“You got no poles,” he said. “You hiking?”
“How much?” I gave him my flat New York subway face, which worked not at all to shut him up.
“You heard about the killings up this way? A lot of them young folks, mostly hikers. I hope you’re not planning on staying out on the trails after dark.”
“No, sir.” Finch glanced at me. “She’s— I’ve got family up there.”
“Up in Nike?”
“Up in Birch.”
“You know about it, then.” Satisfied, the driver closed the door and accepted Finch’s cash. “Don’t want to drop any city idiots up there unawares. So long as you know what to watch out for.” He dropped change in Finch’s palm.
“Watch out for murderers?” I snapped, still feeling jangled. “Is that what we’re watching out for?”
The driver woofed a laugh through his nose and waved us past.
The ride was just under an hour, we’d been told. The old men sat in the back, like the cool kids in every grade school Ella had ever enrolled me in, and we took a seat near the front. Finch dropped into sleep almost the minute we sat down, or at least faked it. As soon as I was convinced he really was out, I dug out the feather, the comb, and the bone. They looked prosaic in daylight. Even the bone didn’t look much like a finger anymore. I shoved them deep into my jean pockets, feeling better as soon as they were out of sight. I settled back and rested my eyes on the trees, watching them roll out like a tapestry.
The bus radio played the kind of country songs you can sing along to even if you’ve never heard them. I hummed quietly, letting my head tip back onto the seat’s sticky vinyl. A slow song came on, an echoing fifties crooner that made me think of dead prom queens. The vocalist sang about swaying and kisses and stars in an eerie feminine purr, and I wondered where I’d heard the song before.
“Look until the leaves turn red,” he sang, as the song shifted down into a speak-sing bridge.
Sew the worlds up with thread
If your journey’s left undone
Fear the rising of the sun
The words hit me like an ice cube down the back. It was the rhyme, the strange nursery rhyme Ness had recited to me. I froze, waiting to hear more, but the song ended. There was a staticky, record-player pause, and Waylon Jennings’s voice poured through the speakers like whiskey. The driver bopped his sunburnt head.
It was here, I thought. The Hinterland. Here, or close enough. I looked at Finch. His lips moved a little, and I thought about waking him—or talking to him, seeing if I could lead him into a dream conversation the way he’d led me. I did neither. I recited the rhyme to myself till it was etched in my mind, watching the trees for I didn’t know what. I didn’t see anything but leaves.
OceanofPDF.com
19
Finch woke up just as we hit Birch, sheepishly running the heel of his hand over his mouth.
“Where are we? How long have I been sleeping?” He peered out the window as the bus turned into a wide concrete lot encircling a shack-sized bait shop. “Oh. We’re here.” The jagged energy that had come off him in waves on our walk from the motel was back.
The old men pushed past us, sour-smelling and laughing at some granddad joke we hadn’t heard. The driver gave me a hard look as I left the bus. I glared at him, wondering suddenly if he was Hinterland. If he’d done something to the radio. He wasn’t, I decided. He hadn’t.
Behind me, Finch held back. “What’s your next stop?” I heard him ask, as I stepped out onto the pavement. “You turning right around and going back?”
“You bet. But you can’t chicken out on hiking now, son.” The driver leaned forward to peer at me. “Your girlfriend doesn’t look like she’d take it quietly. Just get out of those woods by dark, alright?”
Finch turned, his shoulders raised high, and wouldn’t look at me as he walked down the steps.
“What was that?” I asked.
Finch stared past me, to where the old men were filing into the bait shop. He started to say something, but shrugged instead.
I turned away. If he was going through some existential fan dilemma, I wanted no part of it. I still had to figure out how to shake him before we got too close to the Hazel Wood.
Through the trees at the back of the lot, I could see the hard glitter of water. It made me thirsty. “Want to find a convenience store before we walk to Birch?” I started, turning, then cut off. Finch was standing behind me, too close, eyes wide and jaw set. I startled away from him.
“Damn it,” I said, my heart hopscotching. “What?”
He smiled at me. He smiled like a dog who doesn’t want to get kicked but will take it if he is. “I messed up.”
Adrenaline made my stomach kick and my eyes go dry. “What do you mean?”
“We need to walk—we need to get to the highway.” His voice was high and too fast as he stared at the pavement where the fisherman’s bus no longer was. “Maybe we can hitch. We need to … if we can just get back to the city. I’ll explain on the way. I should’ve explained last night.”
“Explain what?” I planted my feet on the pavement, gripped his arm. “We’re standing here till you tell me.”
“I made a promise,” he said. “But I don’t want to keep it.”
“You need to stop threatening not to take me to the Hazel Wood. At this point I can find it on my own.”
“Not a promise to you,” he said. “A promise to them.”
Them. The word hit me like a blackjack. “What. The fuck. Are you talking about?” I grabbed the front of his jacket.
“I thought … I thought it might help you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is. You don’t understand yet. They told me not to tell you…”
“Tell me what? Who told you not to tell me what?”
“I can’t.” He looked around nervously, a tremor in his jaw making his teeth clatter. “They’re probably listening right now. We need to go.”
“Just tell me. No riddles, no excuses.”
He shrugged, the gesture heavy with disgust. “I wanted my life to change. I wanted for it to be real. And it is. But I don’t think this is worth it.”
It struck me, suddenly, that no amount of bottomless funds should’ve been enough to convince me to lead an Althea Proserpine fan to the Hazel Wood. It struck me, too, that I didn’t know that much about Finch.
I wrestled back my rage and sudden fear, trying to make my voice reasonable. “If you don’t tell me what you did, I can’t help you fix it.”
“Oh, no,” he said, the words bottomless and bleak. “They’re already here.”
His eyes flicked past me, just as I registered the quiet purr of an idling car. I turned and had time to see its bright paint job and the figure at the wheel—wait, there were two of them, someone was in the passenger seat—before Finch yanked me behind him, sending a hot pain through my shoulder.
“Go,” Finch said, his voice ragged. “Run!”
Off balance, I stumbled to the dirt.
The car exhaled heat like an animal from its yellow sides. It was the cab I’d seen creeping on me outside of Whitechapel. And there was its dark-haired driver, the boy from the diner. He pushed the hair from his face with a gloved hand.