The other portraits in Lisbeth’s basement flitted through Ben’s mind as he tore down the hallway. The jawlines, light eyes, and dark hair of the boys in the portraits were the same as his. They were the same as Charlie’s.
He flung open the front door and faced the cold world. He still had Elizabeth Swann’s letters gripped in one hand. Bub was on his shoulder, screaming.
Ben thought of the ancient chain he’d found in the kitchen. He imagined it squeezing Charlie’s small body tight against the charred ruin of the elder tree.
The Preservation Society meetings, the Swannhaven Trust meetings, the old-fashioned church sermons, the cattle cleanup: Ben had bought it all. Swannhaven was special. It was a community that took care of its own. It was like no other place on God’s earth. He wondered just how close he’d come to getting sucked into this insanity.
Above the whirl of the wind: a gunshot. Sound moved strangely here, and the direction was impossible to determine. He heard it shudder up the mountains before it faded.
As he stood on his front steps, a shadow separated itself from the dark of the north woods. He watched as it began to move up to the Crofts. Then Ben saw another one, a few paces from the first. This one was wider around the shoulders. It was difficult to see their black outlines against the mottled banks of snow. Now there were three figures moving up the Drop. He looked to the west and saw more there, wraiths across the frozen fields.
Ben ducked back into the house, gasping in the thin air. This is not your imagination, he told himself. He peered through the window to make sure.
It was then that he stopped being quiet and began to yell. It was then that he stopped waiting and began to run.
55
Ben called for them as he ran, though he doubted that Caroline and Charlie were still in the house. The villagers had taken to the forest to look for them. That was where Ben would go, too. He knew he had to leave the Crofts before the people coming up the Drop reached him. He knew this as well as he’d ever known anything. Every part of him screamed to leave this place.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” he whispered into Bub’s hair. The boy’s cries were klaxons in his ears. “But we need to be quiet now,” he said. The boy buried his head in Ben’s shoulder. His sobs were lost in layers of down.
From one of the back doors, Ben searched the Drop for shapes in the night. He saw nothing but the icy fields that lay between the Crofts and the forest. Above all of them, the mountains towered. Silver cirrus clouds streaked the black sky above their heights.
The wind’s gusts burned at his face as he ran the fields. They whipped a dusting of snow along the land like white water. Ben’s tracks disappeared after him as if he ceased to exist beyond the moment his trailing foot left the ground.
Ben chanced a few looks over his shoulder, but the dark house did not tell him anything. He ran as fast as he could through the deep drifts. He made for the tree line. Elizabeth Swann had written about demons in the wood, and Lisbeth had told him about the wendigo, but Ben did not believe any of that. No demons necessary where men suffice. He fell only once, and he managed to twist himself so that he didn’t land on the baby. He lay there for a moment. Beyond the lattice of clouds above, stars blinked their cold light. He stood up and threw himself again into the banks of white.
His ragged breaths made his throat raw, but he kept his pace up as long as he could. When he finally had to slow down, he saw a series of footsteps ahead of him. They were impossible in the wind, but they were there. A fluke of the currents. Some of the prints were small, made with child’s boots, and the ones alongside them were a bit bigger. He did not question them but followed.
Ben glanced back at the Crofts. When he turned ahead again, a huge man stood in his way.
He was dressed in bulky clothes and was draped in fur. He must have been at least half a foot taller than Ben. His face was heavily bearded with a wild tangle of hair, but his small eyes held no malice.
“JoJo,” Ben said.
The man nodded. “Come.”
His voice had a timbre that seemed to begin in his feet. Even in the wind, Ben could smell him.
“Where are they?” Ben asked. He did not move.
“Come,” the man said again. With a thick walking staff, he pointed to the woods beyond the lake. He reached out his hands as if to take Bub, but Ben only held the baby more tightly.
“No,” he told the big man.
“Hurry,” the man said. He began to run toward the forest, and, after a moment, Ben followed him.
“Why did you take him?” Ben asked when he caught up. Despite his size, the man ran like a deer.
“Wasn’t safe.”
“Because of the villagers?” Ben asked.
JoJo nodded.
“Where are Caroline and Charlie?”
The man pointed ahead to the trees. They ran side by side now, their steps synchronized. Along the ring of woods, the trees swayed in time to their pace.
“They blame you for the fire,” Ben said. “For Mark and Liam Swann dying.”
“Mark was my friend.” JoJo shook his head. “They wanted to hurt him. Like they want to hurt yours. I tried to help.”
“So you started the fire to stop them from hurting Mark.”
“They don’t stop,” JoJo said. “Was it wrong?” he asked, looking at him.
Ben saw in his eyes that he wanted a real answer. He could tell that JoJo had been asking himself that question for thirty years.
JoJo blinked. “What I did?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. He could not say what was right and what was wrong when you found yourself in a place where the only choices left were bad ones.
“Did you set the fire in our shed? Did you leave the deer’s head?” Ben asked.
“Was not safe for them. I didn’t want it to happen again,” JoJo said. “If I scared you, if I scared the boy, you would leave. But you didn’t.”
Ben fell again and landed heavily on his side, sliding a few feet before coming to a stop. Bub wailed in his ear. The ground was as even as a pane of glass. JoJo offered his hand and Ben accepted. When he pushed himself up, he saw that they were on the frozen surface of the lake.
“Thank you,” Ben said. That was what this valley had become to him: A place where the kindest hands belonged to kidnappers. A place where he ran from friends because they had murder in their eyes.
“Careful,” JoJo told him.
The ice creaked underneath them.
“I’m sorry,” JoJo said.
Ben looked and saw that the big man’s eyes were full of tears. “For what?”
“The dog. He didn’t know I was helping. But they couldn’t find me before I helped you.” He pointed to Bub. “When he got sick, I didn’t know how to make him better.”
Ben couldn’t think of what to say. There were no words for this.
They crossed to the far side of the lake. Ben followed JoJo to a thicket of spindly pines not far from where Charlie had built his blind.
“Dad!” Charlie was crouched on the ground behind the trunk of a wizened tree. Caroline sat behind him with her hands on his shoulders. They ran to him, and Ben was so relieved to see them that he nearly lifted them all off the ground with his embrace.
“Thank God you got away from them,” Ben said. He buried his face in Caroline’s hair.
“Why are they after Charlie?” Caroline asked. She and Charlie both looked half frozen.
“They’re crazy.” Ben shook his head. “The whole village. We need to get out of here, but we can’t get to the cars. Bub can’t stay in the cold for much longer, and I don’t know how many of them there are.”
“We heard a gunshot,” Caroline said.
“I think it was some kind of signal.” Ben turned back to the fields and saw three dark shapes moving across the Drop. The shapes were running. The one in front loped through the drifts with a lupine grace.
“If we stay away from the drive, we might be able to get to the county road and meet up
with Ted,” Ben said. He turned back to the Crofts to watch the three shadows making their steady way toward them.
“They’re coming,” JoJo said. He pointed to the frozen field.
As Ben watched them, the joy he’d felt when he first laid eyes on Caroline and Charlie turned cold. The men hunting them knew where they were, and Ben knew that his family would never be able to outrun them.
Ben put a palm on Charlie’s head. Even through the boy’s winter hat, Ben could feel the thick thatch of his hair. He savored the texture of it in his hand.
Lisbeth had been right about one thing. You had to keep up the light. And Ben now knew what had to be done. He had promised to be better, and now was his chance.
“Take Mom to the cemetery,” Ben told Charlie. “Can you find your way in the dark?”
Charlie looked at Ben carefully before nodding.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Caroline asked. “Ben, we have to get out of here.”
“I’m going to talk to them,” Ben said.
“Talk to—are you kidding?” Caroline said. “You said it yourself: They’re crazy.”
“I’ll just tell them that I’m looking for you, too,” Ben said. “It was true enough two minutes ago. While I help them look, I’ll separate from them and get to the car. Wait for me outside the bookstore in Exton.”
“Ben.” Caroline’s eyes were wide with horror.
Ben clutched her arms and leaned his forehead against hers.
“You have to get our sons out of here,” he said. “Charlie will show you the way. He’ll take you and Bub over to the cemetery, then down the Drop as close to the mountain as you can get.” Ben turned to Charlie. “Walk down to the county road, but stay inside the tree line so no one can see you.” He gave Caroline his cell phone. “Call Ted. He can’t be that far now. Make sure he doesn’t go to the Crofts.”
“They’re not going to hurt you?” she asked.
“It’s not me that they want,” Ben said. He turned to Charlie and met his son’s gaze. Though it was dark, Ben could see the silver rims of his irises.
“You have to be careful, okay?” Caroline said. She hugged him with Bub between them. She was crying, but Ben made himself smile. Ben kissed Bub on the head and he suddenly felt light-headed. This is how we say goodbye.
Bub’s mittens had come off, and Caroline worked to put them back on his tiny hands as Charlie moved closer to Ben.
“Need to hurry,” JoJo said. His voice was like thunder beyond the horizon.
Charlie hugged Ben’s leg, his face pressing again his hip. Ben turned to watch the men’s progress up the Drop. They were close now, just on the other side of the lake.
“We can’t let them see you,” Ben said. He knelt in the snow to be as close to Charlie as he could. He tried to memorize the shape of the boy in his arms. So many things to say to him, but there was only time for two. “Take care of them. Now, run.”
Charlie and Caroline were both crying when they turned away from Ben.
He watched as they disappeared between the trees, until he could see no trace of them through the dark wood. As Ben pushed himself up from the ground, his hand brushed against a wedge of rock that sat just under the snow’s surface. It was better than nothing. He slid it into the deep pocket of his coat, then fixed his eyes again on the men who hunted him.
“These men will hurt you,” he told JoJo. The big man stood behind him, blending with the trees and shadows. “You should go, too.”
JoJo shook his head. “They hurt my friends,” the big man said.
Ben waited a few minutes, until the men reached the edge of the lake; then he stepped out onto the shore and waved. He recognized the chief’s silhouette in the lead. He watched as the chief hesitated a moment, then sped the group’s progress toward him. Ben began to walk across the frozen lake. As he stepped onto the ice, he felt a strange lightness come over him. It was a vertiginous feeling to realize that all your choices have been made. The wind had weakened, and the night was quiet except for the rattling from the trees and the crunch of his footfalls. Beside him, JoJo was as silent as a ghost.
“Hey, guys,” Ben said, raising his voice into a shout. He wondered if they’d even give him a chance to explain the mountain man beside him. “Did you just come from the house? Are Caroline and Charlie back yet? I can’t find them.”
Now that they were so close, Ben could see that Deputy Simms and Walter Harp were with the chief. Ben had seen the chief only a few hours ago, but that time had transformed him. The bones of his face were sharp in the moonlight. His rangy body was poised for violence. Ben had prepared himself for hostility; still, he shivered under the man’s look.
The chief seemed to contemplate Ben’s question, then he carefully picked his way along the ice to JoJo. He moved with an otherworldly economy. He appeared to sniff the air, never breaking eye contact with the big man. JoJo stood utterly still as the chief looked him over, and Ben could not read the lawman’s expression. Then the chief smiled, pulled his gun out of its holster, and shot JoJo. The sound was deafening.
Ben threw himself down and slid a few feet on the ice. When he looked up, the chief still had his gun trained on JoJo. Ben had not seen the big man go down, but he’d felt him fall.
“Shoulda done that thirty years ago,” the chief said. His voice was low and rough and sounded as if it came from deep inside his chest.
“And woulda, too, if he hadn’t hid in the woods like a scared girl,” Simms said. He spat at JoJo’s still form, then looked nervously at the chief.
“Talked with Lisbeth, Ben,” the chief said. He did not point the gun at him, but he did not holster it, either. “She said she tried again to explain matters to you but had no more luck than before. Where’s Charlie?”
“I don’t know where he is,” Ben said. “I’m looking for him, too.”
“Gotta be either brave or stupid to lie to a man with a gun,” Simms said. Ben put his hands above his head but did not stand up from the ice.
“You got nowhere to go, Ben. It’s a hard thing that has to be done, but he wouldn’t ask it of us if we couldn’t do it,” the chief said. “We cannot question his plan. Your people, Swann and Lowell alike, knew that as gospel. How can you say any different?”
“Listen, we can still just leave this place. No harm done,” Ben said. He thought of his family trying to make their way through the forest. He would give them all the time he could.
“Our village is dying, Ben. You’ve seen it yourself. The herds are sick, the banks are closing in, the people want to leave, they want to undo everything that we—that your family—have given so much to preserve. We would not be in such a bad spot if this one hadn’t gotten in the way last time.” He gestured to JoJo’s prone form. “We have existed by the grace of God since that terrible winter, but we have been on borrowed time for too long. Charlie is God-sent for us to prove ourselves worthy one more time.”
“The only reason we’re here is because you told us that the Crofts was for sale once you found out my grandmother was a Lowell.”
“And your great-grandmother a Swann. God be praised. But it was not chance, Ben. Nothing in this darkening world is chance. You’re one of us. Do you accept that?”
Ben allowed a moment to pass, then nodded. “I can accept it. But it’s the blood that matters, right? So take mine.”
The chief squinted at him.
“You need blood,” Ben said. “Swann blood. And I have more of it than Charlie does, so take it. It’s yours.” The last thing he had to give. “Just leave my family alone.”
“That’s not how it works, Ben,” the chief said. “Losing this life is no sacrifice. Don’t you see that the dead are free? They do not mourn; they do not suffer. We here know well that it’s a harder thing to live than to die. I still hope you get to learn that.”
Ben exhaled into the cold air and rolled onto his back. He’d tried. It was almost over now. He looked up at the stars. He hoped he’d bought Charlie enough time. The pri
ce had been high, but it had been paid gladly. “You have to know I won’t help you hurt him.”
“Think on it, Ben. Think of Bub, if not yourself. We can’t let the Swanns go now that they’ve finally returned. God would not forgive that. The baby boy is young enough that any one of us could raise him as our own. But blood matters, Ben. And a boy should be with his own father.”
Ben saw there would be no end to the horrors here. The villagers had invested too much in their madness. Even they had no choice now but to see it through.
“We tried with you, Ben. Lord knows it,” the chief sighed. He pointed his gun at Ben.
“Chief—”
“You’ve chosen wrong, Ben. But maybe the Lord will forgive you.” Then he pulled the trigger.
56
Charlie brushed the snow off his face and shivered. The Drop was steeper here, and it was hard to find the right footing through the deep drifts. Both Mom and he had fallen more than once. Bub’s cries had quieted into whimpers. The baby was sick and very tired, and Charlie was afraid for him. He knew they could not go on like this for much longer, but it was the only thing they could do. There was no one left to save them.
His eyes welled with tears, but he did not want Mom to see him cry.
And he told himself it was still possible that Dad could get away from the men. Dad knew his words as well as JoJo knew the forest. If anyone could do it, then he could. Compared to the strange things in Dad’s stories, it was not hard to imagine a man talking to three other men on a cold night to convince them they were all friends. The world was filled with things far more amazing than this.
A gunshot broke his thoughts and made his heart jump in his chest. Mom looked at him, eyes wide.
“Another signal,” Charlie said. His voice cracked in his mouth. “We need to be careful.”
Mom nodded and turned forward again, searching the forest ahead for movement.
Charlie felt hollowed out, and it was a moment before the tears came. This time he let them flow. He tried to stay focused and not think about the gunshot, but he couldn’t help it. At least there had only been one, he thought, and felt ashamed of himself.
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