Linus thinks about how close he was to Adam as they walked, how Adam put his arms about Linus’s neck to get over the rougher ground. He thinks of Adam’s throat, open and smiling red.
Now, as he looks at Adam’s still face, Linus thinks he can see traces of Leaf Winham. He squints. Maybe, probably. All certainties seem to have disappeared.
‘Is my house gone?’ Leaf asks.
‘Mostly,’ Linus replies. He can’t stop looking at Leaf Winham. ‘Did he really burn it?’
‘Yes.’ Leaf strides back uphill to where Adam lies prone. He kisses each of Adam’s sleeping eyelids. ‘It was just a house.’ Leaf cradles Adam’s head. ‘It’s ok, darling,’ Linus hears him murmur. ‘I’ll always look after you.’ He turns to Linus. ‘I guess you don’t have a radio?’
Linus shakes his head. ‘Someone will come along soon enough. They use these back routes for sending the patrol cars home.’
‘Ah. Not long then.’ He pats the ground beside him. ‘Come sit with us.’
‘I should wait on the road,’ Linus says. Exhaustion is creeping over him like a living thing, crawling up his legs and through his eyes.
‘We’ll hear the cars coming,’ Leaf says. ‘You hear everything up here.’ Now that Linus listens, he hears it. Every sound, every bird, every whisper of the leaves is clear as though it were engraved. The air is like a living bell. ‘Come,’ Leaf says again. ‘It will be all right.’
Linus gets up, feeling the mazy print of the asphalt road on his back. He can’t face being alone. He makes his way determinedly, unsteadily, towards Leaf, his feet sinking into the leaf mould. In the end he crawls on all fours up the hill. Linus sits down next to Leaf, who puts his hand on his shoulder. ‘Thank you for helping Adam,’ he says.
As Leaf moves his arm Linus sees what lies behind it – what protrudes from Adam’s side. The bright pink end of a blow dart. That was not there before Adam fell, Linus is sure of it.
Adrenaline rushes through Linus but he makes himself move slowly. He touches Leaf’s hand where it lies on his shoulder as if in reassurance. He slides gently away from Leaf down the hill and starts to lift himself to his feet. Linus’s senses are so alert he almost feels the deep sting in the back of his neck before it happens. He puts his hand to the place and tries to pull the dart out. But it has spurs on it or something, which keep it lodged in his flesh. He can already feel it, the poison. Ketamine maybe, or something even faster-acting. There is a soft cracking sound from behind. Slowly Linus turns.
Leaf lays Adam’s head gently down on the fallen leaves. Adam’s neck bends oddly where it is freshly broken. Leaf looks up at Linus. His face has become unrecognisable. His eyes are dime-bright, face pale and drawn as a skull. Linus realises that he’s not a person at all but a thing. He’s been playing a human being all this time.
Linus hurls himself away, sliding and falling down the hill. His legs give for good as he reaches the road. He feels Leaf catch him gently as he falls, so that he doesn’t hit his head on the hard surface of the road.
‘We’re inFallen Kingdom,’ Linus says, speaking up to the pin-bright eyes that are fixed on his own. ‘But we don’t love each other.’
‘I know.’ Leaf Winham slices open Linus’s uniform. The little knife is so sharp that the fibres part like butter. He cuts through Linus’s cotton undershirt, baring his throat. Linus understands what will happen next, but the poison has him and he can’t move. He is trapped inside his still body. Linus breathes deeply and focuses on how to keep doing just that – breathing. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to see that face looking down at him as he dies.
Leaf tips Linus’s head back and the morning air plays about his exposed windpipe, his fragile arteries. As the knife comes down Linus catches the faint scent of lilac.
Late, he thinks. Everything that’s happening is so vivid.It’s too late in the season for lilac.
There is no pain when the knife goes in. The blood smells thick, salty and dark. It pours from his severed throat, flows over his chest. Linus hears the trickle as it pools on the road by his cheek. There’s a grinding, a buzzing all over and he knows that it’s the last crackle of his synapses, his brain entering death. As his vision clouds over it builds to a roar – sounding just like the approach of an engine.
They find things at Nowhere after the fire. They find the remains of the secret staircase, the spyholes which look out. Hidden behind a half-melted jukebox they find a door which leads to a room with no windows. There is a gurney, there are metal trays of instruments. There is a drain in the centre of the floor, like the ones in abattoirs. There is a small darkroom adjoining, and the walls are covered with the photographs of boys who will never see the sun again. The pet graveyard is not for pets, after all.
Much of Nowhere House is collapsed – walls, roof and foundations. They don’t find a tunnel.
Leaf Winham was born like that, people say down in Ault. Or maybe it was Nowhere that made him so. The mountains have their own rules and always have done, especially up at Nowhere. Others know that it was Adam Leahy who committed those acts – it was he who took the boys away from the sun. No one with eyes as kind as Leaf Winham could do that.
4Riley
She knows they’ve gone wrong when they cross the snowline on the third day. The trail is just taking them higher and higher. Riley tries to believe that their timing is messed up because of Oliver’s injury. But she knows that they’re lost. Somewhere the deer trail branched in two and she didn’t see it.
Oliver is always shivering. He is cold and hurt and thin. Peaks soar all around them, but not one of them has spurs pointed like lynx ears. Riley wishes it had been a real mountain lion stalking them instead of the boy. That seems much less scary now. She wonders how long it will be before someone finds him. Maybe they’ve found him already. Maybe they’ll never find him. Maybe his bones will get up and walk the mountain, like in that kid’s song.
Have you seen the ghost of John?
Long white bones with the skin all gone
Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?
Riley threw Cousin’s cooking stuff down the hill, far away from the body into the brush, but her fingerprints will be on it all. Should she have buried the body? She just left it there, hoping animals wouldtake care of it. Coyotes, maybe a real mountain lion. She had been beyond thought, at that point. Maybe she still is.Killed a man, she thinks, wild,killed two—Riley stops the thought right there. It was self-defence.
But he was holding a compass, not a knife.
