The sirens were louder now. The sun still hung in the sky, stubborn to disappear. She grabbed her stepdad’s camo hunting jacket and pulled it on. If she could get back in the woods, hide out for just a few more minutes, she’d be camouflaged in the shadows and the police might not see her. She pushed open his bedroom window and climbed out. A crow landed in front of her, but she shooed it away. Another one sat on the porch railing, and two more by the ruined tool shed. Dozens of them perched on the porch, huddled in the grass. Annie’s breath grew shallow.
The sun was so very nearly gone.
What was death planning now? Was Crow Cullom here, watching, waiting to call the game?
She turned at the side of the house, ready to run for the woods, but a crack ripped the air. She froze. A gunshot? Who had—
An impact like a fist slammed into her. She blinked. Her vision blurred. When she touched her stinging chest, she came away with blood.
The sleepiness of death started to overtake her again.
She turned, the shock of it all numbing her, and found Suze standing in her front yard, Mr. Dixon’s gun in hand, eyes wide with horror. She must have seen where the gun had fallen and picked it up.
“Annie! I thought you were him! Your stepdad. Your coat . . .” Suze dropped the gun.
That bastard, Suze had said. I could kill him for this.
Annie sank to her knees, surrounded by crows as her blood drained into the red dirt. On the horizon, the last sliver of sun disappeared.
It was sunset.
She had lost the game.
PART 6: SUNSET
Annie collapsed to hands and knees. Crows swarmed the earth, but Suze didn’t seem to see them as she ran up. “I didn’t know it was you!” Suze cried.
“Just get out of here,” Annie choked. “The police are coming. They can’t catch you.”
“You’ll die.”
“I’m dead anyway.”
Suze looked ready to protest, but Annie shook her head, waving her away until at last Suze turned and ran. She listened to Suze’s feet pounding on the dirt road until she couldn’t hear them anymore. It was just her and the crows in the twilight. She closed her eyes. Another set of footsteps came, slow and deliberate. When she looked over her shoulder, a man with sea-tangled hair was slowly walking up the dirt road.
Annie clenched her jaw. She’d lost the game. She’d lost her last chance at life. The ring on her finger started to warm. How much longer did she have before it claimed her?
With her last bit of strength she pushed herself up, stumbling through the grass and up the porch steps, back into their house. She found the knife in the kitchen—the one her stepdad had slid against her ribs the night before. Perfectly clean now. When the police came, they’d never know. Her stepdad would get away with it, just like he’d gotten away with beating her mother, when cancer had been the excuse for the bruises.
She stumbled down the hallway as crows cawed outside, louder and louder, and Crow Cullom’s boots sounded on the porch steps. She pushed open her stepdad’s bedroom door. He was still passed out on the bed. She sank down next to him. Her reflection flashed in the knife blade, streaks of blood and soot on her face.
“If death can cheat, then I can too.”
She splayed out her hand on the bedside table and brought the knife down on her own fourth finger. The pain was blistering. It seared all the way to her toes, throbbing and pulsing and she nearly dropped the knife. But she gritted her teeth, and clutched the knife harder until she cut her finger clean off. She let the knife fall to the floor, crying out at the pain. Her finger sat on the bedside table, just sat there. She picked it up with shaking hands and pulled the silver ring off of it. She held it up to the light, thinking back on her grandmother reading her stories in this very house. Don’t expect death to play by the rules, her grandmother had said.
Annie slipped the ring onto her stepdad’s pinkie finger.
Crow Cullom had said if she lost the game, the ring would claim its wearer’s soul. He had neglected to specify whose soul.
Her stepdad stirred, just slightly. A few mumbled words. One bloodshot eye oozed open, and for a second, their eyes locked. His mouth frowned.
“Annie.” His voice was slurred. He tried to sit up, but he groaned like the room was spinning, and lay back down. “You’re dead.”
“No,” she said, and stood up. “You are.”
Her stepdad blinked at the strange ring on his finger, tugging it uselessly. Annie turned away; she pressed her good hand to the wound in her chest and made her way back down the hallway, out onto the porch. Crow Cullom was waiting for her, leaning on the railing, a crow perched on his shoulder, looking as ageless as the first time she’d seen him.
She sank into the porch chair, wincing. His eyes went from her missing fourth finger to the window of her stepdad’s room.
“You know that’s cheating, don’t you, chère? It’s supposed to be your soul the ring claims.”
“Sometimes there’s a place for cheating. Someone told me that once.”
For a few seconds, as twilight changed into night, and the crows watched patiently from the porch railings, neither of them spoke. Annie knew that even as death’s harbinger, he had a soul. He had compassion. He had interceded in death’s game to kill Officer Burton not as a lark, but to rid the world of a monster. Well, her stepdad was a monster too.
Crow Cullom smiled. Annie felt that sleepy blanket of death lift, and her body started to pulse again, and feel warm, and hurt.
“It’s been thrilling watching you play, chère. As for the police searching for you, and your stepdad’s body, you needn’t worry. It all ends with the game. Your friend’s house will return to normal. The dog will too. Any damage shall be corrected—except perhaps Office Burton, and your stepdad. Let’s leave them to rot where they lie, what do you say? Alcohol poisoning seems a likely enough excuse for your father, and as for Burton, it was stupid to stand beneath a falling tree.” He paused, eyes falling to her hand. “But your finger. That you shall forever lose—a toll for cheating.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile. “I look forward to the next time we meet. Hopefully not for many more years, but one never knows.”
Crow Cullom left her on the porch, walking down the dirt road just like the drawing in her grandmother’s book. His crows went with him, except for one. The inky one with the dull feathers. It cocked its head at her and cawed.
Annie leaned back in the chair, hesitantly lifting her shirt. The wound was nothing but a scratch now, and healing rapidly. As she watched, the last of the redness faded until her stomach was smooth again. When she glanced toward the side of the house, the tool shed was standing, and Wolf was nosing around it as calmly as always. Warmth spread out to her limbs. The sirens had vanished. When she went back inside, she knew her stepdad would be dead, the ring gone. Taken to death’s realm in her place. She’d never have to see him again.
She looked down at her left hand, with the missing finger.
She might have lost at hide-and-seek, but she had won at a much bigger game.
She watched Crow Cullom disappear among the fireflies, and wondered, when he came for her next, hopefully when she was old and gray-haired, what game they would play—and if she could cheat him once more.
THE DARK, SCARY PARTS AND ALL*
DANIELLE PAIGE
“I wanted to hear more of what the monster had to say,” I said as my class broke out in giggles behind me. I was used to their laughter, and a lot worse. What I wasn’t used to was Damien Thorne staring at me. But Honors English was my favorite, and today we were discussing Frankenstein—Mary Shelley’s—which I loved a lot more than I hated them. Or at least most of them.
“Go on, Marnie,” Ms. Demetrios said.
I cleared my throat. And blinked to my left. I was imagining it. I had to be. Sure, it looked like those deep, blue-gray ey
es were stuck on me. But Damien Thorne was not supposed to be looking at me. He was supposed to be looking at someone with longer limbs, a face with more angles than circles, and a dress that was bought this decade.
I kept talking.
“We hear the whole story from the perspective of the ship captain and Victor himself . . . the guy who created him. Not from the monster.” I could hear the giggles get louder. I raised my volume. “But the monster is the most interesting thing in the story, and he barely gets a voice. Imagine being cobbled together. Imagine discovering what you are and knowing that no one will ever love you, not even your maker. He does some awful, awful things. But all he wants is someone to love him. Which is, in a way, the most human, the most un-monstrous thing of all.”
Ms. Demetrios smiled. Most everyone else either snickered or rolled their eyes. Everyone but Damien Thorne. All I got from him was a continued stare. Was he making fun of me? Probably. But just before I turned away—did he nod?
“Well, that is a smart, if expected, interpretation of Frankenstein’s creature,” Ms. Demetrios said.
I gulped. I wanted to be more than “expected.” Ms. Demetrios picked up a paper from the pile on her desk. I could tell from the loopy handwriting it was mine.
“But what wowed me in your essay was the comparison you drew to the modern context. ‘We live in a world where transplanting a hand or even a face is now possible. Perhaps in the modern world Frankenstein’s creature would be lauded as a scientific breakthrough, greeted as a marvel instead of a monster.’”
I felt a surge of pride despite the looks on my classmates’ faces. I didn’t turn to see Damien again. Being the smartest girl in class was what I had over everyone in here. One of the few things. Another giggle erupted behind me—this time I knew who it belonged to without turning. I had spoken too long, too passionately, the teacher had singled me out, and there would be a punishment for that. Everly York only cared about the stories she starred in. And her attention span wasn’t much longer than her tweets.
I waited for it.
“Maybe someday someone will make a monster mate for you, Marnie Monster,” she hissed. It was an old grade-school name that just never went away. Everly made sure of that. She always started it. In fact, she started it all.
My first day of school in Harlow was on Halloween in fifth grade. My father didn’t know or care enough to dress me up. I broke out in a rash. I was nervous—about the new school and the new people—and it manifested as disgusting, itchy, red bumps all over every inch of me, including my face. Just in time for Halloween. Just in time for Everly. When I showed up at school in a sea of pretty princesses, I was dressed as myself. Everly took one look at me and said, “Ew! What are you?” in front of the whole class at recess.
“Nothing,” I said, scratching the red welts on my arms.
She corrected me: “You don’t even need a costume, Marnie . . . Marnie Monster.”
She turned around, plastic, translucent wings bobbing. My eyes stung, tears on the verge, and it made me even madder. My hands hurt as I reached for the wings and yanked them as hard as I could. Everly fell backward and landed on her green tulle skirt. Or at least I think she did; I didn’t stick around to see her fall, I only heard it as I ran. Back into the school and into the bathroom. I stayed in a stall until Mrs. Austin found me and gave me a lecture about “sticks and stones and names that can never hurt you.”
Mrs. Austin was wrong. It was stupid, and the name should have gone away like the rash did a few days later. But it didn’t. Marnie Monster was forever. Everly had written my story and I kept playing my part. I let her use me to remind everyone how popular she was by contrast. It was almost boring, and yet . . .
When I glanced back, Everly literally puckered up and blew me a kiss.
“Marnie, Monster, Monster, Monster . . .” The chant began quietly.
It still got to me.
Ms. Demetrios searched the class for the culprits, lowering her wire rims on her nose.
“Monster, Monster, Monster, Monster . . .”
“Enough,” Ms. Demetrios ordered. But the voices continued.
My face warmed. I stayed quiet. Speaking up wouldn’t help.
“I second what Marnie said,” came a voice to my left.
Damien Thorne.
“I’m Team Monster,” he added. He lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
And the chanting stopped.
× × ×
“Hey.” He said it simply, like he was picking up a conversation we’d started long ago.
It was after class now. He’d walked up to my desk and I’d wanted to blurt “Thank you”—but knew his act of chivalry would only make Everly worse. A couple girls huddled in the doorway, looking at us and whispering. All it took was one glance from Damien to send them scurrying off to their next class.
Damien Thorne had an origin story. The beyond-tragic kind that could either have landed him in rehab or made him a superhero. Despite the fact that—or maybe because—both his parents were taken from him at a young age, he was on top in our school. Straight A’s, captain of the lacrosse team, resident of an estate—an actual estate—at the edge of town, and possessor of the most intense, most magnetic stare I’d ever encountered.
He was handsome, but not like the jock good-looks of Shawn Coleman or the model-y thing that James had going. Damien looked like something out of a book—a Heathcliff, someone dark and brooding but with just the tiniest hint—was it his mouth? his eyes?—of humor.
“Sorry about those guys,” he said, messing up his black hair and then shoving his hand into a pocket.
“Why should you be sorry? You didn’t make them idiots.”
He laughed. His nose scrunched up a little when he did, and I realized he was even cuter up close.
“Marnie Campbell, defender of the literary underdog,” he said.
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” I asked, genuinely bewildered.
“Yes, it is. I like a good subplot,” he said, looking down at my paper and touching the A+ inked there.
I grabbed it up and shoved it in my bag.
“Sounds like you practically wrote some monster fan fic. Does your love of the antihero extend to other classics?” I glanced up. He was smiling, joking—but not meanly.
I managed a shrug. “Some.”
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked unblinkingly.
“Homework,” I said, not sure where this was going.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re going out with me.”
“Why?” I almost whispered.
“Because I don’t think anyone here is nearly as interesting as you.”
Was he serious? Damien had said maybe five words to me in the seven years I’d known him. It didn’t make any sense. But my heart began double-timing in my chest. Damien Thorne was asking me out.
The warning bell rang. I knew a girl like me should not take an offer from a boy like him.
Stories like this did not end well.
Not for girls who got called Monster. But the way Damien was looking at me . . .
I wasn’t the prettiest girl in school. But neither was Everly. Somehow she had everyone convinced that we lay on opposite ends of the spectrum. But pretty wasn’t always symmetry and flawless skin. Pretty was sometimes a verb. And Everly prettied better than anyone. She tossed her hair and batted her lashes and owned every room. I slouched and hid and tried to take up as little space as possible.
I returned Damien’s stare, thinking suddenly about all the things I’d never allowed myself to think about. Holding hands in the hallways. Going to prom. Kissing outside my front door.
There was more to Damien than just his good looks—it was something behind his eyes, or about his mouth. An intelligence.
A curiosity.
A promise.
I thought about saying yes.
But then he took a sudden step back.
“Don’t answer yet,” he said, taking another backward stride toward the door. “I like a little suspense.”
× × ×
I was the girl who lived in that house. You know it. The one that’s been worn down to the point of no return, where you wonder what’s buried in the backyard.
When I got home it was empty except for the flea-market furniture and broken TV. The fridge was empty too. I grabbed a handful of stale cereal from the cabinet and made my way to my room, past the peeling paint and up the termite-infested staircase. The house said everything about Dad. He didn’t care what it looked like. He didn’t care how embarrassing it was. It was a roof and walls and it was the bare minimum of what he needed for himself and for me.
Dad had his music—though he hadn’t quote-unquote made it. Some part of me was irked that he hadn’t, that he wasn’t a better musician, more successful. After all, he’d traded me for his music a long time ago. But the music Dad loved wasn’t rock and roll, it was jazz. And he wasn’t a star, he was a good bass man. He’d played on some pretty big records and for pretty big jazz stars, if you liked that sort of thing.
Dad and Mom had been those kids who got pregnant in high school. Mom wanted to give me up for adoption, but Grams took me in and raised me. Dad visited his mom and me for holidays and weekends. But my mother never did. Instead she committed suicide when I was three. Hanged herself. I used to wonder why she didn’t do something easier, like take pills. Now I think Mom didn’t want easy, she wanted certain. Hanging takes commitment. Hanging means no second chances. I used to have nightmares of her eyes bulging, her neck breaking as she hung suspended from the beams of her bedroom ceiling. Grams never really talked about it, and my dad pretended like Mom never existed.
And this week he pretended harder. Mom’s suicide-iversary was three days away and every hour of it, every minute, Dad would fill with more gigs, more girls, and more booze than ever. And that was saying a lot. I didn’t blame him for this week. It couldn’t be easy to lose Mom the way that he did. But I did blame him for the rest of the time. Because when he wasn’t forgetting about her, he was forgetting about me.
Slasher Girls & Monster Boys Page 14
