Burden Falls

by Kat Ellis

  I take a beat to process all this. “Why didn’t you tell me, though? Why make me piece it together from those old articles?”

  “I . . . I guess I didn’t want it to seem like I was trying to take something else away from you,” he says.

  “Sadie isn’t mine.”

  “Isn’t she? It’s always seemed like she means something to you—something more than just a ghost story.”

  Now it’s my turn to go quiet. It doesn’t last long, though. “Do you believe in curses?”

  “Do you mean like hexes, or more general bad luck?”

  “The first one, I guess.”

  “Where’s this coming from, Thorn?”

  “Well, the articles you sent me, mostly. But not just that . . . I dunno. Do you think my family is actually cursed because of all the bad shit my ancestors did? I assume you read it, right? Was that why you really sent it to me . . . you think I’m cursed?”

  “Ava, no. Of course not. I honestly hadn’t thought about it that way. I mean, yeah, there’s good and bad if you look through your family tree—it’s the same for everyone, me included. But with that connection between our two families going back over a century, and how we still have—well, let’s just call it bad blood—I thought it was interesting. Figured you might too. I never meant to upset you with any of it. I’m sorry if I did.”

  “So you don’t think my cursed family might’ve caught your family up in some witchy backlash now?”

  The line goes quiet for a moment, and I’d swear I hear him murmuring witchy backlash to himself on the other end of the line. “Thorn, you had nothing to do with Freya’s murder. Besides, you could just as easily say this town is as cursed as your family. Or the land the manor’s built on. Or the orchard. Or any of the arbitrary things I’ve heard people say are cursed in the year I’ve lived here.”

  “My mom used to say the waterfall was cursed,” I admit. “The story goes that the water’s supposed to carry away your burdens, right? But she told me if you try to solve your problems that way, they only come back to bite your ass harder.”

  Dominic laughs again. “I suspect your mom was just trying to teach you that you can’t solve your problems by pretending they don’t exist.”

  “Yeah, maybe. That does sound like her.”

  We hang up a little while later, but I don’t get out of my car for a moment.

  As I’m looking around the lot outside—the parked cars, the line of trees running parallel to the school building—I can’t help noticing all the eyes.

  They’re everywhere.

  There’s one on the back of the school welcome sign. Another one etched into a gatepost. And another spray-painted onto that dumpster.

  Did people really start leaving these marks as a reminder of what my family did to Sadie? A warning that you shouldn’t trust a Thorn, or they might butcher you and get away with it? Wasn’t that pretty much what happened to John Burnett Miller as well—maimed while working for my family, then cast out with nothing? Maybe people should be warned about us.

  Stay away.

  Maybe anyone who gets close to us gets hurt.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Carolyn spots me through the open kitchen door just as I’m leaving later that night. She comes over and fixes my mask so it’s on straight.

  “You look amazing,” she says, stepping back to take in the entire outfit.

  I shrug. “This old thing?”

  I’m wearing deep plum lipstick and heavy eyeliner (which you can barely see under the lace eye mask, but still), and a pair of curved black horns on my head. The rest of my clothes are fairly par for the course for me—black skinny jeans with knee-high boots, a plum silk shirt with a black furry vest over it, and my black wool gloves. And my coat, of course—the temperature has taken a (hopefully) final plunge today, so we’re going to freeze our asses off tonight. Thank the Dark Lord for booze warmth.

  “Have fun,” Carolyn says, laughing, then nudges me toward the door.

  I text Daphne and Carla to let them know I’m on my way and set off along the river to Copper Bell Dam. I see the lights swaying from the trees long before I reach them, strings of tiny lanterns flickering like fireflies in glass cages. And there’s the music, of course. All I hear to begin with is the deep, gritty bass, but then I catch the eerie, compelling vocal—it’s “Carrion Flowers” by Chelsea Wolfe. My stomach tightens a little as I remember the last time I was here—when I had that weird dizzy spell and thought I saw Dead-Eyed Sadie standing on the far riverbank. I hunch a little tighter into my coat.

  At last, I hear people’s voices among the trees. I’m soon faced with an array of dark creatures—someone in a tuxedo wearing the head of a warthog; a gray-skinned elf with completely black eyes; and a hijabi knight with a metal breastplate and gauntlets decorated with swirling red symbols who I don’t recognize until she turns slightly, and I realize I’m looking at Yara from my art class.

  Moving past them, I look around for Daphne and Carla. I know from our texts earlier that Carla will be dressed as a zombie, and Daphne as a clockwork spider, whatever that is. I move through the little clusters of teenagers swaying to the music along the riverbank path. There are a lot of people here, but not nearly as many as there’d normally be at a danse. I guess some parents are worried about letting kids go out at night after what happened to Freya. Or maybe it’s just the cold keeping them indoors.

  The river itself is frozen, faint patterns on its surface like some giant hand has swirled white paint onto it. Without meaning to, I twist those patterns into the shape of an eye.

  I weave between a macabre group of skeletal cats I recognize as part of the cheerleading squad, then find myself face-to-face with Slender Man. Seeing his black suit with tentacles protruding from the back, and a blank white mask covering his entire head, it’s easy to lie to myself that I can’t tell who’s beneath it.

  I wonder how he’s feeling. I mean, does having a danse for his dead sister feel wrong to Dominic? Or like a necessary passage—a way for us to mark the loss of someone our age the way a funeral or a memorial never seems to. This is how we do things here. And, no matter my feelings about her, Freya was one of us.

  This will probably be Dominic’s last danse in Burden Falls.

  He shakes his head, palms up.

  “Oh,” I say, realizing he’s wondering what I’m dressed as. “Non-specific dark fae. I worked with what I had available. I like your costume, though.” Silently, Slender Man holds out his white-gloved hand. “Are you . . . asking me to dance?”

  He nods. And somehow, with our masks in place, it doesn’t feel weird to step into his arms. We move together, swaying to the slow, pulsing music. The tiny lanterns hanging from the trees sway with us.

  The sound of people talking, dancing, laughing is like a veil around us. I don’t want to speak. Don’t want to do anything that will break this moment and make it impossible to stay here, like this. Because a Thorn doesn’t dance with a Miller. That’s what I’ve always believed. But do I still? Do those centuries of bad blood still run between us?

  I lean into him when he wraps his arms around my waist. There’s that faint scent of expensive cologne. My fingers wander from his shoulder, and I slide off my glove to trace the sharp edge of his jaw through the thin material of his mask. I smile when I take my hand away.

  Not bloody.

  I look up into his face. But there’s only that blank mask, faint hollows where his eyes should be. And it doesn’t feel like I’m looking at a mask. It feels like a memory—or a premonition.

  I slid off my glove to touch Freya’s cold, eyeless face . . .

  “No!”

  I stumble backward, hands up as though I can ward it off.

  Dominic rolls away the mask. “Thorn? What’s wrong?”

  “I—”

  My reply is cut off as a scream echoes across the
river. Dominic and I stare at each other for a moment before we run in that direction. All around us, the music keeps playing. There’s a crowd gathered on the bank, yelling and pointing out at the frozen river. I spot Daphne and Carla among them.

  Daphne’s wearing a headdress decorated with eight gears of varying sizes to make up a clockwork spider’s eyes, and her black leotard has been decorated with chunky brass-colored hinges at every joint. Next to her, Carla has her fingers laced with Daphne’s.

  Carla’s zombie makeup is on point, as expected. There are gaping wounds on her cheeks and neck, her eyes look yellowed and bloodshot, and her hair hangs in crusty-looking rats’ tails around her shoulders. Her clothes are about as Standard Carla as mine are Standard Ava, but she has dirtied them up a little with some fake blood.

  “Hey,” I call to them as I hurry over. “What’s going on?”

  “I think someone’s fallen through the ice!” Daphne points to the river beyond the thickest cluster of onlookers. As her arm extends, it fans out four extra attached limbs.

  “Did you just get here?” Carla asks.

  “Yeah.” I can’t help shooting a glance to where Dominic was standing a second ago, but he’s not there now.

  The shouting at the river’s edge seems to swell, but I’m too short to see what’s happening. I push my way through until I’m standing right on the riverbank. Then I see it—or him, in fact—bursting up through a break in the ice.

  “Help me!” Mateo screams, hands clawing at the cracked ice around where he fell through. “There’s someone in the water—”

  He sputters as he sinks down and water rushes into his mouth. Damn, I can’t even imagine how cold that must be. We have to get him out of there now.

  Then Dominic appears, edging out across the ice, Slender Man tentacles fanning out around him. He drops to his forearms and shins, spreading his weight, and starts to crawl toward Mateo. But it won’t do either of them any good if Dominic falls through as well. The ice is obviously too thin in places—dark patches showing where the river has only frozen a sliver.

  “We need to make a chain,” I say, more to myself than anyone else, but my words are echoed through the crowd and suddenly we’re moving forward. Casper follows Dominic, then Carla, and I end up between her and Daphne, grabbing onto Carla’s ankle as I feel Daphne gripping my boot behind me. I scoot down onto all fours and shuffle forward. The chill bleeds through my clothes like a warning.

  “Help!” Mateo cries up ahead, then sinks again. He’s not flailing around anymore, probably too numb with cold to do more than tread water. If we don’t hurry, he’ll sink down below the ice and get carried away by the current. There’ll be no way to save him then.

  The ice creaks as we scramble across it. Looking up, I see Dominic is almost close enough to grab Mateo if he just reaches up out of the water, but I see no sign of Mateo in the ice break now. Dominic inches forward again. There’s a crack loud enough that I hear it four people back in the chain, but the ice holds under him—for now.

  Dominic plunges one arm into the water with a wordless yell. That water must be painfully cold. Still, he keeps reaching forward, feeling around for Mateo under the water. Then he yells again. “Pull!”

  Gritting my teeth, I start to edge back, gripping Carla’s ankle. I feel a tug from behind, and I slide backward on the ice. I look back to find the whole crowd now pulling from the riverbank. Carla comes next, and we both get lifted back up onto solid ground as Casper and Dominic are dragged back to shore. I see Casper now back on the riverbank, Dominic about to follow, and Mateo still being hauled from the ice—and someone else behind him.

  Mateo hits the edge of the river. People jostle around me. As they part to make room for Mateo to come back up, I see who’s behind him. Mateo’s hand is tangled in a head of dark, sodden curls. He’s pulling someone along by the hair, but they don’t seem to care. They aren’t fighting.

  “Oh my God, it’s a body! There was a body in the water!” someone screams.

  Now I scream. But I can’t do anything else as the figure with the curly hair is rolled onto its back, head lolling to face me on the frozen river.

  Ford gapes up at me, lips blue and stretched in a soundless scream.

  And he has no eyes.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  There’s an itchy blanket wrapped around my shoulders, but it doesn’t do much to stop me shivering. I lean against the trunk of Officer Chavez’s patrol car on the far side of the trees, watching the first responders move purposefully around with clipboards and medical bags. The trees aren’t twinkling with lanterns now, but flashing red and blue.

  “I assume my daughter was never here,” Officer Chavez says, with some not very subtle side-eye. I shake my head. Pretty much everyone who was at the danse is gone. They disappeared as soon as word spread that the cops were on their way. Even Daphne and Carla. They offered to stay with me, but I sent them away. No point in them getting caught at a party where kids were drinking underage, even if the three of us hadn’t actually had time to drink anything yet. Carla has her place at NYU to consider, and Daphne would be grounded for the rest of her life if her dad caught her here.

  Mateo was taken away in an ambulance, yelling for them to hurry as he was stretchered in, and how he’d sue everyone if he lost a nut to frostbite.

  Dominic is talking to some other cops on the far side of the clearing. He keeps squinting and rubbing the side of his head, and I wonder if he got hurt hauling Mateo and Ford from the river, or if the whole thing has brought on another migraine. But he still looks a lot more held-together than I feel.

  And Ford . . . Jesus.

  Ford.

  I saw him, but it still doesn’t seem real. I want to call him, ask if he’s heard about the guy from our class who got pulled from the river . . . Ford can’t be dead, not really.

  His eyes, though . . .

  My stomach rolls, and this time there’s no stopping it. Officer Chavez quickly steps aside as I bend over and throw up on the grass right next to his rear fender. I heave until there’s nothing left, then sleeve-wipe my mouth, grimacing. When I look up, Officer Chavez is holding out a bottle of water.

  “Thanks.”

  “Ava?” I jump, sloshing water over my hand as Detective Holden appears next to us. He’s wearing a navy suit this evening. I wonder if he ever takes a night off. “How are you doing?”

  I glance down at the pile of vomit, which is now giving off curls of steam in the squad car’s taillights. “Not great, Detective.”

  “Think you can handle answering a few questions for me?”

  I remember Uncle Ty’s warning not to speak to the cops without him there, and right now I can’t even think about anything beyond crawling into bed and shutting my eyes tight against the world. “I really just want to go home.”

  He nods. “Of course, of course. Except for just one thing, if you don’t mind?” He leans against the car next to me, carefully avoiding the puke puddle. “A couple of the kids I’ve spoken to said you and Ford Sutter were pretty close. Is that right?”

  I swallow hard, my throat still burning. “We were best friends for years,” I croak. “Detective, my clothes are soaked. I’m exhausted and freezing. Please can I go home?”

  Detective Holden feigns surprise, like he hadn’t noticed. I don’t think there’s much he doesn’t notice, though.

  “Of course, Ava. But I hope you won’t mind if I call to see you tomorrow morning to get a full statement.”

  I push away from Officer Chavez’s car, leaving without another word.

  * * *

  * * *

  For the first time in ages, I sleep, if not exactly peacefully. There are dreams—I sense their after-images like hand marks on my skin—but I don’t remember what they were.

  All I know is that Ford is dead.

  My best friend since forever—gone.


  I haven’t forgotten that he stole from me, or that he almost let me get hit by a car. Maybe I never would’ve spoken to him again. But now that’s not even a possibility. And I hate that the last words we said to each other were angry.

  Beyond this sad, numb, guilt-riddled mood I seem to be in when I wake up, I’m angry. Someone did that to Ford. They killed him, turned his eyes into raw gouges, and dumped him in the river. And that’s the lingering image I’ll have of him. The one his mom will probably be imagining right now too.

  A sob wracks through me thinking of Ford’s mom. She’ll be absolutely broken by this.

  I drag myself out of bed. Somehow, I end up showered and dressed, though I couldn’t tell you how. I go through to the kitchen, intending to head straight over to see Ms. Sutter, but there are cops sitting at the dining table. Detective Holden and Officer Cordell—the same policewoman who was there when I gave my statement about Freya.

  Detective Holden smiles when he sees me. “Looks like she’s awake after all,” he announces, and I realize Uncle Ty must’ve been trying to get rid of him when I walked in. Why couldn’t I have waited just a few more minutes?

  Uncle Ty scowls across the table at him. Carolyn leans against the counter, arms folded across her chest.

  Both she and Uncle Ty were shocked to hell when I stumbled in last night and told them Ford had been pulled from the river. They both knew him, liked him, Uncle Ty especially. Judging by the dark circles under their eyes, I don’t think either of them slept too well.

  “Feeling ready to talk to us, Ava?”

  It doesn’t really look like I have a choice. I slide into the seat next to Uncle Ty.

  “What would you like to know, Detective?” My voice sounds a lot steadier than I feel. Holden leans forward, eager to catch every word that falls out of me.

  “First of all,” he begins, “I’m really sorry we have to do this right now—I know you and Ford were close, and with this happening right after Freya Miller’s murder, well . . . we all need to do whatever we can to help catch the person who did it, don’t we?”