The Wicked We Have Done (8 page)

I’m about to respond when Casey returns from the stream, shirt off and dripping wet. “You all right, kid?”

“Yes, Dad. Mom already asked me.”

I snort and Casey’s eyes catch mine for a brief moment before he says, “Just making sure.”

***

After Tanner, Jace, and Valerie have retreated to the tent for the night, Casey and I remain abrasive toward each other. Bundled inside two blankets with my hood up, I face the dark bank on the other end of the stream.

He pokes at the coals with a stick. “What do you think about what Tanner said? About how no matter where we are, what we’re doing, we can’t hide from our tests?”

Great, not exactly something I want to talk about. I ponder carefully, rolling around the best response in my head before saying, “I think that the next test will hit us when we least expect it. And when it happens, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to handle it.”

“I find that hard to believe.” The noise of coals grating against each other fills the air. “Considering the amount of shit you’ve seen . . . I’d think you’d be numb to tragedy by now.”

Strange that he points out the shit I’ve dealt with as though it’s not in relation to the shit I’ve caused. “I don’t work like that. I don’t go numb when my shit meter is maxed out.”

“Good to know. I guess.”

“Why? So you can make sure nothing else tragic happens to me?”

The noise of the coals ceases. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Give it up, Casey. You act like you have to be in control of everything. It’s why you don’t want to sit here and wait for Gordon.”

“Then what
do
I want to do, if you’re so fucking smart?”

“Hell if I know. Since you can’t control him from here, you’d rather go find him and kill him yourself. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

I don’t need any extra time to realize what I’ve said.

I turn toward him. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did.” He stands, picking up a fresh log and throwing it into the fire. Sparks fly everywhere. I brush one from my shoulder. “You meant it. You think I’m going to die here because I’d rather kill someone then let them kill other people.”

“No—Casey, no, I don’t.” I have no idea, actually. How much do I know of this guy? Not a whole lot. The statistics say that only two of us will survive this place.

Should I hope for the best, or prepare for the worst?

“I guess you’ll find out, won’t you?” he says.

“Don’t.”

“What? You said it yourself. What I can’t control, I kill. Why would they let someone like me escape?”

“Shut up, okay?”

“
Shh
!”

At first, I think he’s mocking me. But his mouth is open. He’s listening for something. I hold my breath and wait, but hear nothing. “What was it?”

And then I hear it, an audible snap of a twig, a shift of a body.

Casey and I both jump to our feet at the same time. I squint in the direction the noise came from, but make out nothing in the darkness.

“An animal,” he says.

I shake my head. I haven’t seen any animals so far in the Compass Room. They might have been hiding from us. I wait for scurrying, hissing, growling. Anything that could signify the movement in the darkness is nothing but a natural part of the landscape.

But then the darkness starts to hum.

I grab Casey’s wrist and listen. I know this song.

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,

Go to sleep, little baby.

I finger the knife in my pocket, releasing Casey.

“Who’s there?” Casey asks lowly.

When you wake, you shall have,

All the pretty little horses.

“I’m gonna go check it out.”

“Are you
crazy
?” he says.

“What’s more insane? To wait here or figure out what the hell’s going on?”

He can’t argue with that.

“I’ll come too,” he says. But he’s unsure. I hear it in his voice.

I know I should be more afraid than I am. The fire from my bickering with Casey has kept me fueled. We
have
been working well as a team of misfits. It isn’t time to back down now. I’m on shift. I need to figure out what’s humming. Who’s humming.

I need to protect the misfit criminals I ended up with.

Blacks and bays, dapples and grays.

“All the pretty little horses,” Casey whispers.

The humming—it doesn’t sound childish. If it did, I would expect Todd to appear. Instead it’s a baritone voice, smooth, like he sings this song often. Twigs crunch under my feet as I tiptoe beneath the overhang of branches, Casey right by my side.

“Who’s there?” I ask the darkness.

With the campfire behind us, my vision slowly adjusts. The humming stops.

No one is here.

“Hello?” Shadows swallow Casey’s voice.

“Take a look around,” I say. “Maybe toward the creek.”

“Separate?”

“We want to make sure the area is clear, don’t we?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

I listen to his footsteps fade and return to the section of forest before me. What I’d give for a flashlight right now. There’s no reason why CR engineers couldn’t have slipped one into our bags, except to enjoy watching us suffer without one.

“Hello?” My confidence is lost, the word only a whisper.

Way down yonder in the meadow,

There’s a poor little lamb.

“WHO’S THERE?”

Bees and butterflies pecking out its eyes,

The poor little lamb cried—

The singing stops, and Gordon, somewhere in the darkness, says, “I never get this far. I want to, you see, but they always die before then.”

Melted ice slips down my spine. I need to run. I need to get the fuck out of here.

“What do you want?” I try to keep my voice steady—
What. Do. You. Want.
—but I exhale the words in a frenzied, slurred mess.

He says nothing in return.

I cling to the blade in my pocket and listen for any trace of him, but there’s nothing. I wait, hearing only Casey behind me, shouting my name. Waking the rest up, I’m sure.

I ask the darkness, “
Who
always dies before then?”

But the darkness doesn’t respond.

May 5, Last Year

Ten Miles from Campus

The evening was chilly. The setting sun bathed the hills in deep orange. Behind us, cars zoomed past Meghan’s, parked on the side of the road. I wondered what they thought we were doing, two girls in the middle of a clearing, staring at nothing.

We had just been in the city. So far I had a picture of a garbage can and a half-eaten carton of Chinese food to work with.

Meghan kept snapping shots, adjusting the lens, snapping more. Her platinum curls whipped back and forth in the wind. “Gorgeous.”

“Hurry up,” I whined playfully.

“Sorry, I can’t get away from this. These might be the best pictures I’ve ever taken.”

“Kidding. I’m more than entertained right now.”

“Hmmm . . .”

“It’s true.”

“You’re so weird. How you love coming on these expeditions.” The sky was melding into a darker blue.

“I like a heads-up on what I’ll be working with.”

She crinkled her nose. “Sure. I think you just want to bug me.”

“Also the truth.”

Actually, the real truth was that she was a source of pure inspiration. This sunset wasn’t an anomaly, even though she was trying to convince me so. She got excited about the beauty of the garbage in the street. Who did that? No one, only someone as immune to monotony as Meghan was. She saw something to be passionate about everywhere.

We grabbed burritos from the taco stand near campus before making our way back to the apartment. She uploaded everything onto the tablet and I chose my favorite, one where the pink was outlined in perfect canary yellow.

She streamed our favorite sitcom and studied as I set the tablet in front of me and began to paint.

***

Our first duo project took me a month to complete.

Meghan’s photo was only the base of the painting. I brushed her in as well, a series of strokes that made up her hoodie and jeans, a tangle of hair that matched the yellow in the sky above her. The clouds were different from the ones in the photo as well. I painted them into twisted hands that grasped at the air—bent wrists and long, curling fingers.

If you asked me then, I would have said that I didn’t know what it meant. The idea came to me and I decided to roll with it. But the psychologists on television had a lot to say about my implementation of twisted hands in the sky and Meghan in the foreground.

Even at that time, I was plotting against her.

6

I want to deny that Gordon was lurking around our camp last night. I want to blame what I heard on my lack of sleep, on my wild and frightened imagination. But Casey won’t drop it.

“Someone was there, Ev. We heard him humming. And you can bet your ass that we weren’t imagining the same thing at once.”

Ev.
He says it so casually, like we’re longtime buddies. I’m not sure if I’m buying it, but I don’t say anything.

Unfortunately for both of us, we have to tell Tanner, Jace, and Valerie, which causes a bit of an uproar.

“If we don’t leave, that fucker could come back at any time,” Valerie says over breakfast.

“And if we do, who’s to say he won’t simply follow us?” Tanner challenges.

We’ve split two cans of SPAM. I hated SPAM until this morning. Now the fried, overprocessed meat is exactly what my body needs. I find myself licking the last of the fat off of my fingers when I’m finished, listening closely to everyone’s opinion on the situation.

“Tanner’s right.” Casey draws circles in the dirt with a stick. “We can pack up and go somewhere else, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll be any safer than we are here. Hell, it could mean we’re less safe. We have running water.”

“We could find another spot downstream.” Jace hugs her knees and rocks back and forth on the ground. I can tell she wants to bolt, and would be the first to start packing up our things if the decision was made to leave.

“Ev?”
Ev
again. “You’re the tiebreaker.”

It’s an easy decision for me. “We stay.” I can’t trust that any spot is safer than another, but here, I feel the woven beginnings of a community. “I don’t think he can hurt us. He chased Tanner, but he never got close enough to make an attempt at killing him, am I right?”

Tanner thinks for a moment, and nods.

“If he does, he’s dead. Just like Erity. So let’s leave it at that.”

Valerie grinds her teeth, but says nothing.

***

I’m left with a lot of time to wonder if they stretched these tests out over a month solely to torture us. Every quake of the branches above, every crunch from the foliage beyond the creek is enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Even with Tanner’s theory that we’re as screwed here as we are meandering in the woods, no one goes more than a hundred feet from the campsite, and that’s just to find a place to pee.

Casey tries to teach Tanner how to build a fire. They construct the teepee out of sticks, and when Casey instructs Tanner to light the tinder, Tanner yelps and drops the lighter, sucking on two of his fingers. Casey huffs and pries Tanner’s hand from his mouth, squinting as he examines the injured digits. “Better be careful. Next time you’ll burn them clean off.”

“Hardy har,” says Tanner.

I laugh. “Log cabin formation’s better.”

Casey raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah, Miss Fire Expert? Care to show the boys how it’s done?”

I stand, clapping my hands together. “Don’t mind if I do.”

***

During the downtime, I keep myself occupied by rendering the clay into thick liquid. When the yellow is done, I pick away at the berry patches in the garden, red and purple and blue skins breaking to stain my fingers.

They will be perfect.

Making paint is my way to disconnect. I used to do shit like this when I was a kid, except with the red earth I found near my home. Now, due to the classes I’d taken in college, I have a bit more knowledge of how to create natural paint. I grind coal and boil berry skins until the broth is dark and thick. My palette is a kaleidoscope of reds and pinks and blues and yellows. I carry a wet hunk of coal over to a boulder a little ways outside of camp and sit cross-legged, sketching a black trunk and gnarled arms. Nothing like the trees here, though. This is escapist art.

This is whimsical.

Little fingers tickle my shoulder, sliding to my neck, my hair. They pinch the strands and tug.

“You like it?” I ask Todd.

“It okay.” He tugs harder. “I don’t like my trees I draw at school.”

The little hand claws at my temple, and I lean into his sweaty skin. Memorizing it.

How can this not be real?

“Why don’t you like your trees?”

“They’re too curly. Mom used to say that you’d come home and show me how to draw trees. She said . . . she said you might even let me use your paints.”

I reach up and touch his hand, smearing paint all over his supple skin. I bring him to my lips, kissing his fingers.

“Why’d you have to do it? Why’d you have to leave me?”

I stiffen. “What did Mom tell you, Todd?”

“Why did you have to kill Meghan? Why did you have to blow her brains out?”

This isn’t Todd. This is Compass Room torment.
You can’t forget that, Ev. You can’t let your guard down.

A breeze cools the sweat on my neck and I know he’s gone. A shiver seizes me, and I reach forward, smearing a pink leaf on one of my coal branches.

***

Todd’s visit is almost as exciting as getting my goddamn period. Almost.

I inform Jace and Valerie when we’re squatting around the half-decimated shed, using forks as levers to loosen the nails.

“Damn, that sucks.” Valerie wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. “Luckily I finished the day before the train.” She nods toward Jace, who is picking out the nails on the other side of the shed and paying no attention to us, rubbing at her healing stab wound subconsciously with her free hand. “She’s also supposed to start in a couple days. Think she’s freaking out.”

With her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth, Jace concentrates on wedging the fork just right. Doesn’t seem like she’s freaking out.

“What are we gonna do?”

“Bleed all over yourselves. Wash your clothes when it’s over. Hope it doesn’t stain.”

“Sounds like a terrible idea.” I cross my arms over my chest. “What about your backpack? I didn’t get anything in mine.”

“No tampons, Ma’am.”

“Sexist bastards.”

“No shit. Well, let me know if you figure anything out. I have dinner to make.”

“Thanks,” I mutter, knowing I shouldn’t worry that much. Women have dealt with periods in the woods before, I’m sure. With less than what we have.

I grab a knife from our supplies and sift through the blankets in our tent, finding the thinnest and smallest of our collection. Draping it over a near tree branch, I cut away at the fabric.

“What are you
doing
?”

Casey, who’s washing a pile of dishes by the stream, gapes at me, horrified.

“Crafting feminine hygiene products, a long-lost artisan technique.”

“But we’re going to
need
that.”

I don’t know if it’s the cold nights, or PMS, or the fact that he’s breathing over my shoulder
again
. “Yes, you are quite right, we will be needing it—for vaginas. So please let me get back to my work before I bleed all over you.”

I return to my slicing. After minutes of no interruption, half the blanket is shredded, and I glance back down to the stream to see a vacant bank.

I bathe and redress. Tanner sits by the water, battling a splinter buried deep in his fleshy palm.

There’s a bit of meat grease in our pan from breakfast, so I gather it on the tip of my finger and bring it to him. Sitting down and taking his palm, I rub the fat over the sliver of wood.

“What’s that?”

“SPAM grease,” I say. “The salt will help draw out the splinter.”

He huffs, pushing up his glasses. “I’m useless here.”

I bite my lip to hide my smile. “You shitting me? I’m the splinter doctor. You sit on your merry ass and speculate about how this entire prison works.”

“They say ignorance is bliss.”

“
They
are a bunch of asshats.”

He grins. “Why can’t all girls be like you?”

“Convicted killers and psychopaths?” I wink at him, and he rolls his eyes.

I make my way back toward camp. Jace and Valerie sit by the fire, deep in conversation. Jace laughs, tracing Valerie’s flowery tattooed elbow with her fingers.

“You guys know where Casey went?”

Jace jerks back her hand, as though she were caught doing something she shouldn’t have been.

Valerie shrugs. “Firewood?”

“We have the shed. It’s enough to last us several days.”

“Maybe nature called. We all have to do our business.”

I shudder. Not having a bathroom has almost been worse than the tentacle dragging me to the bottom of the lake.

Jace points upstream. “I saw him go that way earlier.”

I nod and take off in the direction she suggested. There’s a hint of an overgrown path leading through some younger pine. I swallow my worry and keep searching.

When I come across a clearing, I freeze. My heart thrums so intensely that I can feel it in my throat.

It’s a camp—footprints around a fire pit, the contents burned all the way to ash. It could be days old. This wouldn’t be from anyone in our camp. No one has left long enough to make a fire, and why would they?

I hold my breath and listen—for footsteps, for anything. There’s nothing. Not a breeze, not the sound of birds. Somewhere out in the forest a branch snaps.

The ends of my nerves ignite, screaming for me to run.

Get your ass out of here now.

“Evie.”

I spin toward the sound of Todd’s voice, but he doesn’t speak again. I start to walk, the gush of falling water echoing through the woods. The hill I’m climbing crests. Casey dips his feet in a pool of steaming water—a hot spring, surrounded by smooth rocks on one side and a mossy granite ledge on the other. Water trickles musically.

I cross my arms over my chest to hide my shaking hands. “Holding out on the rest of us?”

“Just found it, actually.” He cocks his head. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I don’t say anything and scramble down the hill. I reach the cusp of the pool and shuffle my feet. The water looks divine, but I can’t help the horrific feeling that if I get in, something is going to slink around my waist and drag me to hell.

“There’s a campfire back there.”

“I saw it. I mean, we knew he was out there.”

“Gordon?”

“Yeah. Nothing we can really do about it now.”

“It could be someone else’s. It could be Stella’s.”

“You’re right, it could be Stella’s.”

I don’t really have a way to respond. I could say something along the lines of,
Well, what should we do about it?
But there really isn’t anything we
can
do about it. We can wait. We can guard our shit. We can hope he’s dead by now.

I want Casey to say something, something that will dull the sharp, awkward air between us. He’s mad at me, maybe because of the blanket, maybe because of something else. And the only things I can think to talk about are death and the weather.

“Well, I . . . uhh . . . hope you have a nice soak by yourself. I will see you back at camp, I guess.”

As I speak, his eyes shift to something directly behind me. As dead as his expression was before, he is alert, scooting from the pool and strapping on his boots in a matter of seconds, jumping to his feet.

He says my name.

“What?”

“Walk straight past me. Keep going and you’ll hit the stream. Follow it to camp and don’t you dare turn around.”

A shiver crawls from the base of my spine to my skull. He knows I won’t. He knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“Don’t.” He isn’t threatening. He’s terrified.

I look over my shoulder.

I see absolutely nothing at first. I wonder if he’s fucking with me—he
has
to be fucking with me, because there’s nothing behind me but a grove of saplings. But then I squint. Beyond, propped up against the trunk of a fir, is a shovel.

I gape at that damn shovel, trying to figure out why Casey’s so scared. And then it clicks.

My desk.

His shovel.

He buried his father.

Casey’s about to have his test.

“It could be nothing,” I try to convince him, but my voice is shaking. “Maybe they’re rewarding us. Shovels are useful.”

“Go. Back. Evalyn.”

I turn to him, attempting to keep a straight face even though Casey’s test means that every passing second could bring me closer to watching him die.

“What are you going to do?” I ask.

“Follow you back to camp.”

“Promise?”

“
Go
.”

His footsteps crunch behind me. Mist filters down through the branches, doing its damnedest to block out the sun. My legs burn as I try to walk as fast as I can without breaking into a run.

I’m losing it. I’m losing my mind.

A gravelly voice echoes through the woods.

“
Turned out just like me, haven’t you?
”

I stall.

“Evalyn,
run,”
Casey commands.

Not without him. I’m not going to leave without him.

With a hint of a Southern drawl, the voice says, “Put me in the ground, but I can still fuck with your head. I can still break you.”

I turn enough to catch a glimpse of the figure emerging from the trees. Then my eyes connect with Casey’s. Amid the panic I find within them, there’s also determination.

“I’m not leaving you.” I extend my hand.

He takes it, and we run down the slippery path. My pulse pounds in my ears. I hear every nervous gasp escaping Casey’s lips as if it were the only sound in the air. The brush thickens until the path before us is nearly impenetrable. He leads me to the right and down a hill.

I take in the moist air and force my legs to work faster until they’re burning up, burning into nothing.

Already tangled in the anorexic arms of foliage, there’s even more stopping us. A stone wall, maybe ten feet wide. I can’t tell if we can get around it, not with the thicket on either side of us.

The man stands on top of the hill we raced down, a shovel in his hand. In his fifties, maybe. Unshaven jaw and salt-and-pepper hair. Work boots and jeans and a navy button-down shirt. The shovel by the hot springs—he carries it in his hands.

“Your dad.”

“I can hoist you over. You’d only have to worry about the drop down.” He clasps his hands together and rests them on his knees, expression mechanical.