The Thread That Binds the Bones (12 page)

Fred slipped through the crowd and went behind the bar, where he turned off the television. Tom helped Maggie onto a stool, then sat beside her. Eddie took the stool to Tom’s left.

“Drinks on the house, Miss. What’s your preference?” Fred asked Maggie.

Her grip on Tom’s arm hadn’t loosened. She looked up at Tom’s face.

“How about a root beer?” Tom suggested, and she nodded. He added, “I’ll take a shot of whatever works fastest.”

“Eddie?”

“Bud,” said Eddie. “Oh, God. Choice. Oh, God.”

Fred poured Maggie’s root beer from a can into a beer glass, drew Eddie a beer from the tap, poured Tom a shot of whiskey. “Talk. Please, talk to us, people.”

Tom tossed back his shot, coughed, and wiped his mouth on his impossibly white sleeve. Warmth spread through him, thawing some of the stage fright he had been feeling. Here on what he had considered solid ground, he felt unnerved by being the center of attention. In the Hollow it hadn’t bothered him that much; somehow he had never convinced himself that the Hollow was real.

“Not used to talking anymore,” said Eddie. He held his hands out, palms up, and looked at them. “These are mine, you know? For a long time they weren’t.”

“You were at Chapel Hollow?” asked somebody.

Eddie drank beer. “Yeah,” he said.

“What’s it like inside that damned house?”

“How many still alive out there?”

“How the hell did you get away? Never heard of that happening before.”

“What in tarnation are you wearing, Tom?” asked Bert.

“These were the only clothes I could find.”

“They get you naked out there? What were you doing?”

Somebody wolf-whistled.

“Well, I never thought it of Miss Laura,” said Fred. “Miss Gwen or Miss Sarah, even Miss Nerissa or Miss Elspeth, but not Miss Laura.”

“It’s not what you think,” said Tom. He wondered how much Arcadians really knew about Hollow people. “When they turn you into something else, your clothes don’t—” He listened to his own voice, his own words, and sighed, wondering what any sane person would make of his remark.

Everyone fell into a meditative silence. Maggie sipped root beer.

“They turn people into things, huh,” said a voice, but it didn’t sound disbelieving, just resigned.

“But you already knew that, didn’t you?” Tom said, trying to locate the speaker.

“Heard of it happening,” said Ruth. “My little sister said she saw something like that once.”

“What’d they turn you into?” asked someone else.

Tom felt heat in his face, which surprised him. “I’d rather not say.”

“We need information,” Sam said.

“Ask other questions, then,” said Tom.

“Did you see my brother Chester?” asked Rums, one of the firemen.

“He’s alive,” said Eddie, “but he’s in pretty bad shape. If you let it get to you, you go crazy. I saw that happen to one girl—her name was Moira—she got so upset she was screaming and crying, and finally the Family took her off somewhere. I don’t know what happened to her, but I didn’t see her again. Chester’s pretty close to that edge, I think.”

“Sam, when are you going out there and make them give us back our relatives? They’re not supposed to take relatives.”

Tom remembered Cleo the grocer’s sad look as she watched him work, her expectation that he would be gone soon. He thought of all the relatives he had in the world—seemed like there were a lot of them, but since Aunt Rosemary’s death, nobody who cared where he was. He had come here looking like a loner.

“I’m not going out there to their home ground and get turned into a cow chip,” said Sam. He rubbed his hand over his bristly flattop. “Seems to me that would incapacitate me for my job.”

“But it’s getting worse. Somebody’s got to stop it. They took two guys in one year. That’s way over the allotment. And they took Chester, and he was almost a native.”

“Well,” said Sam, “here we are—we got three of ’em back.” He swallowed. “How’d you get away? Did you find a.weak spot in their defenses?”

Eddie stared at Tom, and Tom squinted back. Eddie lowered his eyes, drank beer in silence while everyone waited for answers. “It was Miss Laura,” said Eddie. “Her coming changed things enough so we could run off. I don’t think it’ll happen again.”

“She’s leaving the Hollow tomorrow,” said Tom.

“Maybe we could ask her—” Sarn said.

“It must be a fluke,” said Fred. “Blood’s thicker than water. Miss Laura may not like what they do, but she won’t turn against her own kin.”

“You people just go on living here knowing those Chapel Hollow folks steal people and turn them into slaves?” Tom asked. He looked around. Most people refused to meet his eyes.

“They have rules about that,” said someone in a low voice.

“They do things for us,” said Syd Loftus, a retired man who spent hours in the Dew-Drop every day. “‘Least, they used to. Way back in settlement days, in 1852, they rescued a lost wagon train, cured the folks who had cholera, helped people build, and that’s how Arcadia started. In the bad flu years in the First World War, Miz Kerensa came into town and conjured the fever out of people; she was a fine healer and a great lady. In the Depression they made the land fruitful so we didn’t suffer too much, and they still do that in trouble years if we go out and ask right. During the floods of ‘48 and ‘62 they held the water away from the town; some towns disappeared right off the map in those floods, but we’re still here. Last twenty-thirty years, things have been changing. The young ones are growing up meaner, and they started taking folks. They didn’t used to do that. Except—can’t remember. Something—no. It didn’t used to be scary to live here, more like we had angels over the hill. Spring Pageant used to have real miracles in it, and around Christmas they’d come in and we would gift each other and have a big feast. But lately ...

—Fascinating, murmured someone in Tom’s head. He straightened. He had forgotten Peregrine’s presence.

—How so? thought Tom.

—I have not observed this twining of two settlements,
tanganar
and
Ilmonishti
,
before, and I am curious about its operation.

—Do you have questions?

—Ask about the rules of fetchcasting. When I was alive, it was a thing only the very ill or the very destitute did.

“What kind of rules do they have about, uh, fetchcasting?” Tom said.

For a moment silence lay heavy in the bar, but then someone said, “Never take people out of their homes.”

“They can’t take anybody who says no.”

“Yeah, but they can trick you into saying yes.”

“Take only people who have no relatives. Best of all to take someone nobody will miss.”

“Lately, anymore, since this last generation started coming into their powers, it’s safer to keep the kids inside after dark,” said Trailer Court Hank.

“One of the new rules is they can take people who’ve been real mean to them, like they deserve to get taken because of bad behavior,” said Bert. “Used to be you could talk to Hollow folks straight without worrying about the consequences, but lately it’s been getting spookier.”

“But in the meantime,” said Tom, “you kind of cultivate strangers in the hopes that if the Chapel Hollow people come here looking for fetches, we’ll be the ones tapped?”

No one answered him for a long moment. Maggie reached the bottom of her glass of root beer and set the empty on the bar with a gentle click.

“It’s not like we planned it,” said someone.

“We just don’t think about it too hard.”

“We don’t think about them if we can avoid it.”

“If you think about them too much, they can hear you and sometimes they come looking for you.”

“Lord,” said Sam, “and here we are, a group of people thinking hard about them, talking about them, and harboring refugees, too. And we’re breaking the most important rule of all: never talk to outsiders about these things.”

Dead silence.

After a moment, Sam said, “How could we forget that one? It’s built in.” He stared at Tom.

Eddie said, “Face it, we’re not exactly outsiders anymore. We been further inside than most of you.”

“We knew that without knowing it,” said Bert. “The way we know when to shut up even when we don’t know somebody new is in the room. Like you said, Sam: built in.”

“But we’re still talking,” Sam said. “It’s still an invitation to the Hollow people to come and interfere. Syd, Bert, Fred, you’re the oldest; you ever heard of fetches escaping before?”

“No,” said Syd. “Not getting clean away. There was that attempt not too long ago ...”

Fred shook his head. “Nobody’s gotten all the way away.”

Bert frowned.

Sam said, “Think they’ll be mad about this?”

“Yes,” said Fred.

“Whose fetches are you?” Bert asked.

“No one’s,” said Maggie, lifting her chin.

“Sorry,” said Bert. “Whose were you?” His voice was gentle.

Eddie, Maggie, and Tom looked at each other. “Mr. Carroll’s,” said Maggie reluctantly.

“Miss Owen’s,” Eddie said.

Tom crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Miss Laura’s,” feeling peculiar because he was confessing to the indignity of being owned; even though it was not true, it felt demeaning. His appreciation for how Eddie and Maggie must feel increased.

Everyone else in the bar moved away from them, either physically or mentally. “Oh, yes, they’ll be mad,” said Ruth, with a quaver in her voice.

“Couldn’t have picked worse people to defy,” said Hank. He frowned. “Except Miss Laura isn’t—”

“They’ll be on the warpath,” said Sam in a low voice.

A moment’s considering silence edged past. “You want us to go back, don’t you?” Tom said.

“We’re free and clear,” said Eddie.

“What makes you think that?”

“Is Tommy right?” Eddie asked. “Would you rather we went back to Chapel Hollow?”

Silence stretched and lingered. “No,” said Fred at last. “We just don’t know how to arm against them.”

“There was an almost escape six years ago,” said Gus. “A stranger none of us ever met ran across country from the Hollow and ended up at the Henderson sisters’ place. They wrote down who he was and where he came from. That’s all Luke found when he went out there to deliver mail, a note in the mailbox. Margaret wrote that she saw the Hollow people coming toward them out of the sky, and that’s the last we ever heard of them. We figured the Hollow folks took the stranger and the Hendersons off.”

“They were there,” said Maggie. “The women chopping vegetables in the kitchen, Tom.”

“They’re still alive? They were old even then,” said Dr. Alton.

“Yeah, they’re alive,” said Eddie, “but they’re scared. We offered them a chance to run away with us, but they said no.”

“See? They knew better,” said Sam. “They knew they’d only hurt whoever helped them, and they couldn’t get away without help.”

“Hollow people will not be coming after us,” said Eddie.

“Excuse me, but I grew up with Miss Gwen and Mr. Carroll,” said Dr. Alton, “and I don’t think they let go of anything they consider their own.”

Tom stood up. “Maybe we’d be better off
somewhere else. Fred, I lost my wallet out there. I don’t know when I’ll be able to settle up.”

“You did that yesterday, Tommy, remember?”

“Oh, right,” he said, then gave Fred a smile. “You did try to warn me. Thanks. Bert, do I still have a job?”

“Anybody who can drive to hell and come back with fares has a job with me. Thought I’d lost Old Number Two forever.”

“How about my room? Okay if I stay there?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, Bert. This is Maggie.” He touched Maggie’s shoulder. She held out a hand to Bert, who shook it, smiling. “Can I clear out one of the storage rooms and put down a mattress for her someplace? She needs to stay close.”

“Sure,” said Bert.

“Hell, Tom, that’s statutory rape,” Sam said. Maggie gave him a look, and he flushed.

“She’s sleeping alone,” said Tom. “If anybody gives her trouble, they’ll answer to me.” He glared at everyone. Most of them shrugged.

Maggie stood up, close to Tom’s side.

“Wait,” said Hank. “You can’t leave yet. What are we gonna do if—what makes you so sure they won’t follow you?”

Maggie held out her hand, showing her silver brand. “We got a magic mark,” she said. Torn buried his hands in his pockets, hiding his ring. “You know they have rules. This means they got to leave us alone.”

“Where’d you get that mark?” asked Fred. “Could we get one too?”

Maggie’s brow furrowed. She glanced at Tom, and he wondered what he would say if she told them everything. Spelling the whole town wasn’t something he felt like doing, especially in his present mood. The town had whispered “almost home” to him, but the people in it had welcomed him because he was being set up. Except for Bert, who seemed genuinely happy to see them. Bert puzzled Tom.

“You can only get the mark if you’ve been a slave out there,” Maggie said. “It isn’t prevention; it’s a cure. It isn’t easy to find. Miss Laura brought it. Been waiting for it a long time.”

“Oh,” said Fred. He looked at Eddie, who pointed to the mark on his arm, and at Tom, who shrugged.

Eddie downed the last of his beer and stood, thumping his glass down on the bar. “I gotta go find Pops,” he said, “see can I get my job back. Thanks for the beer, Fred.”

“You’re welcome. Listen ... I mean it. Welcome back to town. I don’t think we did that right. We’re just too damned scared.”

“I guess you got good reason for it,” said Eddie. “Come on, Tommy, Maggie.”

“See you soon,” said Bert, as the three of them left the bar through the door where only yesterday Laura had walked into Tom’s life.

Chapter 11

“Want a ride to Pops’s?” Tom asked Eddie as the door closed behind them. “Bessie needs gas. One more stop before we go home okay, Maggie?”

“Yes,” she said.

“That’d be great,” Eddie said. They climbed into the front seat of the cab. “Especially if it turns out he doesn’t want me back. I feel like I have a disease. If it turns out like that, Tommy ...” He stared out the front windshield. “Gonna need to blow this town right away. I don’t know how that’ll work out, with this mark and everything.”