“Quick, catch him!” someone said. He thought it might be Ellie.
“Don’t let him fall—”
“Chris?” A voice from the dark. “Chris, answer me. Are you okay?” “I . . . I don’t kn-know.” His tongue was bloated, his mouth numb.
His chest was heavy, a huge weight pressing him down, down, down
into the black.
I’m on the snow again. I’m under the trap.
“N-no.” When he tried to turn his head toward the voice, his
neck locked tight. “Don’t k-kill me again. P-please. I don’t w-want
to d-die.”
“Shh. Don’t be afraid. I’m here now, Chris. I won’t leave you.” A
hand, strong and sure, cupped his cheek. “Open your eyes. It’s time
to come back. It’s time to see.”
“I c-can’t.” He was shivering. “I d-d-don’t want to see.” “You have to. No more hiding in the shadows.” The voice was
calm but remorseless. “You’re not eight anymore. Come on. Come
back now.”
“N-n-nuh . . .” But his lids were lifting, the darkness peeling away,
a film seeming to dissolve from his eyes. At first, there was nothing but a glaring bright fog, like strong light bleeding through heavy mist. Then he saw the fog curl and eddy as Peter’s face pulled together, the
pieces knitting from the neck up: chin and mouth, nose and forehead. But no eyes. Only blanks, smooth skin over bone.
“Where are y-your eyes?” A fist of horror squeezed his heart.
“P-Peter, whwhere . . .”
“Oh, silly me.” And then the skin over Peter’s sockets peeled apart.
“There. Better?”
Chris felt the scream boil up his throat and try to crash from his
mouth. Peter’s eyes were caves, not deep black mirrors like Jess’s,
but red and vast and filling fast. They brimmed in bloody rills that
oozed down his cheeks and leaked over his lips. When Peter smiled,
his lips skinned to reveal a bristle of too many teeth that were wet
and orange.
“Peekaboo,” Peter said. Thick scarlet teardrops trembled on his
upper lip to drip directly onto Chris’s face and splash into his own
staring eyes. There was a sssss sound, the hiss of a snake, the boil of
acid, and then the pain, and Chris was blind and he was screaming—
“Huh!” Chris heard the cry bolt from his mouth.
“Christopher?” Not Peter or Lena or his father, but an old man. A
dry, cool palm found his forehead. “Christopher, are you back with
us?”
Is this another dream? He lay absolutely still for a long moment. A
new nightmare? He was under a thick down comforter and still mostly
naked, although someone had slipped on a pair of underpants. There
was also something unfamiliar around his neck. Cord?
“Christopher?”
“Y-yes,” he croaked. He dragged his lids up, wincing against bright
spokes of yellow-white light jabbing through two windows directly
opposite the bed. He would’ve raised a hand to shield his eyes, but he
couldn’t move his arms. Sheets were noosed around his wrists, and
his ankles were tethered to the bedposts.
“There you are. Welcome back.” Reaching for a stoneware jug on
a nightstand, the old man splashed water into a clear glass. “Thirsty?” He was about to ask why he was tied down but then considered
that if a kid had grabbed his gun, he’d have done the same thing. “Is
it drugged?” he rasped.
“No. Here.” Slipping an arm under Chris’s shoulders, the old man
propped him as he drank. The water was clean and odorless and
cool as a balm. He felt the chilly slide of its course from his tortured
throat down the middle of his chest and then the cold explosion in his
empty stomach. When he’d drained the glass, the old man lowered
him, then settled back into his own chair. “That should stay put. We
fed you a bit of broth yesterday, so . . .”
“Yesterday?” When he ran his tongue over his still-dry lips, he
tasted old blood from where the skin had cracked. “How long have I
been here?”
“In this room?” The old man laced his fingers over his stomach.
His hair, which floated around his shoulders, was as snowy white as
his beard, although his upper lip was bare. But the resemblance was
clear, especially the eyes, which were as bright and black and keen as
an old prophet’s. “Six days ago. I arrived last night just before sunset.
I was here when you surfaced the first time.”
He caught the emphasis. “What do you mean, in this room?
Where was I before?”
“What do you remember?”
“Snow,” he said, hoarsely. He didn’t want to think about the
dreams. “The trees. Spikes and green glass, and the sound of the
limbs breaking, like bombs.”
“That was the tiger-trap. What else?”
“Weight on my back, and I remember the cold, and it hurt . . .
my chest, whenever I tried to move. I couldn’t breathe, like kn-knives
. . .” He was starting to shiver. “I c-couldn’t . . .”
“Easy.” The old man laid a calming hand on Chris’s forearm.
“That’s in the past.”
“But how far in the past?”
“Two weeks.”
“I’ve been out for two weeks?” His heart skipped. “What month
is it?”
“It’s the end of the first week of March. Take it easy, Chris. You’re
safe now.”
“That’s what you keep saying. Was I in a coma? What happened
to me?”
“You got caught in the tiger-trap. Hannah said you couldn’t
breathe, were in intense pain, had lost a tremendous amount of
blood. Every time they tried to move you or the trap—” “It hurt.” His heaving chest was suddenly prickly with sweat.
“I . . . I couldn’t . . .”
“Take it easy.” The old man patted his arm. “Slow down.” “I thought I was dying,” he whispered. “When Hannah gave me
that water . . . I thought it was poison and she was trying to kill me.
I guess . . .” It was all a bad dream, like the one about my dad and me and
Lena and then Peter. He didn’t know whether to laugh or break into
tears. “I dreamt that I died. I thought I was dead.”
“That’s because, for all intents and purposes,” the old man said,
“you were.”
56
“What?” When he tried to start up from the bed, knots dug into his wrists and ankles. “What are you talking about? What are you saying?”
“Easy, Christopher,” the old man said. “Calm down.” “Calm down?” He thought he was screaming, but he could only muster a tortured squawk. He strained against the sheets, his neck so stiff he heard the creak of bone. “You’re telling me I was dead? That Hannah really poisoned me?”
“Yes. She wished to ease your suffering, to help you let go. She stayed with you until you slipped away. It didn’t take long. You were quite weak already. If Ellie hadn’t found you when she did and sent Eli for help, you might’ve been stone-dead long before Hannah and Jayden got to you.”
“Ellie and her dog k-kept me alive. Th-they . . .” His throat suddenly clogged as he collapsed back onto the bed. “They kept me w-warm.” Chris’s eyes burned, and when he closed them, he felt a tear leak onto a temple. Why am I crying? Embarrassed, he rolled his face away.
“Yes, our little fisherwoman’s quite resourceful,” the old man said, and then Chris felt the slight pressure of a thumb wiping away the wet on his face. “It is not weakness to become emotional after a shock. You’re clearly a very strong boy, Christopher.”
“But how can I still be alive?” Chris whispered. He opened his eyes. “You said I was dead. I f-felt myself die.”
“I know what I said. You were given poison that should’ve killed you but didn’t. You should be dead, but you’re not.” The old man laid a gentle hand on Chris’s cheek, a touch for which Chris was almost absurdly grateful. “I can’t explain it.”
“Maybe it wasn’t as bad as Hannah thought.” He could feel the tears dribbling into his hair. “She shouldn’t have done that. I’m not a horse with a broken leg.”
“Fair enough, but would you have drunk poison willingly? Would you have had faith in a girl you’d never met, that she was right: you were going to die and this was more merciful?”
“Well, she was wrong, wasn’t she?”
“She may have been . . . mistaken about the extent of your injuries. Hannah’s quite skillful. She’ll be a fine healer someday. But no, she’s not a doctor.”
“Are you?”
“No. But I’ve been a healer for a very long time, and I know that tiger-trap.”
“How did they . . .” He heard himself hyperventilating but couldn’t stop it. “They couldn’t get the trap off. It hurt too much. I heard them argue. Hannah was worried I would bleed even more.”
“That’s right.” The old man’s tone was dry, factual. “After you slipped away, they turned you over and pulled you off. I believe they cut a spike or two to do it.”
Cut me off. The image of them flipping the door and his limp body, tacked on iron spikes like a frog pinned to a dissecting pad, stroked the small hairs along his neck. They would’ve bundled him up, too, before throwing his wrapped corpse onto a horse. Or had the horse drag me if it got spooked. He supposed he was lucky they hadn’t decided to bury him under rocks.
“Nathan was hit with a mace,” he said. “That big log? I heard his neck break. Did he come back from the dead, too?”