“I have three more days,” Ledger said.
Earl’s eyes were ulcerated, raw sores visible on the corneas, and scabs caught in its sparse eyelashes. Rather than watch Earl blink with those, Ledger looked up, and his gaze caught on the rotted sockets on its temples, clotted with old blood and what looked like decayed mulch.
“Do you… think I’m… ugly?” Earl asked.
“Yes,” Ledger said.
It wasn’t that the truth couldn’t get you into trouble with an unnatural, but a liealwayswould. This particular truth made Earl give a scratchy “Heh.”
“Do you think… I want to… die?”
“I would.”
Earl smiled. Even tryingnotto look at it, Ledger caught it out of the corner of his eye. Lips split open, the flesh inside too dry to bleed, and exposed worn-to-nub fangs that wobbled loosely in dry white sockets.
“Do you think… I’ll be kind… if you don’t give me… my death?”
“I don’t think you would be kind whatever I do,” Ledger said.
Earl let its head loll to the side. Its whole body went suddenly slack, strung on threads of flesh like a dead puppet. Ledger was possessed of the sudden, suicidal impulse to push it like a swing. Instead, he waited.
When nothing happened, he grimaced and slowly backed out of the room. He caught his heel on the doorstep and only just caught himself on the doorframe. It wasn’t painted, and it wasn’t wood. It felt dry and rough under his fingers. Like bone.
That was disturbing. Ledger kept his eye on Earl as he reached for the door and firmly closed it. Once there was a barrier between him and the thing, he turned and looked around.
The floor upstairs creaked. Ledger looked up at the ceiling. It was creased and wrinkled, dewed with damp.
He glanced back at the front door and contemplated just going. It wasn’t as if he knew how Earl ended conversations. Maybe that was how it did it, his signal to leave.
The floor creaked again, and something groaned softly.
Or not.
Ledger rubbed his clammy hands on his chinos, swallowed hard, and started up the stairs. It got less disturbing as he went. The air still stank of salt, but the walls didn’t have a pulse. Ledger would take what he could get. He stopped at the top of the stairs.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
One of the doors down the hall creaked inward, opening just a crack. Ledger stared at it for a moment, then rolled his eyes before he started down the hall. He got to the door and gave the base of it a nudge with his foot.
Inside, a teenager sat on a rocking chair. She had short blond hair loose around her face and a pleasant, vacant expression. Her arms were darkly tanned, the fuzz of body hair almost white from the sun, and she had a loose dog lead dangled from one wrist. The clip had snapped, and Ledger could see the bone had gouged through the skin of her wrist.
“What—” Ledger tried to ask. He bit the words back as the girl turned to look at him.
Her head creasedoddly, folded along the wrong planes for skin that should be anchored to bone.
“This,” Earl said out of its borrowed mouth. The words came easier, but they were slurred and mush-mouthed. “Is… what I do. If you fail me, I’ll keep you… in here. And you have a sister? It has been a long time since I had… a set.”
It was the wrong tack.
Ledger stepped into the room. He could feel the salt in the back of his eyes, the sting of being underwater in the ocean.
“I doubt you’d want to keep Abigail in a cage,” he said.
Earl stared at him through the girl’s dead eyes. They’d been green once, but now they were faded down to a mildewed gray, stained with a greasy smear that cut right through. After a second, it twisted the dead girl’s face into a smile.
“I’ve seen… your father’s work,” it said. “I don’t fear his… disciple.”
“That makes one of us,” Ledger said. He swallowed the mouthful of sea-salt puke that stung the back of his throat. “Look, did you bring me here just to top up the fear? It’s not necessary. I’m still scared.”
