Near the Bone(31)

Mattie stared down at her plate, now empty of its meager bread slice, and tried to imagine it filling with some food that she’d eaten with Mom and Heather. But the tin plate remained the same, a blank space scattered with a few crumbs.

She glanced at her work basket. There were many things to mend in it—there always seemed to be more clothing to mend—but she couldn’t dredge up the energy at the moment. All the shocks of the last twenty-four hours—the cave, the stranger, the beating, dragging herself through the snow, the creature stalking her, William locking her out, the two men showing up at her door—seemed to suddenly press on her, and all she wanted was to go to sleep. She hadn’t slept in ages.

Mattie lay down on the couch with a blanket rolled up for a pillow—the cushions were hard, and not very good for sleeping, but she wanted to be near the fire. It didn’t matter that the couch wasn’t comfortable, though—she was asleep almost before her head touched the blanket.

William at the window.

He was knocking, knocking very softly, like it was a secret he only wanted her to hear.

She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes, and saw him there, waving at her.

“Open the window,” he said, his voice faint through the glass.

If it had been anyone else she never would have, but it was William, so she hopped out of bed and dragged her wooden desk chair over the carpet and up to the window. She climbed onto the chair—she was very small for an eight-year-old, and Heather always teased her about it, but Mom would hug her and say good things came in small packages so Samantha didn’t mind.

It was hard for her to push the window all the way open, but once she got it partway, William helped her lift it the rest of the way.

“Good girl, Sam,” he said.

“Where’s the screen?” she asked.

“It’s right there,” he said in a whisper, and she peered out and saw it leaning against the house. “Let me through, Sammy girl.”

“What are you doing?” she asked as he climbed into her bedroom. “Why don’t you knock on the door like a regular person?”

He wasn’t dressed the way he was usually dressed. His clothes were all black.

“You look like a ninja,” she said, and a giggle escaped her.

“Be very quiet,” he said, holding a finger to his lips. “Be very, very quiet.”

“Like Elmer Fudd,” Sam said. “Hunting rabbits.”

“Exactly,” William said, and swiped at her nose with his thumb. “Like Elmer Fudd. I need you to stay so quiet and so still in here, just like you’re still asleep. I’m going to surprise your mother.”

“Oh!” Sam said. “Can I help?”

“You already did,” he said, and rubbed the top of her head. “Just wait here for me until I get back and I’ll tell you all about it.”

There were arms underneath her, someone carrying her with surprising tenderness. She surfaced from sleep just long enough to open one bleary eye.

“William?”

“Don’t you worry now, Mattie girl. I’ve got you,” he said.

He placed her on the bed. She felt him pulling her stockings down but she was too tired to do anything about it.

“A man’s got to have sons, Mattie,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for them.”



* * *



? ? ?

There was an astonishing array of gear laid out in the main room of the cabin. Half of the table was taken up with boxes of ammunition, giant knives, brown bottles with warnings and skulls on them, strange round objects that were . . .

Grenades? Are those grenades? Is he hunting the creature or starting a war?

Mattie had never seen a grenade in real life, only on television.

Thinking about television made her stop for a second, because she had only remembered it properly just then. A box with moving pictures inside it, and she and Heather used to watch cartoons and laugh.

Every Saturday morning, and Mom would let us eat cereal with marshmallows in front of the TV.

As soon as she thought “cereal with marshmallows,” she could remember the taste of it. The cereal was like sweet oats, soft and crumbly from being in the milk, and the marshmallows were not like the marshmallows that she ate around a campfire but small and hard and gritty, crunchy underneath her teeth. She liked the strange texture of the marshmallows best and saved them for last, let them float in the milk while she picked around them, scooping up the cereal with the spoon.

Cereal. You remembered a food that you had before. Cereal.

A gun leaned against the wall next to the door, the largest rifle Mattie had ever seen—the barrel seemed enormous. A chipmunk could disappear inside that barrel and never be seen again.

Next to the gun was a giant trap, gleaming silver in the faint morning light. It had huge shiny teeth, the kind that snapped together over an animal’s leg. Mattie shied away from it, not wanting to come too near even though the trap wasn’t set yet.

Her eye felt even worse today than it had the day before, the pouch of fluid larger and harder. She hated not being able to see out of one eye. It gave her the feeling that something was always lurking in the blank space where she used to be able to see.

William’s boots stomped across the porch. She heard him kicking his feet against the side of the cabin to get rid of the snow, then the door opened.