by Alex Gordon
“No! You’re lying! It’s been over three days. They’ve had time to cross the wilderness. They’re innocent and they’re for Paradise. The Lady’s waiting for them!” Petersbury fell silent as Blaine’s shade vanished through the door. Then came the sound of the cane again, tap-tap on the front step and down the sidewalk, fading to nothing.
Minutes passed. Petersbury strained for any sound, heard only the hum of the refrigerator, the distant barking of a dog.
Then it drifted to him from the back of the house. Family noise. Junior’s loud yawning. The babies’ high-pitched yammering. Ashley’s laugh and Norma’s soft voice.
Petersbury started to smile, then looked down at his wrists. The deep cuts he had made had closed. The water in the pans now looked clean and clear. But he had to be dead. How could he hear his family unless he had crossed over? They couldn’t return on their own.
They came to me.
Floorboards creaked. Voices grew louder.
They begged me to help them.
Petersbury tried to make out words, but whatever Norma and the others said ran together in weird singsong.
To guide them.
His family walked into the living room, Junior carrying Alice and Ashley carrying Bella and Norma leading the way.
“Norma? Baby?” Petersbury strained against Blaine’s binding spell. “He came here. He’s come back, just like Matt said he would. He said you asked him for help, but that can’t be true. You went to the Lady. I know you did. He’s a liar.” He waited for his wife to answer, but she just watched him. They all just watched him, silent and motionless as dummies in a store window.
Then Norma stepped forward, and the light from the kitchen shone across her face.
Petersbury dug his heels into the floor and pushed, tried to scuttle against the wall and away from his wife. The thing that had been his wife. Gray skin and sunken cheeks and bony fingers grown too long. A smell like swamp and bait buckets. “Why, Norma? You’d have been safe with the Lady. Why did you go to him?”
Norma said nothing. Instead, she watched him while the others crowded behind her, their skin as gray, their hair as lank and stringy, their eyes as black and shiny as stone. Even the babies watched him, in a way babies never did. Focused and so still, the way cats in the bushes watched birds.
“Norma?” Petersbury struggled to keep his voice from shaking. “It’s me, remember? James. Your husband.”
Norma cocked her head, then uttered garble that might have been a question. For a moment, something flickered across her face. Comprehension. Recognition. The hard glitter in her eyes softened and her brow furrowed.
Petersbury tried again. “Norma? I love you. I’ll always love you.” But the last glimmer of what his wife had been had already vanished. She smiled like an animal now, revealing teeth gone rotted and pointy.
Then Ashley skirted around her and closed in. She had handed off Bella to Junior, and now crouched down and crawled toward Petersbury. He tried to kick her, but his legs had turned to lead and he barely managed to raise his foot off the floor as Ashley reached out and ran a clawlike finger down his leg, slicing through his pants and the skin beneath.
Petersbury gasped as the pain sang and the blood welled. The sound drew them all in as Ashley cut and cut some more, fingers flitting to his other leg, his arms and chest, and his blood flowed in warm rivers that soaked his clothes and pooled around him. Norma dipped a finger in it and drew on the floor while Junior put down the girls and Bella toddled right into the red mess and splashed and giggled.
“Ashley.” Petersbury waited until the thing that had been his daughter-in-law stopped and looked at him. “I swear, I did it to save you.”
Ashley stared at him, claw poised in midair, nails dripping. Then she smiled. “Grampy Jim.” Her nickname for him, in happier days.
Then she reached for his eyes.
Ol’ Tom’s been fixing his signs again.” Virginia Waycross cracked the thin skin of ice in the horse trough, then swept out the shards and tossed them on the ground. “Saw him limping along Old Orchard Road yesterday afternoon with his toolbox.”
“He’s getting started early.” Connie Petersbury sank the de-icer to the bottom of the trough and attached the clips that held it in place. “He always used to wait until March, April, when it warmed up.” She dried her hands on the seat of her jeans, then worked the electrical cord through the hard rubber sleeve that protected it from horse teeth and plugged it into the outlet just outside the fence.
“Couldn’t get much warmer than it is now.” Virginia crumpled the de-icer carton and shoved it into a trash bag with the others. “This is the latest I’ve installed these things since I don’t remember when. We’ve always had at least one real frigid snap by now, but this year? A little bit of snow. A little bit of cold. Like it’s teasing us.” She tossed the trash bag over the fence, beyond the reach of the trio of curious horses that watched from the far end of the corral.
“It’s only the middle of December. We’ll be wishing for days like this soon enough.” Connie buttoned her barn coat to the neck, then took her gloves from her pocket and pulled them on. Her fingers felt clumsy, stiff as the battered leather, and she told herself it was just arthritis aggravated by the cold. Fear had nothing to do with it. Gideon nerves. “Did he say why?” She fielded her friend’s puzzled look. “Tom. Did he say why he was putting up the signs now?”
“Change comin’.”
“That’s it?”
Virginia shrugged. “You know him. I was lucky to get that much.” She trod through a small pile of snow, flattening it into the mud. “He’s right, you know.”
“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Can’t think of a bigger stopped clock in Gideon than Tom Barton.” Connie looked up at the early-morning sky, the smears of rose-colored cloud. “Stopped about 1960 and ain’t been wound since.”
“I know you don’t like him.” Damp breeze ruffled Virginia’s steel-gray curls. From the side, she looked like a tall sliver, all muck boots and skinny jeaned legs and Mike’s old barn coat, the cuffs hanging past her knuckles. “Hell, I don’t like him. But he’s just saying what everyone is thinking.”
“And enjoying the hell out of it while he does. Plastering the Lady’s words all over the roadsides. Folks driving through think we’re a bunch of crackpots.”
“Who cares what strangers think? Our duty is to protect them, not befriend them.”
Connie turned away. One of the horses, Kermit the Morgan, had followed them, and she adjusted his blanket as he nickered and nibbled the hem of her coat. “Protect them how? We can’t even protect ourselves. We can’t even pro-tect—” The word cracked and her voice with it, and she pressed her face against the horse’s neck as the tears fell. Felt Virginia’s arms around her, the weathered softness of the canvas coat and the mingled smells of hay and lilac soap.
“I shouldn’t have asked you here today.” Virginia pulled her close and rocked back and forth, like she held a baby instead of a grown woman. “Dylan could have helped me—it’s his job.”
“I needed to get out.” Connie eased out of her friend’s embrace, wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “All I’d do at home is clean stuff and cry.”
“Well, I’m glad I could help a little, then.” Virginia cocked her head this way and that, trying to meet her eye. “Anything else happen I should know about?”
Connie sniffled, shrugged. “Saw Jorie at the post office yesterday. Mink coat and those spike-heel shoes of hers, like she was headed into the city. ‘The one time I see Gideon in the papers,’ she said, ‘and it’s for something like this.’ Asked how I couldn’t have seen it coming, why I didn’t stop it.”
“Well, damn her and all who sail with her.” Virginia’s eyes glinted. She hated Jorie Cateman, and had never hidden her feelings despite pressure from the other elders. “She’s nothing but a spoiled child, angry with the world for upsetting her day. Not unexpected, and not important.”
“She’d beg to diff
er.”
“So would Leaf. But she’s his folly, not ours, and I say the hell with them both.” Virginia took a piece of carrot from the depths of a coat pocket and held it out to Kermit. “Chew on this, not on my guests.” She gave the horse his treat, then patted his flank. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” She had switched to her meeting-hall voice, level and stern. “Constance Petersbury? I’m not asking as a friend.”
“I understand, Mistress.” Connie took hold of a lock of Kermit’s mane and rolled it between her fingers.
“Because I hate to sound cold, but this is about more than the loss of your family.”
“I know that, Mistress.”
“This is about the survival of Gideon, and the world outside.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Just so we’re clear.” The sight of carrots had lured the quarter horses, Bert and Ernie, and Virginia gently scolded them as they closed in and waited for their snacks. “I remember how close you and Jim were. Except that for the last few months, you weren’t anymore. Bella’s birthday came, and you didn’t go to the party. Sent a present, but Jim sent it back. Then Norma caught that bug that was going around, and you didn’t stop by once to help out or even check how she was doing.”
“You do have your sources.” Connie struggled to keep the bite out of her voice.
“I’m Mistress of Gideon.” Virginia distributed the last of the carrots, then shooed the horses with a wave of her hand. “Rank has its privilege as well as its duty.” She headed toward the gate, then stopped and waited. “Now, I want to know what you two fought about.”
Connie took her time catching up. She had pulled a hair from Kermit’s mane when she petted him, and now she weaved it through her fingers and muttered under her breath. Just a couple of words in the old language, taught to her by her great-grandmother years before. Within a heartbeat, she heard whinnying and snapping teeth and the pound of hooves, and turned to find Kermit cornering Bert, yellow choppers bared, hindquarters tensed as he made ready to rear and strike.
Then just as quickly, he quieted, shaking his head as though coming out of a daze.
“You think you can throw me off by making my boys hurt one another? On my land? How dare you.”
Connie looked back at Virginia to find her red-faced and glaring. “I am sorry, Mistress.” She had seen the woman angry before, but never had both barrels been directed at her. Gone too far. She needed to tread lightly now. “I beg forgiveness.”
“You want forgiveness?” Virginia paced, back and forth, like a big cat in a cage. “Answer my questions. And tell me the truth, or I swear by the Lady, I will make you regret the day you thought you could get the better of me.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Connie racked her brain, tried to piece together a story that could fool Virginia Waycross. She never had thought good on her feet, and Virginia would pounce on any detail that sounded fake or didn’t fit. “We argued about what we thought was happening.” She paused. “We argued about Matt.”
Virginia looked down at the ground, then away, her jaw working. “You been thinking about him, too?”
Bingo. Connie nodded. “Most every day, lately.”
“I wonder what he would make of all this. The way things are now.” Virginia stared off into the distance. “Jim never forgave him for leaving. I know that. Not sure I ever have either, for all he had his reasons.” She inscribed a sign in the air, a ward against demons. “I wish he was here now, though. Lady knows we could use him.” She trudged to the gate, then stopped, her hand on the latch. “You were just a kid when Matt left. What did you know about it?”
“Not much.” Well, that was a lie—Connie knew a lot. He and Emma opened a door, and left the rest of us to deal with what stepped through.
Virginia mounted the steps to her front door, then turned and looked out over the winter-brown yard. “You know, I saw Mike for months after he died. I’d be mucking out the barn or working in the vegetable garden, and I’d look up and there he’d be, dressed in his Sabbath suit, just watching me. He never believed I could manage this place on my own, and he had to see for himself that I could. Didn’t go away for good until the day I hired Dylan.”
Connie stood at the foot of the steps, eyes steady on Virginia as she sifted through the truth and the lies she knew she needed to tell, as all the while the back of her neck tingled and she fought the urge to turn around. “Sometimes I dream about him. I see him bleeding all over. Like he fought with someone. Like they hurt him bad.”
“Connie, he cut his wrists. Nothing else.”
“All over. His chest and his legs and his—” Connie waved toward her eyes. “They’re just black holes and bloody tears running down his face.”
Virginia scanned the yard, then looked toward the road. “Have you strengthened your wards?”
Connie shook her head. “Why would I want to keep him away? He’s my brother.”
“Yes. And you know he was scared. You know how he was acting. The things he was saying. Gideon nerves, we all thought. Same as all of us. But you’re his sister and you’re touchier than he ever was, and even you didn’t expect him to do what he did.”
Connie rubbed the back of her neck as the tingle ramped up to a poison-ivy itch. “What are you saying?”
Virginia dug a small plastic bag of protective herbs out of her coat pocket and sprinkled some of the brown fluff across her front steps. “I think you should stay here with me for a few days. I’m alone now that Dylan’s moved out, and it’s not like I wasn’t alone even when he was here. He’s a hired man. You’re a friend.”
Connie dragged off her glove and pressed her cold hand to the back of her neck. The itch had changed to burning now, as though she stood with her back to a roaring blaze. “Jim would never hurt me.”
“I’m trying to tell you, dear. And I’m trying to be gentle, but I’ve never been good at it. He may not be Jim anymore.” Virginia sighed, acknowledgment of the battle lost. “If you ever see him, you’ll tell me.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“I’m not asking. I’m ordering.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“He’s a tormented soul, fearing judgment, wandering the in-between, afraid to take that final walk into the pathless waste because he knows what’s awaiting him there. That much anguish, it opens doors best kept closed.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“By the Lady.”
“In her name.” Connie turned and headed to her pickup. Looked out toward the road, and saw Jim Petersbury standing just past the end of the driveway, beyond the reach of whatever wards the Mistress of Gideon had set to protect her property.
JIM HAD FIRST appeared in Connie’s dreams the day after they found him and Norma and the kids. Due to the nature of the deaths and the subsequent investigation, the county coroner had delayed releasing his body. And so it was that, bloody tears coursing his cheeks, Jim had come to Connie and begged her to rescue him, to free him from the confines of the morgue drawer and bring him home to Gideon. So she had done as every good child of the Lady would have done in her stead, and asked to meet with her Master, to request that he intercede. But her phone calls to Leaf Cateman had gone unanswered, and as for her post office encounter with Jorie, to say that had not gone well was to not say nearly enough.
Jim, meanwhile, had taken to turning up everywhere she went. Friends’ homes. The grocery store. Hoard’s Grill. The only place he hadn’t been able to enter was Virginia’s property, and maybe that stood to reason. He and Virginia hadn’t seen eye to eye in years, their friendship a memory, and once you lost Virginia Waycross, well, you lost her. Even after death.
“She never guessed you were there.” Connie checked the rearview, and saw Jim seated behind her in the cab’s jump seat, blood-rimmed eyes on her. “You were never able to fool her in life. Guess dying made you smarter.” She waited for a reply, but her brother had remained mute since that first impassioned plea. “Sure did make you quiet.”
She ci
rcled the village square, past Petrie’s hardware store, Corey’s feed store, and the grill, then paused at an intersection all but hidden by the tumbled remains of a stone gate and overgrown shrubbery. Tapped on the steering wheel, and looked toward the small cluster of Federals and Victorians where all but one of the elders of Gideon resided. All but Virginia. “‘Air’s too thin for breathing there,’ she says. But it’s just because of Leaf. Those two never got on.”
Connie pondered for a bit, then turned onto the narrow, tree-lined street, drifting down until she came to a sprawling painted lady done up in gray, wine red, and pink. “Haven’t got an appointment. Think he’ll see me?” She glanced at Jim again, and detected the barest hint of a smile. “Yes, I think so, too.” She pulled into the curved driveway, then stared up at the gingerbread eaves and ornate chimneys for a few courage-affirming moments before finally shutting off the truck and getting out.
Amanda Petrie, Leaf’s housekeeper, must have been watching from the front window, because she opened the door before Connie had a chance to ring the bell. “Constance?”
“I need to see him.” Connie tried to look past Amanda into the house, but the woman had some breadth to her and knew how to use it. “A couple minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Master Cateman’s a busy man, Constance.” Amanda’s wattled neck quivered. “You might have called first.” She wore her usual black pantsuit and pearls, silver hair pulled into a tight bun. On the weekends she worked as a greeter at the family funeral home and behaved with the same impatient bustle, barely concealed irritation with the whole human race, living or dead.
“He’s not the only person who’s busy—I have things that need doin’, too.” Connie stuffed her hands in her pockets and drew up as tall as her bad back would allow. “I’ll wait fifteen minutes, and then I’ll go.” She paused. “And I’ll never seek back again.”
