Page 116 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
The nekker keeps tramping toward the sheriff. Smits backs up faster, half trips over a piece of driftwood and then whirls to run. The nekker lunges. He catches Smits by the back of the shirt, but the sheriff yanks free and gets two running steps before the legless nekker catches his foot.
Smits pitches face-first in the water. The tall nekker falls on him, biting his shoulder. Smits screams and punches and kicks, but the others swarm over him.
I want to look away.
I do not look away. I set them on Smits, and whatever he has done, I must watch whatIhave done. Understand what I have done and will never do again.
The nekkers rip into him, taking mouthfuls of flesh, blood spraying, Smits screaming. They don’t tear him apart. They don’t devour him. They only bite and rip and taste. And then, as the sheriff screams and thrashes, the tall nekker grabs Smits by the hair and drags him into the lake and the others follow, ready to catch Smits if he escapes.
He does not escape.
The nekker walks deeper into the lake, dragging Smits, until the water closes over both of them.
I still stand there, watching, in case Smits comes back, in case I need to defend Ben.
Silence falls. Something moves beside me, clammy flesh touching my bare arm, and I look to see the horse there, Bram holding his head to look out at the lake. Guarding me and watching.
I grab Ben under the armpits and haul him farther onto the beach. I’m dropping beside him when I see another figure, and I startle.
It’s one of the nekkers, still half out of the water, farther down. As it comes my way, the horse shifts, as if in warning, but it doesn’t move. The figure keeps coming, and my throat seizes as I make out the form of my aunt.
“Gail,” I whisper.
I leave Ben and walk toward her. She comes until the water is up to her knees, and then she stands there, swaying as she watches me. I force myself closer, taking in the whole of her, the gray and bloated skin, the ragged holes in her flesh that I now know are bites from the nekkers claiming her as their own.
Her one remaining eye is growing, turning dark and liquid like a seal’s. It fixes on me, but loosely, not fully focused. She continues to sway, her expression placid and empty, with only the slightest hint of confusion. As if she’s seeing someone she vaguely remembers but feels no inclination to identify. Just the vaguest sense of “I know you, don’t I?”
Smits said the nekkers lose their consciousness, and I think hewasright in this. Austin had targeted me, but it seemed like vestigial hate,something animal and instinctive. That first time, Gail had called for me, asked for help, her faculties already fading and terror taking over. Looking at her now is like seeing my mother during her worst episodes, when I glimpse a future where my mother will no longer even mistake me for Gail, where she’ll only have the faintest sense that she knew me, once upon a time, but that it’s not important anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper as my eyes fill. “I should have made you stay behind.” A harsh and humorless bubble of a laugh. “Yes, I have no idea how I’d have done that, but I should have found a way. I shouldn’t have come myself, and then you’d have—” My throat constricts. “If I had any idea…”
Tears fall, hot on my cold skin.
“I wish I could set you free,” I say. “I wish I knew how to do that. All I can do is leave. I think that will help. If I’m gone, you can rest. You can all rest.”
She watches me vaguely for another moment, and then turns and trudges back into the lake, and the water rises higher and higher, until it closes over her head.
Thirty-Five
I’m on the shore with Ben. He’s alive but obviously drugged, and I can’t rouse him. I have my phone. I should call for help. But he’s breathing evenly and his heart beats strong, and I do not dare summon anyone out here. Not at night. I can’t take the chance that they will innocently incur the horseman’s wrath.
So I pull Ben as far as I can onto the shore, and I sit with him, keeping him warm, while ten feet away, the horseman stands watch, a silent sentinel at the lake’s edge.
It’s long past midnight when Ben finally stirs. He’s groggy for the next couple of hours, but whenever I suggest getting him to the hospital, he only mumbles that he’s fine, just let him sleep, and I do.
Even when he’s awake enough to stay conscious, he doesn’t want to go until I tell him what happened. I do that, under the horseman’s watchful eye, Ben glancing that way every now and then, as if checking that he’s really seeing what he’s seeing.
Telling him about Josie is the hardest part. He asks me to go through it twice, and he asks if there’s any way I could be wrong and she’s not…
Yes, she is, and we’re both silent after that, lost in quiet grief and rage at the senselessness of it.
When I’m done explaining, Ben comes up with a story for the police. I haven’t thought of that. Couldn’t think of it even after he mentioned it, and I can only shudder to imagine what I could have said if I’d actually called them before he woke.
Our story is as close to the truth as possible. Ben and Smits were in the forest. Smits injected Ben with something, and Ben lost consciousness without any hint of Smits’s motive. Then Smits took me looking for Ben and sent Josie away.
Suspicious, Josie hung around, and when she was sure she had reason for her misgivings, she confronted him. Smits threatened me, and she pulled out her gun. They fought. She died. Smits ran off into the forest, and I found Ben, and we hid along the shoreline all night, too terrified of Smits to call for help.
When dawn does come, it’s time for me to make that call, but Ben stops me.
