Wildwood Road

by Christopher Golden

  Michael stumbled once but caught himself. Jillian grabbed his hand and they ran side by side.

  A corridor branched off to the right, and there was another staircase going up to the third floor, but the heart of the house was the main hall straight ahead. The same hallway he had found himself in after the masquerade. But his head was clear tonight. His throat was raw and he was desperate, but his mind was clear. There were nine doors leading off of the corridor, four on the left and five on the right.

  Eight of them were open, letting moonlight spill in, flooding the place in a brassy gloom. The shadows had fallen still. It looked for all the world like an ordinary house. But the smells were still there, along with a ripple of distant laughter, the hushed, intimate, shared giggling of little girls.

  With utter clarity he heard the voices. One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four . . .

  Jillian shuddered. Michael saw that she was crying. Crying for the lost girls.

  He hurried her down the hall. Even if that one door—that one goddamned door—hadn't been closed, he would have guessed it. Would have known it. For of all the vague, disoriented bits of memory in his mind, that one was crystal.

  A soft, lisping, baby-girl voice sings “I'm a Little Teapot.” He steps into a child's bedroom. Pale and bleached of life, washed in moonlight. “. . . Here is my handle, here is my spout . . .”Graffiti scrawled on the wall. Ruthie Loves Adam. Nikki and Danielle were here. Miss Friel Cuts the Cheese. Lizzie & Jason, TLA.

  True Love, Always.

  He held Jillian up and she leaned into him the way she curled under his arm, conforming her body to his, every night in their bed.

  With a roar he kicked the door in. It crashed open and they went together over the threshold into that pale, faded bedroom with its pretty white furniture. Some of the hollow women were there—eight all told. Five of them stood in a line across the room, herding the memory-wraiths of little girls against one wall. In the moonlight they were mere shapes, though some seemed more solid than others.

  Then he was wading into the hollow women, the crowbar falling, cracks splitting in misshapen skulls, shards of faces crumbling to the floor. He had driven two of them to the ground and kicked a third, knocking it toward the same broken window he himself had crashed through once upon a time. Then he felt fingers twine in his hair and a powerful hand grip his wrist, and they had him.

  Four of the husks. Hungry mouths wide open above him, they slammed him to the floor. His head banged the wood and blackness swam in his eyes. Michael tried to swing the crowbar again, but it was plucked from his hand. Cold knife fingers plunged into him—

  You don't want this, he warned. I'm not afraid of you, anymore. Not when I can look into your core, steal your past.

  The fingers left him. It was cold where they'd penetrated his flesh, but this time he did not feel dirty or tainted. The husks staggered back from him and Michael grinned. This time he was the one who had tainted them.

  Against the wall, the lost girls—no, the stolen girls—huddled. One of the husks grabbed the nearest girl, barely a shadow now, and plunged its face into her chest, baring grotesque teeth from that distended jaw. It came back with pink ribbon squirming in its mouth like some animal at a trough.

  He raised the crowbar.

  “Die, damn you!”

  It was Jillian's voice. He glanced over to see her struggling with one of the hollow women. Rage flushed his wife's face red. The husks on the floor began to stir, still alive, scratching at the wood, trying to drag themselves back up.

  At the door to that faded bedroom, other broken husks appeared.

  All of them hungry.

  The lost girls who were herded into one end of the room began to scream. Some of the broken ones were reaching for them. Michael raised the crowbar again, ready to shatter the husks, to tear them apart . . .

  “No,” whispered one of the girls, a wraith so slight that he had not noticed her before, barely a glimmer of a memory. “There are too many. You can't save us all that way.”

  Michael hesitated. Then he turned and ran to Jillian. One of the husks was almost upon her and he crashed into it, driving it hard against the wall. He grabbed her by the arms and gazed into her eyes.

  “You collected some of their memories before. Lost ones. Do it now! Share with them! Let them all in!”

  Once more terrible fingers clawed at him, tried to burrow into his flesh and his soul. Michael shattered a malformed face.

  “Yes,” he heard Jillian say. “Come in. Come in, girls.”

  The spectral girls swept toward her, one of them shaking loose the grasp of a husk that tore one final bit of memory from her. One by one they struck Jillian like a gust of wind, blowing her back, disappearing into her chest. Jillian's eyes went wide with each entry, each impact. When it was over Michael shoved her into a corner and put himself between her and the rest of the room.

  There was the window, that shattered window. But he was not going out that way again.

  “Back off!” he shouted at the husks that shambled and crawled toward them. Only one was uninjured. The others were a nightmare vision, with their shapeless gray coats and their fingers curled into claws, their faces broken and impossible darkness beyond.

  He grabbed the one that was nearest him. It clawed his arm, cutting deeply. Michael forced its hand against his chest; at first, nothing happened.

  “Do it!” he screamed. “Touch me!”

  It fell limp, its fingers slipping through his flesh.

  Almost instantly, it began to wither. Michael shuddered with the contact, nearly slipping into the fugue state that had overcome him when they had touched him in the past. But he would not let himself succumb. Instead he only held the hollow woman as she shriveled, skin hanging on her cadaverous form.

  “Out of the way, or I swear to God I'll do the same to every last one of you, even if it kills me.”

  They were unsure. Could he destroy them all? It seemed unlikely. There were more of them. How many more he did not know; others moved in the shadows outside that room. But they hesitated.

  That was all he needed.

  “Come on,” he growled, grabbing Jillian's hand.

  They knocked husks aside as they fled the room.

  For the moment, the hollow women did not pursue them. The hall was suddenly empty, only silver blurs in the air to indicate that they were not alone. Downstairs they found Susan Barnes still alive, but only by a breath or two. Her body had reversed its own metamorphosis but her injuries were so severe it was miraculous that she was still breathing. Michael held Jillian's hand tightly as they walked over to her.

  “Oh, no, Scooter,” he whispered. “Oh, no.”

  Susan attempted a smile, and blood ran from the hatchet-split in her face. “Scooter,” she said, her voice gurgling. “That's right. That's what they all called me.” The woman laughed, a wet sound, filled with fluid that didn't belong in her lungs. “Hilly could never say Susan.”

  Her brow knitted into a frown. “I don't remember Hilly. What she looked like. I don't . . .” Her eyes were filled with despair.

  Jillian crouched beside the dying woman. One by one the lost girls slipped out of her again. They made a circle around Susan, touched her, fingers slipping into her flesh, passing through her as though she was the ghost among them. Jillian could not perform this trick, but she brushed Susan's hair from her eyes.

  Michael caught those familiar scents again. Cinnamon apple pie. The ocean. Others as well. Memories drifting off of these girls. He looked around, afraid it would bring the hollow women, but there was no sign of them yet. Just moonlight and dust in the crumbling foyer of the house on Wildwood Road. Moonlight and dust, and the ghosts of women who had never died.

  “One from each of us,” Jillian whispered to Susan, holding both of her hands. “The best memories. The happiest ones. Because if not for you—”

  The thought went unfinished.

  The smell of a Thanksgiving feast filled the house.

>   “Uncle Bull,” Susan Barnes whispered, and a smile of love and wonder blossomed on her ruined face.

  The wraiths began to leave, then. Passing out through the walls and windows like true ghosts. Lost girls searching for their future, memories set free. Some of them were dead now, the lost memories only ghosts that he supposed would slowly fade. But for the others, Michael wondered what would happen. Would the women they had been stolen from wake up different in the morning, completely changed? Would they think suddenly of something from their childhood, something that hadn't occurred to them in a very long time, and smile? He would not like to think that these others were now just lost girls as well, wandering in search of their shells, searching for completion. Or disappearing forever into nothing.

  The thought would haunt him.

  Alone at Susan's side now, Jillian beckoned to Michael. He went and knelt with her and took one of Susan's hands in his own. Her eyes were unfocused, lids fluttering, but for a moment they cleared and he could tell that she saw him. The flicker of recognition was impossible to mistake.

  “Scooter—”

  “It's you. D'Artagnan,” Susan whispered, tears in her eyes. “I'm sorry about your hat. I crushed it—”

  “Sssh. It's okay,” he said, holding her hand tightly. “It's nothing.”

  She took a long, ragged breath. A tremor of pain crossed her face, but then she focused on him again and her smile returned. “You came. You found me.”

  “I made a promise,” Michael told her.

  A faint smile creased her lips. He could see cracked bone right through the torn flesh of her face. “I . . . remember.”

  And she was gone.

  TOM BARNES HAD STRUCK HIS head hard on the wood floor. Hard enough to bring a trickle of blood across the boards. Even so, he stirred as Michael grabbed him beneath the arms and dragged him out of that house. His feet bounced on the steps going down to the front lawn.

  When Michael emerged yet again from the house bearing the body of Susan Barnes, Tom was awake. Unsteady, he crawled over to her as Michael set her down, and he cradled his mother in his arms, weeping silently.

  He was still holding her that way when the sound of an engine cut the night. Jillian had set off on an errand . . . a short drive to that elegantly antique gas station, so well preserved, an echo from another era.

  A memory.

  Michael took the gas can into the house and splashed curtains and mattresses and furniture, holding it upended until the last drop had fallen, and soaked into that house. When he came outside again, Tom Barnes had already gone, taking his mother's remains with him.

  Jillian insisted that she be allowed to strike the match. Michael didn't argue.

  The blaze lit the night, dispelling shadows. Some of those monsters, those hideous thieves, were still inside. He felt sure they would escape. But with the power that had gathered in that house for so long destroyed by cleansing fire, they would have to begin again. To find another place.

  Another empty house to fill with stolen memories.

  EPILOGUE

  Springtime in Seville was all music and flowers and laughter. It was the kind of place anyone could fall in love with. The Old City was a labyrinth of cobblestoned streets, many barely wide enough for two cars to pass without scraping against one another. The architecture was breathtaking, so different from anything Michael and Jillian were used to. There were massive doors that seemed made for giants, with doors of a more ordinary size cut into them. Wrought-iron gates covered arched entrances that revealed interior courtyard gardens, where flowers blossomed in colors so bright they seemed impossible. Small religious icons were set into alcoves in the outer walls of buildings that might have been homes, hotels, or churches, though it was difficult to tell at times.

  Michael led the way along a sidewalk that forced them into single file. He glanced back at Jillian; she offered him a bemused expression. A squat car that looked almost like a toy passed them, and they had to hug the wall to keep from being bumped by the side mirror. He heard Jillian laugh in amazement and a warm feeling flooded his chest. Michael stepped off the sidewalk and reached for her hand so they could walk together.

  “You're going to get killed if you stay in the street.”

  “I'm pretty quick. I can jump out of the way.”

  “Ooh,” Jilly said, squeezing his hand. “He's a rebel.”

  A loud whine erupted behind him and Michael started, heart galloping, adrenaline spiking through him as he leaped back to the sidewalk. He spun just in time to see a guy on a moped fly by at maniacal speed. Probably a messenger, he thought, seeing the packages strapped to the back.

  “My hero,” Jilly said, and laughed.

  Michael whacked her lightly on the arm.

  “Ow!” She shot him a withering glance.

  Michael didn't wither. “You be nice or I'm not taking you to that flamenco show tonight.”

  The one thing she had made him promise when they had decided upon Seville as a destination was that he would take her to a flamenco show. The city had turned out to have an extraordinary charm all its own . . . or, rather, the Old City had. Seville proper was a sprawl of urban ugliness, depressing in its gray sameness and almost dystopic in its filth. But finding the Old City in the center was like peeling back the layers of a rotten onion and discovering a pearl.

  “You promised,” Jillian said, as the road opened up into a small plaza where the street forked. The main road continued to the right, but on the left was a narrow pedestrian path lined with restaurants and shops and what might have been apartments. In the middle of the fork was a bar with outdoor patio seats where waiters brought tapas to the tables of the tourists who needed a rest and a bite to eat.

  Michael grinned and spun her around in a mad dance. Jilly laughed a moment, then nearly tripped and pulled him into a tight embrace. Her heart beat wildly in her chest from the fright.

  “I'll take you anywhere you want to go,” he whispered to her. Michael drew back just enough so that he could see her eyes. “Didn't I tell you that from the beginning?”

  Jillian nodded. Michael pushed a stray lock of hair away from her face and bent to kiss her. They lingered there, breathing each other in. Several local boys drove by in a car and one of them hooted something out the window. Michael and Jillian only glanced over at the passing car and smiled. But then he squeezed her hand to draw her attention again.

  “Whatever you want is fine with me.”

  She tilted her head to one side, a little-girl gesture that was a recent trait. “I want you to have a good time, too.”

  “I'm having a great time. The best. How could I not? God, the colors, the gardens . . . today was incredible.”

  And it had been. They had walked the Barrio de Santa Cruz, and then visited the royal Alcázar, taking their time as they wandered its rooms and gardens. Michael had taken dozens of pictures in a span of hours, his artist's eye taking in the Moorish influences and storing it all for another time. He knew he would not come away from Spain unchanged, that his creative imagination would be stoked by this place. And the Alcázar was only one of the city's wonders. The great cathedral at the heart of the Old City was perhaps the most breathtaking man-made structure Michael had ever seen. Its Gothic sprawl covered an entire block with intricate design, every surface—within and without—ornate in its way. And the Giralda, the tower, was equally impressive. What Jillian had loved best about it was that there were no stairs. The builders had constructed it so that there were only ramps going up and up and up inside that square structure. Legend had it that the king had wanted to be able to ride his horse all the way to the top.

  Michael believed it.

  In the shadow of the cathedral, in the square below it, he had been tempted to dance with his wife under the warm sun of the Spanish spring. But he did not. This was not the past, but the future. They were crafting new memories here, something Jillian desperately needed and Michael craved.

  They had considered Vienna for this tr
ip, but did not linger on it very long. Neither of them seemed inclined to travel old ground. Jillian had lost a lot of memories—she did not like to discuss it, so Michael had no way to know just how much of her past had been stolen from her, save the few memories of hers that still lingered in his own mind—and this trip was a fresh start. Here she would begin to weave a tapestry of bright thoughts and colorful moments that would help to give texture to her life.

  They had both been fortunate in that they had employers who were understanding. Teddy had covered Michael's ass on the new ad campaign, and things had come out better than ever. Things were not quite as smooth for Jillian. She had been rude and insulting to several of the partners at her firm. And yet once she had gone back in to speak with them, to apologize and let them know that she hadn't been herself, that she'd been having personal problems, they were more than willing to let her show them that she had resolved those issues.

  Her political aspirations had not been so fortunate. After her behavior toward Bob Ryan and the reporter from the Tribune, Jillian didn't have a chance in hell of making it onto the city council. Remarkably, she seemed to care very little. When he asked her about it, Jilly just shrugged it off, mystified that it had ever been important to her in the first place.

  Jillian had reconciled with Hannah, however. Her bond with her sister was more important to her now than it ever had been before. When she had heard the news that the lump in Hannah's breast had turned out to be benign, she had wept openly. Not only for her sister, but for herself. She couldn't imagine losing Hannah, her one real connection to the memories she had lost.

  As for Tom Barnes, they had seen reports on the news about the man being questioned by police in connection with his mother's death. The authorities seemed to think she had convinced him to take her out of the hospital, but that her mental illness and violent episodes had caused her to attack him, and that Barnes had killed his mother in self-defense. The investigation was ongoing. Michael thought it a shame that this was how Susan would be remembered, and that Tom had to go through all of this.