Scorch

by Gina Damico

  “Sometimes it does,” he replied with a smile, pecking her on the nose.

  “Christ, Driggs. You’re turning into a Lifetime movie.”

  “Your defense mechanisms are captivating, as always.”

  ***

  Lex’s mechanisms, defense or otherwise, seemed to be tested at every turn over the next week. Norwood and Heloise’s influence kept spreading through the town like a malicious fungus; Lex couldn’t produce any evidence, but she was sure they were holding more secret meetings. It felt as if every one of her actions was being held under a microscope. As far as the Seniors were concerned, any misstep was evidence that Lex and the other Juniors were secretly plotting to bring down Croak, while their partner in crime, Zara, kept the fear alive everywhere else.

  And throughout it all, Lex had to deal with the guilt of not spending every waking moment with her poor dead sister; in fact, she hadn’t gone back since that first day. She told herself this was because she was too busy trying to solve the mystery of Bone’s note, but she hadn’t gotten anywhere with that either. Every time she jammed her hands into her pocket, she felt it there, taunting them, daring them to drop everything and lock themselves in a broom closet until they figured it out right down to the last letter.

  Of course, they couldn’t lock themselves in a broom closet. Or either of their rooms. Or anywhere in the house, for that matter. Uncle Mort wasn’t kidding about constant surveillance. Anytime she and Driggs got within five feet of each other, he’d appear from nowhere and start chatting them up with thinly veiled weather-related metaphors.

  “Hot today, huh?” he shouted one evening before dinner, popping his head into the living room as Lex and Driggs dove to opposite ends of the couch. “Better cool down soon.” He grinned and made one of those two-fingered I’m-watching-you gestures.

  Lex looked at her watch. Still a couple of hours before they had to leave for Corpp’s; it was the rookies’ one-week anniversary, which meant the Juniors would be meeting up to surprise them with a water balloon fight. “You’re right, it’s so nice out,” she said loudly, dragging Driggs out of the house. “I think we’ll go for a walk.”

  “I appreciate your commitment to fitness!”

  When they were far enough down the road, Driggs plunged right back into her face, but Lex pushed him away. “I have a better idea,” she said, marching toward the library. “We’re going to figure out this note. Now.”

  “Oh.” His face fell. “Yeah, that sounds fun too.”

  Once inside, she made a beeline for the Grotton section. “Here, look.” They paged through the volumes on the shelves and studied each “wrong book” note, finally grabbing Grotton: A Biography and placing it on the large table.

  “There.” Lex flipped to the last page. “That’s where I tore it out.” She removed the note from her pocket, uncrumpled it, and fit it back into the page.

  Driggs looked over the scratchy writing and bit his lip. “‘The key to the dead awaits overhead.’ But Croak is so flat. There aren’t too many choices for things to be overhead.”

  “I know. The Bank is the only building with a second floor, and I doubt that whoever wrote this could sneak something in there.” Lex briefly thought of the white figure that seemed to have been following her over the summer, then put it out of her mind and reached for the note once more. Here was something tangible, something real—not a blurry vision she wasn’t even sure she had seen.

  “Maybe it’s not in Croak,” Driggs suggested. “Could be in Necropolis—that’s the capital, after all. Or what about DeMyse? On the other side of the country, all crazy and Hollywoodish—pretty good place to hide something.”

  “Maybe,” Lex said, switching her thinking up. “What about Bone? Maybe there’s something in one of these books about him. Or her.” Her eyes swept over the endless shelves of books, finally landing on the framed photos on the walls of Grims from years past, arranged in chronological order. “Maybe there’s a picture.”

  “Lex, Bone could have been just some idiot kid with no respect for library property, with nothing to distinguish him or garner any mention in a book. It’s probably not even his real name.”

  Lex frowned. “That’s true.”

  “Plus, what makes him a bandit? And why is he sick?” He shook his head. “It’s like he wrote the signature using Mad Libs. He may as well have signed it Spleen, the toasty orange tugboat.”

  “You’re right,” Lex said, slowly putting something together. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

  “It is!” Goosebumps rippled up her arms as she grabbed a nearby pen and scrap of paper. “It’s a code!”

  “Or that. Sure.”

  Lex’s hands were a blur as she wrote. “A simple substitution cipher? One letter for another? Or maybe it needs a keyword. Maybe Bone is the keyword. Is Bone the keyword?”

  Driggs raised an eyebrow as she scribbled. “This is an interesting side of you I’ve never seen.”

  “My mom’s a teacher,” she said, staring at the paper without blinking. “Instead of cartoons and video games we got work sheets and word puzzles.”

  “I see.” He reached in. “Maybe—”

  “Don’t touch!”

  “Wow. Okay.” He backed away, stifling a snicker. “I just think you’re overthinking this.”

  She looked peeved. “Oh, am I, Sherlock?” She offered him the paper. “What do you think it is, just a simple anag—” Her eyes went wide.

  Next thing Driggs knew, Lex was rummaging around in the closet. “Are you looking for your sanity?” he called after her. “Because I do believe it showed itself out a while ago.”

  She emerged with a Scrabble box in hand. “Silence,” she said, dumping the tiles on the table. “Let me think.”

  Driggs sank into a seat next to her and put his feet up on the table as Lex spelled out BONE THE SICK SCYTHE BANDIT. Five minutes later she had rearranged them into several words, none of which made any sense.

  “Nosy tennis?” she said. “No, wait. Sticky cabin? Shitty chicken?”

  Driggs frowned. “Wait—”

  “Shitty chicken? Really, Driggs?”

  “No, no. Cabin.” He thought for a moment. “Why does that sound familiar?” He switched CABIN with STICKY, removed the Y, and rearranged the remaining tiles to form a new phrase.

  Lex read it aloud. “The cabin beyond the sticks.” She turned to him. “Don’t know what it means, but still! It’s something!”

  Driggs didn’t reply. He just stared at the words, his eyes growing larger.

  “Why am I the only one getting excited about this?” Lex said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I”—he blinked hard—“I think I just remembered something. I think I know what this means.”

  “Seriously? What? What are the sticks?”

  “Sticks with a capital S. It’s a name, Sticks River. And I can’t—I’d have to show you—”

  “Then show away,” Lex said, excitedly pulling him out of his chair, all the way out of the library, and onto the street.

  Driggs turned left, away from the town. “Where are you going?” Lex asked.

  “Shhh.” He looked back at the people on the street. “Keep walking.”

  When they reached Uncle Mort’s house and then passed it, Lex raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think there was anything else down this way.”

  Driggs glanced up the road and donned a strange expression. “Mort brought me to this place only once, when I was fifteen. I had been a Grim for a year already—you know, since I came here earlier than everyone else, when I was fourteen—and I thought I knew every nook and cranny of Croak. Then one day Ayjay correctly pointed out that I didn’t know what was past the Sticks River, and idiot that I was, I decided to find out. But Mort caught me before I even left the house and insisted on taking me himself, figuring that I would probably go and investigate on my own no matter how many times he stopped me.”

  “Little Driggs s
ounds a lot like me,” said Lex.

  “Please don’t besmirch his memory.” He glanced behind them, then faced forward again. “Anyway, one day after work he took me into the forest up there and turned off into a small, hidden path. It was fine at first. But once we took a few steps in, the air got chillier. My mind began to swim. I felt dizzy, disoriented—like thoughts were melting out of my head faster than I could think them. But Mort told me to keep going.”

  He rubbed his forehead, trying to remember. “Next came these sharp, stabbing pains ripping through my stomach, then a sort of burn in my lungs, then a god-awful ache through my arms and legs. And once the searing headache set in, I think I sort of just fell over. Mort—who was holding up slightly better than me—eventually noticed that I had been reduced to a pile of quivering jelly, and he dragged me back to the entrance. And then, just like that, the pain was gone.”

  Lex exhaled noisily. “Weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And as usual, Uncle Mort didn’t give you a single word of explanation.”

  “You’re not going to believe this. He did.” Driggs’s eyes darkened. “He said that at the end of the path is an old, deserted cabin. And no one knows what’s inside, not even Mort, because no one has ever been able to get anywhere near it. I think he’s gotten the closest of anyone—he said that after the physical pain comes emotional torture, where your most terrible memories start flying through your head and start to drive you insane—but he couldn’t take it, he had to come back.”

  “Wow,” Lex said softly. Her uncle had demons, she had already known that—but were they really bad enough to physically stop him in his tracks? “Who else knows about this place?”

  “Mort said he and I were the only ones. And now you.” He let out a long breath. “He must have Amnesia’d me afterward, because I haven’t remembered any of this in years, not until we spelled out those words. He must not have wanted me to go back and try again.” He frowned and stopped walking.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He swept his gaze across the landscape, then looked back at Lex. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “It’s all we’ve got.”

  “Yeah, but doesn’t this whole thing feel kind of off? Mort must be keeping that place secret for a reason.” He scratched his head. “I don’t know, maybe we should just burn that note and forget we ever found it in the first place.”

  “Are you crazy?” She held up the note. “You see this word right here? ‘Redemption.’ I want redemption, Driggs. I want to make things right. If there’s even the slightest chance I can do that, no matter how ridiculous or far-fetched the words on this piece of paper are, I’m going to do it.”

  “Just like you did last time? Look how great that plan worked out—your sister got killed!”

  Lex’s mouth fell open. She felt like she had been slapped. A nasty comeback seemed to be the way to go, but nothing came to mind. Driggs, for his part, seemed to realize that he’d said something terribly wrong but hadn’t the first clue how to fix it.

  So, being the mature, reasonable individuals they were, they bolted. Driggs took off for Uncle Mort’s house while Lex crammed the note into her pocket and stalked back toward town, pulling her hood up to hide her watering eyes. Yet the closer she got to the center, the more people stared, shaking their heads in disapproval.

  “What?” she finally shouted at Trumbull.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he said, wiping his butcher knife. “You kids act like this town is your own personal playground.”

  Lex bit her quivering lip and walked a bit faster. She’d been used to people hating her in high school, but this was different. These were people she supposedly belonged with. Her people.

  The sorority girl Senior joined in, her hands on her hips. “Whatever happened between you and Zara—it affects us all.” Her name was Riley, Lex had learned, and she was maybe in her late twenties. The gigantic sunglasses on her face made her look like a trendy housefly. “Other people’s lives are at stake here too, you know!”

  Lex ducked around her and ran up the porch stairs to the Bank. She blew past Kilda and headed up to the second-floor office, hoping to trick Snodgrass into letting her in. But another youngish Senior woman was there instead, looking at her with an intrigued expression.

  “Hey, you’re Lex, aren’t you?” she asked. Lex wiped her eyes and prepared herself for another barrage of insults, but the Senior gave her a sympathetic look. “Were they harassing you again? Christ, this place is going to hell in a Norwood-and-Heloise- woven handbasket. Maybe if those two would shut their faces for five seconds, everyone else would wake up and remember how to think for themselves again.”

  This outpouring of independent thought caught Lex way off-guard. She didn’t think Seniors were capable of it anymore.

  The girl smiled, sending freckles everywhere. Her hair was black and cut short, with a long streak of red bangs sweeping across her forehead. “I’m Wicket.” She leaned across the desk and held out her hand.

  Lex shook it and looked around. “Where’s Snodgrass?”

  “He left for the day, saints be praised. I’m the graveyard shifter.” She nudged Lex. “You want to go in and see your sister?”

  “You’re not going to give me a hard time about it?”

  “Anything to piss off Snoddy,” Wicket said, punching the code into the computer. “Plus it’s common decency. She’s your sister, for chrissakes. Go ahead, sweetie—and say hi to my better half.”

  Lex thanked her and stepped through the vault door, only to find that the atrium was empty once again. “Cordy?” Lex shouted at the Void.

  “I’ll get her,” a miserable-sounding voice piped up. Edgar Allan Poe materialized from nowhere and flashed Lex the closest thing he could get to a smile.

  “Ed!” She waved at him, then at Quoth, the raven sitting on his shoulder. She hadn’t seen either of them since returning to Croak. Just their mere presence made her feel a million times better. “Where have you been all this time?”

  “Martin Van Buren threw my favorite hat into a canyon,” he snipped. “I was retrieving it.”

  Lex looked at his bare head. “Where is it, then?”

  “A coyote ate it. Look, I don’t have time for this,” he said, stomping off to the Void.

  At the desk sat a Senior with the exact opposite hairstyle of Wicket’s—red and long, with black bangs. “Are you the better half?” Lex asked her.

  The woman laughed. “Yes. I’m Roze.” She greeted Lex with a pair of henna-stained hands, the intricate designs curling around her bony fingers. “And you’re Lex, and I just want you to know—Wicket and I, we’re big fans of yours. We’ve always been close with your uncle, and we know you’re good people. Anyone who thinks otherwise clearly can’t tell their head from their pooper.”

  Lex cracked a smile. “Thanks.”

  “Well, look who decided to swing by,” Cordy said from behind her, on the heels of Poe.

  Lex turned around guiltily. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Save it, Pants-On-Fire. I’ve heard it all before. Hell, I’m shocked you managed to squeeze my funeral into such a jam-packed schedule,” she said in a haughty voice, though her eyes were light and joking. She bent her head to look under Lex’s hood. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Lex said, sniffing and trying not to look as if she’d just escaped a lynching in the town square. “Just some . . . stuff. Going on. I’m fine. How are things in here?”

  “Things are awesome,” Cordy said. “I ate two entire pizzas yesterday for no good reason, I built three more roller coasters—”

  “Torture machines,” muttered Poe.

  “And I got myself a camel,” Cordy finished with a smile.

  Lex stared at her. “Why?”

  “Duh, Lex, because I can. His name is Lumpy, he spits all the time, and he’s freakin’ adorable. We’re going on a trip to Afterlife Egypt next week. I’m trying to convince Eddie here to come, but since he so dis
liked our jaunt to the Grand Canyon, I’m not sure he’d fare too well.”

  “I got sand in places where there should not be sand,” he said testily. “Plus the vortex was quite unsettling. I did not enjoy that.”

  “Vortex?” Lex asked. “What do you mean?”

  Cordy furrowed her brow. “You know, I’m not sure. I mean, I’ve only been here for a little while, but I haven’t seen anything else like it. It wasn’t too big—just a small area down in a corner somewhere—and it was this weird whirlpool of matter, or whatever matter is in here. Just kind of draining everything around it into nothingness, like a swirly black hole.”

  Lex frowned. “That’s weird.” She turned to Roze. “You ever hear of anything like that?”

  Roze nodded. “Yeah, the other day Lewis and Clark said they’d seen something similar in Yellowstone.” She shrugged. “I’m sure someone’s putting them there for fun. Like the time Eli Whitney erected those giant cotton gins all over the place to commemorate its anniversary. Some people just like attention.”

  As if on cue, a horseshoe pelted Poe right in the noggin. Quoth squawked and took off in a flurry of feathers. “Heads up!” Thomas Jefferson shouted between titters.

  Poe huffed into his mustache. “Ingrate.”

  Lex stayed and chatted for a while longer, and by the time she said good night to Kilda and pounded down the Bank porch steps, she felt worlds better. Cordy wasn’t mad at her for slacking on her visiting duties, Wicket and Roze had reaffirmed her faith that there were at least some people out there who didn’t want to see her torn apart by feral wolves, and her fight with Driggs had faded into a distant memory. She didn’t even feel mad at him anymore, not really. He was probably right. The note was a bit sketchy.

  Other than the dull roar from the crowd inside Corpp’s pub, Dead End was eerily silent. Lex squinted into the Field, its gaping, black volume broken only by the jagged angles of the Ghost Gum. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she happened to glance at the ground—and stop. An odd splatter of something stretched to her left while a series of long, drizzled drops extended from her feet all the way to the fountain. She took a few cautious steps forward, and that’s when she heard it.