Лайза Макманн - Cryer's Cross

A cold wind slaps her face and she can smell snow. The wind is a shock to her system, almost enough to make her brain kick into worry drive. Something nags at her, walking so freely, alone, like she’s not supposed to be doing this, but she pushes the thought aside. She is going to save Nico now. This is her purpose. She says it under her breath as she walks, heel to toe, heel to toe. “Going to save Nico now.

Going to save Nico now.” Her eyes are on her boots as she trudges and trips in the dark.

Yet she walks determinedly through the field, staying off the road so she’s not discovered. Tell no one.

Twenty minutes later she lifts open the cellar door in the gravel behind the school. She steps down onto cracked concrete, her hair brushing low-hanging cobwebs, and walks past the storage room, where giant looming shadows of extra, unused desks taunt her. She climbs the interior steps that lead back up to the main level, and enters the classroom. She wipes a web from her face and stops in front of Nico’s desk.

She shivers uncontrollably in her nightgown. For a split second she hesitates, her brain suddenly whirring about the time when she broke down while playing soccer with Jacián, after the last time she sat at Nico’s desk. What if she’s making a mistake?

“No!” she shouts in the dark room, shoving the memory aside. She has to save Nico — she has to. She brushes her fingers over the desk, teasingly, around the space where the graffiti changes, before she places her hand over it, absorbing its medicine. In the dark she can’t read what it says, but the whispers tell her everything.

Harsh and wild, full of venom, the voice demands. The graffiti sears, electrocutes her fingers.

Find me before they kill me!

Deep in the woods beyond Cryer’s Pass.

Hurry! Save my soul!

Kendall gasps and whips her hand away, her fingers still burning. “Nico,” she says to the harsh voice, “why are you talking to me like that?”

But there is no answer.

And he is in danger.

Kendall knows she must go.

She stumbles back downstairs, out the cellar door, and down the road. All of Cryer’s Cross is asleep.

Her nightgown whips around her body, the wind piercing through the thin fabric. Her feet are cold, bare inside her boots, and she begins to run, guided by newfound instinct, the voice inside her buzzing approval. She holds her bag of tools close to her chest. When she passes Hector’s ranch, she turns to cut the corner, out of sight of his house, and then she heads down the path she took on horseback with

Jacián. She follows the path for a short way until it branches, and then she takes the other branch and runs, runs as fast as she can, stumbling, teeth chattering, skin burning and itching from the wind. Her legs ache, unaccustomed to running in her boots.

After what seems like an hour at a solid jog, Kendall reaches Cryer’s Pass, a road for quads and horses that winds up the ridge. Her side aches. Instead of taking the pass, she turns abruptly into the woods, still running, jumping over bushes and roots and vines until she trips and goes sprawling, landing on her bag. The hedge clippers pierce through the canvas and gouge a hole in her upper arm. She sits a moment, stunned, catching her breath, but there’s no time to look at it, no time to stop the bleeding.

Kendall gets back to her feet and staggers through the woods. “Nico!” she shouts. “Nico, where are you?”

She starts to run again, but soon running becomes impossible, so she presses on slowly, awkwardly, painfully, through brush and forest so thick that she nearly has to climb trees and swing from vines to get through. “Nico!” she screams. The voice in her head grows stronger. Find me before he kills me! Thirtyfive, one hundred!

Her legs and arms sting from scratches. She stumbles and catches herself, weak from not eating, strong from the voices that possess her. When she can go no farther, she pulls the clippers from the bag and starts tearing at ivy and branches, clipping and pulling them out of her way. She finds a spot that gives way. Squeezes and chops and pushes and clamps the clippers together until they clang against something metal. “Nico!” she screams. “Nico!”

The heat, the life. Thirty-five, one hundred. Your heartbeat pounds in Our ears. “Come now!” We cry out, a piece of Us within you now. This victim, the most troublesome. Here. Now. Ready to redeem, release another lost soul. Thirty-five?

No.

ONE HUNDRED.

She stumbles as she tries to slide through the slit she made in the ivy and vines between rusted iron rungs. She makes it through, finally, and scrambles to her feet, looking around in the eerie night glow.

There are fewer trees here. Smaller ones. And it’s not quite so overgrown. With the light of a halfmoon, Kendall makes out a large crumbling building away to her left, and a small broken-down shack nearer to her. She pulls out her flashlight and shines it around. She’s in a sort of courtyard, but it’s completely sealed off, even from the buildings, by an iron fence. Fog pockets rest in the valleys just beyond the yard. A bird squawks and settles. She hears the creaking of the trees, the rustling of other animals.

To the right, two dozen white markers stand in the ground. Kendall staggers, feeling herself being pulled toward them by the power of the voice inside her. She resists at first, confused, but then her body jerks into obedience. Her legs are heavy. She drags herself drunkenly across the dirt and brush.

The voice commands her. “Start digging,” she whispers, startled, echoing it. “Start digging? Where?

Where?” She pulls the shovel from her bag, and it leads her to the middle of the courtyard, where the crosses stand. “Nico!” she screams. “Where are you?” She has lost all control of her body. She pushes twigs and leaves aside with her boots, clearing a space.

Then she lifts the shovel and slams the point of it into the dirt in front of one of the markers. Her cold hands ache from the impact ricocheting off her bones, it seems, but she lifts and slams again, breaking the ground, beginning to dig, unable to stop herself. She piles the dirt carefully next to the hole and strikes again.

After a few minutes her punctured arm really hurts. Her hands shake. “Nico!” she calls out again. Her voice rings out, unanswered. She starts crying now, and screams louder for him, over and over as she piles the dirt high. Her back aches. She shivers, teeth rattling, and plunges the shovel into the hard dirt again. Again. Again.

When she hits bone, scooping a piece out with her shovel, she knows she has dug far enough. She knows now what she has to do, what the voice is forcing her to do in order to save Nico. She falls to her knees, hoarse but still screaming out his name. “I’m here to save you!” she cries. “Nico, help me!”

She sits down in the shallow grave she just dug. Reaches for the piles of dirt, drawing her arms around them and pulling them over her. Covering her feet and legs.

She watches herself in horror. Part of her can’t believe she’s doing it, and part of her can’t get it done fast enough.

She is burying herself alive.

And she can’t stop.

Slowly and methodically, simultaneously horrified and glorified by the process, she covers her body with dirt. She begins to chant. “Help me. Save my soul. Help me. Save my soul.” Her chants turn to cries as she covers her thighs, her midsection. The dirt insulates her, warms her. Calms her shaking, but not her cries. She lies back and covers her chest. Her neck. She screams for Nico. Screams until her voice becomes muffled by the layer of dirt she pushes over her own face. All that remains aboveground is her hand.