The Devouring Gray

by Christine Lynn Herman

  It looked the way things do in dreams, ragged and unpredictable and slightly askew. Walls of reddish-brown stone rose above the trees before dividing into three spires, each adorned with a point of corroding iron.

  Violet wasn’t even sure if the car was parked as she grasped for the door handle and tumbled out onto the driveway. There had been a garden surrounding the house once, but it was hopelessly overgrown now. Violet reached the end of the driveway and clambered up the moss-encrusted stairs to the front porch.

  “I’m amazed the place is still standing,” said Juniper. “It’s structurally unsound, you know.”

  “It’s perfect.” Violet stared at the honest-to-goodness brass knocker hanging on the door. Her wonder abated as she considered how much Rosie would’ve loved this place. It was exactly the kind of house they’d dreamed of moving into. A creaky old manor where Rosie would paint murals on the walls and Violet would play piano all day, and the neighborhood kids would think they were witches. Violet tried to shake those thoughts away as she thumped the knocker against the door. But they stayed anyway, like the grief always did, like a thin film across her skin that left her cocooned in her own body.

  The door swung open, revealing a white woman at least a head shorter than Violet, with frizzy hair and a dress knitted from crimson yarn. In her face Violet saw a funhouse-mirror version of her mother; a Juniper who let her gray streaks grow out, who would rather go barefoot than wear heels.

  “Daria,” said Juniper. “It’s us.”

  The woman—Aunt Daria—tilted her head. “Solicitors don’t get inside privileges.”

  She slammed the door shut with an impressive amount of vigor for someone so small. Violet jolted back from the knocker, startled. When her mother told her Daria was sick, she’d pictured someone bedridden and frail. Not this.

  “Daria!” Juniper yanked on the doorknob, to no avail. “This isn’t funny. Open up!”

  “Is she all right?” said Violet softly, staring at a bit of red yarn stuck in the door hinges. There had been no spark of recognition in Daria’s eyes. Not even for her own sister.

  Juniper turned, her hand still clenched around the doorknob. A bit of hair had sprung free from her bun and frizzed across her forehead.

  “No, she’s not.” Her voice was sharp, coiled. “She has early-onset dementia. The doctors wanted to put her in a home. That’s why we’re here.”

  The silver rose pressed on Violet’s wrist, cool and heavy against her rising pulse. “You didn’t think to explain that before we got here?”

  Juniper frowned. “I told you she was sick.”

  The vague puzzlement on her mother’s face was the same expression she’d worn at Rosie’s funeral. Juniper had handled the entire thing with careful, practiced ease; she’d even picked the coffin out on her lunch break at work, where she had neglected to take a single day off. Her mother sat through the services, her face slack with polite disinterest that didn’t go away even when they were standing beside the grave. Violet had fought the urge to push her into the ground along with the coffin, but ultimately, common sense had won. Besides, Rosie deserved better company.

  As Violet stared at her now, she saw that trying to make Juniper realize she was hurt would be a waste of time. If Rosie’s death five months ago couldn’t make her pay attention to the daughter she had left, nothing ever would.

  “Unbelievable,” Juniper muttered. She’d already moved her focus away from Violet, her heels clicking as she paced from pillar to pillar. “We came all this way…can’t just make us sit out here…”

  “Can too!” called a hoarse voice, slightly muffled behind one of the house’s side windows.

  Violet leaned off the edge of the porch. Daria’s wrinkled face was pressed against the glass. Which gave her an idea.

  She was down the rotting steps in seconds, the slight heels on her boots sinking into the grass as she stomped through the garden.

  “What are you doing?” Juniper called after her.

  Violet ignored her mother and hurried to the backyard, where the grass sloped down into a tree-lined hill. From this vantage point, the topmost spire of the house impaled the sinking sun on its iron point.

  The back door was much less ostentatious than the front. Violet wondered if it had been some kind of servants’ entrance. Although the doorknob didn’t give when she turned it, the dirty windowpane was already spiderwebbed with cracks. Violet gazed back out at the yard, considering it for a moment.

  She’d only seen it for the first time minutes ago, yet she couldn’t deny that she felt a strange sort of kinship with the place.

  Her whole life, it had only been her and Rosie and Juniper, her father a hazy half memory, pieced together from a few short anecdotes and precious pictures, the Saunders family nothing but a mystery.

  This house was proof that there was more to her family than that.

  Violet tore her eyes from the trees and checked the most common hiding places she could think of, until she unearthed a spare key under a planter full of dead flowers.

  The key was rusted and filthy, but it fit the lock. A few seconds later, she was striding through the ground floor of her new home. It was a musty place, full of dark, echoing rooms that looked virtually unused. A row of taxidermies lined the walls of the main hallway. Violet shuddered as her hand accidentally brushed against a passel of mounted birds.

  She caught sight of crinkled red yarn and frizzy hair sticking out from behind a couch in what was probably the living room. Violet sighed and walked on until she reached the sun-drenched foyer.

  When she swung the front door open, her mother was leaning against the porch railing, scowling.

  “Thank god.” Juniper hurried inside. “I swear, this place has always hated me.”

  Violet trailed after Juniper, stopping when her mother paused at the half-open door to the living room. Daria was visible now, her knees drawn up to her chest, the dress spilling across her front like a woolly bloodstain. Her hands were embedded in her wiry hair. Saunders hair—Violet had heard her mother call it that multiple times, always sounding annoyed, like their distant Scottish ancestors were to blame for all their problems.

  Juniper placed a hand on Violet’s shoulder. Violet stiffened—she couldn’t remember the last time her mother had touched her. Even before Rosie’s accident, there had always been several inches of deliberate space between them. “I’ll handle my sister. You can start unloading the U-Haul.”

  There was something soft in her mother’s voice, almost apologetic. It was worse than polite disinterest, the same way her talking to Violet in the car was worse than ignoring her. Because it meant Juniper could care about her if she wanted to.

  Violet shrugged out of her mother’s grip. “Fine.”

  She pretended to walk to the front door but turned back after a few paces, watching her mother kneel beside Daria. Indistinct words echoed through the foyer. Although Violet couldn’t make them out, she heard the underlying notes of rage and regret.

  Daria braced her hand against Juniper’s shoulder—to support herself or push her sister away, Violet didn’t know. They rose together, a four-legged beast backlit by the sun streaming through the picture windows. Their figures blurred into shadowed, indistinct silhouettes, and, as Violet squinted into the hazy light, she could’ve sworn she saw a flash of turquoise hair behind their heads.

  Right when Justin’s heart was about to impale itself on his rib cage, he heard three sharp blasts of sound from the side of the track.

  “That’s enough!” Coach Lowell barked, lowering his whistle.

  Justin sagged with relief as his pace slowed from a sprint into a steady jog. He normally looked forward to practice, but preseason conditioning had melted him into an exhausted, sweaty puddle on the track behind Four Paths High School. The rest of the cross-country team straggled behind him, panting and swearing softly as they staggered into a cool-down lap. Next week, he’d start his senior year of high school—his last year with this team. />
  “Time?” he called out, doubling back, slowing from a jog to a walk. Trees crowded at the edge of the athletic field, their roots rippling like veins beneath the puckering asphalt. Kids often wiped out on that section of the track during meets, but they were never locals.

  Justin had grown up in those woods. But now, having those tree trunks so close to him, those branches crowding above his head, he felt a spark of unease kindle in his chest.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling they were reaching for him.

  Coach Lowell frowned down at the stopwatch in his meaty hand. “Hawthorne,” he said brusquely. “Come here.”

  Four Paths High School was too small and underfunded for a real athletics program, but the cross-country team went to meets, and sometimes they even won races. Mostly Justin was the one winning races. But judging from the scowl on Coach Lowell’s face, he didn’t think he was being summoned for a congratulations.

  “Look at this.” Coach Lowell thrust the time sheet in Justin’s face. Justin gaped at the time beside his name.

  He hadn’t run a lap that slowly since freshman year—hell, he hadn’t run a lap that slowly since middle school.

  “What’s going on?” asked Coach Lowell sharply. His dark brown face was furrowed with annoyance. “Gonzales almost had you on the third leg there.”

  Justin bristled. “I could lap Cal Gonzales in my sleep.”

  “The team looks to you to set an example, Hawthorne. If you’re not focused, they’re not focused.”

  Justin dug the toe of his sneaker into the fading asphalt. Coach was right. He was off.

  It just seemed so petty to be concerned about his running performance when a man was dead. He couldn’t stop wondering how this latest death, this latest man, had felt in the moments before the Gray swallowed him whole.

  The man had a name. Hap Whitley. The obituary said he’d worked with his father at the auto repair shop. Justin had spent fifteen minutes studying the picture they’d pulled for the Four Paths Gazette: the backward baseball cap pulled low over loose curls, the slight squint, the shy grin.

  It had been two weeks, and he still couldn’t stop picturing what the man in that photo must’ve looked like, before they’d had him cremated and tucked away in the mausoleum.

  The Saunders family had arrived today, just as his sister had predicted. Half the town had seen their shiny car on its way to the Saunders manor’s driveway. Justin had been expecting this. But he hadn’t been expecting his mother to call Justin and May into her office and order them to keep their distance from the new founders.

  “They don’t know how this town works,” she’d said. “They’re most likely a dead branch of the bloodline. Don’t burden them with their heritage.”

  Although Augusta Hawthorne had been talking to both of them, her eyes had stayed fixed on Justin throughout the conversation. He thought about the thin wooden card lying between him and May, the entwined fingers of flesh and bone, the smell of mushrooms rotting beneath the hawthorn tree.

  So yes, he’d been distracted. But it had been his mistake to show it to Coach Lowell.

  Justin had no powers, but he had a knack for putting people at ease. He mirrored Coach Lowell’s slouchy posture, the arm that swung idly at his side.

  “It won’t happen again.” Justin gave each word conviction, let them ring across the track.

  Coach Lowell relaxed almost immediately. He trusted Justin, or at least, he trusted the Hawthornes.

  “I know it won’t.” He clapped Justin on the shoulder, gave him an easy smile. “Just want to make sure you’re ready for Long Lake. Scouts will be there—and even local schools give scholarships.”

  Scouts. College scouts.

  Justin nodded weakly, pretending that his thumping heart, his uneven breaths, were just a side effect of track practice. The rest of the team wove around him as they walked toward the locker rooms, talking animatedly among themselves about the start of cross-country season.

  He knew all of them, of course, from school and parties and practice. But it didn’t matter that he and Cal had been racing each other since they were kids, or that he’d dated Seo-Jin Park and Britta Morey and Marissa Czechowicz. There was an acute distance between them. When Justin was younger, he’d relished the way they treated him. Their exaggerated laughter at his jokes, the stares, all were part of the respect his family commanded. It was a mark of how much good they’d done.

  But since the first body had been found that year, the stares had turned from friendly to expectant. The Gray claimed a new victim every few years in Four Paths, usually around the equinox, but never this many in such a short period of time. And Justin was slowly realizing there were consequences to being one of the people Four Paths looked to at the first sign of trouble.

  Especially when there was nothing he could do about it. His mother had kept his lack of powers a secret for almost a year, but it wouldn’t last forever. The truth would come out eventually, and when it did, the town’s respect would turn to disgust.

  Which was why his mother had cornered him after dinner a few weeks ago and handed him a packet full of athletic scholarship applications.

  At first, Justin hadn’t understood what she was proposing. Only one branch of a founding family could inherit powers at a time, so when the founder children who’d completed their rituals graduated from high school, they didn’t leave. Especially now, with the town on edge, with the remaining founders dwindling. Online courses and community college were a small price to pay for keeping the town safe.

  But the Hawthornes weren’t just any founder family. They were the ones in charge. His mother had explained that day that Four Paths had to see them as the perfect leaders. And Justin’s lack of powers could ruin their reputation.

  Augusta Hawthorne had told him to leave Four Paths before the town could learn the truth. She would pay his college tuition to a state school—if he promised to never come back.

  He hadn’t decided whether or not he would listen.

  Maybe the future May had seen would let him stay.

  Maybe he was just deluding himself.

  Justin usually went home after practice, but he’d agreed to take a dishwashing shift at the Diner. Augusta Hawthorne’s position as the sheriff meant Justin didn’t strictly need to work. But Four Paths noticed when he did, and he had done his best to build a reputation as the founding family member who was committed to serving people, not just protecting them.

  The sun sank toward the trees as he pulled into the deserted lot behind the Diner. He slung his staff apron over his shoulder and left the truck behind, waving hello to the pair of cops chain-smoking outside the restaurant.

  “Your mother have you on patrol tonight?” Officer Anders asked him.

  Justin shook his head. “Tomorrow.”

  “Ah. Keep an eye out. Three this year is too many—we don’t want four.” The officer’s free hand closed lovingly over the holster at his waist, as if that would protect him. The forest rose behind the Diner, oak trees dwarfing the building beneath them.

  A gun would do you no good if you slipped into the Gray, but half his mother’s staff carried them anyway. They were security blankets for people without founder blood, just like the stone pendants around their necks and the sentinels above their doorways.

  “I’ll be careful,” Justin said, although he could’ve done his patrol routes drunk and naked if he wanted to. Augusta Hawthorne hadn’t let him near any real danger since he’d failed his ritual. Nowadays, he only patrolled to keep up appearances.

  Justin’s medallion dug into his wrist—a disc of crimson glass, a symbol that was supposed to signify that, since he’d come into his powers, he didn’t need the protection of the stone pendants the rest of the town wore. His medallion was a lie, but he wore it for Officer Anders, for everyone else who believed he was still a real founder. Justin said good-bye and walked into the Diner, fighting back shame.

  Everything in the restaurant always looked like it was about to bre
ak. A barely functional jukebox sagged against the wall, piping out a faint, warped recording of a Beach Boys song. Bits of yellow foam oozed from the plushy blue booths, flickering in the sickly glow of the fluorescent light. Justin ran a hand across one of the tables as he passed, tables that would never look clean no matter how many times someone wiped them down.

  “Oh, good.” Isaac Sullivan was reading behind the cash register. “You can take over during the dinner rush.”

  The best word Justin had for how Isaac presented himself was deliberate. His half-shaved head and dark, tumbling curls. The flannel shirt buttoned tightly around his throat. The twin medallions tied around his wrists that gleamed red against his pale skin—the one he’d earned, and the one he’d taken from his brother.

  “Everyone will watch us founder kids no matter what,” he’d say. “Might as well give them something interesting to stare at.”

  It was part of why they were best friends. Isaac understood how it felt to constantly be seen.

  Justin tied his apron around his neck. “I’m not working the counter. I’m on dish duty.”

  “I’ll take dish duty,” said Isaac, snatching up his book and backing away from the counter. “You handle the customers.”

  Although they’d been working at the Diner for months now, Justin couldn’t resist a snicker as the message on Isaac’s apron came into view.

  Welcome to the Diner! read the curlicue script. I’m your friendly server. There’s nothing I won’t do to make a customer satisfied!

  “Really?” said Isaac. “You’re wearing an apron, too.”

  “Yeah, but it pisses you off more.”

  Isaac’s jaw twitched. Justin had learned years ago what the hard-edged expression on his face meant: trouble.

  “Not anymore,” he said, touching his fingertips to the front of the apron. The air in front of the embroidery blurred and shimmered as the stitches singed themselves beyond repair, leaving behind a blackened, ashy hole.

  Justin cursed himself silently. Baiting Isaac was a foolish move—especially at work.