The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  “That Gemma?” Camilla said, pointing towards the cliff at the shape moseying along it.

  “Looks it. Was wondering where she ran off to.”

  Camilla plunged the umbrella into the sand. “Let’s get rid of her tonight.” She touched his shoulder. “Just you and me?”

  Trent took her hand and kissed it. She didn’t flinch. “Just you and me.”

  TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA

  They wanted the night to themselves? Hours later after her mom broke the news, Gemma was still doing double-takes and picking her jaw up off the floor. Flabbergasted, she felt like some stupid cartoon character who had just learned the sun was made of out gold. They wanted the night to themselves? Did they really? Or did the Dread Clock want them to itself? Either prospect seemed preposterous, and in neither one could she figure out a way to be present. Either she lacked enough cunning to stay (her mom was basically kicking her out), or enough courage to fight back (what terrible things would the Dread Clock make Dad do that he hadn’t before to her?).

  “You haven’t been to Jen’s in a while,” Mom said.

  That’s where they were headed to at this muggy hour of 7:00 PM. To Jen’s. For some reason, Mom had called Jen’s mother directly. Was it coincidence? Or did the Dread Clock know Jen had texted her that morning. Connor Prendergast’s website had Gemma so messed up, she almost regretted reading it. The only things she could truly do with that information was either ignore it, try to destroy the clock herself, or run for the hills. Again, she lacked the cunning and courage to carry out any of those three options.

  “What’s wrong, Gem?” Mom bobbed up and down in the driver’s seat. The closer they got to Jen’s, the worse the road became. “I thought you’d be happy for us.”

  Gemma pressed the side of her head to the window. The vibrations from the engine rattled her skull. Was she happy? She wasn’t even in the truck, anymore. She was outside it, in the fields that ran alongside Jen’s neighborhood of one-story homes and rusty bicycles. There she stood, watching the world and its events unfold around her. The field was sparse, chapped, like a long stretch of a dried lip, and her company poor. Scram was there, and a few grubs, which Scram, generally out of jealousy, ended up scarfing down. Unlike the beach, where she built castles for the tide to tear down, here, in this forgotten field, her materials were dirt, dust, and the sweat of her brow. What could she build with that? What could she possibly do that would make a difference?

  Anyway, Mom was out of the house, away from the Dread Clock, and she still wanted to make things work with Dad. Maybe all they needed was a little chaos to have them come to their senses.

  She whispered, “Fuck,” and closed her eyes for the rest of the ride.

  Gemma spent most of the night sending texts to her mom, asking her how things were going and giving her suggestions on what to do, as though she were some expert on marriage. Mom turned down every idea, told her to enjoy her time with her friends, and then around 10:50 PM stopped texting altogether.

  “Hey, Gem,” Jen said, nudging Gemma with her foot. They were in Jen’s basement on the floor, sitting in a circle while anime played in the background. “What’s up? Everything alright?”

  Gemma smiled, set her phone down. “I’m fine. Mom’s acting weird.”

  Addie, who was sitting behind Jen, doing her hair, leaned out and said, “Sorry, Gem.”

  Gemma waved her off. She had known Jen and Addie for almost two years. They were a package deal. If you were friends with one of them, then by default you were friends with the other. Those two had known each other since pre-school, so there was a lot of history between them, inside jokes and things like that, that oftentimes made Gemma feel like an outsider. Like her parents, she pushed them away, and like her parents, they never gave up on her. If she told them a fraction of the freaky stuff that was going on in her home, would they believe her? Something deep down inside her, low and gravelly, almost mechanical, told her she had to try. Some secrets weren’t meant to be kept. She learned that from Mom and Dad. They were their secrets, and nothing else.

  Jen uncrossed her legs and sprawled them out. “Summer is going to fly by, I know it.”

  Addie went to work on another of Jen’s braids. “Don’t say that. I can’t stand school. God, I hate it. Our class is full of retards. The teachers are douchebags. My mom always says I’ll regret wanting to be older, but I’m pretty sure I won’t. Being a teenager sucks.”

  “I don’t know,” Gemma said. Thinking back to her mom and dad in the supposed Black Hour, she added, “What’s so great about being an adult?”

  “Uh, you get to do whatever you want?”

  Gemma shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of our parents ever do what they want.”

  Jen piped up. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any adult do what they want.”

  Addie stopped braiding. “That’s because they all have kids. We’re the problem. I’ll fully admit it.” She scooted away from Jen. “You’re telling me you love school, Gem?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not that bad.”

  Addie’s face went dark. She let down her blonde tendrils and said, “Not for you guys, apparently.”

  Jen scooted herself in between the two of them. “Listen, it sucks for everyone.”

  “I can’t get through one day without embarrassing myself. Either I fall out of my desk, I fall down the stairs, or I fart in gym class—”

  Gemma and Jen started to crack up.

  Addie, half-serious, belted, “Shut up.”

  Jen nudged Addie back onto her hands. “You’re a hot mess. That’s not the school’s fault.”

  “It made me this way.” Addie lay down on her back. “I used to be so cool in grade school.”

  “What happened?” Gemma asked, snidely.

  “Boys,” Addie said, the word rolling off her tongue as though it were as heavy as she made it sound. “And stuff.”

  Jen whispered to Gemma, “It’s the ‘stuff’ that really messed her up.”

  Gemma laughed. “Gets us all in the end, this mysterious ‘stuff.’”

  Addie reared up. “Oh, I’m sorry I’m not as extravagant as you two.”

  “You mean eloquent?”

  “Bah!” She lay back down. “Everything’s pissing me off right now.”

  “Was my time of the month, too,” Gemma said. She furrowed her brow. “Only lasted like a day.”

  “Lucky ducky,” Addie rumbled. “Hate being a girl.”

  Jen shook her head at Gemma. To Addie, she said, “You’re a real treat tonight. Let’s not do this. It’s the beginning of the summer. Forget about school and all that crap.”

  Addie held the sides of her head and made the sounds a monk might make when trying to clear their mind.

  “Gemma, seriously, though—” Jen threw a pillow at Addie but that just made her meditate louder, “—what’s going on with your mom?”

  Mom? She reached for her cell phone. 11:15 PM. No text or missed call. Quickly she sent her mom a message asking how everything was going. Maybe go out to a bar with Uncle Jasper, or hang out in town, she thought and then texted.

  “Gem?”

  She glanced back at Jen. Addie was sitting up now, too, having finally come out of her selfish shell.

  Oh nothing. Dad may have tried to abuse me, and Mom is obsessed with a clock that may be madness incarnate. Gemma wanted to say those things, but since she didn’t think they’d really believe her, at least not at this moment, instead she whispered, “They’re fighting again. It’s bad.”

  Jen’s eyes softened. “Is that why you keep checking your phone?”

  My phone? She turned on the screen. 11:27 PM. No text or missed call.

  “You know, you can stay at my house for a few days,” Jen offered. “It’s summer. My parents won’t care. If it’s, you know, really bad at home.”

  It is, Gemma thought. But instead, she shook her head. “It just scares me. Seeing them like that. It’s like… it’s like I don’t know who t
hey are, anymore.”

  Addie leaned in. “Do they hit each other?”

  “Not exactly.” She swallowed hard the confession in her throat. “I don’t know what to do.” She checked her phone. 11:28 PM. “I think they’re getting better.”

  “Really?” Jen’s face beamed.

  “But everything else is getting worse.” Gemma continued.

  Jen’s head dropped. “Oh.”

  “How’s that possible?” Addie asked. “Shouldn’t it be the opposite?”

  Gemma’s lips were sealed. She had already said too much. It was a mistake coming here. She needed to be at home with Mom and Dad to see if the Dread Clock were the real Dread Clock, and midnight the actual Black Hour. If last night were a fluke, she wouldn’t know until tomorrow. And if it wasn’t, god knows what was about to happen in that house thirty-two minutes from now.

  She started texting Uncle Jasper when Addie said, “Hey, Gem.”

  “Huh?” She stopped. Her text simply said, I’m not home, but I think things are bad there. Then deleted the text.

  “Tell us a scary story.”

  Jen cocked her head. “What? No. Not right now. She’s got something—”

  Addie put up her hand. The way her eyes shone, the way her face looked more angular—so focused and in tune—Gemma could tell what she was getting at.

  “It’s not really my story,” Gemma started, “not yet, at least. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

  Addie shrugged. “That’s cool.”

  Jen, protective as always, glared at Addie.

  There was no hiding behind what was about to happen. Gemma had make it perfectly clear that everything was perfectly wrong at home. Addie was egging her on to tell a scary story, something which Gemma loved doing at sleepovers. Jen and Addie weren’t stupid, either. For the next ten minutes, anything that Gemma said would be immediately interpreted as having to do with whatever was bothering her. She could dress it up however she liked, but like her parents, she was now her secret, and nothing else.

  So, like all wounded storytellers, Gemma gave them a fake smile, disappeared inside herself, and let her tale take over.

  “For little… Connor, it started with a nightmare that never came to an end. When he was seven years old, he went to bed one night and dreamed that his parents had abandoned him.”

  Gemma paused, looked at her phone. 11:35 PM. Focusing on those four numbers, she then continued.

  “In the nightmare, his parents hadn’t actually, you know, abandoned him. They were still home. But they had, kind of, divided the place in two. Right down the middle. A red line that ran through every room, even if the room was really small. Connor could go wherever he wanted in the house, but his mom and dad never talked to each other. And if his mom or dad happened to be in the same room, on, you know, opposite sides of the line, they would stop, stare at each other, and start drooling, like they had rabies or something.

  “Like I said, though, Connor could go wherever he wanted in the house. He could spend the night in the den with his dad, or upstairs in his mom’s bedroom. But every time he did, they would take something away from him. A toy, or some of his allowance. Maybe one of his pets. Sometimes, they took his friends, or a few hours of sleep. Sometimes, they even took words off his tongue, or memories out of his mind. He couldn’t say certain words anymore without feeling sick to his stomach, or think about certain things without feeling dizzy. So he just gave them up instead.

  “Eventually, Connor stopped visiting his mom and dad. He didn’t really have much left to give them, and he was afraid of what would happen if he came to them empty-handed. Near the end of the nightmare, right before Connor woke up, he saw his mom and dad walking down the hall on their respective sides, carrying the last two things he gave them. His dad had one part of Connor’s heart, and his mother the other. At the end of the hall, there was a set of double doors he’d never seen before. His parents opened the doors at the same time, spitting and snarling at each other as they did so, and then they went into the room behind it.”

  Jen leaned forward. In a whisper, she said, “What was in the other room?”

  “Everything Connor ever gave to them. You see, there was this clock. I mean, cabinet.” She blushed. “The room was painted black and totally empty, except for this cabinet. Inside it, on every shelf, were all the things Connor’s mom and dad took from him. His toys and clothes. His fingernails or his sweat. Memories, too, in jars; and food and snacks. Some of his friends were in the drawers. His favorite pet was tied to the back of the cabinet. It was everything he had or had been, you know, except, it all looked really messed up. Like, all that stuff had been gone for so long, he didn’t recognize it anymore, or it grossed him out to look at it. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”

  Addie, chewing on her thumb, said, “It wasn’t?”

  Gemma shook her head. “You see, the red line that divided the house stopped at the cabinet. So his mom and dad could use it together. Taking away Connor’s childhood was, pretty much, the only thing they could do together. But the worst of it was what was in the back of the cabinet, behind all the stuff. It was this dark creature. His mom and dad called it the Black… Mass. It was this sticky, black ooze that clung to everything inside the cabinet. But it had bones, so it wasn’t all liquid. The nightmare told Connor the bones were the bones of children. You see, all the moms and dads in the world like his would take and take. They’d take more than they could give. Without even realizing it, really. Until, one day, like Connor at the end of the nightmare, the kids had nothing left. So the parents would skin them and feed the bones to the Black Mass in the cabinet.”

  Jen gasped. Addie cringed and shook her head.

  “Right as his mom and dad brought out the knives to flay him, Connor woke up from the nightmare. Though he should have been dead, right before his eyes opened up, he remembered something else. He remembered being inside the Black Mass, watching his mom and dad walk through the house, scraping away at the red line that ran down the middle of it. Because, you know, now that Connor was gone, the Black Mass that they had put in the cabinet would leave them alone. Because Connor was gone, they could be happy again.”

  Jen, looking absolutely defeated, said, “Gemma, that’s such a—”

  Gemma cut her off. “That’s not the end of the story. Like I said, the nightmare was just the beginning. Connor woke up, drenched in sweat, really early in the morning. The sun had just come up, so there was some light in his room, but not much. He always went to sleep with a glass of water on his nightstand. So he was guzzling that and, just as he finished off the water, he saw through the glass a little red smudge on the ground.

  “He freaked out. He dropped the glass, and it shattered on the floor. Connor crawled to the foot of his bed and, even though it was still pretty dark in there, he could tell that there was part of a red line, just like the one from his nightmare, on his bedroom floor.

  “His mom came in and asked him what happened. He said he had a nightmare, and she gave him a big hug and that helped him get tired again. But on her way out, even after she looked directly at the red line on the ground, which had never been there before, she didn’t say anything. Connor couldn’t figure out if she couldn’t see it or if she didn’t care.

  “Connor tried to think of what the red line could have been. Maybe he spilled something. Maybe it was paint. He liked to paint. After his mom left the room, he got down on the ground and tried to scratch it off. But nothing worked. His fingernails, the butter knife under his bed—none of it worked.

  “So he snuck downstairs, determined to get a screwdriver or a sharper knife. His dad had tools, too, so he thought he could get some sandpaper. But when he went down the stairs, he noticed something was different. In the… living room. It was too dark in there, so he had to turn on the light to see it all the way. But yeah, against the wall, a new cabinet. Just like the one from his nightmare. It was empty. There wasn’t anything on its shelves yet. But when he saw it, he start
ed to cry.

  “His dad must have heard him, because he came running down the stairs. Thinking the cabinet must have scared him, like, you know, shadows from a tree in the night might have, his dad told him everything was okay. He said that the cabinet had always been there. They had just moved it out into the open.

  “As the week went on, the line inside Connor’s room started to get longer. No one said anything about it. Once it was out of his room and in the hall, his parents started acting weird. They kept asking him for little things. A coin. Or five minutes of his time. It was happening just like it had happened in his nightmare.

  “One night, when the red line was almost down the stairs, he went to the cabinet with a hammer and tried to break it. His parents had started arguing a lot more, and he was pretty sure it was the cabinet’s fault. Every time he hit the cabinet, sticky, black ooze came out. And the more sticky, black ooze there was, the faster the red line grew, and the more his parents fought and took from him.”

  Addie whispered, “What did he do?”

  “After a few weeks, Connor waited for his parents to go to bed and started packing his things. He had a couple of bags from vacation. He didn’t want to be fed to the Black Mass, and he didn’t want his parents to be unhappy. He packed up all his clothes, a pillow, his blanket from when he was born; he brought his toothbrush, some toothpaste. He wrote a note, explaining to his parents why he had left. But the red line had taken over the whole house at that point, so the only place he could put it was in the cabinet, because that was the only place his mom and dad could share, like in the nightmare.

  “Connor was gone before his parents woke up. He knew that, if he heard them in their room, he wouldn’t be able to leave. When he had tried to give the note to the cabinet, the Black Mass almost seemed disappointed. It tried to eat him, but it wasn’t strong enough because they hadn’t fed it enough. But there was one problem: his parents had taken so much from him, he wasn’t strong enough to fight off the Black Mass, either. So with his belongings, he took it with him, into the world.”