Chapter 17 Riley #3
‘No,’ she whispers.
Everett tips his head and nods at her slowly.
He offers the bowl again. Food is better than no food, she thinks, when she is losing so much blood.
Time has folded into itself, but she recalls from her time watching the Alison woman that the mushrooms’ effects seem to last around four hours.
Riley nods. She can handle it. Everett feeds her with a spoon, gently.
Riley eats. But halfway through her mouth purses out and her body collapses into sobs.
Everett offers her the spoon again. She shakes her head, tears running down her face.
He nods at her. The spoon clicks against Riley’s teeth.
‘I don’t want to die,’ Riley says. ‘I know what I did. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have to die for a mistake.’
Everett shakes his head at her, slowly.
‘Why do you wear that on your face?’ Riley asks.
He shrugs.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Riley says. ‘Everyone does things for a reason.’
Everett puts the bowl on the floor. He goes still, so still that he almost blends with the night behind him. Or maybe it’s daytime; Riley’s not sure.
‘Tell me,’ Riley whispers. ‘Why?’
He draws a finger diagonally across his face, transecting his eyes, his mouth. Then he does it again, and again.
‘Show me,’ Riley says.
He shakes his head.
‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ she whispers. ‘I’m not going to last long. Do it for the dying. I’m giving all my blood to the land.’
Everett looks at her for a long minute. Then he raises his hand and draws the mask slowly upwards.
Riley tries not to make a sound when she sees, as more and more of his face comes into view. He puts the mask down beside him and just looks at her, brown eyes wide and beautiful among the scars. His skin is crosshatched with pale seams, all razor thin. A person made each scar with slow purpose.
‘I’m sorry,’ Riley says.
Everett shrugs. He covers the rutted landscape of his face with the black ski mask.
‘Did you ever like me?’ Riley asks.
Everett shakes his head. Then he nods.
‘That’s what I thought,’ she says. ‘Will you tell Oliver something for me? Please?’ She coughs and sags in the chair. ‘Please.’
Everett comes close and bends his head. She whispers into his ear, ‘Tell him I won’t let the demons get him.’ He looks at her. ‘Thank you.’
Everett nods and goes.
Riley lowers her head to the strap on her wrist. She grasps it in her mouth and gnaws, teeth grinding on the leather.
Time moves on, she seems to be fading in and out of the world, but she doesn’t stop.
The leather is so thick she can’t tell if she’s making any difference at all.
Shadows grow longer or maybe the sun rises.
Riley swallows, jaws aching, dry lips gripping the strap.
She thinks longingly of the well outside.
She can see her blood on the patchy grass below, in the sunken garden; the dark slick stain spreading outwards.
It drips gently from her wrist onto the grass.
At some point she becomes aware that footsteps are softly approaching across the long room behind her. Dry leaves flurry out of his path. He carries his own weather with him.
Riley shivers. She knows who it is – who is coming.
Of course she does. His power touches everything, fills the ruins of Nowhere House.
The light turns silver, every sound is etched upon the air.
He comes to a halt just behind her. Riley twists and cries out, struggling against her restraints.
She can smell the fresh earth on him; he is newly risen from the grave.
His breath touches the back of her neck.
‘You’re not real,’ Riley whispers. She knows it’s a hallucination born of blood loss, the mushrooms and exhaustion. She knows all this but she doesn’t believe it.
‘Close your eyes if you like,’ he says, gentle in her ear. ‘You don’t need to look upon me.’
Riley obeys, tears leaking hot from between her eyelids.
She feels his every movement as Leaf Winham bends and puts his lips to her slit wrist, drawing the blood from her like a lamb feeding from its mother.
Riley doesn’t cry, she will never give him that.
She thinks, you killed my father but you will not kill me.
She goes inside herself. Even in the dark of her mind, the tiny people still dart, enrobed in light, hovering on dragonfly wings.
She breathes and breathes. At length she feels the mouth leave her wrist and he’s gone, or the hallucination has passed – whichever it was.
The light has fallen though it’s too early for dusk.
Time seems to be slipping out of place; Riley is afraid that all the rules of the world are breaking.
But when she looks up through the ragged roof, she sees it is a storm which has been gathering overhead.
Rain begins to fall in fat drops. Thunder rolls so loud she thinks she’ll die and a jagged snake of white splits the air.
It feels close, so close, the electricity of it grazes Riley’s skin.
Through the holes in the burnt-out house it rains like swords falling. Thunder cracks the world.
There’s no point, Riley thinks. Leaf Winham is real, he’s here.
She heard his voice and felt his touch. Riley tips her head back, lifts her face up to the scattered rain that falls through the ruined roof.
Cool drops pattern her face. She opens her mouth to drink the rainfall.
The glowing lights dance in the air around the wounds in her wrists, darting through the downpour, sipping from her.
Riley closes her eyes. Let them have it. Maybe this is what it was supposed to be. She came here to find a home, to find her father. Maybe this is how. Maybe it’s time to accept, at last, that she’s not the kind of person who makes it out alive.
Something hurtles past her, shutting out the falling rain and electric sky.
The thing charges away from the storm, flying down the length of the gallery into the shelter of the house.
Riley recoils, heart pounding. As it goes, she sees the outlines of antlers and delicate legs.
Then the deer is gone in a flash of fawn hide.
As it vanishes into the dark Riley sees that one of the deer’s antlers is thin, broken, just beginning to regrow.
Riley stares. She wishes that her hands were free so she could pinch herself. It’s hard to tell what is real. But she felt the deer’s passage, smelled its wet hide, heard the drum of its hooves. She has to hope.
‘Have fun while you can,’ she whispers to the dancing lights. ‘Because there’s another way out of here, and I’m going to find it.’
Riley bends her head to her wrist and takes the thick leather strap in her mouth once more. Grimly she gnaws, working the iron-hard leather between her teeth.
She doesn’t think about time, she just chews until her jaws are sore. Occasionally she rests, teeth singing, but even then she keeps her mind working.
Houses are logical, she knows this. So Riley thinks about the house, goes through it room by room.
She makes maps in her mind, soaring over the valley, looking down on Nowhere from above.
She thinks about rock formations and caves and secret passages.
She lets the dream take her, lets Nowhere wash over her, trying to summon every inch of it in her mind.
Riley judders awake to find Noon at her side, holding a bowl.
‘I’m sorry,’ Riley says.
‘Eat.’ Noon pushes the spoon against Riley’s mouth. It clicks against her teeth.
‘Please,’ Riley says with her jaw locked shut. Keeping her eyes on Noon she works the leather cuffs around her wrist so that the bitten part is hidden on the underside.
‘Did you see him?’ Noon asks, tapping the spoon against Riley’s set teeth.
Riley shakes her head.
‘Yes, you did.’ Noon forces the rim of the spoon between Riley’s jaws and forces them apart.
‘Eat.’ The thick mushroom taste makes Riley gag.
She thinks grimly of the hours to come. The blurring between real and unreal both terrifies and exhausts her.
There is no way to know how much blood she has lost.
‘You’ll want to kill yourself, you know,’ Noon says, conversational. ‘But you won’t be able to. We decide when you die and what you believe.’
‘Mommy?’ Rufus peeps around Noon’s legs.
Riley tips her head back and breathes. ‘You brought a kid to—?’
‘Kind of late for morals,’ Noon says, taking the opportunity of Riley’s open mouth to shove a spoonful of mushrooms in.
‘Mommy,’ Rufus says brightly.
Riley chokes. All she can smell or taste is mushroom; the thick meat-earth scent fills her nostrils like mulch, gathers at the back of her throat.
Noon makes a new cut in Riley’s arm, vertical, following the line of the vein. It’s the kind of cut you use to end things for real. The blood is a pulse, it is a solid thing making its way out of her flesh.
Rufus watches the thin stream of blood as it falls through the air. He puts out a pink finger to touch it.
‘No.’ Noon pulls him gently away. ‘Let it go to the land.’ A peep comes from behind her. Three small shapes come out of the shadows. Hallie, Whitey and Peach look at Riley with serious faces.
‘You’re sick,’ Riley says.
‘They want to watch,’ Noon says. ‘It’s not often someone gives all their blood to the land anymore.’
‘Who are you people?’ Riley whispers. ‘You call yourselves the Nowhere children but you’re demons.’
‘Haven’t you guessed yet?’ Noon asks. ‘We’re not the Nowhere children. They are.’
‘I don’t understand.’ There is a warm blaze of light on Riley’s cheek. It must be sunset, she thinks, vague.
‘Their lives were taken,’ Noon says. ‘We wear their bones around our necks. That’s how they recognise us. They know we’ll look after them, protect them. We owe the Nowhere children that.’
‘Look,’ Noon says softly. She shines her flashlight down into the sunken place.
‘Leaf built this place over them. He had a trap door that went down here. But I wanted them to be open to the sky. So we broke open the floor and opened it. We made them a garden. We cleared away the remains of the wall that collapsed, down there. It took nearly a year.’
Riley blinks.
‘Really look,’ Noon says. ‘You’re always so busy watching out for danger, Riley – you never actually see things.’
Riley looks, following the torch beam as it tracks through the green, across the earth and stones. It comes to rest on a twisting lilac tree. Five round stones are set in a circle at its foot.
‘That’s not real.’ A feeling is building in Riley.
‘Yes, it is. You know what those are.’ The smooth round shapes set in a circle are not stones. The skulls are small, almost fully buried in the earth, only their rounded tops are exposed. The bone is old, worn to a smooth sheen. The upper rim of one eye socket is just showing above the earth.
‘Cal, Everett, Danny, Midnight, Dawn, me – we were never the Nowhere children,’ Noon says. ‘We take care of them.’
Riley closes her eyes. She understands that Noon wants her to lose her mind. It’s part of her punishment. She won’t let it happen. ‘That’s not true,’ she says again.
‘Isn’t it?’ asks Noon, gentle.
‘You’re just trying to make me crazy.’ But Riley feels panic rise. The line between is and is not will not stay put, it wanders to and fro.
Noon smiles. ‘You decide.’
‘Please,’ Riley murmurs. ‘Just let me see Oliver.’
‘No,’ Noon says. ‘We can never see the person we love again – so neither can you.’
‘Have you seen the ghost of John?’ Riley mutters to herself. It’s the only song she can think of. ‘Long white bones with the skin all gone. Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on? Have you seen the ghost of John? Long white bones with the skin all gone …’ She focuses on the words, the rhyme.
A small hand touches her face. Riley opens her eyes. Peach strokes her cheek. She looks at Riley with large brown eyes.
The feeling hits Riley like a wave. ‘They’re sad,’ she whispers. ‘Why are they so sad?’
‘The worst things you can think of were done to them,’ Noon says.
‘And they never get to grow up. So we look after them, love them – the way people should love children. And,’ says Noon, ‘we find unforgivable people and we give their blood to the land in their honour.’ Noon leans in close to Riley’s ear.
‘In case you were wondering, you are unforgivable.’
‘No.’ Riley closes her eyes to shut out the children and the house and Noon. The world is beginning to pinwheel, she tries to hold tight to herself.
Leaf Winham’s face hovers before Riley, his voice brushing her ear like velvet. ‘They need the blood in the land.’
‘Leaf Winham did it by accident,’ Noon says. ‘He put blood in the land and it kept him safe. We’re way better than him. We don’t kill for pleasure.’
Leaf Winham smiles at Riley and licks her, tongue dragging up and down her cheek. His breath smells of lilac.
‘Why,’ Riley wonders aloud or in silence, ‘can I see so many ghosts in this place but not my father?’
‘He was weak,’ says Noon, unconcerned. ‘Only the strong survive death.’
‘You’re lying.’ Riley is not sure if she’s speaking out loud or not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. ‘You must be.’ Then it all comes up like a hurricane and swings over Riley’s mind, covering everything in darkness.