Sawkill Girls

by Claire Legrand

  They would wait, together, until the right moment.

  It was almost time.

  Almost.

  Marion

  The Cold Pillow

  Whoever was kissing Marion was doing a good job.

  God, it felt good to be kissed.

  Over the past couple of years, she’d had a not inconsiderable number of wild fantasies involving virtually everyone she’d ever met.

  No one seemed interested in kissing Marion in real life, so in her mind, she did it for them. Mr. Romero, her bookish history teacher. Katrina Day, the beautiful black girl who played the piano and used to sit in front of Marion on the bus. Duke O’Hara, the big, burly white boy with the gorgeous red curls.

  In her mind, she’d straddle them on her couch, she’d tug them into the stairwell at school, she’d sneak into the quiet stacks at the library and let them press her up against the books and kiss her until her head buzzed.

  But those kisses were never soft, like this one. They were urgent and frantic; they’d wake her up and have her slipping her hand between her legs, craving release.

  This kiss, though—whoever was kissing her was so gentle it made her chest ache. Soft lips brushed against her own, whispered warm along her cheeks and jawline, traced her eyebrows with a sigh.

  Once she thought she felt her dream lover’s tongue slip between her lips—cautious, respectful, playful.

  She arched up out of bed and awoke, a soft cry on her lips.

  Her lips.

  A moth sat there, on the curve of her bottom lip. A white moth with black spots like eyes on its wings. One, two, the wings beat slow and sure. Fur and tiny legs and twitching antennae, tickling Marion’s mouth.

  She screamed and smacked it away, hitting her jaw in the process.

  The moth flew off, toward the window.

  It wasn’t alone.

  Hundreds, thousands—the room was full of them. Tiny white moths, silent but frantic, an army of those black wing-eyes staring at her. They swirled around her bed, her legs. She flung off the sheets, scrambled to the center of the room. The moths covered the ceiling fan, the walls, the carpet. Charlotte’s room shivered, a four-walled mass of wings and little furry feet.

  “Get out of here!” Marion screamed, her skin wriggling and alive. “Get out, get away!”

  She grabbed her sweater from the back of Charlotte’s desk chair, sending up a flurry of moths. She swung the sweater through the room, smacking everything she could find. She knocked over the desk lamp; she shoved their father’s framed art off the walls. She shook out the curtains, sent the moths flying. They were confused, they were a tornado. They settled on her arms and between her fingers and toes. They tugged her toward the window, and she couldn’t fight them. They were tiny but they were many.

  They whispered words she couldn’t understand—high, soft voices, childlike, murmuring over one another.

  Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep.

  The moth words fought their way into her mouth and down her throat like a sharp bite of food that hadn’t been chewed properly. She hunched over, gasping. Not the hair, not again.

  He’ll follow you home—

  The bedroom door flew open.

  The moths rose into the air as one—silent wings flapping madly, black eyes staring.

  Freed, Marion crouched on the floor by the window, hands over her head. Duck and cover.

  “What do you want?” she screamed.

  “Marion? Marion!” Hands grabbed her shoulders, shook her. “Stop screaming! What is it, baby?”

  Marion’s eyes flew open, trembling with terrified tears.

  “Marion?” It was her mother, dark hair messy from sleep, discolored circles under her eyes because, Marion was convinced, her father’s death had painted them there permanently. “What happened?” her mother asked. “Why were you screaming?” She glanced past Marion. “Where’s Charlotte?”

  Charlotte. Charlotte.

  Suddenly, Marion knew what the moths had been whispering. A queasy, hot-cold feeling descended upon her skull like the drop of the final velvet curtain.

  The moths hadn’t been trying to kill her.

  They’d been trying to tell her something.

  Marion pulled free of her mother’s grip and stumbled to Charlotte’s bed. She’d fallen asleep there, early this morning, Charlotte’s sleepy voice singing lullabies at her ear.

  Marion felt Charlotte’s pillow, the mattress where Charlotte had curled up beside her.

  Where Marion had slept: warm and worn soft from Marion tossing and turning.

  Where Charlotte had been, only a few hours ago: Cold. Cold like the open window. Cold like Marion’s legs, shivering last night on the porch while she watched Chief Harlow drive Zoey away.

  Marion stared at the pillow in her hands.

  “Marion?” Her mother’s voice, suddenly nervous. “What is it?”

  The wings returned, buzzing at her ear, in her teeth, down her throat—not the moths’ wings. The other ones, shiny and fluttering. The ones that belonged to the bones. A high whine threaded through the buzzing sound—one long nail, dragging across a shiny slab of metal. Across and down, down, down.

  Marion followed the sound to the open window and looked down, squinting. The dawn light illuminated the grooves trailing through the flower bed. Ten furrows—eight fingers, two thumbs. Charlotte-size. They carved jagged lines through the dirt. Uprooted begonias and small chunks of mud lined their path.

  Then, a few feet away, the marks vanished. Undisturbed grass. The soft call of a mourning dove.

  “Marion?” Her mother knelt before her. “Where’s Charlotte?”

  Marion stared at her. She wanted to throw up everything she contained, stuff the viscera inside her mother’s mouth so she wouldn’t have to hear her talk, ever again, and ask horrible questions that required horrible answers.

  But instead, she croaked, “Charlotte’s gone.”

  IT HAD HAPPENED AGAIN.

  And it would continue to happen, over and over—here on the Rock, and elsewhere throughout the wide-reaching world. The Rock would feel every meaningless death like a stab to the flesh of its great old aching heart.

  If the Rock didn’t act quickly, more would die, and soon.

  But if it was simply a matter of action, the Rock would have long ago flattened every last one of the invaders into the ground, then swallowed them into oblivion.

  Slaying the beast was a task the Rock could not complete alone.

  The Rock felt its daughters’ feet beat angry paths into its ravaged flesh, and sent out its call, and waited for them to wake up.

  Val

  The Softie

  Would the woman ever stop crying?

  Val stood at the entrance to the Althouses’ living room, wet tissues crumpled in her fists.

  Chief Harlow and his deputy had arrived, and they were asking Mrs. Althouse questions about her missing daughter. It was a valiant effort but ultimately fruitless, because of the aforementioned crying.

  Ugly crying, too, it was full-blown sobbing, with snot trails and great heaving breaths and unintelligible wailed words.

  Val couldn’t stand to look at the woman.

  Val’s lungs were stones in her chest, being screwed tighter and tighter into place by a relentless machine.

  Val’s ears rang with the memory of Charlotte’s screams, and if she thought about the expression on Charlotte’s face for one more second, that look right at the end when she appealed desperately to Val for help, then Val thought she very well might beat her head against the wall until her brains gave out.

  But, for Val to do that, to put an end to things, she would have to scrape together a shred or two of courage.

  So instead, she swallowed her disgust like downing a mouthful of poison, and watched Pamela Althouse sob.

  If Val had disappeared, her mother wouldn’t think to put on such a display. She would dab her eyes on occasion, answer Chief Harlow’s questions succinctly and with a
brave little smile that would make even that brainless deputy, brute that he was, gentle his voice and wonder if maybe Lucy Mortimer’s soft hand on his shoulder meant he was special.

  “I don’t know what else to tell you,” said Marion. She sat beside her mother, holding her mother’s hand. Back straight, eyes clear, voice steady.

  Mostly.

  Val could hear a tiny trembling thread in that soft voice, which probably no one else noticed because of her mother’s fit.

  But Val noticed. Val noticed how Marion’s other hand clutched the starfish charm around her throat.

  Val noticed everything.

  “I fell asleep next to Charlotte in her bed,” Marion continued. “It was maybe three, three thirty.”

  Chief Harlow scribbled something in his notebook. “Shortly after I took Zoey home.”

  “That’s right.” Marion inhaled, her breath catching on tears, but her shoulders remained square. “She sang me to sleep. When I woke up this morning, she was gone.”

  When Val swallowed, she tasted mud. She glanced down at her fingernails—clean, now, spotless and smooth. Cleaning her fingernails was always the first thing she did, after.

  She kept her eyes open until they watered.

  “Miss Mortimer?”

  Val met Chief Harlow’s eyes right as a tear slid down her cheek. She wiped her nose. “Yes, sir?”

  Chief Harlow looked over his notes. “You had a party last night. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Charlotte attended this party?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He glanced up at her, his face unreadable. “It was in the usual place, I assume?”

  Val bit the inside of her lip. Oh, how it grated on Ed Harlow that he couldn’t do a damn thing about Val’s parties in the woods, with the dry-brush bonfires and the underage drinking, and God only knows what else those kids got up to in the dark.

  Once, he’d tried. One Sunday morning, he’d come marching up to Kingshead at dawn, Val at his elbow.

  “Seems your daughter throws parties in the woods on Down Hill,” the chief had said, once Lucy Mortimer opened the door. “I found piles of beer cans. The place reeked of alcohol.”

  “I see.” Ms. Mortimer’s blue eyes had slid to Val, taking her in from head to toe—clouds of blond hair, wide curls falling loose after a night outside in the damp.

  “If you’ll come with me, please, Chief,” said Val’s mother, and then she and Chief Edward Harlow had disappeared into the Kingshead library, and Val had fled to her room.

  A few minutes later, she’d watched the chief drift out to his car, like a fish cast off a line, caught but now discarded, and more than a little shaken.

  He’d paused at the driver’s side door, looked up at the window where Val stood between the drapes. He’d quickly averted his eyes, then slipped into his car and driven away, wheels spitting up gravel.

  He hadn’t bothered Val about her parties again.

  “Yes, sir,” Val said, showing Chief Harlow her sweetest smile. “The usual place.”

  His jaw clenched.

  “Charlotte and I stayed out until, I guess it was two or so,” Val continued. “We walked back to Kingshead together. Then she went to the cottage, and I went to my bedroom.”

  Chief Harlow turned a page in his notebook. “Others can vouch for you?”

  Val nearly laughed. Yes, others could vouch for her. She could spin a hundred lies and find a hundred people to back her up without question.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I can send a few people from the party to the police station for questioning, if you’d like. Would that be helpful?”

  Chief Harlow ignored her, his mouth thin. “And, Marion, you didn’t go to this party?”

  Val watched Marion closely. No, Marion hadn’t gone to the party. She’d gone for a stroll in the woods with her new friend.

  “No,” said Marion. “I was at home, reading, until maybe about one. I went on a walk and found Zoey. We hung out until you found us.”

  Marion glanced at Val, those big gray eyes of hers red-rimmed and sleepless. Val’s throat zipped up to the back of her tongue.

  “If that’s all, Chief,” Val said, turning away, “I’ve got to be going. My mother and I are bringing lunch to the search parties.”

  As Val left the cottage, she felt Marion Althouse’s gaze resting on the hot tense spot between her shoulder blades like the scorch of a brand.

  “You’re upset.”

  Val fell to her knees as soon as she entered the stones, and lowered her head onto her arms. Breathing in the chalky white rocks, the caked black mud, the thick tangy scent that clung to the trees after a kill night, Val almost felt like herself again.

  “Look up. Let me see you.”

  Val obeyed, sitting back on her heels. The hated boy-child stood before her, shimmering dark at the edges, eyes white and alert and unblinking. After eating, while he digested, his form shifted, and it was more difficult for him to believably look like a creature of this earth. Though today, Val noticed, only a few hours after his meal, he was already regaining cohesion. He could stand on his own; he didn’t need to lean those pudgy boy hands against a tree to prop himself up.

  He was indeed growing stronger. How many more kills would he need before he could break free and end them all?

  Three?

  Five?

  One?

  A cold, hard finger curled under Val’s chin, forcing her to look up at the swaying branches, the half-baked sunlight fighting its way down.

  “Who upset you?” he asked, inspecting her. “Who, Val?”

  “No one,” she replied. “I’m just tired. We had a long night.”

  “You’re lying to me,” came his cold voice, and then he was gone, off in the trees somewhere, shadow-shaped, brooding. “Stop lying to me.”

  Val lifted her fingers to her nose; she still smelled Charlotte’s blood. He’d sprayed her with it. An unfortunate accident.

  A loneliness so profound it felt like she’d been battered with it settled hard and cold in Val’s belly. Her eyes filled with tears she didn’t have to fake.

  But she wasn’t really alone, was she? Mortimer women never were. They lived at Kingshead, they kept their mothers’ name, and they miscarried boys until they birthed a girl. They were vigorous and vital and so lovely they made people cry for wanting them, and they would have been long-lived, if he had allowed them that. They never got sick, and they never broke bones. The blood in their veins wasn’t entirely their own, and that gave them power over the unwashed masses, made others sit up and listen, too afraid to interrupt. There was a magnetism to the Mortimer women, and they knew it, and they used it. It was their right, this witchery; they’d given up their souls for it.

  So they grew up on the island, these enslaved goddesses, and taught their daughters how to keep him happy. How to serve him and feed him, how to guide his blind and fumbling self to the kill and lure in the catch, because it was that much sweeter to him, when his meals came willingly. A Mortimer woman taught her daughter how to keep him solid and strong in this world, how to never question his orders, how to remain in peak physical condition so he could draw upon her energy when he needed to and fortify himself.

  And to never, ever speak of the Far Place—never ask what it is, never ask where it can be found, never ask why he fears it—not unless, her grandmother had said, wryly, you crave his wrath.

  But sometimes Val did crave his wrath, if only because feeling it meant feeling something.

  She closed her eyes. She needed to calm down.

  “Tell me you’re proud of me.” It was barely a whisper.

  “I’m proud of you,” came his voice, curious and fond from the shadows.

  Thank God, he hadn’t left her. If he left her, she’d have nothing. If he left her, who would she be?

  She’d thought about it, on occasion: Leaving. Rejecting this life she’d been born into and moving across the world and hiding. Talking to no one.
>
  Hurting no one.

  But he would find her, wherever she went. Val was sure of that. Or maybe another one would. She’d learned that much, from his sated ramblings after eating: He wasn’t the only of his kind. In fact, there were many.

  Maybe it was a good thing that she couldn’t run and escape him. Maybe, without his presence and his will and his instructions, holding her up from the inside out, she’d collapse.

  Maybe, after he fed enough to break free of her family, Val would disintegrate. Purposeless and aimless.

  Would that be so terrible? The world would be better off.

  But the idea of disintegrating terrified her. Val wanted to live. And if this life she’d been born into was the only one allowed her, then here she would stay, gutless and shackled.

  She licked her dry lips. Her head fizzed, chaotic. She couldn’t stop thinking of Marion’s soft round face, how she’d held it together while her mother and her house and her life fell apart around her.

  A quiet ache bloomed in Val’s chest. She knew that feeling. She breathed that feeling.

  “You’re shaking,” he observed, nearer now.

  “I’m tired,” she replied, hating the puny quality of her voice. “And Charlotte . . .”

  Charlotte.

  Natalie.

  Thora.

  “Charlotte what?” he asked.

  Val shook her head. “Charlotte won’t stop screaming in my mind.”

  After a moment, he said, sounding pleased, “You’re so weak.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. Her mother never cared about the girls she helped him hunt. Her mother never cracked, but Val was fracturing all over.

  “You need a distraction.”

  Soft lips touched Val’s own. She opened her mouth and her eyes, saw the pale-eyed, pale-faced form of Dr. Wayland bending over her. A small thrill shook her: He’d shifted forms so quickly it startled her. Once, it would have taken him long minutes. Once, he would have writhed in the dirt, half-made—part boy-child, part man, part monster—while Val watched in silence, guarding him.

  But now—a blink, a shift, and he was changed, and he was kissing her.