Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Lo leans over to blow out the candle that’s sitting on the table. He picks up the rifle and uses the strap to sling it across his back before he pushes open the cabin door and we step out into the night.
It’s three o’clock in the morning, and the temperature is dropping fast. I search the sky for lightning, but there isn’t any. The air is damp. Almost chilly. I shiver hard and Lo reaches for my hand.
“We just had that big storm yesterday afternoon,” I tell him. “Now another one is moving in.”
I can’t help thinking it’s weird. Daddy would tell me it’s normal. Big storm systems get stalled-out over the Ozarks this time of year. I know that. They dump rain hard and fast.
But nothing feels normal this summer.
“Not another one,” Lo corrects me. “This is the same storm, still raging.”
We pause at the edge of the clearing and peer down the dark and twisting dirt road into inky nothingness. It’s like the world ends five feet in front of our faces. Up until an hour ago, if you’d asked me if I believed in magical protective fences made from red cedar sticks, I’d have said no—hell, I’d still say no—but standing here now, I’m reluctant to step foot off Granny Pearl’s property, because, the truth is, Turley could’ve come busting right into the cabin earlier.
But he didn’t.
Maybe that was because he somehow knew Lo was standing just inside with a rifle trained on the door.
Or maybe there was some other reason.
“Why do you think Brother Turley left the white rose on your mama’s grave?” I whisper the question as we step onto the road and the whole universe shrinks down to me and Lo and what we can see in the beam of our little flashlight.
“I don’t know,” Lo murmurs. “To scare us, I guess. To leave a little callin’ card so we’d know he was right there—close enough to kiss us or kill us—and we never even knew it.” Lo’s quiet for a minute. “Or maybe just to rattle me,” he finally says. “Everybody knows the story about Mama bein’ found with the petals of a white rose floatin’ around her body.”
I think about my mama discovering her closest friend dead like that, and my heart aches. I feel the pain of it deep in my gut, like my insides are full of sharp rocks and they’re slicing me to pieces.
“Granny Pearl told me once that Turley was real mad we didn’t have Mama’s funeral in the church,” Lo says. “He threw a hissy fit ’cause he wanted to pray over her, to cleanse her soul of wickedness, he said. But Granny Pearl wouldn’t let him.”
“Good for her,” I mutter.
“Granny said we didn’t need any preacher to put in a good word for Mama.”
We walk in silence for a long while, creeping along the dirt road as quiet as we can and picking our way across the first two bridges over Lucifer’s Creek. We’ll cross it two more times before we hit town. We’re straining our ears, listening for the snapping of twigs or the rustling of leaves, anything that might hint we aren’t alone out here.
But all we hear is thunder. It goes on almost constantly, like distant cannon fire, long and low enough to shake the ground under our feet.
We’re coming up to the creek again. I can tell by the strong smell of sulfur that’s blowing this direction on the wind. I’m keeping track of the bridges in my head. Counting them like mile markers. It’s the only way to tell where we are in the pitch dark.
This is the third of four between the Wilder cabin and town, which means we’re about halfway down. Another mile to go. We’ve just made it across the bridge when the first bolt of lightning tears the dark to pieces.
The twins are reunited. I guess it was Lightning that got himself lost this time.
I glance up at the sky, and Lo picks up his pace. His legs are longer than mine, and I have to hurry to keep up. I don’t want him to let go of my hand.
It doesn’t do us any good, though. There’s one more explosive crack of thunder before all hell breaks loose. The rain comes so fast and so hard that it’s like someone turned a firehose on us.
The dirt road is instantly a river of mud and we’re fighting for every step. We can’t see. We can’t hear each other shout. All we can do is hang on to each other’s hands and try to keep moving forward through the storm. The attack feels personal. Like it’s more than bad weather. Almost as if the Ozarks themselves have it in for us tonight.
Driving rain stings my shoulders and my face like a thousand tiny needles. I put my free hand up to shield my eyes, but it doesn’t help. Trails of lightning crisscross the sky like highways, snaking down here and there to lick at the earth with deadly tongues. One bright explosion hits closer than the others, and we jump. I stumble and fall, and Lo drags me to my feet. I wonder if that’s how we’ll die. Electrocuted on this desolate road.
Then I feel the water swirling around my ankles and I know that Thunder’s twin isn’t the only thing we have to worry about. The way this rain is coming down, a flash flood might be what takes us out.
Or a mudslide.
We’re inching down the mountain toward town, peering through curtains of driving rain trying desperately to see what’s right in front of us. Knowing that anything or anyone could be coming up right behind us and we’d never hear it. We wouldn’t hear a tank barreling down the road blowing its horn. Not in this storm.
We fight through the assault for another half hour or so. Each of us falls a half dozen times. We’re sliding down the mountain more than we’re walking down it.
There’s a barrage of short thunderclaps that sound like someone setting off Black Cat fireworks right behind my head, and a dozen streaks of lightning rip across the sky at once, turning dark to day. And that’s when I see him plain as anything. He’s standing just up ahead of us, on the other side of the last bridge across Lucifer’s Creek. His blond hair is blowing in the wind, and he’s staring down at the rushing water, so I can’t see his face.
But I don’t need to see his face.
I know it’s Riley Alden.
Then the world goes dark again. I’m standing frozen in the rain while the sky falls down around me. Lo is tugging on my hand. “Come on!” he shouts. “Dovie!” At least I think that’s what he’s yelling. I can’t hear a word of it.
I let him pull me toward the bridge, and when the lightning comes again, the ghost of Riley Alden has vanished. I scan the dark, looking for the beautiful boy from Tulsa whose bones I held in my hands.
Lo is trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear anything over the deafening roar of Lucifer’s Creek. He aims his flashlight toward the bridge, and I see the swirling water surging underneath, passing within a hair of the wooden planks. And the rain is still falling in sheets. If we don’t cross now, we won’t be able to.
I think about something Granny Pearl said earlier. Then we’ll see each other tomorrow , she told us. God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
Lo grips my hand like a vice, and we start across the little bridge where we sat and talked just a few days ago. That first day we were reunited.
The spot is unrecognizable now. Lucifer’s Creek has become a raging monster and it wants to eat us alive. We’re inching across the slippery planks. One false step and the water wins. We’ll be swept downstream, tumbling head over feet.
Lo loses his footing and I scream his name and grab for him. My mouth is full of rain and my eyes are flooded. My heart has leaped out of my chest where it belongs and it’s pounding against the insides of my teeth. But Lo finds his balance and we make our way on across. When his feet hit ground on the other side, he pulls me to him and crushes me against his chest. “We’re okay,” he tells me over and over and over again. “We’re okay, Dovie. We’re okay.” And those words I’m somehow able to hear over the violence of the storm.
We move as fast as we can down the last part of the road toward town, and despite the fact that we’ve come to steal a murder weapon from a serial killer, I’m relieved when I see the church come into view. All I can think about is finding some shelter. I don’t know if you can drown from walking through the rain, but if you can, Lo and I are almost there.
Lo clicks off his flashlight as we crawl under the graveyard fence. Our feet sink deep in the mud, and the squelching sound of it makes me sick to my stomach. It reminds me of the sound bones make when I pull them from wet earth.
Suddenly I’m thinking about Hannah.
How long until her bones start singing?
There’s another round of thunder and lightning, and all of a sudden the rain is mixed with hail. Sharp chunks of ice fall from the sky like God’s pitching them right at us. It feels like being hit by fistfuls of gravel flung from a slingshot at close range.
Lo and I are slogging across the churchyard with our hands up to shield our faces, sinking with every step. I’m trying not to cry out from the pain of the hailstones stinging the exposed flesh on my shoulders and back.
When we finally reach the leaning shed, Lo reaches for the door, and I’m equal parts sick and relieved when he’s able to pull it open. We step inside and pull the door closed behind us. Lo covers his flashlight with his hand before he turns it on, so just the tiniest bit of light shines through, and we crouch down low to avoid the windows.
We’re dripping and gasping. Wiping rain from our eyes. Still slipping on muddy feet. Trying to catch our breath and get our bearings.
The knife is still lying there in plain sight, exactly where it was when we saw it earlier.
“He really does want us to stop him,” Lo whispers.
“Maybe,” I answer, but I’m wondering if we’ve walked into some kind of trap.
Hail is pounding the tiny shed. It sounds like someone dropping marbles on the metal roof. Rain runs in rivers down the windowpanes. It leaks through holes in the walls and seeps in under the door.
Lo takes the rifle off his shoulder to examine it with the flashlight. “Shit,” he mutters. “It’s full of mud.”
That doesn’t surprise me. We both slipped and fell again and again trying to get down the mountain. We’re so covered in mud that I can barely find a spot with skin showing through.
When he sighs and leans the rifle in the corner of the shed, I notice something lying right beside his foot. “What’s that?” I ask, and I reach over to pick it up. It’s a little plastic card, like a driver’s license. Lo hits it with the flashlight, and I almost drop it from shock.
“Holy shit.” Lo breathes out the words in a long, low whisper. “Is that—?”
“Yeah.”
It’s smudged with mud from where Lo stepped on it when we came in, but Riley Alden smiles easily up from a gym membership card.
“You told me you’d been seeing him,” Lo says.
“Saw him again tonight.” I can’t tear my eyes away from Riley’s. “In the rain. On the way down the mountain.”
“Dovie.” Lo lays his hand on my shoulder. His dark eyes burn like smoldering coals. “This is why. This is what he was leading you toward.”
My mind is spinning. Reeling and swirling like that flood water surging under the bridge at Lucifer’s Creek. I’m spiraling out in a million different directions at once. It’s a free fall, and I reach for anything that feels solid. For me, that’s always Lo, so I grab his hand and hang on.
I close my eyes, but I keep seeing Riley’s face as he stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight underneath my bedroom window. The scene flickers through my mind a million times in the span of a few seconds. I watch it over and over and over, trying to make sense of it, until the images become like a word you’ve repeated so many times that it’s become nonsense.
I’m thinking about those boot prints hidden among the trees. I was so sure it had been Turley who was watching the house. My brain playing tricks on me.
Now I don’t have any idea what to think. Nothing makes sense. I’m dizzy and shaking and I can’t remember how to breathe.
I realize this is exactly what Lo’s been experiencing for years, and my vision blurs.
“Lo?” My voice sounds desperate to my own ears. “I’m sorry,” I choke. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lo reassures me. His hand is warm and gentle on my muddy cheek. But it’s not okay. Everything I’ve ever believed is upside down and sideways, like someone’s shaken up a box of puzzle pieces. “You don’t have to be afraid. See?” He takes the ID from me and holds it in the flashlight beam. “Riley wanted you to find this, here in Turley’s shed, so we’d know for sure that the preacher is the one who killed him.” He leans in close to look into my eyes. “Neither one of us is going to be haunted after tonight, Dovie. I promise.” He hands Riley’s ID back to me and I stick it in my pocket.
Suddenly there’s movement at the window. A face. Blue eyes and hair that glows pale blond in the moonlight. A spectral palm pressed against the pane. He’s mouthing words at me.
I scream at the top of my lungs and scramble backward. Lo launches himself across the distance between us to clamp a hand over my mouth, but he’s too late. Someone rips open the door to the shed, and I brace myself for an encounter with a beautiful dead boy.
Only, it isn’t a vengeful ghost that’s blocking the door.
It’s Brother Turley, and his eyes blaze red in the dark like the Howler’s.