She sped away from Traverse City, knowing the hospital could not save Mack from Stephen’s knife. If he were to survive, she had to get him to the Stoneroot Forest.
Chapter 38
October 31st, 1945
Liv
Liv paused at the edge of the wilderness, breathless as she took in the house blazing in the violet dusk. Light flickered in the windows and poured forth from the first-floor windows and the door that opened to reveal dozens of costumed strangers. People milled on the porch. The sounds of a string band floated a haunted melody across the lawn.
Liv clutched the cat mask and tried to slow her pounding heart.
Her body tingled with the anticipation of seeing Stephen, but also with dread. Had everything changed in a single night? Yes, and she had wanted it to. She had wanted to give herself to Stephen, had been dreaming of such things since that very first day at the river, though the thought only struck her now.
“Freya, come with me,” she whispered, gazing at the first stars breaking through the darkening sky.
Liv held up her long skirt and hurried across the grass, following a couple up the wide porch stairs. Music and laughter drifted from the house.
She walked through the door, and the warmth and the scents of roasted meat and sugary confections took her breath away.
A man in a black tuxedo played a violin. Liv could not see his face. A long-nosed black mask with a sloped forehead and budding brows covered it.
Tall candelabras stood in every corner and cast the masked faces in golden light. Every surface held black vases overflowing with purple dahlias.
For several seconds, Liv stood in the threshold of the door, her heart pounding, her feet frozen. When soft, warm fingers grazed her elbow, she startled and cast her eyes up to see a man in a black tuxedo, pale blue eyes sparkling beneath a horned goat mask.
Stephen smiled, a secretive smile, and slipped into a group of people deeper in the foyer.
Liv did not follow him. Instead she lifted a glass of champagne from a tray when a black-clad waiter paused in front of her. The champagne was sweet and bubbly, and giddiness lit her from toes to scalp.
Hidden beneath her mask, Liv drifted into the parlor, where dozens of people stood in silk and satin gowns and black tuxedos - all mysterious in their masks.
Liv saw Stephen’s mother standing near the windows, her black hair in ringlets on her head. She wore a sparkling navy dress with a neckline that revealed her voluptuous pale breasts. The top half of her face was hidden beneath a glittering wolf mask.
Near the stairway, Liv saw Stephen watching her.
When she saw him break from the crowd and slip up the stairs, she followed him.
“I’ve thought of nothing but you all day,” he told her, wrapping his hands around her waist and pulling her close. He tasted of champagne and smoke, as if he’d been inhaling the cigars of the men tucked into the parlor downstairs.
“Me too,” Liv whispered, inclining her forehead against his.
They stood that way until a girl’s voice broke their silence.
“Stephen?”
Liv cringed at the sound of Veronica’s voice.
Stephen’s eyes lit up mischievously.
“Shh…” He put a finger to Liv’s lips and guided her into the shadows.
When Veronica appeared at the top of the stairs, Liv bristled. The girl wore a long, satiny lavender dress sheathed in sparkling chiffon. Her dark curls rose from the purple peacock mask she held coyly over her eyes. She took the mask away and flashed a huge, uncertain smile at Stephen.
“You made it,” he said, sweeping into the hallway and twirling Veronica around.
She laughed and put a hand to her neck, as if woozy from his adoration.
Liv glared at her and felt a terrible desire to push the girl down the stairs.
She watched as Stephen took her hand and led her to the third-floor stairwell. As he guided Veronica up the stairs, he glanced back at Liv, stretching out his free hand and beckoning for her to follow.
Chapter 39
September 1965
Jesse
Jesse drove down the road that edged the dense woods of the Stoneroot Forest eventually pulling onto the shoulder and turning off the engine.
He didn’t know where Corey’s cabin was. He could easily spend days scouring the woods and never find it.
“But I’m here now,” he reminded himself, tucking his keys into the pocket of his coat and stepping from the car.
He walked through the trees, propping up branches every few feet to mark his passage back out.
As he moved deeper, he heard the crunching of twigs underfoot and ducked behind a wide oak tree. As he gazed into the Stoneroot forest, he saw a dark, cloaked figure dragging something through the woods. Whatever the man carried, it must have been heavy, for he stopped frequently, hunching over.
Jesse slipped out from behind the tree and crept closer.
The hooded figure’s head popped up, and Jesse slipped behind another tree.
This time when the figure bent over the object at his feet, Jesse saw that a man lay there. The figure held the man by his arms and dragged him through the dried leaves.
Was he witnessing a murder?
Jesse thought of shouting and running at the cloaked figure to scare him away, but as the figure bent over the man, the hood fell down, revealing wavy blonde hair.
Liv.
Her name was in his mind without warning. He didn’t know her and had no reason to suspect it was her, and yet…
“Liv,” he said, his voice ringing across the divide between them.
The woman’s head shot up, and she dropped the man’s arms.
She gazed at him, her brown eyes watchful and alert, like an animal considering if it should run or attack.
He held up his hands.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, though the man laying at her feet implied it was she who might hurt him.
“Who are you?” she asked, standing up tall. She was taller than she’d initially appeared, likely only a few inches shorter than his six feet.
“My name’s Jesse. I know about you. About George and Arlene and Stephen…”
Liv frowned, looked beyond him as if searching for his accomplice.
“I’m alone,” he said.
She lifted something from her chest. Jesse watched as she gazed at him through a small white stone. When she let it drop, it caught on a leather loop around her neck.
“Help me,” she said, reaching down for the man’s arms.
Jesse hesitated for only a second, and then he ran to where she stood. She was flushed, her breath short and quick, as if she’d pulled the man a long way.
When Jesse looked down at the man, he cringed. A red flower bloomed on the man’s chest. The blood was thick, and it pooled in the little hollow of the man’s breastbone.
“He’s been stabbed. I need to get him to the cabin,” she huffed, beginning to drag him.
“George Corey’s cabin?” Jesse asked.
Liv paused, a little furrow knotting her brow, and then she nodded.
“Shouldn’t he go to a hospital?” Jesse asked, thinking they should be dragging him out of the forest, not into it.
“They can’t bring him back,” Liv murmured. “He’s gone too far into the veil.”
* * *
Liv
When Liv saw George’s cabin, she gasped with relief and held tighter to Mack’s arms.
“Stay with me, Mack. Stay with me,” she murmured. “Get the door,” she told Jesse.
Jesse looked at her, confused.
“But there’s nothing,” he started, before growing silent.
Liv knew he hadn’t seen the cabin only seconds before.
He went to the cottage and pushed in the door before returning to Mack.
“Can you lift him?” she asked.
He nodded, though his face drained of color when he looked again at the wound in the man’s chest.
Li
v hurried into the cabin, her stomach dropping at the dust-coated surfaces, the empty crow’s perch, the hearth as cold as a grave. She gathered twigs and leaves, building the fire quickly, breathing huge billows of oxygen into the budding flames as George had taught her so long ago.
Jesse struggled through the doorway with Mack, who was large and heavy and had been unconscious for more than an hour. When he tried to lay him near the fireplace, his arms seemed to give out and he mostly dropped him.
Mack’s head hit the wood floor with a thud, and Jesse looked horrified.
“It’s okay. He can’t feel it,” she muttered. She pulled Mack onto the rug and stuffed a straw pillow beneath his head. “I have to stop the bleeding,” she murmured.
The fire grew hungry, burning through the sticks and catching hold of the larger logs she’d place on top. The cold in the room backed away.
She stood and handed Jesse a rag. “Put it on the wound and press down. He’s already lost too much blood.”
As Jesse pressed his hand over the spreading red blur on Mack’s chest, Liv went to the little counter. George’s cabin was unchanged, the jars of herbs set in their same locations, dried herbs hanging from a string in front of the window, though they’d hung for so long that some had crumbled away and left piles of brown dust on the wood counter below. In the corner of the room she saw George’s staff, and her own next to it.
She started to drift back to the day he’d given it to her, immediately swallowed by her shame at having left it — and him — behind.
“I can’t find his pulse,” Jesse called.
Liv looked up, knowing she’d wasted precious seconds getting caught in the web of memories. Tearing a piece of linen from a swath of fabric George had hung near the water drum, she filled it with ground yarrow. A spicy cabbage smell drifted up from the dried herb as she hurried it across the room.
“Move your hands,” she told Jesse, kneeling.
As he slid his hands back, more blood gurgled up from the wound. Liv pushed the sack of yarrow onto Mack’s chest. His face looked pale and gaunt, his lips turning blue.
“Hold this,” she said, her hands trembling as she pulled them away.
She went to George’s bed, trying not to look at the indentation there, the space where his body laid for so many years, and grabbed a drum from the floor.
Jesse looked at her strangely when she returned.
“You’re going to play music?”
“I need you to be quiet, okay? Not a word. I don’t know if I can do this, but I have to try.”
She sat down and started beating her hands against the drum. The motion felt awkward; she could not find a rhythm, and the strangeness tore at her. She wanted to cry, to hang her head and give up, but she couldn’t.
Her hands continued their pounding, her mind insisting the spirits had abandoned her, but the room had begun to fade. The crackling fire gave way to another sound: water rushing down a river, carrying away rocks and twigs and sand. The Dead Stream rushed above and below her. Liv struggled against it, the current pushing her lower, holding her captive as she thrashed against the branches snaking around her ankle.
“He’s dying.” Jesse’s voice broke through her dream, and she hurtled across the veil back into the cabin.
Smoke billowed from the fire, as if someone had thrown water over the flames.
Jesse held the yarrow pouch over Mack’s wounds, but blood gushed through his fingers, turning his pale hands red.
He looked at Liv desperately, but she could do nothing but watch as the man who had tried to save her faded, his lips opening to release a bubble of blood that popped and trailed down his cheek.
Mack’s eyes fluttered open and locked on Liv’s.
“Tell Diane…” Mack choked on the words. Another spurt of blood exploded from his mouth and splattered Liv in the face. “Tell Diane I love her.”
His eyes closed.
Liv rocked away from him, a sob and snarl combining in her belly and tearing across the silent room. She howled and ripped the hag stone from her chest, flinging it into the smoky hearth.
As she opened her mouth wider, a flood of water rushed in. The river surrounded her once more, pushing, ravaging her. Her hair was pulled and wrenched, forcing her head forward, deeper. She saw the watery green death down there, shadows darting, but then voices from above drew her back. The spirits called, begging that she turn and look into the light.
She twisted around and looked up through the clear, watery void. She expected to see Stephen there, as she must have twenty years before, but it was not his face that peered down.
George’s strong hands reached into the river. She felt their fingers intertwine; their palms meet.
George pulled her from the river and held her close. She rocked and sobbed against him.
Further down the stream, a trunk floated, half-open, a dark dress billowing out.
The steady beat of her drum brought her back into the cabin.
When she opened her eyes, fire still blazed in the hearth, and Jesse sat perfectly still, his hands pressed against Mack’s wound.
“I think he’s waking up,” he whispered when he saw Liv watching him.
Liv looked down.
Jesse’s hands were clean.
Mack, too, was clear of blood. He had not spit up. He had not died.
Mack blinked, his face contorting with pain.
“Ugh, fuck-all. That bastard stabbed me,” he groaned.
Liv’s hands slowed, her breath catching.
“Mack?” she whispered.
He turned his head, offered her a weak smile.
“I saw George, Liv. He said you’d come through.”
Chapter 40
Halloween
October 31, 1945
Liv
She stood in the doorway watching Stephen and Veronica in his room.
He winked at her.
“I have a gift for you,” he told Veronica, carefully holding the curse in his left hand. “But you can’t open it until you get home.”
Veronica giggled and took the folded present, unaware that she was holding her own yellow scarf wrapped around a curse that would bring her nightmares for months.
“I’ve been wondering when you were going to ask me out, Stephen Kaiser,” she flirted. “Pity you waited until you went off to college.”
Liv rolled her eyes, tempted to dash Veronica’s fun, but footsteps sounded in the hall behind her.
“What are you doing?” a woman hissed, and Liv recognized the voice of Adele Kaiser.
When Liv turned, Adele stood in the hall, her mask clutched in her hands, her eyes dark and furious.
“Umm… I…” Liv ducked into Stephen’s room, barely aware of Veronica’s look of surprise.
“Liv!” Stephen laughed, but the sound was cut off as Adele stormed in behind her.
The color drained from Stephen’s face.
Veronica looked confused, her eyes shifting to Liv and then to Adele.
“You sneaky, disgusting little bastard,” Adele seethed. She lifted an accusatory finger at Stephen, her hand shaking with rage.
Stephen walked to the bureau beside his bed.
No one spoke. The very air seemed sucked from the room.
He reached down, and when his hand emerged, Liv tried to make sense of the leathery thing he clutched.
“I curse you,” he spat, lifting a silver candlestick from his table and slamming it into his mother’s temple.
His mask had fallen away. In one hand he clutched the flap of cat’s skin, the blood writing blurred in the dim light.
His mother’s face sagged, and she collapsed to the floor.
Liv stared in frozen horror at the gaping wound, blood pouring down the woman’s pale cheek.
Veronica shrieked and fled through the bedroom door.
Liv tried to follow, but Stephen reached out and grabbed her wrist as she turned for the door. His grip felt hot and slick. She could pull her arm away. She had to, but her br
ain couldn’t seem to send the signal.
His mother put a hand to her head. Rings glittered there. The gold poison ring Stephen had told her about came away with a smear of blood. She stared at her pale hand in confusion. A dark red gash lay across the white of her flesh, as if she’d been cut, but it was the blood spilling from her head. She teetered forward, attempted to push out her other hand to catch herself, but her arm nearly splayed to the side as she landed face-down on the wood floor.
Liv wrenched away.
Stephen’s bloodless face gazed down. His mother lay unmoving.
Liv pushed open the bedroom door and pounded down the stairs. Her shoes fell off, and she left them, running barefoot into the chilly night.
Chapter 41
September 1965
Liv
Liv and Jesse did not sleep that night. Mack drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes alert and feverish, laughing and telling stories only to quickly slip into oblivion.
When Liv finished the story of Halloween night, Jesse frowned.
“Adele is in the trunk? Stephen’s mother?”
Liv nodded.
He sighed and rested his head heavily against his chair.
“Then what happened to Veronica?”
“I killed Veronica,” Liv confessed.
Jesse sat up and scooted to the edge of his chair, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it.
“You didn’t kill her,” he said. “You couldn’t have, wouldn’t have.”
Liv’s face was pale and gaunt, her brown eyes haunted.
“You don’t know me, Jesse. How can you say that?”
He looked at her earnestly.
“Because I know people, Liv. You’re not a killer.”
“After I left Stephen’s house, I was…” Liv put her face in her hands, “gone, like a draugar.”
Dead Stream Curse: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel Page 24
