Welcome to Fear City, page 26
There was a Rynn at the back of the house who was very young indeed and appeared to be picking flowers and talking animatedly with someone Sylvie couldn’t see. She was there several dozen times over, getting older, her hair getting darker. There were so many versions of her that Sylvie was sure they could all be her. And the flowers weren’t just in the memory—there was a patch several yards from the tree even now. They didn’t look healthy, were probably being pummeled by the heat. Were those the things Rynn had told Marilyn were good luck? They didn’t look like much, but Rynn sure seemed to love them.
Sylvie thought of Marilyn, and she knew she could probably find her here, if she concentrated on it, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It felt like a violation—and maybe everything Sylvie did was a violation, but she didn’t know these people. She knew Marilyn.
Really, she just didn’t want to stop following Rynn. She didn’t need more proof, but she wanted it. She had entirely forgotten why she had come out to Bushwick at all.
There was Rynn out by the tree. Sylvie started to run over, but almost immediately came to a stop. A different girl had appeared—briefly—and there! Again! A golden blonde girl, sometimes wearing a cap or a hat, other times wearing a braid or a bun, centuries out of time. Sylvie had never seen her before, and she was spit from the memories of the dead tree, just like Rynn.
Rynn was watching the golden girl, too, with the same puzzled expression that Sylvie had when Rynn first showed up.
Sylvie wanted to see more of this new interloper, and she slipped through all the copies of Rynn and pushed her hand to the bark of the dead tree.
Instead of the golden blonde girl, a man came to the tree, frazzled, unshaven, unwashed. Samuel. He had the girl’s same blonde hair, but it was lank. In his arms he carried bones and into the tree he tossed them. Then he dropped to his knees and prayed in a tongue even stranger than the whispers. He did this again and again, and Sylvie could mark the differences in days by the new strain on his face. He hacked at the knot, carving it wide open like a screaming jack o’lantern, spraying dirt and bark into his face. Sap oozed in thick rivulets. Sylvie winced at each blow. But at the same time, a stronger, healthier, cleaner version of Samuel dragged a bleeding head and dropped it near Sylvie’s feet.
Between all these events, a figure climbed out of the tree’s newly formed mouth.
The tall, brown-haired woman climbed out of the tree, looking like too many people and not like a person at all. Her too-long fingers of her too-large hands curled over the sap-covered, bleeding lips, and the rest of her unfolded from a diabolical, unseen womb. The entire trunk shivered, the bark creaked and split. The leaves began to blacken and fall. It was the woman from the cellar, the woman both she and Rynn had seen drinking from the man’s arm. Sylvie was standing off to the side of the hole, and she knew this wasn’t happening now, but it had happened, and it made her feel weak. She needed to look away, but she couldn’t look away. She needed to scream but she was too shocked.
It’s only a movie.
It’s only a movie.
It’s only a movie.
Then came worse things. Sylvie now realized the healthy version of Samuel had dropped the woman—the creature’s head at her feet. Then he took the creature’s headless body and shoved it back into the knot—in pieces. An arm. A thigh. Half of a torso. His body was saturated with blood and smelled even worse. Sylvie was grateful he had carved her up where she couldn’t see it. Then, at the base of the tree, he began to dig. And he dug and he dug—and older versions of him prayed—and into the hole he put the head and covered it in dirt. Large, wide-set, glossy eyes stared up at him as he did this, but he didn’t flinch. The lipless mouth was slightly open as though she had died mid-laugh, her pointed teeth stained pink.
When he was finished, he returned with a lamp and a guttering candle, but the flame failed in the rain. He wailed something in what sounded like old Dutch, raging at the sky, smashing his lamp against the trunk, trying to start a fire that wouldn’t take.
In other moments, she saw the girl with the golden hair—fleetingly. She stood far from the tree, her foot touching a root without realizing it, impressing herself on the history of this place. She held white flowers. She stared at the tree in sadness. The creature came up behind her, towering over her, but did not touch her.
“Beautiful Metje, why do you shy from me?”
Desperate to push that woman away, Sylvie allowed in other layers of time. But few other people interacted with the tree, and it was easy to follow the moment of its desecration. She noticed one or two people attempt to climb it, or look into the terrible hole, but half of them left with anxious glances over their shoulders, or a hand clamped over their ears.
Sometimes she saw people simply standing in front of it. She saw a man do it, a man who first appeared in a brocade overcoat with powdered hair and was later reduced to a blood-spattered linen shirt and bare feet.
She saw Hessians in blue and white uniforms. She saw a young man come to the tree with a lady on his arm. He shoved her to the ground and wrung her neck. In the middle of this scene appeared a little boy who must have come from a century later, in his short pants and long curls. Sometimes he was there with his older sister, and she would hand him the white flowers and he would shake his head and run away.
After them, there were many other children, children from an increasingly dense and diverse neighborhood, who heard the stories of the skeletons and the ghosts and wanted to know. Teenagers laughing and drinking from one decade after another, before “teenager” was even coined, looking into the mouth of the tree for a scare and a laugh, then sometimes for a second glance.
Then came Rynn, and Rynn again, and then Rynn with a small, doe-eyed child in curls and a stiff, tartan dress. Marilyn. The little girl didn’t like the tree, so they didn’t linger, just looked for a moment before moving on to where the flowers grew.
“My mama said grandma made her pick ’em for protection. Mama always had a vase of ’em when I was little,” Sylvie heard Rynn say. “Grandma said they’re good luck flowers. When she picked them, she said they saved her.”
“From what?”
“She just said that they make things quiet in your head.”
Marilyn’s tiny voice responded, but they were too far away, smothered beneath other sounds.
And then Sylvie saw Rynn’s killer. She shouldn’t have been surprised and yet she almost jerked away. He stared at the tree as often as Samuel had prayed, and sometimes he cried and begged it to give him peace, that he couldn’t, wouldn’t. He tried to swing an ax, but the head broke from the handle. Then sometimes he would smile or laugh or look at his hands as though they were filled with something beyond his comprehension, though nothing was there. Then the fear would return, and he would cover his ears.
Suddenly there were hands on Sylvie’s arms, pulling her sideways. She snapped back to the present as though she hadn’t been there in days. Or years. Or centuries. Seconds passed before she realized what was going on.
“We need to go.” Marz.
“Your brother is cracking up.” Marybeth.
Gary was in the patch of wildflowers, having walked a wild, restless path around the whole property to get there. On his knees, he was picking everything in sight, weeds and flowers alike.
Sylvie turned and carefully walked up beside him. She could hear him talking under his breath. “Gary? What’re you doing?”
When he heard Sylvie, he jumped up and began shoving the flowers at her. “Take these,” he demanded, almost throwing them at her and reaching down to grab more until she pulled on his arm.
“Gary, stop!”
He wheeled around and grabbed both of her arms and began pulling her away. His face was pale, his eyes were red. “Go. Sylvie. Go. We have to—you need to get away from here. She knows. She knows what—you have something she wants—she needs to get rid of it. The girl had it, and the last one had it, too. She needs to get rid of it and she needs a new body and it’s going to be you because you’ll heal once you’re dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The girls couldn’t get Gary to calm down, even as they peeled off the property like their feet were on fire. People stared at him, at them, as they sat on the train back to the city, and for once Sylvie understood why and wasn’t afraid. Gary was quieter, but when he sat, he shook his leg, and he couldn’t stop gasping for air and looking over his shoulders—as though someone would be outside the window, staring in at him, Twilight Zone style.
Nobody intervened, of course. It probably looked like he was having some kind of bad trip, which was what their parents thought when Gary kept raving long into the evening.
“You can’t leave her alone!” he kept yelling at everyone. “She knows—she’s known a long time and she’s tried to use me—she’s still using Ilan—she’s not gonna stop!”
When Sylvie’s parents asked her if she knew what was going on, Sylvie would only shrug. And it felt so unfair, but the truth wouldn’t help. They’d only think both kids were losing it. And maybe Sylvie could take them up to the house on West Tenth, but that would risk her parents’ safety, too.
Gary wouldn’t eat. He paced in front of the living room windows. He turned the television set up so loud that Geneva immediately ran over to switch it off. Jessie Baby kept whining, kept retreating to their parents’ room.
Eventually, they decided he needed medical attention.
Sylvie didn’t know what to do then, either. Would he be safer in a hospital? They’d find nothing in his system and probably discharge him immediately, anyway. Maybe they’d put him in a psych ward. She felt burning guilt as their parents attempted to reason with him, and all she could do was let whatever was going to happen, happen.
“You can’t leave her alone!” he kept yelling. He didn’t seem to object to the hospital, only that Sylvie wasn’t coming with them.
“I’ll go,” she tried to insist, but her parents looked at her and her dad said, with all the finality in the world, “No.”
He called a cab company while their mom gently held Gary’s arms and reminded him that Sylvie had been home alone countless times. That she wouldn’t dare go out while they were gone, right? (Sylvie nodded.) That the doors would be locked, that Jessie Baby would be with her, that no one had ever broken into their building.
Gary would hear none of it, so in the end, Sylvie had to come, too.
She didn’t mind. She didn’t want to be alone, anyway. After their afternoon in Brooklyn, the world was suddenly very quiet without thousands of overlapping voices. She hadn’t had any time to process a single second of it, but she could feel a tidal wave of thoughts trying to break through.
The hospital kept Gary overnight. They had to give him tranquilizers so he could sleep. He must have been grateful, at least, for that.
Sylvie’s parents tried to tease more information out of her, but the only lie she could come up with was, “He and Ilan fell out, and I think it’s really upsetting him.”
“Why’d they fall out?”
Sylvie shrugged. “Ilan’s been acting a little different, but I don’t know what happened.”
“Hasn’t Ilan talked to you about it?” asked her mom.
“No. He’s gotten really busy playing music and stuff, I think.”
Gently. “And you haven’t seen him lately?”
Sylvie shook her head.
Her parents gave each other looks only they could read before letting her go.
In her room, Sylvie flopped down on her bed. For a while, she let her brain turn to white noise. Then out of the static came her first coherent thought: Rynn could read buildings, too.
Was this an answer? Was this the answer? Was this why she could see Rynn and Rynn alone? It wasn’t because her ability was broken; it was that it was on the same frequency as someone else. (Two someone else’s, even, because there was that other girl there.) That was why she couldn’t see the man pulling Rynn back inside. That was why she couldn’t see Rynn after the attack unless she touched the surface that bore witness. Rynn had died after the third shot. The final two were to make sure of it.
But, wait—Rynn hadn’t died, Sylvie kept having to remind herself. That was the whole thing! She hadn’t died. She’d gone to a hospital and moved on with her life for another year. Or another twenty years, because she might be up there in that apartment, acting the part of a vampire. Just like that strange woman in the cellar.
Sylvie sat up.
Everything she had witnessed on that property was stirred up in her mind, but foremost of all was Marilyn’s presence there. Sylvie couldn’t stop thinking about the little girl in her tartan pinafore, hand in Rynn’s, apparently wandering over to pick flowers at the back of the lot. She couldn’t stop wondering how this ability was handed down and why it had to come to her. Because it truly felt like a trap now, more than anything else, and that burned her up. She had come to think of her powers as intrinsic as breathing, and now she felt like Marie Curie diving head-first into radiation.
She wanted to know more about what Marilyn did and saw on that property, but she didn’t want to ask directly. Instead, she decided to phone Marilyn and ask about the archives, see if she had gone into them and learned anything new about Rynn’s fate. But Marilyn didn’t answer her phone.
It was a struggle to sleep. Sylvie kept dreaming of Rynn and Marilyn, hand in hand, both of them tiny little girls together, which was impossible. They skipped through a velvet garden of white flowers before stopping to pick some. The roots of the flowers were strong, and their small arms couldn’t even snap the stems. They pulled and pulled, until a hand came through the dirt—five long-stemmed fingers ending in five bright, white flowers. Instead of screaming, the girls laughed hysterically. Then the shadow of the tree fell over the garden and the flowers withered up, and the hand receded into the ground, and the ground began to sink around them, and Ilan’s body emerged from the dirt, bloodless and cold. Sylvie woke up so sharply that she slipped off her bed. She landed hard on her side, her hip bone digging into her arm beneath her.
She was too startled to feel the bruise until she officially woke up to the smell of her dad cooking bacon.
Gary wasn’t coming home today, her parents later found out. His choice. They talked to him briefly before he asked to speak to Sylvie.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, Silverado.” A pause. “Sorry about, uh, me, I guess.”
“How are you?”
“Strung out and loving it.” And he did sound a little thick in the tongue. “Is everything okay over there? Has … anyone shown up?”
“Nope. Everything’s okay here, except it’s a hundred million billion degrees.”
“That’s an exaggeration!” called her dad.
“I’ll probably go get an ice cream.”
“Be careful, if you go. Take Marybeth or Jessie Baby. Actually, yeah, take Jessie Baby. She knows her shit.” Gary’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “I need a couple days, I think. If it turns out to be a little too One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, then I’ll change my mind.”
“I never saw that.”
“Forget it. Just promise me you’ll be careful. I know I sounded like an insane person but it’s true. There’s something about you that—anyway. Ilan knew it. He thought he was getting her off your trail, I guess. And I think I knew it, but I didn’t want to admit it. I don’t know how … I don’t know how that thing found out about you—I don’t even know what was up with you out there, either, by the way.”
Sylvie eyed her dad, but he was looking at the TV.
“I told you,” she said.
“Are you actually psychic?” He might have meant it as a joke, but he didn’t laugh.
“Not in the way people think of.”
“Can you see the future?”
“I don’t even know what day it is tomorrow.”
“Thursday. The past?”
“Postcog, all the way.”
“You ever heard of James Randi’s prize for genuine psychics? It’s a few thousand bucks.”
Sylvie snorted. “I know. He’d never believe me. No one ever believed me, except Marz and Marybeth.”
A pause. “I always …” Another pause. “Explain later. Please. You were freaking me out.”
“Sorry. But likewise.”
“Sorry. Anyway, love you, Cool Breeze.”
“Love you, too.”
After lunch, Sylvie’s parents dispersed into errands. Whether they had ever taken Gary’s commands seriously or not, they weren’t now. Her dad was off to buy sausage and cannoli on Bleecker, and her mom went to meet some people organizing the next artist talk. As soon as they left, as soon as the lock turned, Sylvie couldn’t help feeling anxious. Part of her imagined that Ilan would step out of the elevator or climb in through the skylight. Maybe he had been lurking down below, in the studio, in the dark. It wasn’t natural to be scared of him, and she knew that if she saw him, she would want to save him.
But Jessie Baby was in a very typical mood, drinking her water and going to her bed in the living room, where she curled up and promptly fell asleep. Above them, the ceiling fan whirred, gently playing with the sunlight that still streamed in even though the curtains were closed to keep it out. It was brutally hot.
Wally’s. She was going to go to Wally’s and get an egg cream or something. Something normal and something cold. Thinking back on what her brother suggested, she decided to wake Jessie Baby up and take her with.
Her leash hung with the coats by the door, and Sylvie half-heartedly peeled off her socks and shoved her feet into her sandals as she retrieved it. Turning around, though, Jessie Baby was already awake again, and standing up.
Sylvie whistled to her. “Wanna go for a walk, Jessie Baby? W-A-L-K?”
The whirring fan disguised the low growl, but it did not disguise the sharp barking. Jessie Baby’s hackles were up, her ears down, her whole body rigid. Sylvie dropped the leash and almost tripped over her own feet trying to back away from nothing at all.
