Countless Haints, Pt. 5

Pa opened the door just a crack.  The creaking hinges, the light spilling into the darkened room, roused Madi.  Her eyes fluttered open, but she didn't move.  She didn't speak.

"You awake?" Pa asked.  His voice, barely a whisper, trembled.

Madi's back was to the doorway, but she imagined Pa standing there, watching silently, chewing the inside of his mouth the way he did when nagging thoughts worried him.  Madi pretended to sleep, and after several minutes Pa pushed the door closed and retreated down the hall.  Still, Madi didn't move a muscle until she heard the whine and snap of the screen door, the heavy tread of Pa's boots on the front porch steps.  Only then did she sit up in bed.

She couldn't be sure what time it was, but she guessed it was late, maybe close to midnight or later.  The house was still and quiet, and the darkness was deep and thick, not the tentative shadows of the early hours, but a rich blackness that only came as evening matured into night.

Madi's eyes burned and the skin of her cheeks felt stiff from dried tears.  She still felt sleepy, but she didn't want to close her eyes again.  When she had awakened, the most awful thought had popped into her head—that her father and Old Man 'Riah and a half dozen faceless men were stealing into her room to spirit her away.  Her heart still raced, and she drew the sheets up and squeezed the blankets in her fists.  Her stomach flipped and turned.  She felt weak and lightheaded, and she thought she might throw up.

"What's the point of that?" she muttered.  "Ain't nothing in my belly anyway."

The bottom drawer of her dresser rattled.

"You have something to say?" Madi asked.

The drawer shook as if unseen hands were struggling to yank it open.

Madi hopped out of bed.  A wave of dizziness swept over her.  She closed her eyes and took in a couple of gulps of air to steady herself, then crossed the room.  Kneeling, she pulled the drawer open.

"What do you want?" she asked.

Within the drawer, the boy's skin squirmed and crawled, like an enourmous, fleshy flatworm.  She reached in—the skin was warm to the touch once more—and pulled the haint out.  The skin unrolled before her, and she laid it out across her chair.  It looked almost as if the boy sat across from her now, only he was flat as a board, and the eyes that stared back at her were gaping holes.  A tremor passed over the boy's lips.

"Window," he hissed.

"What about it?"  Madi looked at the window beside her bed.  The shade was drawn.  "Something out there I'm supposed to see?"

"Tree …"

"Hate to disappoint you, but I've seen that old tree darn near a million times."

"Hhhhhh …"

The skin breathed in frustration, then said:

"Tree …  Lies …"

"What's that?"  Madi took a step away from the haint.  "What's that about lies?"

"Window …"

"All right.  All right."  Madi turned to the window and pulled the shade.  "Don't know what's so fascinating for you, anyway.  You can't see a thing—"

Several figures stood beneath the branches of the old tree.  Madi couldn't see them very well, but she counted at least eight, men and women alike.  They carried torches that flared and guttered in the wind.

"That's them," she whispered.  "The Gathering."

Another figure climbed the hill towards the tree.  From the way his shoulders slumped and feet dragged in the dirt, the torch he carried might have weighed a couple of hundred pounds.  Despite the darkness and the distance between the house and the figure, Madi recognized the man.

"Pa."  She glanced at the boy's skin.  'How'd you know?  How'd you know they were out there?"

Thunderheads crawled across the night sky, blanketing the stars.  The muted glow of the moon struggled to pierce the haze.  On warm afternoons, Madi could wile away hours watching the sky, picking out the shapes of unicorns and castles and butterflies in the clouds.  But she didn't like the shapes she saw looming out of the vapors tonight—and the old oak tree reached out to them like a beckoning hand.

As Pa reached the top of the hill and joined the other torchbearers, Madi couldn't help but think she might never see him again.

"Avrum Creed …" the boy's hide wheezed.

Madi snapped her head towards the speaking skin.  "How do you know my Pa's name?"

"The pact …"  The haint ignored here, but continued to hiss.  " … Years … Seventeen years …"

"What are you talking about?"

"No signs …  Just a child …"

Madi couldn't make any sense of the haint's gibbering.  She leaned close to the window, her breath fogging the glass.  She couldn't tell Pa from any of the other people crowding around the trunk of the tree.

"Time has come … terms of the pact … killed her … killed the witch …"

"Would you just pipe down?" Madi said.  "I'm trying to think."

"Not her … Raised her … I'm her father …"

Madi gasped.

"Are you trying to tell me you can hear what they're saying way out there?" she asked the skin.  "How can that be?"

And then she knew.

Something dark and spindly was crawling in the branches of the old tree.  The people gathering upon the hill didn't see the creature, even as it clambered through the tangled limbs towards them, leaning in close, listening.  In the light of the torches, its naked flesh glistened.  Madi remembered the bloody footprints trailing through the brush, leading away from the spot where she had found the boy's skin.  She remembered the eerie feeling of being followed and spied upon.

"The … rest of you is out there, isn't it?" Madi said.  "Your body, your eyes, your ears.  It's out there, in the tree, and whatever it sees and hears, so do you."

"Witch," the haint continued.  "Witch."

Madi couldn't help but smile as she gazed upon the hill.  She had her own personal spy, onewho could tell her anything—

Her smile faltered when the boy's skin next spoke.

"Decided …  It's decided."

Her throat grew dry.  Her blood ran cold.

"The girl … must die …"