Page 3 of The Executioners Three
The Fête du Bûcheron was in a little over two weeks, and that meant every inch of City-on-the-Berme Village Historique had to be ready for a shindig the locals took Very Seriously Indeed. Every year, the Village was open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Then, the Village reopened its gates one extra day for the locals to celebrate Halloween.
Not only was it a big fundraiser for the Village, but it was alsotheevent of the year for a town that was as insular as it was festive.
Which meant it was Freddie’s mom’s most important event of the year.
Freddie and a handful of volunteers had already spent the last two weeks helping Mom deck everything in jack-o’-lanterns, scarecrows, and an unseemly number of hay bales. La Maison Authentique du Bûcheron (the Authentic Lumberjack Homestead, which was neither authentic nora homestead) was now a haunted house, complete with skeletons, mirrors, and hiding places for her stepdad, Steve, in ghost makeup.
La Taverne now housed all the necessary accoutrements to sell heaps of hot apple cider and Mrs. Ferris’s famous jams, while La Marché d’Été (the summer market) was all ready for the jack-o’-lantern contest (whoever won that got to put a banner on their house for the entire year).
Lastly, two portable toilets had been tucked behind the tavern that didn’t actually sell alcohol. No French placards for those. (Port-A-Potty,it would seem, was not worth translating.)
Freddie sighed toward her best friend, Divya, who leaned at the school’s red clapboard entrance with all the cool poise of a runway model. The fall wind had picked up outside, lifting leaves and adding a lovely autumn glow to Divya’s amber skin. It also made Divya shiver while she frantically played Snake on her Nokia.
“It just seems,” Divya said now without looking up, “like a really hard mistake to make, Fred. I mean, surely you know what a bunch of rich kids drinking sounds like.”
“Not really,” Freddie admitted. “It’s not likeI’veever been to a party. Have you?”
Divya flashed a laser glare—and a sound like digital snake death beeped out. “You know I haven’t. Unless you count our book club meet-ups with Abby and Tom. Those can get pretty rowdy sometimes.”
Freddie didn’t count those at all. A drunken teenage party was not the same thing as a spirited discussion of whatever novel Divya had insisted they read. (This month’s selection had beenThe Notebook,which Freddie had found a little too light on murder for her tastes.)
Freddie stabbed more forcefully at this nest of longlegs (or was it aswarm?) blocking her from the schoolhouse bell twelve feet above. She really couldn’t go up there until these were gone. With hair as wild and dark as hers, all those arachnids would get lost in a heartbeat.
Divya, meanwhile, slunk into the shadows of the school and notablydidn’toffer to help Freddie as she eased onto a bench. After all, it wasn’thermom who was head of the City-on-the-Berme Historical Society. And no matter how many times Freddie pointed out to Mom that it was illegal to force her daughter to prepare for the fête every year, Mom justlaughed and said, “Great. In that case, you can find somewhere else to live.”
Although, for all Freddie’s vocal complaints (she was very,veryvocal), she secretly loved volunteering here. City-on-the-Berme was her favorite place in the whole world. Part tourist attraction, with its only moderately accurate French logging settlement, and part outdoor center, with the county park trails winding through the forest next door—you couldn’t get more autumn creeptastic than this place.
Which was likely why the fête was always the biggest event of the year for locals.
And also why Mom always put so much pressure on Freddie to help.
Last night, however, things had gone awry. After Freddie had finished helping Mom with the hay bales, she’d left her scarf behind. And seeing as it was her favorite scarf (and therefore crucial for the completion of any fall outfit), she’d set out for the City-on-the-Berme Village Historique on Steve’s rickety bike after dinner.
Freddie never made it to the Village—or found her scarf, for that matter. The trail had been dangerously foggy, her headlamp bouncing beams everywhere, and there’d been an awful stench like dead animals in the air. So strong, so overwhelming, that Freddie had actually thought she might gag.
It had forced her to stop her bike just so she could cover her mouth and try to breathe. The fog definitely hadn’t helped. Freddie’d had the horrifying sense it was alive and trying to climb inside her.
Then a bell had tolled from somewhere in the trees, even though there was only the one bell in City-on-the-Berme (currently over Freddie’s head) and it had no clapper so itcouldn’tring.
Freddie had not liked that sound. Nor the way she’d suddenly felt the fog tighten as if solid around her throat.
So the instant she had heard frantic shrieking from the woods nearby, she’d needed no urging whatsoever to turn around and pedal straight home again.
She had seen enoughX-Filesand read enoughGoosebumps,thank you very much, to know how this sort of story would end.
Once home, she’d called the cops. Unfortunately, instead of finding a Person in Distress Being Slowly Dismembered in the old logging forests ofCity-on-the-Berme, Sheriff Bowman had found an unauthorized bonfire and a lot of underage drinking.
Divya kicked her legs onto the bench in front of her. “Look, Fred, I’llgrudginglyaccept that neither of us knows much about parties or partying or anything associated with the verb ‘to party,’ but surely you can tell the difference between someone screaming bloody murder and someone screaming for more beer.”
“Can I, though?” Freddie asked. “Because it sounded like bloody murder to me. I mean, glass containers aren’t even allowed in City-on-the-Berme, Div.”
“Pretty sure the Fortin kids don’t care about that part. They’re also under twenty-one.” Divya gave a low whistle. “Oh boy, I hope they don’t know that it was you who called the cops on them.”
Freddie’s stomach flipped. She hadn’t thought of that. “How could they possibly know?”
Divya shrugged. “Dunno. But it’s a small town. People talk.”
Freddie winced. That phrase—It’s a small town, people talk—might as well have been the town motto for Berm, population 1,321. There were more deer here than people, and if the deer could talk, they probably would too.
