Page 43 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

Thirty-Four

I backpedal. Austin keeps coming, and I want to turn and run, but Ben is here somewhere, and if I run, Austin and the other nekkers will kill him.

“Austin,” I say, and my voice wavers and cracks.

Austin left those animals for me. I might have accused Smits, but he’d had no reason to lie when he denied it, and my gut says it was Austin.

Smits said the nekkers’ souls—consciousness—were gone. Was that a lie? Either way, something remained, enough for Austin to lay out those dead animals for me.

Enough for him to attack me?

He keeps coming, and I inch back. Then I stop myself.

No more running. Not from Austin. I did the right thing to run as a child, but I am not a child now.

I reach down and scoop up the biggest rock I can fit in my hand. Then I wait.

Austin continues his relentless trudge my way. His gaze never wavers from my face. He sees his target. He has always seen his target, and I don’t know what I did to deserve being it.

Nothing. I did nothing. I was a child. I didn’t “lead him on.” I didn’t even want to be his friend, something inside me always wary around him.

Others—my mother, my grandparents, Austin’s parents—pushed me to be nice to him.

Was that why he targeted me? Because I’d shown him some attention?

Or had they pushed me to be nice to him because he’d already targeted me, and oh how cute, Austin has a crush on Sam?

What matters is that I did nothing to deserve the hell he put me through, and now I stand there with that rock, ready to do what I wished I could have done fourteen years ago. Drive him away. Hurt him, if I need to.

I feel terrible that he died because he hurt me, but I didn’t make him hurt me.

I did everything I could to stop him from hurting me, and my father did, too, and yet Austin would not stay away, and he died for it, and I will not take responsibility for that.

Or for whatever I need to do to protect myself now.

He stops in front of me, and it is so strange, looking down at him. He’d been growing fast at thirteen, towering over me. Now I look down and I see a boy. Nothing but a boy.

His gaze lifts to mine, the hate blazing. My hands tighten around the rock. But he just stands there, glaring, and even as hatred pulses from him, it’s empty and unfocused. As if he knows he hates me … but doesn’t know why. Doesn’t know what to do with that.

When he moves toward me again, I take a deep breath and stand my ground.

Is he a threat? He doesn’t feel like one anymore.

Just a lost and angry little boy, needing a target for his rage and seeing me and …

somehow no longer able to connect the two.

Whatever remains of Austin in there, it’s not enough for him to understand why he hates me.

Then a sound comes from behind him. Some noise I can’t make out. Austin stills and slowly turns as another object emerges from the water.

A head, lifted by a hand, as if its eyes can still see. Then the man—Bram—and his horse, rising, the headless horseman walking from the lake.

That noise comes again. From Bram? From the horse? I can’t tell, but it must be a sign to Austin, a warning, because Austin grunts and steps away and then just … shuffles off.

I stare out at the horseman, ready to flee. Then I remember I have nothing to fear from Bram. Nor does Ben.

I race toward the horse and its rider, and Bram holds out his head to see me as he slows the horse. I run until the horse has fully emerged from the lake, Bram’s head still turned toward me.

“I need help!” I say. “Please. Can you do that?”

The head stares. Up close, it is little more than pocked flesh over bone. Huge glowing eyes, a hole for a nose, a hole for a mouth. Like a jack-o’-lantern, I think, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. The headless horseman and his jack-o’-lantern head.

“Can you help me?” I say. “Can you hear me?”

No reaction. We stare at each other. Then, at a sound farther down, Bram swings his head that way.

The lake is almost still, only the faintest ripple in the water … except for one spot, farther down, where ripples are growing, and the crown of a head emerges.

A nekker.

I race past the horseman and down the shore, frantically looking for Ben.

“Stop,” a voice calls.

My head jerks up, and I follow the voice to see Smits in the moonlight. He’s dragging Ben’s bound and unconscious body toward the lake.

When I take another step, he says, in that same calm voice, “Stop, Sam. Look behind you.”

I glance over my shoulder to see Bram there, his horse sloshing through the water as he trails behind me. Bram holds his head out toward Smits.

“He’s staying close,” Smits says. “Protecting you.”

“Yes, which means you’d damned well better drop Ben and—”

“No.”

“The horseman—”

“—will kill me if I touch you. He’ll trample me. Which means he will also trample Ben, and since you’ll be here, caught in the fray, you won’t escape either. The horseman might protect you, but that horse is a mindless beast that will not understand it’s trampling you, too.”

I open my mouth to say I’m willing to take that chance. Then I shut it. Whether I’m in danger or not, Ben is.

I watch the nekkers—four dark shapes standing motionless in the water. They’re watching. Drawn in, but having no reason to come closer. Not yet.

“Watch and learn,” Smits says. “If you have any of your mother in you, you know this is the time to think about saving your own hide, Sam. Let me give Ben to the lake.” His gaze meets mine across the twenty feet between us.

“Prove that you have her blood. That you can do this. Show me that, despite everything that’s happened, it’s in my best interests to let you take your mother’s place. ”

Let him sacrifice Ben, he means. Smits envisioned Josie and me as the next generation of Smitses and Paynes, working together. Josie is gone but if I play my cards right, maybe we can still make this work. That’s what he’s telling me.

He starts the incantation. If asked an hour ago whether I’d remember the words from the book, I’d have said no. But as he speaks, they roll from my subconscious. An invocation to the water and the power there, to the nekkers, asking them to accept this sacrifice.

At first, Smits is watching me, but when I don’t move, he turns toward the nekkers, voice rising as he calls them, and they begin to wade closer.

The one in front is the man I saw last night. The one I’m now certain is the figure I’d seen in the shed, drawn there by my return. I kept trying to figure out how someone entered with the door latched—because it was a something not a someone.

Then comes a woman I don’t recognize. Austin falls in behind her, and he looks my way, pocked lips curling as if in a hiss.

Another one appears, and my stomach clenches.

It’s the camper, who stops there, looking about as if confused, not knowing why he felt the need to come to the shore.

Two more nekkers follow, their attention on Smits and Ben. On the caller and the sacrifice.

“Wait!” I shout.

Austin turns my way, and my gut freezes. But the man in front turns toward me, too, and something cold and wet brushes my arm as the horse moves up beside me. The nekkers all stop, attention turning to Bram, to their leader.

“I am the bonded one,” I say. And stifling my revulsion, I lay a hand on the horse’s cold, slimy flank. “I am a Payne. This man is nothing.”

Do they understand me? I doubt it, but nor do they move. Huge liquid eyes and empty sockets turn my way.

I am the bonded one. I am a Payne. Whether they understand my words or not, they understand my truth.

“Sam,” Smits warns. “You’re going to upset them. Confuse them. The horseman can’t protect you if they—”

“I call you, creatures of the water, guardians of the lake,” my voice rings out in the invocation, and they all turn my way.

“Let me do this,” I say to Smits, my voice low. “It will be stronger if I do the sacrifice.”

Smits rocks, uncertain but not interrupting.

I continue the invocation and the dedication, saying the same words he had. Then as I near the end, passing where I’d cut him off, I turn his way.

“I bring you this offering, children of the lake,” I say. “This man, for you to devour and claim as your own.”

Smits lifts Ben by the collar.

“I give you this man,” I say. “Yours, in return for your favor. This I offer to you, my guardians, my protectors.”

The nekkers draw closer. Smits holds out Ben for them, and then lets go. Ben’s limp body drops face down into the water.

“All yours,” Smits calls, waving at Ben.

I watch Ben there, his nose and mouth under the water, unable to breathe. Smits walks away as the nekkers close in.

One step. Two steps. Three—

I run for Ben. Smits hears me and whirls, but I’m already there, yanking Ben by the collar, getting his head from the water.

“Sam,” Smits snaps as the nekkers stop. “You’ve already given him to them. Don’t interfere. You’ll get hurt. It’s too late to save him.”

“I didn’t give him to them.” I struggle to hold Ben up out of the water. “I gave you.” I wave at Smits. “There. That is the one I gave you.”

Smits only rolls his eyes. “It’s too late. You—”

“—said I was giving them a man. That’s you.” I start dragging Ben toward shore, angled away from Smits. I wave at the sheriff. “Him. That’s your target. Take—”

Smits charges, snarling. He doesn’t get within a yard of me before the horse gallops into his path.

“I didn’t touch her!” Smits says. “I never laid a finger on her.”

The horse stays where it is, Bram holding out his head to watch Smits.

The sheriff is yelling something at me, furious, feeling safe if he stays where he is.

He doesn’t see the legless nekker pulling itself through the water.

He doesn’t see the others, turned his way, beginning to move.

His focus is on the horse and rider. As long as he doesn’t touch me, he’s safe.

Except, with the horse between us, the nekkers understand. I am holding Ben. Protecting Ben. And Bram is protecting me. Which means the sacrifice …

The legless nekker wraps one hand around Smits’s ankle. The sheriff jumps. It’s barely a startle, as if lake weeds touched him. Even when he sees the nekker, he only yanks his leg free and backs up.

“Not me!” he shouts. “Him!” He gestures at Ben.

The legless nekker keeps pulling itself along, slowly but inexorably pursuing Smits as the sheriff backs up.

And that’s all Smits does. Backs up. Focused on this broken creature, no threat to him, easily escapable.

But the others are coming his way, too, and he doesn’t see them until the tall nekker is nearly on him. Then Smits’s head jerks up and …

Do I see recognition flash in his eyes? His lips form a word he doesn’t utter, and his gaze locks on the man, as if he recognizes him.

“One of yours?” I call. “A traveler you just happened to find dead? Only he wasn’t dead, was he?”

The nekker keeps tramping toward the sheriff. Smits backs up faster, half trips over a piece of driftwood and then whirls to run. The nekker lunges. He catches Smits by the back of the shirt, but the sheriff yanks free and gets two running steps before the legless nekker catches his foot.

Smits pitches face-first in the water. The tall nekker falls on him, biting his shoulder. Smits screams and punches and kicks, but the others swarm over him.

I want to look away.

I do not look away. I set them on Smits, and whatever he has done, I must watch what I have done. Understand what I have done and will never do again.

The nekkers rip into him, taking mouthfuls of flesh, blood spraying, Smits screaming.

They don’t tear him apart. They don’t devour him.

They only bite and rip and taste. And then, as the sheriff screams and thrashes, the tall nekker grabs Smits by the hair and drags him into the lake and the others follow, ready to catch Smits if he escapes.

He does not escape.

The nekker walks deeper into the lake, dragging Smits, until the water closes over both of them.

I still stand there, watching, in case Smits comes back, in case I need to defend Ben.

Silence falls. Something moves beside me, clammy flesh touching my bare arm, and I look to see the horse there, Bram holding his head to look out at the lake. Guarding me and watching.

I grab Ben under the armpits and haul him farther onto the beach. I’m dropping beside him when I see another figure, and I startle.

It’s one of the nekkers, still half out of the water, farther down. As it comes my way, the horse shifts, as if in warning, but it doesn’t move. The figure keeps coming, and my throat seizes as I make out the form of my aunt.

“Gail,” I whisper.

I leave Ben and walk toward her. She comes until the water is up to her knees, and then she stands there, swaying as she watches me.

I force myself closer, taking in the whole of her, the gray and bloated skin, the ragged holes in her flesh that I now know are bites from the nekkers claiming her as their own.

Her one remaining eye is growing, turning dark and liquid like a seal’s.

It fixes on me, but loosely, not fully focused.

She continues to sway, her expression placid and empty, with only the slightest hint of confusion.

As if she’s seeing someone she vaguely remembers but feels no inclination to identify.

Just the vaguest sense of “I know you, don’t I? ”

Smits said the nekkers lose their consciousness, and I think he was right in this.

Austin had targeted me, but it seemed like vestigial hate, something animal and instinctive.

That first time, Gail had called for me, asked for help, her faculties already fading and terror taking over.

Looking at her now is like seeing my mother during her worst episodes, when I glimpse a future where my mother will no longer even mistake me for Gail, where she’ll only have the faintest sense that she knew me, once upon a time, but that it’s not important anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper as my eyes fill. “I should have made you stay behind.” A harsh and humorless bubble of a laugh. “Yes, I have no idea how I’d have done that, but I should have found a way. I shouldn’t have come myself, and then you’d have—” My throat constricts. “If I had any idea…”

Tears fall, hot on my cold skin.

“I wish I could set you free,” I say. “I wish I knew how to do that. All I can do is leave. I think that will help. If I’m gone, you can rest. You can all rest.”

She watches me vaguely for another moment, and then turns and trudges back into the lake, and the water rises higher and higher, until it closes over her head.