Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Tucholke, April Genevieve

“Maybe you need to hit it again,” Cassie said. “Look, it’s trying to move.”

  Sam had a bat in one hand. I hadn’t noticed. Why hadn’t I noticed that bat? When did Sunshine’s bookish parents get a baseball bat? Sunshine’s fingers reached out and touched my bare toes, and I wanted to help her, I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t move. I was stock-still and frozen, trying to scream but making no sound and Sunshine wasn’t moving at all anymore and Sam’s bat had blood and matted hair on it, and why hadn’t I seen it when I first came in, Sunshine, blood, bat, I was shaking and screaming a silent scream—

  And Cassie finally saw me.

  She smiled. Her eyes had a funny, staring, dead-boy-by-the-tracks look in them. “Hello, Violet. Do you want some tea? We’ve had quite a morning. A rat got into the house. But Sam has killed it with his bat. Look at it there, by your feet. Isn’t it disgusting? It’s probably carrying rabies. Sam is going to take it out back and burn it. Violet, you look upset. Is something wrong?”

  Sam looked up then. He took one look at me and raised the bat in the air. “I told you there’d be more than one, Cassie. Rats come in hordes. Get out of the way. I’ve got to kill this one too—”

  He swung the bat, and I ducked. The hard wood bounced off my temple and I stumbled backward. I didn’t fall, but there he was swinging again, and God, I didn’t want to leave Sunshine, but I could hear the bat cutting through the air and—

  I ran. I ran out the door, stumbled, ran down the steps, stumbled again, ran past the woods, past the ocean, down the driveway, and straight toward Citizen Kane.

  Brodie was waiting for me. He was standing by the fountain. He saw me running and didn’t seem surprised, didn’t seem surprised at all. He was stroking the dirty nude fountain girls with one hand and smiling.

  “How is Sunshine?” he asked, nice and slow, as I came to a stop in front of him, sweating and sick because my whole damn world was shaking and falling apart. “Is the little slut dead yet?”

  And then he looked at me, right at me, and he winked.

  CHAPTER 26

  I TRIED TO RUN. My feet slipped in the gravel and I fell. My palms skidded across the small rocks and maybe it hurt but I couldn’t tell, because I was already up and running again, running toward the Citizen, to safety.

  He caught me on the steps. Grabbed me, hard.

  “Maybe we should introduce ourselves again. The name’s Brodie.” His skinny fingers gripped my left elbow. He jerked me back to the ground. “And you must be Violet.”

  He let go of me, as if he knew I wouldn’t run. And I didn’t.

  “What do you want?” I asked. Though I didn’t want to know. “Who are you?”

  Brodie opened his mouth, and shut it again. He tilted his head to the side, and his expression went slack. His eyes looked younger for a second, younger and—

  He straightened his head, and the look went away.

  “Who am I?” He flipped his cowboy hat off with one hand. His boots tapped on the driveway, tap, tap, tap on the old, cracking pavement. “Well . . . I could be the Devil, I suppose. Or I could be River and Neely’s younger brother. Which would you like? Take your pick.” His voice had changed. It wasn’t fast and kind of eager and enthusiastic. It was low. And he spoke in a slow, languid drawl now, dragging out the words as if reluctant to let them go, like a miser with his gold.

  Brother. Brother.

  He stepped toward me. His eyes had changed too. They were narrow, as if from squinting in the sun. And cocky. Those cocky, narrow eyes. They were familiar.

  I moved back. He laughed. It was a hoarse sound. A hoarse, familiar sound.

  I’d heard that laughter before.

  In the Glenship attic.

  I smelled smoke, and gas, like I was still back there, with Gianni and Jack.

  “Not going to let me come near you, then. Right. Because River told you about the glow. Both of my brothers have big mouths, but of the two I think River’s is the biggest. You?”

  I didn’t answer. I pressed my hands to my heart, pushed my palms in deep, tried to make the beat slow down.

  Brodie laughed again, took a step closer. “Hey, you don’t need to worry. I don’t glow like River. Not by touching. I spark. And I need blood to do it.” Brodie paused. His narrow eyes went strange again, like before—they looked very green, and a little bit . . . lost. Then his face softened and became almost dreamy. “If I wasn’t such a violent youngster, I probably wouldn’t have figured it out, not for years. And wouldn’t that have been a shame? Look at this.”

  Brodie slipped his hand into his boot and pulled something from it, a thin, four-inch piece of silver with a pearl handle. A knife.

  I’d seen that knife before, cutting up an apple to give to a little kid at Brief Encounter in the town square.

  “I got this thing made special,” he said, waving it in front of my eyes. “For my girlfriend. She was a sweet thing, sweet as sugar with sugar on top, and innocent as a day-old colt. I liked to cut her. I liked to watch her cry.”

  He slid the knife back into his boot.

  “I’ll be damned if we didn’t just meet and yet I’m talking away as if we’ve known each other for years. I think it’s because you look like Sophie. My little Sophie. Blond hair, pale skin, drippy fear in your drippy blue eyes. Hmmm . . . I would like to cut you sometime. Watch you cry. I think you’d like it. I know I would.”

  He hesitated, and the fingers of his right hand tapped the ends of his red hair. “Let’s see, where was I? Oh, yes. So I live in Texas. Or I used to. I’m only River and Neely’s half brother, to be frank. Different mothers. Pa, he didn’t have much use for me. He paid the bills, and came to town once in a while, on account of some Redding oil interests in Abilene, and to get himself a bit of Texas honey. Until Ma up and went deranged, that is. Now she’s rotting in some asylum and I haven’t seen her since.” Brodie’s body went still. No boots rapping, no fingers tapping. The only thing that moved was his red, red hair, lifting in a breeze coming off the sea. “She used to call me the Mongrel. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head.

  Brodie’s eyes shifted to the side for a second, not looking at me. “Well, she’s locked up with the screamers and the droolers and she got hers, didn’t she. But back to the point. The last time Papa Redding came for a visit, we had a strange talk. William Redding II, he’s as cold as ice in hell, so when he tells me about a glow, and starts asking me questions, questions about my thoughts coming true, and making people do things just by thinking them . . . well. I paid attention.”

  I snapped my head around, trying to spot River, or Neely, or Luke. Someone. Where were they? Had Brodie already gotten to them? Had he already—

  “Pay attention, Violet.” Brodie’s voice was harsh, suddenly, his words fast. “I don’t like to be ignored. Eyes on mine. Eyes on mine.”

  I put my eyes on his. Brodie’s eyes were green and narrow and mad-mad-mad and I felt that I would go mad too if I stared into his eyes for much longer. But I clenched my fists and didn’t look away.

  “There, that’s better,” Brodie said, his voice slow and languid again. “So, a few months ago, I was using my little knife on Sophie, and, well, I tried making her do something. With my mind. It had never worked before. I’d been trying it, off and on, since Pa and I had our chat. But it worked then. Oh, hell, did it work then. So much for saving yourself, darling Sophie. I took it from you, and you were happy to give it, oh yes you were.”

  He opened his mouth and licked his bottom lip.

  “Sunshine,” I whispered. “What did you do to Sunshine?”

  He shrugged, his narrow shoulders disappearing into his red hair. “Nothing. She flashed those bosoms at me, white and fine as a bucket of fresh cream, peeking out of the top of that whore-red dress. So I asked her where you were, and she said you were walking toward town with the orphan brat. I followed her back
home, and met her parents. And they met my little knife. I’m pretty quick with the thing. You’ll be surprised. I knifed both their skinny palms as easy as shaking their hands. And then I found you ten minutes later, and Jack brought us both to the body. I’m pretty quiet, when I need to be. You didn’t hear a thing.”

  Tears were running down my face now. They were slipping out the corners of my eyes and leaving a wet trail down my neck. River wasn’t the Devil. He had never been the Devil. The red boy standing before me with his knife was the true Devil. In the flesh. I knew it like I knew the smell of paint drying on a canvas. I knew it like I knew the feel of my own heartbeat in my chest.

  “But . . . but Sunshine’s dad hit her in the head with a bat. A bat.” There was a high, pleading sort of sound in my voice. I hated it. “She’s hurt—”

  “Way to go, Papa Sam.” Brodie stuck his thumbs inside the pockets of his jeans and then let his gaze slide down my body. “Want to know a secret, Violet?”

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, yes, you do. I, Brodie Redding, have been in this nowhere shit town for three days. I can tell by your face that you’re surprised, Violet. As was I—I track down one brother and the other shows up too. Of course, both are too stupid to notice I’m here. If there is anyone more tedious than you and River, with your glow talk and your kissing, it’s Neely. Always fighting, like a damn savage. This whole trip has been dull from one end to the other. I had to burn a witch on the way here, just to stop me from blowing my brains out with boredom.”

  Brodie smiled, as if he liked thinking on that. “But back to the point, Vi. I’ve been watching you. You and River and Jack and Luke and the rat girl. Eating pizza. Painting. Sleeping. Oh, yes, ma’am. All the windows in the guesthouse are wide open and three feet off the ground, and I’ve been in and out of Citizen Kane more times than I can count. I’ve seen it all. Heard it all. Has it never occurred to you to lock the Citizen’s doors once in a while? I’ve been coming and going as I please these last few days, watching all of you paint together and kiss each other and adopt random redheaded orphans who don’t even— Who can’t even—” He paused.

  “Anyway, it was too damn easy. And easy things bore me. I’m bored. Bored, Violet.”

  “It was you,” I whispered. “The laughing in the attic. The bully. River didn’t forget. He didn’t do it, just like he said.” I felt dirty and exposed and weak with fear and I just wanted to go back to bed and wake up, except that it wasn’t a nightmare. Sunshine was really hurt and the boy was really dead and everything was going to get a whole lot worse than it already was.

  “Now, Violet. Give River his fair share. I sparked up your Italian pizza boy, it’s true. Once I found that rotting mansion, I knew I had to use it as a setting for some mischief. What a fine place to set someone on fire. And it was all going so well until Neely stuck his nose in, that fist-slinging halfwit. But that dead brat by the tracks was all River’s. Yes, ma’am. Neely was out prowling for the boy, trying to save him, the sentimental simpleton. But now we know that the brat was already lying in the ditch, bloody, swollen, and dead as a widow from the waist down.”

  Brodie whistled, low and long.

  He’d been here, the whole time. It was true. He’d been right in front of us, laughing and spying and plotting evil.

  My head was tingling and my throat stung, like I was swallowing smoke.

  He was going to kill me. He was going to kill us. All of us.

  “Why?” was all I said. And then I said it again. “Why?”

  Brodie just kept whistling the first few bars of something sad and folksy. “Well, should we go see what my brothers are up to?” he said finally. “Hmmm? Don’t shake your head at me, darling. Come on now.”

  I lunged forward. I was going to run. Run to Echo, get help, just go, go—

  And my head jerked. Pain rippled over my scalp. The red boy had grabbed my hair in his fist. He yanked me back to his side.

  Brodie’s green eyes stared down at me, through me, like they were trying to dig their way into my soul. “You’re going to play a part in this thing I’m planning, whether you like it or not. So you might as well save time and do as you’re told.”

  A scream. Coming from the woods. Jack. He was running and screaming Let her go let her go and he came right at us—

  I saw a flash of silver.

  And Jack was down.

  Down in the dirt, blue eyes shut, and a line of blood breaking out across the freckles on his cheek.

  Brodie crouched over Jack’s still-as-stone body. He grabbed a bit of his hair, and twisted it between two fingers. “It’s not even pure red,” he said. “Just this shit muddy auburn color. Frankly, I don’t see the appeal.”

  Brodie stood up, took the toe of his boot, and slid it under Jack’s body. One quick kick and he’d flipped Jack over on his belly so his face was in the dirt. Brodie shoved me out of the way, reached down, and yanked the back of Jack’s shirt up. Jack’s pale skin gleamed in the bright sun.

  “You’ll want to watch this,” Brodie said. “I’m going to cut him. Slower this time.” His tongue ran over his lower lip. “You’re thinking about running for help, aren’t you, Vi. I can always tell when my victims are about to bolt. But do it and I’ll kill Jack instead of cut him. No” —he glanced up at me— “you aren’t going anywhere, Violet White. I have great plans for you. I’m going to make you bleed. I’m going to cut you and cut you and make you bleed and bleed.”

  I thought when Sunshine fainted, I was scared. I thought when I saw the Devil over River’s shoulders, I was scared. I thought when I saw Jack tied up in the attic, and the dead boy by the tracks, and Sunshine bleeding from the head, and Sam with the bat, I thought I couldn’t get more scared. But that was only the beginning. The beginning. And the middle. All leading up to the red boy in front of me.

  This was the end.

  CHAPTER 27

  HE DRAGGED ME to the guesthouse, one hand pulling me by my shirt, the other clawing through my hair, his thin, hard fingers twitching and jerking until his nails drew blood.

  I tried to turn, tried to call out to Jack—he was still on the ground, not moving, his skin crisscrossed with red—but the nails went in harder.

  Brodie opened the door and shoved me through it. The first thing I saw was River, kneeling on the floor of the kitchen. Neely was standing behind him, holding a kitchen knife to his throat. River’s head was back, the edge of the blade pressed into the soft skin near his Adam’s apple, so deep that River’s heartbeat was making the knife quiver slightly.

  The room began to spin. I saw dark spots in the corners of my eyes. I was going to throw up again. And I didn’t want to be sick in front of the red boy. Don’t be sick, Vi . . .

  “Neely,” I whispered. “Neely, stop. Brodie’s tricking you. It’s just a trick. Put the knife down.”

  Neely was bleeding. A thin line of red ran down his left cheek, just like Jack.

  Neely looked at me when I said his name, but his eyes were odd and empty, like Cassie’s, and Sam’s. And Gianni’s. “Violet,” he said, “I caught this boy trying to sneak into the Citizen. He was going to kidnap you, take you back to his men, and rape you. He and his posse have been causing hell in these parts for years. But I got him good now. Run to the prison and get the sheriff, would you? I can’t seem to move my arms. I’ve got to keep the knife at his throat, you see, otherwise it hurts . . .”

  I reached out my hand. “Neely, put the knife down. It’s River, your brother, you have to put the knife down—”

  Brodie grabbed me. Thin fingers wrapped around my wrist, and he jerked my hand back. “Don’t want to do that, darling,” he said, the words crawling out of his mouth as slow as molasses. “The people I spark tend to respond pretty violent if you interrupt them in the act.”

  I screamed, but Brodie didn’t drop my arm. River’s eyes were watching me over the knife. Th
ey weren’t empty, like Neely’s. They were alive, and sparkling, as always.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Vi,” he said. His words made the blade cut deeper into the skin of his neck. Blood began to drip from the wound down onto the collar of his shirt, where it bloomed like a flower.

  I fell. My knees, still muddy from the creek bank, hit the kitchen floor with a loud crack. I moved my head back so I could look up. The ends of my blond hair swished across the black-and-white tiles, and I met Brodie’s eyes.

  “Just undo it,” I said.

  Brodie stared at me. Seconds passed. He breathed in and out. Then he grinned. “Your degradation amuses me,” he said at last. And shrugged.

  I heard the knife crash to the floor behind me. I got up and turned around. Neely was rubbing his eyes. River got to his feet. Slowly. He put one hand to his neck, where the knife had been, and swiped away the blood. Then he reached out and pulled me up. But he didn’t look at me. He didn’t even look at Neely. His eyes were fixed on Brodie.

  “How did you do that?” River asked, and his voice shook. Just a little, but it was enough. River had never lost his cool, not since I’d known him. That was the thing about River. He was calm. Calm as a summer’s day. Calm as a gentle nap in the sun. Even when girls were fainting and men were slitting their throats in front of you. He’d been upset, about thunderstorms and his dead mother, and not knowing he was using the glow on me in his sleep, but he’d never been scared. Not like this.

  And if River—River—was scared . . .

  “Tell me how you did it.” River reached out his arm as if to grab Brodie by the collar, but Brodie stepped back out of the way, lightly, on his toes, with his knees bent like a skinny, leering marionette.

  “What, take my spark back?” Brodie put a hand on his sharp chin and stroked it. “Well, eventually my victims shake off the spark on their own, but it can take hours. Otherwise, I rip the spark out of someone’s head manually, so to speak. Easy as pulling apples off trees, old boy. I’m pretty good at it.” He was watching River’s face, closely, so closely. “I could show you how, if you wanted.”