Of Scars and Stardust

by Andrea Hannah

  I turned toward the window and look out at the sherbet-colored sunlight staining Dad’s shed. He was hiding something in there, something he was extremely careful to keep hidden.

  But I was going to find it.

  twenty-eight

  I stormed out of the kitchen and into the foyer and threw open the closet. This time, instead of looking for the wolf knife, I was searching for one of Ella’s scarves. Dad tried to get all authoritative with me. He tried to tell me that I wasn’t allowed to go out with Grant, that I needed to stay home for once. But I didn’t listen; I didn’t even respond.

  This wasn’t my home anymore.

  I hopped into Grant’s truck, which was already warm and waiting—he’d quietly slipped outside when Dad started yelling. And then we drove through the iced-over roads of Amble, just biding our time until Mom and Dad fell asleep.

  Given how twitchy Dad had been near the shed, Grant suggested that we should take a look inside. He didn’t say it, but I could tell by the way his eyes had that empty look, and how he couldn’t stop chewing at nonexistent hangnails, that Dad’s erratic behavior had really freaked him out.

  And then there was the doll.

  The moment I got in the truck, I’d flipped through Dad’s file again. According to the report, there was never a doll at scene. I tried to remember the articles I’d read, and was pretty sure there’d never been any mention of a doll there, either.

  He’d been the first at the scene, just like he was at Ella’s attack. He’d found evidence at both scenes that he wanted to keep hidden, so he took it. If what he’d said to me was true, he’d taken the paring knife to keep me safe. But why the doll?

  Who was he trying to protect?

  And what had he found while I was in New York that made him quit Sarah’s case and resign as chief?

  I glanced at the watery green lights of the dashboard. Midnight. “I’m sure they’re asleep now,” I said to Grant.

  “Let’s move.” The truck rumbled as he stepped on the gas and made a sharp turn down Main. We were only a couple of miles from my house, but we’d spent the last few hours driving aimlessly around town. There wasn’t anywhere in Amble where I was welcome, and unfortunately my status as town pariah had also crippled Grant’s social life.

  Grant cut the headlights when we turned down my street, and slowed the truck to a stop a few yards from my house. He nodded. “Looks like everyone’s asleep.”

  The house loomed over us, all of its light snuffed out. In the darkness, its red siding looked almost black. And everything was eerily quiet.

  We crept out of the truck and through the cornstalks, Grant’s flashlight leading the way. I tried not to think about what else was hiding in there.

  When Dad’s shed came into sight, the flashlight clicked off and Grant threaded his fingers through mine. He squeezed my hand and pulled me forward.

  “Where’s the key?” he whispered. I could just barely see the outline of his other hand wrapped around the padlock. I winced as I stuck my hands into the snow, fumbling around until I made contact with a smooth surface. I grabbed the garden gnome by his oversized hat and tipped him over. Grant pull the key out from under its feet and inserted it into the lock.

  Click.

  The sound was so loud in the midst of all this quiet that it sounded more like a gun firing than a lock. Grant went rigid next to me. But nothing happened. No one came.

  Carefully, he unthreaded the lock from the handle and pushed open the door.

  The darkness was so thick and dusty, I felt like I could drink it in. I coughed, and Grant stumbled into something that sounded heavy and painful. “Shit,” he mumbled. “That hurt.”

  “It’s too dark in here—we need more light. Turn on your flashlight.”

  “Can’t,” Grant answered from somewhere to the left of me. “It’s too bright. I’m afraid your dad will see it from the house.”

  “Fine, give me a sec then.” I fumbled through my coat pockets for my cell phone. When I found it, I touched the screen and a soft blue glow stained the floor in front of me. “Let’s look for something a little more practical.”

  Grant flicked on his cell phone too, and in a matter of minutes he found an old, oil-based lantern and some matches. With a snap and a quick burst of flame, the inside of the shed was doused in light. “Let’s put this on the floor,” he said, tucking the lantern under a wood bench. “We only need a little light.”

  And it was true. I’d forgotten how small the shed really was, especially on the inside. It’d been years since I’d been in there.

  It looked like it had been about that long since Dad had been in there, too.

  Everything was coated in so much dust, it gave all the objects inside a fuzzy, out-of-focus look. I wiped my finger over a sawhorse, and the dust clumped on my skin. I glanced around. It seemed like nothing had been used or touched in years, and there was no trace of anything strange that I could start with.

  Grant’s voice cut through the silence. “Look,” he said, pointing at the floor. I tilted my head around the sawhorse to see what he was talking about.

  A perfectly preserved set of footprints, standing in the center of the room. And they looked fresh. Well, fresher than anything else in this space.

  I looked under my feet and saw my own footprints settling in the dust, all chaotic and scattered. Grant’s, too, were slapped haphazardly throughout the shed. But these footprints, the new ones, were smaller.

  “Someone was in here,” I said, inspecting the prints. “These don’t belong to Dad.”

  Grant squinted through the shadows stretched across the floor. “No, they don’t.”

  We started to search the area encircling the prints, pulling out old pots and moldy garden gloves. Grant started sifting through cardboard boxes, but it turned out they were filled with a tangle of fishing lures.

  I closed my eyes and tipped my head up, attempting to stretch out my neck. Exhaustion fell over me like a warm blanket, and all at once I remembered how tired I was. I opened my eyes.

  My mouth dropped open when I realized what I was looking at.

  A little knitted bird with a fat, beaded eyes hung from the ceiling above me. It was blood red.

  “Grant,” I said slowly. “I found something.” I pointed.

  Grant’s head tipped up next to me. “Oh shit,” he said. “Shit.”

  “Ella,” I said.

  The footprints, the knitted bird dangling from the crossbeams—it was all Ella. And it was recent; she must have left these things behind right before she disappeared. The bird wasn’t dusty at all.

  “Look, there’s some kind of box above it,” Grant said, pointing to a small shoebox balancing on the crossbeams, just above the bird. “We have to get it down.” Without hesitating, he hoisted himself onto the wooden workbench and stood. His silhouette made shadows dance around the shed.

  Outside, I heard a howl.

  I shook it away. I had to focus.

  Grant easily reached the shoebox, tapping it until it tumbled into his hand. He jumped down with a thud, then took a deep breath before he pulled off the lid.

  The doll.

  It was a homemade doll, something Mrs. Dunnard probably stitched together while waiting for customers at her shop. Its hair was made of yellow yarn, and its dress of gingham. Two button eyes stared blankly at me.

  It was covered in blood.

  Almost every inch of the fabric was soaked, except for the hem of its dress.

  I closed my eyes and swallowed. “Grant, put it away.”

  Breathe, breathe, breathe.

  A howl came again, this time quick and furious and full of wanting.

  My dad had murdered Sarah Dunnard.

  Why else would he have hidden her doll in his shed?

  Another howl. Closer.

  “There’s a note,” Gran
t said. “And … this.” His voice sounded far away.

  I opened my eyes. “This” was a smear of tarnished metal and jagged wood and glittering, gem-colored eyes. Dad’s missing knife.

  “Give me that,” I said, holding out my hand. “He can’t hurt anyone else. I won’t let him.”

  Grant stared at the knife for a second and said, “Maybe I should hold on to it. This is evidence.” But eventually, he put it into the palm of my hand. I shoved it in my pocket, trying not to think of the blood congealed on the tip.

  “Here’s the note.” Grant handed me a sheet of paper with torn edges. It was Ella’s handwriting, so rushed that this time she even forgot to dot her letters with hearts.

  He was going to hurt me like he hurt her, so I told them to take me away. I had to go.

  All of a sudden, everything got wobbly and the lantern light started to flicker. I clutched the workbench. I’d been searching for Ella, certain something feral had carried her away from Amble as she screamed for someone to find her. But the “he” Ella was afraid of wasn’t a snarling, snapping wolf or the boy with the heavy-lidded eyes. It was her own father. The entire time I’d been holed up in New York, Ella was being hunted from all sides.

  He’s going to kill me.

  A white light flooded my vision and I was sure I was going to pass out. I squeezed the workbench harder, but my fingers felt numb.

  “Claire, we’ve got to get out of here. Hurry!” Grant’s voice, warped and muffled. Then there were arms around my back and under my legs and I felt like I was floating.

  Another beam of light soaked the contents of the shed, and then there was yelling. Loud. Furious.

  Dangerous.

  “Go, go, go,” Grant whispered from somewhere above me. Dry leaves clawed at my skin as he carried me into the cornfield. The lights from the house splashed across the stalks, illuminating their brittle gold in short bursts of color.

  One after another, the howls tore through the sky.

  As Grant carried me away from the frantic floodlights, I wondered which was more lethal:

  What was inside the cornfield, or out.

  And did it even matter anymore?

  twenty-nine

  “Breathe, Claire, breathe.” Grant’s eyes floated in front of my face, soft and full of moonlight. A cluster of cornstalks bent over us, shielding us from the falling snow with their twisted leaves. The scent of a bonfire flooded my nose.

  “It’s okay. We’re safe.”

  Something snapped a few feet away and I jumped to my feet. Grant grabbed my shoulders to keep me steady. “We’re not safe. We’re not safe at all,” I choked. “My dad’s a murderer, my sister thought he was going to kill her. She let them take her away, Grant.” My chest constricted with panic and I gasped for breath. “She let the wolves take her to get away from him, and now I don’t know how to find her.” Thick sobs began to clot up my throat.

  Grant pressed his body flush with mine and tucked my head into the space beneath his collarbone. His heartbeat thumped against my skin.

  But it didn’t drown out the howling.

  I pulled my head from his neck and listened.

  More howls, long and melancholic, spanned the cornfield. Things snapped and popped all around us, and Grant clutched me tighter.

  A flash of gray.

  And the blink of a yellow eye.

  “Grant,” I whispered, “they’re close.”

  He rubbed the back of my neck. “They’re right over there.”

  I spun around. Smoke billowed toward the star-speckled sky, and a bonfire snapped and crackled from a few feet away. Laughter bubbled over into the space between us and the party.

  “Come on,” he said, pulling me forward. “We can ask them for help.”

  I jerked my hand back. “How can they possibly help with this?” What did he expect? That we’d ask them to help us catch the wolves and they’d say, “Sure, no problem. Let me get my net”?

  “We could ask someone for a ride back to my house. Then we could think about our next move from there.”

  I sucked in a breath. Okay. Okay, that could be good. Some time to collect ourselves before we went out hunting for wolves. I took a step forward.

  A wet pile of snow gave way beneath me and I stumbled right into the middle of Lacey Jordan’s party.

  “Claire?” Lacey said from the other side of the stalks. I could see through the bonfire smoke that she still had the fat caterpillars crawling along her eyelashes. “What are you doing here?”

  The fire snapped in the center of Lacey’s oval-shaped backyard, casting shadows in the spaces between all of the people huddled there. They were a blur of yellow Amble High letterman jackets and snow boots, of cigarette smoke and freedom. And every last one of them was staring at me.

  Grant’s fingers touched my back and I let out a breath. “I brought her with me,” he said. “We need a ride back to my house.”

  Lacey stepped around the fire, trailed by two girls who also had caterpillars for eyelashes. Must be an Amble thing I’d missed out on. She narrowed her eyes at Grant. “Leaving so soon, Grant? Now that’s rude.”

  Something rustled in the shadowed space behind Lacey, and I felt Grant’s body go rigid next to me. “Look, Lacey, we’re not looking for trouble. We just need a ride.”

  The space around us had grown tighter, and all their shadows fell in watery patterns across my boots. If it wasn’t so cold, I would have been sweating. They were trapping us, hunting us. They all thought I was the threat, while the whole time wolves and murderers encircled them, watched them.

  Hunted them.

  “What are you doing, hanging around with that?” a boy about my age said. He had crept up next to me and I hadn’t even noticed. I could smelled the beer on his breath. He reached over me and shoved Grant’s shoulder. “You really shouldn’t hang out with crazies, Grant. Might rub off on you.”

  Grant’s fingers left my back. He stepped in front of me and pushed the guy back. “Cole, why don’t you go back over to that cooler, get yourself another beer, and leave her the hell alone.”

  A howl bounced in the space around us and I swear my heart stopped beating. But it was only Cole, whose laugh sounded more like an injured dog than a human. “Oh yeah? Why don’t you go find us some wolves, Claire?” He leaned in so that his salty breath plugged up my nostrils. He whispered, “Why don’t you use them as an excuse to tear my face off?”

  The next thing I saw was snow.

  I sank into the drift as Grant gently pushed me out of the way. He let out a low, growling sound—like something I’d heard in the corners of Manhattan when I was being hunted there—and lunged at Cole.

  The two boys kicked up snow around them, and it sparkled in the air around the fire for a second before dusting the rest of the party. Lacey turned to me and screamed, “You ruined my party!”

  Everything around me ticked in slow seconds. My brain went foggy, like the smoky air, and all I could see were the corners of the stars trying to peek out from beyond the fire.

  I stood up, bracing myself against a bent-up stalk. Grant and Cole were still rolling through the snow. Lacey was coming toward me. The wolves were waiting, still deciding which of us would get new scars tonight.

  Grant slammed Cole into a card table positioned at the foot of the yard. It seemed like it wobbled for ten seconds before it tipped over, crashing into the snow and taking down a riot of liquor bottles with it. A vodka bottle cracked open down the middle as it crashed into the metal legs of the table. Liquor splashed everywhere: on the tips of my boots, on Cole’s jacket, in Grant’s hair.

  And the scent of cherry filled the air.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Lacey stood in front of me now, her eyes blazing from under her clumped lashes.

  I didn’t know which would come first: the wolf’s teeth i
n the back of my neck or Lacey’s hand across my face. Either way, it was going to hurt.

  But the only thing that happened was the snap of a stalk and a howl close enough to make the entire clearing shudder to a stop. And next came the screams.

  The flash of gray wove itself through the boundary of the clearing, its eyes gleaming like orbs in the light of the fire. Bottles clinked together as they were dropped, forgotten, in the snow. Snapshots of boots and arms, varsity jackets and too much makeup clicked through my brain, but I didn’t move. I wouldn’t move until I saw messy brown hair and pale green eyes and freckles.

  “You’ve gotta get out of here.” Fingers clamped around my wrist, and I let myself be pulled toward the edge of the yard. It took another three seconds before I realized it wasn’t Grant.

  I pulled my wrist free. “Where’s Grant?”

  “Come on, Claire, we’ve gotta go. My house is right over there. He’ll be fine.” Half-lidded eyes. Hair that curled over his right ear.

  Patrick Gillet was leading me away from the party, away from the wolves.

  thirty

  “In here,” Patrick breathed, holding the front door to his matchstick house open for me. I stepped over the hole in the front porch that lingered at the doorway like an uninvited guest.

  Why Patrick Gillet was inviting me into his house, even though the howling had finally stopped, I didn’t know.

  Something about the way he leaned against the house made my stomach flip-flop. Of all the people I’d seen in Amble, he looked exactly the same as he did in the picture on Ella’s corkboard. I couldn’t help but imagine him leaning over Ella the same way he leaned in the doorway, his fingers tangled up in her hair.

  I must have forgotten I was staring at Patrick himself instead of his picture because he waved a hand in front of my face and said, “Hello? You coming in?”

  I took a step away from the door. “You know who I am, right?” I asked.