Button Hill (13 page)

“You're the only one who can help me.”

“What do you want?”

“I'm in Understory. The city on the other side of the gorge. Where my mom lives.”

Dekker frowned. “If you want my help, telling the truth would be a good start.”

“I'm sorry. It's not the kind of thing I can talk about with most people.”

“News flash: thanks to you, I'm not most people anymore.”

“I didn't mean to come here, Dekker. My mom's the governess, and she's in a royal snit. Your heart is here, and she wants it. It's to be sold at auction.”

“If your mom's the frikkin' governess, what does she need my heart for?”

“She won't tell me. I wouldn't help her, so she grounded me as soon as I got here. I'm stuck in her ridiculous mansion.”

Dekker scowled. “Why should I trust you after what you did?”

“Because I can help you get your heart back. How soon can you get here?”

“What about Cobb?”

“Mom's guards apprehended him. She says he's out of the picture. I'd forgotten about him, to tell you the truth.”

Dekker's mind was racing, but he tried to sound calm. “I don't know. I'll have to think about it.”

“Well, don't think too long, okay?” Harper paused. “I miss you.”

Dekker felt something tighten in his chest. “Oh.”

“So hurry, then.”

He hung the receiver back on its cradle and immediately thought of several things he wished he'd said instead.
If your mom's the governess, what does that make you?
His watch said 6:47
AM
. He could hear heavy footsteps in the kitchen. He wondered what his aunt would say when he told her about the auction. As much as he hated the idea, the coffin was looking more and more like his only option. He climbed the stairs and crept up behind his aunt. “Boo!”

She closed the fridge and crossed to the sink without looking at him. Her arms were full of carrots. “Ghosts say ‘boo.' The undead moan. If you're going to scare people, you need to work on your shuffling. A lazy shuffle looks unrefined.” She dumped the carrots into the sink and turned the water on. “Your sister is already at work in the garden.” She gave Dekker a significant look. “Please retrieve her, and pick your tomato before the sun gets too hot.”

“What, no breakfast? Just kidding,” he said as his aunt shot him a look and started chopping the carrots with a heavy cleaver. Dekker thought she seemed a little too enthusiastic. He grabbed the leather bag from its hook by the back door and headed out into the yard. The summer sun was already warming the path to the garden.

The raspberries were thick with fruit, and new canes curved wildly across the entrance. He pushed the thorny tangles aside with the leather bag. Inside the garden, the air was heavy with the scent of flowers and ripening vegetables. Ranger snuffled in the dirt at the edge of the pool.

“Hey, get away from there.
The Book of Night and Day
says that's a Nightside pool—you know it's not safe to drink from that.” But the dog ignored him. He pawed at the dirt at the edge of the water and started to whine. “What is it, boy? Did you find something?” The dog paced, agitated, his nose to the ground. Dekker walked over to the water and looked where Ranger was pawing the dirt. Nestled in the pink flowers that grew around the pool was the journal, opened to the drawing of the wavy figure traveling through the pool.

Ranger was at the edge again, snuffling and whining. Dekker crouched down and picked up the book. Two small, clear shoe prints were pressed into the mud at the water's edge. The empty space in his chest felt suddenly colder. “She wouldn't have, would she?” he whispered.

Ranger looked up at him and pushed his wet nose against Dekker's shoulder. “I can't go that way—I'd come apart. And we don't know she went for sure.” His mind was racing, spinning like a bicycle wheel. “You wait here in case she comes back. I'm going to check at the 4-
H
club.”

As Dekker hurried toward the house, fear rose in his throat. He knew she wouldn't be at the 4-
H
barn. He dashed through the kitchen and raced up to her room. The clock on her bedside table read 7:07
AM
. There was a long lump under her covers, but when he sniffed the air her scent was stale. She had left hours ago. He threw back the covers. Two pillows had been stuffed lengthwise under the blankets. He looked around the room. Her pink bag was gone, and so was Harper's bone music box. “No!” he shouted, sitting down on the bed.

“Dekker, is everything okay?” His mom stood in the doorway, her eyes sleepy and soft. “Where's your sister?”

“She left without me to go see Bluebird. She promised she'd wake me up so I could go too, but she didn't.”

“She's getting so independent since we moved out here. Don't be too mad at her; she's trying to be like you.” His mom wrinkled her nose. “You can go down to the 4-
H
barn too, but after you shower.”

Dekker stood up, out of her reach. “Mom, there's no time! I mean, there's no point. I'll just get dirty at the barn anyway. I'll shower when I get back, okay?” He left Riley's bedroom without waiting for her to answer and raced downstairs to the front room, where his aunt was reading the weekly rural paper and sipping her morning tea. He grabbed the paper out of her hands and started flipping through it. “Come on, come on, where are they?”

Aunt Primrose huffed. “Young man, what is the meaning of this?”

“The obituaries. Didn't anybody die this week?”

“On the back page, but I don't see what that has to do with anything.”

Dekker flipped the section around and threw the rest of it on the floor. “Oh, yes! There's a funeral today.”

“What on earth are you rambling about?”

Dekker pointed at a black-and-white picture of an old woman. “Alva Conquergood. She died at the nursing home three days ago. This is great!”

“Young man, your manners are unconscionable. You didn't even know that poor woman.”

“I don't care who she was,” he replied. “It means I have a chance to catch Riley before it's too late.”

“Riley? Tell me what happened.”

Dekker lowered his voice. “I think she went through the pool last night.” He held up the notebook to Aunt Primrose, who snatched it out of his hands.

She looked at the drawing of the pool, and her face went pale. “You're right, Dekker, you have to go to the graveyard. Tonight.”

“So how do you hitch a ride with someone who died?”

“The correct term for it is
traveling
. You find a soul ready to walk the paths of the dead, and you convince it to tether itself to you.”

“What do you mean, convince it?” asked Dekker.

Aunt Primrose set the weathered book on the kitchen table and flipped through it to the right page. She pointed to a diagram of a soul rising from an open coffin. It seemed to be tied to a small figure crouched at the base. “Look here. A soul is its own master. It will either take a traveler or it won't. Some say you can talk to it, or offer it something in trade.”

“What would a soul want?”

Aunt Primrose sniffed. “I couldn't rightly say. I myself have never attempted such a crude thing. To negotiate with the dead seems somehow untoward.”

“How do you get to Nightside then?”

She stared at him until Dekker looked away. “As the keeper of this place where Dayside and Nightside are joined, I am granted the freedom to travel into the borderland as I please. It is not a gift I can grant you, not without a heavy price.”

“Jeez, Aunt Prim, you don't have to get all cryptic.”

She ignored him and continued looking at the book. “Observe how the sun sets behind the coffin.”

“How do you know it's not the sun rising?”

“Don't be obtuse. What doors do you think the rhyme of the Nightclock refers to?”

“
Sunset, for opening doors
. Oh yeah, that does make sense.”

Aunt Primrose glared at him. “Indeed. The spirit opens a door you can step through into Nightside. You can follow the spirit's tether to its own body back to the borderland. Best to come back by train from there, I think—once you've found your sister.”

“And my heart.”

Alarm flashed in her eyes as she reached out and clutched his hand. “My boy, remember you have so much further to go in your training. You must consider the possibility that your heart is beyond easy reach. If you discover this to be true, I hope you will have the sense to put Riley first. She has gone there for you. You must go for her.”

“I know. But I can at least keep an eye out for it while I'm looking for Riley, right?”

The old lady said nothing. She patted his hand roughly, then turned to one of the last pages of the book that had been written on. “The gravedigger will see you off at sundown. Reed knows his business, and if I ask, he will help.” She closed the book slowly and slid it into the leather bag. “Once you leave the borderland around Button Hill, you won't have much use for the book. What little is known about Understory comes from rumor and hearsay. I myself have never journeyed that far. If you are able, try to record what you see on the blank pages at the back.”

Dekker took the bag and slung the strap over his shoulder. “What should I bring with me?”

“The book. The bag. The courage to stay human.”

He swallowed. “That's not very much.”

“Study the book, and add to it if you can. You and your sister will be the first Daysiders to travel beyond the borderland in many years. If you return, your knowledge will be invaluable.”

Dekker turned and wobbled down the stairs into the basement.
Is it weird to miss this freezer? This might be my last time
. The lid closed above him and he settled onto his bed of frozen peas to wait. As he opened the journal, he noticed a yellow-brown spot the size of a quarter on his right wrist.
Stupid arm
.
I forgot to do my tomato.
He scratched at it without thinking. The skin peeled back like an apple gone bad, but dry and scabby. The muscle beneath had turned brown, and he could see the bone under it, gray and tinder dry. He pulled his sleeve down, not wanting to see what was happening to him.
I have to hurry
.
I'm running out of time
.

Fifteen

An iron raven stared down at Dekker from the top of the cemetery gate, as if daring him to enter. He pushed through the wide gate with a clang. Ranger trailed a few feet behind, his head hung low. He'd been waiting by the freezer when Dekker rose and had refused to leave his side. Every few minutes he whimpered and nudged Dekker's leg. “I'm going as fast as I can,” said Dekker. He had tried to pet him, but the dog had moved back, out of his reach. “I smell that bad, hey?”

The headstones nearest the entrance stood like guards on either side of the path. He left the narrow road that traversed the grounds and walked up a side path toward the back of the cemetery, where Aunt Primrose had said the funeral would be. He had timed it so that he arrived at the end of the service, before the gravedigger lowered the coffin into the ground.

As he crested the hill, early-evening light shone through the crypts and statues that ringed the oldest part of the graveyard. Dekker crouched behind a stone angel and looked down to where Mrs. Conquergood's small gathering was beginning to break up. He watched as the pastor shook hands with a few elderly people dressed in dark colors; after the last of the mourners had departed, the pastor drove away in the long hearse.

Once the last car was out of sight, Dekker and Ranger walked swiftly down to the open grave. The casket sat at the foot of the hole; a mechanism with heavy straps, gears and a winch handle stood behind it.

The quiet graveyard lay under a dusky-purple sky that signaled the end of day. An owl hooted in the trees that ran along the edge of cemetery. Dekker looked up. A man in baggy pants and a flannel shirt was getting out of an old half-ton truck, a shovel in his hand and a wad of chewing tobacco bulging one cheek. He approached Dekker and raised his chin in greeting. “Your aunt called, told me what you need. Name's Reed.”

Dekker stuck out his hand, and the man took it. His hand felt rough and dirty. “Did—did she tell you what happened?” Dekker asked.

The man shrugged and set his shovel against the casket. “Told me what you did to save your sister, and that you were there when my daughter went into the gorge. Said I should mind my own business too.”

Dekker tried to laugh, but it came out as a cough. “That's what she always says to me.”

“Uh-huh. To everyone. You look bad, kid. So what happened?”

Dekker could feel the gravedigger's stare boring into him. It was like taking a test at school and not having any of the answers.. “I didn't know you were Harper's dad. Cobb stole my heart—and Harper's music box. She said she had to stay with Cobb to get it back from him, so she could come back to Dayside. Harper wouldn't get off the train. I'm sorry.”

Reed whistled through his teeth as he began to set up some sort of mechanical device at the foot of the grave. “Harper's drawn to Nightside. Always been curious about her mother's side of the family, so to speak. That music box came with her from the dead city when her mother sent her back to me all those years ago. It has some kind of power in it, enough to keep her grounded in Dayside. Without it, she must have felt a mighty strong pull into the dark.”

“I get that, but why she helped Cobb do this to me… It's just so unfair,” said Dekker.

The gravedigger brushed the dirt from his hands and looked Dekker up and down. “One thing I learned, fallin' for a woman who was already dead, is that life ain't fair and neither is death. The question is, what are you goin' to do about it?”

Dekker felt hollow inside as he imagined living forever in Button Hill with his aunt and mother, never seeing Riley again, and he weighed that against his fear of being trapped in Nightside. “I have to get Riley back. That's all there is to it. And my heart, if I can.”