Chapter 46
The storm had eased somewhat, and Malcolm took over driving.
The road remained treacherous and visibility dreadful, but the temperature inside the Frazer seemed to have risen a tick.
Violet had emptied her stolen gun shooting at the plow.
They hadn’t expected the vehicle to crash, but it bought them precious time, and they all intended to make the most of that.
Violet had coaxed Benjy into the passenger seat with her. The boy had continued to cry for nearly half an hour before finally running out of tears. Malcolm thought he had fallen asleep, but when he glanced over, Benjy’s eyes were open and full of sorrow.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Malcolm.”
“Where are we going?”
How to answer that? Malcolm decided not to. “Try to sleep, little buddy. The whole world will seem different tomorrow, when the sun’s up and the storm is over.”
Benjy pondered that. He seemed even younger than his age, but shock and trauma did strange things to children. And not just children.
“My mom and dad are dead,” Benjy whispered, voice cracking. His features twisted up with sadness.
“Mine, too,” Violet whispered, hugging him close.
“Mine, too,” Malcolm said. He jerked a thumb toward the back seat. “That’s my sister back there, so hers, too. We’re all orphans here, kid.”
Benjy narrowed his eyes, looking at him doubtfully.
Maybe because the word orphan seemed so impossible to him right then, or maybe because he knew enough to question whether or not Malcolm and Jennie’s mother was actually dead.
After all, Maggie was in the back seat with Jennie, and she moaned and gasped and squirmed with pain that seemed to be increasing by the mile.
Malcolm could have told the kid that didn’t mean she was alive, but he didn’t know how to explain that.
If Benjy remembered what he’d gone through under Root’s control, he already knew, and if he didn’t remember, Malcolm didn’t feel like trying to make him understand. He’d been through enough.
“Mal,” Jennie said, “it’s getting pretty bad.”
“What can we do?” he asked.
“The cuffs are cutting into her wrists.”
They had removed the handcuffs from Benjy’s wrists and put them on Maggie.
It surprised Malcolm that they worked to restrain her, but the closer they drew to Shediak, the more pain she endured and the weaker she became.
If she transformed fully, she might still be strong enough to kill them, but for the moment, she lingered in that liminal state, dead but still alive in some way nature would never recognize.
Malcolm didn’t have a good view of Maggie.
His eyes were supposed to be on the road.
A glance in the rearview mirror only showed him her right side.
Jennie had sat her up, but Maggie had slid over and now leaned against the door on the driver’s side, right behind him.
He could hear her moan and whimper, but not see her face, and maybe that was best.
“Whatever state she’s in right now,” Violet said, “the pain is still there.”
“From the curse she, what, spoke into the world? Trying to save herself.”
“You don’t know that’s how it happened.” Violet lowered her voice, as if the boy in her arms might be upset by the words.
Malcolm flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. His back and neck and hands ached after so long driving, tensed up, through the storm.
“I know it didn’t happen the way she told Jennie.” He glanced over his shoulder at his sister. “Honestly, Jen, I can’t believe you bought that story. I loved her, but this is Maggie we’re talking about. She never put someone else’s needs ahead of hers in her whole life.”
Jennie mostly looked sad and tired. All the years she’d been gone, she had used to get smarter and stronger, but she was still Maggie Wise’s daughter.
“I think he’s right, Violet,” Jennie admitted.
“The pieces just fit together. But I don’t like seeing her in pain like this.
Whatever she might be now, part of her is still Momma.
The closer we get, the more it’s hurting her.
If you were back here with her … it’s like watching her being stabbed by invisible knives.
The pain’s on the inside, but it’s brutal. ”
Malcolm didn’t have to see. He could hear the noises coming from behind him. Maggie might be halfway to a monster now, but she whimpered, and he had to focus on the fact of her death to remind himself she was beyond saving.
From death, he thought. But you could save her some pain.
Maybe.
He started to sing again. With the muffled sounds of the snow on the road, the wipers, and the Frazer’s engine, the words blurred into nothing but soft melody, but he could almost feel Maggie’s pain ease.
In the rearview mirror, he watched her right arm and leg relax.
In the passenger seat, Benjy sniffled and then sighed, taking some comfort from the song for himself.
Halfway through the fourth time singing the same song, not another word spoken from any of them, he longed to try another tune.
But Maggie had built this bit of witchcraft with purpose, and he didn’t know enough about any of it to deviate.
So he kept singing, and it worked for a while, holding off the evil inside his mother and keeping her quiet. Keeping her painless. Keeping her dead.
Eventually, she began again to stir. She made a small sound that somehow seemed louder than it was, a sound so forlorn that it felt like a lifetime of surrender.
Violet said his name, her tone a warning.
He stopped singing. The wipers kept the rhythm going.
“What is it?”
Violet pointed at the windshield, over on her side. “I saw someone out there.”
“Someone?”
“Moving fast. On foot.”
“It was only a matter of time,” Jennie said, rolling her window down for a better look out into the dark. Snow and wind whipped at her face. “They knew our destination. They’re going to try to stop us.”
Violet shook her head. “How did they find us? You did that thing with the dust so they couldn’t track Maggie’s body.”
Malcolm nodded slowly. “Shediak is technically an island. There’s a narrow channel that separates it from the mainland, like a hundred other little islands around here. It’s got one little two-lane bridge to get out there by car. Otherwise, it’s a boat or a chilly swim.”
As he spoke, he saw something in the snow off to the left, moving through the trees on that side of the road.
Tall and pale, it loped on two feet. He caught only glimpses, and he wondered if it knew they were there in the car.
If it did know, why hadn’t it already tried to stop them?
How weak had these things become, so close to Shediak?
Still strong enough to kill you, he thought.
The headlights picked out a sign ahead. The wind chose that moment to wipe away most of the snow that covered it. SHEDIAK 2 MILES.
A quiet, mocking laughter slithered up from the seat behind Malcolm.
Jennie jerked away from Maggie, sliding all the way against her own door. “Christ.”
“Sing, Malcolm,” Violet said. In her arms, Benjy pressed his eyes tightly shut, breath hitching as he tried not to see.
“Sing, Malcolm,” Maggie mimicked. “Useless daughter.”
“How bad is it?” Malcolm asked.
Violet had a good view of Maggie. “The cuffs are holding. She doesn’t want us to see how much pain—”
The monster in Maggie had woken up. Now it screamed, but in seconds, that scream faltered to a seething, spitting hatred. She couldn’t mask the pain racking her body as they traveled the last couple of miles.
But she laughed again. “Go on, then. Drive.”
Malcolm didn’t like the sound of that. He eased up on the accelerator and glanced at Violet, then back at Jennie. They’d caught an unsettling insinuation in Maggie’s words as well.
“There are others up ahead. In the road,” Violet said as if that was the end of things.
Maggie laughed again. This wasn’t the voice of their mother, breaking through the wall of death to communicate with them. This was the Morák in her, the thing she was becoming.
“There were so many that night … even after they knew I would die … they wanted to tear me apart. The pain I caused them … it drove them away. They thought it would only affect them in Shediak and they fled for the mainland, a screaming exodus. When they got across the bridge, they knew the truth. There was nowhere for them to run, so they burrowed into the ground right where despair felled them.”
“Oh my God,” Violet said. “They buried themselves right here.”
“How many?” Jennie asked. “How many of them were here that night?”
Maggie rasped, more a grunt than a laugh. “Dozens.”
The engine rumbled as Malcolm slowed the Frazer to a halt. The car vibrated, snow falling, wipers shushing. The headlights illuminated several silhouettes far ahead, impossible to identify, but they all knew.
“There’s no way across,” Maggie said. “Set me free. The sun will rise soon, and you’ll have the daylight hours to run for your lives.”
It was Malcolm’s turn to laugh. Slowly, careful not to let the tires get stuck, he turned the car around.
“You have Maggie’s voice and face, you’ve got her memories, and maybe part of you is still her,” he said, “but you’re not Maggie Wise. She was damn clever, and you’re far from that.”
The tires slid but found new purchase. The Frazer wouldn’t let them down.
“We’ll get you to Shediak, and we’ll bury you deep.”