Dennis spun so fast, his head pounded like Jill’s most brutal drum beat.
McGlazer wore an unsettling smile, like an exaggerated mask of himself. “Indulging in a bit of necromancy?”
It was unlike McGlazer to be so flip. Dennis wondered if he was hallucinating the minister.
The silence between them was as heavy as the surrounding stones, until McGlazer spoke again. “I haven’t seen you in quite a while.”
“Yeah.” Dennis produced a pack of cigarettes, offering one to McGlazer, who declined. “You were…pretty messed up, last time we talked.”
“Oh yes.” McGlazer lilted, as if pleasantly reminiscing over his difficult healing process. “I suffered.”
Dennis tilted his head. “What’s with the brogue?”
“Brogue?”
“Nevermind.” Dennis raised the bottle. “Not gonna insult you by offering you some of this.”
“How considerate.”
Another awkward staredown.
“I’m not ready to pray this away right now,” Dennis said. “This drunk. This…hate.”
“I suspect not.” Still, the Cheshire Cat smirk. “Well then. Don’t let me spoil your plans.”
Dennis didn’t bother with a goodbye. The honest part of him would have said it was a little hurtful, not being rebuked or counseled by McGlazer—his sponsor, for Christ’s sake.
Nothing a fresh bottle of Diamante couldn’t wash away, though.
* * * *
Mrs. Dietrich paced in the hallway, chewing her left pinky nail while Mr. Dietrich, hands jittering and twitching like a rabbit’s nose, prepared two family-sized microwave lasagna dinners. As the meals cooked, he poured himself a tall glass of tea, though he never cared for his wife’s too-sweet mix, and carried it around with him. The constant faint clinking of the cubes further gave away his nervous state.
He set the big disposable dish on the counter to cool and—goodness! clumsy fellow—dropped his glass.
He leaned toward the dinner tables with his darting eyes and lips stretched weirdly across his teeth. “Candace, would you please sweep that up for me?”
It was odd how quickly he had chosen her, and odder still that he made a point of facing away from her, yet strained to watch over his shoulder as she whisked the sharp pieces into the dustpan, then the trash can.
After doling out the lasagna, Dietrich took the lid off the trashcan and pretended to rearrange the contents to make room for the meal cartons. But Candace knew he was inspecting the shards she had deposited.
Dinner was served. Seeming to have shaken off her nervous immobility, Mrs. Dietrich distributed the plates. She usually served the youngest first, but tonight saved Candace and Emera for last, setting plates with much smaller portions before them.
The servings were too small to satisfy, barely three or so bites. “You young ladies have made things difficult for everyone around here,” she said coldly, petting Radley’s shoulder for added effect. He seemed as puzzled as anyone by this. “You can make do with less and go directly to bed after dinner for the next few weeks.”
Mr. Dietrich supportively came to stand beside his wife, essaying a resolute frown.
It all seemed forced, artificial, awkwardly theatrical. Even Emera was more baffled than upset. The children finished their meals in silence, as the Dietrichs went off to their bedroom to trade urgent whispers.
* * * *
Wearing a scarf and hat taken from Matilda’s bedroom closet, Aura chased Amos around the house. The goat cried out in terror and confusion as he slid about on his hooves, giving Aura frequent excuses to fall across Nico on the old velveteen-covered couch in the living room.
He ignored her, focused on the thick old book the witch had compiled over her lifetime. It was written in a hodgepodge of languages ranging from Old English to Latin to Druidic runes, to elaborate scripts he didn’t recognize.
“Anything good in there, babe?” asked Aura, as she plopped down beside him.
“Plenty. Pips’ll have to make another trip or two to the library.”
Pipsqueak, thanks to study discipline he’d gained in college, was adept at gathering information, such as the location of Ruth’s grave.
While Nico was in prison it had been Pipsqueak who’d tracked down and sent him the first few books on witchcraft, and then located Matilda, the most famous witch of any branch in several counties. Pip had paid her well for the wolf transformation spell and supplies, and to influence Nico’s transfer, then planned the assault on the bus for months.
Now, with Matilda’s books and gear in hand, Nico reasoned he was better off having eliminated the middle man, so to speak, and doing what had to be done himself—including the resurrection of Ragdoll Ruth.
There would be a learning curve, but that was how Nico always played it. Learning to ride, hitting a gas station, forming a gang—all done on the fly, just the way he liked it.
“Yessir,” Nico said, turning a heavy brown page. “I’d say we hit the goddamn motherlode.”
“They’re back!” Aura announced. Her senses still heightened after her transformation, she heard Hobie and Rhino’s bikes several miles away.
Chapter 11
What Lies Beneath
Jill was glad she showed up early for work. She would need a while to finish up her crying fit and reapply makeup.
On the way, some kids in a ragtop Monza Spyder had pulled up beside her Indian and called to her using her stage name. “Thrill Kill Jill!” they chanted, the kid in the back mimicking a drum solo. She gave a friendly wave.
Parked behind the library, she quickly doffed the helmet and let it out; the tears, the snot, the sounds of an aching heart.
Dressed borderline normie these days, with her hair dyed back to something approaching its natural strawberry blonde, she wasn’t recognized as often as she once had been, but for fans, the Indian was always a giveaway, not to mention her custom helmet with the curvy corpse chalk-outline on both sides.
With her tough bitch persona essentially gone dormant, Jill was a regular girl again, with all that entailed. Mrs. Washburn had been happy to give her a job at the library. She was there enough anyway, being a bookworm. Once the head librarian saw Jill was not only settling down, but was very much in need of distraction in the wake of leaving both the band and her boyfriend, it had been a done deal.
But now she bordered on being late—again. Which she reasoned was marginally better than coming off like some overwrought TV evangelist drama queen mid-tithings pitch. Again.
“Better get it together, girl,” she told herself, and wiped her eyelashes again, deciding to forego makeup till she could take a break. She locked up the Indian and carried herself in, hoping for a numbingly busy shift.
Jill entered the library with her head down exactly at shift start time. She clocked in and went directly to the re-shelf cart, trying to avoid contact with customers and co-workers as long as possible.
Turning into the YA section, she spotted two familiar figures huddled together over a Neil Gaiman graphic novel. The nearest bore a profile that sent her heart into a tailspin.
“Stuart?”
The boy looked up, then he and DeShaun rose, regarding Jill with pity and discomfort. “H…hiya Jill,” Stuart said. DeShaun gave a tentative wave.
Jill smiled, triggering her own tears.
“Aw jeez. I’m sorry,” Stuart said. DeShaun scratched a non-existent itch on the back of his head.
“No, no. It’s not your fault, babe.” Jill had a little flapper style chain purse, studded with the legend “Dead Girl” in rhinestones. She had started wearing it everywhere because it was perfect for carrying the tissues she needed so often these days. Now, for instance. She opened it—and cursed its emptiness.
“Hey, I’ll go get some tissues.” DeShaun eased past her.
“Thank you, s
weetie,” called Jill with a wavering voice.
Stuart put his hand on her shoulder, and she pulled him into a hug.
“Really sorry. I didn’t mean to come in and get you all upset,” said Stuart. “It’s just, we got a project…”
“Oh stop,” Jill said. “If it wasn’t you, it’d be something else.”
“I hope you’re gonna be okay.”
Jill took a step back. “You know I’m gonna ask.”
“Dennis is…not any better. Ma’s really worried.”
“God dammit.” Jill wiped her eyes with her hands. “Does he just not care?”
Stuart found himself once again in the position of explaining and covering for his older brother. “I know he cares. He just doesn’t handle stuff all that well sometimes.”
They glanced toward the ends of the aisle to be sure no one was eavesdropping on their family business.
“I know how much you loved helping with the band,” Jill said. “I’m sorry I broke us up.”
“It’s okay.” Stuart didn’t know what else to say; how to keep her from feeling guilty about protecting herself without feeling like he was betraying his brother.
“Listen, I better get to work.”
“Yeah…”
“Oh… You guys need help with something?”
“Well, yeah. Stuff on the town founders.”
“Yeah.” Jill narrowed her gaze as she recalled something, making an irresistible quizzical expression. Stuart wondered how his big brother could ever choose a bottle over that face, that soul.
“Didn’t you guys cover that last year?”
“It’s not for school.” He peeked around the corner and found DeShaun standing a few feet away from the aisle, sheepishly holding a handful of tissues. “Come on dude,” Stuart called. “She’s gonna help us.”
DeShaun came to them and sheepishly handed Jill the tissues. “We’re supposed to keep it shushed. Something weird going on.”
“Weird?” she asked.
“We can’t say too much.”
“Sure, no prob.”
She parked the returns cart by a seasonal spinner filled with children’s Halloween books, then led the boys across the library. Stuart caught sight of a man entering—someone he didn’t know but felt he should; someone who might show up at a Chalk Outlines show.
Carrying a road-scarred helmet, his tanned face adorned with bushy mutton chops, the guy was clearly a biker.
“Wait here.” Jill went behind the employee counter and worked her way through a maze of desks, carts, shelves and Halloween display projects.
Stuart shared a look with Deshaun that said this is all too heavy.
“Screw this grown-up garbage,” DeShaun said. “Let’s just stay little kids.”
Stuart was more relieved to hear his friend make this wisecrack than he could express. It wiped away, for a few minutes maybe, his insecurities about being small, about having a messed-up family, about wetting the bed.
Jill returned, looking mischievous, with a pair of keys cupped in her hand.
“C’mon,” she whispered. Some rule was about to be broken.
On the way back to a closed door beyond the reference stacks, she bent over to put back some fallen paperbacks at the foot of a spinner. Barely a second had passed before she heard, “Woooo mercy! I’d like to check that out overnight, pretty please!”
Jill rose angrily, eager to take her frustrations out on some deserving douchebag. “What the hell did you just say?”
Pipsqueak raised his hands in mock surrender. “Easy, little lady.” He reached past her to take a book of crossword puzzles from just behind her on the spinner. “I was talking about this here puzzle book. My pals and I could use something to do around the ol’ campfire.”
Jill was off her bitch game, unsure how harshly to respond to the smarmy highway hood.
He pretended to find genuine interest in the pages. “Say,” he began, eyeing her lithe form with no subtlety. “Maybe you’d like to come play some games. At our camp.”
She had seen him in once or twice recently. He hadn’t been so fresh then.
“Nope.”
Undaunted, he extended a fingerless-gloved hand. “My crew calls me Pipsqueak. And we have ourselves some goddamn good times, lemme tell ya.”
“Don’t give a goddamn.”
Pipsqueak laughed, and she shushed him.
“Right. Don’t disturb the squares. I got it.” He hooked his thumb in his belt loop. “We’re up in the hills. Just a handful of us. One other chick. She’s cool.”
Jill just glared.
“We party like mothers, babe. You’re gonna want to see.”
“Nope.”
Pipsqueak was at a loss for words. But his eye strip routine continued until he found his forked tongue again. “C’mon babe. We ain’t gonna make you do nothing you d—”
“Leave her alone,” Stuart said, with tombstone eyes.
“Whoa!” mocked Pipsqueak. “Who’re these li’l cats? Your dads?”
“I’m her boyfriend’s brother, douchebag.” Stuart’s voice cracked here, at this worst possible time.
“Okay, shrimp. I was just being friendly.” Pipsqueak gave Jill a wink, then started to walk, but not before fake-jumping at the boys. They fell for it, dropping back a step. With a mocking salute, Pipsqueak walked away.
“Thanks boys,” Jill said. “You both okay?”
“Yeah.” Stuart took a deep breath. “I didn’t know what else to say.” He was still stinging from being called “shrimp.”
“It’s okay. I needed a reason to be angry. Maybe we all did.”
Pipsqueak made a detour into the reference section to steal something, then slipped out.
* * * *
“I’ll be god damned,” Nico said, stroking his beard. “She was right there when my Ruthie got sliced up, huh?”
“Unless that whitebread was lying to us,” Hobie said. “And I don’t think he’s that dumb.”
Nico knocked back the bottle of tequila he had been nursing, finishing the last half. He set the bottle beside the fire pit and rubbed his hands together, thinking. “New plan, then.”
The Fireheads circled close.
“Hell with the money. We need a sacrifice to bring back Ruthie,” Nico said evenly, pointing at the grimoire. “We’ll use the little sister.”
“Oh, that is beautiful!” Aura said, charmed by Nico’s sense of poetry.
“You sure?” Hobie asked. “I’m thinking the Dietrichs might get jittery and call the cops.”
“That’s why a couple of us are going full skin,” Nico said.
* * * *
“Can’t believe that assclown,” muttered Jill, as she flicked the switch on the unpainted cinderblock wall at the head of an enclosed concrete stairway. The fluorescent tube above was a jolting contrast to the main floor’s subdued light.
The thick old door eased closed behind them with a muffled thump. At the foot of the stairs they stepped off to their right, into a room that was familiar to the boys in some vague way, like a place from childhood.
“It’s going to be an art room, if the funding comes through for remodeling,” Jill explained, taking the key ring over to a tall metal cabinet in a corner next to a wall of windows covered by dusty tin blinders.
“And all this town history stuff will probably wind up in a permanent display here, if…” She rubbed her fingers together, again referencing a wispy hope for funding. She opened the cabinet and the boys beheld neatly stored metal lockboxes, brown documents and old photographs encased in glass. On the cabinet’s bottom section lay a stack of thick tomes, more recent.
“Wow,” exclaimed DeShaun.
“I can probably make copies of some of this stuff, if it’s in decent enough shape, so just leave me a note.” She took a mock-ste
rn pose. “I don’t have to tell you guys what happens if you get so much as an eyelash on any of this stuff.”
“Lady,” Stuart yanked a thumb at DeShaun. “This dude has comic books sealed inside plastic that’s sealed inside plastic that’s sealed inside plastic.”
“Nowhere near as valuable as this stuff, I bet,” DeShaun said with awe.
“Swell,” Jill handed the key to Stuart. “Just the same…” she thrust a box of rubber gloves at them. “Back like you found it. And if one of the staff finds you…”
“We’ll make up something good,” DeShaun reassured her.
“Damn right you will.” She took two steps and stopped. “Thanks.”
“For what?” Stuart asked.
“For…defending my honor. And distracting me. And just for caring.”
“Yeah, okay.” Stuart flipped her the finger and a funny sneer.
She returned both gestures and left.
“Jeez, where do we start?”
DeShaun snapped on a glove. “How ’bout with your prostrate, Mr. Barcroft?”
They immediately engaged in one of their frequent wrestling matches. Even though they were careful regarding their surroundings Stuart realized that DeShaun was holding back. He surely knew he was stronger than Stuart, but for whatever reason, didn’t want or need to prove it—like he didn’t even want to be bigger and stronger than Stuart. Like he wanted them to always be the same size, strength, everything.
Stuart recalled his friend’s throwaway comment: “Screw this grown-up stuff.”
Maybe, Stuart thought, he’s not any readier for all this than I am.
Chapter 12
Haunted Window
Less than half an hour after dinner, Candace and Emera found themselves in their beds.
Strapped in the useless Velcro fetters, Candace listened to Emera shift in her sheets as the others, gathered in the family room, watched a sitcom, up louder than usual. Their laughter mocked the girls.
Candace understood that it was all meant to hurt more than punish her, she just couldn’t guess why. But her young mind was on something else.
Grim Harvest Page 9
