Feral Page 6

He was young, she realized, now that she was staring right at him. The face beneath the black stocking cap was no older than her own.

  He snorted, shaking his head. “The sheriff lives at the end of the road,” he said, pointing. “It looks like favoritism if we get power first. But they’ll be here,” he said, nodding at her sign. “Believe me.”

  Now that he was standing close, Claire found something oddly calming about him. Maybe, she thought, it was because there were no expectations. No eyes staring out from his face pleading with her to be okay.

  “How’d you know we came from Chicago?” she asked, still suspicious. “Or did you know? Was it a guess?” She pointed at the plates on the back of the Gremlin. “You assume everybody from Illinois lives in Chicago?”

  “Claire Cain, junior,” he recited. “Agreed to spend her dad’s sabbatical semester in Missouri, while the geology professor-slash-paleontologist did his scientific thing in a just-discovered cave on the outskirts of Peculiar.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Everybody knows,” another voice rang out. When Claire turned, she found herself staring at the girl from ’Bout Out—the blonde who’d been looking for her friend. Her pretty face was engulfed by a black wool hat with earflaps. She stood securely, even on a section of road that dipped slightly, angling toward the ditch.

  The girl was wearing cleats, Claire realized, tugged on over a pair of hiking boots. Claire felt a bit foolish from her spot on the ground, the chill of the ice biting through her jeans into her backside. She struggled to right herself; the boy from across the street reached out to help her.

  “I guess it’s true, the way word travels in a small town,” Claire said.

  “Even faster when your dad’s the sheriff,” the girl agreed. “I’m Becca Holman,” she added, introducing herself. “My family’s at the end of the road.” She pointed toward the same house that the boy from across the street had already identified as the sheriff’s place. A gust of wind made her butter-colored hair ripple out from under her hat like a sheet of silk. “Looks like you’ve met Rich.”

  “Rich Ray,” the boy told her, gesturing toward a mailbox at his curb, the side hand-painted with his last name.

  Becca craned her neck, squinting behind Claire’s shoulder. “Jasper!” she shouted. “Jasper 2!”

  A large brown dog trotted up to her side, and she reached out with a gloved hand to rub him behind his ears. “We’ve been up and down this street about twenty times,” Becca confessed quietly.

  “You need any help?” Rich asked. “I’m in that house by myself without anything to do. I’m the official portrait of stir-crazy.”

  “Where’re your folks?” Becca asked through a slight frown.

  “Running a warming center at the church.” He turned to Claire to explain. “It’s got an in-ground generator, for anybody who doesn’t have one of those small gas-powered things. And it’s right across the street from ’Bout Out, so they’ve got their pick of stuff to eat. Dad wanted me to stay to keep an eye on our place.”

  “Preacher’s kid,” Becca told Claire, wagging a thumb at Rich.

  “What about your dad? Still hasn’t found anything? No tips?” Rich asked Becca.

  “It’s so slick out,” Becca said, staring at the glistening road. “And it’s night. Again,” she added, her voice cracking. “What does she do at night? How can she get away from the cold?” She shook her head, looked directly at Claire, and asked, “Have you seen her? Has she been by here?”

  “Who?” Claire asked, shaking her head, not understanding.

  “Serena,” Rich told her. “Serena Sims. Missing since the beginning of the ice storm.”

  Claire felt her stomach bottom out. Becca’s friend had never come home. The conversation she’d overheard at the general store hadn’t been mere high school pettiness. It had been serious. “Why would—”

  “You’re staying in her old house,” Becca said softly, staring up at the second story balcony. “Her great-great-grandparents built the place. When she was ten, the family built a new house and moved. Left the old furniture inside it and decided to use it as a rental.” She chuckled, her eyes glistening with so many tears they suddenly looked as though they, too, had been coated by ice. “She hated the new place,” Becca admitted. “This is the place with the wallpaper her grandmother hung. This is the place with hardwood floors her great-grandfather laid. She hated letting other people come stay here. Especially since it wasn’t important to them. They all wound up breaking tiles in the front hall, or putting holes in that rose wallpaper her grandmother liked.”

  “Not that there have been many renters,” Rich reminded her, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “What—maybe three in seven years? Who comes to Peculiar, right?” He rolled his eyes at Claire as he made his last point. “I’m sure Claire and her dad’ll take care—”

  “Has she been by?” Becca pressed, a tear threatening to tumble from her right eye as she stared at Claire. “I mean—if she knew someone was here, again, I thought, maybe—maybe she was trying to get out here, you know? Welcome you—or tell you about how it was her family home or something.”

  Claire shook her head as Rich eyed Becca with pity. “No. Sorry.”

  “I know,” Becca said. “It’s illogical to think she’d still be out here walking around, making visits. I just—I’ve been everywhere that is logical, and I can’t find her. I’m so scared.” She bit her lip as though it could act as a dam against her tears.

  Glancing to the side, she let out a small snort. “Look,” Becca said, pointing to the spot in the snow where Claire had reached for her phone. “Look at the track you made. It looks like an S.” And she laughed again.

  “Becca—” Rich tried.

  “Serena writes her initials on everything,” Becca went on, ignoring Rich. “She’s—a—what do you call it—a doodler. She scribbles on everything. She draws silly pictures, writes notes to herself. Mostly, though, it’s her initials—SS, SS. I actually started out looking for her hoping that the SS might show up somewhere—like some bread crumbs I could follow to where she was.”

  Rich shuffled his feet a little nervously. “Maybe you should check with your dad, Becca—”

  “You haven’t heard anything?” Becca asked, turning her pleading voice toward Rich.

  He shook his head. “You would know better than I would,” he said. “You took my place a long time ago.”

  His voice hadn’t been accusatory, but the way Becca narrowed her eyes made it seem as though that was how she’d interpreted him. “Look,” she said. “I just want to know when you saw her last.”

  “After journalism, when she told me she was going to stay for the story,” Rich sighed.

  “What do you mean, she stayed?”

  “To work on the story,” he repeated. “About the basement. That’s what she’d planned, anyway.”

  “Wait. The basement? Of the school? She meant she was going to be at school working on her story?”

  “What else would she mean?”

  “I thought she was going straight home to write. I didn’t think she was at school. Why didn’t you tell someone?”

  “Because—she told me her plan in the morning. And when Sanders closed school early, I didn’t actually think she’d stay—”

  “You didn’t think at all,” Becca growled.

  The harsh tone in her voice made Rich blurt, defensively, “I thought you always knew where your little shadow was, in case you had some job for her to do—like kiss your feet.”

  “Excuse me?” Becca snapped.

  “Oh, don’t act innocent,” Rich told her, his voice staying even. He seemed almost immune to anger—but unapologetic at the same time. “You like having her around to worship you. You’re probably going through withdrawal right now, not having your magic mirror to walk around with you, constantly reminding you with your every breath that you, Becca Holman, are the fairest of them all.”

  “That’s not true,” Becca insisted as Clair
e watched in shock. “I love her. She’s my best friend.”

  Rich just stared.

  “I’ve got to call my father,” she said. “Someone needs to look at the school.”

  “Someone has looked at the school—”

  “Not the basement, you jerk,” she thundered. “I mean, for God’s sake—she said she was staying to work on the story of the kid who died in the damn basement. And you didn’t think that was important?”

  “You don’t think I’m not afraid for her, too, Becca?” Rich asked softly. “You think you’re the only one who worries about her? Do you hear her when you sleep? I do. Like she’s calling out to me—like when we were kids. Calling like she wants me to come get her. Don’t act like you’re the only one who cares. If you want to know the truth, you probably truly care the least about Serena. You just want to make sure you’ve still got a president of your fan club.”

  “That’s not fair,” Becca hissed, before turning her back to him. She took a step, whistled at Jasper 2 to follow her.

  “You take care of Serena’s house.” Becca pointed toward Claire, before stomping off toward the other end of the street.

  The conversation left Claire feeling weak and dizzy. She shivered as she watched Becca go, her cleats taking angry, crunchy bites out of the ice. Again, Claire wondered, What the hell have I gotten myself into?

  “Everything all right out here? I heard some loud voices.”

  Claire pulled her head up, staring straight into Dr. Cain’s concerned face.

  “Rough start to your semester,” Rich told Dr. Cain, pointing at their ice-coated surroundings.

  He nodded in agreement, dipping his bearded chin inside his corduroy coat collar. “It is,” he agreed. “But you know,” he added, flashing his professorly smile, “even when the earth is brutal, she’s a beautiful thing.”

  “I’m going back inside,” Rich told Claire as he turned toward his house. “It’s cold out here. You should go in, too.”

  Before Claire could respond, another tree limb snapped in the distance. Something about the noise was so bloodcurdling, so familiar—she jumped like a frightened rabbit before she could stop herself.

  “Yes,” Dr. Cain agreed, reaching for Claire’s arm. “Come inside.”

  “No,” she said, pulling herself free. “I—I’m going to get some firewood.” In truth, she needed a few minutes to collect herself.

  “Claire, come on now, we’ve got a good fire going already. And besides, dinner’s almost done,” Dr. Cain said.

  But Claire hoisted on such a picture-perfect brave face that her father couldn’t argue.

  “Okay,” he relented. “Be quick about it. It is cold out here.”

  Calm down, Claire, she scolded herself as she made her way toward the wood stacked under a tarp beside the porch.

  But her hands shook anyway.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  SIX

  The back porch, Claire noticed, was riddled with tiny plastic bowls, the kind that people used to feed their pets. But there wasn’t a single morsel of food in any of them—in fact, if it weren’t for the sheet of ice lining their insides, the bowls would have all been completely empty.

  But Claire couldn’t bother to think much about those bowls; not with the words Becca and Rich had lobbed back and forth at each other still growling inside her head.

  A missing girl, she thought, shuddering at the possibilities.

  “Quit it, Cain,” Claire grumbled out loud, reaching beneath the blue plastic tarp draped over the mound of wood at the edge of the back porch.

  The moment that her hand touched one of the dry logs, a hiss of warning filled the air.

  Claire froze, afraid to pull her hand back too quickly. The hiss gained strength, grew louder, like static on a radio.

  Slowly, Claire lowered her head to look beneath the covering. In the moonlight that bounced off the backyard snow, she watched a cat lift her bloodstained jaws from the warm, half-eaten belly of a newly slaughtered rat. The cat’s eyes flickered angrily against unwelcome company, and she snarled again, flashing teeth stained dark with rot.

  The cat lowered her face back into the rat’s belly one last time, pulling out one more good bite of bloody entrails. She chewed, as some of the still-steaming intestines spilled out from the rat’s wound, drawing slimy, bloody splatters across its corpse. She purred, as though enjoying the sweetness of the warm ooze against her mouth.

  She swallowed the last savory bite, then swiped her face clean with her rough cat tongue.

  As Claire stared in horror, she backed up, inching away slowly. A sinister-looking shadow fell across the toes of her shoes. She continued to move in slow motion, retreating as the cat inched forward. The cat emerged, flashing a pair of angry yellow-green eyes, marked with black vertical stripes. Tiny ears rose and fell with jagged edges that spoke of old fights. Her tail swelled fat with rage.

  The calico glared wickedly as she crept out from under the tarp. This cat was nothing like the sweet yellow tabby Claire had seen at ’Bout Out. Her eyes were matted, and now that she was completely exposed, Claire could tell one ear had actually been torn in half, and her body was covered in the kind of filth it took more than a decade to collect. Joints swollen with arthritis, back crooked, face covered in raw, pink patches. And something was tangled in her tail—something shiny, almost like a string of tinsel from a Christmas tree.

  Claire cringed at the cat’s sickening appearance—but at the same time, she couldn’t quite peel her eyes away, either. A gold charm dangling from the shiny string on the cat’s tail had wound itself tight enough to actually look painful.

  Wanting to help the poor thing out, Claire lunged forward.

  The cat yowled.

  “Shut up,” Claire snapped. “I’m trying to help you. You need help.” She lunged forward again.

  But the cat arched her back, opening her mangled face to let out a squalling, hissing cacophony of tones. She leaned against her back feet, ready to race away.

  “No! Wait! Let me help!” Claire shouted.

  The cat took off, jumping over a nearby fallen limb and scurrying across the yard and into the darkness of the frigid night. Claire stared out across the yard, sorry she hadn’t managed to free the poor cat’s tail. But at the same time, she felt grateful that the awful thing had left, taking her parasites and filthy claws and half-rotten teeth with her.

  She turned back toward the woodpile, hesitantly this time. Her eyes rested on a thin, shiny object hanging from one of the fallen, ice-laden branches nearby—the same long thread that had dangled from the old cat’s tail. Only, it wasn’t just a thread, she realized as she squinted. It was a cameo necklace. And it must have been pulled free as the cat raced away.

  The necklace looked old—maybe even antique—with a broken clasp. As Claire held it up toward the moonlight, she saw it, like the flash of a camera: the St. Jude charm dangling above her head.

  She brought the necklace down in a jerk, flinching against the vision. She still had the St. Jude charm the cop had given her. She had tucked it away in the bottom pocket of her suitcase—the first thing she’d packed, actually. Because maybe it had helped her through. Maybe it had been lucky. After all, Claire hadn’t wasted away in the parking lot, not like she’d thought she would that night as she’d hung in the sky, hovering over her ground-beef-looking body, thinking, It’s too late for you. You’re dead.

  “Time for a new good-luck charm,” Claire decided. She twisted the last metal loop in the chain until it opened, and wrapped the necklace around her throat. She pinched the loop tight, the metal stinging against her cold fingertips.

  But the memories of that night persisted. She was back in the lot, the boys circling all around her, beating her. The boys lifting metal cans and hitting her with garbage. An object coming down on her leg, crushing it.

  Claire g
roaned, instantly understanding why the snapping limbs had sounded familiar.

  My bones, she thought. They’d sounded just like the snapping branches when they’d broken.

  And the screams Claire had let out had sounded exactly like the screech of the bobcat.

  She grimaced and shook her head, trying desperately to push it all away.

  Reaching beneath the tarp, though, her eyes focused on the slaughtered body of the rat.

  It’s too late for you, Claire heard ringing in her head all over again. You’re dead.

  Her hands shook as she used a smaller fallen limb to drag the body away from the woodpile and covered the poor thing with a few handfuls of snow. She straightened herself, finally grabbing a couple of logs for the fire, and rushed into the house before her father could ask if something was wrong.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  SEVEN

  Even Peculiar, Missouri, had the occasional blue sky, Claire was relieved to learn three mornings later, as her father drove through the puddles of melted ice between their house and the high school. Power had returned the day before as work crews had arrived to reattach their lines, just as Rich had predicted.

  It might have even been hard to believe the storm had happened at all, if the casualties—snapped branches and downed trees, some of them surely big enough to be more than a hundred years old—weren’t also being cleared, hauled toward the edges of properties. Piles of ice-coated trees lined the streets as Dr. Cain steered toward the high school, the growl of chain saws following them along the way.

  “You didn’t tell me Edgar Allan Poe went to school here,” Claire quipped as they pulled into the lot, only partially joking. She leaned into the windshield, staring up at Peculiar High—the odd, solitary building she’d first seen at the top of a distant hill as she and her father had passed the city limits sign. Made of some sort of stone that might have once been white, the entire building was now wrapped in the gray, dirty hue of cigarette ash. Winter-scorched ivy, brown and brittle, swirled across the front, surely blocking the sun from entering classroom windows. More than just old and dingy, the place had a kind of forgotten air about it. The persistent fog, swirling about the base of the school, didn’t exactly make it seem any less menacing, either.