Chapter Fifty-Eight Mini
FIFTY-EIGHT MINI
The church bell was ringing now just like Willy had said it would.
He took a break from digging and looked up at her from down in the hole of the knackerman’s empty grave.
Only it wasn’t his face looking up at her, but the knackerman’s.
He’d been wearing the costume since they left the knackerman’s place up on Saw Meadow Hill.
Then he’d gone through town, in costume, putting the knackerman’s mark on all the doors he could manage—making sure to get Josephine’s, Jack St. James’s, the pub, and Pops’s store.
And when he was finished, Mini had been waiting for him in the cemetery with a shovel and a flashlight just like he’d asked.
She didn’t understand his plan, but when he said, “Trust me,” for whatever reason, she did.
He knew they’d ring the bell to call a town meeting—that everyone would be in hysterics about the marks on the doors.
“I told you, Mini,” he said. “I told you they’d ring the bell.”
Mini hated looking at the face, the dark sockets with Willy’s eyes hidden back behind them. And she hated that he was down there digging up that grave. Not that he would find anything down there.
Mini knew it was empty because they’d dug the knackerman up years ago, before she was born, built the shrine, and put all the relics from his grave into it.
Mini’s Grandfather Fitzpatrick was a master woodworker and had built the case that held his remains.
It was a great honor, that was what her papa always said.
Mini hated when she was made to go pay her respects to the old bones in church.
She hated looking down into that glass-topped case her grandpa had made.
She would do her best to keep her eyes off the skull, fixing them on his chest instead, counting ribs: twelve pairs.
The knackerman was not laid out flat on his back in there, but curled up like he was sleeping.
“It’s almost time,” said Willy through the mask when the bell stopped ringing.
Almost time for him to wake up, Mini thought.
She blinked down at the knackerman.
No, Willy. Just Willy. Just Willy. Just Willy.
“Time for what, exactly?”
“Once they’re all there, gathered, I’ll go to the church. I’ll have the costume on. The mask. They’ll think I’m him.” Willy swayed a little there at the bottom of the hole, leaned on the shovel for balance. He’d had so much bourbon it was a wonder he was still awake, still moving.
Mini frowned at him. “I don’t know if it’ll work. If they’ll believe.”
“Belief is a funny thing,” he told her, his voice muffled, different.
And she thought maybe he was right about this one thing.
About how the whole town believed in the knackerman—left gifts, followed the rules without question.
How outsiders weren’t really welcome. And Josephine Banks and Reverend Quinn and Pops and all the other town elders insisted that it was better that way.
That the world beyond their valley was a dangerous place full of corruption, sickness, sin, all forms of evil.
But the people of Boone’s Ferry would remain safe and strong as long as they lived simply, relied on the old ways, and followed the rules.
Mini gazed down at Willy. “But what if they don’t think you’re him?”
Sad Willy lifted up the bottom of the mask and took another sip from his bottle.
“They will.”
“How do you know?”
He sighed. “Because they have before.”
She stood staring down at him, trying to make sense of what he’d just said.
“Mr. Willy, sir. Is that how you knew about the root cellar?”
“Not much Sad Willy doesn’t know about,” he mumbled as he went back to digging.
She tried to swallow down the lump she felt building in her throat.
“The thing you need to understand, Mini, is that it’s not their fault.
The things people do when they put on that mask.
And they don’t have a choice. If you’re chosen, you can’t say no.
And then once you put the costume on, it’s like you’re not even you anymore.
You become someone else. Something else. ”
Mini licked her lips, tasting the graveyard dust. “Mr. Willy, have you—”
“We have to bury him,” Willy said, not looking up from his labors.
“It’s the only way. Bury him once and for all.
People will understand. They’ll be scared because they’ve all gotten the mark.
Then I’ll come out and they’ll be even more scared.
Until I take off the mask.” He was talking fast, his words slurred.
“Tell them it’s over. It’s all just pretend—there is no true knackerman.
That we need to lay the stories to rest along with his bones—take them out of that ridiculous altar and bury them. ” He dug faster, mumbling to himself.
Mini felt scared deep down. Willy’s plan wasn’t really a plan at all.
And what scared her most was the idea that there were others. Others who’d played the knackerman. Others who knew. People she’d sat next to in church maybe. People who’d taught her in school, given her lollipops at the store and bank, smiled and told her she was just as pretty as her mama.
It was almost worse than there being an actual knackerman: this idea that the knackerman was a group of people, the whole town really, because there were the people who played him and those who helped them, then there was the rest of the town, who went along with it, kept the stories alive.
“We’re all the knackerman,” Mini said, things clicking into place. Usually, when Mini understood something, really and truly got it, she felt elated, satisfied. But not now. Now she felt sparks of dread kindled deep inside her, a small and dangerous fire that would continue to grow.
“I’m sorry,” Willy said, still digging. “So, so sorry. Please, Anna, forgive me.”
“Mr. Willy?”
He looked up at her, his eyes two dark sockets that seemed to go on forever.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know she was in the building.
They told me to light the fire. To put on the costume and burn the town hall.
Had to get rid of the records, the old archives, before any more outsiders came and saw them. ”
Mini reeled, feeling dizzy, nearly falling into the hole as the realization hit her.
It couldn’t be true. It was awful, too awful to think of.
Willy turned away from her. “She was supposed to be at home. She told me she’d stay home.”
Mini’s legs felt like spaghetti. She dropped to her knees beside the open grave.
“I tried to save her. But I was wearing the costume, and she ran from me. I called to her, but she ran right into the fire.”
Mini made a little gasping sound as all the air left her. She felt lightheaded, empty, like a deflated balloon.
“I’m sorry,” Willy whimpered, shoulders shaking, crying now.
Then he let out an angry, knackerman roar, drove the shovel down hard again, and stopped, looking down.
He’d hit something.
He scraped away dirt with the shovel, then bent over, brushing at it with his gloved hands. There was nothing down there, Mini knew. The knackerman’s remains were in the church.
So what had Willy found?
Willy jumped back, scrabbled and pulled himself out of the grave.
Mini aimed the beam of her flashlight down into the hole and saw what Willy had uncovered.
She let out a high-pitched, frantic scream, dropping the flashlight.
“Shh, Mini,” he said, wrapping his arms in the heavy leather coat around her, rocking her. “Close your eyes,” he told her. “Don’t look.”