Julian had broken her neck. After the fact. For some strange reason, his face didn’t kill her, and he still had broken her neck, never giving her the chance to explain anything. I couldn’t blame Julian for being so angry after what she’d done to him for so long, compelling him to kill all those people, but there was a reason she wanted me here, wanted me dead, and a part of me felt like now I would never know.
Carrie was dead, and my head buzzed with the flashes of memories. She’d chased me in the woods. She’d wanted to kill me.Why? My head was reeling with all the unknown possibilities, trying to connect dots and forcing dots to connect, making straight-edged shapes that didn’t have names, like constellations in my empty skull. Carrie was with Sacred Sea, and Sacred Sea had been pushing me to join them since I’d arrived.
Maybe it was them all along. And now I would never know for sure.
I wanted to be angry with Julian for never giving me the chance to find answers, I should have been mad at him, but I wasn’t. I’d never seen him so … distraught, so hopeless. It was the first time I’d seen an ounce of fear in him.
He was something fragile yet still something so dark. Disarming. An oxymoron of ink and ivory. A ferocious thing with a fistful of desperation, holding triumph in his throat. And, as he’d looked up at me on all fours, stuck in his war, it was the first time I’d seen it. His silver eyes had saturated with love just after holding death in his arms. And maybe that was what love did to him, a heavy thing that left him on his knees, wrapped around his spine, filled his lungs with the sea until he couldn’t breathe. Maybe love to a manmade monster was weighed down by magic and mourning.
But the town did this to him.
Everyone made him into a monster but feared it when it couldn’t be contained.
The sun dipped into the ocean, bled its colors across the waters. The cold wind thrashed, and I took a step back from the edge, turned to return indoors. My eyes were heavy but there was no possible way I would be able to get any more sleep.
“After the ball, I’ll find you,”had been Julian’s words.
The Annual Pruitt Ball? Did that mean he was going? Did he expect me to go too? Carrie had come to my house days before insisting that I go. It had to be connected somehow, something Julian was not telling me that had to do with Carrie Driscoll.
I took a quick shower, changed into a sweatshirt and jeans, a pair of black leather loafers. I had to busy my mind. I couldn’t think about things that were beyond my control at the moment. Things like Carrie Driscoll, what had happened last night, and Julian’s determination to get me out of the woods. Instead, I focused on what I could control like the Morgan property. I was the last living Grimaldi and Morgan in Weeping Hollow, and it was up to me to find out what I should do with the house and all the history that lived here.
I walked to the end of the property and retrieved the mail from the mailbox, shoved the envelopes into my backpack when I paused.
Then I looked to my left, where the pebbled driveway was. Julian’s black Integra I’d driven in to get here last night was gone. How was it gone when I had the keys inside the house?
I hadn’t driven the Mini Coop since I’d taken Gramps to see Dr. Morley. It felt wrong driving it around Weeping Hollow for some reason. It didn’t feel like me anymore. And since there was something still wrong with the scooter’s engine, I made the two-mile walk into town where the color of oak and fire covered the sidewalks and streets. Cobwebs decorated the corners of the storefronts, and children skipped from door to door in witch costumes and pointed hats, cloth bags filled with candy swinging from their arms.
Halloween had already begun for the flatlanders, and the residents greeted one another as if it were the best month of the year, standing under the sun’s smile to feel its warmth. For the first time, Weeping Hollow felt alive, no one knowing of what happened in the woods the night before.
It was October, after all. October was poetry all in its own, where dying leaves were the flowers, and the chill nibbled your flesh like a lover’s bite.
The bell chimed as I walked into Mina Mae’s Diner. I spotted her in the far corner, taking orders from the three old ladies who had all the latest news and gossip in Weeping Hollow. They’d always sat on the bench in front of the gazebo with their vintage hats and Easter-egg colored dresses, pointing and laughing and reminiscing. I overheard them giving Mina a hard time about fraternizing with the enemy. Something about switching the brand of syrup, which Mina declined was the case.
“I’ve been usin’ the same syrup for ovah forty years now, Gertie,” she laughed, “You’re off yah kadoova.”
I took a seat, feeling my chest warm at the sound of something Gramps used to say as I buried my nose into the menu until Mina made her way to me. “Oh, Fallon, deah. You’re here.” Mina blew a wayward gray strand from her eyes. “Did yah see the lineup out theyah for the pumpkin cahvin’ contest?”
“Yeah, I saw it. It’s incredible,” I looked out the window, seeing if I recognized Kioni’s fat pumpkin, “Who are you voting for?”
“Ah, nice try, but I can’t tell yah that. The people around here take this seriously, so I wouldn’t go out and put yah two cents in eithah. Theya’s already gossip floatin’ around that the whole thing is rigged, and we can’t lose a tradition ovah soah losahs…But don’t forget to drop in yah vote,” she quickly added at the end, tossing me a wink. “Whataya havin’, deah?”
“I actually didn’t come to eat. I wanted to ask you about Benny’s house. Do you know who I need to talk to about it?”
“What do yah mean?”
“I don’t know what to do with it or any of the belongings.”
“Do with it? It’s yoahs, deah. All of it. If yah need peace of mind, you could ask Jonah. He handles most of the records in town. I thought yah knew that. He’s got the wills. Yah know, the wishes. Yah fathah’s, yah mothah’s, and Benny’s.”
My chest clenched. “Really? My mother’s will?” I shook my head, “I didn’t know she had one.”
“Everyone’s gotta have one,” she said with a tilt of the head, and I leaned back in the booth as my hands slid over the table. “If yah want, I can help you soaht through the house one day.”
I nodded, my gaze out in front of me, wondering if seeing my mother’s will was something I wanted to see. It seemed like an invasion of privacy. I didn’t know her as the town did. I’d always wondered if she ever loved me. Until I’d seen that picture of her holding me in her arms when I was born. Her face said yes, but then I took her life. Was that why she’d never visited me?
“Yeah, Mina, I could really use your help,” I cleared my throat, turned my gaze back to her, “I don’t know what’s important to keep, what’s not important. Maybe have like a yard sale or something.”
“Ayuh, a yahd sale sounds great. We’ll get it taken care of, no need to worry,” she patted my hand, “But I gotta ask, Fallon, yah plan on leavin’? Don’t tell me yah leavin’ us…”
