Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
Winnie, 9:25 P.M.
Will be late 2nite
Visiting twins
Francesca Wednesday, 9:25 P.M.
Okay, Winnebago. Thanks for letting me know.
When the safari group returns to the Monday estate, fireworks are about to begin over the Little Lake. Everyone exits the bus, except Winnie, who holds her seat and pretends to focus really hard on her phone.
Dusk has blossomed into night, as have lanterns strung across the parking lot. They emit a brown-tinted glow, each one marked by the outline of a scroll for the Monday clan, and beneath which are names too small to read from here. Too small, even, to read from the pavement beneath each lantern.
But everyone knows what names are on there: Monday hunters lost to the forest.
Winnie digs her locket from her hoodie. The message within hasn’t changed; it still reads Museum, 11 P.M. tonight . So she slides her Monday schedule, folded into quarters, from her back pocket. Next, Winnie retrieves a pencil. It’s just a short yellow one from a supply Mario had for the tourists who wanted to keep notes during the safari. The tip is too soft against her leg; the marks left behind on the page are clumsy. But that’s fine. She isn’t going to draw tonight. She is simply going to think. Then she’ll shred up this paper and toss it into the nearest bin.
What I know:
1. Four years ago:
· Dad went missing and was framed as a Diana
· Grayson drove a hummer off the bridge during his second trial
· Jenna died on her second trial after vampira typically consume the top halves of bodies NO
2. Dad’s map led me to:
· Jenna’s empty dampener in the stream where Grayson died
· A granite hole in the forest stained with blood
3. Mom knows more than she can say about Dad, but she is under a spell
4. I am also in the forests surrounding the Earth’s oldest spirits NO NO NO
5. Erica can maybe help with #3 and #4
6. Tuesdays are in cahoots with from afar, they appear as gnarled, elderly women
7. Jay is a werewolf, and it’s getting worse
· His father might have been
Winnie stops writing here. Her lungs swelling with an inhale. It’s not relevant , she tells herself . Jay’s father isn’t relevant to your list, and Mario’s theory probably isn’t right anyway. So you can stop writing now. You don’t have to finish the sentence.
She doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead—and with a firm leash on any wayward ghosts—Winnie starts a second list.
What I don’t know:
1. What my locket does
· If three stars means MESSAGE, was I supposed to use it for contacting Dad all along?
· Why did Grandma Harriet have the locket—or did she really?
2. What S. hid in his office
· Is the telescope important or not?
3. Why Jenna created the in Norway, revenants are called draugr
· Why Jenna went on her second trial
4. What Mom knows and what happened four years ago
5. If any of Mario’s theories about Jay are true
· How Jay got a wolf’s jawbone under his pillow
6. WHO AM I MEETING AT THE OLD MUSEUM????
Technically this second list is shorter than the first, but that fact coaxes no triumph from Winnie’s chest. Instead, her eyes dart from wolf’s jawbone to MEETING AT THE OLD MUSEUM to What Mom knows. Back, forth. Up, down. A quick glance at telescope important or not? Then it’s back to wolf’s jawbone. Back to MEETING AT THE OLD MUSEUM.
Winnie hears her breathing pick up speed. She sees her pencil start shaking against her thigh. And she knows what’s coming next—except this time, it’s not only ghosts unleashing. It’s also the overwhelming sense that she is up against more than she can handle. That her Don’t Know list is too long and there is too much for her to reckon with inside of Hemlock Falls.
Because the Crow isn’t the only bad guy out there, is she? There are other Dianas too, and there’s the Whisperer, churning through trees and nightmares and people as easily as Winnie will soon tear through this paper…
And oh god, now that Winnie considers it, if Jenna created the Whisperer and the Whisperer killed Grayson, does that mean Jenna killed Grayson? The boy she loved? Somehow, that is almost as awful as learning there’s a chance Jay’s father was the werewolf who slaughtered people seventeen years ago. There’s no escaping tragedy in Hemlock Falls. Death really is a part of life, and the forest really does break everything.
Wolf’s jawbone.
MEETING AT THE OLD MUSEUM.
What Mom knows.
Telescope important or not?
Winnie drops the pencil. She doesn’t hear it clatter to the bus floor. Doesn’t hear it roll, or feel when it bumps against her boot. She leans forward until her forehead hits the back of the seat in front of her. Her glasses press into her brow. Her eyelids close, pinch, squeeze until she sees shooting stars. Shooting stars like the ones Samuel used to observe through his telescope .
No, Winnie can’t think of Samuel either. She can’t think of the other dead Diana, totally unknown, left smoking on the forest floor. She can’t think of the lanterns bobbing outside, with the hundreds of Monday names lost over the century. And above all, Winnie can’t think about Dad.
Because what if it’s not him at the old museum tonight? What if he’s also dead and gone forever just like everyone else on her list? Like Grayson, like Jenna, like both Jay’s father and mother? And what will Winnie do if all her sleuthing and searching leads her to absolutely nothing but a famēs spell with no end?
Winnie tastes cherries in her mouth. She feels like the bus is moving, though it’s not. She wishes Jay were here to wrap her in his hoodie. She wishes Aunt Rachel were here to give her water. Hell, Winnie would even take Ms. Morgan right now, just to hear the lady say, I’m always on your side.
A whistle sounds outside. Then a crackle like bubble wrap. Then a thunderous boom that means the fireworks have begun.
For several seconds, Winnie lets the noise hammer into her. It’s a battlefield. A thunderstorm. She feels the light off the fireworks, even though she knows her eyes are shut too tightly to see them.
The human eye can detect a single photon of light.
She can’t remember where she learned that fact, but she does remember being flabbergasted. A photon of light is the smallest packet of electromagnetic energy in existence. It’s not a particle, it’s not a wave. It has no mass, no diameter. It is one dimension of energy, momentum, and angle.
Yet the human eye can detect it. A single photon traveling along a line at the speed of 299,792,458 meters per second—the human eye can sense when it’s there.
Winnie wets her lips and pushes backward until her vertebrae, sacrum, and skull can rest against the bus seat. The fireworks blast and zoom outside in a boisterous display of defiance. You cannot snuff us out tonight.
She wonders if the nightmares see the lights and hear the noise. If they gaze in awe or cower in fear. She wonders too what the hunters must think; is it a distraction? Or is it a reinforcement of the mission that propels them each night?
Above all, Winnie wonders what all this noise must do to the sleeping spirit at the bottom of the Big Lake. If such a noise cannot awaken it, then what in all the universe can?
The cherry taste recedes from Winnie’s mouth. She rises, her blue paper clutched in one hand, the pencil forgotten on the floor. Then with careful, contemplative steps, she exits the bus. The night outside is warmer than she expects. The fireworks are louder, their colors brighter. Luminaries trickle into the parking lot, exiting the after-party to watch the glittering show.
Winnie spots Dryden, fireworks reflecting colors on his pince-nez. And oh, there’s Darian snuggled close with Andrew. Good. Everyone smiles—even Marcia, whose face wears an unfamiliar serenity as she leans against Antonio. She looks less like his Antonio-nym (as Winnie and Erica used to joke) and more like a partner very much in love. A wife, a mother, a councilor just doing what she can for Hemlock Falls.
For several seconds, Winnie feels wholly suspended in time, in place. Her teeth feel no urge to click. Her breaths come steady and full. There’s no panic, nor onslaught of ghosts.
Instead, she thinks of the oceanic bathypelagic zone, where the water is so deep, not even a single photon can penetrate. Where the pressure is so intense, few creatures can survive. And yet, life still goes on there at the pure heart of the ocean. The fish and squid and microbes manage to see and find each other.
Because they create their own light.
“Ah,” Winnie sighs, and her skeleton softens within its fascial suspension. All this time, when she thought the lights of Hemlock Falls were lying to her—they weren’t, were they? They were never swamp fires pretending to be fairies, but instead bioluminescence inside the ocean.
Winnie twists again toward the Little Lake and the fireworks. A breeze coils against her, coming not from the forest, but from the east with smells like funnel cake and gasoline. Like gunpowder and cotton candy. Beyond the boats wobbling as they launch fireworks, the full moon of the Ferris wheel spins. Aspire to become me, it says to the waning gibbous in the sky.
The last time a waning gibbous hung, Winnie was beginning her first trial. She was an outcast. She was alone. Now here she is, one month later, literally surrounded by other people.
In a finale of color and chaos and joy, the last fireworks launch into the night. The cheers from nearby Luminaries build, competing in Winnie’s brain for acknowledgment, and she finds she’s holding her locket in a fist she doesn’t recall making.
Number of people depending on Winnie a month ago? Two.
Number of people depending on Winnie now? Thousands.
Her phone vibrates in her pocket. She doesn’t check it. Instead, she turns away from the Little Lake and sets off toward the family Volvo. She feels taller; she feels fuller; and she realizes this must be what Aunt Rachel meant when she talked about exorcising versus compartmentalizing. It’s what Ms. Morgan meant too, when she talked about eating the pizza.
Winnie might have ghosts to haunt her—some of which aren’t even her own—hovering like all these stamped lanterns bobbing on the breeze. But right now, at this particular moment, Winnie can’t look at the lanterns. She can’t listen to the ghosts.
Because the human eye can detect a single photon of light.
And that light is what she needs to be following.
As Winnie walks, as she methodically shreds her blue paper —rip, rip, rip —a feathery hope fills her ribcage. And far to the north, a will-o’-wisp watches the same fireworks, its own pure light shining into the trees.