Page 32 of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow
“Yeah, come on, it’s not like she’s ever done anything insane, Wyatt,” I add, fighting to keep my expression neutral.
He cruises the truck to a stop sign and then presses his forehead into the steering wheel as if we’ve defeated him entirely. “I can handle one of you,” he says, his gaze fixedstraight ahead. “Not both of you. Not with everything else going on.”
“I thought you were a stronger man than that.” Fallon sniffs, scratching Fern’s ears in a precise spot that makes the big dog thump her foot happily.
“A weaker man,” Wyatt mutters, turning off the road onto a familiar drive, “would’ve throttled you both by now. You slapped somebody right on Main Street, Alice. And Fallon, you had her by her goddamnhair. In the middle of the damn day.”
“She deserved it!” Fallon and I shout at the same time. Fern apparently agrees, because she throws her head back and howls. All of us—even Wyatt—dissolve into laughter. We fall into a comfortable silence, Fallon’s shoulder pressed into mine, Fern’s legs splayed across my lap as she settles in for the ride.
I lean my head against the window, feeling better thanks to the burrito and the fact that I’ll get to let my parents know I’m alive. If they don’t hear from me, they might contact the university, and I just don’t feel like explaining it all to them right now. I mean—I don’t know how to explainanyof it to them. I guess I’ll tell them I’m safe, taking a weekend trip with some friends. I don’t have any friends besides the people (and dog) in this truck, but they might be so happy at the prospect I’ve made some that they’ll buy the rest of it.
The cab of the truck is still warm from sitting in the sun next to the town hall, so I crank a window down. Wyatt’s catching Fallon up on everything we did this morning, and my attention wanders. I stare out the window, appreciating the beauty unfolding all around me.
A copse of silver birches catches my attention, and I take them in with delight as we draw closer. The meager sunlight that manages to pierce the thick tree canopy coats the slim, pretty trees like molasses, turning them into bronze sculptures. Except for one, I think—it’s a strange hue of spring-green, moving insome unseen breeze. I open my mouth to point it out, but then a horrible stench overtakes my senses, and I retch.
“What in the fuck?” Fallon asks just before Wyatt slams on the brakes. My head glances off the truck’s frame—that’s what I get for hanging out the window like a damn dog, I guess. I blink, trying to get my bearings, and then I realize the movement I see up ahead isn’t just the mist.
It’s a sleek black creature, all taut muscle and long limbs, utterly otherworldly. I lean forward onto the dash, peering closer. My brain protests what I’m seeing, trying to convince me the pitch-colored hound doesn’t have its jaws unhinged at an impossible, snake-like angle.
“Shh,” Wyatt hushes when Fern lets out a quiet whine.
Fallon comes to life all at once, reaching over me to pull a pistol out of the glovebox. The creature takes no notice of us, shaking its head violently before tearing a limb from its victim.
Biting down my tongue, I force myself to look closer through the writhing fog. For a moment, I’m terrified it’s a person, but then I understand it’s only vaguely humanoid. It’s a little smaller than me, I think, and its skin is an impossible gray hue, patchy and scarred. A bright slash of red catches my attention, and I squint, academic curiosity overcoming any sort of self-preservation or disgust.
A decapitated head lolls on the dirt road. Its features are almost human, but not quite. Its eyes are open corpse-wide, the pupils and irises an impossible black. Pointed ears knife through stringy hair. On its head is a red hat, made of a strange fabric.
Oh. Not fabric, I realize, the nausea rising up my throat now.Skin. “A redcap,” I breathe.
“I’ll be damned,” Fallon murmurs.
“I am begging you,” Wyatt pleads in a barely-there whisper. “Shut.Up.”
The dirt road is damp with dew and viscera, a trail of red-black blood trickling down into the grass like run-off during a summer storm. The feasting creature—it’s a hellhound, I realize all at once—pays us no mind, biting into the redcap’s head. Gore bursts forth like fountain, gray brain matter dribbling down the hellhound’s chin.
Its maw isn’t any kind of canine mouth. Instead, its entire jaw is lined with razor-sharp teeth, and the way it moves iswrong. Or at least my brain tells me—screams at me—that it’s wrong, wrong,wrong. My entire body buzzes, and my heart thrashes like a living thing caged by my ribs. Distantly, I realize I’ve never felt flight or fight quite like this before, as if there’s always been a bottomless well of primal fear inside me waiting for the right moment to activate.
The hellhound finishes off the redcap’s head and then fastens its teeth around a torn-off limb—an arm, maybe? All at once, it straightens and turns toward the truck, its eyes gleaming like a predator’s in the dark, even though daylight still leaks through the treetops. I notice an interruption in its sleek, black coat—a white scar on its shoulder, like a half-moon, almost. And then it’s gone. Not the way a dog runs away, bounding off into a field. The hellhound is there, and then it just melts away, leaving nothing more than a smear of gore on the abandoned dirt road.
All four of us breathe out in a collective exhale. As the adrenaline fades, the stench overpowers me and I retch again, reaching over to crank the window back up.
“Shouldn’t be any redcaps this close to town,” Fallon says, an edge in her voice.
“No,” Wyatt agrees, beginning to slowly inch the truck forward. “No, there damn well shouldn’t be.”
The first thingI do in the yard of Caden Hayes’s surprisingly cute cottage is vomit.
“Well,” Wyatt says as he kneels beside me, “least it’s not in my truck.” I would probably laugh at his dry tone were I not puking my guts up, trying to avoid the potted mums and the porch steps.
Fingertips brush the nape of my neck—Wyatt’s, I realize, as he gathers my hair back. Despite the nausea, despite the fact I’m literally on my fucking knees in damp grass, dry-heaving on a stranger’s lawn, something bright and warm flutters beneath my breastbone.
More contradictory feelings flood my body as I lurch forward again and throw up whatever was left of my poor, beautiful burrito. A hand ghosts up and down my back in a comforting stroke. I want to melt into it, intohim, but I’m preoccupied at the moment. And it’s so stupid, I know, but I hope he’s not judging me for tossing my breakfast at my first sight of Them.
I rock back on my heels and shiver. It’s way colder up in the hills, particularly with this weird, midday mist. Wyatt stays next to me, reaching into his coat pocket for a square of fabric. It’s Black Watch plaid, I think, forever unable to turn my brain off, as he offers it to me.
“Oh my god,” I say in a strained voice. “You carry around a fucking handkerchief.”
“Do you want to wipe your mouth off or not?” he demands, one eyebrow arching.
