Page 2 of The Knucklebone Brothers

“Goin’ where?” I mumbled, not moving. “The only place I’m goin’ is back to sleep.”

“The Halloween festival and I am not missin’ it. C’mon, Rory, it’ll be fun.”

I lifted my head just enough to give her a look. Lacey knew damn well I wasn’t a “fun” person anymore. Fun was for girls who didn’t have a hollowed-out space where their soul used to be. Fun was for girls who hadn’t spent the last year staring at a cinderblock wall.

“Lace, I hate people. You know this. I especially hate a whole town’s worth of ‘em crammed into one place to eat deep-fried shit and buy overpriced pumpkins.”

“Please,” she whined, dragging the word out like she was pulling taffy. “It’s the Mercy Ridge Halloween festival. It’s practically our civic duty. Besides, the Knucklebone boys are gonna be there.”

I snorted, letting my head fall back against the couch cushions. “The freakshow brothers? No thank you.”

“They’re not freakshow, they’re… atmospheric. And they’re hot in a way that makes you feel kinda dirty for lookin’.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “I heard Maverick does card tricks that’ll make you question reality.”

“Or he’ll just steal your wallet.”

“Please, Rory? For me? You can’t just hide in here forever. It’s almost Halloween. The one time of year this town doesn’t feel like a goddamn funeral.”

That was the part that got me. She was right. For one month, Mercy Ridge wasn’t just a place people went to die or disappear from. It was a place where the rot was celebrated, dressed up in orange lights and fake spiderwebs. It was honest. And maybe a part of me, the feral part they’d tried to medicate out of existence, craved that honesty.

“Fine,” I groaned, pushing myself up. “But if I have to talk to more than three people, I’m leavin’. And you’re buyin’ me a corn dog.”

An hour later, we were walking into the chaos. The air was thick with the smell of fried dough, kettle corn, and corn fields. Strings of orange lights were strung between the trees, casting a sickly glow on everything. Faded jack-o-lanterns sat on hay bales, their candles flickering weakly. A distorted Halloween version of "Monster Mash" warbled through old speakers, the sound thin and reedy in the humid air.

It was exactly as I’d imagined: cheap and homemade. Kids ran around with plastic pumpkin buckets, teenagers smoked behind the haunted house attraction, and old ladies sold knitted scarves next to a booth selling moonshine in mason jars. It was a beautiful, rotting mess.

And then I saw them.

Tucked away at the edge of the main thoroughfare, almost hidden in the shadows of an old oak tree, was their booth. It wasn't flashy like the others. No bright lights, no hand-painted signs. Just a dark canvas tent draped with old carnival banners and a collection of… things. Jars with what looked like animal embryos floating in murky liquid. A taxidermy raccoon with too many legs. A collection of antique masks hanging from a clothesline, their empty eyes staring out at the crowd.

Behind the table were the Knucklebone boys.

One of them, Maverick, looked wrong standing still, like a wild animal caught in a cage. He was too pretty to trust, his face all sharp cheekbones and heavy brows, but his eyes… his eyes were a sleepy green and predatory, always lookin’ like he was amused by a joke no one else could hear.

Violence was just another punchline he hadn't gotten to yet. His hair was a mess of a dark mullet that curled at the nape of his neck, lookin' like he cut it himself with a dull knife behind a trailer mirror. He had a thin mustache and a crooked grin that made my stomach clench. His tattoos were a mess of bad decisions, layered up over the years like scars—crude playing cards, faded carnival ink, bits of scripture written in smoke-blackened letters on his fingers.

He was dressed like he’d been rolling around in the dirt behind a barn: a faded band tee, muddy boots, and a cigarette tucked behind his ear, looking like he was ready to run or fight at a second's notice.

The other one, Blythe, was carved out of the mountains themselves. He was bigger in every way, a solid wall of a man with broad shoulders and heavy muscle from a life of hauling carcasses and digging graves.

He was terrifying because he was still, just sitting there on a stool like he’d grown out of the damn ground. His face was brutally handsome, sharp jaw and a nose that looked like it’d been broken once. He had a worn baseball cap pulled low, but I saw his hands first. They were big and scarred, with grease permanently ground into his knuckles.

His tattoos were darker, cleaner, like they meant something—antlers and thorn wire and old symbols that looked like they’d been inked into his skin with a needle and a prayer. He was dressed plain, black tee and old jeans, but he looked more dangerous than any man in a costume. He wasn't doin' a damn thing, just watching the crowd with blue eyes that were flat and unreadable, like a storm waiting to break.

I watched them, mesmerized. They were like a piece of the Holler that had somehow wandered into town, a slice of the deep, dark woods set up right next to the pumpkin patch. They didn't belong here, but they did. They were the town's dirty little secret, its living ghost story.

Then, a group of giggling girls walked by, and Maverick’s eyes lit up. He waited until one of them was right in front of their booth, then he lunged forward, snarling behind a pig mask. The girl screamed, stumbling back into her friends, and Maverick just laughed, a wild, unhinged sound that cut through the carnival music. Blythe didn’t even flinch. He just kept watching, his expression unreadable.

Lacey was tugging on my arm, pointing at a funnel cake stand, but I wasn't listening. I was watching them. I was watching the way Maverick’s eyes scanned the crowd, the way Blythe’s hands rested on his knees, ready. They were predators in a sheep pen, and for the first time in a year, I felt something other than numbness. I felt a spark. A dangerous, thrilling flicker of recognition.

I was looking at monsters. And I had a feeling they were looking right back at me.

"Beer first," I grumbled, steering Lacey away from a booth selling pumpkin-spiced everything and towards a makeshift saloon fashioned out of an old barn. The sign above the door, "The Spooky Spoon," was painted in shaky, dripping letters.

Inside, the air was thick with the smell of stale beer and sawdust. I ignored the fancy "Witch's Brew" and "Vampire's Kiss" cocktails in plastic cauldrons and got two bottles of cheap domestic. The first one went down like water. The second one started to thaw the ice in my veins.

We wandered back out into the night, the beer a warm, familiar weight in my hand. Lacey was chattering about some boy from high school, but I was only half-listening, my eyes scanning the crowd, the flickering lanterns, the shadows between the tents. That's when I heard it. A whisper, soft as a snake's belly, sliding through the noise.

"...that's her, ain't it? The one who burned down the church..."