by Kali Wallace
She hung up and set the phone on the floor beside her. She hadn’t said a word about me.
“It will be a couple of hours,” she said. “He’s coming up from Boulder.”
“He can help?”
“You stay over there. Don’t get me wrong, that was kinda badass, but I don’t want you near me.”
“Fine. Are we getting out of here or not?”
“I think so. This room looks pretty old, but if I’m right . . . Ghouls aren’t good for anything else, but they’re pretty useful for breaking through magical shit like this.”
Ghouls. Awesome. Another one for the Real side of the list.
Rain nodded at the unconscious man on the floor. “Will he wake up?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know anything, do you?”
“No,” I said. “I really don’t.”
The man didn’t wake up. He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t blink. He was breathing, and he had a pulse, but nothing else about him changed. Not one thing.
EIGHTEEN
BRIAN KERR IS still alive. He’s at a hospital in Cheyenne, hooked up to machines that monitor his heart. He breathes on his own. They feed him through a tube. He is unresponsive to stimuli. The news articles said he played football in college and studied communications, and he was married to Barbara Rice of Cody, Wyoming. He told her he was helping a friend fix up an old house to sell. When he didn’t come home and didn’t answer his phone, she drove out to check on him.
An article from his hometown newspaper said: “Longtime residents of the county might remember Kerr as one of the survivors of the Windy Ridge Boy Scout Camp animal attack fifteen years ago, during which four boys were mauled to death by an unidentified animal.”
Probably a bear, never confirmed.
That would have been how Mr. Willow found him and drew him in: I know you saw something in the woods that night. I know you know it wasn’t a bear. Nobody will believe you.
The articles also said: “Due to evidence found at the scene, Kerr is now a person of interest in several open cases, including a series of disappearances spanning six states.”
He’s still alive.
I added him to my list anyway:
Brian Kerr, mass murderer.
None of the news sites mentioned that he had been found in a room painted with blood.
NINETEEN
“THAT WOMAN,” Rain said.
She hadn’t spoken for so long the sound of her voice was a surprise.
“Which woman?”
“The one that was here before you. She was looking for her kids. That’s how they got her.” Rain was sitting on the floor with her legs stretched out in front of her. “She thought these people took them.”
The children on the playground, blank faces turning to watch as Violet and I walked by.
Rain said, “They took her away. That guy and one of his friends. Dragged her out of here. Guess she’s never getting a chance to find her kids. You’re not bleeding anymore.”
“No.” I touched my hand to my neck. The furrow left by the shotgun pellet was scabbed over, the skin already knitting itself together. It was healing much faster than Lyle’s cuts on my side.
“That should have killed you,” Rain said. “Point blank with a shotgun.”
“He missed.”
“You are so full of shit.”
After a while I noticed a change in the light through the open door. Dawn had come, and somewhere in the house, beyond that barrier we couldn’t cross, morning sunlight was filtering through unblocked windows.
Not long after sunrise, Rain looked up and tilted her head to the side. “Someone’s here.”
Her ears were sharper than mine. A full minute later I heard a car approaching. Tires crunched over gravel; the car creaked as it stopped and the engine cut out. A door slammed.
“Is that your friend?” I asked.
Rain walked to the doorway and leaned close to see down the hallway. For a few minutes we didn’t hear anything else. No doorbell, no knock.
Then glass broke somewhere in the house. I jumped, startled, and Rain laughed. There was a muffled curse and footsteps in the hallway.
The word ghoul had made me imagine a creature with gray skin and yellow teeth and dangling rotten bits, somebody old and crooked and grotesque. But the person who came for us was a tall, skinny kid with brown hair and brown eyes. He looked human, maybe some Middle Eastern or Arab blood in his family history, no older than sixteen or seventeen.
“Took you long enough,” Rain said.
“You woke me up at three in the morning and made me drive all the way to Wyoming, and you’re complaining about how long it took?” the boy said. He wasn’t smiling. “Who is that?”
“We don’t know the dead guy. The other one is Breezy,” Rain said. “At least, she says that’s her name. I have my doubts. Breezy, Zeke. Zeke, Breezy. Don’t let her touch you.”
“Why not?” The kid wasn’t particularly alarmed by the warning.
Rain pointed at the unconscious man on the floor. “She did that,” she said.
I pressed my hand over the aching gashes in my side and tried to look harmless. “It was an accident,” I lied. “He’s not dead.”
Zeke gave me a quick look, then reached out tentatively to touch the doorframe. “What did they use for this?”
“The blood of a hundred virgins,” Rain said. “Who knows? Who cares? What are you— Don’t!”
He stepped through the doorway, made a face like he was smelling something gross, and stepped back out. He was only in the room for a second, but it was long enough for me to feel his brief, shifting shadow. He was a killer.
“That was stupid,” Rain snapped. “You could have been stuck in here with us.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You wouldn’t have called me if you thought it would work on me.”
“Maybe I called you because I don’t know anybody else stupid enough to come. Can you break it?”
Instead of answering, Zeke ran his fingers gingerly over the wood of the doorframe, touching it lightly, like he expected it to be damp and sticky rather than long dried.
“Maybe,” Zeke said. He turned and disappeared into the house.
Rain called after him, “Where are you going?”
A storm door clapped shut elsewhere in the house.
Rain rolled her eyes. “I hate ghouls.”
“Know a lot of them?” I asked. What I really wanted to know was why the only person she could call for help was a teenage boy, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t answer.
She shrugged. “No. Still hate them.”
The storm door opened again; the hinges were squeaky. When Zeke came back, he was carrying an ax.
“Do I even want to know why you—” Rain stopped. “No. I don’t want to know why you have an ax. I can guess and it’s revolting. Isn’t that messy? No, don’t tell me.”
“Shut up and stand back.”
Rain didn’t move until Zeke raised the ax above his head and swung. She stepped back quickly, and he struck the frame at the height of the latch. The ax made a solid thunk and chips of wood spat out. Zeke chopped at the frame again and again, hitting all the way around the door until the wood was reduced to a mess of shattered splinters.
He broke away some dangling slivers, tossed them aside. “Well?”
Rain reached for the doorway, pushing her fingers tentatively into the open space. When she didn’t meet any resistance, she stepped forward. “Finally. Let’s get out of here.”
“Why would that even work?” I said. The rest of the room was still painted with blood. We weren’t any less surrounded than we had been a minute ago.
“Why are you asking me?” Rain said. “I don’t do human magic. You could have asked our friend here, but you knocked him out before you got the chance.”
“What do we do about him?” I said. Brian Kerr’s blue eyes stared, unblinking,
at the ceiling.
Rain was already walking down the hallway. “He’s your mess. I don’t care what you do with him.”
“What happened to him?” Zeke stood in the doorway, ax resting on his shoulder.
“Will you believe me if I tell you I have no idea?” I said.
Zeke took a couple of steps closer. “He’s not dead.”
“Uh, I know. He’s breathing.”
Zeke looked at me. “That doesn’t mean anything. You’re breathing too.” He frowned, uncertain. “You have noticed, right? That you’re—”
“A reanimated corpse? Yes, I’ve noticed.” I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly, sharply self-conscious. “But almost nobody else has, and it only took you ten seconds. How did you know?”
“I can tell,” Zeke said.
“That’s a totally helpful answer. How? Do I smell or something?”
“A little bit. What happened to you?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
That was good enough for him. Zeke turned and walked out of the room. “You coming?”
I stepped through the ruined doorway. No resistance, no pressure, no magic. It was like nothing had ever been stopping me at all. Magic was already making my head hurt and I didn’t even know anything about it yet.
I was morbidly curious about the kind of house a man who kidnapped monsters might live in. I was hoping for cobwebs and draped black curtains and jars filled with pickled body parts. Cages of all sizes. Weapons, lined up and polished on display.
But it was only a house. One level, two bedrooms, one bathroom. The kitchen was painfully ordinary. There were red-checked curtains on the windows, dishes in the sink, mail piled on the table. There was coffee in the pot on the counter, a mug beside it, the faint stale scent of yesterday’s brew hanging in the air. In the living room there were photographs on the mantel. I recognized Brian Kerr, younger, posing with a bunch of white guys beneath a doorway marked with Greek letters.
There was a picture of Mr. Willow too, smiling blandly, his arm hooked over a boy in a baseball uniform. I shuddered and turned away.
“Check this out.”
Rain was on the other side of the kitchen, standing before what would have been the formal dining room. But that wasn’t what it was being used for.
The room was filled with stuff. Not junk, but personal things. Clothes and coats and backpacks and shoes. Kids’ schoolbags and jackets, big purses that must have come from old ladies, briefcases and laptop bags. At least three suitcases that I could see. A bright green ski jacket. A ten-gallon Stetson sitting atop a pair of cowboy boots, belt and shining Texas flag buckle curled on the floor beside them. A small pink bike with streamers on the handles and training wheels. A backpack with a sleeping pad strapped to it, an empty water bottle hanging by a clip. A stuffed green turtle with a chewed ear.
My throat was tight. My stomach turned queasily.
These were the belongings they had taken from the people they abducted. I knew it before I saw my own things, the stolen little boy’s backpack and stolen skateboard tossed carelessly to the floor. Brian Kerr’s memories weren’t as vivid as they had been when I first took them from him, but they were still there, just as the memories of the dead family in North Dakota still lingered at the back of my mind, and the memory of a baseball bat stained with blood and the smell of peanut butter. Once I have a murderer’s memories in my mind, I have them for good.
And I remembered the people Brian Kerr had taken those things from.
Rain darted forward for a black sweatshirt, pulled it over her head, and stepped away, like she was afraid something would grab her if she gave it a chance.
“That is messed up,” she said.
I retrieved my backpack and skateboard, brought them back to the kitchen table to check the contents. My NASA notebook was still there, pen stuck in the spiral, and the handful of bills and change I had accepted from generous strangers. In the bottom of the pack was the plastic bag with the clothes I had been wearing when I died. My other clothes were there as well, the ones I had stripped off and shoved into the washer at Mr. Willow’s farmhouse. They smelled faintly of detergent. Somebody, probably Violet, had folded my jeans and shirt and put them in the pack, along with my damp shoes in a plastic grocery bag.
Rain and Zeke were poking around the house, opening doors and peering into closets, so I went looking for the bathroom. I stripped off Violet’s dress, ran water in the sink to scrub the blood off my hands and body. I dressed again in the too-long jeans and Wonder Woman T-shirt, and I wrapped the scarf around my neck to hide the bruises. I was going to leave the ruined dress in a heap on the floor, but I changed my mind and stuffed them into the pack. Everything I knew about magic came from Harry Potter and Sunny’s repeated viewings of Wizards of Waverly Place, but I remembered the young man who had bled out on the mattress, taking so very long to die. That was enough for me to suspect that leaving a large quantity of my blood lying around might not be the best idea.
I left the bathroom and walked into the middle of an argument.
“We have to tell someone,” Rain was saying. “You don’t get it. You weren’t here—”
“So tell someone,” Zeke said. “Tell whoever you want. I don’t care. Just leave me out of it.”
“Stop being such a coward. What do you think she’s going to do?”
“I don’t care. I’m not going.”
“Going where?”
They both looked at me, taking in my changed clothes, the backpack over one shoulder. I held tight to the wheels of the skateboard. Sunlight slanted through the kitchen door in a bright triangle; there was a broken window beside the door, a scattering of glass on the floor. I pushed down the urge to run past them and get outside, keep running until I found a road, until the house disappeared over the horizon.
“We have to tell people about these men,” Rain said. “Tell them what they’re doing. I can go, but I want you to come with me. You met them too.”
I could see the dining room behind Rain, but I didn’t want to look at it. There was a yellow baseball cap on the floor, dirty, bill dented in a line down the center. A crying little girl had worn it over her braids. Her skin had been more green than pink, her tongue oddly long when she screamed, and her eyes were bright, unnatural spots of light. Brian Kerr had killed her.
I nodded numbly. “Yeah. I can do that.”
Zeke started to say something, stopped, and Rain let out an exasperated sigh. “What the hell is your problem?”
After a moment, Zeke said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to go to a magician.” His eyes flicked toward me when he said her, and he said magician the way most people would say maggot.
Rain laughed. She reached out to muss his hair; Zeke flinched away. “What’s the matter? Afraid you’ll be grounded for visiting the big bad witch in the woods?”
Zeke crossed his arms over his chest. It made him look like a little kid being scolded by an angry teacher. “It’s not a good idea.”
“Why isn’t it a good idea?” I asked. They ignored me.
Rain’s smile turned mean. “I can’t believe you’re scared of Ingrid. She helped you.”
“She’s human. She’s a magician.”
“Just because you’re racist against humans doesn’t mean they’re all bad,” Rain said. She reached for Zeke’s arm, and this time he shoved her back against the counter.
“Touch me again and I will break your arm,” he said.
Rain held both of her hands up, palms out, a mocking surrender. “That’s why everybody loves ghouls so much. All those good manners and social graces. We’ll go without you, if you’re going to be like that. Just take us back to Boulder. I’ll find somebody else to drive us.”
Zeke shook his head firmly. “No.” He looked at me, looked away quickly.
“No, what? No, you’re not going to drive us to Boulder?”
“I’m not—” Whatever Zeke was going to say, he changed his mind midsentence. “
Fine. Whatever. Let’s go talk to the crazy hippie witch. It’s your funeral.”
“That’s okay,” I said quietly. “I never got one the first time around.”
“I knew it,” Rain said. “I knew you weren’t breathing.”
Zeke said to me, “That’s why you shouldn’t go to Ingrid. You’re—”
“I’m what?”
“Interesting,” he said. “She’ll think you’re interesting.”
It was the same thing Rain had said earlier. Interesting like a two-headed calf, like a bug under a microscope, like an infectious disease.
“Oh, that’s great.” Rain let out a barking laugh. “He’s worried about you. How sweet. That is messed up even for a ghoul. Ingrid won’t hurt you. She’s not like that. This asshole doesn’t know her like I do.”
Zeke only shook his head.
I didn’t think I was going to like being the kind of interesting everybody kept telling me I was.
Mr. Willow had said of the unseen Mother: she will be so happy to see you.
But interesting also implied this woman might know something about what I was. I didn’t have any place I could go, didn’t have anybody I could go to. All I had was a lot of questions. I could think of a few things I might want to ask a witch. That’s a very human thing to do, I told myself. Ask questions, poke at a mystery, look for the truth. “Trying to learn everything we can about the universe we live in is the most fundamental human endeavor,” Karen Garrow had said in one of her science shows, and her voice had been filled with awe.
I could do that. I could be fundamentally human and try to understand what was going on. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all I had.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Zeke turned and stomped out the door, ax in hand.
“Well, come on,” Rain said. “I still don’t want you touching me, but I’m not going to miss it when you finally put two and two together and start thinking about his diet. I need the laugh.”
TWENTY
