'll never be able to find our way back here again. We barely found it the first time. Besides, think of the great story this will make. Think of the great art it will inspire, brother.”

Luke stared at me for a second, and then shrugged. But I could still see it in his eyes, the anxiety. He looked at Sunshine, and then back at the town behind him, his muscles tensed, like he was trying to suppress a shiver.

I set down the picnic basket, crossed my arms over my chest, and hugged myself tight. Luke's unease was getting to me. This silent, forgotten town . . . the dead birds . . . that blood . . .

Still. I wasn't going to run. I'd wanted this, after all.

“Vi's right, Luke,” Neely said, his Neely glint still flashing in his blue Neely eyes. “This should be a night to remember.”

And he walked up the steps of the abandoned house, laughing.

November

We found a secret passageway one night. A hidden door in the large storage room off the Glenship's main kitchen. Chase stumbled upon the hidden latch while reading French poetry out loud to a pretty maid while she hid from the housekeeper.

Will laughed out loud when he saw it open, the brick wall separating like a row of teeth opening to take a bite. “Atta boy, Chase,” he said. “Atta boy.”

We followed the hallway as it grew colder and darker, colder and darker. It went on and on. We finally turned up underneath a trapdoor in the conservatory in the Glenship's large, manicured garden. We climbed the ladder and popped out like characters on a moonlit stage. The warm humidity was exotic and sensuous after the cold tunnel, and I breathed in deep.

“So that's how they're getting the hooch in and out,” Chase said. “The back road leads right up to the greenhouse here. I should have guessed. All that noise in the middle of the night . . .”

And suddenly I realized there was more to Chase's father, and their money, than I'd thought. Chase held a flask to my lips, and the gin singed my insides, just like that first time, in the wine cellar, when it mixed up with Will's burn and clouded the world and led us into sin. Gin would always taste like fire and Will and sin, to me.

When the flask was gone, and we were drunk on it, and on the heady smell of the flowers, and the thick greenhouse air, we collapsed in a heap in a corner. A large green fern tickled us with its tickly fern leaves every time we moved, and it made us laugh and laugh.

Will took our hands, both Chase's and mine, and made the stars twinkling above the glass roof glow, glow so bright they were no longer stars, but pebbled-sized suns. And then he made them dance. And form themselves into the letters of our names.

And the next day Chase thought it had just been the drunk in him, but I knew all along, didn't I.

≈≈≈

The boys gathered twigs and branches from the snowy backyard and Sunshine started a fire in the fireplace. I warned everyone about sooty chimneys and how they made you fall over dead. But no one listened because it was freezing.

It was long past twilight. I sat down on the floor in front of the fire. My skin warmed in the heat and my hair glowed orange in its light. I wanted to keep reading Freddie's diary, and thinking about Will Redding and his burn, and River Redding and his glow, and let the thrill and fear of it all fill me up until I started liking it.

But not now. Later. When I could be alone. And when I wasn't sitting in an abandoned house in a forgotten town that hated devils and ravens and strangers.

The door to the Lashley house had been unlocked—I guess theft wasn't a concern here, just like it wasn't in Echo. Inside, it had been untouched, stopped in time, like Miss Havisham in her wedding dress with the clock and the cake. Wooden toys, furry from dust, cluttered the high-ceiling sitting room, lying just where they'd been left. Flowered wallpaper surrounded Victorian furniture—the stiff, high-backed chairs and sofas, the fringed lampshades, the elaborately framed mirror above the fireplace.

We explored everything the moment we got inside. Everything but the attic, which was locked, and the cellar, which was pitch-black and full of grisly, scurrying night sounds. We'd forgotten the flashlights in the car, so the search was done in icy semi-darkness, lit only with a candle Neely found in the kitchen. The master bedroom was large and neat. A satin caramel-colored nightdress hung on a hook in the bathroom, and small, feminine glass bottles and jars were still arranged tidily in front of the mirror. Everything was stiff with cold, especially the bed cover and the curtains. I ran my hand down rigid silk and dust flew.

The nursery. Sunshine opened the door, but none of us went in. Boy things, everywhere, shoes and toys and books and a rocking horse and . . .

. . . And all I could think about was a small crushed boy body, tangled in leaves and shadows.

I knew what it would have looked like. I knew, more than most.

Neely came over to me by the fire, moka pot in hand. Yes, we'd brought the little silver espresso maker with us. He set it near the flames, and soon I heard a low, hot-water sound. The familiar dark coffee smell burst through the room, sweeping away the thick smell of dust and neglect.

We all sipped the joe for a while, sitting on our sleeping bags in front of the fire. We wouldn't be sleeping in the beds. No way we would be sleeping in the beds. And we wanted to all be together, anyway. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe everything would be quiet, and we would wake to warm sunshine and spend the day questioning the town about the devil-boy and then go on our merry way.

But I doubted it. And everyone else did too, judging by the way Luke and Sunshine had forgotten to be in love with each other, and the way Sunshine jumped at every sound, and the way Neely kept getting up to stare out the big Victorian windows into the night outside, and the way Luke never let me out of sight for more than three seconds.

Still, despite all this, I felt bustling, energized, fired up. Even if this town scared the damn hell out of me. Even if Brodie could be out there, right now, his tall, thin body weaving between dead trees, his red hair looking black in the dark, his birds flying behind him like a damn ebony cloak.

I pulled red logs of spicy chorizo out of the basket, and we roasted them on the fire. Oil dripped into the flames and made them hum. We had more of Neely's coffee and four crisp apples and a wedge of nutty Dutch cheese.

For dessert Neely gathered fresh clean snow in a glass bowl from the square kitchen. He opened a jar of maple syrup he found in the cupboard, and drizzled it on top. We all ate from the same dish, using big silver spoons, the fluffy white melting away to smooth, earthy sweetness on our tongues.

When we were done, Luke and Sunshine washed the bowl and spoons with more clean snow, since there was no running water in the house. They dried the dishes, and put them back in the kitchen, like we lived in this damn house now.

Luke and Sunshine fell asleep in minutes, despite Luke's earlier protest. I drifted off in front of the fire eventually, coming in and out of consciousness, small sounds waking me with a jerk, my dreams tense and twisted. And each time I awoke . . . there was Neely. Not sleeping. Pacing. Watching.

He woke us at midnight.

Neely had found a radio buried in a closet upstairs when we searched the house. I hadn't been able to bring myself to touch the woman's dresses, so small and bright and . . . unused. So it was Neely who pushed through the clothes of the dead woman, to the back, to the shelf where he found the radio.

Luke, Sunshine, and I rubbed sleep from our eyes, sat up, and then shivered as our shoulders hit the cold. We moved our sleeping bags even closer together, and Neely threw another thick branch on the fire.

He started fiddling with the dials, but Luke just stared at the radio and shook his head. “I'm not listening to that show again. Not here, in this creepy house in this creepy town. I won't do it.”

Sunshine was glaring at the radio too. “That stupid radio show is the reason we're sitting here in this cold house in this nightmarish town, instead of drinking hot chocolate in the Citizen. Wide-Eyed Theo can go to hell.”

“Shut up, you cowards,” I said, because, damn it, I wanted to listen to Theo, so help me God. I owed it to him. Without Theo, I would still be home, staring at the sea, about ready to scream at the silence and the boredom and the waiting, waiting, waiting . . .

Neely looked from Luke, to Sunshine, to me, and smiled. He spun the left knob—

. . . of the mad and true. It's Wide-Eyed Theo. I'm here. You're here. And it's the witching hour. Time for your daily dose of
Stranger Than Fiction.

Neely sat down next to me and cuddled up close in the cold.

So . . . anyone out there find Inn's End? Any reports on the devil-boy and the ravens? Please call in. 1-800-EYE-THEO. Keep Theo in the loop, kids.

I did hear back from one brave, loyal follower. Jason H. called in from, quote, “an ominously quiet corner of Washington State” to report on that kid who claimed he was talking to a dead boy in his attic. This ghost told him to start digging a four-foot-by-four-foot hole in his backyard . . . and the boy eventually dug up the remains of a small child. Police are looking into it. Thanks for the closure, Jason. A Wide-Eyed Theo Kit is coming your way, complete with an EMF meter and apocalypse-ready hand-crank radio.

I have three new stories tonight for you greedy little bastards. This first one comes out of Maine, a town named Riddle. Two young sisters are claiming that a teenage boy is living in an old, unused barn buried in the woods behind the sisters' farm. The boy only comes out at night, and disappears whenever anyone but the sisters are near. The girls have been leaving him apples and chocolate. But now the boy wants the sisters to come into the barn to, quote, “see something they will find meaningful.”

They want to know if they should follow this boy into the barn. Well, believers? What do you think?

My other two stories both come out of North Carolina. Apparently the residents of some small island off the North Carolina coast have started a sea god cult. They worship a boy who commands the ocean and demands virgin sacrifices to appease his violent appetite.

Take that as you will, believers. My source called in late last night—she seemed confused and possibly drunk. She lost track of what she was saying by the end of our conversation, and didn't remember who I was, or why she had called in the first place, so I didn't get the name of the island. But if any of you listeners find it, well, do let me know. All I could get out of her was “Wild Horses,” whatever that means. Could be the name of a hotel . . . or the name of a beach. Not sure, not sure.

My last story, as I said, is also out of North Carolina, though I didn't catch where before the caller hung up. It involves a haunted fisherman's shack. Teenagers go in and don't come out again. That's all the details I have. And if this sounds like pure urban legend, then perhaps it is. But it is our job to believe, and so we must.

It's Wide-Eyed Theo, signing off for the night.

Go forth and find the strange.

“Riddle,” Luke said, staring straight at me. “That's only thirty miles from Echo.”

“I know,” I replied. Riddle was a village nestled in the deep Maine woods like something from a German fairy tale. Freddie had taken us there once, when we were little. She met a young man in the forest at the edge of town and disappeared with him into the trees, leaving Luke and me just standing there, staring into the dark. When she came back, some ten minutes later, she was pale, but cheerful. I never did solve that Freddie mystery. It was just one of the many.

“I don't like it,” I added. “I don't like that Theo mentioned a town so close to the Citizen.”

Luke nodded. Sunshine nodded. Neely laughed.

“Looks like our devil-boy has moved on, as that Pine girl said. The only question is . . .” Neely leaned back against the flowered wall by the big front window and smiled one of his careless smiles. “Which way did he go?”

I opened my mouth to answer . . .

And then I saw the lights, flashing in the dark outside.

“They're here,” I said, and my voice was calm, strangely calm, like I had known all along what was going to happen.

I heard Luke climb out of his sleeping bag. Felt his hand grip my arm, hard. Sunshine grabbed a thick marble candlestick from the mantel above the fireplace, and held it at her side, fist clenched like she was ready for it . . . but then her free hand went to her head, cradling it in the spot where the baseball bat hit it last summer. She dropped the candlestick on the ground and it thudded, deep. She backed into a corner of the room and crouched in the shadows, her long hair covering the white of her face.

But Neely just kept standing at the window, shaking his head.

“It's not what you think,” he said. And then he opened the door.