Amity (19 page)

Always evil
.

Alive
.

Here lies Amity
.

Always
.

NOW

DAY 13

MOM BRIGHTENED
when I mentioned to her that I was going to go into town, that I wanted to have a look at the local library. It had been several nights since we’d talked about it. She’d probably thought I’d forgotten, lost interest. It was important to my parents that my interest in “normal” social behavior not waver, so to her this development was good news.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, squinting through her reading glasses at the morning crossword puzzle. She asked hopefully whether I was planning on meeting anyone there, and I hated to have to remind her that I had no one to meet. The younger girl I’d spotted down by the riverbank hadn’t come back—at least, not that I’d seen. And besides, I hadn’t ventured from the property once since we’d moved in.

Which was odd, come to think of it.

“You can take my car,” she offered, another sign that her concerns about me persisted. This type of generosity was uncommon, if not completely unheard of. Mom fished her keys out of a colorful glass bowl in the middle of the table and pressed them into my hand. The metal was cold against my palm.

“Sure.” I wasn’t going to turn down the car keys. If her concern reached a tipping point, it could be a while before I had my hands on them again. “I’ll ask Luke if he wants to come.”

Her shrug told me she expected this to be futile, and I had to agree. He’d been disappearing into the boathouse, shovel in hand, for longer and longer intervals lately, though he’d yet to show us anything he’d uncovered, promising only that it was “great stuff.”

“
Great stuff
 …” and that flat, distant gaze.

(go away, crazy)

I wondered what
great
meant in this context. I didn’t think I wanted to know.

I slipped the car keys into my back pocket. “Do you need me to bring anything back?”

Mom looked startled by the question, then frowned. “No. I don’t think there’s anything I need. Oh, but, honey?” Mom’s tone escalated, making my breath quicken. “If you’re going to go get Luke, I don’t think he’s in the boathouse right now.”

“No?” That was a surprise.

“He’s in the basement.”

The basement
.

The basement, not the boathouse. A surprise, yes.

Whether it was an improvement remained to be seen.

THE BASEMENT SMELLED LIKE MILDEW, THICK AND CLOYING
, making my nose prick as I tottered cautiously down the stairs. The only lighting was still that lone, bare bulb swinging from a fraying line at the foot of the staircase. As it arced back and forth, it cast bold geometric patterns in the air. I thought my mother had to be mistaken, that surely there was no way Luke would be down here in the dark, rank rot. Surely, this place was even less appealing than the dilapidated old boathouse.

(not to Luke it’s not)

(not to Amity)

But as soon as my foot touched the cold concrete floor, I saw his shadow skitter along my peripheral vision.

He had a shovel in his hand.

Hearing me approach, he leaned it against the wall and pushed hanks of unwashed hair out of his eyes to survey me. I glanced around the spare, dreary room, finding no remnants of the sage I’d burned. Had Luke removed them?

And if so, why?

He looked at me, eyes flat. “You wanted something?”

I wanted lots of things, none of which I was going to get from my brother, my almost twin, in that moment. “I was about to go into town.”

His eyebrows knit together in a suspicious question mark. “Why?”

Again, the question of why any of us would venture away from Amity. It was a valid one. Until now none of us really had left, more than we needed to.

I ran the toe of my sneaker along the basement floor. “Actually, I wanted to check out the library. I’m interested in local history.” Mostly, I was interested in seeing how the public records might correspond with the garish dreamscapes I’d been encountering lately. “I mean, specifically, the history of the house. It’s got such old bones.”
Old bones
. The skittering from my bedroom, from within my walls at night, sounded softly in some far-off corner of my mind.

(go away, crazy)

I went on, babbling a bit now. “You should know. I mean, all that poking around you’re doing in the boathouse. You must be getting pretty familiar with Amity’s bones.” A whisper of cold air rushed over my bare arms, making me shudder.

Luke jutted his lower lip out. “And where,” he sneered, “do you think that’s going to get you?”

I’d expected this anger, hadn’t I? Luke defaulted to it more and more these days. As calmly as possible, I replied, “I’m just curious.”

Of course, they say that curiosity killed the cat.

Luke’s face relaxed slightly. “I don’t think you’ll find anything.”

That skittering again from the back of my throat, fluttery movements in the corner of my eyes.
Go. Away. Crazy
. I swallowed.

Luke flicked his eyes toward a lightless, sooty corner of the
room. Following his gaze, I caught sight—just barely—of a torn, dingy plastic bag, lumpy and leaking a small pool of dark fluid. My stomach lurched.

“The thing is, Gwen,” Luke said, his consonants long and drawn out, “I kind of know everything I need to know about this place already.”

I decided I wasn’t interested in any further details from my brother.

(What’s in the bag, Luke?)

(she was shot in the HEAD)

I told him I’d leave him to it. And I did.

MY MOTHER’S CAR HAD SEEN BETTER DAYS
, but pulling down Amity’s long, winding drive and out onto the pebble-strewn road felt exhilarating. I rumbled along with the window rolled down and my arm resting over the door, baking in the sunlight as the breeze whipped my hair against my face. But I’d only gone a mile, maybe, when the sky clouded over, gray swaths of steel wool connecting overhead ominously.

I hardly had time to register the swift shift in weather when a fawn bounded out from the wooded thicket that lined either side of the road. In a single leap, it jumped to the center of the road, velvet-lined nose twitching. Its chocolate eyes bored into mine as the car chugged forward, seemingly of its own volition.

I gasped, squeezing my eyes shut involuntarily, bracing for the impact. But there was none.

When I opened my eyes again, the deer was gone.

But the figure from my bathroom mirror had taken its place.

SHE WAS THERE IN A HEARTBEAT
, a hairsbreadth, a flash, a tangle of dark, matted curls slapping my windshield and fanning out. There was the thud, the groaning protest of metal against muscle, the slam-rattle of glass against bone, my teeth clicking together as my own head snapped forward in my seat.

She was holding something in her hands, holding it out to me, even as her limbs pinwheeled at odd, impossible angles. I glimpsed stained—was that
fur
? Was it felt or fabric? It was too quick, tumbling away—and then reflexes overtook me.

I jerked the steering wheel to the left, sending the car screeching into the drop-off that sloped alongside the road. The car stalled out, flinging me harshly against my shoulder harness. I quickly unclipped it and stepped out of the car, panting. I climbed back up out of the ditch and onto the road, coughing from the smoke rising from the hood of the car like fog.

Even through the haze, I could see there was no trace of the girl, not a hint left behind.

BACK UP ON THE ROAD
, with an elevated vantage point, the situation with the car looked all the more dire. I had nothing but the car keys in my pocket, so walking home looked to be the only option. I was alone on the road,

It was lucky, I supposed, that I hadn’t made it further into town.

“WHAT HAPPENED?”

I whirled to find myself face-to-face with the girl from the sewing room window, the one who had disappeared down by the river. The canopy of the woods behind her remained completely motionless, undisturbed.

She was waiting for my reply.

“I thought I—I thought I hit something,” I said, those glazed, red-rimmed eyes, that matted, clotted nest of hair, that ghoulish image from the mirror streaking through my mind. “A deer.”

There
had
been a deer, hadn’t there?

“You
did
. Hit something.” She pointed, and I followed her gaze.

There, on the windshield, where the mirror-image had made contact with my car, crept a nasty spiderweb of cracks. In the center, an angry red smear screamed accusingly, a bloody target.

The air around me seemed to fall away. “But …,” I faltered.

Knowing seeped from her, leaked from her sea-green eyes. “If it
was
a deer, then where is it?”

“I don’t know. The impact, maybe?” I scanned the shoulder for any trace of an injured animal.

There
. The dirty felt—that stained, furry fabric. The one that the figure had held out to me. It was lodged under one of the car’s front tires.

That much, at least, I hadn’t imagined.

“That,” I said, gesturing toward it. “What’s that?”

She hitched up her pants, faded jeans that sagged in the seat, and darted toward it.

“Oh, you shouldn’t—” I called out, worried that it was maybe a wild animal, broken and battered beyond saving. I hadn’t meant for her to try to get a closer look. But she’d already snatched it up and was making her way back to me, clutching it against her chest.

It
was
an animal, I realized, as she drew closer. But not a live one. She was holding a small, stuffed dog.

It was covered in bloodstains.

The stains had streaked across her top, a loose, cotton piece that had been cornflower blue to begin with, but now appeared a wild, modern-art print, dusted with handfuls of road grime and smears of … yes, it was definitely blood.

I swooned.

“YOU SHOULD PUT THAT DOWN,”
I managed, when the wave of dizziness finally passed. “It’s filthy.” And we still hadn’t found the presumably injured deer.
And
if the object that the mirror-image carried was here, then where had she gone?

(Go. Away. CRAZY.)

None of this made any sense.

I swayed again in the heat, knees buckling as the air in front of me appeared to ripple, to shimmer and bend.

I felt the girl’s hand on my forearm, cooler to the touch than I would have imagined. “It’s okay,” she assured me. “It’s mine.” She meant the stuffed animal.

I looked down at her, searched the toffee-colored freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose. “It’s
yours
?” This, too, made no sense to me.

She shrugged.

A SURGE PASSED OVER ME
, slinking along my skin. There was a sharp clap of thunder overhead and I flinched, bracing for a deluge, but none came. In the distance, lightning forked neon through the sky.

“I’m Gwen,” I told her. “I saw you down by the river.”

“I know,” she replied. “I’m Annie.”

“That’s a nice name.” Though it didn’t quite suit her, even with her moppish, live-wire ponytail of copper curls, and those round, baleful eyes.

“It’s babyish,” she protested. “It’s not … me.” She pursed her lips and again, that charge ran through me. Again, thunder echoed, rumbling, from all sides.

I focused on a brownish-red stain at her breastbone. It looked like a half-moon, blooming just above her heart. Looking at it, I had to shudder.