All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(16)

But that was a lie. I was in danger because I was a threat. I was a threat to Lawayne Karkkanew, owner of Jigger Boss, drug lord, and a man who had intended to kill Samantha Oates. Who would have killed Samantha, if Luke hadn’t gotten to her first. And a man who wanted something from me. Something I refused to give.

As we reached the Dumpster, thoughts of Lawayne dropped away. Even with the lid closed, the smell of old garbage drifted up to meet us. In spite of the foul odor, I took a deep breath, and then another. Was that blood? Was that shit? Was that rot, the smell of something decomposing? That was crazy, crazy, but my hands slid along the edge of the lid and left a sweaty track. It had to be crazy. No one would drop a body in the middle of a town, not even a town as small and backward as Vehpese. But I kept thinking of River, of the glimpse I’d had of him before the end of the dream: naked, torn open from neck to groin, his remaining skin tattooed with burns and cuts, and his face slashed and scraped and flayed to the bone until it was a red pulp. Canned tomatoes, that’s what it was like, and that made my stomach flip. My hands skidded another inch, and the lid dropped back and clanged. Jesus Christ. Canned tomatoes.

“Open it already,” Becca snapped. Her face pale, she dug her nails into my upper arm.

I tightened my grip and flung the lid open.

No body. That was the first, most important thing. There was no mutilated cadaver mixed in with the garbage. The second thing that entered my mind was: there was a lot of garbage. The Dumpster was almost full, jammed with black bags. Loose beer bottles, sprinkled among the bags, gave off brown sparkles. A wave of trash-rot hit me, bad enough that my throat tightened.

“He’s not here.” Becca raised herself onto the tips of her toes, folding her arms on the rim of the Dumpster. “Thank God. Vie, he’s not here. That means he’s ok, right?”

With a quick push off the ground, I vaulted into the Dumpster. The bulky bags collapsed and settled under me, and I caught myself on the frame as I adjusted to the spongy footing. A fresh wave of decay—stale beer, pizza grease, a crumpled, feathery thing that had once been a pigeon—hit me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood. Where was the body? Where was the drifter boy who had been tortured to death? Becca’s dream had been no ordinary dream. Luke had been in that dream. He had been manipulating it, maybe he had even manufactured it. There was a chance that Mr. Big Empty was just toying with her, enjoying the game, scaring her by showing what had happened to River.

“Vie, he’s all right, isn’t he?” Becca launched onto her toes again, trying to look me in the eye. “He’s fine, Vie. It was just a dream.”

I ignored her. Maybe Mr. Big Empty was just trying to scare her. But if so, why? What did Becca mean to him? Was he trying to hurt her because she was my friend? Or did this have something to do with River? What could a drifter boy—one who had never been in Vehpese before and who would have left in another hour—have to do with Mr. Big Empty? Why, after two weeks of invisibility, had Mr. Big Empty come out of hiding?

“Vie Eliot. Come on, let’s just go.”

The tightness at the back of my neck, the feeling of a finger stretched out, so close, almost touching, grew more intense. My gaze shifted to the door into Jigger Boss, and the cut along the back of my neck flashed with pain again. Something had been here. Something that had come racing out of that door. Something that, even in a dream, had managed to hurt me. And maybe, I realized, it was here now. Waiting for us. Maybe this had been a trap.

But a trap needed bait. Maybe there was something here after all. I dropped to my knees, shouldering aside a black bundle of trash, and dove into the garbage. The smell of rot grew worse, and my fingers grazed the slimy, blackened residue at the bottom, but I kept searching. Something was here, my gut was telling me. Something had happened here. And I had to find it. I scraped back and forth, sweeping through the jumble of garbage bags, faster and faster. That feeling of closeness, of someone standing just behind me, was so strong that I crawled up to check the door to Jigger Boss. It was still closed, for now, but I remembered how in the dream it had shivered and dented and crumpled. Dropping back into the garbage, I raked my hands through the filth. I had to find it, whatever it was. It was here, and I had to find it. I had to find it now.

That sense of something standing right behind me grew stronger, sharper. The beast, the monster, whatever: it was coming, it was almost here. It was reaching out, one black nail scraping my spine, and the jagged cut on the back of my neck flared. Distantly, I heard the door to Jigger Boss explode open, and Becca screamed.

And my fingers closed over something at the bottom of the Dumpster.





As shouts continued to rise outside the Dumpster, I surged up from the trash. My fingers clutched fabric. Before I had a chance to examine what I’d found, I reached the Dumpster’s opening and found myself staring into a familiar face.

Lawayne Karkkanew met me stare for stare. After a flash of surprise—just a momentary tightening around his eyes—his face relaxed, and his lips peeled back into a smile. The thing about Lawayne, the thing that had fooled me at first, was that Lawayne was a buddy. Everybody’s buddy. He had that kind of face: broad, open, genuine. Today, like every day I’d seen him, he looked like he could have been headed out to chop logs or drive freight cross-country, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and scuffed boots. But Lawayne didn’t make his money driving an eighteen-wheeler. Lawayne made his money on drugs, on women, and on nasty secrets.