Edie blinked stinging sweat out of her eyes. It didn’t help much—it was just too damn hot in Virginia. Her fingers were slippery, but she tried not to think too hard about that. Her hands were already shaking, and Anna and Gabe had clambered over the top a full minute ago.
“Look at these freaking cookie-cutter houses.” Anna snorted as she spoke, and Edie could envision the face she’d be making toward the new sub-development, that scrunched-up face that made her look like an angry librarian. “Makes me sick to my stomach.”
Edie let go with one hand, felt the world start to spin. She gritted her teeth and scrambled for a higher handhold, pulled herself upward. When she was finally stable again, clinging to the side of the rock formation, she was level with her cousins’ feet, Anna’s jellies (how had she climbed up these huge rocks in those?) and Gabe’s Timberland boots (wasn’t he sweating to death?).
“Yeah,” Gabe grunted more than replied.
Edie continued her attempt to summit the six-foot monstrosity as Anna continued talking. “Dad said they asked Uncle Bill to sell the farm to them, but he wouldn’t.”
Gabe answered for his father(Uncle Bill to the girls) still in a series of grunts and growls. “Yeah, last month. For that new sub-development on the other side. You can see it from the house. He told them to piss off.”
Her foot slipped and Edie swore under her breath, closing her eyes against the dizziness.
Anna snorted again. “Good for him.”
Okay, a better grip, and Edie was stable again. Her foot found the hold, and she threw herself upward. At this rate, by the time she got there the sunset over the Shenandoahs would be over. She’d never been very athletic. It always embarrassed her, but especially around Anna.
“Edie, you okay?”
She opened her eyes finally, looked up to see Gabe staring down at her. He was turned away from the sinking sun, but she could tell he looked worried. She made what she hoped was a brave face. “Yes. I just…this is…”
But Anna appeared over his shoulder, rolling her eyes, and that was it for Edie’s halting explanation. She snapped her mouth shut, determined.
“I think you picked the hard place to climb up. Need some help?” Gabe made as if to drop to his knees, reached toward her—
But something cracked below Edie, a heart-wrenching sound. A sound she’d been waiting for, really. Splintering of rock and the clatter of a small avalanche.
No, she thought vaguely as her feet went out from under her and her hands scraped off the ledge, grasped frantically at nothing. A large avalanche. That was a lot of noise.
And then she was falling—a sensation of brief uncertainty about which way was up, and her stomach flip-flopping as if to figure it out. Then a moment of blackout when the panic was too much. A tearing of leaves, the feeling of vines against her legs and arms, wrapping around her—
No. She was free. Then a splash. A slight jolt to her tailbone as she landed in cold, cold water, all dark. Wetness seeped all through her skirt, into her underwear, then her skin. Her hands slipped below her, gliding along not-quite slimy stone.
She opened her eyes, though she didn’t remember closing them. She was below the rocks, but also sort of under them. And it wasn’t dark; she was in a half-cave, a small carved out shelter beneath the rock. A ripped curtain of vines hung limply over the entrance, which must’ve been why she’d thought she was being grabbed—and possibly why she hadn’t noticed this little alcove in the first place. Or maybe her mini-avalanche had revealed it.
Her cheeks blazed at the thought—a situation that only got worse when she noticed a few small rocks skittering over the edge and the sound of footsteps and swearing above her.
Gabe suddenly dropped from above her, his boots crunched into the vegetation twisting around the edges of the pool. He looked down, saw her sitting in it, and seemed to freeze in place.
His mouth opened, then shut, silent. Edie was about to ask him if he was okay when he finally shook his head, as if trying to snap himself out of some daze, and asked, “Are you okay?”
She tried to meet his eyes and hoped she made a pretty good show of it. Crushing embarrassment made it hard, though. “Yeah. I’m just…” she looked down, watched the sparkling water soaking up into her shirt, and sighed.
“Wet?” Anna supplied, popping around the corner, obviously having taken a less direct path than Gabe.
Edie definitely could not look her in the eye.
And here she was, sitting in a slimy pond like the gawky little cow she was. She didn’t want to move—if she didn’t move, she wouldn’t know if anything was broken—but she began fumbling about anyhow. It was shallow, maybe three feet at its deepest. Definitely man-made, a little like a small fountain.
Gabe inched forward slowly, toeing plants out of his way as needed. He was still staring at the little cave she’d so cleverly discovered, blinking a lot. “Jesus, I didn’t even know this was down here.”
Anna laughed, but not as unkindly as Edie expected. “Count on Grace here to find it.”
Edie tried to laugh too, but noted gratefully that Gabe ignored the joke. (She didn’t care what her mother said about “that useless Gabriel.” He was all right with her.) She shook her head no when he leaned over to give her his hand, just as she latched onto something that felt like a good hand hold –
Which moved. She pulled at it, ignoring whatever Anna was saying now, and it came loose. It was a large-ish stone, flat on one side and bumpy on the other. Through the shifting mask of the water, it looked like a face.
Tentatively, she pulled it up out of the pool. It was a face, carved in high relief from the same grayish-brownish rock all around her. Masculine, with a strong nose and forehead—her mother’s romance novels would’ve called the face noble—but there were vines carved all over it. Not just the beard and hair, like a Green Man, but coming out of the eye sockets, too, spilling down over the cheeks. And horns. Long, curving horns that held the wild mass of vine-hair just barely at bay. When she blinked, the stone leaves seemed to twist and writhe, but it was just the water running in small streams through deeper contours back down to the pool.
In which she was still sitting.
She blinked herself back to reality, noticing with relief that her cousins were still staring at her find and not her. When she started to push herself upward it jarred them out of their reveries.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Gabe growled. He didn’t mean to growl, Edie knew. It was just the way he talked.
Anna edged closer to get a better look. Edie moved in their general direction, ignoring the strange sensation in her limbs and the dripping, clinging awfulness of her clothes. In spite of the slimy coat on the pool, she made it out quickly, and on her own.
“Creepy,” Anna pronounced on closer inspection of the carving. It didn’t sound like a bad thing, the way she said it. “My mom has something like that in the yard. She calls it a Green Man.”
“Green Men don’t have horns.” Gabe’s forehead crinkled. He examined the thing intensely, still looking slightly dazed. “We have one, too. That’s like a…those goat-guys.”
“Satyr,” Edie supplied. It was nice when her Classics major was useful in everyday life. (Not that it had ever happened before.)
She looked at the thing more closely, too. In spite of the more grotesque features, it had a rustic charm.
“Yeah. Them,” Gabe agreed. “You need help?”
Edie didn’t look up. The flush had faded from her cheeks, and she was more interested now in this new object than her own sodden state. She managed an absent, “I’m okay.”
And she was, she was pretty sure. If she’d scraped herself up, it didn’t hurt now. She felt a little disoriented, and was vaguely aware that she might be in a little bit of shock, but it was nothing.
“You should take it to your mom; the whole family is into that kind of stuff.” Anna crunched off in the direction of the farmhouse, obviously ready to leave.
Edie looked up, first at her, then Gabe. “What if it belongs to someone?”
Anna glanced over her shoulder to cock an eyebrow. “Out here? In the middle of a giant puddle hidden under a rock?”
Gabe shrugged, but still seemed lost in thought somewhere.
Edie tucked the Not-Green-Man under one arm, then started after Anna. Her skirt had taken on what felt like fifty pounds of water, so she started wringing it out one-handed along the way. The bottom of her hair was wet, too, but first things first.
Gabe trotted up beside her after a moment. “Want me to carry that while you dry off?”
She dropped one section of her skirt and picked up another, and caught Anna looking at her over her shoulder. Edie didn’t dare take him up on the offer under those eyes, but she smiled at him gratefully as she shook her head no.
She felt a little lightheaded as she did so. And goosebumpy, all over her legs and her hands. Everywhere she was wet. So strange. Maybe it was that algae.
“It’s gonna get dark soon,” Anna said. “Let’s go back and get Clumsy some new clothes.” She smiled at Edie this time, though.
Edie made herself smile back, and was pleased when she failed to blush.
Gabe lowered his voice so only she could hear. “Sure you didn’t hurt anything?”
“No. I feel fine. I’m a little tingly—”
Anna looked back over her shoulder.
“It was just the water,” Edie amended. Maybe too quickly. “It’s cold, is all.”
They seemed mollified, and let it drop. Past the woods, away from the foothills, and back toward the house and the Unofficial Annual Vaughn Family Reunion.
Aunt Madeline snorted out a laugh, proving once more that if Anna didn’t look like her mother, she at least behaved like her. “Oh Edie, you’re so awkward!” She said it like she’d never been so amused.
Edie smiled, though she wasn’t sure why. She wondered if she should be sad or offended, but the matter seemed academic.
She was so tired now. The walk back to the house had probably only taken ten minutes, but it might as well have been days. It seemed to stretch forever in her memory.
Her skirt was still very heavy and her legs felt wrong. She’d checked for a bump on her head, just in case, but there wasn’t a thing there. She’d landed on her tailbone, but that didn’t hurt at all now.
She put the Not-Green-Man on one of the benches on the front porch, near where her mother was sitting, watching Gabe with open disapproval. Edie thought vaguely that it wasn’t fair. He wasn’t the first to fail out of college, and it wasn’t a crime anyhow. Her mother hadn’t even gone to college.
“Come on.” Gabe appeared beside her. She’d thought he was on the other side of the porch. “I’ll get you some of Liz’s clothes.”
His sister Elizabeth, on the other hand, was a 4.0. She was on an archeological dig in Peru this summer.
“Thanks,” Edie said. She adjusted the Not-Green-Man so he would be able to see everything on the porch and stood up. She caught a glimpse of the sub-development that had tried to buy the Vaughn farm last month, not half a mile away. Clear even in the fading light.
Rows and rows, lines of houses. Five to six bedroom, three to four bathroom, marble stairs and copper awnings and faux stone facades that failed to distinguish them from each other. Shoddy workmanship, one after the other, every one worse than the last. Like a little warren.
A hand on her shoulder now. “Hey. Edie.”
She blinked and the flash was gone. A fog descended over her again. She followed Gabe into the house.
He dropped a basket on the floor. “These are all hers. Take whatever fits. You can leave your wet stuff in the washer. I’ll run it for you.” He didn’t sound impatient, but if she didn’t know him, she might’ve thought he was. Gabe was the soft one who looked hard and mean, and Anna was the hard one who looked soft and pretty. She’d never thought about it like that before.
“You don’t look very good.”
The sound of his voice snapped her out of her momentary daze. He was looking at her with narrowed eyes.
“I’m tired,” she said. It was the only part of what was happening she understood. She was very, very tired, in fact. And awfully thirsty. Her mouth felt full of dust.
He made a doubtful face. “My room’s pretty scary, but Lizzie’s is clean. You wanna lay down?”
She nodded, and he made for the door to let her change. She felt a sudden burst of inexplicable panic, however, and stopped him before he closed the door. “Gabe.”
He looked over his shoulder, hand on the doorknob.
“Would you…” she trailed off, paused. Part of her fought it—the part of her that felt really far off, and wouldn’t want Anna to hear her ask. But that part was covered in a cloud, and she didn’t really see the point in worrying about it now. “Would you wait for me out there?”
There wasn’t really any reason to want it. But she did, quite suddenly.
“Yeah,” he said, but slowly. “You want me to get your mom?”
“No. I’m okay. Can I just have some water?”
The look on his face made her wonder if it was a crazy request. But he just said, “Sure,” and slipped out, closing the door behind him.
She finished the fourth glass of water as they got to the top of the stairs, and felt a little better. Maybe she’d hit her head after all, even though it didn’t hurt. Maybe —
It didn’t matter. She just wanted to lay down for a minute. Then it’d be okay.
Gabe led the way into his sister’s room, flipped the light on, and turned to face her. “I, ah—” He was still looking at her oddly, but she didn’t mind so much. “If you need anything?”
“I’m okay.” This time, she thought she meant it. Her legs could barely hold her up anymore, and her head felt itchy (but more of a tickle than that). But she took a moment to pause at the window anyhow.
It used to look out on a field and a few other farm houses. Now it looked out on the sub-development.
“It is really ugly, isn’t it?” she said, mostly to herself.
“I don’t think I ever had so much respect for my old man as when he told them no.”
She couldn’t remember if Gabe got on with Uncle Bill or not. It seemed like her mother said something about that recently. About… Gabe had done something bad, hadn’t he? What was it again? She couldn’t recall—the whole world was sort of coming apart around her. Flaking off little by little, like old paint. “Yeah,” was all she said.
“You really don’t look good.” The sound of worry was very touching in his gruff voice, she thought. She’d never really noticed before.
“I’m just tired.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Okay. I’ll come check on you in an hour or something, okay?”
Edie just smiled and crawled into bed, feeling every muscle in her body stretch and move as she did it. For the first time she could ever remember, she felt really graceful. It seemed odd that she’d ever felt otherwise.
She hoped Elizabeth wouldn’t mind her using her bed. What if she got tired, too?
Oh well. They could share. They were cousins, after all.
She burrowed into the pillow as Gabe slipped out of the room. Her last thought was that it wasn’t her head, but her hair that was tingly. And she shouldn’t go to bed with it wet like this.
Gabe had always suspected that Edie felt out of place at these reunions—a small, blonde, sensitive thing in a family full of dark, foul-tempered roughs. He used to feel bad for her, but now that they were older and he knew her a little better, it wasn’t just pity; he liked her, too. (Or he would’ve, if he could get over the feeling she was scared of him.)
This was extra quiet and washed-out though, even for her. He’d never thought the expression “green around the gills” was literal ’til about five minutes ago, in fact. Then again, she was so easily embarrassed, for all he knew it was just that, and she wanted to hide, which was fair enough.
He was distracted anyhow. That stupid nursery rhyme of Grandma Vaughn’s, only half-remembered, had been bothering him since Edie’d fallen into that weird cave.
Moon-well bright and ivy green
the power of…
The power of what? What the hell was a moon-well? And why the hell did it matter? He felt half-stupid for even remembering it.
He tried to shake it off, stepped back out into the stifling night to be greeted by the chirping of endless crickets and the buzz of the bug zapper.
Anna sauntered over, chewing on a piece of the apple in her hand. “Where’s Edie?”
“She was tired. I put her in Liz’s room.”
“Such a pansy.”
Anna’s flippancy still irritated him sometimes, but not enough to elicit a response. Blessed with absolutely no male relatives in his own generation (how freaking difficult would it have been for one of his uncles to pass on a Y chromosome just once?), he’d learned to make the best of the weird variations in the feminine at family functions. Anna might be a bitch, but she was at least entertaining.
“I’m bored,” she decided suddenly. “Come for a walk.”
That worked for him, since he was about to freak if he had to endure another of Aunt Lindsay’s dirty looks. Anna agreed they’d come back soon to check on Edie (if he had to), and they left their parents’ evening chatter behind, walking in the general direction of their earlier adventures, this time in the dark.
Anna prattled pointlessly, but Gabe knew his reputation would let him get away with answering in the occasional grunt. He spent most of the time trying again to banish the mental image of that eerie little fountain-in-a-cave Edie’d found, and the irritating repetition of that line-and-a-half of nursery rhyme. That finally accomplished, he admired the wide open space of his home, lit up by the high full moon. The woods coming up on the left, the black ridge of the mountains in the distance.
Sometimes he could admit that he’d flunked out because he missed it here. But only when his father wasn’t around.
He caught sight of the climbing-rocks, and had a pang of worry over Edie again.
“You’re gonna miss your parents leaving if we go too far,” he said, more to change his train of thought than anything else.
She stopped walking and knelt next to a dark patch of summer violets. “I guess I’ll stay with Edie tonight in Lizzie’s room. I don’t wanna go to Grandma’s.”
He didn’t blame her. If Grandma Vaughan’s creepy nursery rhymes weren’t enough, the place smelled like mothballs, badly covered up with cedar air fresheners, the pine tree shaped ones truckers favored. And she had this thing against plants in the house that bordered on mania. “Sure. Edie won’t care.”
She stood once she had her little flowers in hand. “Don’t get excited about more quality time with your cousins, Gabriel.”
“This is what I look like when I’m excited, Anna,” he deadpanned.
She started walking again, smiling that smug little smile of hers. “You got sulky when you grew up. You used to be fun.”
“And you used to be nice,” he lied, just to wind her up.
“I’m nice.”
“Ha!”
She grinned quietly for a minute before the smile slipped off her face. She tucked a few violets behind one ear absently. And then, finally, she said, “Oh come on, she’s fine. She’s a big baby.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied some more. “It was just a general statement.”
She grinned again. “Screw you.”
His laugh died quickly. Mostly because he couldn’t forget how pale, how green Edie’d looked when he left her.
His foot snagged on something briefly. He looked downward.
Vines. Those oily dark green ones, the creeper from the forest, but here in the middle of the field. It grew from one small spot, not even a foot in length, and a lot thinner width-wise. And then another spot, a little further on, and another, and another –
The hell? Was there some kind of sudden infestation? Gabe stopped walking. “These weren’t here before, were they?”
Anna followed his gaze with mild interest, the moonlight reflecting somewhat comically off her tortoise-shell glasses. After a moment, she went up on her toes to tuck the last of her violets behind Gabe’s ear, apparently unconcerned. “Maybe we’re not in the same place we were before.”
“We’re in exactly the same place. I know every foot of this field.”
“You didn’t know that puddle was hidden under the rock.”
Gabe started off again. The ivy patches continued, running up against the forest, toward the rocks, but he couldn’t see if they actually got all the way there. “This is the same path.”
“Is it some bizarre plant that blooms at night?”
He picked up speed a little. “No such thing. Well, not around here.” On impulse, he looked over his shoulder. They’d taken a different path through the yard up to that point, but now he could see clearly that the ivy patches went all the way back to the house. “Look.”
Anna did, and stopped walking for a minute. “Jesus. That’s weird.”
They continued onward though, and a strange feeling started growing in the pit of Gabe’s stomach. The vine spots grew noticeably thicker, the shoots themselves longer, the leaves larger as they walked.
When they got near enough to the rocks to have a clear view, his unarticulated suspicion was confirmed. Large pools of the things, shapeless black blobs in the silver light, were scattered between them and the tiny cave-pond.
“It goes back there,” he said.
Anna chewed on her bottom lip, narrowed her eyes, flippancy gone. “It definitely wasn’t here before.”
No shit.
Gabe stared at the rock formation for a long moment, shook his head in silent confusion. He considered going back to the rocks to investigate more thoroughly, but that thing in the pit of his stomach had expanded to the size of a small boulder. It rebelled at the thought, and he fought down a spell of panic.
“Let’s go back home.” He didn’t notice he was whispering until it was already out.
Anna nodded and spun on her heel, her ponytail nearly smacking him in the face. He turned to follow, feeling a blessed strain of amusement creep into his thoughts at Anna’s inability to notice that there were other human beings occupying the space around her –
A thin, brain-electrifying sound cut his thought short. High-pitched, but barely-there. Like a whisper, but more like a laugh.
His skin felt like it was trying to run off without him.
Anna froze, caught his eye. “Tell me you heard that,” she said through her teeth.
“I heard that.”
She swallowed hard, and he watched her compose herself step by step. First she threw back her shoulders, then she took a deep breath. Then she took one step, and another.
He stumbled in his first step after her. “Anna—”
“Don’t be a chicken. It was just some animal in the woods.”
Gabe ground his teeth, but did his best to convince his skin to stay attached, at least until they got back home.
The rhyme jumped back into his head, nagging at him. Moon-well bright and ivy green… the power… something-something… her balance fair, eternal held…
Dammit.
By the time Gabe had the presence of mind to notice something was wrong with the house, they were only twenty-five yards away. He looked upward, at first to take a calming glance at the night sky. A large black spot on the back of the house caught his attention under the small corner window—Lizzie’s room. He muttered to himself under his breath that the old place was falling apart, but before he got halfway through his swearing he stopped in his tracks.
It wasn’t rotting wood or something sticking out the window. It was something growing on the side of the house. Out of Liz’s window. Something spindly and leafy and –
His lungs deflated. Drawing breath became nigh impossible. “Holy shit. Edie.” It came out as more of a gasp than an exclamation.
Anna reached out for him—ostensibly to steady him, but her grip told another story. She latched on tight, almost frantically. “Stop being such a queen,” she said with cold seriousness. “There’s a good reason for this.”
But his stomach was a mass of uncomfortable boulders now, not just jostling against each other but jumping up and down. “Something’s really wrong. She knew something was wrong.”
“That doesn’t even make—”
But he didn’t wait for her to finish. He tore off for the back door, and she had to either follow or let go.
She followed. “Gabriel! Slow down. Jesus!”
He couldn’t, though. He wanted to—he didn’t want to go into that room. It was the exact same feeling he’d gotten looking at those huge puddles of ivy near the rocks, that same don’t-make-me-go-there panic. But remembering the look on Edie’s face (green around the gills, she was so green around the gills), he couldn’t stop either. He dragged Anna into the hall, up the stairs, and directly to Lizzie’s room.
When they burst through the doorway, Anna screamed.
Gabe stumbled backward, very nearly doing the same.
Edie, if Edie was still under there, was covered in vines that writhed like slender snakes. At first that was all he saw, just a wriggling mass of leaves and stems in the vague shape of a girl. But within seconds his eyes adjusted and he saw everything. Blonde hair threading between green, here and there a flash of pale skin in the thin moonlight. Anywhere he saw skin, he saw a black liquid circle (not black, he realized belatedly, dark red), a wound. The vines either grew out of them, or into them. Then they’d shift, twisting and threading until the hole became invisible under dark plant-life.
They made a faint rustling sound when they moved. Like trees in a light wind.
Anna shuddered. “They’re growing… out of her…”
But all Gabe could say was “Edie.”
He didn’t know what he was seeing. It wasn’t really happening, of course. His brain refused to process it, so he knew it wasn’t really happening.
Anna tugged at his arm. He hadn’t even realized she still had it. “Gabriel. We have to go.”
He shook his head once.
One adventurous vine slipped out from under the others. It crept along the duvet in their direction. A small, searching finger.
“We can’t just walk away—”
Anna dug her nails into him.
He shook her off and stepped toward the bed. Anna didn’t follow, this time.
“Edie,” he said again. Even though he’d seen the wounds. (No blood on the bed, though. No blood anywhere.) Even though he knew she couldn’t hear. Another step closer, and he leaned over the bed.
“Please, Gabe,” Anna breathed.
A scream cut through the dark silence. Gabe’s blood rose instantly, his stomach squelched.
That was his mother’s voice.
Anna grabbed his arm again, yanked at him. Something snagged at his pants and kept him from following.
The vines grew thicker over the bed. One slithered around his leg. He stared. Blinking. Wondering why the hell he wasn’t doing something, but unable to imagine what would be appropriate.
Anna yanked again. The force snapped the vine and pulled him through the door.
His mother was in the kitchen.
So was his father, in a way. Bill Vaughn was bound to the kitchen table by glistening vines—his forehead down, his backside firmly on the seat, his legs lashed to the legs of the chair by miles of vegetation.
In the kitchen light, Gabe got his first good look at what it was the plants did. They were growing in and out of his father, and there were small holes in various parts of his anatomy (and what was left of his clothes—a few strings of busted denim here and there, a flash of a gaudy t-shirt from Hawaii). They wrapped around him, clothed him in green, and used him. None of his features were visible; just a plant-man with arms, legs, and a head. And there was no blood on the floor, no blood anywhere but in those faint flashes of entry/exit wounds.
Gabe took two steps forward, a little bit closer.
Anna tried to pull his mother back, to keep her from a spindly vine coming her way. She went, but not without sobbing and choking. Maybe trying to say “Bill.”
Gabe couldn’t say.
A network of vines stretched from the table toward the laundry room, a lush tropical carpet. They came from beneath the door, but there were a few pushing through at the top as well, like the laundry room was full to bursting with them.
As if in answer to his thought, the over-laden door creaked.
Gabe thought now would be a good time to be scared. Or to cry, maybe. But his brain was frozen, staring at a thing he could not really believe had been his father (if not for the Hawaii t-shirt.) Staring at the groaning door and his crying mother.
“Gabe. We have to go. Now!” Anna hissed, hauling his mother up off her knees.
All he could do was nod.
Anna pushed his mother toward him, and she fell into his arms. Her face was wet in his neck, and Gabe felt a strange something well up inside him.
A shove to his back, and he was on his way toward the front door.
By the time they launched themselves past the infestation engulfing the front porch, Aunt Tess had stopped sobbing. Anna was relieved, but still annoyed with her. She hated when grown-ups acted like children.
Gabe, at least, seemed to be coming out of the daze that finding Edie had knocked him into.
Anna stared around in the dark for a moment and tried to make a list to account for the others. Making a list would help. Lists and facts would make sure she stayed strong.
“My parents must’ve left,” she said, more to herself than Gabe and his hysterical mother. “Edie’s, too.”
“We have to…” Gabe trailed off, kneeling on the ground with his mother. Far from the house. “We have to call 911.”
There was a thought. His first in what felt like forever. Still. “What the hell will they do for us?”
He looked up at her suddenly, his eyes snapping into intense focus just like that. “Anna. Call an ambulance.” His growling was more pronounced now, like he meant it.
She narrowed her eyes at him in a sudden flare of anger, then took her phone out of her pocket and threw it at him.
It landed in the grass in front of him, where he was easing his mother down to the ground.
“You call,” she snapped.
She wasn’t surprised when he ignored her. He’d call and she knew it. As soon as he was done getting Aunt Tess to stop clutching at him like that.
Anna shot her one last annoyed look before turning her eyes back to the house. The porch was hidden, sinister vegetation like a plush rug thrown over the whole thing. The benches and the swing were covered, and something—possibly the furniture, possibly the floorboards themselves—was creaking ominously. Like the door to the laundry room had been.
She moved toward the house tentatively, fighting her heart and mind with every step. She was stronger than fear, goddammit. Gabe mumbled into the phone behind her, telling them god knew what, but the only sounds in front of her were the rustling of leaves and complaints of over-taxed wood. A little closer, and she noticed something pale in the push of dark leaves and stems.
A few more steps and she knew. It was the Green Man.
That name seemed a little too real now, and very, very wrong.
The Horned Man, then.
It rode a tide of black-green tendrils, forced off the bench and about to be swallowed. Anna watched him, watched his face, watched the sprouting stone vines from his eyes—and had an idea.
“Gabe. It’s him.”
She felt him behind her, but a sudden explosion of glass above the porch distracted her attention. The kitchen window blew out, and slick fingers of leaves pushed through the wreckage. The bench groaned again, then cracked.
Gabe sounded wooden behind her. “They’re on their way. I gotta take care of Mom.”
“Let her go,” she snapped. “She doesn’t even know you’re there.”
He stepped up beside her. “You’re not helping.”
Gabe had the face of a boxer, her father always said. For the first time, Anna knew what he’d meant by that. Gabe looked ready to bite the ass off a bear, and sounded dead cold.
“Look at this.” She pointed toward the pale stone sticking out of the vine carpet. “It’s the Green Man. That’s what did this.”
It was the only possibility. It was impossible, of course, but thinking like that was the biggest waste of time ever, right now.
“That’s—” Gabe didn’t bother finishing. He was taking in the horror before them, his home being eaten alive.
“Stupid? Fucking insane?” She snapped. “Look around. We saw the vines all the way to the pond Edie fell in, and now your house is being eaten.” If her parents could see them now, they’d never wish they’d had a boy.
Gabe looked around helplessly, and every trace of pugilistic intent vanished from his face. He looked very young, suddenly. “The Green Man was never in the house. But Edie was.”
Edie.
Anna hadn’t thought about that. Why upstairs, and why the laundry room? Goddammit, Gabe was an accidental genius. “Exactly. In the bedroom and the laundry room.”
“Next to the kitchen.” His voice sounded hollow.
The bench on the porch snapped in half with a splintering crash. Vines curled around the porch railings now, and they’d reached the front door.
“We have to take it back.” Anna decided as she said it. That was all they could do. This thing was obviously the source of all this madness; every sign pointed to it. Edie had taken it, and it had taken Edie, and now it’d take everything if they didn’t give it what it wanted.
Which had to be to give it back, right?
Gabe didn’t seem to follow. “We do?”
“Obviously. So go get it.”
He blinked at her, then at the undulating carpet of vines ravaging his front porch. “What?”
“Pick. It. Up.” It had to be Gabe, after all. He had longer arms. He could reach it. It wasn’t because she was scared. Or he was the boy. It was just the way it had to be. Really.
She expected to have to argue a little, but to her surprise he reached right into the mire of creeper.
More glass breaking overhead, this time from behind the house, and a painful crack and groan of wood from deep in the structure’s belly. She shivered inadvertently, and her stomach threatened to drop her dinner onto her shoes.
Gabe’s arm emerged trailing a few fingerling vines. He jerked, snapped them in half, brushed off the remaining leaves, then came back to her holding the Horned Man. He was covered in goosebumps, she noticed, in spite of the hot night.
“Let’s go,” she said.
He nodded, but continued past her, to his mother. He knelt next to her in the grass, where she sat like a marble statue. Hugging herself, white-faced and staring.
“Mom. Mom, hey. The ambulance is on the way. You have to be here when they get here. We’re gonna take the Green Man back where we got him.”
Aunt Tess looked at the mask, a sudden spark of consciousness in her eyes and a curling of her upper lip. “That’s not a Green Man.”
“I know,” he said.
Another frightening crack, then a crash and bang from inside the house. The vines crept up the front door, choked the stairs. Anna had to swallow the sickness rising in her throat again to speak. “Running out of time, Gabriel.”
He stood and started off at a half-run, not even waiting for her.
The vines formed a continuous pathway from the house back to the rocks, and they ran alongside it. The plants still grew thicker and thicker at that unearthly, alarming rate. Neither Anna nor Gabe said a word in the dark; they just ran.
When they finally came up on the half-cave, it was almost as if everything was… normal. The place was undisturbed, serene, even. A small round pool set into the ground, sheltered by the rock, carpeted by peaceful greenery.
“Moon-well bright and ivy green… the power of the oldest queen,” Gabe mumbled, breathless, like he was having a revelation. “Something about a balance restored, and an oath. Did you ever hear that one?”
Gabe blinked at her, as if he expected her to know what he was blathering about.
“Keep it together, Gabriel,” she snapped. “Throw it already!”
His shoulders slumped. “Stand back.”
“Just do it, jackass!”
He tossed it underhand, and it landed with a great splash. Sparkling water leapt into the air and scattered—some of it landing on her bare legs, cold and tingly.
She didn’t care. It was over. “Okay, it should’ve stopped now.” Saying it out loud made it sound feeble, somehow. The thing she’d been hoping for when they’d set off seemed impossible suddenly. What the hell had she been thinking?
But it had to be okay now. There was nothing else they could do, so it must be okay now that they’d done what they could.
Her head hurt badly from trying to understand it all. She stopped thinking and started back toward the house, not even looking to see if Gabe was behind her. She ran at half-pace in case some of the vines tried to trip her with their expanding tendrils. (They were still moving, still growing. Why were they still growing?) She ran and didn’t look back, the hiss of the leaves and the beating of Gabe’s heavy footsteps behind her punctuated only by the occasional crash from the direction of the house, and then the high thin wail of sirens.
She ignored the growing tingling in her legs. Too much exertion, too much exhaustion, and she couldn’t let it show. Not now, not when it was almost over. She repeated it desperately, like a little song to the rhythm of their sprint. Almost over, almost over.
She ignored it as long as she could, anyhow. But she was starting to get distracted. The house was close, half-black now, writhing and twisting like its siding was alive. But it wasn’t the siding. It was the vines. (Of course it was the vines. Why was she even reiterating this?) It was the vines and her legs didn’t want to work anymore. That water had been so cold and now her legs were cold. Or not cold, but –
What the hell was wrong with her?
She slowed to a walk, then stopped about twenty yards behind the house.
“What is it?” Gabe panted beside her. He doubled over, hair falling over his face like a curtain, put his hands on his thighs and took a deep breath.
At least she wasn’t as out of air as him, she thought somewhat vacantly. At least she hadn’t flunked out of college. Why that was important, she wasn’t entirely sure…
“It’s tingly,” she said.
Lights flashed blue and red on the other side of the house, lit the surrounding fields and the far-off forest like a strange disco. Strange and sick. And she felt sick, too.
Or, not sick. Just tired. Weak. Wrong.
Gabe tossed his hair out of his eyes, fixed her with a glare. “Anna, stop dicking around.”
“I’m not. I’m—I’m just tired.” It was beyond her. But it was true. “And thirsty.”
Shouting from the other side of the house now, footsteps and yelling and the hiss of leaves in the wind.
“The house is right here,” Gabe said, his voice taking on a low urgency now. “Don’t quit now—”
A stunning bang from the roof silenced him, jarred Anna’s stomach. She looked upward and saw the shingles buckle on the far end of the house.
“Oh my god,” Gabe breathed. “It’s going to fall in—”
Odd, that. But then, she supposed it was for the best.
More movement caught her eye now, and she moved to the other side of the house. The vines that had spilled from Lizzie’s window coated it, and Anna thought momentarily of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
A figure was there, too. Black and leafy in the dark, two legs, two arms, a body and a head all in the right place. Other than that, completely inhuman. It walked away from the house, in the direction of that godforsaken sub-development.
Almost walked. Jerked, more like, like a marionette in the hands of a particularly unskilled puppeteer. Coarse movements, inelegant, as if the thing had never walked before. A macabre spectacle of life from death.
Her legs tingled almost painfully.
Gabe staggered toward the lurching creature for a few steps before he stopped. Maybe he caught sight of the few strands of blonde hair still glistening in the pale light, twined in and out of the living vines. Or maybe something else stopped him.
“Edie,” was all he said. It sounded like a death sentence. Or at least an obituary.
Anna blinked and had trouble opening her eyes again. She was sure she’d feel very bad for Edie, but that water had been so cold. She should’ve had a drink while they were there.
That water…
Edie’s hair in the bedroom. Edie’s clothes in the laundry room. The Horned Man on the front porch.
Gabe grabbed her arm just as she was about to slip to the ground, lay down on the cool grass and rest. He hauled her up, put his arm around her. “Christ. You’re going green.”
He knew. He’d seen Edie and he knew, and she knew.
The house groaned, devoured from the inside out. Is this what would happen to the sub-development?
That would almost be worth it.
“It was the water,” she said, into his ear.
“No.”
But he knew, and his voice gave him away. He was too smart not to know. “Don’t touch my legs. Until they’re dry.”
“No, it was definitely the face. Come on, we just need to get you to the ambulance.” Hysterical determination. He hefted her into his arms, staggered just a little bit under the weight.
She would’ve kicked and screamed any other time. But now she was just vaguely touched. “Don’t let the water touch you,” she repeated.
He staggered forward. “Anna, please.”
It was okay. She just needed to rest, and everything would be fine.
“What is it? Was it some kind of shrine—was the Green Man just a decoration?” He was talking to himself, staggering around to the front of the house.
Anna closed her eyes, one arm resting carelessly over her cousin’s shoulders. It didn’t really matter. If Edie and the house were a sacrifice, it’d be worth it. Worth it if all the rest of them went the same way.
There was the splintering sound of the roof collapsing, and Gabe mumbled a nursery rhyme under his breath as he rocked her to sleep.