Page 131 of Stay Buried

The moon was still nearly full as I walked, thinking, remembering.

The sun was as yet just a dull glow behind the mountains in the east. The moon hung low in the sky, bright enough to see by as I picked my way through the trees on the path, moving uphill.

The snow was soft, feathery, making my footsteps soundless.

And that was why I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me.

I was struck from behind, hard in the back, right between my shoulder blades.

Wing bones, Pearl had called them when she ran her fingers down my naked back.

Scapulae, I’d insisted, during those afternoons, those long beautiful afternoons when we’d lie together in the old Ayers place, our secret house. And then it was my turn to run my fingertips over Pearl’s body, naming all its parts.

The pain was fierce, like a fire through my chest. I looked down, saw the tip of a blade protruding from the front of my chest, just to the left of my sternum, poking out of my wool coat.

I reached for it, cutting the palm of my right hand. I fell to my knees, the fresh snow soft as down.

I lay back, my eyes closed, and remembered falling on the couch at the Ayers house with Pearl, pulling her down on top of me.

“Did you know the human hand has twenty-seven bones?” I’d asked Pearl, and she had only laughed, kissed me.

I opened my eyes as I lay there in the snow, not on the couch. I blinked up at an impossible sight:

A man in a long patchwork coat, a horse skull where his face should be.

“No,” I said, the last word I would ever utter, which struck me as a terrible final word.

The beast shook its head, so that the skull mask shifted, slipped down a little.

The moon was bright, so bright that I could see the neat raised white scar on his forehead, a scar from seventeen carefully done sutures.

SIXTY-ONEASHLEY

October 18, 2016

The scream went on and on, high-pitched, frantic.

“Mini!” Ash said, as she took off running down the middle of the pews and out the door, pushing past the woman standing there.

No one stopped her. No one shot her in her tracks.

Ashley bolted across the parking lot to the entrance to the cemetery, through the open wrought-iron gate. Malcolm was behind her, as was a crowd—seemingly everyone who’d been gathered in the church had followed. She could hear their voices:

What’s happening?

Will he kill her?

He’s come for all of us.

Heart pounding, Ashley sprinted past the dried-up fountain with the damaged angel, and at last saw Mini. The little girl was kneeling next to the unmarked grave. There were mounds of dirt around her—the grave had been dug up.

The knackerman was on his knees behind Mini, his great arms wrapped around her, holding her tight. She was crying.

There was a soft glow coming from the open grave, as if a door had been opened and was letting light through.

Ash had the absurd thought then that a door had truly opened,and he’d come through, his spirit called forth by the entire town, by their fear, their longing.

She was almost to them when she heard a voice behind her shout, “Let her go, you son of a bitch!” The knackerman released Mini and she spilled forward, collapsing face-first on the ground. He rose up, his great leather patchwork coat around him like furled wings. He put a hand on his white bone face.