One moment he was there, and the next, it was only those silver eyes.
Staring and studying.
Watching us.
Watching me.
Then they too were gone, leaving me alone in the empty town. A breeze whispered through the branches, and swirled around me with a sharp, acrid bite.
It smelled like fire.
Like ashes and cinders.
“She loves a good blaze,” said a voice rising out of the darkness, a specter slithering forth from a tomb.
I turned to see Cyrus Danforth on the steps of the schoolhouse.
He blinked at me, eyes radiant with an otherworldly shine.
A glow of moonlight and madness.
Silver.
“You’re dead,” I whispered, my throat drying up and closing in on me.
This was a dream.
This was only a dream.
“You’re about to wake up,” I whispered to myself. “You’re about to wake up in bed, next to Merry. And Sadie. None of this is real.”
But he looked real.
The purpling bruises that circled his broken neck looked real.
And the handkerchief he held in his hand, dangling between his unusually long fingers, also looked very, very real.
“Have you forgotten about this?” he asked.
The little square of cotton fluttered in the wind, my three drops of blood standing out in stark relief.
“How did you get—that’s not yours!”
“Isn’t it?” He wrapped it around his pointer finger, turning it over and over. “Finders keepers, I suppose.”
The way the fabric wound round his finger was mesmerizing, beguiling. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried.
I did not try.
“Why…why do your fingers look like that?” My voice sounded as distant as a dream.
This was a dream.
Cyrus opened his mouth, but the laugh that came out was not his. It was high and light, seeped with feminine charm.
“Why, the better to beckon you with.”
She laughed again, this creature who was not Cyrus Danforth.
“I need you to do something for me, Ellerie Downing.”
“How do you know my name?”
I felt drugged, caught in a stupor where the world moved too slowly and the shadows grew too dark.
“I’ve been watching you. I’ve been watching you for a very long while.”
I blinked heavily, trying to clear my head, but the daze persisted, turning the world bleary.
For a flash of a moment, Cyrus morphed into something else—a slip of a figure sporting a white eyelet dress and dark curls.
I blinked again and saw only Rebecca’s father, so terribly, terribly dead.
“Why?”
“You’re special, don’t you know? So very special.”
I shook my head. “I’m not. I’m just—”
“I wasn’t finished,” she reprimanded, her fingers balling into quick fists.
Someone with such a lovely voice shouldn’t have fingers like that.
My thoughts listed, like wilting flowers. There was a strange presence within my mind, another entity warring for space.
“As I was saying…I need you to do something for me.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know who or what this thing was, but I wouldn’t go along with anything she suggested. The real Cyrus’s shouts from the Gallows echoed through my thoughts.
This Cyrus held up the handkerchief again. “I have your pledge. I hold your blood. And I need you to do this one small favor for me.”
In a flash, the figure skittered toward me, moving with such a ferocious speed, I felt sick. My eyes struggled, finding it impossible to focus on the new form the creature took. She was too close, pressed against me with an unrelenting insistence. I could only understand pieces of the whole. A brilliant smile. An arched brow. Misshapen knuckles, as bulging and bulbous as knots on a tree.
“What that drunk old bastard said was true,” she murmured, drawing one grotesque finger down my cheek. “I do love a blaze. The bigger, the better, I always say. If I could watch the entire world burn down, I would with a cheerful heart. So I need you to take this, Ellerie. I need you to take this and use it.”
She pressed something into the palm of my hand.
It was a match.
Such an unassuming little bit of wood and sulfur.
Thoroughly innocuous when dormant.
“Wake up, Ellerie,” I said to myself. This dream, this nightmare, was getting too strange, feeling too real.
“You need to take it and use it,” she instructed, closing my fingers around it.
“Wake up.”
“Take it and light it.”
“Wake up now.”
“I have your pledge, I have your blood, you must do as I say,” she hissed, pressing her lips close to my ear, her voice invading my mind. “Take it. Use it. Burn it all down.”
Against my will, my hands moved, acting of their own accord.
I swiped the match against the side of the schoolhouse, sparking it to life.
The flame flared brightly, a little flash lighting up the night, biting and burning.
The creature released a sigh, relief whistling through her rotting teeth.
Just as I dropped the match, letting it fall carelessly to the ground, I came to, startling awake with a gasp for air.
When I woke up, I was alone in the loft. Merry and Sadie must have let me sleep in, taking on my morning chores themselves.
For a moment, I allowed myself to sink back into bed, relishing the warmth of the quilts against the bitter cold. Frost covered the windows, but it reassured me.
It had been spring in my dream. In my nightmare.
Not like this.
This was real.
That was not.
Part of me longed to stay in bed, whiling away the morning in a dozy, dreamy nap. But there were things to do, and I couldn’t remain here while my sisters handled everything. With a groan, I kicked the blankets from me, hoisting my legs to the floor.
I paused, staring down at my feet, unable to comprehend what I saw.
Usually I bundled up in several layers of Papa’s wool socks to stave off the night’s chill, but the socks were gone now. My toes were darkened with a crust of dirt, as if I’d spent the night walking through the Falls with bare feet.