Forests of the Night Page 3

  At the moment, however, Macy wouldn’t have minded if Dom could hear what she was thinking because she didn’t know how to say it out loud. She could see the muscles in his back move ever so slightly as he typed.

  She looked around the room. The walls were bare and the room was fairly clean—clothes in a corner hamper, and the throw rug on the hardwood floor looked freshly vacuumed. She could see what looked like boxers through the mesh of the hamper.

  She had seen Nick’s and Jackson’s boxers strewn about their filthy rooms plenty of times, but seeing Dom’s felt different, like she had peeled off the cover of a book.

  His windows didn’t have any curtains and she could see out over the bluffs to the hazy line where the clouds met the water.

  “Where’d you get this house?” Macy hadn’t asked that before. She had wondered about it, though—how these kids who were her age could afford a giant Victorian house.

  “What?” Dom glanced up from his computer. “Oh, it’s Trev’s. His and Sam’s. They bought it.”

  “Bought? Like, they own it? You’re not renting? How is that possible?” Macy took in the walls around her, and the many rooms, and the roof that made up this great big house. It must have been worth a million dollars. Not that she really knew what houses cost—a million was always her go-to amount when anything was inconceivably expensive.

  “They don’t actually like to talk about it. They have some money. From . . . a settlement.”

  “Settlement?”

  “Um.” Dom looked uncomfortable. He ran his hand through his hair and winced as he moved his shoulder. “I’ll let them tell you.”

  “Sure.” Macy looked down at her skinned knee. She poked a finger through her torn leggings to the drying blood. It hurt, but she kept doing it without thinking, like picking at a hangnail. “Anyway, you were going to show me something?”

  “Yeah.” He turned his laptop towards her. The screen showed a news article about a serial killer in Arizona. A few years earlier someone had killed four women by slitting their throats, but he was never caught.

  Macy just assumed the killer was a he. It happened right around Halloween, so they called the murderer the Halloween Killer. Clever.

  Dom pointed at the article, actually pressing his finger on the screen. Macy hated it when people did that. She wanted to wipe the fingerprint off the screen with the fabric of her dress, but she resisted.

  “This town had a Door too,” Dom said. “But after these women died, the Door closed. I think it was a ritual.”

  “It says that?” Macy got up and leaned over his shoulder. “It mentions the Door?”

  “No, of course not. But we had it marked on the map as a Door that just vanished. It’s very odd for a Door to disappear, so I remembered it.”

  Macy tried to make sense of this new information. They already knew that a Door had closed before and didn’t tell her? She decided to let that one go. There was so much she still didn’t know about the trio.

  “Okay,” she said, “but now you think these murders had something to do with it?”

  “Yeah. Slitting someone’s throat is very ritualistic. Bloodletting, sacrifice . . . all that stuff. And they were all killed near the Door.”

  Macy shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Lorna try to kill a ton of people to keep the Door closed if she could have just killed four people to close it later? That doesn’t sound very efficient.”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know what was going on in her head. Or what happened in the last fire. Not unless Lorna’s ghost comes back for an interview. Maybe the fire was the only ritual she knew? She was obviously pretty scared about what would happen if the Door opened.”

  Macy remembered Lorna’s face in the darkness—how devastated she looked when she knew she had failed. It was hard not to feel sorry for a terrified old woman, but Macy did her best. Just thinking about Lorna made Macy clench her teeth so hard that her jaw hurt.

  Macy sat back down on the bed. Leaning over Dom’s shoulder was starting to get uncomfortable. The she realized what he was actually showing her. “Wait, so you do know how to close it? The Door?”

  Dom nodded, smiling at her. Then he shook his head. “No. I mean, I don’t. But someone might. If I’m right and these killings were part of a ritual . . . ”

  “Someone? Are there others like you? Other people who hunt ghosts?”

  Dom rubbed his shoulder, looking back to the computer. “Not exactly like us, but yeah—other people know about Doors. Other people can see ghosts. Is that what you’re asking? How do you think I learned anything? Fucking trial and error?”

  Macy frowned. Dom didn’t usually raise his voice at her. “Yeah, I guess. I just didn’t think there were chatrooms and stuff.”

  Dom yawned and put his hand over his shoulder again. His eyes drooped. “Sorry, what’d you say?” He looked terrible.

  Macy really wanted to know more about those other people and this possible ritual, but Dom was obviously fading. He’d let her know when he found something useful. She just had to trust him.

  “Nothing. Come here.” Macy got up and patted the now empty bed. “You should lay down. I’ll go.”

  Dom laid down on top of the bed, but he took Macy’s wrist before she could leave. “Wait,” he said. His hand was warm and she could feel her pulse beating beneath his fingers.

  Macy couldn’t look him in the eye. “What?”

  “Just . . . you can stay a little longer. If you want. You look tired, too.” Dom scooted over so he was against the wall.

  The bed was a twin, but there was just enough room for two people. She took off her shoes and got on the bed next to Dom.

  He put his arm over her waist and pulled her close.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You smell nice,” he said into her hair, his words slurring a little with sleep. She didn’t say that his sheets smelled a little sour like a sick room. She didn’t say that her neck tingled where his breath touched her skin, and that she wanted him even closer—so close that there would be no difference between him and her. So close that she could read his mind.

  Instead, she asked, “Where’d you grow up?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Macy started to think that he had fallen asleep because his breath was so even. She could feel his chest rise and fall against her back. Then, in a low whisper, he said, “I guess San Francisco. That’s when I still lived with my parents.”

  “What was it like?” she asked, though what she really wanted to know was what had happened to his parents. What had happened to him? What had made him this way?

  Dom moved his hand up to her hip, his fingers pulling at the fabric of her dress in an absent sort of way. He probably didn’t even realize he was doing it. “We had a lemon tree in our backyard and we lived at the top of a really big hill. San Francisco’s supposed to be so foggy all the time, but I just remember that it was sunny. I remember lying on my back and looking up at the blue sky through the trees. I think it was somewhere in the Mission district, but I don’t really know. I was seven.”

  Macy held her breath, as though any sound—any distraction—would make him stop.

  “I don’t know why my sister was out that night. She was fourteen. When I was seven that seemed so old. My parents should have known where she was. How could they not have known? It’s like the one job a parent has—keep your child safe. But they didn’t know where she was and they didn’t realize when she didn’t come home that night. Someone found her three days later in an alley. The police thought she had been dead for about twelve hours, which meant there were two full days when she was still alive—and whatever they did to her, she could still feel it. She knew it was happening.” Dom took a deep, shaky breath, like he had just surfaced from beneath the water. He let it out slowly while Macy tried to figure out what to say.

  “That’s horrible.” Macy took his hand off her hip and held it to her stomach, wincing at the pressure against the palm of her hand. She could
feel the soft hair of his arm against the skin of her own arm.

  Dom had his other hand in her hair, pulling it away from her shoulder. “Yeah. It sucked.” He kind of laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I didn’t really know what was happening at first. At seven, you actually realize a lot more than people think. I knew she was dead. I knew I’d never see her again. I knew what it meant when someone was murdered—that a bad person had killed her. But they tried to keep the worst of it from me. If my sister hadn’t come back, I might never have known.”

  “You saw her? Her ghost?” Dom’s finger’s grazed her neck and Macy tried not to shiver.

  “She was the first ghost I ever saw. I thought I was dreaming because I knew she was dead. And dead people didn’t ever come back to visit. My mom kept explaining that to me, like I wouldn’t understand if she didn’t keep telling me over and over again. She even compared it to when our dog was hit by a car. As if Fido splattered all over the fucking road was at all the same as my sister.”

  “You actually had a dog name Fido?” Macy winced at her question. Yeah, ’cause that was the important part of the story.

  “Nah. I don’t remember his name. I’m sure it was clever though. A character out of a book or some mythological reference. My parents always thought they were so fucking clever. Maybe it was Fido. They would have actually loved that—thought it was ironic or something. Don’t you sometimes wish that pets would come back instead of people? Puppies and hamsters following us around? Little poodle ghosts?”

  Macy gave a little laugh, but she didn’t want Dom to get sidetracked. And she actually thought that ghost poodles would be fucking creepy. She asked, “What happened? When you saw your sister, I mean?”

  “She came to see me after I was tucked into bed. Like I said, at first I thought I was dreaming. She would talk to me just like I’m talking to you. Just like she was really there. But she didn’t look right. It was her eyes, to start with. She wouldn’t open her eyes. Josefina. That was her name. Josie. She would brush her cold hands across my face, and kneel on the side of my bed. She would sing to me sometimes. Songs from the radio or lullabies our mom used to sing. But she would always get upset if I talked to her, because I just wanted to ask questions. Wasn’t she dead? Was she a ghost? That kind of thing. She would put her hands over my mouth and shush me. It was always dark, so I didn’t see the worst of it until one night when I got out of bed and pushed past her. I turned on the light.

  “My sister’s face had been cut. Long lines from the top of her forehead down to her chin. There was blood under her eyes and she wouldn’t open them. Couldn’t open them. She couldn’t see, to know the light was on. That’s something I still wonder about. Why couldn’t her ghost see? Even if they cut out her eyes when she was alive . . . ” Macy dug her fingers into Dom’s hand and her fingertips stung. “Why couldn’t she see after she died? Isn’t death supposed to be this great release? Isn’t it supposed to free you from pain? From suffering? Why couldn’t my sister see?”

  “Oh, Dom.” Macy had been biting her cheek. She made herself stop and ran her tongue over the skin inside her mouth. She could feel the rough imprint her teeth had left. It tasted like blood.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing. I saw her like that—all of it. The raw red lines on her wrists where she had been tied up. The cuts on her arms and legs. I didn’t want to see her like that. I wanted her to go away. I put out my hands and screamed. I closed my eyes and I used the trick my dad had taught me, for when I was afraid of a monster in my room. I was supposed to imagine that the monster was a snowman in the summer and it was melting. I don’t know if my dad made that up or if he read about it in some parenting book. Probably the book . . .

  “So I imagined my sister melting. And I felt it—you know what I mean. I felt her, in my head. And then she was gone. I did that to her.”

  Macy shook her head against the pillow. “You didn’t know what you were doing. You wouldn’t have . . . I know you didn’t mean it.”

  “But the thing is, if she came back here today, and I know what I know now, I think I would still do it.” Dom pushed away from Macy so he was laying on his back. His voice was getting softer and slower. “She didn’t deserve to be that way. She couldn’t even see me. And her face . . . I think I would do it again.”

  Macy shook her head. “I don’t believe you.” Once again Macy pictured her brother as he was in his senior picture, with his stupid smile and his hair brushed back off his forehead. Not as he was in the hospital. Never that.

  When Dom didn’t answer, Macy turned to look at him. His eyes were closed and his arm was flung above his head at an awkward angle. “Dom?” she whispered, but he didn’t move. She sat up carefully, then leaned over him. Macy imagined herself kissing his mouth, gently, like he was an enchanted prince from a fairy tale. Instead she pressed her lips to the side of his mouth where his skin was darkened with stubble. Her kiss was so soft that she barely touched him. But she still felt him on her lips as she went down the creaky stairs and walked out the front door into the rain.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The boathouse looked like something out of a horror movie. Moss covered the decaying roof, and the sides were a grayish green. The door was missing so the front looked like a huge, gaping mouth.

  Jackson had first read about the dead man in a newspaper that his dad left out on the coffee table. He was nine or ten and usually just grabbed the comics. That day, however, the headline caught his attention: FOUR BODIES FOUND AT HORSESHOE LAKE. They didn’t include a picture of the man’s body hanging from the low rafters of the boathouse, but they did have a picture of the lake—black and white and grainy. Apparently the fall wasn’t enough to break the man’s neck, so he had probably strangled to death. The reporter had described the body: he was “severely decomposed” to such an extent that his body had come loose from his head and lay in a messy heap on the floor.

  They found his wife’s body rotting and bloated in the shallows. Both husband and wife had been dead for a few weeks. Jackson had wondered at the time if the wife was naked, but it didn’t say in the article. He imagined her body surfacing, gray and leathery, like one of those manatees in the Everglades. Jackson didn’t actually know what a dead body looked like, but he knew exactly what a manatee looked like because they had read a book about them in fifth grade.

  The strangest part of the article was the second couple. They had only been dead for a few days and they were both drowned. No sign of a struggle—like they had each held their own heads under the water and breathed in the greenish, murky lake water that was contaminated with the decomposing body of the dead woman. Disgusting.

  Jackson had thought about that story for years, wondering what had actually happened. It was a mystery that the town wanted to forget. Grey Hills already had the Fire, the specters of the burned students looming over it. It didn’t need a haunted lake as well. The man who hung himself and murdered his wife were both older people. They had no children and had lived outside of town in a crappy mobile home in the woods. They were easy to forget.

  The drowned couple was younger, in their early twenties. Just out of college and traveling. A tragic accident, but they had no family nearby to miss them. When Jackson told Macy the story, he had tried to tell it the way he thought about it—the way he dreamed about it. That man climbing down from his rope and wading into the water. He must have pulled the man under the water first, Jackson thought, and then the woman. That’s how it usually worked in scary movies—the women tended to die last.

  Sam walked faster than Jackson, and he had to kind of half-jog to keep up. “In a hurry?” he called to her.

  “It’s fucking raining. Let’s just get this over with.” But Sam was grinning. She slowed down a little and let Jackson catch up. Trev had hardly moved from the car. He stood grimacing down at the sticky muck along the shore.

  “Hurry up!” Sam yelled to her brother. “You’re slow as fuck.”

  “This place smells like shit,�
�� Trev called back. “And yes, let’s all just run into the haunted shed. Great fucking idea.”

  When they reached the boathouse they all peered in one of the broken windows. The building was big enough for two or three smallish boats—canoes or rowboats—to fit side by side. But there weren’t any boats, just some broken beer bottles and a few empty milk crates off to one side.

  “See anything?” Jackson asked, because he had to. He couldn’t see anything ghostly himself.

  Sam shook her head. “Nah, empty.”

  Jackson didn’t know why he couldn’t see ghosts the way the others did. Dom had always said there were levels of sight, but Jackson’s level seemed like the ground floor. Macy could see things that even Dom couldn’t—like that fucked-up ghost with the goggles—but Jackson couldn’t see jack shit. He couldn’t even really see the Door, just a sort of wavy, mirage-thing that would disappear if he looked at it straight on. And ghosts were usually completely invisible. He had seen something like fire at school a few times. That first day of school, when Macy had seen the ghost of a teacher burning, Jackson had seen flames appear out of nowhere—licking the air around the front of the classroom for a few seconds before they vanished. But ever since the Door opened and the town was just flooded with an assload of ghosts, he couldn’t really see anything. He would stare toward a ghost that the others said they could see and maybe he would see something that looked like waves of heat rising off the cement—if he were lucky. Once he felt a shiver of cold when he was walking down the street and Macy told him he’d just passed through a ghost. Thanks for the heads up, Mace. Fuck. Jackson hated it. If someone had poured out this “superpower” out of a bottle, then all Jackson had gotten was the spit-filled backwash at the end.

  They walked to the lake side of the boathouse. Trev was right, the lake did smell kind of nasty. Jackson stepped in some green duck shit and tried to wipe off his shoes on the patchy, wet grass. The smell reminded Jackson of dead fish and rotting grass clippings left out too long in the yard. Sam went into the boathouse first, holding a big flashlight over her head like she thought she was a cop from a movie.