“Oh, good, you’re here,” Amanda said.
“I know where the girls are,” said Rebecca, already turning, knowing the rest of them would follow. She hadn’t even made it back to the willow before the screaming started.
27
In the dappled moonlight, on the low, leaning stump between the tipped-over trailer and the American flag trailer, with his hat pushed back and one hand in the air, the Whistler stood like a fly fisherman on a bank, and he waited. Ooh, he waited, watching the two girls across the clearing—the little one in the braids with the sock on one hand, and the blond, reedy one with the shards of broken glass for eyes—as they fought him, tried to fight him. So much fight in them. The reedy one radiated so much fury that she distracted, even mesmerized him momentarily, and that allowed the little one to get off a scream.
So exciting.
Even now—after the tall one had finally started to give, he could feel it—the little one wriggled, almost as if she still thought she could run. Such a mighty little hooked thing. The Whistler thought she might even be the stronger of the two.
Then a new thought burst over him, bright and brilliant as a holiday firework: maybe the struggle wasn’t being caused by these girls at all! Was it possible that he himself had lost something when he lost his Destiny? Or even Mother? Had his grief—and he had grieved, hadn’t he?—weakened him, somehow, made him less? Was that what grief did? Left him lonesome, orn’ry, even meaner?
From somewhere close, off in the trees, his new, Still One’s voice sang out. “Truuuueeee,” she was calling, in her blue, hollow tone. “Truuuu.”
And with a shiver in his shoulders—another spasm of his boundless grief—the Whistler understood, or rather remembered: his Still One was no replacement for his Destiny, never had been, never could be. No. She was for something else entirely. And grief, it turned out, hadn’t weakened him at all.
Grinning wider as the girls fought him, the Whistler bore down, lowered his arms. Using only his will, he gave a little tug, and watched as Shards-for-Eyes staggered toward him. She was still fighting, but not even trying to hang on to anyone or anything. This one wasn’t scared or sad; she was simply enraged.
Delicious.
He watched her get her head turned even as she continued stumbling toward him. Her clawed fingers scratched at the moonlight her eyes and hair reflected. How very like people, really, to resist the very things that lit them up, the desires that made them who they were. They spent their entire existences battling the engine they called “life,” whose only actual function was to drive them toward death. The girl snarled something over her shoulder at her little braided companion.
“I can’t,” the braided one said.
“She really can’t,” said the Whistler to Shards-for-Eyes, and he sat down on his stump and raised his arms to greet her.
And then he made himself wait, poised right at the most ravishing moment, his favorite moment: the split-second silence between verse and swelling chorus; the breath (theirs, of course) between kiss and bite. He did not move again, nor did he direct the girl to move again, until everyone else—the others he’d heard coming—poured out of the trees into the so-bright clearing, which he had transformed into this perfect, glorious stage.
How he had missed performing for them. He really was going to have to go back to doing that.
First out of the trees was the tall black man who had been here this afternoon, waking him to (or from?) his dream of his Destiny’s voice; behind him, a pale, once-pretty blond woman with a frown etched so deeply into her face that it looked carved, seemed almost driven through her face, like a jack-o’-lantern’s mouth. Such a face!
Then came his new, Still One, her mouth still rounded around her last “Truuu,” brown eyes churning like just-turned soil. Nothing about her seemed still, now. And just when he thought it couldn’t get any better, be any more perfect, his Destiny’s mother stepped clear of the trees. Call it Destiny, Policy, God, whatever, but it really did seem as though something had guided him here, landing him exactly where he needed to be.
He smiled at the assembled as he hooked and quieted them, like a pastor settling his congregation. He did love them in his way, every one. Especially, he loved and smiled at his new, Still One. Really, this was all about her, now, all for her. He watched her take in the tableaux he had created. And yes, oh, yes, she knew what was about to happen. He could see it in her face. The sight sent a shock through his bones. And that was exactly right, her destiny, the very reason she’d been born: to be his very own doe-eyed pincushion, sin-eater, the thing he could hurt, over and over, until he stopped hurting.
He watched her wriggle, fight him, but not like Shards-for-Eyes, or even the girl with the sock puppet. Not as though she thought she could win; her life had already taught her better.
When he was sure she saw, and knew, and was watching—when he’d drunk deeply from all of that—he returned his gaze to the furious child in front of him. This one still exhibited so much rage, he almost felt like singing as he pulled her to him. He was tempted simply to Whistle her to sweet, sweet sleep.
He broke her back over his knee instead.
* * *
The crack rattled through Rebecca so forcefully, it might as well have come from her own bones. In disbelief—or, worse, belief—she watched Danni’s broken body spill off the Whistler’s lap and fall at his feet, all her fire and fury doused, just like that, without even smoke to suggest it had ever been there. Yet another piece of Rebecca’s world—the one she’d assembled from the box of discarded pieces of other people’s worlds that life had given her—swept away.
Like Oscar.
Like Jack.
All of them, gone, in less than an hour.
The Sombrero-Man wouldn’t stop staring at her. He looked thin, had so many leaves sticking to his denim jacket and the outsides of his raggedy boots that he looked more like a stick insect than a person, except that he had even less expressive eyes. He watched her watching. A smile spread over his face, and his lips puckered, and that sound came out. Partially, it was whistling, but also it was nightingale’s mating cry, owl’s murder-song, all in one. He opened his arms, and somehow, she sensed immediately what he wanted from her: a cry of anguish, then a useless charge across the clearing.
Of course, that’s what she wanted, too. It was the only thing left to do, except the thing she did.
With a gasp—it was like she’d imagined tearing out an IV would be, and it hurt—Rebecca lunged not forward but sideways, not toward the Whistler but Trudi. She didn’t exactly see the Sombrero-Man twitch, but she heard the hiccup in his whistle, knew she’d surprised him. He lurched off the stump, and that sudden movement freed everyone else, too, just momentarily, but long enough for Jess to shout, “Rebecca, yes!”
Grabbing Trudi around the waist, Rebecca uprooted her, yelled “Run!” to the rest of them, and bolted between trailers toward the woods. Trudi startled awake, started squirming and screaming. Rebecca kept hold, kept running, expecting the Sombrero-Man to land on her back any second: the moon, with claws, come to lift her away and away.
But he didn’t come, and she made the trees, and then she was in them, crashing through roots and whipping branches, rattling the world the way loons did when they reared at last, at the end of their summers, flapped their desperate wings, rose out of Halfmoon Lake into the air, and vanished.
* * *
A split second after Rebecca made her move—brilliant girl, good girl, nothing like Natalie except in the way she was exactly like Natalie—Jess made hers. It was almost as though she and Rebecca had planned it beforehand. As if they were the ones who had shared a past, and still hoped to have a future.
And you will have one, Jess thought. Run, Rebecca. She threw herself right into the bastard’s path, between him and the fleeing girls, pinking shears raised. They wouldn’t do enough, she knew, even if she drove them through the fucker’s eye. Whatever she was doing now, it wasn’t about surviving
or even stopping the monster in front of her; it was about Natalie. About what the good girl Jess had raised had done to save her son. About hurling herself under the wheels of this careening truck and maybe puncturing just one as it crushed and released her. Maybe that would buy Rebecca and Trudi a little more time. Maybe even enough time.
She was in midair, stabbing the pinking shears forward, when she realized the Whistler wasn’t chasing Rebecca, hadn’t moved from his spot near the trailer. He’d stood up, all right, but that was it, and now he was just gazing after Rebecca with what looked like the same admiration and affection Jess was feeling.
Of course, it wasn’t the same. Not in the end.
Shears still raised, Jess stared at the creature that had shredded what was left of her life. He wasn’t even paying attention to her. Again. He wasn’t interested in her. Again. Because he couldn’t hurt her enough, she realized instinctively. He had already suffused every atom of Jess’s being with hurt, and that made her no longer interesting or useful to him.
Instead, he’d zeroed in on Rebecca, on Amanda and Joel. He gazed at them now like a little boy at birthday presents.
“No,” she said, because she saw what was going to happen next. It was as clear to her as memory, as if it had already happened.
Then it happened.
* * *
Late. I’m late. For a most important date.
That’s what Sophie was thinking as she swung-scuttled through the rustling, chattering night-woods. Eventually, she started chanting those words, and that helped, some, distracted her from the sticks jabbing up into her stumps, the snarled, ground-level branches that smacked and scratched her as she plowed through them. After tonight, she really was going to need a pants plan. Or some stilts.
After tonight. And there was going to be an after, once she had seen the Whistler again, poked his stupid hat off his head so she could see his heartless, gorgeous face, and so he could see her. She wasn’t sure he’d even really noticed her before. He would now.
The Whistler and Jess. Oh, yes. They’d both see her. She was about to see them both together. Ignoring the scratches and smacks the forest inflicted on her, she dug harder into the earth, swung forward faster. She was moving so fast, darting across streaks of moon from shadow to shadow, that she actually hit an armadillo, pitched forward across it, lurched upright, and found it tipped over on its back, waving its scaly legs in the air.
It was … meowing? Was that what armadillos did? Or maybe this really was the Wonderland forest.
Her mouth filled, abruptly, with the taste of just-dead deer, the deer she and Natalie had tried devouring after Natalie had plowed into it with her GTO. Ah, yes, Sophie thought. Another magical night, that one. The one where my best friend tore my jugular vein in half and drank from it.
As though giving CPR—or, negative-CPR, whatever the opposite of CPR was—Sophie leaned over the screaming armadillo, clamped one hand over the other on the soft spot on its chest, and crushed the scream out of it. She pushed a little too hard, wound up shooting half its insides out its mouth like toothpaste through a tube.
“Sorry, dude,” she murmured, and she was, some. “You’re too loud.”
After that, she followed the racket. And she was so focused on that that she almost barreled right into Rebecca, fleeing toward Sophie down the path. Sophie had to throw herself sidelong, right into a pricker bush, to avoid getting run over. The only reason she didn’t get seen was that Rebecca, too, was riveted on the noise from the clearing behind her—the shouting, the snapping and breaking—and was therefore looking that way, over her shoulder. She wasn’t even glancing at the wild, wriggling thing yowling in her arms.
Yet another screeching kid that girl could hold in her arms. How, Sophie wondered, did she do it?
Same way I did, she realized, surprising herself. She went on thinking about that—about her Roo—while she waited for Rebecca to pound away down the trail. Then she eased herself off the thorns that had impaled her, brushed the burrs from her skin, and edged back out of the bush.
There was less sound now from the clearing, which probably wasn’t a great sign for the people in the clearing. A bat fluttered madly in the leaves over Sophie’s head, and then the leaves went silent.
Glancing just once after Rebecca, Sophie was startled to see another figure stagger out of the woods. This one was black-haired, bloodied, broken. And it was calling Rebecca’s name.
Whoever that was, Sophie figured Rebecca would come back for her. And that would keep her close by. And that was all to the good.
I’m late, Sophie murmured to herself, thinking of the Whistler, of Jess. She let herself smile, fingered the phone, the little Bluetooth speaker in her pocket. Then she slipped away once more into the shadows.
* * *
There was a moment—several, actually—right after Rebecca snatched up Trudi and fled, when no one in the clearing seemed to know what to do. Gripping the rake, trying to resist jabbing it into her own face in the hopes of waking herself up, freeing herself of whatever this feeling was, Amanda stared at the monster in the sombrero. But he just stood there, preternaturally quiet, staring after Rebecca, almost precisely in the way Joel had taught so many of the girls who’d passed through Halfmoon House to watch the night-woods for owls.
Only, this guy was even quieter. He didn’t even seem to breathe.
Jess had made some crazy leap, cried out, stabbed absolutely nothing with the pinking shears, and now she was just standing there, too, looking dazed, and also small: a tiny, grief-wracked widow, shapeless in her gray sweatshirt but transfixed by moonlight, ablaze with it. She looked reared up, somehow, like a little gopher at the mouth of its den, waving uselessly at the fox that had come for her young.
And then there was Joel. He, of course, had broken completely with the snap of Danni’s spine. Because, as always, he’d gone and done exactly what they’d both set out to do with Halfmoon House, right from the beginning. He’d done the one thing Amanda had never quite let herself do.
He’d let himself love them. Even—especially—the furious and fucked-up ones. And until ten seconds ago, he’d actually believed he could save them all, and that they would save him in turn.
By saving me, Amanda realized abruptly. By waking me up. As if I were only sleeping, all this time.
She looked at him, her mad, broken, no-longer-laughing husband, arms wrapped around his shovel, mouth open, eyes overflowing, and not just with tears but also everything he’d shared with these children who were not his children: his crazy songs, his dreamed-up-in-the-instant games, his ridiculous theme-picnic plans. All the things she’d loved about him, once. She still loved them. Sometimes.
All the life he still believed—or maybe had believed, until just a few seconds ago—he might one day have. With me, she thought.
“Joel,” she said, hating the sound of her voice, as she had for years, now, because even she couldn’t read the emotion in it. “Go live.”
He didn’t even stir, of course. His attention remained riveted to the heap at the Sombrero-Man’s feet. The heap that had been Danni.
But Jess heard. And Jess understood, immediately. Of course she did.
“Amanda, no,” she said.
“Save the girls,” said Amanda, feeling herself finally, finally tear free of whatever it was that had held her in place. In truth, it had held her long before today. And now, just like that, it was gone. And here she was, after all this time, unfolding inside herself.
Hello, me, she thought, trembling, letting life flood in. Long time no see. Then she leapt.
She died so fast—so much of her flying in so many directions—that neither Joel nor Jess would ever be sure exactly what it was the Whistler had done to her.
* * *
A split second too late, freed by the movement his wife had made (or else by the momentary distraction that movement had caused the Sombrero-Man), Joel leapt, too. He didn’t think, hadn’t planned, hardly even raised the shovel, but su
ddenly, he was sailing through a winking red haze that hung in the air, a corona of Amanda—of what had been his wife—around the summer moon.
Like flying through the forest, he thought, in the seconds after a tornado hits.
The Whistler smashed him to the ground, knocked the shovel flying, seemed to swirl down on him like a tornado.
* * *
The Whistler hardly felt what he was doing, he simply did, set the air screaming and the night whistling just by whirling his arms. Sounds spilled from him—from everywhere, really—as he stepped on the neck of the guy with the shovel. The guy formerly with the shovel. Unless that was a root he’d leaned down on to crack?
Who cared?! Not him. He flung his wet, red arms wide, bathed them with world, which was there for him to Whistle to, sing to, swallow whole, snap. It existed only to make noise under his feet, come apart in his grasp, experience.
He was Whistling now, a proper whistle, his first in ages, weeks. He hadn’t Whistled this way since his Destiny died. What a truly wonderful world, he thought, watching and feeling the blood and flying skin-bits coat and mottle his own skin, become him as he hummed.
Don’t know much about … biology …
The movement alerted him, but not quite in time. He shivered back into himself, into the moment, and glanced around.
The other woman—his Destiny’s murderer-mother—was gone.
Marvelous!
“Ready or not,” he said-sang to the moon and stars, the trees and trailers, the shredded and snapped things at his feet. “Here I come.”
* * *
Trudi hadn’t stopped screaming “STOP!” since Rebecca had spirited her out of the clearing. But when Rebecca pulled up momentarily and set her down, tried to spin so she could see who or what had just called her name, Trudi somehow screamed louder.
She kept repeating the same word, howling it at everything and nothing, and who could blame her? Right now, Trudi wanted the whole world to stop.
Good Girls Page 25
