Good Girls (37 page)
Authors: Glen Hirshberg
He rolled to a stop, let himself sizzle. For a while, he had no idea how long, he lay there in the wet and loamy Delta earth. Behind him, the screaming reached a crescendo. Then it stopped, and in its place came a crackling, a hissing and sighing as the fireâAunt Sally's surprise guest, the one she'd told no one was comingâsubsided out of its frenzy, settled down to feasting.
Caribou opened his eyes.
Aunt Sally stood over him, holding a hose, her white dress streaked with ash. There was a single streaked handprint, right at her hip, where one of the monsters must have tried to grab hold of her to pull himself free of the flames. Before she'd pushed him back in.
He tried lifting a hand, found he didn't dare. He thought he might not have enough hand left, might just melt away into the ground if he so much as stirred. He wanted to look elsewhere, too, didn't want to be staring into Aunt Sally's face. But he was no longer sure he had eyelids. And anyway, she didn't seem to want him to look away. She seemed to want him to ask.
So he did, as best he could, by lying there and looking up at her face as his flesh blackened and his bones flaked toward ash.
“You're wondering why?” she said. “Oh, 'Bou. Poor, poor 'Bou.”
She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of her car, where Ju, Caribou realized, must already be strapped in, might even be sleeping, all tucked up and ready to go.
To
go
! Despite the horrific pain, and the even more devastating hurtâbecause she'd left him with
them,
with the other monsters, had in fact ordered him to join themâhis blackened body filled with longing. He looked up at Aunt Sally, hoped she understood.
And she did,
he thought. She might even have reconsidered, briefly. But after a while, she said, “No. I think not. I'm sorry. I did mull that, 'Bou. You were the only one I thought about taking. But sometimes, it's best just to clean house, you know? I believe in a clean house. Actually, I believe in
no
house. A cataclysmic burn, then a new road. It's just”âvery slowly, even regretfully, Aunt Sally smiledâ“Policy.”
She waved the hose at something. At the night. The liquid at the end caught the moonlight, flashed purple. Aunt Sally was still talking, but not to him, anymore, or even to herself; she was talking to the stars, the Delta, all the years she had survived before Mother, with Mother, after Mother but with Caribou. She was talking to the years coming.
“We are all creatures of cataclysm,” she was saying. “Accidental aftermath, ignited into darkness with nowhere near enough light or oxygen or love to sustain us⦔
Caribou watched Aunt Sally murmur, her voice trailing away, her mouth still moving as she gazed over her shoulder toward the LeSabre. And abruptlyâdespite the pain, despite what she'd doneâamazement flashed through him. And not just amazement. If he could have gotten up, if he'd been sure his skin and skeleton wouldn't stick to the ground when he rose, he would have risen. He would have approached, carefully. He would have put his arms around Aunt Sally and held her. Because he understood, and he was amazed.
Aunt Sally was afraid. She was afraid, because she wanted a companion, a permanent one. A daughter: Ju. And she did not knowâany more than any of them ever hadâhow to make that happen, how to make Ju one of them instead of dead when the moment came and Aunt Sally, inevitably, struck. Whether the impossible, flickering, miraculous
something
that was Ju would just wink out and bleed away, or else rise upâlike Mother had; like
he
hadâand ignite in the dark.
And Caribou realized that he wanted to see what happened, too. He wanted to know. Desperately, he wanted that, so desperately that actual tears swelled in his singed ducts, sliding out of his eyes and down the char of his face. How astounding to understand, at the last, how much lifeâany life, even the one he'd livedâmatters to the living.
Of course, Aunt Sally noticed. She always did. She raised the hose, put her hand on the nozzle to douse him, purify him,
baptize
him. Droplets hung at the hose's mouth, slick, purple-black. Not water, Caribou saw. Too late, he saw that. Not that seeing or knowing would have mattered.
“A clean burn,” Aunt Sally said. “A new start. A little more cleaning up to do. A bit more erasing. And then my little girl and I, we'll just⦔
She did finish that sentence. But Caribou couldn't hear her over the spray of the hose. He couldn't scream, didn't even want to, as she slipped a match from her pocket, lit it against the pack, and dropped it on him.
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GLEN HIRSHBERG
received his B.A. from Columbia University, where he won the Bennett Cerf Prize for Best Fiction, and his M.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Montana. His first novel,
The Snowman's Children,
was a Literary Guild Featured Selection. A story collection,
The Two Sams,
won two International Horror Guild Awards and was named a Best Book of the Year by
Publishers Weekly
. Hirshberg has won the Shirley Jackson Award and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award.
Glen Hirshberg teaches English and creative writing at a high school in the Los Angeles area, where he lives with his wife and children. He is also one of the founders, along with Dennis Etchison, of the Rolling Darkness Revue, an annual event (now in its tenth year) celebrating the dark delights of horror fiction.
Visit him on the Web at
www.glenhirshberg.com
. Or sign up for email updates
here
.
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BOOKS BY
GLEN HIRSHBERG
The Book of Bunk
The Snowman's Children
American Morons
The Two Sams
The Janus Tree
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Contents
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
GOOD GIRLS
Copyright © 2016 by Glen Hirshberg
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Alejandro Colucci
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3746-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-3442-2 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466834422
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First Edition: February 2016
