She wasn’t quite on home ground, but it was close.
The road’s tunnel through dense greenery wavered slightly, and she realized her eyes were hot and full. Bea swiped angrily at her cheeks, and kept going.
Small changes accumulated over four and a half years. The mailbox listed heavily, nearly buried in a drift of vines; the driveway’s mouth, butting up against ancient seamed two-lane paving, had crumbled at the edges, the concrete drainpipe underneath—meant for runoffs in wet springtime—half-choked with detritus from more than one storm. Undergrowth scraped at the car’s sides as she negotiated the familiar rise. There was no porchlight shining through winter’s last dusk-gasp, no star of floodlight atop the post at the edge of the turnaround or its twin near the stable’s dark, leaning bulk.
And there was the rambling knockoff colonial, her brother’s pride and joy. Four bedrooms, I’ll use one as an office. You can do something too—an art room, or meditation?
“When the fuck am I gonna meditate?” Bea murmured, the old conversation raw and aching in memory. He’d been so goddamn proud.
We have acreage too. Goes a fair bit up the mountain, it’s a big-ass lot. During hunting season we’ll have to wear orange. And the den looks right onto the back meadow, I can put my desk there and have the trees while writing.
The windows were scabbed over with boards, the wraparound porch he’d been so proud of visibly deteriorated. The forest had crept across a good portion of the back meadow, looming closer than ever. Bea shuddered—the weird stuff, like the tracks of tiny misformed feet or horribly savaged bodies of small wild animals, most often happened along that line. Now she remembered each and every incident, including the ones passed off as imagination, hypnagogia, or just plain bullshit.
Can you just not be an asshole, she’d yelled over the phone, right before giving in and leaving college for good. You’re going off the deep end with all this alien abduction shit, can you just fucking not? I should have known you wouldn’t let me get my degree!
Her heart hurt, thinking about that fight. Turning off the headlights and cutting the engine meant the foglights also died. Night rushed at the windshield, swallowing the car whole. Even the trickle of cold air through the inch of rolled-down window smelled familiar—fresh air loaded with balsam and the faint iron tinge of running water from the creek at the west edge of the property.
Months of being under siege in this house, afraid to even go into Noll Corner for groceries because when she came back something was sure to have happened, Jare wild-eyed and pale, the noises near the windows in the dead time between midnight and 3am…
The Charger’s door swung shut with a heavy, decisive sound. She was halfway to the house before she stopped, one drip-dried sneaker hovering until she realized she’d frozen mid-step and put it down.
She couldn’t go in there.
Nope. Not today, Satan. One of Don’s favorite little jokes. Had he stopped by Callie’s place, had he been able to convince her to flee with him?
“Worry about yourself, Bea.” Her voice broke the hush. The trees sighed, ruffling under rising wind. She should have been shivering, with no coat, no gloves, no hat.
But she wasn’t. The tremors came from an entirely different source.
She turned, and it took a few steps before she was on track. Yes, this was exactly how Jared had approached the stable that evening. Neither of them liked being out after dark by that point, but it had been a nice spring day, warmer than late April usually got, and Snowball usually did her business in a hurry at that hour.
There was the window Bea had peered through, a cataract eye filthy with dust and pollen outside and cobwebs on the inner surface. Scraps of faded crime-scene tape fluttered near the doorway, and even though it was a cloudy moonless night, rain or worse threatening on a rising nor’east wind—she could tell by the way it sounded climbing over Noll Mountain’s shoulder—her new super-senses were pitiless, because she could see every splinter of the stable’s leaning walls. The long-ago haze of horse, hay, and manure tickled her nose along with a deeper, darker thread.
He came along here, Snowball was barking but I didn’t hear her because I put my earbuds in. Bea took one last lingering look at the window before backing up to walk along the path he’d taken and sidling through the doorway—Jared wouldn’t have had to turn sideways, but it was frozen half-open now, probably swung to during a storm.
After the body was taken away.
Oh, God. She didn’t have to go inside very far. Rotting wood, mildew, and that nasty hideous brassy note, still terribly present.
Death.
The stain was faded, yet obscenely visible. Bea found the right angle and sank into a crouch, tilting her head just so.
Right here. He was right here, looking at…and Snowball was over there, they threw her after they…
It wasn’t that hard to believe a monster, after all. Bea turned, staring at where she knew the window was. Lukas hadn’t heard her heartbeat for some reason—the wind rattled and moaned at the stable roof.
Quite possible, since the reek of greiben was strong and they are noisy in withdrawal. She could almost feel his breath in her hair, and hunched her shoulders before unfolding.
If she looked at the stain anymore, she might start to cry again. Instead, she half-spun, and looked up at the hayloft. Maybe she could leap there, with her body’s new super-reflexes...but she used the rickety old ladder anyway, holding her breath and hoping it wouldn’t crumble under her weight.
Would she get heavier? Lukas certainly was.
With each rung, another damp, nasty scent intensified. It reminded her of greasy yellow fog, big black insectile eyes, their horrible little mangled paws and naked buttocks.
It was looking more and more like she’d tried to stab the wrong monster. Now Bea had to wonder what else he was telling the truth about.
I really don’t want to think about that, either.
