When her new friend appears, a low, lumbering shadow moving through the gardens toward the gazebo, Caitlin has to stifle a laugh. It’s as satisfying a moment as the gas station attendant’s terrified expression. Still, she gains control, reminds herself that she has work to do.
She grips the edge of the window frame, gazes down upon her intruder as he moves toward the gazebo, and tries to summon the same hatred, the same rage she felt when she watched her husband and his little slut rushing through the same garden.
The problem, though, is that the hate is nothing like she felt (feels) when she thinks about Troy and Jane. What has this man done to you? Really? I mean, except hop your fence and plant cameras in your yard? Does he really deserve the same fate as Troy?
These thoughts, and the cold fingers of regret they press against her strained heart, have distracted her from the silence outside. Indeed, she can only hear her own rasping breaths. No screams from the gazebo, and the guy’s still down on his knees, mimicking her earlier pose almost exactly, pulling up loose floorboards. The vines that slithered at just the hint of her touch, the vines she just fed for a second time, have not responded to her mental command.
She feels instantly, violently humbled, and is shocked to feel a hot sheen of tears in her eyes. But then a part of her leans into this feeling. She was moving too quickly. That’s it. She doesn’t even know who this man is, and she was so desperate to test the new powers available to her that she rushed into this with too much thoughtless hunger.
Magazines, she realizes suddenly, the word exploding in her mind like a bright flare. He’ll know it’s a trap now. I couldn’t think of anything better than magazines. And why should I have? I thought he’d be dead by now. Why isn’t it working? What’s different from last time? This new question reminds her of the one that glued her to the windowsill a few moments before: What has this man done to you? And as she turns that question over in her head, she can feel it shift just a bit, the emphasis changing. What has this man done to you?
A voice that sounds surprisingly like her dead husband’s answers.
Not enough, sweetheart. Apparently not enough.
In a few seconds, her strange hooded intruder will realize he walked into a trap. He will know that he is alone with a frail young woman who has been playing tricks with his mind. Vines or no vines, Caitlin cannot have this, cannot be thought of as weak any longer, and so now she is running—out of the room, down the stairs, and through the front door—gun raised in one hand as if it has the power to part the shadows before her.
She creeps up on him silently. “Take it off!”
The guy doesn’t move. He’s found something down in the vines, and for a delirious instant she thinks one of them has snagged him, but he isn’t struggling, he’s digging. The magazines she laid as a trap have been tossed aside onto the floorboards next to him. “Stop!” she yells again, and this time his hands go up, while he stands straight and backs up at the same time.
“Stop moving and take off the hood.”
Gone are the hot tears of embarrassment. She is proud of the authoritative tone of her voice, at least, if not the wobbly aim with which she holds the tiny pistol on her intruder’s back.
But he’s still backing up.
“I said stop mo—”
He spins and lunges at her in the same instant, his arms out. She sees the glint of something in his right hand and before she can process whether or not it’s a weapon, she fires, and in the muzzle flash she watches her husband’s blood-encrusted gold watch tumble from the intruder’s hand and fall to the earth at her feet.
Just like the man she has shot.
22
“He’s not here, Nova.” It’s the fifth time Blake has said it, but Nova keeps searching the little house as if her father might be cowering in the few inches between the wall and the back of the sofa or curled up inside the tiny kitchen pantry.
“Maybe he’s been and gone?” Blake offers.
But Nova just shakes her head and keeps up her futile search, and Blake is sure she isn’t as frightened for her father’s well-being as she is furious he broke his promise. Which might be the reason he’s not answering his phone, he thinks. After their conversation a few hours before and the events of the past twenty-four hours, everything seems possible, none of it good. Willie ignoring his daughter’s wrath is the best of the scenarios Blake can conjure.
On their way in, they bypassed the plantation house and its grounds, taking instead the gravel road right to Willie’s miniature house. Which means it’s not the only place left to look.
“Nova. His truck isn’t here. He’s not here.”
“Maybe he parked up at the main house?”
“Which he never does.”
“No… but if Caitlin asked him to, he would. Come on!”
A few moments later he’s running after her up the same path they took earlier that afternoon, only now the cane field belonging to the neighboring farm is a curtain of shifting shadows beside them, the sounds of its rustling stalks easily mistaken for the careful footfalls of a predator sizing up its prey.
Blake sees the gazebo first and reaches out a hand to stop Nova. The grounds are shadow-filled and so is the soaring plantation house. But the single lightbulb inside the gazebo is on, making it look like the tip of a boat dock on a dark, expansive lake. From this distance away, he can see some of the floorboards are missing, and what appear to be several magazines strewn across the dirt.
When he starts for the gazebo, Nova lets out a small sound of protest and reaches out a hand to stop him, but he takes it in his and starts leading them across the garden. She follows, silenced by his determination that they stick together. He can feel her trembling slightly through her hand.
“What the hell?” Nova whispers as they peer down through the gazebo’s missing floor. And Blake is surprised that despite her willingness to believe, Nova is more thunderstruck by the sight of the slick and impossibly large growths coiled below than he is. Maybe it’s some kind of denial mechanism, but Blake is fixated on the traces of recent human behavior all around them: the deliberately removed floorboards, the discarded red toolbox, the swirl of some sort of gold fabric wrapped up in the vine coil.
When Blake gets down onto his knees next to the hole, Nova hisses fiercely, grabbing for his shoulder, but he brushes her hand aside and braces himself against the edge of the opening with one hand while reaching down into the miniature pit with the other. As soon as his fingertips touch the strange band of gold, he can tell it’s made of fabric. The thick, slick vines barely protest as he pulls it free of their coil.
Nova goes silent, her hands rising to her mouth as Blake extracts the soaked and tattered necktie. He lifts it up toward the light overhead so they can both get a good look at it.
It feels to Blake as if the simple act of holding this discovery aloft is required to draw the implications of the scene before them into a coherent picture. The vines—if that’s what they are—are too thick and large and fresh-looking to have recently been disturbed by a human burial. And why would anyone just shove this once-shiny gold necktie down into their moist lair? And could a human hand have forced it to entwine with them so efficiently?
“Was this…?”
“He was wearing it last night,” Nova whispers through her fingers. “Troy. He was… That was his…”
The eruption of music from the main house and Nova’s scream seem to come in the same instant. The song now rattling the windows of the parlor is upbeat and cheerful, and Blake can’t process the jarring transition at first. It feels like he’s just rolled out of bed to find himself standing on a busy New York sidewalk. But the lyrics are familiar enough to send a spear of anxiety through his sternum.