HEX (25 page)

“The bird is still alive,” Marty said.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Warren said.

“For real. I just heard him chirkling. Or curkling. Or whatever it is that a peacock does.”

“Give me a break,” curkled Grim.

“And that's not all,” Marty said. “There was an organ lying in the bushes—I think it's an animal heart, but I'm no anatomist. Then we have that twig doll over there”—he pointed to a sort of braided cross of willow branches dangling from a branch not far away—“which is, like, totally ripped off from
The Blair Witch Project
. I don't get it, because in the film it was this evil thing from the witch herself, and why would anyone want to give her something like that? And, um, discount coupons from the supermarket.”

Grim and Warren stared at him.

“There's something written on the back. The rain has made it run, but I think it's Bible verses.”

The peacock in the shopping bag let out a piteous cry.

“Motherfuckers!” Grim hissed. “Mary, call Claire. Have her send out an alert that the situation is under control, and that contact with the witch is still prohibited. Mention the Emergency Decree and what people can expect if they ignore it. Tell Claire to search all the relevant security images. I want to find the assholes who did this and hang their scalps on the wall.”

He took his box cutter out of the pocket of his coat and stepped forward.

“What are you doing?” Warren asked.

“Cutting it off, of course! These jokers have no idea what they're letting themselves in for. She's already getting wound up, and if people start tying junk to her, God knows what she'll do next. What if somebody drops dead of a stroke, like those old folks did in '67? What the hell were they thinking?”

“Just be careful, okay?”

Grim noticed that the witch's dead, sunken lips, where murky drops of rainwater had gathered, were moving slightly, causing the wet stitches in the left corner of her mouth to tighten. He concentrated on the voice of Marty Keller, who now had Claire on the line, and on the sound of the rain in the woods. The witch was whispering, but Grim didn't listen, violently forcing Katrina & the Waves in his head to keep him from focusing on her words.

He cleared his throat and stepped forward. The peacock in the blue shopping bag rustled softly. A shudder passed through its plumage. Katherine's hands hung limply at her sides. Grim reached out with the box cutter …

 … and the witch grabbed hold of the peacock feathers.

Grim jumped back, tottered, and was caught by Warren Castillo. He let out a stifled cry. It had been one compelling movement, deliberately made, as the poor bird's tail feathers stuck out just within reach of a swift twist of the wrist, and now her scrawny, cadaverous fingers closed around them like a wolf trap. As the three of them watched, the bird's life ebbed away. The brilliant green and blue flowed out of the peacock eyes and faded to a mournful gray. The thin feathers around them curled inward, crumbled into powder, and dissolved in the wind.

The bird didn't rise like a phoenix, it roasted like a chicken. Thin wisps of smoke rose from the shopping bag and gave off an appallingly vile smell—not of burning but of
charring,
like a dried piece of charcoal breaking up in your throat and filling your windpipe with hot ash. Grim imagined that opening an old tomb in Pompeii would smell like that.

“I'll … I'll call you right back,” Marty stammered, and he cut Claire off. “Jesus, did you see that? I mean, did you
see
that?”

No one bothered to answer. Katherine stood facing them, motionless. Something in the way she held the undoubtedly dead bird gave them the impression that she was mocking them, as if with that one simple act she was reminding them who was boss here in Black Spring. Grim tried to appeal to reason, but he felt the world tilting crazily, straightening itself out, and skidding to the other side. He was in the grips of a strangling panic, and for the first time in his life, he wished with all his heart that he had never been born in Black Spring and that Katherine was someone else's curse.

*   *   *

KATHERINE HELD ON
to her peacock.

Instead of disappearing and popping up somewhere else, as she usually did every seven hours or so, her pattern changed. From that moment on, she began wandering through town, the shopping bag tied around her waist and the bunch of dead peacock feathers in her hand.

“I think she's happy with her offering,” Warren Castillo concluded at a certain point, but no one knew if that was true or not.

By Monday evening, while all of America's networks were covering the run-up to the next day's presidential elections, Philosopher's Creek had turned a murky red, as if a great white shark were swimming somewhere in the waters and had bitten a couple of hikers in half.

Katherine had made her way to Town Hall, with her peacock in tow.

 

SIXTEEN

AT THE LOW
point of his stupor after Fletcher's death—at half past one on Monday night—Tyler lay in bed, naked but for his underpants, his body covered with goose bumps and his nipples dark, hard nodules. The normally gentle but well-formed lines of his ribs and muscles looked sunken and pale in the glow of his MacBook screen saver. He stared at the ceiling and listened to the ticking of the heating pipes, counting off the passing of seconds. The window guys wouldn't be coming to repair the back window until tomorrow, so the house was drafty and the radiators had been working overtime for the last few days.

Tyler was beyond exhausted, but sleep eluded him. He changed positions, shivered restlessly, and pulled the blankets up to his waist. He had no idea how he'd gotten through the past forty-eight hours with so little sleep, but one way or another, he had managed it. It made him despondent, overwrought, frustrated. He didn't want another night like that.

Just before midnight, Laurie had texted:

Tyler, how RU? Miss you, let me hear from you, OK? Love, Laurie

Tyler had clicked the message away and turned off his phone. He didn't feel capable of answering her. It was as if Laurie were in another dimension, where the images that kept flashing through his mind in a sickening repetition—Katherine's nipple, Fletcher, the horses—didn't exist. He had surfed to a webcam site in search of easier consolation, but nothing could excite him much in this condition.

Finally, he had worked up something in his blog's content manager, but of course he didn't put it online:

Total wash-up. Think I'm brain-dead. Can't think clearly. Brain feels slammed, as if Paladin trashed my head instead of the living room. Wish I had some weed or something. Gotta keep cool or I'll explode. Got a bottle of tequila from downstairs and threw a party in my room—a one-man fiesta à la TylerFlow95, you bitches. Think I'm gonna puke. If I don't puke, I'll never drink another drop of alcohol.

No idea what the next step's supposed to be. How things turned out. Hubris, Icarus, all that crap? Yeah, it's my fault.
OYE
was my project. Proper preps, check. Articulating vision, check. Tolerance, check, anticipating, check. But there's no tolerance for Jaydon's madness, no anticipating. How he stuck that knife in her tit. FUCKED UP. I don't want to think about it, but I can't get it out of my mind. How he sliced her nipple like a piece of rotten fruit, or a piñata. Why did I ever let Norman Bates join?

He's DANGEROUS. Big fucking period. Stay out of his way. Don't let yourself be tempted the way you did yesterday. Real manly man, standing up for your rights. He didn't even give a fuck. As if he understood why he deserved a punch in the mouth. Freaky, no? You saw how he was looking at you. As if he had it coming and he knew it, like after-school detention.

Went to the creek today. Dad says we can't go anywhere near there because we don't know if it's dangerous or not—look at what happened to the horses. But horses sense things differently, and I don't think it has the same effect on us. Personally, I think it is dangerous, but in a whole nother way. It fucks with your brain. Those trails of blood in the water. Like party streamers. Hypnotizing you.

Anyway, shot some doc but don't feel like editing. Why should I?
OYE
is dead and buried. A grave in the backyard, just like Fletcher.

Oh, Fletcher. Dad, I'm sorry. Mom, I'm sorry. Matt, I'm sorry. Without me Fletcher would still be alive. Dad knows I know more. I can tell by the way he looks at me. He asked me once, but I didn't say anything. Is he waiting for me to confess it on my own? But I can't, wouldn't know how. And what Katherine did was just a reaction—Fletcher struck first. Can we blame Katherine for wanting to get back at us? We killed her children, we hanged her, we sewed her fucking eyes shut. Who wouldn't be pissed? And jeez, why am I saying “we”? Paranoia. Maybe I'm losing it. Things are falling apart. Reality check: HER EYES MUST NEVER BE OPENED. After 300 years of bottled-up powers she'll explode like a supernova.

I'm shitting my pants. Never been so scared in my whole life. Why did I call our project
Open Your Eyes
? It's weird how things make so much sense at first and seem so fucked up later on.

It was always meant as a call to Black Spring. Why does it sound like a call to the witch now?

A floorboard creaked on the landing.

Tyler listened, paralyzed like a salamander on a rock, feeling himself run hot and cold at the same time. The sound moved, followed by an unmistakable groaning of the stairway joints—the gently placed footsteps of someone who didn't want to make any noise. Tyler recognized Matt, as you come to do with the sounds of the people you live with. He wondered what Matt was doing downstairs; there was a bathroom up here on the second floor, too. Maybe to get something to eat. Tyler suddenly felt hungry himself; he hadn't been able to swallow a thing all day. Maybe a bite of something would get rid of the heartburn he'd gotten from the tequila … if he could manage to keep it down.

He listened for a little while. Silence. Tyler pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw stars blossom, but suddenly he sat bolt upright and opened his eyes wide. There were rapid footsteps on the stairs. Thumping, a quiet bump, a muffled curse: Matt had stumbled. Hurried steps on the way to their parents' bedroom. Tyler stared into the darkness and listened to the agitated, sleepy voices. He couldn't make out what they were saying.

The food's gone,
he thought stupidly.
The witch has eaten it all. Tomorrow they'll take Matt and you to the woods and leave you there for the wild animals.

When he heard Fletcher's name he threw off the blanket and sneaked down the hall on bare feet. Light was pouring from his parents' bedroom, and Matt glanced over his shoulder at Tyler.

“Go to sleep, it's one-thirty…” he heard Jocelyn moan from under her pillow. Steve growled something and Matt bounced nervously from one leg to the other.

“What's going on?” Tyler whispered.

Matt turned to his big brother. “I dreamt I heard Fletcher scratching at the back door. As if we had accidentally locked him out in the cold, you know? And then I went to look, and it wasn't until I got downstairs that I remembered he was dead. Except he was still scratching at the back door. I saw his shadow in the light of the outside lamp.”

Tyler sighed. He saw the circles under Matt's eyes. In his oversized T-shirt, he looked like the little kid who was still hidden inside him, who had every right to show up now and then at age thirteen—when he was having a nightmare, for instance. “Dude, you're dreaming,” he said. “Go to bed, bro.”

“But the outside lamp
went on,
Tyler, and that means—”

Then they heard it: a muted barking in the distance that seemed to be coming from the woods behind the house. For a second Tyler thought he was only hearing it in his head, a phantom sound emerging from the depths of his exhausted mind like some sort of psychological reaction to what had happened over the last few days. Because yes, it had
sounded
like Fletcher, no denying that. But then he heard the barking again, clearer and closer this time, as if the dog making the noise were standing near the horse pen in the backyard, and now there was no doubt in his mind: that was Fletcher barking.

It was almost comical the way they all snapped into action: Tyler stormed down the stairs, closely followed by Matt, then Steve and Jocelyn, who stumbled out of bed. Downstairs, Tyler stepped through the rectangle of icy moonlight falling through the back door and onto the tiles. He saw that the outdoor lamp was off. The lamp had a time and motion sensor, and if anything had moved earlier, it was gone now. It was unusually dark downstairs because the chipboard covering the window in the dining room was blocking any incoming light. They hadn't yet bought a new dining room table, and the empty, boarded-up darkness seemed gloomy, like an old boiler room in a factory.

Tyler unbolted the back door and turned the key. The cold outside air chilled his naked skin when he opened the door. Matt wriggled past him and stared outside.

“Boys, you'll catch your death,” Jocelyn said, but Matt raised an index finger and said, “Shhh!”

He cocked his head and listened.

Silence.

Then the barking came again, flatter and yet more
present
without walls to dampen the sound. It came from the left, somewhere in the massive blackness that was Mount Misery. Tyler's breath caught in his throat and Matt turned around with a wild look in his eyes. “That's Fletcher!”

“Don't be ridiculous, Matt,” Steve said matter-of-factly. He joined his sons in the doorway. The barking had moved, this time to the right. It didn't sound happy, the way Fletcher had always barked when he was running after branches. Nor did it sound angry … “hunted” was the right word, and somehow sad. Still, that sound … Could you recognize a dog from his bark, the way you could distinguish people's voices—and in the dark, if you were all worked up and scared? Because of course it couldn't be Fletcher. They had buried the dog on Saturday afternoon, and now he was at the far end of the backyard, wrapped up in a woolen blanket, in a shallow pit behind the horse pen. The earth was damp and the blanket would have started to grow moldy by now; his gums may have already decomposed, and the white spots on his fur would no longer be white.