by Kali Wallace
It was midmorning on a warm, sunny Saturday, the sky cloudless and deep blue, and Pearl Street was crowded with people: couples walking with cups of coffee in hand, kids playing, buskers plucking songs on their guitars. After the strangeness of the past several days, everything felt off, artificial, as though the entire city had been lowered around us like a movie set during the night.
Rain was leaning against a storefront when we arrived, hands tucked into the pockets of her black hoodie. “You know Ritter?” she asked Zeke. “Climber guy, lives in his van, not too fond of showers?”
“Human?”
“Yeah, but he’s harmless. Totally chill. He works at a bagel shop.”
“That’s a stellar character reference,” I said.
“Considering the people you’ve been hanging out with, you have no room to judge. How’d you like their ugly little roommate?”
“Oh, Steve? We’re cool. We understand each other.”
If I was expecting Rain to be different—some external evidence of fear or relief, a glimmer of maternal instinct, or even guilt for putting her children in danger again—I was disappointed. She looked and acted exactly as she had the day before. We might have been making plans to go see a movie rather than discussing the fate of her missing children.
Rain’s friend was sitting on a low wall in front of a bookstore and café. He lifted a hand in greeting when he spotted her, started to smile, grimaced instead.
“What did you bring him for?” he said.
Zeke stared right back and didn’t say anything.
Rain leaned over to kiss the man’s cheek. “Not my idea. Don’t worry, I won’t let him bite. Ritter, this is Breezy. Breezy, Ritter. She’s the one I told you about.”
“You’re the one that put Brian Kerr in the hospital,” Ritter said.
He was closer to thirty than twenty, with dirty-blond hair pulled back in a limp ponytail and a scraggly beard coaxed into twin loose twists. He was wearing ratty jeans and flip-flops and a red T-shirt that said I SKI♥LAND in block letters. He held a ukulele in his hands and the case was open on the ground in front of him, a few dollar bills and change scattered over the velvet lining. He had never killed anybody.
“I guess so,” I said warily. “How did you hear about that already?”
“News travels,” Ritter said. “I’m not the only one around here who’s had a problem with those assholes. Trust me, I’m not going to judge you for it. That man has done some serious shit. If you messed him up, I want to buy you a drink.” He squinted in the sun. “Or I would, if you weren’t like twelve.”
“My age is kind of a divide-by-zero number at this point. How do you know them?”
Ritter gave me a wry smile. “I used to be one of them.”
He didn’t say one of them like he was talking about a group of kids he used to know, like he would say he used to be in a band or on a team, or even the shamefaced way he might say, “I used to be a Young Republican.” He said it like it was something he had lost, something mournful from long ago.
“You mean you were . . .” I didn’t know how to ask. “Different?”
“They don’t go after normal kids,” Ritter said. “I used to be able to see ghosts.”
“Are you sure they were ghosts?” Zeke asked.
Ritter twitched his shoulders. “Yeah, I’m sure. I used to call them my ‘glowy people.’ My stepmom thought I was making things up to screw with her.”
“When did you start seeing them?” Zeke said.
“Uh, I don’t remember,” Ritter said, frowning. “I could always see them. I was never scared of them or anything. They don’t do anything, right? They just float around. There was one on the street outside our house. I was like eight before I realized nobody else could see it.”
“But you could always see them?” Zeke said. “Even when you were a baby?”
“What does it matter?” Rain asked.
Ritter brushed his fingers over the strings of the ukulele. He was looking more uncomfortable with every question. “I think so. I don’t exactly remember, you know? Why?”
“Something happened when you were born,” Zeke said.
Ritter’s fingers fell still on the instrument. “How do you know that?”
“Your mother died.”
“Jesus, could you be more tactless?” Rain kicked at Zeke’s feet. He stepped out of reach.
“Nah, he’s right,” Ritter said. “It’s fine. How did you know?”
“Humans can’t see ghosts without a reason. That takes magic, and magic means somebody died.”
Ritter snapped his fingers and pointed at Zeke. “See, that, that’s what I didn’t know before. I know it now, sure, but they never told me that. Pastor Willow and all his people. He never told me there was an explanation. He never told us shit.”
“How did you meet them?” I asked.
“I got in trouble when I was a kid. Got caught, you know.” Ritter held his fingers to his lips to mime smoking a joint. “My dad and stepmom decided I should start going to this youth group thing, at this church our neighbors went to. This place over on Baseline. I don’t know if it’s still there. This was, I dunno, ten years ago. I thought it would be talking about Jesus and playing basketball and going camping and whatever, and if I got my grades up, they’d forget about it and stop making me go. It was mostly fine, too, a little woo-woo and everything. No prayers or shit. I doubt any of them ever even read the Bible. They had this house where we could hang out without any adults. That made it fun. But there was this one guy, this older kid, he was really intense about it.” Ritter plucked at the ukulele strings again, a quick progression. The notes vibrated brightly and faded. “Intense about everything, like he didn’t want any of us having fun.”
“Brian Kerr,” I said.
Ritter nodded. “It was only the second or third time I went when he told me he knew I was different. I didn’t plan to tell anybody. I was a dumb shit, but I wasn’t stupid enough to announce to a bunch of Jesus freaks I saw dead people. But they were saying, like, everybody experiences things they can’t explain, the world’s full of mysteries, maybe you know about them, blah blah blah, and I thought, maybe they’d understand? And one day Brian came up to me and said, ‘We can make it go away.’ I told him I didn’t know what the hell of he was talking about, so he got one of the younger girls to talk to me. She was always saying things like, ‘It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it just means you have something bad attached to you, you have a darkness inside you,’ other crap like that.”
Violet’s lines hadn’t changed much since then.
Ritter went on, “I didn’t listen at first because, whatever, my ghosts didn’t hurt anybody. But she was really convincing. I started to think, oh shit, she’s right, this isn’t normal, there is something seriously wrong with me. So I said okay. They could fix me.”
“What did they do?” I asked.
“They took it away,” Ritter said.
“How?”
Ritter looked at me for a long, long moment. “I don’t remember.”
In Brian Kerr’s memories, there were towering pine trees, the scent of the forest, a yawning dark hole in the side of a mountain, and fear. His fear. He had been dragging other people to their deaths, but he was as scared of what waited in that darkness as they were. No matter how many times he walked away alive, he was still afraid.
“But it worked?” I said. “Whatever they did, it worked?”
Ritter glanced down, tapped the wooden body of the ukulele, shrugged and laughed a little, humorless and tired. “Yeah. I guess. I miss them, you know? The ghosts. They never hurt me. I kind of liked them. That one outside our house, I couldn’t tell who it was, but I used to pretend it was a kid like me who died riding his bike or something, and I’d talk to him like he could hear. I wouldn’t mind seeing them again.”
He was quiet after that. All around us was the lazy commotion of a crowded street on a Saturday morning, but nobody gave us a second look. I felt the
tendril tug of a killer, somebody besides Zeke, but I couldn’t pick out who it was before the sensation was gone.
“That girl you met,” I said. “That was Violet?”
“Yeah. Redhead. Sweet little kid, but creepy too.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“No way,” Ritter said, shaking his head. “Bad idea. All that stuff about being cursed and releasing your soul from evil and all that bullshit, she believes it. She believes everything that bastard tells her.”
Maybe she had ten years ago, but I wasn’t sure it was true anymore. Violet had let me go, or tried to. Even Lyle, who I could barely think about without shuddering, had apologized as he snapped my bones and tore my skin. Something was broken at the center of Mr. Willow’s congregation. His foot soldiers were not as loyal as he believed them to be.
“I want to talk to her anyway. You know how to get in touch with them, don’t you? Who did you call for Rain?”
“This kid Danny. Danny Mendoza. He’s all right. They told him they couldn’t help him, but they kept him around anyway. Working for them, you know, doing whatever.”
Truck Stop Danny, the trying-too-hard Goth who could see a girl across a parking lot and know she was a monster and send her right into Mr. Willow’s hands. No wonder they kept him around.
Zeke asked, “Why would he do that?”
Ritter shrugged. “He’s not into their shit, man, but it’s not like he has anywhere else to go.”
“You have to call him again,” I said.
Ritter was already shaking his head. “No. Not a chance. I am done with those people.”
“You did it before.”
“Because I thought—” He stopped, looked at Rain, frowned in confusion. “You said you needed— What did you need?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rain said. “You don’t care. You didn’t care before, and you don’t care now. You know it’s none of your business.”
Ritter was holding the neck of the ukulele so tight I thought it would snap. “But I—”
“It’s only a favor,” Rain said. All of her easy friendliness was gone. She was looking right at Ritter, and her eyes were like embers. “A little favor. I’ll owe you one. No big deal. Just call the guy.”
Zeke glanced at me, but I didn’t need the warning. I knew what she was doing.
“I don’t think,” Ritter began, but he was reaching into his pocket for his phone. “What am I supposed to say to him?”
Rain looked at me, and I said quietly, “Violet’s the one I need to talk to.”
“Find out how Breezy can talk to that Violet girl. That’s all.”
Ritter looked at the phone like he wasn’t sure what to do with it. “That’s all? I don’t want to go back. I don’t—I can’t—”
“You don’t have to go back. They’ll never know you were involved.”
His face was pale except for two flushed smudges on his cheeks. He made the call.
Rain leaned close to listen to the conversation, and she murmured in Ritter’s ear to guide his replies. It might have been intimate, almost romantic, if only he didn’t look so scared. He spoke for a minute or two, then looked up and held the phone out to me.
“He wants to talk to you.”
I accepted the phone. “Yeah?”
“You’re an idiot.” Truck Stop Danny. He sounded younger over the phone. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you care what I’m doing? I should be dead now, thanks to you.”
“I didn’t think you’d actually be stupid enough to go to them.”
“Then why did you even try?”
“Because it’s a hundred bucks for me for every stupid one,” he said. “And I need to eat. Not my fault you fell for that shelter-from-the-storm bullshit.”
“But I learned so many interesting things from the experience.”
“You know they’re looking for you. You and the nightmare. They know she’s hanging around Boulder a lot.”
“They’re here?” My skin crawled. I couldn’t stop myself from looking up and down the street, as though I might spot Mr. Willow lurking right there among the shoppers and students.
“Just the crazy chick right now,” Danny said. “The pastor and his attack dog are dealing with the cops in Wyoming.”
“Violet’s here? Where is she?”
Danny didn’t answer right away.
“You know where she is,” I said. “Tell me.”
“You should get out of there,” Danny said. “Leave town. Forget about them.”
“I will. After I talk to Violet.”
“You didn’t get enough of her already?”
“Why don’t you want to tell me? You didn’t have any trouble sending me to her before.”
Danny sighed loudly. “You know what? You’re right. You’re not my problem. I am done with this shit.”
“Good for you. Tell me how to find Violet.”
“Willow’s got a place in town. His dad’s house. He never sold it.” Danny gave me an address, told me how to find it, grunted in confirmation when I repeated it back to him.
“That’s it?”
“Don’t call me again. Thanks to you I’m out of a job.”
“Wait! One more thing.”
“What?”
“How did you know? When you saw me at that truck stop. How did you know what I was?”
“I can see,” he said.
“What do you mean? What can you see?”
Danny didn’t say anything for several seconds. “I can see what’s under your skin.”
He hung up.
I handed the phone back to Ritter. He was still collecting himself, shaky and pale. He pocketed the phone, put his ukulele in its case without gathering up the money.
“You get what you need?”
I nodded.
“Then you’re going to leave me alone. And you.” He clicked the case shut, stood up, and looked at Rain. “Next time you call, I’m not answering. Don’t ever come near me again.”
Rain stood too, but she said nothing.
Ritter turned to me. “You shouldn’t be helping her either. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“It’s too late for that,” I said. “Thanks.”
What I didn’t say was that I wasn’t doing any of it to help Rain. I wasn’t proud of it, but my knowledge of her kids’ whereabouts was the only thing I had to trade for a way to get in touch with Violet again. I told myself I was playing by the rules of this new world I had woken up into. Valuable information for dangerous information.
I almost didn’t feel bad about it.
Then I thought about those kids on the playground, the creak-creak of the merry-go-round as they pushed each other in circles, and I couldn’t meet Rain’s eyes.
THIRTY-TWO
“THERE’S NO WAY I’m going with you,” Rain said after Ritter was gone. “I’m done here. Tell me what you know.”
“I didn’t invite you,” I said. I sat down on the brick wall to dig through my backpack.
“I would say you should take him, even if he is useless.” Rain jerked her thumb toward Zeke. “But that would be kind of like bringing a cockroach casserole to a picnic. Sure, it might send everybody screaming, but they’d only come back with an exterminator.”
“I think you think that metaphor makes more sense than it actually does,” I said. I handed Danny’s blue flier to her. Church of the Prairie. NEED HELP? Map and address at the bottom of the page. “This is where I saw them. There’s a woman with them. I don’t know who she is, or what she is. I didn’t talk to her.”
Rain unfolded the page and looked it over. For the first time, I saw a flicker of worry in her eyes, quickly shuttered.
All she said was, “See you around.” She walked away.
I zipped up my backpack and slipped my arms into the straps. “You’re not going to try to talk me out of it?”
Zeke was looking at the ground by my feet. “Would it do any good?”
&n
bsp; “No. Probably not.”
“You want me to go with you?”
He knew a lot more about monsters than I did. He could walk through magical barriers. He had killed somebody before. He had a car. Absolutely. Yes. If Danny was lying, if I had misjudged Violet, if this didn’t go how I expected, I wanted him with me.
But I shook my head. “You promised Jake you wouldn’t.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“Maybe, but first he’ll blame me,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
Zeke started to say something, changed his mind. He tossed his phone to me. “In case you need help again.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, whatever. Be careful.”
He walked away, hands shoved into his pockets. He hadn’t asked me what I was going to do.
There were only a handful of numbers in the phone, most identified by letters rather than names. J was the one he used most often, so I guessed that’s who I was supposed to call if I needed help. I was sure Jake would love that.
The directions Danny had given me led me down the bike path along Broadway to south Boulder. I skated in the sun, dodging joggers and cyclists, until I found the right street. I identified the house but kept my distance. It was small but well kept. Clean white paint, green shutters, trimmed lawn. There were no cars parked in the driveway. I didn’t see any signs of life, so I spent a little while skating around the neighborhood, doing my best to look bored and harmless. I passed the house three or four times and nothing changed. I didn’t have any plan for what I could do if Violet didn’t show up. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do if she did.
The next time I turned onto the street, there was a car parked in front of the house. Nebraska plates. I couldn’t remember if it was one of the cars I had seen outside the farmhouse.
I stopped on the other side of the street rolled the skateboard back and forth, back and forth, the wheels rumbling softly on the asphalt, and I waited.
The front door opened. Violet walked out to the car and lifted a couple of plastic grocery bags from the backseat. She was wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt rather than the flowery dress, and her red hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She turned to go into the house again, but when she reached the door she stopped, and she turned. She met my eyes across the street.
