The bird screamed in pain, and Matt could feel his eardrum explode under the pressure. But he didn't back away. He threw all his weight against the axe handle, felt it push through the foul jelly that had been an eye. The crow screeched again, but less loudly now. Matt fell forward on the axe handle and heard a crack as the head snapped the thin bones around the eye and plunged into its brain.
The hell crow spasmed violently, then fell over. Matt was nearly pulled off his feet as he held on to the axe handle. He gave it a yank and the blade came free, dripping blood and brains and optic fluid.
Matt leaned on the axe, gasping for breath.
And then heard another sound behind him.
The sound of hands clapping gently together.
Matt whirled around, expect to see Orfamay at the head of a Vetch army.
There was only one man standing there. He had the cocky grin and jaunty posture of a basic cable game show host. He wore a loud checked jacket with plaid golf pants. A lollipop dangled from his mouth.
"Bye bye birdie," Mr. Dark said. "A ten year-old with a BB gun couldn't have done better."
"You brought me here," Matt said, his hand clutching the axe handle.
"As I recall, it was a lawnmower engine on bicycle body that brought you here," Mr. Dark said. "Pity about your bike. You looked so heroic puttering along on it."
"And if someone else had come down the highway, would that exit have been there for them?" Matt said.
"That's a good question," Mr. Dark said. "If there's an exit and no one takes it, does it really exist? If you try to find your way out of Heaven, will it still be there?"
"You can't keep me here," Matt said.
"Of course not," Mr. Dark said. "I wouldn't dream of trying. After all, you're the big hero. Rode into town on his trusty steed, killed the monster and saved the day. I wouldn't dare mess with Sir Galahad. Even if the big bad dragon looks a lot more like a puppy."
Matt didn't want to look back. This was probably just one of Mr. Dark's tricks. But his eyes betrayed him, casting a glance toward the carcass of the creature he'd killed.
It lay sprawled on the ground like a deflated balloon, ragged feathers spilling off and revealing a layer of black felt underneath. Matt couldn't stop his hand from reaching down and touching the cloth. It crumbled at his touch. Underneath he could see a flash of pink.
Matt tore at the decaying cloth, pulling away fistfuls of feathers, scraping his fingers against a rusty zipper. It couldn't be. The bird had been real. It had nearly killed him. He had killed it.
But there was no way to deny what he was seeing, feeling. The thing he had killed was a costume, badly constructed and sloppily sewn. He ripped open a seam and saw the truth of what he had killed.
It was the girl. The one he'd saved at the barn. She lay lifeless on the ground, sightless eyes staring up at him. Blaming him.
"It's not possible," Matt said, backing away.
"That's what they said about putting chunks of cookie dough in ice cream, but just ask any fat girl what she eats when her date stands her up," Mr. Dark said cheerily.
"It's a trick," Matt said, clutching the axe tightly. "I didn't kill her!"
"You don't have any idea what you've done," Mr. Dark said. "Just pooted into town on your lawn mower and started swinging that axe. 'Cause that's what a hero does, right? Gotta say, my job's a lot easier when I've got heroes doing my work for me."
Mr. Dark chuckled and he reached down to stroke the dead girl's cheek.
"Don't touch her!" Matt shouted.
"Stop me, hero."
Matt lunged for Mr. Dark. Or tried to. His feet were planted in the ground; he couldn't lift his arms. He strained, but he was completely frozen. From somewhere he heard a girl's voice.
"Take this one back," the voice said. "Take him back to hell and send us what we need. Take him back and let him rot."
Mr. Dark flashed a happy grin. "I think that's for you. Bye now."
Matt strained to lift his axe hand, but it wouldn't move. Tried to scream but tongue, teeth, jaw were stone.
"Take him back, I beg you," the girl said. "I give you the gift of blood."
A blast of pain ran up Matt's chest. It felt like somebody was opening his chest with a butcher's knife, completing the Y incision the coroner had failed to finish the day he woke up on the slab.
The pain came again, and Matt's eyes flashed open on darkness.
Not in the woods. He was in Joan's house, lying on the couch he'd never left.
He tried to sit up.
Thin ropes held him in place. His arms and legs were tied to the sofa's legs.
There was a flicker of light. A candle. It dripped wax on his chest, burning him again.
Mouse stood over him. At first he thought she was dressed in red. Then he realized she was naked, her little girl's body just beginning to turn into a woman's. The red she was wearing, the red that covered her from her shoulders to her feet, was blood.
"Take him back to hell," Mouse said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mouse walked slowly around the couch three times, holding the candle steady except when she would let it drip burning wax down on him. As she passed him, he could see that her body wasn't a child's at all. Her breasts were still unformed and her pubes bare, but her arms and legs were cabled with muscles. How many years, how many decades had she been trapped in the shape of a little girl?
Matt struggled to move, but the ropes held him tightly. Some hero , he thought. Tied up while I'm sleeping, and I don't even notice. Except that maybe it wasn't all her doing. Mr. Dark had been in his dream; maybe he had kept Matt unconscious long enough for the girl to get the ropes on him.
"Mouse, what are you doing?" he gasped as a bead of wax scalded his skin.
"Sending you back." Her voice was hard and cold; the girl was gone from it. She sounded as old and weathered as Orfamay.
"You don't have to send me anywhere," Matt said. "All I've wanted since I got here was to get out."
"I summoned you here just like I summoned her," Mouse said, continuing to circle the couch. "And you ruined everything. I have to get rid of you and get a real lawgiver."
It took him a moment to realize what she was saying. "You brought Joan here?"
"I called her and she came," Mouse said. "The book told me how." She stopped by a table where an ancient volume sat. It was bound in something that looked like leather.
"You brought that monster here," Matt said. "You inflicted all that pain. And now you want to inflict more."
"You don't know anything."
After what he'd seen at the Grange, Matt thought he did. "Constant war between the families. You said your parents died before Joan came. Killed by Vetches?"
"Killed by Vetches because they'd killed Runcibles who had killed Hogginses who had killed Vetches," Mouse said. "Vern and Cal wanted to get revenge, and they would have done it. Then someone was going to get revenge on them. And it was going to keep going until there was no one left. I found the book my grandmother hid away in her root cellar and I figured out how to summon the lawgiver. And we didn't have any fighting anymore."
"And the price?"
"We all paid," Mouse said. "I did, too. When she fed, it hurt so bad. But when she was done you were still alive, and so was your family. And she only fed off the ones who made trouble. You just had to learn not to make trouble. That wasn't so hard, was it? That wasn't so bad."
Matt thought he saw something behind her words – guilt maybe. Every time that Joan thing took away one of the townspeople for a feeding, it had been her fault. And in that guilt Matt found a glimmer of hope.
"If it worked so well, why summon me to kill her?"
"It was for Cal," she said, and this time Matt was certain he saw a flash of the little girl she'd seemed to be when they met. "He was all sweet on that Vetch whore. Mixing like that, if Joan found out that was a lifetime of pain. But he wanted her so bad. Kept telling me he loved her and she loved him. Then you saw. She said he raped her and they killed him."