Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day(28)
“I do.” Brenda looks at me seriously. “This is your town, Jenna. This is your holy ground.”
“No,” I say, without thinking. “It’s not. I’m not the anchor here.” Because I can sort of see what she’s trying to say—the shape of it, at least—and what she’s saying is wrong. Maybe I’m the oldest human ghost in Mill Hollow, but that doesn’t make me the anchor. There’s something else holding this place to the world. Something other than me.
“Maybe so and maybe not, but it’s still your town. If there was a witch here, where would she be hiding? Where would we find her?”
There will be time to argue about anchors later. I close my eyes, breathing in the taste of Kentucky, the sweet dampness that coats my lungs and stays behind even when the air rushes out again, unchanged by its time in the phantom prison of my lungs.
As I breathe, I start to see the Hollow sketched across the inside of my eyes, a pale, monochrome map of a place. There’s the graveyard, where my bones lie next to Patty’s, whiling away eternity in a pine box. There’s the church, where we went on special Sundays, promising to honor and obey a God we didn’t quite understand and didn’t quite believe in. There’s home, and the school, and the narrow strip of shops that was our main street, and the old theater, and—
Stop. Back up. The theater I remember was the jewel of the town, small and bright and always open, with cheap matinees for the kids and long engagements of the hits for the adults. Patty and I went there about once a week when we were growing up, trading our pocket money for the chance at escape, even if it was only for a little while. I’m pretty sure that’s where she fell in love with the idea of New York, turning it into the fairy-tale ending that could save her from the monsters in her mind. That’s where I fell in love with the idea of running. Running so far, so fast, that the sunset could never catch me and the movie would never have to end.
But the theater on the inside of my eyelids is shabby and shuttered, with boards across the windows and nothing written on the marquee. I know the reasons why even without thinking about them. Cheap cable, home video, a dwindling population, and better places for the money to go as the ticket prices soared. It makes sense that the Mill Hollow Cinema would be closed down. I still never expected to see it, not in my lifetime, and not in what came after.
“The theater,” I say, opening my eyes. “That’s where they’ll be.” I can’t put words to why I’m so sure. I just know. The Mill Hollow Cinema is dark, and shuttered, and filled with shadows. It’s also right at the center of town, with multiple rooms far from the street. Someone who could get inside there could hide for weeks, if they stayed out of the lobby and away from the windows.
“You’re sure?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. But it feels . . . it feels right. I guess that matters, under the circumstances.”
“I guess it does,” Brenda agrees. “Which way?”
I tell her, the directions coming as quick and easy as a breeze that’s been waiting years to blow. As I speak, I crank down my window, letting the smell of Mill Hollow fill the cab from top to bottom. Brenda looks at me thoughtfully for a moment before mimicking the gesture, until the wind blows clear through, carrying everything the Hollow has to offer us. I can even smell corn. Small patches, not sprawling, endless acres, but that seems to be enough to put some soldier in her spine; she’s sitting straighter when she hauls on the wheel and sends us rolling toward town, her eyes fixed on the windshield and the distant fight to come.
“Danny usually did a good job of hiding that he was dead,” I say. “How did he get mixed up in this?”
“He’s working with a witch,” says Brenda. “Thing about witches is we can always spot the dead when we find them up and walking around. It’s how I found you. Whoever it is wouldn’t have to have been looking for a corporeal haunt. They could have just been walking past the comic book store and spotted him out of the corner of their eye, and the rest is horrible history.”
“How come you can see us and we can’t see you?” The question has frustrated me for years. I don’t make any effort to hide that as I fire it at Brenda, eyes narrowed and lip pushed outward in the beginning of a pout. “It’s not fair.”
“You say that like somebody put this system together on purpose,” says Brenda. There’s no rancor in her tone. “We don’t have checks and balances, Jenna. We don’t have a system of countermeasures to avoid abuse of power. Witches can see ghosts, ghosts can’t see witches. Witches can’t see each other, either. We’re shadows on the wall of the world, and we find each other through abuses of power, half the time. Trees start dying, or lambs are born with two heads . . .”
“Or all the ghosts go missing,” I say softly.
“That, too,” Brenda agrees. “It’s not fair, all right? If it were, you wouldn’t have witches like Sophie, who can barely keep herself together on the good days. You wouldn’t have corn witches born in cities and steel witches born in small towns with nothing taller than the church spire. It happens because it happens. The universe isn’t fair.”
“Ugh.” I drop my head into my hands. I can’t see much of anything, anyway; it’s too dark out there, and maybe that’s a mercy. The Hollow still smells like home, but I’m smart enough to know that time changes a place. It won’t look like home when the sun comes up. It’ll look like someplace else, someplace almost familiar, someplace impossibly strange.