Violet sat up and looked around. “It’s dark.”
“It’s been dark,” he said.
“Nighttime, I mean.”
“We’re okay,” Malcolm told her. “We had a head start, and they can’t track us now.”
Violet turned in her seat to look back at Jennie, perhaps for confirmation. Jennie said nothing, but Violet seemed momentarily content. He suspected they were all unwilling to trust any sort of optimism—not until the task had been completed—and that was for the best.
As if to underscore his caution, a single piano note rang out in the Frazer. Crisp and clear in spite of the engine and the wipers and the road, it was followed by several further notes, played as if by an idle drunk preparing to entertain.
Then the song began. His pulse quickened with the music. The melody felt too rapid, and sped up. He glanced at Violet and back at Jennie. Neither of them reacted.
“The music again,” he rasped. “Her song.”
Jennie shot a look over at Maggie’s corpse. Malcolm watched it happen in the rearview mirror, and so he and his sister saw the boy move at the same time. He’d been frozen in silence. Now he smiled and began to rock in time with the music, laughing.
“Close! So close!” Benjy cried in delight. “You wanted to know when they were near, and now you know!”
He thrust upward as if to celebrate, even to dance. His head skidded off the interior of the convertible top, and he fell forward, halfway over the Frazer’s front seat, jerking with seizure even as his laughter continued. He thrashed so hard he knocked into Malcolm’s elbow, nearly driving them off the road again.
Malcolm slowed the car. “Damn it! Get him under control!”
Violet moved to help Benjy. The boy’s hands were still cuffed behind his back. Malcolm knew she would hate every second of this, but she put her weight on him and whispered reassurances. The seizing tapered off, but the laughter continued.
Jennie had a hand on his back as well. “How far, Benjy?”
That only made him laugh. The monsters were coming, but knowing that might not make a difference if they didn’t know what kind of time they had.
“Don’t you feel it?” Malcolm asked. “It’s like the air is full of despair. Like I’m breathing grief into my fucking lungs. Can’t you—”
“It’s evil,” Violet said. “It makes you want to crawl off somewhere and hide. But there’s nowhere to go.”
Malcolm glanced at her. Violet’s hands were trembling.
“Find a place to pull off the road,” Jennie said sharply.
“How did they find us? You said they wouldn’t be able to track us now.” Malcolm craned his neck, trying to see through the rear windshield. “The side roads are barely plowed. How am I supposed to get us somewhere safe?”
Benjy went stiff. The Frazer slid to a halt. Malcolm glanced over at the kid where he lay still draped over the seat, twitching. Benjy wore the smile of an eager addict, obscene on a child’s face.
Violet whispered, “There’s nowhere safe.”
Her voice merged with the sound of the wipers shushing snow, so he’d almost missed the words until he saw the expression on her face and the angle of her eyes, which stared into the shadowy place behind the driver’s seat. The place where Maggie’s body lay.
The wipers shushed. But there were other sounds in addition to Violet’s whisper.
Jennie muttered something like a prayer. Her eyes were damp. She’d let go of Benjy and slid back into her seat, staring into the same shadows as Violet.
“I’ll Be Seeing You” had gone silent.
Hands thrust from the back seat, hooked fingers digging into Malcolm’s face and throat. Violet did not scream—she blanched white and reached over Benjy, trying to pry those fingers away from Malcolm, speaking the wordnoover and over as if something had broken inside her. Behind Malcolm, Maggie hissed as she wrestled herself free of the canvas-and-rubber shroud. She lunged over the seat. Yellow spittle and pink blood frothed from the tight line of her lips. He felt malice radiating from her, an aura of malignance that unstitched the fabric of his adulthood, filled him with the certainty that all his childhood fears were real, reaching for him, crawling on his skin.
Malcolm gripped his mother’s hair. She ripped free, a fistful in his hand, slithered farther over the seat, racked his head to one side and thrust her mouth at his throat. His mother. Maggie. Who’d done her best. Who’d trusted him. Her lips spattered on his skin, and he felt something rough drag against his throat. She shrieked in frustration, voice muffled.
Thread.
Paxon Keates had sewn her lips shut.
