Chapter 2
Cave
What is given freely, but once broken can never be mended? What is the foundation of everything, yet the easiest thing to destroy?
The island is loud. But it shouldn’t be loud, not with everyone inside. Nixie told everyone to stay indoors tonight, yet I can hear movement. It shouldn’t be here. And those footsteps . . . they’re not ones I have heard before.
I’m not supposed to leave my cornfield, but the need to know what the noise is burns inside me. The closer I get to the edge of the cemetery, the more I sense something is wrong.
Small feet are running, and heavy ones are following behind.
I move on the edge of darkness, keeping well hidden. The dark and I have an understanding, and I move through it with ease.
The man is large, and the girl beneath him is diminutive in comparison. She is so small and helpless on the ground, shaking as she tries to push herself up.
I stare at her, knowing I shouldn’t be thinking about the things I am.
When I was small, someone told me that, but not with their words.
Those people never used words, but they did other things, and now I see things slightly wrong.
Apparently something was broken in me. Now I’ve had years to think about it, and I’ve decided they were right about the broken part, but I’m not sure about the rest. This is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.
It’s not the blood or what he has done to her that makes something hot sear through my chest. It’s the way she still fights, refusing to surrender. The tears on her face as her body won’t go down without a fight.
I’ve seen nothing like this, and though I want to keep looking, I need to stop him.
I stare for a moment longer, memorizing every part of her, but when he reaches for her again, I move. He doesn’t hear me—no one ever does.
Except for her.
She sees me, and her doe eyes run over the length of my body, following my sword as I raise it into the air and bring it down, hitting the back of his head with the handle.
He grunts and goes down, landing heavily on his side. I gaze down at him for a moment to make sure he doesn’t get back up. He is still breathing, which poses a conundrum—I can either drag him away and fix that problem, or help her.
She remains on the ground, and my quick glance reveals wide eyes of an unbelievable blue, peering up at me the way most people do, as if struggling to understand what exactly they are seeing.
But she doesn’t look away, and I watch her instinct to fight dwindle as her brain tells her I am not a threat—to her at least.
This woman is beautiful laid out like this. I stopped being ashamed of the way I see things a long time ago. It doesn’t help anything. I held it in for years when I was young, and it didn’t change a single thing about me.
I need to talk to her, reassure her; yet when I open my mouth, words don’t come easily. Instead, I give her the only sound I can.
“I have no color, yet I stop you in your tracks. I have no voice, yet every eye finds me first. I am broken in places no one can see, and still they call me the most striking in the room. What am I?”
Beautiful.
Her eyes close, and her body falls limp, so I kneel beside her and slide one hand under her. I pull her to my chest and smell her hair—something tightens in my chest at the scent of lilies. Standing, I throw her over my shoulder, where she flops like a rag doll.
I need to make sure she is safe, and the only place that has ever kept me safe is the cornfield. As I cross through the cemetery, she stirs a little, and I don’t want to scare her, so I murmur, “I am a word with no teeth. Lovers use me, monsters too. The lonely crave me and the hunted fear me.”
She stops moving, and I hurry forward, needing to reach the cornfield and make sure she is okay.
After weaving through the rows of stalks, I lay her at the base of my post in the center of the cornfield.
She looks right, as if she belongs here with me.
I know she needs someone else when she wakes up, that I shouldn’t be the first face she sees.
She will need another girl to make her feel safe.
I’m good at scaring people in the dark, and I am good at riddles, but I’m not good at the soft things people need when they are hurt or frightened.
I wasn’t taught those soft things; what I was taught is not something I like to think about, something I refuse to think about right now.
I know who I need to get—the tattooed girl, Kayla. She answered one of my riddles, and I let her go. It means she owes me a favor; that is how it works. I give them a riddle, and if they answer correctly, they walk away unharmed, but at the cost of a favor.
I head back to the cemetery where I saw her last, and she is gone, so I go straight to her house and see the lights are still on. I let myself in and follow the sound of laughter upstairs. When I open the door to a bedroom, everyone’s eyes turn to me.
Vero shrieks. I swear that little worm is the bane of my existence, especially when he has an episode, but I won’t hurt him.
If only because he belongs to Ares—they all do—and Ares has always been kind to me.
Clay and Brawley stand side by side, and I nod toward Kayla. At my movement, she pushes past them.
“Come,” I say, and their mouths fall open. They have never heard me talk beyond riddles, but one word is easy—it’s the rest that is hard.
“Over my dead fucking body,” Clay spits, and I draw my sword from the scabbard Cipher made for me.
“Calm down. Cave, is everything okay?” Kayla asks, and I shake my head.
“Girl,” I say, pointing toward the cornfield.
Kayla nods and pulls on a pair of pants—I hadn’t realized she was only in her underwear. Once her pants are on, she slips her feet into her boots, and Vero throws a hoodie at her.
“You are not seriously going with him,” Clay argues.
“Yes, I am. I owe him a favor. Besides, you all know he is no threat to me. I’ll be back.”
“You hurt her, and I will kill you,” Brawley says, and I laugh. He can try.
Kayla follows me out of the room and down the stairs.
The sound of her men arguing follows us, along with Ares assuring them that she will be fine.
I have zero desire to hurt her; she has done nothing to me.
I like her well enough, though I think she needs to be evaluated for loving Vero, but each to their own.
A therapist once said something like that to me.
That everyone’s brain works differently, and if we were all the same, the world would be boring.
She doesn’t ask me for an explanation, or fill the void with words, which I appreciate. I don’t like words; I like silence, unless it’s Noa—I like his words.
When we reach the girl, Kayla looks down at her and then back at me. I simply nod as she takes off her hoodie and puts it over the girl, then checks her pulse.
Silently I turn and walk away, stalking back toward the cemetery.
I need to check on the man now that I know the girl is safe.
I am thinking about how to do this when I hear Noa; I know his footsteps, fast and uneven—one foot is slightly heavier than the other.
Plus there is almost always the drag of a shovel.
He comes around the curve of the path and stops when he sees me; he looks me over and then meets my eyes. He is quiet for a full second, which is a lot for him.
“Right,” he finally says. “So I saw you come past and thought I would see what you were doing here, see if there was anything I could do to help. I brought my shovel. It’s always with me, which most people think is strange, but really, it’s just practical.
No one would think it was weird if a chef carried their knives with them. ”
I don’t reply—I never do.
“He’s not getting up,” Noa continues.
I shake my head.
“I know a spot. Past the tree line, and just behind the old fence post that has fallen down. It’s a good place to leave a body, somewhere people won’t find it easily.”
I grunt.
“Right then, follow me.”
He leads me, first to the man I left and then to the spot he’s chosen.
I follow, hefting the man in my arms as Noa talks the whole way about the grounds and the night, a bird that has it out for him near the south fence, and whether the rain last week did any damage to a path that no one ever uses.
I don’t normally like words, but Noa doesn’t need a response; he just speaks and the sound soothes me.
He finds a suitable spot and pushes his shovel into the ground, but all I can think about is the small woman. How tiny she looked lying beneath my post and the vibrancy of her eyes, blue like the sky.
“There,” Noa says, stepping back to admire the work he’s done so far. “For what it’s worth, I’m not going to ask. I’ve found some things are better dealt with practically than left where they are.” He pauses. “I brought a second shovel, just in case.”
I place the body down and take it as Noa nods at me. We both dig until the grave is deep enough, then I kick the man in. If he wakes and digs himself out, he won’t like how painful his death will be.
Once we’re done, Noa takes the shovels, saying that he has somewhere else to be.
I don’t mind, as I’m in a hurry to get back to my corn. I don’t know why I expected it to feel the same as it always does, but now that she is there at the base of my post the whole field feels different as I move through the stalks.
Kayla is kneeling beside her, but looks up at me as I approach. “She’s okay—nothing seems to be broken. The cuts on her face look worse than they are.”
Glancing down at the girl, I see her face is turned slightly to the side and her hair has fallen across her cheek. I want to move it so I can see her better, which is not something I have ever wanted to do before.
Kayla stands and brushes the dirt from her knees. “Be careful with her,” she warns.
I nod and remain silent.
She moves past me toward the edge of the corn and stops, looking back at me over her shoulder. “You won’t hurt her,” she says. It’s not a question, but it’s not a statement either, swirling in the gray area between the two.
I shake my head.
Kayla holds my gaze for a second, then she is gone, and now it’s just the two of us in the darkness. I sit down, my back resting against the base of my post. I don’t know how much time passes; the island has its own sense of time, and I stopped trying to measure it long ago.
The woman moves. First just her fingers curling against the ground, then her whole body flinches awake.
She scrambles backward so fast that she hits the base of the post—the place I had shifted from mere moments before—and makes a sound I don’t like.
It’s like a frightened little mouse backed into a corner.
Her eyes are wide as they find me in the dark, and she pulls her knees up to her chest.
She shakes, and her eyes don’t leave me.
I know she is scared, but there is nothing I can do, so I just sit still and silent.
The corn rustles, and I glance over to see Kayla is back, holding a blanket and a pillow. She runs over and drops down beside the girl.
“Hey,” Kayla says softly. “Hey, look at me and not him.”
The girl’s eyes drift to Kayla’s face and fix there, and though she is still shaking, she doesn’t look away.
“You’re safe. I know it may not feel like it, but I promise you are. My name is Kayla and no one on the island is going to hurt you.”
The girl’s breathing is ragged, and she glances between me and Kayla.
“He doesn’t talk—that’s just Cave. He might say riddles, but he is no threat to you.”
The girl remains silent, but her eyes move back to me again, like she cannot stop them. Almost as if I’m something she needs to keep watching to believe.
“Are you sure?” she finally whispers.
Kayla nods. “This is Fear Island, a year-round Halloween park of sorts. Everyone who works here is a little different, and some you need time to get used to being around—no offense, Cave.”
I shrug. Few people here see me as a person. To them, I’m just the Scarecrow, something everyone is afraid of, and for good reason. After dark, something in my brain clicks into protective mode, and I will remove intruders using any means necessary, but this girl belongs here . . . with me.
“I did not take you. I did not ask for you. You were left in the dark, and now here we are. What are you?” I intone.
Kayla laughs and stands, patting me on the shoulder. “Good luck. I think you might need it.” I think her words are meant for both of us.
Then she walks away, leaving me alone with the girl, who doesn’t yet know she is mine. There is one thing I do not have from her yet, but I will gain it over time. Trust.