Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

“I have seen,” I said, reading the words painted beneath the lurid rendering.

  I froze, my breath caught painfully tight in the hollow of my throat as I recognized the familiar phrase. It was a snippet of what Levi Barton had scrawled across his barn after murdering his wife and livestock.

  Why would someone copy it here?

  Thomas came around to my side of the tent and stared at the dripping words. “It’s rather curious.”

  I nodded uneasily. “A few years ago, one of our neighbors painted something similar across their barn.”

  His eyebrows rose sharply. “Really? Perhaps he was the one behind the vandalism last night.”

  “Not likely. He killed himself.” I told him the whole story, and Thomas shuddered.

  “Ah, admiring our new mural, Ellerie?” Ezra asked, coming out of the stall. He brushed his fingers over his palms, job done. “Ghastly, isn’t it?”

  “Ellerie was just telling me the most ghoulish story. All sorts of murder and mayhem. There was a giant eye involved in it as well.” Thomas stared at his father as though imparting a deeper meaning than I could discern.

  “We have bleach,” I offered, my eyes drawn back to the handprint pupil. It was smaller than I’d have expected it to be, as if a child had created the macabre image. “Up at the house.”

  “That would be very helpful,” Ezra said. “Would you mind getting it now? I’d hate for this horrible thing to set in any longer than it already has.”

  “Of course.”

  I could hear Ezra’s low murmuring as I left the barn, but couldn’t make out exactly what was said.

  Outside, movement near the pines caught my attention, and I spotted Whitaker at the edge of the forest. He was paused along the tree line, half in weak sunlight, half in shadows, watching the barn with a strange expression of concern on his face.

  Before I could call out a greeting, he slipped back into the darkness, eyebrows furrowed and his lips drawn into a worried line.

  The earth was warm and damp as I stepped into the flower field, as if it had just rained. I could feel the black soil smudge my feet, working its way between my toes.

  I was barefoot.

  The flowers rustled around me, their blooms wide and glowing an eerie blue beneath the full moon.

  Papa told me once that the moon pulled at waves here on earth, drawing the water across wide oceans and bringing them to their intended shores.

  This moon hung so low, I could feel its persistence working on me, tugging me through the heady blossoms and urging me toward town.

  I was in my nightdress, long and white, but it didn’t matter.

  I had no lantern to see by, but that didn’t matter either.

  The only thing that did was putting one foot in front of the other, following the moon’s insistence.

  “Ellerie Downing.”

  Whitaker had come out of the forest, out of the night, out of the sky and stars themselves, it seemed. Was he too pulled along by the glowing moon? Had she intentionally brought us together?

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “You?”

  “I think I am sleeping,” I decided. It certainly felt possible.

  He smiled, the tips of his teeth winking. “Are you saying you dream of me?”

  “All the time,” I said in a teasing manner, light and flirtatious even though it was true.

  “What do we do in these dreams of yours?”

  “I think…I think we ought to walk.”

  He offered his arm with a cavalier charm.

  We rambled down country lanes, covered by bowers of tree limbs and fragrant ivy. We cut through lush meadows where the dew dotting the long grasses caught the moonlight from overhead, forming an entire galaxy of sparkling stars around us. We walked on and on until we made our way into town.

  I don’t remember speaking as we traveled, but I memorized the pressure of his fingers on my forearm, the sweep they made across the small of my back as he helped me over a bit of rocky terrain. Words were not needed. I felt safe, secure, and—as he tucked a brilliant red poppy behind my ear—cherished.

  All around us, Amity Falls slept, houses shuttered and dark.

  “I feel like we’re the only people left in the world, don’t you?”

  I’d never seen the town so quiet and still.

  “It does seem rather abandoned,” he agreed. “We could do anything we wanted, and no one would ever know.”

  We came to a stop outside the schoolhouse, its white clapboard at odds with the heavy black window frames.

  “I’ve always wanted to ring that,” I said, peering up at the bell housed in a jutting gable. “All those years of school, and I never once got to.”

  “You could, right now,” he suggested. “But that would wake everyone in town and we’d lose our chance.”

  “Our chance for what?”

  The world felt impossibly slow and dreamy as he pulled me toward him, bringing his hands to my face and gently cupping my cheeks. His thumbs traced down my jaw, ran over my mouth.

  An unfamiliar sensation woke within me as he brushed my lips, his own so close, I could feel the heat of his breath warming me. There was a heaviness in my belly, a thrilling prickle of awareness racing across my skin. My fingers danced to its pulse, aching to reach out and touch him.

  “This,” he murmured, lowering his lips. They moved over mine, like a whisper, a song of reverence and praise, a prayer. “This is how I should have kissed you at Christmas—this is how I’ve always wanted to kiss you.”

  And then his fingers were tangled in my hair, drawing me closer until I answered back with kisses of my own, soft at first, but then so much more. When I parted my mouth, daring to flick my tongue against his lips, he let out a strangled gasp of surprise. His arms wrapped around my back, confidently pressing me flush against his body. It was so warm and unfamiliar, so wholly different from mine. Where I was soft, he was hard. Where I curved, he flexed. We were like little wooden puzzle pieces at McCleary’s store. Just little bits of colorful chaos on their own, but once they were snapped into place, you could see they were meant to be together all along.

  When his long fingers traced their way from the nape of my neck down my spine, I felt a wave of delicious shivers race through me, shimmering with need and demanding more. More touching, more kisses, more him.

  “Whitaker,” I tried to whisper, but his mouth was on mine, swallowing my words. I felt him groan, the vibrations ringing against my lips, my skin, down into my very bones, and my fingers curved reflexively, sinking into the soft skin at the back of his neck, desperate to draw him closer still.

  He responded in kind, his fingertips running over my arms, down my side, tracing the curve of my hips. His worked his way lower, kissing the column of my neck, the hollow of my throat. He could feel my heart pulsing there, I was certain of it. It pounded, racing faster and faster. Every beat felt like a drum snap, spelling out his name, until my entire body throbbed with its cadence.

  The pads of his fingers brushed my skin as he toyed with the buttons of my nightdress, and a sound rose, so completely foreign and primal that at first I didn’t recognize it as myself. It was dark and full of wanting and desire and absolute need.

  “This is madness,” I murmured, blood sizzling through me, setting my nerve endings ablaze. I couldn’t think, couldn’t reason. I just wanted to feel.

  “Madness,” he echoed. Then he paused, his lips only a breath away from my bared skin. Every bit of me was hung aloft in anticipation, yearning for the moment when he’d descend.

  When he stepped back, stepped away, turning his attention toward the forest, I felt his absence as keenly as a cold slap. My chest heaved, wholly aware he’d been against it and was then suddenly not. I reached for him, but my hand fell short. He was too far
away to touch, too attuned to whatever he sensed in the woods.

  Realization stabbed at me, sharp and swift. Something was out there, watching us. I followed his gaze. There was nothing but moonlight on the dew, sparkling and shining dots of silver.

  Then something shifted, stirring pine needles, a shadow darker than the other shadows, sneaking and sly.

  The silver dots danced with subtle movement, as if breathing.

  Panting.

  They blinked.

  And Whitaker took a step forward, drawn to this living, breathing entity, a moth to flame.

  “Stop.”

  We had nothing to protect ourselves with.

  He took another step and another.

  “Don’t!”

  He was getting too close. Much too close. I could no longer distinguish his dark jacket from the forest.

  One moment he was there, and the next, it was only those silver eyes.

  Staring and studying.

  Watching us.

  Watching me.

  Then they too were gone, leaving me alone in the empty town. A breeze whispered through the branches, and swirled around me with a sharp, acrid bite.

  It smelled like fire.

  Like ashes and cinders.

  “She loves a good blaze,” said a voice rising out of the darkness, a specter slithering forth from a tomb.

  I turned to see Cyrus Danforth on the steps of the schoolhouse.

  He blinked at me, eyes radiant with an otherworldly shine.

  A glow of moonlight and madness.

  Silver.

  “You’re dead,” I whispered, my throat drying up and closing in on me.

  This was a dream.

  This was only a dream.

  “You’re about to wake up,” I whispered to myself. “You’re about to wake up in bed, next to Merry. And Sadie. None of this is real.”

  But he looked real.

  The purpling bruises that circled his broken neck looked real.

  And the handkerchief he held in his hand, dangling between his unusually long fingers, also looked very, very real.

  “Have you forgotten about this?” he asked.

  The little square of cotton fluttered in the wind, my three drops of blood standing out in stark relief.

  “How did you get—that’s not yours!”

  “Isn’t it?” He wrapped it around his pointer finger, turning it over and over. “Finders keepers, I suppose.”

  The way the fabric wound round his finger was mesmerizing, beguiling. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried.

  I did not try.

  “Why…why do your fingers look like that?” My voice sounded as distant as a dream.

  This was a dream.

  Cyrus opened his mouth, but the laugh that came out was not his. It was high and light, seeped with feminine charm.

  “Why, the better to beckon you with.”

  She laughed again, this creature who was not Cyrus Danforth.

  “I need you to do something for me, Ellerie Downing.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  I felt drugged, caught in a stupor where the world moved too slowly and the shadows grew too dark.

  “I’ve been watching you. I’ve been watching you for a very long while.”

  I blinked heavily, trying to clear my head, but the daze persisted, turning the world bleary.

  For a flash of a moment, Cyrus morphed into something else—a slip of a figure sporting a white eyelet dress and dark curls.

  I blinked again and saw only Rebecca’s father, so terribly, terribly dead.

  “Why?”

  “You’re special, don’t you know? So very special.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not. I’m just—”

  “I wasn’t finished,” she reprimanded, her fingers balling into quick fists.

  Someone with such a lovely voice shouldn’t have fingers like that.

  My thoughts listed, like wilting flowers. There was a strange presence within my mind, another entity warring for space.

  “As I was saying…I need you to do something for me.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know who or what this thing was, but I wouldn’t go along with anything she suggested. The real Cyrus’s shouts from the Gallows echoed through my thoughts.

  This Cyrus held up the handkerchief again. “I have your pledge. I hold your blood. And I need you to do this one small favor for me.”

  In a flash, the figure skittered toward me, moving with such a ferocious speed, I felt sick. My eyes struggled, finding it impossible to focus on the new form the creature took. She was too close, pressed against me with an unrelenting insistence. I could only understand pieces of the whole. A brilliant smile. An arched brow. Misshapen knuckles, as bulging and bulbous as knots on a tree.

  “What that drunk old bastard said was true,” she murmured, drawing one grotesque finger down my cheek. “I do love a blaze. The bigger, the better, I always say. If I could watch the entire world burn down, I would with a cheerful heart. So I need you to take this, Ellerie. I need you to take this and use it.”

  She pressed something into the palm of my hand.

  It was a match.

  Such an unassuming little bit of wood and sulfur.

  Thoroughly innocuous when dormant.

  “Wake up, Ellerie,” I said to myself. This dream, this nightmare, was getting too strange, feeling too real.

  “You need to take it and use it,” she instructed, closing my fingers around it.

  “Wake up.”

  “Take it and light it.”

  “Wake up now.”

  “I have your pledge, I have your blood, you must do as I say,” she hissed, pressing her lips close to my ear, her voice invading my mind. “Take it. Use it. Burn it all down.”

  Against my will, my hands moved, acting of their own accord.

  I swiped the match against the side of the schoolhouse, sparking it to life.

  The flame flared brightly, a little flash lighting up the night, biting and burning.

  The creature released a sigh, relief whistling through her rotting teeth.

  Just as I dropped the match, letting it fall carelessly to the ground, I came to, startling awake with a gasp for air.

  When I woke up, I was alone in the loft. Merry and Sadie must have let me sleep in, taking on my morning chores themselves.

  For a moment, I allowed myself to sink back into bed, relishing the warmth of the quilts against the bitter cold. Frost covered the windows, but it reassured me.

  It had been spring in my dream. In my nightmare.

  Not like this.

  This was real.

  That was not.

  Part of me longed to stay in bed, whiling away the morning in a dozy, dreamy nap. But there were things to do, and I couldn’t remain here while my sisters handled everything. With a groan, I kicked the blankets from me, hoisting my legs to the floor.

  I paused, staring down at my feet, unable to comprehend what I saw.

  Usually I bundled up in several layers of Papa’s wool socks to stave off the night’s chill, but the socks were gone now. My toes were darkened with a crust of dirt, as if I’d spent the night walking through the Falls with bare feet.

  Days slipped by without word from Sam.

  The snow continued to fall, piling past Sadie’s knees, then Merry’s, then mine.

  My dreams returned to normal, without heated visions of Whitaker or terrifying encounters with the creature in the pale dress.

  My feet stayed in their socks.

  Then came an unexpected knock at our front door one morning.

  It sounded once, then twice. The third rap was louder. Our guest was clearly vexed no one had answered.

  “Merry
!” I was elbow-deep in the washtub, and the front of my apron was soaked.

  Buttons had bounded through the kitchen, knocking a stack of tin plates into the soapy water before falling in himself. I could still hear him yowling in the loft as Sadie tried to dry him.

  “Merry!” I tried again after the third set of knocks.

  “She’s in the barn,” Sadie announced, coming down the stairs, carrying a murderous Buttons in a towel.

  “Can you answer the door while I change?”

  Her mouth fell open. “You want me to answer the door? I never get to answer the door.” Another set of raps spurred her into action. “Coming!” she shouted, her feet clattering loudly through the house.

  I tossed the sodden apron onto the worktable and did a quick check in the little plate-glass mirror Mama kept in the kitchen for moments such as these. Wispy flyaways framed my face, but there was no time to fix them. I grabbed a clean pinafore off the hook and made my way to the front.

  “What are you doing here?” I heard Sadie ask as she opened the door.

  I inwardly groaned. Mama would have given her an earful if she’d heard her.

  “Manners, Sadie,” I said, coming around the corner. When I saw the visitors, I stopped short. “Oh.”

  Simon and Rebecca Briard stood in the middle of our sitting room wearing a set of matching scowls.

  “Good Blessings,” I said, recovering.

  “Good Blessings.” Only Simon echoed my sentiment.

  An uncomfortable silence filled the room, making it clear neither of the Briards would speak first. “We’ve not seen you since the wedding. You look well.”

  “Yes, my Rebecca is quite the picture of radiance these days, don’t you think?” Simon smiled at her fondly before letting his eyes drift to her belly.

  She must have finally let him in on the happy news.

  “Would you care for a cup of tea?” Even as I offered, I prayed they’d say no. We were down to our last tin.

  Simon’s eyes lit hopefully, but Rebecca shook her head with a curt snap.

  “We won’t be staying long.”

  “What brings you by, then, neighbor?” I asked, adjusting my tone to match her clipped cadence.

  “Coming home from town two days ago, we saw a troubling sight,” Simon jumped in as his wife nudged him in the ribs. “It appears your new relatives have come for a visit.”