Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

  “Are you all right?” Ephraim asked once the parson had left and was loudly greeting Matthias Dodson with a laugh so boisterous, it rang false.

  “I’m fine. It’s fine.” Though it was balmy out, I rubbed at my arms, chilled by the encounter. I couldn’t forget the look of contempt in Letitia’s eyes, the glint of scorn and hatred. “That…all of that…felt wrong.”

  He glanced toward the pines.

  “Do you think they’re there now? Watching?” I asked, following his gaze.

  “I’m certain they are. Somewhere.”

  * * *

  “Good Blessings, Amity Falls,” Parson Briard called out from the makeshift stage, hushing the merriment.

  “What a wonderful day, full of the Lord’s bounty.” He pulled out a small Bible and flipped it to its ribbon marker. “I thought, perhaps, we might spend a bit of time with the Word before the feast begins.”

  He launched into his sermon without another comment, reading from Matthew, holding his Bible aloft and jabbing his finger to the page as he enunciated each syllable.

  “ ‘And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ ” With a heavy thud, Parson Briard snapped the Bible shut, his gaze steely, his jaw resolute. “And what do you say, Amity Falls? Have you heard the calls of your fellow men? Have you seen the hungry, the tired, the sick? I’ve lived in the Falls for all my adult life and have never seen a lack of Good Samaritans here. The founders of this town so cared about helping their fellow men, they even included it within the Rules.”

  Townsfolk nodded, and I saw several chests puff with pride.

  “I feel honored to call the Falls my home. And yet,” he said, his eyes darkening with the message’s turn. “And yet, we’ve failed to be the good shepherds God calls us to be, tending and caring for his flock as he has for us. We allowed division and hatred to reign in our hearts, ruling our thoughts, and governing our hands. Prejudice supplanted compassion. Animosity overcame grace.”

  The afternoon had grown warm, spring teetering into the dangerous heat of summer. A line of perspiration dotted the parson’s brow, and he removed a handkerchief, embellished with one of Widow Mullins’s designs.

  “I am not here today to take confessions—God will judge those who commit despicable and cowardly acts. He sees all, he watches all—but I am here to condemn them. Amity Falls will not abide discord. We cannot allow our community to harbor enmity and strife.”

  He tucked the Bible back into his pocket and clapped his hands, changing tones.

  “Will you do me a favor? Can we stand, right here and now, and reach out to a neighbor? Look them in the eye, take their hand. Come on now, let’s all join together.”

  We stood and shuffled about to form a circle across the town green, each of us a link in the chain that made up Amity Falls.

  Across the circle, I noticed Sam, chuckling with Winthrop Mullins as they pretended to not want to hold each other’s hands. When he glanced up, our eyes met. I tried offering a little smile, but he looked away with indifference.

  When we were smaller, we’d clung to each other with an unbreakable fierceness. Seeing his detachment now made me want to cry. Where had we gone so wrong?

  Parson Briard stepped onto a bench, raising himself over the giant circle. His smile beamed, showing off even the very last of his molars.

  “This is Amity Falls,” he cried. “United by God. United with friendship. United together!”

  Briard broke into applause, and everyone else followed suit, hugging their neighbors, offering pats on the back and smiles as wide as the parson’s. Winthrop Mullins was the first to leave the circle, stumbling his way to the parson.

  He greeted the boy with a hearty handshake. “Happy to see you today, Mullins. We’ve missed you at services.”

  Winthrop ran stubby fingers through his hair. It was badly in need of a trim. Old Widow Mullins had always kept her grandson’s red hair cut short and neat, but he seemed utterly lost without her now. This was the first time I’d seen him since her funeral.

  “Interesting sermon today, real interesting.”

  Parson Briard’s eyes lit up. “Indeed? I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it.”

  “Don’t know how much I agree with a lot of it,” Winthrop confessed. “You say we ought to be like a shepherd, right?”

  “Well, it’s not just me saying that. You’ll find references to shepherds and their flocks all over the Good Book.”

  “Now, see, that’s where I have the problem. I only know one shepherd”—Winthrop glanced at Leland Schäfer, who stood under an elm tree, laughing at something Cora had said—“and he doesn’t do any of the things you said he ought to. My grandmother died because of him, Parson. Starved to death. What crops weren’t taken by the black rot were pillaged by that man’s sheep!” He pointed an angry finger at the Elder. “So if being a shepherd is allowing your fences to rot away and fall apart—if it’s letting your flock wreak havoc on another man’s land—I don’t know that I want anything to do with it.”

  “What the devil are you talking about, Mullins?” Leland asked, striding across the lawn, his black Elder cloak trailing like thunderclouds.

  Cheerful conversations died away as everyone watched this new drama unfold.

  “Is he going on about those fences again? I’ve told you a thousand times, the southern field is yours to keep up. My flock would have never gotten loose if you’d tended your posts better.”

  “Now, look you here”—Winthrop grabbed the Elder’s shirt, yanking Leland to his toes—“it’s not our fence to tend! Our corn isn’t going to get loose and eat every damn thing in its path.”

  “Leland—Winthrop, son…” Briard placed a calming hand on each of their backs. “Surely we can talk through this—away from the crowds?” His eyes drifted across the green. Most of the town watched on with horrified fascination, the moment of united peace gone.

  “Sometimes words aren’t enough!” Winthrop snarled, and his fist flew through the air and caught the side of Leland’s jaw with a meaty smack.

  Matthias was across the yard in a flash, pulling the boy off the other Elder. He caught a wayward elbow to the stomach in the process and threw Winthrop to the ground.

  “Gentlemen—gentlemen!” The parson struggled to grab at Leland but was decked himself as Matthias’s punch missed its mark. Briard grabbed at his eye and whirled back, searching for something to stop the madness. “Thaddeus McComb—play something. Play anything. For God’s sake, just play!”

  The farmer immediately launched into a song, though most of the crowd lingered at the edge of the fight, enraptured.

  “Dance, please,” the parson instructed, holding Winthrop back from the melee. “We’ll handle this and—Dodson!” he snapped as Leland charged at them. Matthias grabbed the other Elder. They all but dragged Winthrop and Leland down the hill toward the church.

  “They’re here. They have to be,” Ephraim said, suddenly at my side, scanning the crowd. “They’d never miss something like this.”

  I glanced around the gathering. “I don’t see her. I don’t see anything that looks like those drawings.”

  “They won’t always appear like that,” Ephraim muttered, his dark gaze flickering across the crowd. “Look around, Ellerie. Look hard. Who’s here who shouldn’t be? Someone new. Someone unknown. Someone—”

  “Whitaker,” I said, catching him wandering through the square. When he spotted me, his eyes brightened. “I told him not to come. Let me…I’ll be right back, I promise.”

  “Keep your wits about you,” he warned. “This town is primed like a powder keg. It won’t take much to set it off.”

  “Did I miss the picnic?” Whitaker asked as I joined him.

  “What are you doing here?”r />
  “I know you said I shouldn’t come. I know. But…I was down at the creek’s edge and I heard the music starting, and…I just really hoped you’d forgiven me enough by now.”

  “Enough? Enough for what?”

  “A dance?” he asked earnestly. He held out his hand, hope written across his face.

  “I…” I glanced back to where Ephraim had been, but he was gone.

  Thaddeus McComb began a new song, a sweeping and sad ballad that pulled every strain of angst from his fiddle. Without the spectacle to watch, couples came together now, eager for the intimacy of the forlorn waltz.

  After a moment of hesitation, I took his hand and our fingers laced together. Whitaker’s other hand rested at the small of my back as we began to sway to the song’s tempo.

  “That dress truly is the perfect shade on you,” he said, gently turning me out into a spin. “I’ve never seen you look lovelier.”

  “It nearly got me in trouble.” His eyebrows rose. “The parson’s wife accused me of stealing the fabric off her clothesline last summer.”

  His smile froze. “Oh?”

  “Right here, in the middle of the social. Can you believe it?”

  “How strange.”

  “It’s become increasingly strange around here since you left.”

  “Really?”

  “Things haven’t been right, and…”

  I caught sight of Ephraim once more. He’d made his way over to Thomas and was listening to something his son said, eyebrows furrowed into a thick line. Merry joined them, shaking her head, her eyes wild and cheeks bright.

  I stopped dancing.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  “What is it?” Whitaker asked, turning to see what I stared at.

  “I need to—”

  Before I could offer an excuse, Merry burst into tears.

  I was at my sister’s side before I even realized I’d left Whitaker behind.

  “What is it? What is it, Merry?” I asked, grabbing hold of her shoulders. A bolt of fear stabbed at my chest, cracking it open wide.

  Merry broke into fresh sobs, horrible and keening. “She’s gone, Ellerie. Sadie is gone!”

  Merry’s cries grew louder, drawing a gathering around us and even stopping Thaddeus McComb’s song.

  “What is it now?” Matthias asked, struggling to run back up the hill from the church. His shirt was soaked in sweat, the rolled cuffs and collar yellow. The afternoon sun baked down in an unrelenting layer of heat.

  “The little girl, she’s gone missing,” Ephraim explained, changing his voice to sound like Ezra’s once more.

  “Sadie Downing?” the Elder guessed, staring down at me as I held Merry.

  Her fingers sank painfully into my arms as she rocked back and forth in her grief.

  “Why such hysterics? She probably wandered home or down to the general store.” Matthias scanned the group for other young girls. “Trinity, Pardon—do you know where Sadie Downing has gone?”

  “Last time I saw her, she was over there,” Trinity said, pointing to the pines.

  Merry doubled over in a fresh set of tears. “Those things got her. I know they did. The creatures!”

  Matthias knelt beside us, awkwardly patting at my sister’s shoulder. Matthias wasn’t known for compassionate comforting. “I’m sure those wolves are long gone, Merry Downing. When did you notice her missing? She can’t have gotten far.”

  “It hasn’t been long,” I said, grabbing on to that sliver of comfort.

  “Not the wolves. The other—” Merry started, but a swift shake of the head from Ephraim silenced her.

  Matthias stood, raising his hands to quiet the group. “We need to assemble search parties for Sadie Downing. Trinity Brewster says she was last near the pines, but she could have also wandered into town. We need to divide up and look for her.”

  “Thomas and I will take the woods around the square,” Ephraim volunteered quickly, stepping forward before anyone else could.

  “Surely you don’t believe she’d go into the forest.” Matthias chuckled as if to lighten the situation. No one joined him. “I know grown men who won’t wander into the pines. A little girl would never—”

  “I’ll search there too,” I said.

  Matthias looked uneasy. “Perhaps you could help Merry back home? She’s in no condition to search, and Sadie might have returned there.”

  “I’m going after my sister,” I said, a flint of determination steeling my voice.

  “I can take Merry back,” Bonnie Maddin said, working free of the crowd.

  “Thank you,” I said as we pulled Merry to her feet. “I’ll find Sadie,” I whispered, bringing Merry into a tight embrace. “I promise.”

  Matthias scanned the crowd. “Cora and Charlotte, why don’t you form a party to check the north side of town? Violet and Alice, you ladies take a group to the south. Calvin, take some men to search the western fields near the Our Ladies. Edmund, Thaddeus—the lakeshore. Gran and I will take the east. Everyone else, join a group and let’s get to work.”

  I gave Merry a final hug before joining Ephraim and Thomas. They’d already edged away from the rest of the group, planning in private.

  Ephraim squeezed my upper arm. “Ellerie, there’s no shame in searching the town.”

  “You know that’s not where she is.”

  “Then…if you’re going to do this…you need to arm yourself.”

  I bit my lip. “Papa took our rifle with him.”

  “Not with bullets.” He reached into his leather satchel and pulled out a stash of…things.

  “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

  Rabbits’ feet and four-leaf clovers—some pressed between small panes of glass, others encased in resin. Vials of ladybugs and monarch butterflies. Rosaries with silver crucifixes. Spinner rings with prayer wheels. Horseshoes. Pennies. Sets of dice, and so many animal figurines.

  “Luck,” Ephraim said, as though the word ought to clarify everything. “Dark Watchers feed off fear, despair. Items of luck bring people hope and comfort. They can repel them.”

  He pressed a handful of the trinkets into my palm.

  “I’ve never seen anything like all this before,” I said, toying with an elephant charm. The soft fur of a rabbit’s foot brushed against my fingers, and I suddenly realized I had seen such a collection. And it belonged to the one person who would need it most, living out in the woods, surrounded by the very monsters he’d claimed not to see.

  Whitaker.

  I froze, hearing his footsteps behind me, as if he’d been drawn by my thoughts.

  He reached out and trailed a gentle finger down my shoulder blade. “Ellerie, I’m coming with you.”

  * * *

  The woods were darker than I’d thought they would be.

  Much darker.

  Hundreds of branches, laden with long pine needles and dozens of Bells, blocked even the boldest sunbeams and cast the forest into an eerie, murky gloom.

  Years of fallen needles softened our footsteps, deadening them to the point of silence.

  I’d expected to be attacked the moment we set foot on the forest trail, eviscerated by sharp claws and barbed teeth, but there’d been nothing. No monsters, no shadowy figures. Not even a bird or squirrel scampered through the canopy overhead.

  It was only us and the pines.

  And the Bells.

  I stood at their edge now, staring into the dark, silver-less void before us. The Bells did not taper to an end, simply trailing off where our forefathers had run out of trinkets. There was an unmistakable boundary dividing the areas as sharply as a line of ink upon a map.

  Here there was protection.

  Here there was not.

  I took a deep breath, clutching at
my silver locket for reassurance. Months before, I’d tucked away Whitaker’s four-leaf clover within it and had been unknowingly protected against the Dark Watchers ever since.

  “Sadie! Sadie Downing!” Whitaker called out, cupping his hands around his mouth to make his voice carry deeper into the woods.

  We paused, listening to the air around us, but all I could hear were the cries of others searching for my sister.

  For the first time since the social, I turned to face Whitaker, truly looking him in the eye. I’d expected him to look different somehow, as if his betrayal would cast a tangible mark across his face.

  But he was as he’d ever been.

  Just Whitaker.

  “We can cover more ground if we split up,” I said.

  “And we have already,” he said. “Ezra and Thomas went east.”

  “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean, and no. It’s better to stick with someone—”

  “But—”

  “Especially when one of the team members doesn’t know the lay of the land.”

  “Especially when the lay of that land is full of monsters.” The accusation burst from me like shrapnel.

  He sighed. “There are no—”

  I grabbed every piece of Ephraim’s luck from my pockets and hurled them at his feet. “I know they’re real.”

  He looked at the scattered trinkets, confusion growing across his face. “What is all…How did you—” His eyes met mine with swift understanding. “Ezra.”

  “Ephraim,” I corrected him. “Why did you lie to me? You said there was nothing out in the woods. You said everyone was imagining the monsters. You said there was—”

  “I wanted to keep you safe.”

  “By lying?”

  “To protect you!” His voice was firm, resolute, but after a moment he pushed at his sleeves, fidgeting uncomfortably as if his tattoos itched. “Then…he lied as well. He’s not Ezra Downing.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Not your uncle.”

  “No.”