The Liar of Red Valley

by Walter Goodwater

“He’s saying hi,” said the lanky Laughing Boy who had just been selling magic dust to the kid in the Escalade. “It means he likes you.”

  “That thing doesn’t like anyone,” the smoking Laughing Boy said.

  “That’s the whole point of a watchdog,” said the other.

  “Let’s kill it and wear its skull as a trophy,” said his giggling demon.

  “I’d like to see you try,” the lanky Laughing Boy said before going inside.

  Directed by the sound, Sadie could now see the outline of the dog in the poor light. It was tied up to the brick building, the thick rope knotted to a loop anchored into the wall just around the corner from where she was crouched. The dog was facing away from her, but she could see its broad frame and the cords of muscle in its back. It looked part Rottweiler, part pit bull, part hellbeast.

  The smoking Laughing Boy picked up a rock and threw it at the dog. The rock fell short, but the dog stopped barking and instead just growled with pent-up malice.

  It looked to Sadie like the Laughing Boys were mostly gathered in the main building. If they had her bag, it stood to reason that they’d keep it there, where they could keep an eye on it. But that meant she’d have to sneak in under all their noses and hope they were as dumb as they sounded. That prospect didn’t thrill her. She’d rather be eaten by the guard dog than surrounded by glowing blue demon eyes. At least the dog seemed to hate the Laughing Boys as much as she did.

  And that gave her an idea.

  She eased her pocketknife free and slid out the blade. She was grateful her mom had always kept it so sharp. She shifted her feet very, very carefully. The watchdog was still glowering at the end of its rope, some twenty feet away, but one wrong move would bring it down on her in a flash of sharp teeth and pain. The rope’s anchor point was close, only a little bit farther. Keeping her eyes on the dog, she pressed the edge of the knife into the knotted rope, and began to saw.

  Nice little doggie, Sadie thought. Just stand there and look at the mean Laughing Boy and imagine how good he’ll taste. The rope frayed a little. She kept at it.

  Voices drifted out from the main building.

  “Any beer left?”

  “How the fuck should I know? Check the ice chest.”

  “You’re standing right next to it, you check.”

  “I’m not the one who wants a beer.”

  “Come on, man. I just got comfortable.”

  “Piss off, Ted.”

  Yeah, Ted, Sadie thought as she tried not to imagine the dog’s mouth reaching for her throat. If you’re old enough to get your body invaded by a blue-eyed demon from hell, then you’re old enough to find your own beer.

  Then the knife was through. The rope fell slack to the dirt. Phase One, complete.

  The smoking Laughing Boy had finished his cigarette and gone inside. Sadie slipped back around behind the brick building. She needed something to draw their attention, but not to her. She felt around on the dark ground and came up with a handful of decently-sized rocks. The building in the u-shape across from her looked newer, built of wood and metal instead of brick, and still had a few intact windows. That should work.

  The first rock pinged off the roof. The dog took notice, its big head swinging toward the sound, but none of the Laughing Boys seemed to. The second one just disappeared into the dark, too high. Sadie swore under her breath. She never had been very good at baseball. Her mom had made her sign up to play right field one season; she’d made it through two games before quitting. But that had been a game, and this… well, this was something else entirely. She threw again. And again.

  Her second-to-last rock hit the window with a satisfying smash of broken glass.

  “What was that?” came a voice from the main building.

  The dog growled. Sadie retreated.

  Two Laughing Boys appeared at the door. At the sight of them, the dog started barking wildly.

  “You see anything?”

  “I can’t see shit,” the Laughing Boy who had come out to smoke before said. “Grab one of those flashlights.”

  Sadie moved around the other side of the brick building. As the Laughing Boys came out to investigate, she ran through the shadows to the next building toward the main one. There were only two out in the yard now, their flashlight stabbing through the night. She needed a bigger distraction. Hopefully—

  “And for the love of God,” the Laughing Boy said, “will somebody please shut this stupid dog up before I—”

  Sadie heard the dog start to run, its paws kicking up dust. And she heard the Laughing Boys realize it wasn’t tied down anymore. Between the buildings, she caught a brief glimpse of them trying to flee, and then the dog clamped down on the ankle of the slowest one and pulled him to the ground.

  As soon as she heard the screams of pain and shouts of panic, Sadie ran. She came around the edge of the last building and crossed over to the main structure as the shouting intensified. Staring through busted windows, she saw close to a dozen Laughing Boys pour out into the yard as their unlucky companion tried to keep the dog from devouring his entire leg.

  “Get it off me! Get it off me!”

  “Kill it! Smash its brains!”

  Under the cover of this chaos, Sadie found a low window and slipped inside.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The main building had a few sources of light: propane lamps spread around on a few tables, a big fire burning in a pit in the center of the room, and a dropped flashlight by the front doors. In the weird yellow-orange glow, Sadie could make out a little of the building’s interior. The place was tall enough to be two stories, but was all one big open space broken up at regular intervals by sturdy posts that rose to the ceiling. A few makeshift rooms had been created with blue tarps, and a panoply of discarded furniture—sagging folding chairs, broke-bottom couches with stuffing spilling out of torn upholstery, a leather recliner that looked like it had been savaged by wild animals—was arrayed around the fire pit. Rotting piles of forgotten lumber filled one corner, decaying tools rusted beyond repair were stacked in another.

  Most importantly, the room was empty of Laughing Boys.

  The screams continued out front. Sadie ignored them, running to the nearest table, looking for her bag, her ledgers, anything she recognized. She found what looked like an alchemist’s laboratory: mortars and pestles, various jars full of powders and liquids, strange words written out on scraps of paper. Tiny bones had been gathered in one vessel. Some were in the process of being pulverized.

  But no sign of her bag.

  “Hold still!” someone outside shouted, and then a wet scream of agony. “I said hold still!”

  Closer to the fire pit, she found a collection of what looked like stolen goods: purses, boxes of groceries, a laptop with a broken screen. But nothing she recognized.

  It had to be here. She couldn’t have risked everything to come here for nothing. Sadie remembered Undersheriff Hassler’s smug face when he’d told her where to find the Laughing Boys. Maybe he had sent her here to get killed after all. One less loose end. One step closer to a safe, normal Red Valley.

  Except Red Valley was never going to be normal and was never going to be safe. And she wasn’t going to give up.

  The dog yelped. More shouting.

  “Don’t let it get away! Kill it!”

  “I want to eat its liver!”

  “My leg!”

  Just as Sadie was about to turn and run for the back window before the Laughing Boys came back inside, she caught a glimpse of purple out of the corner of her eye. There, under one of the tables! She slid to her knees and pulled the backpack from under a fallen hunk of cardboard. She yanked the bag open. There was no sign of her money, but all the ledgers were there, right where she’d left them.

  Sadie sighed and clutched the bag to her chest. A sob caught in her throat.

  “Stop your whining,” one of the Laughing Boys was saying. The voice came from just outside the main doors, and Sadie was in the very middle of
the room, exposed.

  She ran, the sound of her shoes on the dusty floor thundering in her ears. She just hoped they’d be distracted long enough so she could get out the back.

  Only a few feet more. More voices behind, more laughter.

  Where was the window? She lost it in the gloom.

  There, there! Only a few more steps.

  Just as she put her hands on the frame to vault through, she looked out into the night—and saw blue glowing eyes hovering in the dark. Drawn by all the sound, more Laughing Boys were coming toward the mill from the back, cutting off her only escape.

  “…chewed my leg off!”

  “You’ll be fine. Besides, you deserve it, the way you treated the dog. You’re lucky he didn’t rip your face off.”

  “I’ll rip his face off.”

  She was surrounded. And out of time.

  Just as the Laughing Boys stepped into the fire pit’s light, Sadie scurried around behind one of the hanging tarps. The makeshift room stank of mildew and piss. She fell onto a ratty, stained mattress and tried to hold her breath, lungs burning. Silhouettes of the Laughing Boys loomed on the tarp, backlit by the dancing flames.

  “What I want to know,” said one of them, “is who let the dog off his leash.”

  “Somebody who wanted you to get bit.”

  “Shut up, Ted.”

  “How do you taste, Ted?”

  The scuff of shoes on the floor. New voices, more vile tittering.

  “Where’s Kyle?” someone asked. After a moment, Sadie recognized the voice as Danny’s.

  “Brooding.”

  “You see his burns?”

  “His skin melted.”

  “Yeah, pretty gross. That girl got him good.”

  “Wait until he gets his hands on her again. That ain’t going to be pretty.”

  “Hope that was some secret your girlfriend wanted to stay hidden, Danny.”

  “Shut up,” Danny said.

  “Maybe the secret is that his girlfriend isn’t real.”

  “That’s no secret, that’s just a fact.”

  “Didn’t she dump you for some older dude?”

  “Oh, but Danny still loves her!”

  “Shut up,” he said again.

  Sadie’s heart was out of control. Her mouth was dry, her fingers numb. When the Laughing Boys had destroyed her house, she’d vowed revenge. She was going to make them pay. But the world wasn’t that simple, that neat. She was just one person against a whole gang of monsters, men driven mad by the foul things coiled up inside of them. If they caught her, they would kill her, and now she was surrounded with no chance of escape.

  The tarp rustled. One of them was right outside.

  I’m sorry, Mom, Sadie thought as the shadow loomed closer. I fucked up everything. I lost our house, your car. I wish you were still here so you could tell me what to do. I wouldn’t listen to you—I never listened to you—but I’d know you were right. A tear dripped from her chin. I wish you could have trusted me, in the end. I wish you could have told me…

  But she hadn’t. Whatever was going on—her “bad Lie” as Brian had said—her mom had kept secret. She’d even hidden her cancer. Maybe they’d meet one day on the dark lonely road and Sadie could ask her why.

  “Hey, where’s that girl’s bag? It was right here.”

  “You lost it? Kyle’s not going to like that.”

  “I didn’t lose it.”

  “Well I didn’t—”

  “She’s here, you miserable fools,” hissed a demon. “She’s here! Find her!”

  Bile and panic clawed at Sadie’s throat. No, no. Not like this. They can’t find me. I’m not ready for the dark road.

  A crash. The sound of a tarp tearing. Swearing, laughing, growling. Blue eyes in the dark.

  Sadie eased her ledger out of her bag. Her mom had used her own blood to hide her cancer. Some things were worth the Liar’s Price. She found a pen and started to write:

  The Laughing Boys can’t see me.

  “Tear this place apart! Don’t let her get away!”

  She pulled out the knife again, but before she could fold out the blade, it jangled out of her trembling fingers and fell onto the mattress. She swore quietly, but not quietly enough.

  “I hear you, little girl…” sang a demonic voice.

  Footsteps approached, first slowly then faster. Shadows on the wall grew. Sadie grabbed the knife and dug the tip into the pad of her thumb. Blood welled.

  “We’re going to hurt you so bad!”

  She smeared her blood into the ledger.

  The tarp was torn aside, and Danny stood over her, lit up by the fire. His dead, hungry eyes stared right at Sadie, who fell back onto the mattress with the knife held up, blood still gleaming from its quivering point.

  “You find her?” called a nearby voice.

  “No,” Danny said, turning away. “Just hearing things.”

  He’d been looking right at her. He couldn’t have missed her, even in the dim gloom. The Lie had worked.

  Sadie wanted to laugh. The urge was so strong that she had to clamp a hand across her mouth to keep quiet. She didn’t know what that Lie had cost her and she didn’t care. It had worked. She was safe. Oh, God. She was safe.

  When she dared, she tucked her ledger and knife away and slowly moved off the mattress. The Laughing Boys were frantic now, their demons urging them on like hellish taskmasters. Tables were overturned, rooms smashed, bags and boxes emptied and scattered. Yet even as she stood up, bathed in the orange light, they took no notice of her. They screamed and roared at her, threatened her with all manner of violence, but never once even glanced in her direction.

  I guess being the Liar has some benefits after all, Sadie thought.

  Then the room fell completely silent. Even the laughing stopped.

  “Where is she?” The voice was familiar but different. There was something human in it, but only a trace. The rest of the Laughing Boys had two separate voices: their own, and the demon who had crawled inside. But this one spoke with both at once, the two intertwined in a horrible, grating rasp.

  “We’re looking, Kyle,” one of the others said, his word tinged with fear.

  The thing that had been the Laughing Boy Kyle stepped into the doorway. The others had taken on some features of the parasites riding inside of them, but beyond the blue eyes and sharp teeth, still looked mostly like any other strung-out addict on the street. But the shape filling the doorway would never pass for human. His arms hung down nearly to his knees, with clawed fingers splayed out. Other appendages had sprouted around his arms, some short, some long. A few of them ended in more hands, others in razor-sharp spurs and spikes. One of his eyes was gone, lost in a red mass of burned flesh that covered the entire right side of his face. The other had grown to double its normal size, and now burned with icy, unholy rage.

  Kyle moved into the room and the others shrank back. His head swiveled on an elongated neck thickened by burns and scar tissue, taking in everything. The terrible eye pierced through each Laughing Boy in turn with a blinding light, like some desecrated lighthouse. Until it stopped on Sadie.

  The sound that came out of Kyle then was no laugh. It started soft, then grew quickly to a wail of anguish and sorrow that made her insides twist and her legs go weak. He wasn’t a Laughing Boy anymore, but a Crying Boy; and that was much, much worse.

  And her Lie had been too specific.

  One of the Crying Boy’s gnarled hands rose, a crooked finger pointed at Sadie’s heart. His mouth opened, revealing row after row of yellow teeth. “She’s right there, you idiots!” he snarled in his double voice. The Laughing Boys looked around in confusion.

  “Umm, Kyle, are you sure you’re—”

  The Laughing Boy who had spoken gasped in wide-eyed shock as a tentacle whipped out from Kyle’s shoulder blade and ripped through his throat. Blood bubbled from his mouth and onto his filthy shirt.

  “Shut up, Ted,” the Crying Boy said with a curled, cracke
d lip.

  All her elation at tricking the Laughing Boys curdled and her thoughts scrambled inside her head as she fought to swallow a scream. But as the Crying Boy shifted his weight low like an animal about to pounce, they coalesced into a single, terrified word: Run.

  The building’s detritus exploded behind her in the Crying Boy’s wake as she ran. She was aiming for the broken window she thought she came in by, but as she reached it, she realized the pane was still intact. Too late now; she ducked her head, led with her shoulder and smashed through the glass. She hit the ground outside hard, but tucked and rolled out of the fall. Her ankle gave a quick jolt of pain, but Sadie wasn’t listening. She ran.

  The metal wall groaned and screamed and then was torn apart. The Crying Boy burst through the hole, his many terrible hands churning the dirt.

  She couldn’t go back toward the other buildings for fear of being stuck between them, or caught by a lucky Laughing Boy. So she ran into the field behind the mill, kicking through weeds and tripping over gopher hills. She hoped to lose the Crying Boy in the dark, but his bright blue eye found her in an instant, and then he was coming again.

  Sadie saw the rusty chute and ducked under it only a moment before her forehead would have collided with it. To the left, it ran all the way back up to the mill. To the right, down into darkness. The way ahead was blocked by the barbed wire fence, so instead she followed the chute downhill. The Crying Boy leapt up onto the chute only a dozen feet behind her.

  “You should have played nicely, little girl,” he roared.

  The ground sloped down, then leveled off. Sadie heard moving water. Oh, fuck.

  It could be hard to stay alive in a town like Red Valley. It wasn’t safe. That’s why there were rules. Every kid knew them; every kid followed them. Or else.

  Do not cross the King.

  Don’t trust the Liar.

  Never, ever go in the River.

  The chute ended in a short wooden dock. When the mill had been operational and the lumber had been coming down from the mountains on the water, they’d catch it here and run it up the chute to the mill for processing. But now the forests were empty and the River was far less accommodating.