The May Queen Murders (32 page)

ing hounds was present, every face on the lost dog signs on Papa’s

clinic window.

“A-A-August?”

I rounded a stall where a horse had once resided. In the pass-

through was a long harvester table.

On which Violet’s body lay.

The same red-black color sludge as in the jugs congealed in the

wounds on her throat.
It’s blood. Oh, God.

August ran his finger along her cheek. “I swore I’d do whatever she

wanted. She promised she’d never tel . But she lied. She was gonna

tell Sheriff, said things had gone too far.” He glanced to a jar holding

a grayish-red hunk of meat and touched his thumb to her lips. “Not

like she can talk now.”

“What the hell have you done?” Rook asked.

August tapped a dog’s skull beside her head. “You know, Vio-

let liked what I do. I once promised if anything happened, I’d keep

her skul . Her family went to see Pastor Galloway, and that’s when I

brought her where she’d wanna be. Those police folk from the coun-

ty, they would have sliced her up. It was wrong. She wouldn’t want

anyone but me taking care of her that way. So I took her from the

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clinic, wrapped her in blankets, put her in a wagon, and brought

her here. She knew I was different. I wasn’t some dumb hunter or

farmer. After seeing Heather get away with so much, the kinds of

things Dahlia used to do, it wasn’t fair. Heather never let Violet join

in, and all the time, Heather was what Dahlia used to be.”

The light in the barn slanted, and the stone floor seemed to drop

out beneath me. I could fall into the black earth below and never be

heard again, no matter how loud I screamed. The heel of my palm

pressed between my eyes and steadied me.

“Y-you killed Heather,” I said.

August smiled. “Heather should’ve let you be friends with Violet,

but it was always about what Heather wanted, nobody else. Violet

took a bottle of her family’s wine. We got the bel adonna from Rook’s

greenhouse. We had it all figured out. On May Day, Vi got you as far

from Heather as she could, and that gave me a chance to dance with

Heather, tell her I wanted to talk to her by the river. I gave her the

bad wine. I did all I could to stay true to the Birch Markle story. I felt

kinda bad and left you some presents from Heather’s necklace. Did

you get them?”

I gulped, everything tilting.

His face took on a sour expression. “How was I to know Mr. Free-

man was pretending to be Birch Markle all these years? Damn May

Queens. I didn’t know that he’d go after you. Getting rid of Heather

was supposed to make it better for my Vi, but then she went and

said she was gonna tell Sheriff what we’d done. I couldn’t let her.” He

picked up two withered strips like leather. “Heather’s smile was real

pretty, wasn’t it?”

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My mind emptied, focused on the wilted flesh.

“Run,” Rook shouted, shoving me. “Get my father.”

I grabbed his wrist, but instead of running with me, he slammed

August against the table with such force that it knocked Violet’s arm

off the edge. August’s knees hit the ground, yet he pried himself up

from the floor to kick out his leg and catch Rook in the hip. Rook

tumbled backwards, crashed into me, and we landed on the stone

floor in a heap of awkward limbs, a tangle of my hair and skirt.

I lay stil , my arm coiled beneath me. Already the pulsing in my

forehead from a growing lump made my eyelids heavy.

“Get up, Ivy,” Rook urged and wrenched me up under my arms.

“C’mon. I ain’t leavin’ you here, and we gotta get help.”

“I’m up,” I said, but my voice was mushy. I blinked and tried to

make sense of where I was in the barn — where was the door, where

was August? The lantern guttered, dark then light.

A loud
ting,
metal singing, broke the silence. Behind Rook’s

shoulder, a silhouette rose in the half-light. Tal , cloaked, smelling

of old blood and buzzing with flies. August raised his arm. His hand

clutched the handle of a harvesting sickle, the curved blade arching

high and ending in a vicious point.

“Move!” Rook shouted.

He pushed me forward before the sickle pierced and tore down

his back. A scream that vibrated off the stone floor quivered up my

legs. He slumped over. His arms sought to grip a post that held up

the hayloft but snatched only air. His chest hit one of the massive

jugs of blood. It rolled with his weight, glass grinding against stone.

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Then Rook came to a rest. August yanked out the blade, the force of

dislodging metal from meat spattering my face with liquid heat.

“What part of him do you like best?” August wondered and drew

the sickle’s curve behind Rook’s ear. “He’s a good listener, ain’t he?”

The blade cut down. Something pink and fleshy plopped on the

floor. Blood poured from the side of Rook’s head. A moan escaped

his mouth, but it was impossible to make out any words, red gushing

down his cheek and bubbling over his lips.

I glanced to the old horse stal . It was hard to make out, but in-

side, a pole rested near the stal ’s door. A shovel? A pitchfork? Hay

from God only knew when was scattered on the floor. I edged back

from August, who knelt and picked up the outer shell of Rook’s ear,

flicking it so it wobbled before he sniffed it. Rook struggled to force

himself up, but August slashed the blade across his back again.

Blood splashed on the ground. Rook’s blood. My throat closed; I

was no longer able to scream, cry, wheeze as I breathed. Keeping one

eye on August, I stretched my arm around the stall door extending

until a cramp seized my shoulder, but still I strained to grasp the

pole.

August smeared his hands in the bloody pool leaking from Rook’s

wounds. Red coated his palms, a weird smile cocking his mouth,

then he moved a pail beneath Rook’s head to catch the blood.
Plink,

plink, plink.
He must’ve drained the blood from the dogs and fun-

neled it in to the jugs. As he bent over, entranced by Rook’s redness,

I made a grab for the pole.

“
Nnnugh.
” I groaned and hoisted up not the piercing tines of

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a pitchfork or flat edge of a shovel. Just a muck rake for cleaning

horse shit. Yet two dozen metal tines of the rake scraped the floor to

leave pale claw marks. They were sharp. I carried the muck rake as if

ready to heave wasted bedding into a bucket, my hold firm and teeth

clenched. I had one chance.

Don’t hold back.

Run him through.

The tines on the muck rake didn’t stab flesh. August’s build was

too solid, and the rake tore his shirt and gouged his back above his

waist. Force meeting a barrier, the halt jarred me and I bounced

back, the muck rake dislodged from my hold. He yowled, dropped

to one knee before staggering away from Rook’s body. Not allowing

him to gather his wits, I reached for the rake and smacked his head.

More tearing, this time the tender skin of his face, and blood swam

down his cheek and chin.

Again, I hit him, the rake cutting close to his eye. He fell again and

lay stil .

One hand on the rake, I dashed to Rook and hoisted him up. My

feet slipped on the blood-slick floor.

“C-come on! Move!”

My right foot flew out from beneath me, and I landed on my

knees in warm liquid. Thick down my skirt, wetting my legs, I stood

again and lifted up under his arms. He was limp.

Dead weight.

His muscles had no tone, his face was slack.

The cold in my head raced to my fingers and toes, a sizzling sensa-

tion but caused by ice instead of heat. The back of his shirt was sticky

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and dark, like a beet with its outer layer peeled off to reveal shining

crimson beneath.

“Rook, you gotta get up.” I shook him, searching his neck for any

twitch of his pulse. “Get up!”

A bristle of his eyelashes. His feet tried to stand only to go dumb.

From between blood-drenched lips, he uttered, “Can’t.”

No.
Tears drained down my cheeks. He couldn’t give up. Not when

he’d showed me how strong I’d been.

“You’re with me,” I said. “Take one step.”

His head lolled. I didn’t think he’d listen, but his foot shuffled for-

ward.

“Take another step.”

He walked again. So much blood covered us both. I didn’t dare

guess how much he’d lost, but a trail of sloppy, red footsteps fol-

lowed us from the barn into the road. Outside with the torches, I laid

Rook beside a horse fence and stripped off his shirt. A gash down

his shoulder blade flayed his skin, a scarlet line along a white sliver.

Bone.

The daze of panic crawled over my brain, but I took his head in

my lap and looked at the opaque cartilage left from his ear before

tearing my sleeve to bandage him. I prayed the pressure would stop

the hemorrhaging. Blood painted the lenses of his glasses. We need-

ed help, more help than anyone in the Glen could give. There were

few vehicles on the land, but even if someone brought a horse . . .

I was reaching for the bel s strung on the fence when a sickle

reared in the air and ripped downward, clipping the alarm bel s. I

rolled onto my backside and screamed as August stood over me.

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Journey’s mane on his head stank of rot, the furs knitted together on

his back were worse.

August stepped closer. “All those stories about a madman and his

girl goin’ off in the woods? We can live them. You like stories. I never

hurt you ’cause Violet said not to. But she’s gone.” He glanced to Rook

on the ground. “He’ll be dead within the hour.”

I crab-walked back until my elbows gave. August advanced, sickle

in one bloodied hand and the other stretched to me.

Was this it? If I took his hand, what happened then? Would he kill

me? Would he force me into the woods? I’d never stay with him. He’d

have to kill me. There was no other choice in joining him.

My fingers were hesitant in meeting his. Taking his hand was ac-

cepting my death. I could pray he’d kill me quickly, but there would

be pain. He would see to that.

Rook’s dried blood was embedded in the ridges of our finger-

prints. I held August’s hand anyway. Blood made the Glen go mad.

The hillfolk locked themselves away after dark, and now it was Au-

gust and me and the wet breathing behind me. I walked with him

past the torches. I walked with him past the field where the scare-

crows watched.

I didn’t want to be a story.

I wanted to be me.

An owl circled overhead. I looked up. August did as wel .

I had a chance. My hold broke from August’s, but he grabbed me

again, biting my finger to tear off the fingernail. I shrieked from

pain, at the surge of fire in my nerves, but my scream stunted as he

swallowed the fingernail. I peered past him to Rook’s too-still body.

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My legs shook with rage, and I wheeled my other arm around to stick

my thumb into August’s eye. It was wet and marble-like. I kept press-

ing until I felt it yield. August gave a yel , and I ran. He ran after me.

Get him away from Rook. Get him away from hurting anybody else.
I

ran toward the outside.

The highway.

I breached the Glen’s boundary, and the country highway stretched

long past hayfields and cornrows. Pellets of gravel flew around me.

The
whup-whup-whup
of his boots closing in spurred me on, but I

kept going over the hill until the glare of headlights drilled into my

eyes. I ran at them, cringing, tears glistening so the lights grew spikes

and shone like stars. I looked over my shoulder. August rounded the

hil top. He was so close.

“Ivy! Stop!” he screamed after me.

The truck’s lights blinded me. All I saw was white and dark blue

dots. My muscles tightened in anticipation of collision, closer and

closer.
Five, four, three
. . .

I leaped to the left.

Brakes screeched, and a thud pounded the road, a crunch of bone

or metal, I didn’t care, except that the sound made me smile.

My elbow hit the road’s shoulder, and I rolled until a wire cable

stopped me from winding up in the ditch. Ringing filled my ears.

Grit clung to my lip and crunched against my teeth while I lay stil .

Blood dried into the red thread circling my wrist.

The truck’s engine hissed. A man shot out to the front of his truck

and screamed.

My body resisted standing, but the cable fence made good lever-

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age. I crept along the fence and staggered toward the crinkled truck.

Fissures spread across the windshield. August was a busted heap on

the ground, his head twisted backwards on his neck, blood oozing

from his mouth.

A second truck drove up. I needed to duck back inside the Glen,

except my body fought any movement. A cry deepened in my throat

and pushed past my lips, growing louder. Someone ran toward me,

seizing my shoulders, and I screamed and batted my hands to get

away.