The Devouring Gray

by Christine Lynn Herman

  Justin had never been so grateful to see him.

  “Are you both just going to stare?” Isaac called out. “I can’t hold this for long.” His sweaty curls were slicked against his forehead, shoulders heaving with the effort of keeping the Gray at bay.

  Violet rushed toward the door Justin’s friend had made. But as Justin started to follow her, the noise whistled through his head again; louder this time, insistent, demanding.

  It was a voice.

  A strange leadenness stole through Justin as he contemplated weaving his way through the trees, being hunted, being killed.

  You disappointed your family. You’re disappointing the town. Even Isaac would be glad to see you gone—one less thing to worry about.

  “Shit,” he muttered. This was what the Beast did—it got inside your head. It told you you were worthless, you were nothing. “You’re wrong.”

  Am I? The voice sounded almost amused. You’ve lied to everyone, Justin Hawthorne. But you can’t lie to me. Not about her.

  And suddenly Justin was there again, by the lake, Harper behind him, his mother in front of him, her mastiffs growling at her sides. The panic on her face.

  He had chosen his family that day, not Harper, because that was what Hawthornes did. They put one another first.

  But no matter how hard Justin tried, he couldn’t bury that guilt.

  Yes, you betrayed her, said the Beast. And you deserve to be punished for it.

  An arm snaked itself beneath his shoulders and yanked him to his feet.

  It took Justin a moment to orient himself, to realize that he was still in the Gray, he was still alive, still standing. Violet hadn’t left him after all.

  “I need…your help,” he panted, leaning on her bony shoulder. She was stronger than she looked.

  “Hey!” called out Isaac. “What are you doing, admiring the scenery?”

  There they were; the Five of Bones, the Eight of Branches, and the Three of Daggers, side by side. Just like May had said they would be.

  Violet snorted. “Yeah, I noticed.”

  They staggered out of the Gray together, one agonizing step at a time, until they collapsed into the lush green embrace of Four Paths once more.

  And Justin pushed down the voice, the guilt, and the sinking feeling, deep in his gut, that all the Beast had done was tell him the truth.

  The blood and grime on Violet’s body made a rust-colored swirl around the Hawthornes’ shower drain. She’d done her best to scrub the horror of the past few hours off her skin, but even when the water ran clear, the truth could not be washed away.

  She had raised the dead.

  She had returned to the Gray.

  And it was only through the efforts of a boy who’d shown her nothing but hostility that she had gotten back out.

  Violet pulled on some ill-fitting white jeans, courtesy of Justin’s sister—May, that was her name—and an oversize Four Paths track sweatshirt that reeked of campfire smoke and Axe. The smell made Violet’s nose wrinkle. But her own clothes were soiled.

  She couldn’t stop thinking of that moment in the Gray when Justin had faltered.

  She could have abandoned him, left him to fade into those dark, ashen trees. Harper had told her not to trust the Hawthornes. But Violet had decided, when she pulled Justin out of the Gray, to make up her own mind about her allegiances.

  Because there was one intoxicating thought that had been burning through her from the moment Orpheus began to walk again.

  If Violet could bring back a cat, what was stopping her from bringing back Rosie?

  She was not going to miss the opportunity to learn how to fix all her problems just because of a single warning. So she had let Justin and Isaac lead her back to the Hawthornes’ house, and she had agreed to hear them out.

  The Hawthorne siblings had told her to go to their reading room once she was done cleaning up. But when she pushed open the door, they weren’t there. Violet took in the space—although it was called the reading room, she saw no books. Shelves along the walls were stacked with knickknacks, placed in such a way that she could tell they were valuable. A petrified branch sat beside an incredibly realistic sculpture of a rabbit. A broken dagger lay next to a dusty card that gleamed silver in the dim light, a dejected-looking jester etched on the front with two words engraved at the bottom: the Fool.

  The only piece of furniture in the room was a scarred wooden table, right beneath the room’s only window.

  Violet was drawn to a calligraphic print hanging on the wall. Writing at the top identified it as the Founders’ Legacy, whatever that meant.

  She read the words like a poem.

  Branches, they twine & grow about the forest; they will tell you where to plant your roots & prune those that disagree.

  Daggers, their allies, weakened in their Leader’s absence; they raise their hands in the air & shatter the world & put it back together.

  Stones, stalwart & steady—do not discount the builders, for they can always break what they have made.

  & Bones, masters of all things, the Living & the Dead.

  Do not question these who have braved that which ye will never understand.

  Praise them instead & do not falter in the tasks they command.

  Only then may you reach salvation.

  The print stirred something inside of her that she wasn’t sure how to explain. Like a flower unfurling for the first time.

  Have you tried looking in the woods, little bone?

  Like she was finally waking up.

  “Snooping?”

  The voice was low and acrid. Violet knew before she turned her head that it belonged to Isaac, but she wasn’t prepared for the way he was looking at the print.

  Like he wanted to rip it to shreds.

  “I was told to come here.” The words came out a shade more defensive than she wanted them to. “Not my fault Justin and May are late.”

  “They weren’t expecting you to clean up so quickly.” Isaac was taller than she remembered; broad-shouldered but lanky. His flannel shirt had been buttoned up to the collar, obscuring his throat. “The Gray isn’t something people usually process in a few minutes.”

  Isaac studied Violet’s face as she glared back. If he was looking for fear, he wasn’t going to find it.

  The Gray was scary, sure. But it was nothing compared to losing Rosie.

  “It takes a lot to freak me out,” she said. Thinking about the Gray reminded her of how she’d gotten out. Of Isaac, his arms outstretched like he was holding up the universe. “You can open the Gray, too. How?”

  “I was wondering when you’d ask a real question.” Isaac gestured toward the print. She’d noticed the medallions at his wrists but saw for the first time that while one was a perfect pane of red glass, the other was horribly cracked. “I’m a Sullivan. It’s like it says in the creed—we raise our hands in the air, and we shatter the world.”

  Violet looked at the print again, a shudder running down her spine. Branches, stones, daggers, bones—

  “So, what, you break things?”

  “Bones, walls, supernatural barriers,” said Isaac. “Also hearts. But I don’t need magic to do that.”

  “Hilarious,” drawled Violet, like he hadn’t just said magic so casually, tossing the word out there like it wasn’t the impossibility she’d believed it was a month ago. “So that’s a creed? A creed for what?”

  Isaac shook his head. “You really don’t know anything. And yet Justin seems so convinced you’re going to help us.”

  “What do you think?”

  Isaac’s eyes met hers. They looked like burned-out matches. “Honestly? I think you’re trouble.”

  Violet bristled, but before she could respond, Justin and May appeared in the doorway. Violet saw immediately how they belonged to this room, and it belonged to them. They fit here the way Daria fit in her rocking chair. The way Violet had fit in her and Rosie’s old art studio. It was the place where they were most themselves.

&
nbsp; “Making friends, I see,” said May, holding up a mug. Steam wafted across the room, and Violet caught a whiff of cinnamon and something else, something woodsy. Even though they were inside, she couldn’t shake the impression that this room was somehow part of the forest. “Coffee?”

  “Absolutely.” Violet raised the mug to her lips and took a grateful sip, then followed Justin and May to the table by the window. Isaac joined them a moment later. The only source of light was a chandelier with bronze arms sculpted in the shape of branches. It cast a dim yellow glow on Justin’s and May’s faces, accentuating their high cheekbones.

  “We hope you’re okay,” said Justin. “What happened to you today…well, it shouldn’t have happened at all.”

  “So things in Four Paths aren’t…always like this?” Violet said cautiously, thinking of Frank Anders again.

  Justin shook his head. “No. I’m not sure how much you know about this town, but our family is dedicated to keeping Four Paths safe.”

  “She obviously knows enough, if she can do what you said.” The crimson pendant at May’s neck gleamed in the dim light, and Violet realized it was the same red glass as Isaac’s bracelets, as the sheriff’s badge.

  Across the table, Isaac nodded. “I’m with May. There’s no way she resurrected something without a ritual.”

  “Ritual?” Violet was lost. “What ritual?”

  May let out a sharp, disbelieving snort.

  “Violet, I was looking for you because I thought you could help us,” said Justin, giving May and Isaac a frown that looked a lot like a warning. “Now I think we might be able to help each other. The three of us know almost everything there is to know about this town. So why don’t you tell us what you’re curious about, and let us fill in the blanks?”

  It was what Violet had wanted them to say.

  So she told the Hawthornes and Isaac what she felt they needed to know. Violet didn’t think she could explain Rosie, or how she’d hallucinated her, without bursting into tears. She didn’t see why she should tell them that her information had come from Harper, either, and her long-dead uncle was none of their business. But the Gray, and Orpheus, and her blackouts…all of that came spilling out.

  “If I really brought Orpheus back…” Violet had reached the end. “What does that mean? What am I? How does that even work?” Her voice shook with the weight of the words—she couldn’t help it. Saying it made it real. And if it was real, maybe, just maybe, she could save Rosie after all.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about her sister standing in front of her, only this time, Rosie would actually be there. Violet would be able to hug her.

  And Rosie would tell her, with a loving smirk, to stop being so melodramatic, because everything was finally okay.

  “I think I understand now.” Shadows flickered on the wall above Justin’s head, spiraling outward across the paneled stone like leaf-laden branches unfurling from behind his neck. “You’ve already figured out that Four Paths isn’t just a town. Technically, it’s a prison.”

  Frank Anders’s bleach-white eyes swam to the front of Violet’s mind. Her stomach jolted. “A prison? For that…that thing in the Gray? Then why are we here, too?”

  “It’s in our bloodlines,” Justin said, which didn’t exactly calm Violet’s unease. “It might be easier if we show you.”

  Justin hurried over to the rows of shelves, returning a moment later with a yellowing scroll of paper. It was only when he unrolled it across the table and began to weight the corners down with smooth red stones that Violet realized what she was looking at.

  It was a map of Four Paths, clearly drawn by hand. The woods were everywhere, hundreds of tiny green-and-brown etchings bleeding onto the winding path of Main Street as it forked around the town square. Violet had noticed before that Four Paths was far more forest than town, but the overwhelming presence of the trees was even more prevalent from a bird’s-eye view.

  Her eyes traced the tiny columns of the town hall, pausing on a small, eerily lifelike drawing of what was clearly her new house. The words Saunders Territory were inked beneath the manor.

  This was one of four such “territories” that had been marked on the map. As Violet glanced at the Carlisle family’s rustic stone cottage to the east and the Hawthornes in the south, she realized she recognized the other names.

  There was no house in the western part of town, just a blacked-out bit of map with the words Sullivan Territory beneath it. Violet could make out the outline of a house under the blotched ink, but someone had clearly gone to great pains to strike it from the picture.

  Violet’s eyes flickered to Isaac, whose face had gone perfectly still. “What happened there?”

  May started to say something, but Isaac cut her off. “Nothing good.”

  “And nothing relevant to our current conversation,” added May, her voice sharp and shrill. “What really matters is here.” Her pale pink fingernail tapped the words written at the top: “The Founders’ Map.”

  Violet’s brain spun as she remembered what those women had called her back at the Saunders manor.

  What Justin had said to her in the Diner.

  How everyone at school had looked at him, and May, and Isaac.

  “We’re descended from the town founders, aren’t we?” she asked, raising her gaze to meet Justin’s. “That’s why our names are on this map. That creed is about our families. And that’s why I can’t go anywhere without people staring at me.”

  The surprise on his face told her she’d been right. “I’m not sure how you don’t know this,” said Justin. “But yes. Four people started this town in the 1840s—Hetty Hawthorne. Lydia Saunders. Richard Sullivan. Thomas Carlisle.”

  The reverence in his voice didn’t escape her. Neither did the fact that Harper was from a founder family, too.

  “Why does everyone care about that so much?”

  “Because the founders are more than just people to Four Paths,” said May. “When this town first began, they were worshipped. People called them the Four Deities. Together, they represented the four paths to salvation—hence, our name.”

  So Violet hadn’t imagined the way everyone had looked at them. It was like they were gods.

  She wasn’t sure why that thought sat so poorly with her as she clutched her coffee mug. “What did they do, exactly, that made people worship them?”

  The woodsy scent Violet had noticed before seemed stronger now. As the light outside the room faded, the shadows of the objects on the shelves had grown long and slender, spilling onto the wall behind the Hawthorne siblings.

  May smiled. “They defeated a monster.”

  “You mean the thing that lives in the Gray?” said Violet. “Because it doesn’t seem all that defeated to me.”

  This time, Isaac was the one who answered. “This monster has been in Four Paths for a long time,” he said. “It was—is—a creature unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Normal weapons couldn’t harm it. It was smart enough to get inside your head, see your thoughts, even your future. It could destroy you with a single touch.” His eyes met hers again, and Violet thought of what he’d said just moments ago, about breaking things. “And it was difficult—maybe even impossible—to kill.”

  Isaac’s words held the low, effortless cadence of someone telling a story they had heard a thousand times before. Like a fable. Like a lullaby.

  “So they couldn’t kill it,” said Violet. “What did they do instead?”

  Justin traced a finger across the curve at the edge of the map, a gesture as intimate as a lover’s caress. “They tricked it. Bargained away parts of themselves to the monster in exchange for some of its magic. Then they used those powers to bind the monster to the town itself. Well, to a version of the town. That place you got sucked into is its prison—another Four Paths, laid over ours, frozen in the moment the founders bound the monster inside of it. The Gray.”

  Violet thought of the row of strange, old houses. Of that static sky, those awful, twisted tre
es.

  “So they worshipped them…us…for that,” she said slowly, trying to understand.

  “Yes,” said Justin. “The religion was called the Church of the Four Deities. It died out a long time ago, but…the remnants are still there. We still protect the town. And they still respect us for it.”

  “You’re lucky, you know.” May’s voice sounded a little less pinched now. “Most people who wander into the Gray don’t come out alive. Especially people who haven’t done a ritual.”

  Violet wondered why, exactly, May’s eyes had flicked toward Justin at the end of that sentence. “You mentioned a ritual before. What is that?”

  Justin answered. “Each founder bound themselves to the monster in a different way. As Hetty Hawthorne’s descendants, we must pass the same trial she did to earn our powers. Each family’s ritual is different, at slightly different ages, although it’s always somewhere between thirteen and sixteen.”

  “So you both did these rituals?” said Violet.

  A look passed between them. It reminded her of the wordless conversations she and Rosie used to have, and witnessing it made her insides seize.

  “Yes,” Justin said after a slightly protracted pause. “You’re a senior—you’re seventeen, right?”

  Violet nodded.

  “So you’re past the age you should’ve done your ritual by, and you’re pretty vulnerable until you do. You’ve got powers, but you won’t be able to fully control them until you go through the right steps. The Gray will hold you here until that happens.”

  “Hold me here?” Violet’s thoughts spun with sudden panic. “But I can leave, right?”

  “No,” said May solemnly. “You can’t.”

  Violet’s breaths were coming in short, choppy gasps. Rosie was in Westchester. Not here. Nothing but death and these strange god-families and the Gray were here. But she didn’t want to break down like this; not here, in front of strangers. “I thought you said this prison was for the monster.”

  “It is.” She was pretty sure Justin was trying to sound soothing, which only made her panic worse. “But your family line is bound to that monster. Which means that until you do your ritual, you’ll effectively be treated the same way.”