Fiendish (21 page)

UNEARTHLY

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

W
e left the house at a run, Isola shuffling out onto the porch after us. Her arms were folded and her face was troubled but she didn’t try to stop us.

As we crossed the yard to Fisher’s car, something white drifted in front of my face. It fell like snow, but the air was warm, swirling with a hot updraft.

“It’s ash,” I whispered, holding out my hands to the awful dust falling all around me. “The sky is burning.”

I understood suddenly that for as long as Shiny had been trying to explain, I’d been wrong about the reckoning. In my head, it was ugly fish and plants that grew too wild and too fast. Now that Davenport had woken up her craft, now that it was the five of us, all those things were so small—just the little daily vagaries of the hollow—and there was a world of difference between the hollow and the reckoning.

We drove through town, holding hands across the gearbox the whole way. It was like something sweethearts did, but I couldn’t help thinking that how I was holding on to him was not like a sweetheart, but like a drowner. Like I was scared someone was going to try and rip him away from me.

The clouds were huge and almost green. The wind was up, making the trees along Broom Street toss and thrash. The whole place had taken on a strange, eerie light.

The streets were mostly empty, people barricaded in their houses, the black muzzles of rifles and shotguns the only thing that showed between the blinds. Now and then, we passed signs that something terrible was happening. A bloody square of sidewalk. A house that had gone completely to brambles and kudzu vines in less than an hour. The reckoning was lunatic and it was everywhere.

We drove too fast for town, passing handfuls of trucks and off-roaders and every one of them headed out toward the Crooked Mile.

“They’re going down to the Willows,” I said. “We have to get there before they do—otherwise they’ll . . .”

Fisher nodded once, without looking at me. Then he whipped the Trans Am around in the middle of the road.

“What are you doing?”

“We’ll go out on Main and then cut down through Beekman’s back acreage, just as long as the farm road isn’t still underwater.”

The south end of town was completely empty, quiet as a grave.

As we watched, the sky turned black in a long plume all the way down toward the hollow. The wind picked up, tearing the banners off the buildings, sending them flapping across the empty street like huge, ungainly bats. The storefronts were left naked, their windows dark like jagged, empty sockets.

At the edge of town, the fair stood eerie and deserted. One of the midway booths was standing empty in the street, bloody and covered in handprints. The windows of Spangler’s were broken out, and some black bat-winged creature lay slumped over one of the frames, half in and half out. Glass lay in a glittery spill all over the sidewalk.

We rolled through the fair, everything still and empty as the end of the world.

The swings turned gently by themselves. The lights on the carousel had all gone dark. Over the roofs of the abandoned buildings, the sky was an oily black, swirling slick and ominous.

Only a few days before, Fisher and I had ridden these same swings while the speakers played old country songs and the only thing on my mind had been how he might kiss me before the night was through. Now everything was ruined.

We left Main at a dirt turn that was marked by nothing but a fencepost and cut down through the pastureland on a little tractor road that was barely a road at all, just dirt and gravel and deep wheel ruts. Fisher drove it like a maniac, plowing along through the hay and out onto the Crooked Mile.

Out the back window of the Trans Am, I could see the line of trucks as it wound down into the Willows—a long way off, but getting closer. They were taking the road slower than Fisher, and for good reason.

The town had been bad enough, but the Willows was turning monstrous. The creek wound black all through the lowlands now. Tree roots crept up from the ground like clutching fingers, snaking across the road.

At the Heintzes’ place, the gate was torn half off its hinges and far off, behind the house, I could see flames out in the birch wood. The whole countryside seemed to flash and flicker like the very air was burning. I didn’t see Davenport anywhere.

We drove on, toward Myloria’s, and as soon as we pulled up to the house, I was out of the car, running up the front steps.

I tore through to the back of the house, looking for my family, for anyone. Shiny and Rae were in the kitchen, scraping together all the sharpest things from the drawers, and locking all the windows.

“The coalition’s coming,” I said. “We saw them on the road, and Shiny, there are a lot of them.”

The words gave me a tight, choking feeling in my throat, but Shiny just nodded. Her face was terrible and beautiful. She yanked open the side door of the china cabinet, reaching for the shotgun and the shoebox, fingers sliding past the rock salt loads to the real shells.

She had the gun laid across the table and was loading it when the silence was broken by the rumble of an engine. The only person who’d driven up that driveway—maybe in years— was Fisher, and now a whole chorus of engines sounded, rusty and uneven, metallic clangs and doors slamming.

“Myloria Blackwood,” someone called from the yard. It was a man’s voice, twangy and nasal.

We went to the window and peered between the curtains. A bunch of men stood in the yard, holding shotguns and rifles and wooden bats. They had their hats pulled low over their eyes, but when I looked closer, I saw they were mostly young, and some were still only boys.

Mike Faraday was there, along with the rest of the in-town crowd who ran around with Fisher. The Maddox brothers stood side by side near the back, hair standing up like they’d walked out of a blast furnace. Luke was holding a pickax, and Cody had a kaiser blade in each hand. Behind them on the road, I could see a parade of headlights, getting closer.

Fisher moved behind me, shaking his head. “Shit,” he muttered, peering out the window into the yard. “
Shit
.”

“What is it? What’s happening?” Myloria had come up behind us, her flannel shirt slipping off her shoulder and her hands stained purple with some kind of ink. She looked wild.

Shiny didn’t glance around. “That asshole Faraday and his hick friends are here.”

“Then this is the end,” Myloria whispered, sinking down onto the floor with a thin little gasp, clutching at the curtains and nearly bringing the rod down with her. “They’ve come for us.”

The yard got very still. There was no answer but the grim metallic sound of someone hauling something heavy out of the bed of a truck. Shiny stood in the kitchen with her shotgun, a butcher knife held in her other hand like a sword. Myloria was making a thin, moaning sound.

“Myloria,” Shiny said sharply, standing over her. “Maybe you’re ready to roll over. Maybe you are fine and good to just sit there and wail about the world ending and wring your hands. Maybe you’re all set to do exactly what you did the last time this shit got stirred up and these assholes came out here. But not me.”

Myloria sat on the floor, hugging her shoulders, looking up at her daughter. “What are you going to do?”

Shiny glared at her, breathing hard. “I’m going to save this busted joke of a house and everything that goes along with it. And you’re going to get up off this floor and help me. Otherwise, you need to shut up and stay out of my way.”

Out in the yard, the men were shuffling closer. Any minute, one would step onto the porch, just to prove to the others that he was brave. They’d hauled all sorts of gas cans out of the flatbeds of their trucks.

Shiny stormed into the front hall, her shoulders back, her hair loose and tangled, and I followed her. For one instant, I had a strange vision of Myloria herself—Myloria young and glamorous and wild. The moment passed, though, and it was Shiny striding up the hall, ready to rip a strip off anybody who came near her.

From out in the yard, one of the men yelled, “We’re not here to make trouble, Miz Blackwood.”

“What are you here for then?” Shiny called back through the door.

“Just need to talk to you for a minute. We got someone out here who’s got something to say.”

Shiny shook her head at me fiercely, but I opened the door anyway, peering out through the screen. The yard was full of boys and men arranged in a semicircle, staring up at us.

Then Mike Faraday stepped into the dirt at the bottom of the steps, shoving Davenport in front of him. Her dress was rumpled and she was crying. He had his hand tight around her arm.

I pushed open the screen door and stepped out onto the porch. Shiny grabbed at me, but I pulled away and strode out to the top of the steps.

“Let her go,” I said. “If you’re afraid of her, then let her come up here with us. But you don’t need to hurt her.”

Mike Faraday only spit and shook his head. “No way I’m handing Greg’s own daughter over to you, to a bunch of fiends and murderers.”

I stood looking down at Davenport, trying to think how to save her.

“There!” she said, pointing with a pale, long-fingered hand, her eyes wide and hurt. “They killed my father!”

THE RECKONING

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

D
avenport’s face was frantic, her eyes as panicked as any wild animal’s.

“What are you talking about?” I said, and it came out as a whisper.

Mike was the one who looked up at me, the one who answered, like he didn’t even know I hadn’t been saying it to him. “Greg Heintz is dead and she tells us you all are the ones that killed him.”

“That’s crazy, though,” I said. “Davenport, tell them it isn’t true!”

Davenport only stood silent, and the crowd in the yard stood silent with her. They were all looking past me.

Fisher had come out onto the porch behind me. He was holding an ax, and all the boys in the yard stepped back. Beside him, Rae was prim and tiny, with a mild look on her face and Shiny’s buck knife in her hand.

Shiny stood on Fisher’s other side, easy and long-boned. “Hey, y’all.” She was holding the walnut-handled Remington.

A huge wind was blowing through the trees, and for a second, I thought I smelled the sharp, poison stink of the hell dogs, like they might be creeping up from the hollow along with everything else, and I knew I didn’t have long before the world and the hollow would collide in some kind of all-out war.

Davenport was still standing in front of the house like she had only got there by mistake. Her homemade dress hung loose and doll-like on her, and her face was very pale.

Beside me, Shiny was staring down the boys in the yard. She had the shotgun propped against her hip. It looked dangerous in her hands, like it might be just another part of her.

She was considering Mike Faraday, not in fear or trepidation but like she wanted a piece of him and no one else would do. “I always knew I would burn you down one day.”

Mike nodded slowly. He was carrying a gas can. “Funny how that works.”

The can hung loose and heavy in his hand. The air in the yard was crackling like it might catch fire.

Shiny smiled a strange, ugly smile. “Funny.” Her tone was sweet and sticky. Then, the way it always did when she got scary, right after the last word, rage came snarling out of her like smoke. “Now get your nasty-ass self and your nasty friends out of my yard, you redneck piece of trash.”

For the longest time, none of them moved or said a word. Then, like they’d all agreed ahead of time, they began to climb up into the backs of their trucks, stuffing rags in bottles and lighting them.

I was still watching in dumb horror when the first bottle flew past my head and onto the porch, a twist of rag blazing in the top, and Shiny shoved me hard enough to send me staggering out of the way, my arm throbbing where her hands had scorched me through my clothes.

“Shiny!” Rae cried as two more smashed against the boards in twin flowers of burning oil, smoking black as bad dreams and sending flames licking up the side of the house.

Without a word, Shiny knelt and scraped up the spilled oil like it was nothing more than a handful of leaves, then chucked it down into the bed of Mike’s truck. The paint exploded into flames, not like a normal fire at all, but a great bonfire, burning in the yard. It towered in the air so the whole place was lit by a pillar of flame.

Everyone was staring at the burning truck, but Davenport only stood limply off to the side, looking out toward the creek.

I jumped down from the porch and darted across the yard.

“Davenport,” I said in a tight, breathless whisper, grabbing her by the hand and trying to pull her toward the house. “They’re going to rip this place apart in a minute. Just tell them we didn’t kill your dad and we can sort this out. Or come with me and we’ll leave. We’ll run away to Wixby Hollow—you and me, or all of us—and stay there until we figure out how to stop this.”

For a second, I thought that she would. I thought she’d make a break back toward the house with me and we could run away and this awful, awful day could all be over.

Then she pulled her hand away. “You did kill my daddy,” she said. “We all did. We all hated him, every last one of us. I just took that hate and finally it made it worth something.”

I moved toward her again, hugging my elbows. “That’s not true. It was an accident. You didn’t mean it!”

Her face went cold, awful in the light from the burning truck. “Don’t tell me what I mean. You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know you’re as scared as the rest of us,” I said. “But you’re not alone. None of us really know how to work our craft and it’s ruining us. We have to figure out some way to stop it, before it goes any further.”

All around us, the members of the coalition were stepping down from trucks, bottles burning in their hands. I could hear Shiny shouting at them not to move, but that didn’t stop the clang of their boots as they jumped down from the flatbeds.

Davenport didn’t pay them any mind. “Sometimes that’s just the way of the world. You can’t make it better, so you might as well do the worst.”

The way she said it was so chilly that at first I could only stare at her. “What are you talking about?”

The question was not much more than a dry little rasp in my throat, and she smiled.

“You know I’m no good, Clementine. Deep down, you know. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“That’s not true.” But the way she was looking at me made me falter. In the firelight, she looked more like her father than ever.

“I was down in Wixby the night you tore up his zoo,” she said. “Gathering up the light for my daddy, when she came crawling up out of the creek and said she needed to talk to me. Said she was my
mother
.” The last word sounded thick, like she was spitting it between her teeth, nearly sick, it was so disgusting to her.

I nodded slowly. “She was.”

Davenport stared back at me, eyes pale as ice. “Well, I don’t suppose I need to tell
you
, but I had no use for any sort of mother like her. No use for any sort of fiend. She was an abomination to my blood, and I don’t need anything to make me more hated than I already am.”

The way her face didn’t change sat in my heart like a stone. “Davenport, what did you
do
?”

“Made sure she never came near me again. The next time I went down, I looked for her. I tricked her out from the creek into the trees and caught her in a trigger snare, the same way my dad caught half his zoo. All the stories talk about how strong they are, but they kill pretty easy, just like anything else.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t hear the commotion behind us anymore. It was like I couldn’t hear anything. The clouds of ash fell softly and constantly. There was a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow down.

Davenport had murdered her mother, and whether she hated fiends or just herself, it didn’t really matter. It was done.

“This is the way the world ends.” Her voice was singsong and I went cold all the way to the tips of my fingers. The hell dogs were getting close now. I could smell the chemical stink of them, feel their dark shapes creeping around in the shadows, getting closer.

From over by the porch, someone shouted, and then there was a snarl and a scream.

I whipped around in time to see one of the oily black shapes go vaulting over the hood of a truck, biting and tearing at one of the men from Carter’s Garage, knocking him into the dirt, ripping at him so the blood flew in bright drops.

I stared with my hands cupped over my mouth, but Davenport only smiled. I was struck by how she never seemed to blink.

“Can’t you feel it?” she said, exalted and breathless. “Can’t you feel how
big
it is?”

And the worst thing was that I could. The light inside me was reaching for the craft in the rest of them, pulling me in all directions like a magnet. I felt that in a second, it would burst out of me in a huge storm and flatten everything.

I wrestled with it, breathing in little gasps. “What is it you
want
?”

Davenport laughed dryly, shaking her head. “I want the same thing I’ve always wanted, ever since the day I was old enough to know it was a choice. I want to get the hell out of my father’s house.”

“You are,” I said, brushing the ashes from my cheeks. “You
killed
him. There’s no one left to keep you there.”

I reached out to touch her arm. Ash was raining down in powdery flakes, swirling in the air. The smoke was thick around us, making it hard to see, and everything was so hot that I could hardly breathe. Her skin was cold, though, unnaturally cold, so that it seemed to sizzle under my hand. Her eyes were wide and unearthly, the blue bleeding ragged against the white like torn paper.

“You shouldn’t come so near me,” she said, taking a step back. “You make it so hard to keep the creek low.”

I raised my chin, blinking against the smoke. I had the strangest feeling that I was seeing the end now. That this was what it had been coming to all along. We were all lost in our own terrible powers. All deep in the grips of the reckoning.

From the porch behind me, there was a riot of shouting, but I was scared to look away from Davenport, who stood in front of me under the tupelo tree, staring so long I wasn’t sure she even saw me anymore.

Then one of the boys yelled, “Don’t you have any kind of loyalty?” and I knew they were talking to Fisher.

Davenport and I both turned. The boys had all climbed down from their trucks. Some of them were holding hunting rifles, crowbars, or bats, looking up at Fisher on the porch like they meant to tear him to pieces.

“Don’t act so hurt,” he said, turning the ax in his hand. “Like you want me down there with you. You might have been dumb enough to ignore my blood once. I might have been dumb enough to pretend, but it’s getting old.”

“You got to pick where you want to stand, is all,” said Cody, not saying Fisher was right, but not denying it either. “This is your last chance.”

Fisher nodded, slow and heavy like he was thinking about that. He stepped down into the yard, and now he was smiling.

For just a moment, none of us moved. The whole world seemed to pulse and flicker. Then Fisher turned and put the ax through the windshield of Mike Faraday’s burning truck.

The sound it made was colossal.

This was the ugly business, the taking of sides. If any of them had thought before that he might join them, all question was gone the minute he swung the ax.

Mike Faraday was inching closer to the porch, still holding the gas can, but less and less like he had a plan for it.

“Stop where you are, Mike.” Shiny’s eyes were full of flames, and her voice crackled. “You and me, we’ve had some times, but this is dirty even for you, and so help me God but I will put you down.”

The Remington seemed to have shrunk to nothing but two black barrels, and I watched them with the awful feeling that they were watching back. The air around her seemed to shimmer, and smoke swirled out of her mouth.

With a slow, hungry smile, she came down the steps, crossing the three feet of dirt between them in one stride, and held the barrel under Mike’s chin.

And in that moment, I had never been so ungodly scared. I was certain none of them was kind or reasonable or right. They were without decency, but in a minute, Shiny was going to do something terrible.

She stood perfectly still, and her breath blew out a bright cloud of sparks, hissing in the air. Her finger was on the trigger, and then, she gasped.

At first, I didn’t understand what was happening—only that a cold, prickling sensation was gathering around my feet, soaking my shoes and creeping up my legs.

Davenport made a breathless noise beside me. Her mouth was so pale it seemed bloodless, and she was breathing in little gasps, so short and shaky it sounded like she was laughing.

She said in a small, shuddering voice, “Here comes the creek.”

And as I turned, I saw that she was right. The water was coming up fast and muddy, pouring into the yard from nowhere and everywhere, slow at first, then all at once, rising in a wave, washing over our knees.

I grabbed the porch rail to steady myself as the whole Blue Jack seemed to leave its banks and come rushing into the yard at us.

With sharp, yelping cries, the boys went scrambling for their vehicles. Mike swung himself up onto the running board of one of the trucks, but Shiny wasn’t so lucky. She screamed as the water hit her legs, sprawling in the mud as the wave broke over her.

I clung to the house, trying to keep my feet, but the water kept coming, and Shiny had disappeared. Rae gave a sharp little cry and went splashing down off the porch, flailing across the yard to her, trying to get her head up out of the water.

The creek around them was full of wicked-looking fish with spines on their backs and mouths full of teeth. Snakes that wound through the water like thick, black cables— rubbery looking, almost mechanical—with hell-green eyes and horns sticking out of their heads.

Rae put the buck knife through one with barely a glance, dragging Shiny up out of the water and hauling her back onto the porch.

Shiny was breathing in painful gasps. Her skin had cracked in a network of jagged hairlines. They didn’t bleed, only covered her like a spiderweb, raw and oozing. Her whole body was shaking and Rae sat on the porch with her, holding onto the hem of her shirt instead of her hand so as not to touch her skin.

All down the flooded driveway, the trucks were parked at crazy angles and as I watched, the headlights began to shatter, exploding in showers of glass as Fisher waded through the yard, the craft humming off him in a fury, making the water slop up in crazy waves.

Mike and the other boys huddled in the backs of the trucks, but they were still stuffing bottles, getting ready to light them. The rags were smoking blackly, and without Shiny to turn the fire back, there would be no stopping them from burning the house.

“Just get
out
of here,” Mike said, and he sounded nearly desperate. “I know you, man. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Fisher only laughed a hard, ugly laugh. “What can you do to me now that I haven’t already done to myself?”

His face was terrible, and I understood that the power working in him might just be enough to crack the world.