The Boatman, page 14
She looked west, then north. The sun had crossed its peak, starting to dip to the wood line.
“We circle up north behind Mabel’s house, trace the river west from there a bit, then dip into the woods. Come at it from behind, away from any trail.”
I bit into my own teeth, nodding. “Lead the way.” I gestured wide, urging her to move.
She turned, stepping over a broken spot in Esther’s fence. I followed suit, stepping into matted grass on the other side.
A wide path separated us from Mabel’s. I’d meet her a couple times. Her late husband had a fine taste for gin, and the swill made in this town didn’t cut it.
Strange lady. A little batty, but kind and attentive.
The road continued to the right into a few smaller dirt paths leading to the mines. The ground was kicked up by wheel grooves and a couple wagons sat at the mouth waiting for another work day. I didn’t envy the poor souls that mined it, but damn did it fetch a pretty penny.
Not a soul in sight otherwise. Desiree shot a look over her shoulder, nodding, before jogging across the path. The sun had crested over the top layer of mud, but not enough to dry what was under. My boots cracked through, sinking into muck and adding a fresh ring around the base of my sole.
We trudged on, my neck burning from eyeballs that didn’t call out. It was broad daylight, they were out to hang me, and I was running through the town with a woman and a box tucked under my arm.
Crossing into Mabel’s yard, we dipped between houses, stopping a moment. I could hear Mabel mumbling something through a cracked window. Her shadow moved across a drawn curtain. She was cooking something, waving the knife in her hand around as she talked.
“We just need to get to the river bank,” Desiree started. She seemed breathless, pupils blown wide by the thrill. She was enjoying the outlaw life.
“From there, we’ll hang a left and hurry. And hope.”
She sounded far away. The splinter in my head started vibrating, the box shaking. I could hear it hum, pulsing through my fingers.
She pushed off Mabel’s house, brushing her hands before jogging across her backyard and closer to the swell of trees guarding the river.
I followed, movement catching my eye right as I cleared the back of the house.
Mabel was at the window, peering down at me. She didn’t say anything. Barely moved. Looked at the box in my hand and watched me follow Desiree. I held her look for a moment before turning, feeling her icy gaze wrap around my back.
Ahead, the river rushed, crashing over rocks and lapping at the shore. She had slowed for me to catch up, walking just on the far side of the slope dropping into the water.
I caught up in a few strides, box rattling under my arm.
“Mabel saw me,” I said.
She turned her head, eyes wide. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t think she’s going to say anything.” I looked out over the river, the water frothing from scum churned on rocks. “We have history.”
She looked at the ground, thoughts racing behind her eyes. “Good history?” she asked.
“Worked with Geoff, her late husband. Got him the drink he liked.” I waved a hand. “Don’t matter.”
“Why do you want to know about the song?” She asked, not breaking stride.
The pressure behind my eyes built. The spire’s ghostly shape was gone, but it was still there. In that clay covered clearing, jutting from the ground and erasing the space around it. The purple tendrils, the child’s hand…
“Stuck in my head,” I grumbled.
“Off he goes, pays his tolls, two—”
I grabbed her by the sleeve, yanking her so hard she stumbled. My skin quaked. Every vein in my body filled, ready to burst.
“Do not sing that song!” I spit through gritted teeth. “Are you fucking nuts?”
She dropped, cowering, suspended only by the stretch of fabric in my fingers. My breath heaved, frantic, saliva festering in the corners of my mouth.
“Where did you hear that?” I shook her, pulling her up onto her feet. Her lips trembled, brows turned up in fear. She didn’t answer, reaching up to grab my fingers and peel them off.
I dropped her, sending her sprawling onto the patchwork grass. She looked up at me. My head throbbed again, vision pinpointing. I could feel something looking at me.
I scanned the river. The woods. The town behind us. Nothing. My heart fluttered so fast it sucked the air out of me.
“Why?” I screamed, stomping toward where she was lying. “You called him!” My vision shook, the song dancing on my tongue.
“Called who?” she answered, shaking. She held her arms in front of her face in a permanent flinch.
“The kids! The—”
Behind her, standing just behind the first row of trees, was Maggie. She stomped, digging up a bit of dirt under her hooves. She rolled her lips, nodding at me before disappearing back into the woods.
“Maggie!”
I dropped the box and sprinted after her. Trees blurred past as I clipped my exposed flesh on every sharp corner of every jutting branch.
Didn’t care.
Not about the song. Boone. Or that I left Desiree and her answers behind.
I wanted my fucking horse.
21
Underfoot | Desiree
Sawyer vanished between the trunks, chasing his horse into the treeline.
Sunbeams ran gold through the trees, warming the grass and my legs. Green blades poked at my palms and my neck itched where my shirt pinched as he held me off the ground.
Didn’t mean to set him off with the song. Started singing it to make him feel less crazy. For my own safety.
Incredible work, as always.
I pressed off the ground, brushing off the clumped dirt that clung to my elbows and pants. Water trickled behind me, reminding me of the peace I could have if I’d choose it.
Potter’s Field and safety were behind. Boone. Yellow. My house. Each calling for me to leave the box on the ground, go home, and have a drink. Leave all this madness behind.
Sawyer was ahead. Needed help. Something told me following him would only deepen the nightmare I’d been living for the last twenty-four hours, but he’d die out there in his current state of lunacy.
I snatched the box off the ground, tucked it under my arm, and ran into the woods.
* * *
The wet hadn’t dried from the sun under the thick canopy. It stabbed my nose, decaying leaves and the sweet stink of natural living sucking the air from my lungs. Feet sunk deeper with each step, pressing pine and foliage into the earth.
Still couldn’t see him. The woods got deep in here fast, and if you head west for too long, it doesn’t take much to get turned around.
Inevitable once night falls.
“Sawyer?” I called. I couldn’t yell too loud, not this close to town. Someone would hear, and instead of me chasing down the only other person who’d seen the children, it’d be a posse pitchforks and nooses.
The only noise out here was the swell of cicadas. A sharp static crawled my skin as the memory of my first encounter with the girls filled my head. What Mabel gave me took my reins and was leading me out here. Out to Sawyer.
There were no tracks on the ground. No hoof prints. No boots. No sign at all that anything came through here.
“Goddammit,” I muttered, spinning to gather my bearings. Scanned for anything that could tell me where they went. There was nothing.
Golden beams turned orange as the sun dipped lower in the sky, casting long, blending shadows on the forest floor. My boots had caked over, my thighs burning from the added weight.
I needed head to the shack. Hope to get there before dark.
We still didn’t know who or what tore up that man I found. I didn’t want to hang around to find out, either. He’d mentioned something about tunnels.
At the time I took it as the ramblings of a dying man.
“I’m heading to the poker shack if you can hear me,” I shouted, certain only the cicadas heard me.
I started walking, keeping the setting sun to my right. I was north of the trail and if I kept going I’d eventually find the trail and then hurry to the shack.
Tree after tree passed. Darkness shrouded tiny branches that slashed at my cheeks, leaves and twigs catching my hair as I attempted to dip around them.
The sky was getting darker by the minute, my fragile sense of familiarity leaking away. I’d walked south for a minute now. Kept telling myself the trail was just around the next tree.
And then the next tree.
I started jogging, mud slapping against the sole of my boots, the box rattling in my grip. Trunks bled past in a smear, my eyes aching from the strain.
“Sawyer?” I yelled. To hell with subtlety. “Anyone?”
The cicadas fell out briefly, my voice pinging off the trees.
It didn’t make sense. Between the river and the trail was, what, a quarter mile at best? My lungs were burning like I’d done a couple laps around town.
Maybe I’d run past it in the panic. The path was wide, but maybe?
I wouldn’t have missed it.
Doubling back, I started running the way I came. Hopped a log, landed in a thick pile of mud. My foot sank in to the ankle, stopping me cold.
I yanked it free, mud sucking hard.
Air wheezed out from the pile, sputtering in the thick muck. My stomach flipped. It sounded exactly how that man’s lungs emptied into his torn belly, the frothing blood burping between viscera.
It wheezed, boiling the mud, wafting something putrid before settling.
The sun has fully set and the moon wasn’t out either—obscured by the dark, rolling clouds gathering above. Blue flashes flickered deep in the cloud.
Fuck.
I staggered away from the pile, sparing a last look before falling into a run. Wasn’t going to miss the trail this time.
The final dregs of light died, dropping me into a dark that chilled my bones. I careened forward, crashing into skinny trees I couldn’t see until they were on top of me. The frogs started up, pushing me forward faster.
My hair stood straight. Something was watching me slip between trees, following just behind opposite trunks. My vision swam, useless anyway. I was sprinting blind.
Squinted into the night, dodging the bigger trees and tanking blows from the skinny ones. They came in bursts of gray, indiscernible blobs moving faster and faster—
Jagged bark tore into my shoulder.
Didn’t see it until it sent me careening on my heels.
Whirled my arms for balance. I twisted, grasping at empty air. Nothing caught me.
The ground disappeared beneath my feet and I tumbled, scraping headlong down a slope. Roots and rocks pounded into me, snapping teeth together. My skull cracked against a trunk, lights flaring behind my eyelids.
I hit the bottom, splashing into a cold stream. The world stilled, silence smothering everything. No cicadas. No frogs. Only the wind in the branches and trickling water.
I groaned, blood and dirt coating my tongue. Rolled slowly onto my stomach. I craned my head up, wincing from the pain as warmth flooded down the side of my face, trailing along my jaw before dripping from my chin and into the cold that flowed around me.
“Fuck.” My fingers touched the wound Sawyer had carved into me, stitches torn wide, skin slick and hot. Blood smeared over my fingertips, pooling in muddy circles. Squinting upward, I struggled to see anything through my blurred, pulsing vision.
I’d flailed to the base of an embankment, jammed into a narrow gully where runoff pooled and streamed toward the river.
Arms trembling, I pushed upright, bracing myself against a slick, moss-covered rock. Eyes darted up the slope, desperate for something solid. Roots. Vines. Stones. Anything.
Nothing but loose, wet soil all the way up.
At the base of the hill, the box leaned half-submerged in the water. I picked it up with a relieved sigh. It was covered in mud, dripping, but in tact.
Thunder cracked behind me, deep enough to move my bones. Lightning flickered in faint bursts, teasing shapes from the dark. A thin veil of storm clouds parted, silhouetting the moon and scattering faint silver across the forest floor.
Cold spread through me, prickling into goose flesh as I turned downstream and followed the flow. The stream thinned the more I followed it, the ground getting more rocky with it.
A cool wind picked up, pushing me further.
Blood stuck to my palm as I peeled it off my head, but the flow had stopped. Or at least slowed.
It curved right, sharper this time, cutting off my view. I slowed, stepping in. I could hear… something. A breath.
Hugging the rocks on the right, I peeked around the corner.
A dappled horse stood at the mouth of a cave, her black eyes locked on me. Lightning flashed, reflecting bright off their glassy surfaces. My breath hung trapped in my chest.
Maggie.
She looked at me as if she’d been waiting there, expecting me to arrive at exactly this moment. She nickered, pausing a beat before turning away with a gentle snort and stepping into the cave’s mouth.
The cave entrance stood wide enough maybe for two men shoulder-to-shoulder. Rock edges gleamed in the moonlight, moss clinging like mold.
Maggie’s hooves echoed, drifting deeper into darkness.
I’d never heard anything about a cave system under Potter’s Field. The mines, sure, but we had carved them out of the ground.
Had to be the tunnels.
Stunned, I stood motionless, the stream parting around my feet. Urgency surged through me again, jolting my legs forward.
I sprinted in.
The walls tapered in, the narrow cavern echoing every step back to me. Dark moss crawled along the stone, slick and bulging in the dimming light.
I slowed, the narrowing walls barely a person wide here.
“Sawyer?”
My voice bounced off the walls, empty echoes trailing into silence. I pressed forward, running fingers along the left wall. The cave mouth was now only a faint glow behind me.
Maggie whinnied from deeper inside. My throat tightened, tongue stuck dry against the roof of my mouth. She sounded scared.
“Maggie?”
Sawyer’s voice. Panicked and cracking. Footsteps slapped against the wet stone, echoing on my left before fading to the right.
I broke into a run, chasing the sound of his feet, but the echoes melted into nothing. The cave forked ahead, two paths branching into deeper blackness, walls stripped of any visible detail.
Pulse hammering in my forehead, I pushed forward into the right tunnel.
“Sawyer!”
My voice sounded muffled, as if shouting into cloth.
“Desiree?” Sawyer shouted back, confusion and fear tangled tight in his voice.
I spun. Behind me. But I followed him to the right?
“I’m right here!” I called.
A long pause. “You shouldn’t have followed me. You need to leave.”
Something crawled over my skin.
“You need to come with me!” I shouted, brushing my hands down my arms.
He didn’t respond. I spun in place, keeping my hand on the wall. Something about his voice…
“Maggie?” he asked. Sounded close.
I followed his voice, only to bump into a wall. My head spun. He was right here.
“Oh God…”
“What?” I asked, pressing my ear to the wall. “Sawyer, talk to me. Please. What the fuck is going on?”
Soft purple light bled into the cave, seeping from the moss. No not moss…
Sheolite veins threaded along the stone, flaring bright, smoky tongues that licked at the air.
His breath rasped through the wall but he didn’t say anything. The tongues grew, reaching out to me and twitching in their glow. I shrank into the wall, frozen.
“Sawyer?”
The wispy tongues reached closer, slithering and dancing around each other.
I scrambled into a run.
Down the tunnel I came from, the path now lit by soft purple-black light. The Sheolite reached out, slashed at me, cut my arms. Pain propelled me forward, blood running down and trailing off my fingers.
The fork came into view, the glowing rocks guiding me, hunting me. A cold breath washed my neck. I let out a pathetic noise, hurtling down the tunnel.
Legs couldn’t move any faster. Dodged the tongues that reached out to me.
A wall illuminated in front of me, a dead-end where the exit should have been. Slammed my fist into it, a choked warble escaping me.
No.
I wheeled around but the Sheolite had completely swallowed the tunnel, obscuring any chance of escape.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I whispered a prayer to no one.
This wasn’t holy. This shouldn’t exist. Endless woods with impossible caves. Rocks that were alive and tried to cut you, to kill you.
“Desiree.”
A soft, gargling voice from behind me. I spun, eyes wide.
The twins.
Their eyes had faded over white. Sagging skin sloughed off their jaws, teeth missing in multiple spots. Underneath their skin mapped the same purple-black veins, morphing and swirling with the tongues off the Sheolite.
They reached out to me, hands extended like they did that first night. I reached out but hesitated.
Their milky eyes drifted past me and shot open in terror. Snapping back to me, they urged me again, stabbing at me with outstretched hands.
The girl on the right opened her mouth to say something, only for swamp water to roll over her flayed lips. She grasped at her mouth, covering it to stop the water, her fingers only succeeding in splitting the stream.
The hairs on my neck stood. I turned slow, craning my chin over my shoulder.
A figure walked toward me, dressed in a cloak that seemed cut from this world. It took steady steps, guided by an oar that scraped across the stone.
The hood of the cloak opened, a cold wind gust dislodging it.
My legs weakened. It wasn’t human. Not even alive.
A horned rabbits skull topped its cloak, eyes glowing with Sheolite. A thin layer of haze clung to the bone, blurring any attempt to get a focused look at it.
