Shallow Graves Read online

  I might have convinced myself of it too, if I hadn’t seen what Mr. Willow couldn’t see.

  Behind him, behind his open expression and relaxed posture, his kind smile and kind eyes, Lyle was clutching Esme’s hand so hard their joint grip was trembling, and his face was pinched with rage. Esme’s lips worked but no sound came out. A shiny line of drool gathered at the corner of her mouth. Her upper lip pulled back in a snarl, revealing white teeth in red gums.

  Violet touched my arm. “Come on, Katie.”

  At once Lyle’s expression cleared, the anger replaced by a mild mask. He wiped his sister’s mouth and patted her knee.

  “I’ll show you the church,” Violet said. “How does that sound?”

  I tried to smile. “That sounds great.”

  THIRTEEN

  THE RAIN HAD stopped and the sun was shining through the clouds in bright rays. The prairie smelled fresh, clean, not a hint of a manure or fertilizer. Violet skipped between the driveway puddles, stopped after a few feet, looked at me, and laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired of being stuck inside. It’s hard to get used to being all the way out here, where it’s so quiet.”

  “Have you been here long?” My voice was steady, but my throat was tight. I didn’t let myself look back to see if Mr. Willow was watching.

  “Not long. We used to have a church in Colorado,” Violet said. “In Boulder. That’s where the congregation started. But it was . . . It’s a little remote here, but it’s better. I like it.”

  On the playground the kids had moved from the swings to the merry-go-round, and the woman’s umbrella was folded up and tucked under her arm. Beyond the playground, the old man in the brown hat was still standing by the church graveyard. He hadn’t moved at all.

  The woman turned toward us as though she was going to say something, but her gaze flicked over me and she spun away.

  “That’s Gail,” Violet said. If the woman heard, she gave no sign. “She’s still getting used to it.”

  “Getting used to what?”

  “To who she is now,” Violet said. “It can be hard to give up something that’s hurting you, even if you know how much harm it’s causing. Mr. Willow is letting her stay here for a while, until she’s feeling better. The children help, I think. She likes watching them.”

  Drugs, I thought. She was talking about drugs. The coded language, the damaged people with blank stares, all the unsmiling photographs in the hallway. This was a halfway house for addicts. That’s what Danny had seen when he looked at me, unwashed and bedraggled and alone in my ill-fitting clothes, stranded at a truck stop between nowhere and nowhere. He had looked at me and thought, hey, there’s a girl who needs to break a really bad habit. That’s what Mr. Willow and Violet thought I was.

  The merry-go-round creaked as the kids pushed it around. They were a boy and a girl, about the same age, maybe twins. They weren’t talking or laughing or making any noise at all. There was only the faint squeak of the merry-go-round.

  “Where are their parents?” I asked.

  “Their mother isn’t ready to give up everything she’s holding on to,” Violet said. “She’s a danger to them, for now. They’re better off with us.”

  When I glanced back, I saw Gail’s face in profile: sharp, almost birdlike, the briefest flash of teeth when she hissed at the children, hidden again when she fell silent.

  “How long have you been with the congregation?” I asked.

  “Long enough that it feels like I never belonged anywhere else,” Violet said. “Here we are.”

  She climbed the steps of the church and reached for the wide wooden doors. I was right behind her, but I stopped as soon as the doors were open.

  There was no movement in the air, no change in pressure, but I felt something flowing out of that church like breath from a gaping mouth, so sudden and so strong I backed down one step and caught the railing for balance.

  “Katie? Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I said between gritted teeth.

  Still holding the railing, I started up the stairs again. Goose bumps rose on my skin and I grew nauseated with the effort.

  “It’s okay,” Violet said. There was a mournful edge of disappointment in her voice. “You only have to come as far as you can.”

  If I had been paying attention, I would have realized what a strange thing that was to say.

  But all I could think was: I shouldn’t be here.

  I was as certain of that as I was of all the other new truths in my world. I had been dead and now I wasn’t. My heart could stop and it wouldn’t hurt me. I didn’t need food or drink or sleep anymore. Murderers dragged shadows of guilt behind them for the rest of their lives.

  I could kill with a touch.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  “It’s okay,” Violet said again.

  I was breathing heavily when I reached the top of the steps. Six broad church steps and I felt like I had sprinted up a hill.

  “Can you come inside?”

  My throat was raw. “I’d rather stay out here.”

  “I think you should come inside. This is our way of being sure.”

  Violet reached for my hand.

  We stood side by side, backs to the road and the endless prairie, looking at those open church doors. There was a smear of reddish-brown paint across the threshold, stretching from one side to the other.

  When Violet stepped over the threshold, I did too, suppressing the quiver of nausea that rolled through me. There were boxes and chairs stacked inside; the vestibule was being used for storage. Sunlight slanted through high stained-glass windows, illuminating a room cluttered with old furniture and crooked pews. Nobody had held services in that church in a long time.

  “I know it’s frightening,” Violet said. “You have a darkness in you.”

  A darkness. I almost laughed, but I couldn’t make a sound. The darkness wasn’t inside me. No priest standing over my childhood bed could call out demons while my parents watched in fear and hope. There was no voice whispering in my mind, no being controlling my body.

  “It’s like a cancer,” Violet said. “It’s inside you, this terrible thing. Maybe it feels like it’s part of you, but it isn’t. It isn’t, Katie. That’s the lie it’s telling you. You won’t be free until you cut it out. Whatever you are, we can help you.”

  “I don’t need help.” My voice was hoarse. “I’m not—”

  I had seen beneath my own skin. I had opened wounds in my own guts. I knew what was there. Inside of me was flesh and blood and bile and bone, same as it had always been. The darkness was all around, in the endless sky, in the crumbling soil of an empty grave, in the grasping shadows that clung to people who had done terrible things.

  “I’m not possessed.” I spat out the word, but if I expected it to hit Violet like a blow, I was disappointed. “I don’t have a demon inside of me.”

  “I know you don’t,” she said. “That’s only an easy way to think of it, for people who are too scared to understand. But you don’t have to be scared. Just because you’ve always been this way doesn’t mean you have to stay like this. Let us help you, Katie.”

  I thought: but I haven’t always been this way.

  And I thought: that isn’t me.

  But what I said was: “How? What can you do?”

  Violet was quiet for a long time. Clouds drifted over the sun. The inside of the church dimmed, darkened, brightened again.

  “We all used to be like you,” she said.

  I felt a spark of wild hope. “You?”

  “Yes.”

  “Exactly like me?” The painful shrieks, the bloody ears. I couldn’t do that. Whatever Violet was—or had been—it wasn’t the same.

  “Oh, no. Not exactly. There are so many different kinds of darkness.”

  “But you—” I swallowed. There was a sharp, sour taste at the back of my throat. “But you’re not anymore? You’re not . . . what you were?”

  “Mr. Willow helped me,” Violet said. �
�I’m not anything but ordinary now.”

  I had a dozen more questions, a hundred, clamoring and clashing in my mind. What Violet was telling me, if it was true, was fantastic. It was incredible. There were other things like me in the world. I hadn’t dared imagine it might be possible, but that’s what she was saying. Ever since I had woken up I had assumed that dying was like walking through a one-way door. I had come out the other side as something else, something inhuman and different, and most of all alone.

  It hadn’t occurred to me there might be others.

  I hadn’t thought I might go back.

  Violet was still holding my hand, so tight I felt my bones grind. Her palm was damp. There were tears in her eyes.

  If it was true.

  “That’s what he’s done for all of you?” I said.

  “That’s what we do. We can help you too.”

  “What about Esme?” Silent Esme, growling Esme with the towel tucked into her shirt. Had they done that to her? Was that their idea of help? “Did Mr. Willow help her too?”

  Violet didn’t answer.

  “And that woman upstairs? Those kids out there? What did you do to them? What kind of help? You have to tell me something. Violet. Please.”

  “Mr. Willow helps them,” Violet said.

  “How? What does he do?”

  “He doesn’t do it himself. He’s not alone. None of us are alone. He takes them—us—to a friend. A very special friend. Not here,” she added, when I glanced around the church. “She stays somewhere else, where she can be safe. Whatever we are when we go to her, we come back better.”

  “Mr. Willow? He used to—”

  “Oh, no, no, not him. He’s human. He only wants to help.”

  “What about Esme? What did she used to be?”

  “She was—” Her voice caught, choked with an emotion I couldn’t identify. “Dangerous.”

  I thought of all the photographs in the house, the vacant expressions, the empty eyes. Decades of photographs. Dozens of people, if they were even people anymore inside those blank shells. Charming Mr. Willow was human. Helpless drooling Esme was dangerous. I was cancer and darkness. None of us were special or alone. That’s what Violet was telling me.

  I remembered, suddenly, with a painful shiver, the day my father took me to an empty parking lot to teach me to drive, to change a tire and check the oil, and how he had laughed when I drove over the curb trying to parallel park, and laughed again when I hit my own nose with the jack handle. He had reached over to muss up my hair—I had squirmed and protested, “Dad, don’t!”—and he had said, “It’s all right, Breezy, at least we know you’ll always have your brains.” He couldn’t have known how right he was. I might be dead, I might be walking around with a heart that didn’t have to pump and a touch that could kill, but I was still me, and I didn’t like the picture Violet was drawing.

  I couldn’t know how many of Mr. Willow’s people were like Violet, functional and sensible, and how many were like Esme or the silent children on the playground. I wanted to believe it was possible. I wanted to believe Violet was proof of that. But what would it matter, to have flowing blood and sucking breath again, if it turned my mind to mush? What would it matter, to discover I wasn’t alone, if all I could do with that knowledge was watch silent children drift listlessly on rusty swings? I didn’t trust those odds.

  “The only help I need,” I said, speaking slowly, “is a ride to the bus station.”

  I expected her to argue, but Violet only squeezed my hand. “If you’re sure.”

  “I am.”

  She lifted her free hand to my face, and I flinched. She touched my jaw and leaned close to whisper, “You have to run.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “But—”

  “You have to run. You can’t go back to the house.”

  “My stuff,” I began.

  “Forget it. You can’t go back. He won’t let you leave.” She released my hand to take my elbow, turned me around to face the church doors again. “You have to go now.”

  But when we emerged from the church, Mr. Willow was waiting.

  “I was wondering where you went,” he said. He smiled up at us, so warm, so convincing. His combed hair had been teased out of place by the wind. “It’s time to come in and talk about your plans, Katie.”

  “We’ll be right in,” Violet said.

  Willow’s hands were tucked into his pockets. He looked up at the sky, squinting in the patchy sunlight. “It’s turning into a beautiful day, isn’t it? There’ll be plenty of time to talk after lunch.”

  Violet let go of my elbow. “In a minute, Edward. We’re looking at the church.”

  Mr. Willow looked at me, and at once I saw what I hadn’t seen before, the subtle shift in expression that before had made me think he knew more than he was saying.

  He was afraid of me.

  Nobody had ever been afraid of me before.

  “Come in now,” he said, and his smile was gone.

  If I gave him a chance, he would take that away.

  Violet said, “Katie.”

  I jumped down the church steps in two bounds. I stumbled at the bottom, recovered, and I ran.

  FOURTEEN

  THE GRAVEL CRUNCHED under my feet and muddy rainwater splashed my legs. Mr. Willow shouted, but I didn’t look back. I ran to the end of the driveway. I didn’t know which way to go. I picked right, hit the asphalt, and kept running.

  I couldn’t stay on the road. They would catch me in a minute with a car. I veered left, slid into a ditch and scrambled up the other side. I ducked through the barbed wire and risked a look back.

  Willow wasn’t chasing me, but Lyle was.

  He was running down the road in long bounding strides, each one stretching longer than the last, and he was fast. I gaped for too many seconds at the impossible blur of his legs, then shook myself and broke into a run across the field. The ground was muddy and spotted with puddles. I splashed and skidded and crushed young plants beneath my shoes.

  I wasn’t fast enough. Lyle was at the fence. He cleared it in a single jump, and he caught up with me in seconds. He hit my back with such force I felt—heard—something crack. Fiery pain burst through my ribs, and I went down hard. Lyle’s hand was on the back of my head, driving my face into the ground.

  I tried to shout, gulped a mouthful of mud and water instead. It was in my nose, in my throat. Lyle was on my back, his fingers digging into my neck and my side—not fingers, no, but claws, sharp enough to tear my clothes and break my skin. He hadn’t had claws in the house. I would have noticed claws.

  I thrashed and kicked, but I couldn’t push him off. His breath was hot on my neck.

  Whatever you are, Violet had said.

  They didn’t know what I was.

  They didn’t know I didn’t need to breathe.

  Against every screaming instinct, I stopped fighting and let myself go limp. I had been here before, mud in my mouth, grit in my eyes. I wasn’t even underground this time.

  All I needed was a chance. I had done it before. I could do it again.

  Lyle didn’t let go, but the weight on my back eased. He flipped me over easily, as though I weighed no more than a doll. The manhandling twisted something in my rib cage and I gasped, spit the mud from my mouth, and coughed.

  I swung at Lyle with my free arm, struck him on the side of his face. He cursed and tried to grab my hand, but I was ready for him. I caught his wrist and I pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  There was nothing there. Nothing for me to grasp, nothing for me to stretch and break.

  Lyle jerked his wrist away. I grabbed it again. Nothing. There were no vines of darkness trailing Lyle or gathered about his head like thunderclouds. He wasn’t a killer. I couldn’t do anything to him.

  I tried to squirm away, tried to kick at his legs, but he was bigger than me and every bit as strong as he was fast. I bent one of my knees up into his groin. Lyle grunted and loosened his grip just enough for me to br
eak away. I scrambled backward through the mud, heels digging into the ground, the broken rib a hot fist of agony in my side.

  “Wait!” I gasped. “Stop! What are you—”

  Lyle leaped at me. He landed with all of his weight on my right knee; I didn’t hear a crack that time, but pain exploded through my leg. I yelped as Lyle wrestled me to the ground again.

  “Shut up!” he roared.

  He struck me across the face with so much force my head snapped to the side. His claws raked through my cheek, and something in my jaw cracked. His face was only inches from mine, his breath hot on my skin, and his hand slipped from my face to my neck. His long fingers and claws closed around my throat, right over the bruises already there, the ones that never healed, and through the throbbing pain I smelled green grass and spilled beer and I saw my own face in the slick curve of a car windshield and a reflection behind me and I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t breathe—

  The pressure on my neck vanished. My ears were ringing, but it wasn’t until I saw Lyle’s wide eyes did I realize I had been screaming.

  There was a flash of something on his face—pity, almost—but he quickly stamped it down.

  “You can’t get away.” His voice was ragged and oddly high. He couldn’t be much older than me. “I can’t let you get away. I’m sorry.”

  I wasn’t much persuaded by his apology. I kept fighting, beating and scratching at his arms and face, but it was no use. No matter how much damage I did to him, he had broken my rib and my leg and probably my jaw, and I wasn’t healing fast enough. He lifted me easily, swung me over his shoulder. The motion sent a fresh wave of pain through every part of my body. I felt the cracked rib shifting as his shoulder dug into my abdomen, and his arm hooked around my legs made my knee hurt so much my vision blurred.

  Lyle carried me to the fence and jumped the ditch—that hurt too, but groaning in protest only made it worse. He walked me up the road, up the driveway, past the church and the playground. Violet was nowhere to be seen, but the woman and children were still there, watching me like spectators at a funeral procession.