Chapter 13
The morning air is viciously fresh, biting my cheeks with winter cold, raking through my hair with icy, breezy fingers until I raise the hood of my scarlet cloak.
The distance from Valenkirk House to the edge of the forest is farther than it looked, but with every stride, the treeline is coming closer.
The nearer I get to the woods, the heavier my heart becomes and the wearier my body grows, as if something invisible has crawled onto my back and is weighing me down with its malicious bulk.
I’m not used to entering Wormsloe from this direction, but I have a general idea of which way to go to reach the Barrow. What I’ll do when I get there is another question entirely.
In my satchel is a piece of meat, carefully wrapped in thick butcher’s paper, and some berries nestled inside a mug.
I also packed a small knife, a half-bottle of leftover milk I found in the cold cellar off the kitchen, and a small jar of honey.
I don’t have a full loaf of bread, but maybe these offerings will be enough to get the Barrow-Man’s attention.
And I have the word that the dying demon gave me, the same word that was hidden in my father’s vial.
I have a suspicion that it’s more than a word—it’s the Barrow-Man’s name.
Maybe if I pronounce it aloud over the food I’ve brought, he’ll come out and speak with me, even if it isn’t midnight.
I’m not sure if he’ll allow a whole conversation or just one question, so while I’m traveling to the Barrow, I need to mentally prepare for both possibilities.
Pacing along the edge of the forest, I look for an entry point. The undergrowth is thicker here, interlaced with thorny vines, and I’d rather not tear up my clothes if I can avoid it.
Up ahead, I spot an area where the saplings, bushes, and branches have been crushed and snapped, creating a tunnel that runs deep into Wormsloe, as far as I can see.
A shiver ripples over my skin as I stare into that gap.
The branches are broken off in a wide swath, and the destruction continues higher up, into the canopy of the forest.
Something enormous passed through here multiple times, by the look of things. Something uncanny, unnatural, monstrous.
Once again, the image of the two-headed wolf floats at the front of my mind.
It’s connected to Beresford somehow—no denying that fact.
It’s the details that elude me. I need more information.
Without it, my brain is going to keep screaming round and round in frenetic circles, crafting terrible possibilities.
The wolf, the Barrow-man, the bodies… and Beresford.
An ache started in the pit of my stomach when I opened the blue door.
It’s worse now, and it pulses with sharper pain every time I think of my husband.
His tongue, his chest, his hands. He came for me, came inside me.
Dragged me out of the hopeless apathy in which I was mired.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that he saved my life.
I love him, and I hate him for doing this to us, for keeping a secret so unutterably devastating.
“Fuck,” I whisper, stepping into the tunnel of bent trees and broken branches. Pulverized twigs crunch beneath the soles of my boots as I proceed into the forest.
Under the canopy, the breeze flattens into still, cold air tinged with the spicy rot of autumn leaves. Trees cluster closely, like they’re crowding together for warmth or making walls to defend against something.
Last time I entered Wormsloe, I felt the darkness, the wrongness, the creeping corruption. The farther I walk, the more strongly I sense it. Something has been disturbed or awakened. Something is stirring, and it is angry. It is hunting.
A chittering rustle shakes the remaining leaves as a breeze slithers between the tree trunks. The air current is slender, targeted, snakelike, winding around my body and lifting the edges of my red cloak. It flows beneath my hood, coiling around my throat.
This isn’t any normal breath of wind. It’s something else. An invisible tentacle, an extension of the foul presence that has infested the forest. It’s investigating me, searching me out.
The realization makes me panic. I shudder violently, voicing a little scream, and I take off running down the path, with nothing else in my head but the need to dispel the touch of that invasive, invisible force.
A threatening hiss slices the quiet of the woods, like the exhale of giant lungs through sharp fangs. As I run, I scan the trees to the left and right. Is it the wolf? Is it watching me?
The noxious presence I sense from the forest isn’t the same energy I felt from the wolf.
My instincts tell me they’re two separate entities.
And yet the appearance of the wolf seems to coincide with the beginning of all this—Grandmother’s mental deterioration, the disappearance of Herron, all the inexplicable sights and sounds of the past weeks.
I shouldn’t be running from this thing, whatever it is. I shouldn’t be racing along the makeshift path blindly. I can’t let fear make me careless.
Panting, I slow my steps and look back the way I came. Either I ran much farther than I thought, or the tunnel through Wormsloe has extended itself. I can’t see the end of the path or the daylight beyond the edge of the forest. Only the trees exist, funneling away into the gloomy distance.
I shouldn’t have tried to enter the woods from this direction. I should have gone back home, to the path I know, and started from there.
“Barrow-Man.” I say it boldly, and then I speak the word the dying demon gave to me. “Alchelinore.”
Another hiss of wind races through the trees, but this time it builds, growing louder and more intense until it’s a voiceless scream.
A visceral, icy dread grips my bones, and I realize, with a certainty that makes no sense, that the entity in the forest has been hunting for me.
And I delivered myself straight into its clutches.
The rising wind snatches up a hurricane of dead leaves and hurls them toward me, like macabre banners heralding the arrival of their dread master. But in the midst of that roaring tempest, I hear scampering, thumping, galloping.
From the bushes burst a dozen or more demons, some of the larger creatures I’ve summoned. Anne said they were leaving the forest, but some of them must not have fled yet. They charge straight toward me, running at full speed.
At the front of the group is a doe the size of a cart horse. The skin and flesh on both sides of her body has receded, leaving her ribs exposed. Flowers bloom from between those bare rib bones, fueled by her organs and her inner heat.
She has looked that way ever since I summoned her two years ago, one spring afternoon in the back garden. I remember the pain and shock I felt when she appeared, the guilt because I couldn’t help her, the certainty that she wouldn’t survive. Yet here she is, alive.
She bounds up to me and throws her body against mine, knocking me off balance.
With a dip of her head, she tumbles me across her shoulders.
Two of the other demons, a marmot with an exposed spine and a chicken with a lizardlike head, leap onto the doe’s back as well, holding me in place as she doubles her speed.
I don’t struggle, because with my body against the doe’s, I sense our connection like a jolt of buzzing energy.
In this moment, the demons and I are more intimately linked than ever.
They’re fleeing, running from the same corrupt entity that is chasing me.
They want me to escape, too. They’re trying to help me.
The hissing roar crescendos through the trees, whipping whole trunks back and forth.
A great oak tears free of the earth and crashes across our path, but the doe leaps neatly over it.
I’m nearly thrown off, but I cling to her back with the desperate recognition that she’s my only chance of escaping Wormsloe.
Roots arch up from the earth and rear high into the air, whipping and coiling like tentacles.
Two of them snare one of the demons running beside the doe.
The creature shrieks as the root-tentacles cinch tight.
They jerk apart, ripping its body in two.
Blood spews over the forest litter, and glossy entrails slide out of the creature’s lower half.
I scream and nearly vomit, both from the awful sight and from the jolting of my stomach against the doe’s back.
The walls of the path are heaving like giant lungs, the trunks undulating like grass in the wind. Two more of the demons are ripped away from our company, but the doe keeps running, even though her lungs rasp and her skin is humid from exertion.
Up ahead, between the hideously contorting trees and the thrashing serpentine roots, shines a crack of daylight, widening as we approach. With a final bunching of her muscles and a sound like a torn human scream, the doe bursts out of the woods into the meadows of Valenkirk.
She takes a few more staggering steps, then halts. I tumble off her back into the grass.
The other surviving demons don’t pause—they scatter across the fields, racing away to find a new haven.
But the doe remains nearby, her slim legs trembling.
Her insides glow like a lantern through the quivering flowers between her ribs.
As I watch, the blooms turn limp, shedding a few of their petals, and the amber glow inside her torso falters, flickers, and vanishes.
The doe falls heavily on her side, her tongue flopping from her muzzle onto the grass. A horrible stillness follows—no breath lifting her flanks, no awareness in those glassy eyes.
She saved me, and she died.
My mind hitches, refusing to grasp the truth, revolted by reality. I want to reject it like a rotten apple, like rancid meat. It’s not something I want to swallow, because it will sicken me. It will hurt too much.