Ink and Bone(3)

A black flower of blood bloomed on her brother’s thigh. He’d gone a frightening white, couldn’t stop screaming. It was a siren, loud and long, deafening. She wanted to cover her ears, to tell him to stop. Her father was yelling down below. Her name. Her brother’s name. Then a command as clear as day: Run!

She went to the edge of the path and saw her father lying among the trees, sloping downwards, arm looped around a slender birch trunk as if he was holding on, leg bent strangely. And then she saw the other man. Dressed in jeans and a flannel work shirt, heavy boots. He wore a baseball cap, the brim shadowing his face. In his arms he had a gun, long and black.

She froze, watching him. Her brother’s screaming had quieted; he was now whimpering behind her. Her father was yelling still. But she couldn’t move; she was so afraid, so confused, that her body just couldn’t move.

She heard something, a chiming. A little tinkle of bells. The phone. Her father’s phone was ringing. She turned and saw it down the path, screen bright, vibrating on the dirt path. It broke the spell, and she ran for it. She was fast. She was the fastest girl in her third-grade class, always pulling effortlessly ahead of everyone else on the soccer field at relay races in PE. Coach said she was a rocket. But she wasn’t fast enough today.

Another man, whom she hadn’t seen, was coming up the path from the opposite direction. He got there first, crushing the phone beneath his hard black boot as she dove for it, skinning her knees, the dirt kicking up so that she could taste it in her mouth.

He looked down at her, his expression unreadable.

“Don’t bother running,” he said. He sounded almost sad for her. “He’s got you now.”

But she did run. Her daddy had always told her if a stranger tried to take her that she was supposed to run and scream at the top of her lungs and fight with everything she had. Don’t ever let them take you, he warned. No matter what.

Why? she used to ask. The conversation frightened and excited her, like a scary movie. What happens if they take me?

Nothing good, said her father grimly. And the way he said it meant that the conversation was over.

She used to lie in bed at night sometimes, thinking of how she would get away from a bad guy that tried to take her away from her family. In those imaginings, she was always strong and brave, fiercely fighting and punching like the kids in Antboy and Kick-Ass (which she was way too young to watch but did with her brother on those nights when Mommy was working and Daddy was in charge).

It was nothing like this. She couldn’t breathe; fear was a black hole sucking every part of her into its vortex. Her brother was now yelling, too, telling her to run. And she did. She got up from the ground and she ran past the strange-looking man, leaving her brother and her father behind. She was going for help. She had to be fast, faster than she’d ever been. Not just for herself, but for her daddy and her brother.

How far did she get? Not far when a great weight landed on her from behind, bringing her hard to the ground, knocking all the wind out of her. There was a foul smell and hot air in her ear.

“You come like a nice little girl, and I won’t kill your father and your brother. I won’t go back and kill your mother, too.”

She couldn’t even answer as the man yanked her to her feet and started dragging her back up the hill—past her brother who lay quietly crying on the ground.

“Let her go,” her brother said faintly. “Please let her go.”

They locked eyes; she’d never seen anyone look so afraid. It made her insides clench. She couldn’t help it; she started to shriek and scream, pull back against the man. But he was impossibly strong; she was a rag doll, no muscle or bone. Her movements were as ineffective as the flap of butterfly wings.

When she looked back, she couldn’t even see her daddy. And after a while, walking and walking with the man holding on to her arm, pulling her so roughly, talking so mean, it started to get dark. She had never been so far away from where she was supposed to be. Maybe it was a dream.

It couldn’t be happening, could it? Could it?





PART ONE


   NEW PENNY

   Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

   Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.

   —John Milton, Paradise Lost





A girl, spindle thin, rode too fast atop a motorcycle with an electric-purple gas tank and fenders, shiny chrome exhaust pipes. The engine roared, scaring the birds from their perches and causing the animals in the woods to skitter into their burrows. The road before her was a black ribbon dropped carelessly on green velvet, a twisting, turning skein between the trees that had not yet started to turn color. She took the bends tight and in control, feeling the confidence that only youth allows, still blissfully ignorant to the hard fact that consequences can be as unforgiving as asphalt on bare flesh.

The Hollows watched as she flew, the tall pine trees reaching up all around her, the last breath of summer exhaled and the first chill of autumn hovering, not yet fallen. The girl was of this place; she belonged here, more than she knew. But she was a fox in a trap, more likely to chew off her own leg than stay and wait for the hunter to come find her. She was unpredictable and wild, powerful, foolish, stubborn, like many children The Hollows had known.

She rode past the woods, past the high school and the small graveyard with the dilapidated caretaker’s shack, past the small pasture. Then she turned onto Main Street, which would lead her into the heart of town. She slowed her speed. If she was seen driving too fast, then it would get back to her grandmother, who would then worry about her more than she already did, which by Finley Montgomery’s estimation was far too much.