Hot breath puffed through my nose, speeding up to match my heart, dragging in the stinging stink of the fire.
The women chanted the same words over and over again, “Cu sidhe an laoch díoltas.”
Electricity charged the air, drawing the hairs on my arms up, covering them in goose pimples. Fear mingled with a cool breeze and a chill ran down my spine. I looked at Rusty, who’s eyes were saucers, mouth a gaping fly trap. “What the hell is happening?” I mouthed, hardly a breath.
He shook his head. “I feel like I might be dreamin’.” His eyes shot in my direction, looked down then back up again. “I definitely have this dream a lot.”
I blushed and turned back to the glowing fire in time to see the red-haired lady toss the headless chicken into it. A blast of flame billowed out to the sides, and then shot up like a rocket engine through the center of the circle of trees. All four women raised their hands to the sky. Hoods fell away to show each wore a skull headdress, circled in twigs and flowers.
The whispered voices of so many mouths at once, the hiss of a thousand snakes. “Gort, ciert, fearn, dair, ruis,” they chanted.
Sparks popped and flashed in the billowing fire, gunpowder in open flame. Yellow first, then little bursts of green. They sang on and the fire crackled into a curling swirl of green. The color of first spring grass.
Eight hands clapped in unison. I flinched, breath gone for good. My heart galloped in an all-out sprint. I gulped back the thick lump trapped in my throat. With the slap of their hands, the fire flashed to yellow again, crackling gone.
A pair of glowing purple eyes locked onto mine. Tingling crackled over the baby-fine hairs on my neck. The blonde woman dropped her raised hands and pointed one eerily straight finger directly at me.
“Oh, hell!” Rusty yelled as he jumped up from behind his bush, drying undies hardly hanging on to his narrow hips. “Com’on,” he shouted.
I clamped my eyes shut and tucked my head to my knees. I was too drunk to handle stressful situations. No fight. No flight. All freeze.
Rusty’s bare feet slapped sandy soil as he ran away from me, kicking up leaves and cracking twigs all the way. A rough fist clenched hold of my hair. I screamed and kicked, and struggled to wriggle away. The harder I kicked, the more determined her steps. Screaming in the woods under a full moon only let me know how loud I could scream from the echo that came back to me. There’d be no one coming to help. No one could hear me. No one but Rusty.
Tiny cuts on the backs of my legs nipped like bee stings as twigs tore up my backside. I screamed for Rusty. I knew he didn’t leave me. He wouldn’t. There was no way. I should’ve ran with him. Lord, help me, I should have ran.
I skidded to a stop next to the fire pit. “What—”
She held tight to my hair, forcing me to my knees. Hush voices hissed foreign words.
I gulped, terrified vomit—sweet and spicy like whiskey—stung the back of my throat.
My daddy hunted my whole life, and I lived with my brother, who thought guns and knives were the best things since titties. I knew a knife when I heard one. A sharp blade sliding quickly from its sheath had a particular sound. Deadly steal gliding over well-aged leather. Nearly indescribable. It took knowledge and a good amount of fear to understand that sound.
Unfamiliar screams ripped through my throat. I tried to scramble to my feet, but one of them shoved me to the dirt. Blood splattered from my head onto a large pale rock surrounding the fire.
Lungs stiff with fear, I rolled to my back. Through hazy eyes, the red-haired woman towered over me. Her chicken-killing blade glinted in her clutch. I kicked at her, but she grabbed my hair again, taking near about my whole scalp with it.
Wriggling and kicking, I jerked away from her, almost yanked my hair from its roots when I did. Off in the distance, lit only by moonlight, Rusty snuck through the brush. He’d put his pants on. I opened my mouth to warn him, beg him to run away, but only a strangled squeaking came out.
If a knife is sharp enough, you don’t even feel the cut. Air gurgled through the thick gash across my gullet. Blood poured from the gaping line like someone had opened a flood gate. She held the wooden bowl under my chin and let the blood fill it up.
“Gort, ciert, fearn, dair, ruis.” They circled the fire pit, cottony robes tickling my toes as they moved around me. Each swiped a finger through my blood in the bowl, drawing angled lines across their faces. Blondie sat a headdress on her head—a five-point buck, crowned in dried bits of nature. Red-spattered soil clenched in my fists, I begged the heavens to take me quick or give me the strength to kill them all. “Cu sidhe iompróir a bháis bheidh mé a bheith,” they cried.
Red left the circle, dragging me by my hair to my feet—tips of my toes hardly touching the ground—and held me over the flame. Blood poured, fueling the fire. In a searing flash, lime green flames plumed, engulfing my face, licking the trees above. The stench, my own burning flesh, the last true scent of my young life.
Death isn’t something you plan for, even though we all know one day it’s coming to round us up. I should’ve been somewhere else. Anywhere else. Fate brought me there. It must’ve been that creek Granddaddy was talking about.
Happy fucking birthday. I choked a rattling breath. Blackness filled my vision.
The force of a pissed off bull slammed into us. The woman dropped me and I fell to the dirt. She tumbled away. Shallow breaths hardly registered. I peeled open one heavy lid. Shadowy blobs rolled and scuffled. A slow, forced blink cleared my vision. Rusty.
Emerald fireworks burst from the now raging fire. Ragged breaths puffed dirt at my lips. Heart only a whisper, I silently begged the Lord to keep him safe. My ornery boy. Lime green flames shot up through the center of the trees. I clenched cool soil in my fingers, one desperate grasp of earth before I took my last breath.
Blackness, a void never ending, swallowed me whole. Nothingness. An eternity in an instant.
As if God himself commanded it, I popped back to life, eyes wide, stomach curdled with agony. Sorrow, a sound so vile, screeched from my lungs. Blood and bitter bile spewed from my lips. I coughed and sputtered and spit the last of it to the dirt.
“Lynn?” Rusty cried.
I pushed myself to my knees, freshly resurrected and too weak to stand. “Rusty,” I gurgled, a soggy hole gaped in my throat.
I should’ve been dead. Flat out on my back croaked. I blinked at the madness unfolding, head swimming with a thousand thoughts—and the equally void blackness that called me back home. On shaky legs, I climbed to my feet. My boy wrestled with all four of them—each caked in my blood—winning for just long enough to scramble closer. I reached for him, desperate for his touch, lost in the chaos of the last few minutes.
The fire puffed out into a mushroom, curling around each of us, sending them to the ground. Pain shot through my limbs. They gave out and I fell back to the dirt, sandy soil stinging my palms. My back arched, spine popping, each vertebra shifting into an unnatural curve. Cartilage and bone cracked and echoed in my head.
I dug into the dirt, clinging to something familiar. Soil-covered fingers clicked at each joint, bending, lengthening. My thumb retracted into my arm, deforming into something animalistic. Long, sharp claws pushed from my nailbeds.
A garbled, messy almost strangled version of Rusty called for me. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t move. Whatever was happening to me had taken my voice, trapping me in silent horror.
Tendons stretched and snapped. Skin reformed, a slopping gooey mess that dripped on my hands. I cried out, hollered and begged Jesus himself to save me. No words came out. Eyes and teeth shifted in soggy, slurping sockets.
Squelching and crackling echoed up my limbs and drowned out muffled sounds around me. Pain blinked my vision in and out, a slow camera shutter. Chills raced down my crackling spine with each pop. The sound sickening. A tooth pulled with nothing but whiskey
and brute strength. Tangy puke clawed its way up my throat.
Stinging tingles spread over my skin. Murky green fur erupted from each pore, covering my arms in a thick, shaggy coat—which shook, flinging gooey remnants and letting loose a woody musk.
Unspeakable awareness of the monster I’d become dragged terror from my lungs in a long, piercing scream. Not a scream. A howl. Screeching into the darkness.
Found girl lost
I opened my eyes to a white sky. That unsettling shade that comes just before sunrise. The early morning chill sent shivers down my arms, aching every inch of my skin. The beds of my nails, my eyes, even my damn scalp hurt. For a second, I thought I’d laid out all night, drunk as a skunk. And somehow naked.
I sat up slowly, trying not to set free a pint of beer from my rumbling belly. White coals smoldered, little puffs of smoke twisted out. Blood. Dirt. Rocks and limbs, striped and speckled with red. I’d have given anything to go back to that blissfully ignorant second.
I scrambled to my feet and fell instantly—knees in the dirt, hands tangled in soft black cotton. My throat caught and vomit popped out where a scream should have been. Red hair stuck to a mangled face in sticky clumps.
I scrambled backward on my hands and feet, as far away from the body as I could. Twigs and debris carved tiny cuts on my backside, stinging like little bits of fire on my skin. Something squished against my palm. I swallowed hard and looked cautiously over my shoulder.
For the first time in fifteen years, I realized that I loved Rusty Kemp with my entire soul. Anguish—a word I’d never known before that moment—poured from my lungs, strangling me on the way out. I gulped air but nothing broke through. Choking gasps held tight to my throat.
For a moment, I truly believed I died all over again.
Hot tears fell on Rusty’s face, washing long lines of flesh through the red mask that dried on his skin. My cries echoed through the trees, rousing a flock of birds that rustled late-summer leaves from the limbs. I wrapped a trembling hand around his chin and moved his head to look at me, silently begging the whole of the universe to make it not so. When I squeezed, thick, long lines of flesh pushed open, bone peeking through from under all that blood and meat.
I jerked away, wiping the tingles of terror on my hand into the dirt. My chin quivered. We should’ve been elsewhere. Shaking hands hovered over his body, searching for a clean place to touch, to lay my spinning head.
Thick rusty lines striped his chest. Jeans, left unbuttoned in haste, were stained red to the ankle. Not an inch of him hadn’t been marred by blood. I stared at red speckled feet, dragging in air, snot and tears and drool falling in a gooey mess to my hands.
One long whoosh stole the last of my breath. Like an old movie, single frames of time clicked through on fast-forward.
A blade. My throat. The fire. Dying. Changing.
Powerful legs pounced. Catlike swipes sliced open the brunette. The others fought, trying to tame the beast I’d become. I bucked, a bull from a chute, flinging one through the air and onto the fire. She wailed as the flames overtook her. The other flipped through the dirt in front of me. With one mighty paw, I drew four wide, gory stripes across her middle.
Rusty let out a gurgled scream. I turned my big furry body and bounded on four muscled legs to the jumbled mess of purple and green.
Glowing neon purple, the last robed woman straddled Rusty—green as a spring afternoon—hands around his throat. I leapt. Claws so fierce and deadly, landed wildly, Rusty in the way. I slashed at him without hesitation—a simple casualty. Electric violet spurted from the woman’s wounds. She collapsed onto her side, and rolled away. Rusty’s glowing eyes stared at me, blood glugged from his gullet, lime green milk from a tipped jug.
The film jolted to a stop.
Searing hot air filled my lungs, freezing me to the bone. I curled my legs to my chest and fell to my side. A fierce shiver took over my body, shaking me from head to toe. There I lay, not a peep, eyes wide, staring at the bloody mess I’d left behind.
Summer sun peeked over the mountains turning the white sky blue, shining glittering light on Rusty’s sweet face. I plucked a leaf from his sticky skin; nuzzled against his cold stiff body. He smelled like a jar of pennies, but if I pressed my nose against a spot of blood-free skin, I could catch the hint of his cologne. He’d been wearing the same damn cologne since high school. I’d always hated it. Laying there next to his dead body, all I wanted was to breathe in the scent of that stupid cologne.
The rumble of a heavy truck crunched along the bank of the lake. It sounded far off, but it slowly moved closer. Help had come. They had to’ve been there for me. To save me. The monster.
Heavy boots clomped through the underbrush nearby, coming closer to me and the bloody heap beside me. Fear hit, a hard lump of ice in my gut. My claws, my strength had torn into those women, into Rusty. The people of Havana would tie me to a post and burn me alive. How in all the heavens in the sky would I explain to the law—and the torch-holding townsfolk—that some witches—that’s what they had to’ve been, no doubt in my mind—had turned me into some beastly thing? A ravenous creature that just might kill again. I gulped down stinging bile.
He’d call the State Police. He’d call my mama. He’d call Garret. My icy stomach dropped when I thought about my brother.
I’d killed his best friend. My boy.
Tears rolled down my cheeks and plopped into the dirt. “I’m sorry,” I breathed.
Silent, still, I laid there and waited for those heavy boots to find me. A beast. Lord, don’t let them burn me.
Strong arms scooped me up from the chilled earth. Garbled words, like talking underwater, I watched his mouth move but didn’t understand a word of it.
He squeezed me tight to his chest, his panting breaths echoed in my head. We moved quickly through the brush, me draped naked over his arms. I listened to his heart pick up speed. Shoving through the rim of bushes where Rusty and I had hid, golden rays of sun hit my cheeks. I winced away from the light.
“You okay?” he rumbled. “We’re almost there.” His breaths came too quick, heart almost not able to keep up. He should’ve put me down. Dragged me out by my feet. “What in the hell happened here?” he whispered.
That question would haunt me the rest of my living days. What was this nightmare? When would I wake up?
He stumbled the last few steps to his truck, where he laid me in the bed. “Stay right there, honey. Don’t move.” I laid on my side and let the morning sun warm my skin. “What in the world….” the man said confused.
His badge glinted in the light. Deputy Morely. He covered me with a heavy wool blanket. Too much for the hot summer morning regardless of my nakedness. The deputy’s radio crackled. “I got her. I got her,” he shouted with short breaths.
It seemed like only seconds passed before the sirens were coming. They were coming. The state police, the sheriff, my mama, and my brother. I cried hard and loud.
Deputy Morely jumped, laid his hands on my hip and shoulder. “Talk to me, honey. You okay?” he said.
“No,” I howled. My body shook with every breath I dragged into my lungs.
“It’s gon’ be a’ight. They’re comin’, honey. You’re a lucky girl. Lucky your brother knows you good enough to know you’d be all the way out here.” He ran his hand over my head. I winced from the pain that shot down my spine.
Sirens screeched close by, clawing through my splitting head, before they cut short and the sounds of a dozen car doors popped my ears. More heavy boots and a chorus of crackling radios. They all shouted to each other. A sound so penetrating my head vibrated with it, split with it. I curled into a ball, peeking out from over my knees.
The police cars were parked at least a hundred feet away and all the men in uniform and big brimmed hats stood around the edge of the lake. No one was crowding me or yapping their mouths right over my
head. But I could hear them like they were having a party on the tailgate.
I let out a long breath, failed to stop my trembling, and sat up. Off a ways up the bank, parked right where we had left it was Rusty’s old truck, one of the officers wound yellow tape around trees to block it off. His white shirt glowed in under the intense sun. A shining reminder of what was.
Death hung in the air. Dense. Pungent. I couldn’t see the bodies from where I sat, the ridge of brush hid the circle of trees and the fire pit that sat center. Their stench—a smell I’d never quite get rid of—clung to the hairs inside my nostrils. Deputy Morely must’ve smelled them too. Had to’ve.
A Logan County deputy wrapped me in a heavy coat without saying a word and helped me off the end of the tailgate. We walked together—my legs threatening to give way—to the ambulance that waited away from where the action was. The young deputy smiled and held my hand while the paramedics looked me over. The victim. The lone survivor.
No one knew I was the monster.
One of the paramedics said I had a high fever. Said I was probably in shock but wouldn’t rule out internal injuries—as if she could see my broken heart right through my chest. They strapped me to the gurney, covering me in a thin cotton blanket. She poked me with a needle and hooked me up to a bag of clear liquid. I watched them work in silence.
Time ran forward and back in my mind. Wild, frantic thoughts. Flashes of memories, fear and sorrow, flowed into my head in waves. Agony, sheer and total, ripped through me. I thought it’d kill me right there.
“Where is she?” My chest seized. “Where’s she at?” Garret’s voice was at full volume when he came flying into the back of the ambulance.
Garret’s blue eyes stared down at me. How could I ever look at those eyes again? I’d killed his best friend. Our best friend. His almost brother.
Snuffing out the life of someone you love, truly love, feels like God himself is ripping your heart out straight through your chest. My soul was dying, rotting from the inside out. I prayed to Jesus that wasn’t true, begged him to save my soul.
And the Creek Don't Rise Page 4
