What the Dead Want(42)



“Did they all die in days or hours before the anniversary?” Gretchen asked. “I mean, we know these forces have been getting stronger, but the rest of the town, all of history says it was an accident. Celia and Rebecca say they started the fire, because of how they play. And now the town is gripped by an epidemic of accidents every year.”

“We know it wasn’t Celia and Rebecca,” Hope said. “Like you said before. The killers have the same faces. And those faces do not belong to a little white girl and a little black girl who like to put dresses on cats.”

Hope opened her mouth to say something else but just as she did a massive form plowed out of the woods and tumbled over the car. Hope hit the brakes and the car spun, tires shrieking as blood sprayed across the windshield and the girls were thrown forward, then jerked back suddenly by their seat belts.

They were turned nearly ninety degrees in the road, the mangled body of a deer splayed over the road in front of them.

Hope and Gretchen breathed heavily. Looked at one another in terror.

Hope turned the key in the ignition and the engine started again, making a grinding whining noise.

“That does not sound good. I hope this thing can get us the rest of the way there and back,” she said.

Gretchen unbuckled her seat belt. “I’m going to get out and survey the damage.”

Hope grabbed her arm. “No,” she said, her voice shaking. “We’re not taking any more unnecessary risks. The car’s working, the tires aren’t blown. We’re not going to tempt fate.”

She put the car in gear and drove slowly around the bloody remains of the deer, then headed out along the road.

After another two miles Hope pointed to a bramble up ahead. “We’re here,” she said.

There was a hand-painted sign, set back from the road, partly covered by an overgrown honeysuckle bush. Gretchen managed to catch just the word SHADOW and a red arrow. She snapped a picture as they were turning onto the property.

There was a guard at the gate—a small redheaded man with a patch over one eye. He sat on what looked like a milking stool, waiting to look over anyone who might come through, but there didn’t seem to be anyone headed to Shadow Grove that afternoon. He recognized Hope, and stood up.

“You all right? Your headlights are smashed. Your friend looks like she’s been in a fight.”

Gretchen realized she must look like hell: cuts, bruises, a swollen eye.

“We’re fine, but it was assisted suicide for a deer back there,” Hope said.

The man shook his head solemnly.

“Bad day to be driving, young lady.”

“We’ll be okay,” Hope said. “We’re looking for Annie.”

He nodded. “She should be down at the pavilion.”

Hope drove in and parked the Triumph in a lot to the side of the gate. They locked the doors and began walking. The damage to the car wasn’t as bad as Gretchen had thought, but the lights were indeed smashed, and there was blood all over the hood. If the deer had run into them head on, she thought, they might be dead.

As they walked, Gretchen was surprised to see Shadow Grove was a town like any other. She’d expected a rural ruin with a few run-down houses. But this place was lovely. Much nicer than the plastic small-town perfection of Mayville. The streets were lined with large silver-trunked elm trees. A welcome sign that read Shadow Grove and beneath that Making Darkness Luminous stood in the village square and had a directory of psychics and places of spiritual communion listed below it, as though words like “healing temple” and “clairvoyant” were as common as “dentist’s office” and “town hall.”

“Is this place for real?”

“Depends on what you mean by real,” Hope said. “But yeah. You know how there used to be whole towns of people employed by one company? This is like a whole town of people dedicated to the spirit world.”

They walked past a large library, a sandwich shop, and a baseball diamond.

Farther down the road they came to a clear blue-green pond surrounded by willow trees, where ducks swam serenely. The park surrounding the pond was filled with stone sculptures and a well-tended wildflower garden.

Just past the park, in a small clearing near the entrance of a pine woods, was the pavilion. A stage was set up in front of rows of wooden benches, on which fifteen or twenty men and women, mostly older and mostly gray-haired but wearing very colorful clothes, sat watching a pale-eyed woman with shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair who was dressed entirely in black. She was simply sitting in a chair looking straight up through the treetops, as if she were reading something written on the sky. When Gretchen and Hope sat down on a bench at the back, the woman looked out at them with focused attention and spoke.

“My great-great-great-great-granddaughter has joined us,” she said.

“Oh boy,” Gretchen whispered under her breath.

The people on the benches turned and blinked in their direction and Gretchen realized the funeral director was there—now he actually was wearing Birkenstocks and jeans, his hair more unkempt than when she’d seen him earlier, when he was handing over her aunt’s ashes.

Gretchen didn’t know what to say so she sat there watching.

“They’re here,” Annie said, apparently channeling Fidelia. “They are almost all here now. You are the only one who is still on the other side.” She pointed directly at Gretchen.

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