When the Bones Sing

Chapter Twenty-Five

Twenty-Five

Daddy clams up after that, and I can’t get any more out of him. He sends me back into the lodge to look for Lo, and I find him standing underneath that Howler staring up at it.

“The Howler’s a harbinger of death, Dovie. We shouldn’t have hung it here.”

“Come on,” I tell him, and I try not to look into the Howler’s glowing red eyes. “Daddy’s waiting in the truck.”

The ride back down the mountain is bumpy and quiet. I’m sandwiched in between Daddy and Lo, and none of us says much. Daddy offers to drop Lo off at his place, but he says he’s got something to do in town, so he’ll just go home with me.

Neither of us tells Daddy that the thing Lo has to do in Lucifer’s Creek involves meeting the brother of a dead boy so the three of us can solve the riddle of who’s slaughtering hikers around here.

When we get home, Daddy parks the truck under the carport, then he tells us he’s heading in to open the gallery for the day. “Most likely won’t be home until late,” he says, and I know that means he’s going hunting tonight, same as Ira and the nervous man in the lobby.

Only, he’s huntin’ for Mama. Not hogs.

Lo and I spend the afternoon helping Nana weed the garden and gather ripe peaches off the trees along the back of our property so she can bake a pie. Phantom follows us out to the peach trees, but the poor old cat gets so worn out chasing grasshoppers in the miserable heat that Lo has to scoop him up and carry him back to the house.

After dinner, Sheriff and Deputy Jonah come to set up camp on the front porch. Nana hands them ice-cold glasses of sweet tea to dump out when she’s not looking, and they apologize for missing last night. “We were dealing with a situation,” Sheriff explains, and I know the situation was a dead preacher who somehow got himself jammed up under the Lucifer’s Creek bridge like a fallen log. “You let us know, Dovie, if them bones wake you up tonight. We’ll be ready.”

When it starts to get dark, Lo and I move out to the back steps to wait for Xan. We’ve only been out there a few minutes when he emerges out of the trees at the back edge of our yard, like he was already there watching and waiting for us.

“Hey, Dovie,” he says, and he gives me a shy smile. He’s got on jeans and cowboy boots paired with a faded T-shirt, John Deere green, and he looks like he stepped out of the pages of a Future Farmers of America brochure. Suddenly I’m feeling more than a little awkward, remembering that sneak-attack kiss last night and how it made my spine tingle.

Maybe I’m feeling guilty, too.

I turn to look at Lo and he’s watching me with a funny expression. I wonder if he can see that kiss on my face somehow, but I don’t have time to think about that right now. We’ve got more important things to focus on.

The three of us head inside through the laundry room, and when we come to the kitchen, Nana looks up from the seed catalogs she has spread across the table.

If she’s surprised to see three of us, instead of the usual two, she doesn’t show it.

“Nana, this is Xander Alden,” I tell her. “Remember? I told you he was in town tryin’ to find out what happened to his brother.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Xan says.

Nana nods, but she hasn’t taken her eyes off Xan’s face. “I sure hope you find the peace you come here lookin’ for,” she tells him. Then she turns her focus to Lo. She reaches a thin arm out to him, and he takes her hand and kneels beside her chair. She puts a hand on his head. “And I hope you find the peace you need, sweet Lowan Wilder.”

“Me too, Nana,” Lo says.

The three of us make our way up the attic stairs to sit in a tight circle on the rug. We turn off the overhead light but leave the lamp beside my bed burning. It’s dim and quiet in the room, just the humming air conditioner and the tinkling of Lo’s skeleton key charm overhead.

We start by recalling our words from last night. Peace for Lo. Justice for Xan. Truth for me. We say the words out loud, breathing them into the quiet attic like an incantation spoken over an ancient campfire. Then we spend the next few hours going back over all the timelines we know. I get out that yellow pad with the twenty-four red slash marks, and Xan and Lo watch with solemn faces as I make a new one for Hannah Nelby, even though I haven’t found her yet. Because we know it’s only a matter of time.

Lo and I jot down as much information as we can for each mark on that page, going back three years since hikers first started showing up dead in droves. We circle spots of the map where we know victims disappeared off the trail and the places where I found their remains.

Maybe if we can find some link…

It’s a little after ten o’clock when I feel the beginnings of a familiar pull. I put down the legal pad in the middle of a sentence and move to the window to stand at the air conditioner and stare out into the dark.

“Dovie?” Xan whispers. “You okay?”

“Shhhh,” Lo tells him. “Let her be for a minute.” He gets up and moves across the room to stand beside me, but he doesn’t say a word.

“It’s Hannah,” I whisper. “I feel her.”

“Holy shit,” Xan says from behind me. “Are you serious?”

Lo shushes him again.

I close my eyes and let that humming energy fill me up. Hannah washes over me like a tidal wave. Her song is disjointed and confused. It swirls and loops in circles that never go anywhere. I feel her misery so strong it makes me whimper, and I reach for Lo’s hand.

“I’m here,” he whispers. “I got you.”

I turn around to look at Xan, and he’s staring at me wide-eyed. I’m wondering if he thinks I’m beautiful now, or if he thinks I’m terrifying, but then he locks eyes with me. “I’m here, too,” he tells me. “We’ve got you.”

“Should we go down and tell the sheriff?” Lo asks me, and I study the faces of the two boys who are waiting for instructions from me, my magic mountain man with eyes like polished river stones and this blue-eyed cowboy who showed up out of nowhere.

They’re the only ones I want with me tonight. I can’t stand the thought of sharing what’s about to happen with anyone outside our sacred circle of three.

“Let’s go find her ourselves,” I whisper. “We can tell the sheriff where she is after, and he can go up and do what he needs to do. I want you two with me for this.”

Lo looks at me like he’s not sure, but Xan gets up off the floor and comes to stand on the other side of me. “I’m in.” He looks at Lo, and there’s a challenge in his squared jaw and his tilted chin. “You up for it?”

Something skitters behind Lo’s eyes. He’s afraid. I can tell. Lo’s heard about plenty of these recovery missions after the fact, but he’s never been with me for one. I turn back to the window. Hannah Nelby is a magnet pulling on the deepest part of my soul. My rib cage is vibrating and my feet itch to get moving.

“Please, Lo,” I whisper. “I need you tonight.”

“You got me, Dovie,” he answers. “You know that.”

I trade my shorts for jeans and pull my dark hair back in a stringy ponytail, then we gather up a couple of flashlights and creep down the stairs without breathing. We don’t dare turn on the lights or whisper a word to each other until we crawl over the split-rail fence and duck into the woods behind the house.

“Which way, Dovie?” Lo’s hand is warm on my shoulder. It’s sweltering tonight, probably the hottest night we’ve had this summer. Sweat is already running down my back, and we’ve only gone a hundred yards. It won’t be long before my tank top is soaked through.

I stand there swatting at bugs and breathing in the thick air, letting Hannah Nelby rattle my bones. She’s calling me up the AAT, in the same direction Riley pulled me, so we make our way toward that end of town, staying off Mud Street and sticking to the safety of the woods. Xan coughs and gags against the fumes as we scramble across a fallen log over Lucifer’s Creek.

We emerge from the woods behind the graveyard. The church is dark and the mourning bells are silent. I have this wild urge to break in and swing on the rope. Someone should ring the death bell for Hannah Nelby tonight.

The three of us skirt around the church to cross the strip of grass at the end of town. The last thing I see before the woods swallow us whole is the glow of Moonlight Crag Lodge perched on top of the mountain.

“Who owns that place?” Xan asks us. “The big one up there.”

“Ira Langdon,” I tell him. “He’s like an uncle to me.”

To all of us in Lucifer’s Creek, really.

“Rich guy, huh?” Xan says.

“He is now,” I tell him. “He didn’t start out that way.”

“Ira’s a good guy,” Lo says. “He takes care of folks around here. The kinda people nobody else gives a damn about.”

Talking about Ira makes me think about Daddy, too. He’s out there somewhere, walking these hills looking for a different set of bones.

It scares me to think he might find my mama one day.

And it scares me just as bad to think that maybe he never will.

Suddenly it feels crowded in these mountains, with all of us out here on our own secret missions. I have this thought that we should turn back. That something terrible is going to happen tonight. But Hannah Nelby won’t let me give up. She reaches down inside me to wrap her fingers around my guts and pull hard. “The bones are singing loud,” I tell Lo and Xan as we start to climb. “I feel her so strong.”

Those agitated, confused, looping circles.

The same jumbled notes again and again and again. Like someone who can only hum the same two bars of a melody.

My legs are vibrating like tightened piano strings.

Hannah plays me like a fiddle, drawing her sorrow across my spine like a bow. She’s plucking my tendons and strumming my muscles. Leading me right to her.

“Does it hurt?” Xan asks me. He and Lo are trudging along behind me as we climb higher into the Ozarks. “Whatever it is you feel.”

“Not really,” I tell him, as I pause to knock down a spiderweb that’s stretched across the trail in front of us. “It’s just a funny feeling way down deep inside me. Like something crawling under my skin, or an itch I can’t scratch. The closer I get to Hannah, the stronger I feel it.”

We’re moving again, and my tank top is sticking to me like a second skin. My ponytail is plastered to my neck and the woods feel so close I can barely breathe. I’m dreading stepping off the trail into the thick of the forest.

We climb up and up, past the trail shelter where Xan and I met the other night, the same one where Hannah Nelby stopped on the last day of her life. We slog another mile or so.

It must be getting close to midnight. I figure we’ve been hiking for about two hours now. Suddenly I feel a slight change in direction. Whatever is leading me toward Hannah is pulling me off to one side now, and I know it’s time to leave the trail and plunge into the woods. I stop and stare off into the dark.

“This is it,” I tell them, and I gasp out loud when I feel a violent shudder run through me from my toes to the top of my head. “She’s close.” I breathe the words into the humid night. “Not far off the trail here.” I pull the ponytail holder out of my damp hair and give my head a shake.

“You’re shivering,” Xan says, and his eyes find mine. He lays a hand on my chest, just above my heart. His palm feels like hot metal against my bare skin. “Jesus,” he whispers. “I can feel it, Dovie.” His hands move to my shoulders, then they’re sliding down my bare arms to wrap around my fingertips. “Your whole body is humming.”

“Can I feel, Dovie?” Lo is staring at me like I’m someone he doesn’t quite recognize.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Sure.” Xan lets go of me and takes a step back, and I take Lo’s palm and lay it against my cheek. His eyes open wide, and he slides his hand down to the curve of my neck. “Feel that?” I whisper, and he nods.

Lo and I stare at each other for a second, then he pulls me close and crushes me against his body. One hand is pressed against my back and the other is tangled in my hair. “I’m sorry, Dovie,” he whispers. His lips are moving against my neck. “I’m so fucking sorry.” He plants the words like fevered kisses against my skin.

Hannah pulls on me so hard just then. She’s impatient, and I feel her move through me like an electrical current. My breath comes in a rush, and I shudder. Lo gasps and pulls back like I bit him.

“Lo?” I say. “Are you okay?”

“I can’t— I don’t—” I take a step toward him and reach for his hand, but as soon as our fingers touch, he jerks away like I’m venomous.

“It’s okay,” I reassure him. “You’re safe.”

“No. Dovie.” He’s still backing away, shaking his head. “Oh God. No.” He’s looking over his shoulder now, and then off to the side. “Jesus Christ.” His eyes dart around the blackness. “They’re here. They’re everywhere.”

“What the hell?” Xan is looking back and forth between me and Lo.

The bones are pulling so hard on me now. Every part of me is vibrating with an intensity that’s impossible to ignore.

“Lo. We need to go. The bones are—”

“Stop it!” Lo puts his hands over his ears and squats down close to the ground. “Shut up! Shut up!”

“Hey. Watch it.” Xan steps between Lo and me. “You got no cause to yell at her like that.”

“He’s not yelling at me.” I’m trying to explain, but Lo is coming unglued.

“Get away! Stop!” He’s swatting at the air. Batting at invisible hands. “Leave me alone!” Lo jerks his head up toward my face all of a sudden, and a look of pure terror settles in his familiar eyes. “Don’t you touch her!” he screams at someone, or something, that Xan and I can’t see. “Leave her alone!”

Lo launches himself in my direction, but Xan steps in front of him and shoves him hard. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lo goes stumbling backward. He loses his balance and lands in the dirt at the edge of the trail.

He’s on his feet again instantly. “Lo!” I shout. “Wait! It’s okay!” But he’s shaking so hard now.

“I’m sorry, Dovie,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Then he turns and takes off into the dark, leaving his flashlight lying on the ground where he fell.

“What the hell?” Xan shouts.

“Lo!” I start after him, but Xan grabs me by the wrist.

“Dovie. What’s going on?” I’m torn between my need to make sure Lo’s okay, like always, and my need to find Hannah Nelby’s bones before their singing shakes my ribs apart. I know I must look completely wild and frantic. “Take it easy, okay? Take a breath.” Xan tucks my hair behind my ear and I fight to get myself under control.

“It’s not his fault,” I say. “Lo wasn’t yelling at me.”

“Who was he yelling at, then?”

“He sees spirits,” I explain. “The ghosts of the dead hikers. He says they’ve been stalking him. That they want him to make the murders stop.”

“You believe that?” Xan is looking at me with no judgment in his eyes, like he just wants to know what my take on it is.

“No,” I admit. “But Lo does, and that’s all that matters. If he believes in them, they’re as real as you or me. At least for him.”

“Damn,” Xan says. “That’s intense.”

Everything feels intense right now. Hannah’s thrumming misery is tugging me hard toward her, and it’s like someone pulling my insides out with their bare hands.

Then there’s Lo. I can feel his terror so clear, too, and my fear for him threatens to sweep me down the mountainside with the sudden ferocity of a flash flood.

But there’s also the heat of Xan’s hand on my cheek. The concern in his eyes.

“I should go after him,” I say. “He shouldn’t be alone.”

“Lowan’s a big boy,” he tells me. “Let him take care of himself tonight. Let’s focus on taking care of Hannah.” He’s stroking my cheekbone with his thumb now, but I’m still staring out into the dark searching for any sign of Lo. “And let’s take care of you. Okay?”

I nod and pull my hair back into a tight ponytail again before we start into the thick undergrowth. Xan and I fight the brambles and the vines and the clawing thorns for ten or fifteen feet before we come to a downed tree.

“This is it,” I whisper. “I knew she wasn’t far off.” I drop to my knees and put my palms on the ground. I feel the vibration of the bone song rattling inside me like the last breath of a dying man. “We found you, Hannah Nelby.”

Xan holds the flashlight as I sweep aside the leaves and start to dig with my bare hands. Hannah’s buried shallower than the others. It only takes a few minutes of digging before my fingers make contact with something soft. I brush the dirt away and the greenish-purple skin of an arm becomes visible. Then a hand. And fingers with white bone exposed at the tips where the bugs have been feeding.

The fresher bodies are always the worst to find.

“Oh shit.” Xan gags and pulls his T-shirt over his mouth and nose. His face has gone completely pale and his eyes are wide as the full moon over the mountain. “Jesus, Dovie. Is that—?”

“Yeah.” I sit back on my heels and use the back of my arm to wipe the dripping sweat from my forehead. I don’t want to touch anything. My hands smell like death.

Xan blinks at me. “You found her, Dovie.”

“We found her,” I tell him.

“We should go down and get the sheriff,” Xan says, and I know he’s right.

“We’ll be back,” I tell Hannah. “I promise.”

Before I get up, I notice something sticking out of the ground near her arm. I pull it loose, and it’s a pink baseball cap. I remember the identical ones Hannah and Candy were wearing when we met them on the trail that last day of Hannah’s life. I knock the dirt off, and the name Hannah is embroidered on the front.

I lay the hat on top of the grave as a kind of temporary marker, then I start to get up out of the dirt, but Xan stops me. “Wait,” he says. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“There’s something under her hand.”

I brush away more dirt and come up with something small and metal. I hold it in my palm and Xan hits it with the flashlight. “Looks like an old key,” he says, but I’ve already realized exactly what it is.

It’s an old-fashioned skeleton key with a tiny bit of yellow yarn still attached.

I stare at it like I’m expecting it to change into something else.

Please let it become something else. Anything else.

“You good?” Xan asks.

I slip the skeleton key into my pocket and nod because I don’t trust myself to talk.

I manage to get to my feet and Xan leads me the short distance back through the thick woods. We find the trail, and before we start our descent toward town, Xan strips off his green T-shirt and ties it around a tree to mark the spot for the sheriff. We’ve left Lo’s abandoned flashlight back at the burial site, so we’re down to just one now. Xan hands it to me and I go first with him following right at my heels.

We don’t talk much. I’m constantly looking and listening for Lo. He’s my best friend. More than my best friend. He’s my only friend. So he’s my responsibility. I should’ve gone after him. I shouldn’t have let him wander off alone in that state, and now that skeleton key is burning a hole in my pocket.

Xan gives me space and quiet, but I can hear him breathing right behind me, and every so often he touches my back and asks if I’m doing okay.

When we stop for a minute to wipe the sweat from our faces, I notice him staring at me.

“Did I scare you tonight?” I ask. I figure he must be revolted. Everyone is. “I know it’s awful, seeing that. And I know I look like—”

“You were beautiful tonight, Dovie.” I’m staring at him like he’s lost his mind. I’m filthy. Covered in dirt and sweat. I smell like a corpse and my hair is plastered to my face. “No. Really.” He reaches out to brush some dirt off my cheek, and I wonder if there was really anything there, or if he just wanted to touch me. “I don’t know how to explain it. You were on fire. Lit up with this purpose and energy.” He tilts his head to study me. “I really didn’t believe it—not until I saw you do it—and it blew my mind to see you go right to her like that. Then to see you be so gentle.” His voice catches in his throat. “And I know you must’ve been like that with Riley, too. It helps, knowing someone took that kind of care with him.”

“Thanks,” I say, and suddenly I can’t come up with any more words.

“You’re wrong, Dovie.” Xan puts his hands on my shoulders and pulls me toward him. “That’s magic.”

“No.” My voice is firm and I shake my head, even though I know I probably look and sound like a stubborn toddler. “I told you it’s not magic. There’s no such thing as magic.”

Magic is a lie people tell themselves. Same as religion. If you tell yourself the lie over and over, you might start to believe it, but that doesn’t make it real.

“Okay,” Xan concedes. “I won’t argue with you about your own ability. Maybe finding those bones isn’t magic.” He runs his hands over my back and pulls me even closer. “But you’re magic, Dovie. I know that for a fact.” I don’t know how to respond to that. My palms are on his bare chest, and his skin is too warm. His mouth too close to mine. “I’m gonna kiss you again, Dovie who is not a witch. That okay with you?”

It seems to happen in slow motion, but I still barely have time to nod before he presses his lips against mine. He’s more insistent than last time, but still gentle, and this time I lean in and open my mouth for him. I feel his tongue against mine, moving against the ridges of my teeth. It doesn’t last long, but it takes a few seconds for the sweetness of it to fade and for everything else to come rushing back.

I don’t understand how it can feel so desperately wrong to kiss somebody who isn’t Lo, but also so right to kiss Xan. It’s one more thing that doesn’t make any sense.

We start moving down the trail again. We’re more than halfway to town. Xan is breathing behind me, and the steady sound of him in my ear is a comfort. So is the occasional pressure of his fingers against the small of my back.

“Not much farther,” he says. I’m starting to love that Oklahoma twang of his.

It couldn’t be more than five seconds later when I realize I don’t hear him breathing anymore. I stop, and there’s nothing.

No hand at my back.

No question spoken into the dark.

No breath on my neck.

My heart skids to a stop and my knees go weak.

I turn around slow and shine my light into the blackness, but there’s nothing there. No Xan. No sign of him. No proof that he ever existed at all.

“Xan?” I whisper his name to the night, but I know he’s gone. Vanished. Just like all those dead hikers. The hair stands up on the back of my neck, and I fight back the urge to scream. These mountains are full of people I know tonight, but I’ve never been more alone.

Somewhere in the distance a strangled howl rises in the night like mountain fog. It bounces off the trees and echoes off the rock faces until it seems to come from everywhere all around me. When that howl finally fades, it comes again, one more time. Closer than before.

It hits me then that the only thing worse than knowing you’re alone on the Aux-Arc Trail in the middle of the night is knowing that you’re not.