Julian paused for a moment with his lips parted, then tilted his head.
Though I couldn’t see his eyes behind the skull, I was certain he saw mine. I felt them on me like they were his fingers, and sweat raced down my spine under my thick layers as I froze in place behind the tree. My breath caught, a bubble of air begging to release from my lungs as he continued to whisper into the goat’s ear, his long fingers drifting up and down the copper brown fur, bringing calmness and releasing the goat’s fear.
Chanting grew louder, picking up like the thrashing heartbeat in my ears. Julian reached behind him and pulled out a long sharp blade, and the hellish flames reflected off the metal.
Then he brought it to the goat’s throat! and I wanted to scream out. I wanted to cry. But nothing materialized. My senses went numb, only able to dig my nails into the tree bark.
Julian glanced once more at me, and I knew what was to come.
“No …” It came out as a breathy gasp as I shook my head and slammed my eyes closed.
Thethump!against the earth didn’t happen for a long time. With my lips sucked in and fingernails embedded deep into the tree, I waited. It was only seconds but felt like forever, which was sometimes how long forever could last, especially for the goat.
And the chanting stopped, but I refused to open my eyes. I refused to believe what had to have happened from only feet in front of me, what Julian had just done, the life he’d taken.
A cool wind swept across my face.
The tips of my loose strands tickled my cheeks.
The fiery and anarchic night was chilling and peaceful again.
The heat from the fire was gone.
My eyes blinked open, and I became paralyzed by a bone-white skull and a broad chest only inches away. My eyes latched onto a silver pendant hanging around his neck as the Heathen stood over me, tall and sculpted and chiseled as if by Michelangelo. His pale skin was flushed and slick and glistening from the fire, and I hadn’t noticed until now the countless white and pink scars slashing his torso like the trunk of a tree, his sides, his chest. Blood dripped from the tips of his fingers onto the forest ground. I heard everydrop, drop, dropas I scanned back up his body, his scarred chest violently heaving. Familiar and cold steel eyes locked on mine through the skull's hollow openings.
Julian Blackwell—the kind of presence that could leave cold spots in the places he had been.
And I should have been scared. Maybe a part of me was. But the other part, the side wanting to reach out and touch him, to make sure he was real and not an illusion or made of stone, kept me rooted to the ground.
His lips parted slightly beneath the bottom of the skull, a vibrant and delicious red. The forest fell silent as fear and fascination warred. Thoughts raced. What happened to him? What was he going to do to me? Did he still have the blade?
But it all summed up in one word.
“Why?” It had come out as a breathy whisper, and his muscles flinched at my response. Behind him, the other three walked to where we were standing, closer and closer and closer …
They were closing in on me, and fear lodged itself in the empty spaces between my bones, chiseling into my marrow, crawling up my spine. Oxygen was thinning, and panic constricted my throat, making it harder to breathe. Faceless, their masks suffocated the moon above, shutting out the light.
Instinct kicked in, and I turned and took off through the woods.
A second pair of footfalls echoed behind me, possibly Monday, possibly the Hollow Heathens, so I ran harder. My lungs burned, and twigs snapped under my boots. The black of the forest contorted into a mirage of skull faces taunting me, but I didn’t dare turn around or go back for Monday. I didn’t stop until my feet ran past the railroad tracks and my palms hit the brick of the funeral home.
Chapter 4
Fallon
The grandfather clockchimed from the bottom of the steps as I shoved more clothes into my suitcase, pacing back and forth from the armoire to the creaky bed. I lasted three days, cornered by the town, the headlines, the Heathens. It had been seventeen years since feeling so…trapped, and the only way to break free was to break out.
I wrote a note for Gramps and left it beside his coffee maker. By the time he would see it, I would be halfway through Connecticut. But he’d be happy I was leaving. He never wanted me to come here, anyway.
I tossed my bags into the Mini Coop in the middle of the night. I didn’t have much and didn’t bother changing. After a few attempts and pleads, the engine kicked, and the car roared.“I put a spell on you,”crackled through the old speakers as I plugged the charger into my dead iPhone and waited for the screen to light up.
The townspeople’s eyes followed my car as I rolled through the foggy streets and around the gazebo. Milo snapped up from the park bench, children paused their dizzying dancing, and Mina from the diner held a hand to her chest beside a disappointed Jonah. There were all out and about, and I tore my eyes away and kept moving forward at a turtle pace. Agatha Blackwell pushed through her apothecary shop door. The outside winds whipped her silky black hair from her low bun as she stumbled upon the steps, a pained look in her clouded eyes. She shook her head, hurt on full display.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise after what Milo had said about me. The townies should be happy I was leaving. I’d thought theywouldbe happy to be getting rid of me so quickly. Instead, they looked as if they were hurt, insulted. Was it because I was leaving Gramps? A man they loved and respected? They all knew him better than I did, so why was it up to me to be there for him?
I reached the arched sign of Weeping Hollow, and my car crawled under it. I pressed my foot onto the gas and sped down the narrow and winding road, only able to see ten feet in front of me with my birthplace in my rearview mirror. My gut whispered to turn back around. My head screamed to move forward, and I turned up the volume of the radio to submerge my thoughts in music.
The same metal sign appeared, this time reading,You are leaving Weeping Hollow. Don’t look behind you,witha pair of ravens sitting over the sharp edges, crowing into the night.
