Eternity (16 page)

“I know,” Em said.

“But Skylar told us that you tried to warn her. About . . .
them
. To talk sense into her while she was under their spell. So,
I’m willing to give you a chance.” She folded her hands on her lap. Only her fingers, which were trembling slightly, betrayed her anxiety. Em looked around at Skylar, who was tearing at her cuticles, her hair curtained forward over her face, as always. Ms. Markwell was sitting ramrod straight, as though preparing to bolt. Em pulled back a chair and took a seat.

Silence built on silence, and Em swallowed, tried to choke out the words she so desperately needed to say. Finally, she managed: “I know you knew Edie Feiffer.  And she knew the Furies. I need to find out what happened to her. I need to find out what you know.”

A shadow passed over Nora’s face. Sadness. She exchanged an almost imperceptible glance with Hannah, who nodded.

Nora cleared her throat. “We were best friends,” she said, looking down at her hands. “The three of us were inseparable. Edie, me, and Hannah.”

“Edie Feiffer.” Em confirmed softly, thinking of the creased photo in her purse, of the stooped woman she had seen in her vision—or memory—earlier today.

Hannah nodded. “Your friend Drea’s mom.”

Em nodded. Drea’s mom, who had been a victim of the Furies. Em remembered the first time Drea told her:
She was being haunted. I’m sure of it.

There was no time to waste. “Why was she marked?” Em asked point-blank. “And did she fight back?”

Nora and Hannah exchanged another look. Nora toyed with a gold bracelet, twisting it endlessly around her wrist.

“She wasn’t marked.” Hannah spoke up now. Her voice was surprisingly deep.

“I don’t understand,” Em said, frowning. “So she wasn’t being haunted?”

Nora looked as though she was on the verge of tears. “Edie was the one who summoned them in the first place,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

There was another second of silence. Em felt a yawning pit in her stomach. Edie had summoned them. Em shook her head, confused. That didn’t make any sense.

Hannah jumped in, pursing her lips before starting to speak. “We all grew up together,” she said. “And Edie was a wonderful woman. Full of life, and so passionate. But she had her share of problems, too. Her first husband was just awful.  A drinker. He hit her too, more than once. A twisted man. Played all these mind games until she almost broke. She had these . . . blue periods. Just stretches of sad, sad time. She’d withdraw.”

Just like Drea,
Em thought.

“When she remarried, she seemed to get better,” Nora said. “Especially when Drea came.”

“But
he
was always lurking in the shadows,” Hannah said.

“Her first husband, you mean?” Skylar piped up. Em had practically forgotten she was there.

The women nodded, and when Nora looked up Em could see that the tears were starting to overspill her eyes.

“We’d all heard stories growing up about three women who haunted the woods, taking revenge on people who had sinned,” Nora said. “My grandma—your great-grandmother, Skylar—used to call them ‘Dirae.’ Some said they were ghosts, or demons. This is New England. People are superstitious.”

That was true. No matter how many malls were built or iPhones were sold, people in Ascension, Maine, would always like to tell stories: about ghosts and witches and things that went creak in the night. Em had been, what, five years old the first time she heard the legend of the Haunted Woods? Ghost stories were like a rite of passage around here.

“I never actually believed all that stuff,” Nora continued. “But Edie—she
believed
.”

“Well, she was always looking for something to believe in,” Hannah said authoritatively. “Whether it was crystals and healing stones or witches in the woods, she wanted something
external
to fix things. I don’t think she thought she could fix them herself.”

Em took a deep breath. She hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to sit here and listen to the truth, to hear about all of this old pain and old blood, dredged up and restored. She didn’t want to rush Nora through what was obviously a traumatic retelling. But it was more than that—some part of her didn’t want to hear, or know.

Blinking back the sudden desire to cry, she looked around the greenhouse. An explosion of color and green: plants growing up and out, stretching their way along the interior of the glass. They so clearly wanted out.  All this life, condensed into this one artificial structure. Protected from the cold and the snow, but aching for fresh air.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Nora asked, watching Em’s eyes roam the building.

“Yes,” Em said shortly. She cleared her throat. She couldn’t waste any more time. “Can you—can you tell me more?”

Nora sighed. “Edie found out about three women who burned to death in the Ascension woods, and she started gathering what she considered to be evidence of dark forces—unsolved crimes; murders and accidents that went unexplained; mysterious fires. And then she found the book. . . .
Conjuring the Furies.
”

A jolt went through Em and she sat up straight. “I have that book,” she blurted out. Hannah looked at her sharply. “I—I found it. In Sasha Bowlder’s things.”

“We never thought she would do anything with it,” Nora said, rushing on. There were red splotches on both her cheeks. Guilt, or anger, maybe. “But when Drea was three, Jack—the first husband—came back around. He threatened her. Saying he would take Drea, make it so that she could never see her child again, do things to Drea.”

Em shivered. Bad energy was whirling around the table.
Skylar dug her fingernails into the soft wood of the table.

“Edie was so angry,” Nora said. Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “So scared, too. She . . . she wanted protection.”

“So she tried to summon the Furies for help,” Em said. She was beginning to understand.

“She didn’t
try
,” Nora said dully. “She did it. She succeeded. Last she heard of Jack was a month later. He’d been found dead in a house he was working on, his head split clean by a circular saw—”

“But they weren’t done,” Hannah interrupted. “That was only the start. Edie thought she could control them. But that isn’t how it works. They wouldn’t—they wouldn’t leave her alone.”

They won’t leave
me
alone either . . .

“But she hadn’t even done anything wrong,” Skylar pointed out.

“They’d gotten their claws in her,” Nora said. “They’d found their way into our world again. They didn’t want to leave. They kept saying she owed them. . . . ”

Em fought a surge of nausea. It was all too familiar. And now, finally, the pieces were all in front of her. Still, she was having trouble putting them together. When she spoke, it was to the floor. “So they killed her, right? Just for fun?”

Hannah surprised Em by shaking her head. “No. Not directly. They wanted something from her—she would never tell us what. All we knew was that it was something she would never give them. It was driving her insane.” Hannah’s voice broke. “And so she took the only way out she thought she had.”

Skylar inhaled sharply.  The four of them sat for a moment in stunned silence. Em turned over the information in her mind. So Drea’s mom had killed herself, rather than give the Furies what they wanted?

What had they asked of her? And would they ask the same thing of Em?

“She left us a note,” Nora said, breaking the spell to dig into her sweater pocket with shaking hands. “I’ve kept it all this time.” She locked eyes with Em and handed her the paper; it was old and had been folded and unfolded hundreds of times.

I did a terrible thing,
it read.
They are eating me from the inside out. I can’t stand it. It isn’t just about me anymore. I have to save her.

The words felt like tiny sparks showering over Em, making her skin burn. This was a message from someone desperate.

Someone just like her.

“They put their darkness in her,” Nora said, as if she was reading Em’s mind. “Just like they’ve put their darkness in you.” For once, she didn’t look terrified or disgusted when she stared at Em. It was pity Em saw in Nora’s eyes.

They see Edie in me,
Em realized.
I am a reminder of their long-lost friend. I am the carrier of that.

“But after she died . . . they just . . . left?” Skylar asked. Clearly she was thinking of the next logical question:
How can we get rid of them?

Hannah spread her hands. “That was the last we heard of
them. I guess they were . . . satisfied when Edie died. We thought they were gone for good, until . . . ”

The sentence didn’t need to be finished, but Em did it for her: “Until now,” she said. “Until me.” No one bothered to respond; they all knew the answer.

Em lungs felt like a pressure cooker that was about to explode. Was the only solution for her to do as Drea’s mom had done, and do the Furies’ dirty work for them? Is that what had happened to Sasha and to Chase—had they leaped from the Piss Pass, driven to suicide by Ty, Meg, and Ali?

Possibly. But then why had the Furies had stuck around, instead of fleeing as they had in the wake of Edie’s death?

“There must be a way to stop them,” she said, as much to convince herself as the people at the table.

Nora set her mouth into a grim line. “Of course, we all have our theories,” she said, staring into the space behind Em, where the overgrown flora suffocated itself beneath heavily glazed panes. “I carry my snake pin. Never been without it since what happened to Edie. Some say that rituals of purity and sacrifice will mollify them, and Hannah once read there was a way to undo the curse if you’ve been poisoned by them—an antidote of some sort.” She shook her head. Now Em could read the pity in her eyes again—the resignation, too. “But we tried all we could. I fear no mortal can stop them.  And their game never really ends, you know.  The Furies always win.”

“Only you would wear a suit to Fun Zone,” Ned said as his ball ricocheted off the fencing behind them. Foul.

“It’s not a suit,” JD said, taking a few strong practice swings as he got into position. “It’s my dad’s blazer with pants that aren’t ripped jeans. And stop trying to throw me off my game.”

It was Saturday morning and they were at the indoor batting cage in the middle of a much-larger sports arcade near Ascension, a place made for kids’ birthday parties and rowdy teenage boys. JD and Ned weren’t the usual clientele—a few too many honors classes (not to mention years) under their belts—but it was a spring tradition for them to come here every year before opening day of baseball season.

JD was grateful for the chance to blow off some steam. The
interaction with Skylar’s sister in the graveyard was etched in his mind, mingling with unavoidable image of Crow stalking Em, and of that snake pin buried in the mud. . . . And then there was Ty. Ty texting him, teasing him; Ty’s laugh echoing in his mind. Like she’d implanted herself there.

He couldn’t shake a bad feeling. He’d woken up from a nightmare only to forget the details but be haunted by the sense, all day, of darkness.

“Don’t forget that Keith wants us to come over tonight to pick our fantasy rosters,” Ned said, squatting in the corner of the cage and tearing into a bag of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. Dressed in a T-shirt and army-green cargo pants, Ned looked ripped from the pages of an online gaming brochure. As for JD . . . well, it wasn’t clear what type of catalog he was modeling for. His pinstripe pants, buckled boots, plain white T-shirt, and glasses . . . None of it suggested Sports Guy.

The first pitch from the machine came barreling toward JD and he let it go by. He liked to get used to the space, to the feel of the bat, to the speed of the pitch, before taking his first swing. “You’d be having a better time if you hadn’t gotten off to such a crappy start,” he said, and Ned grunted in assent.

“You gonna wait all day there, buddy?” Ned called out as JD let another one fly by his head.

“It’s called patience,” JD said, tightening his grip on the bat.

“It’s called being a—” Ned cut himself off as JD swung at
the next pitch. Made contact. The ball soared straight toward the back wall, getting stuck in the netting that lined the rear of the cage. “Okay, beginner’s luck,” he said. “Nice one.”

JD smiled, feeling the dancing sensation in his stomach that came whenever he did something well. Like when he aced a test, or figured out a complicated circuit. Like every time he beat Em at Scrabble.

“You call it beginner’s luck; I call it having a good eye,” he said, grabbing for the chips. “You’re up.”

On his next turn, Ned managed to hit another foul ball that shot straight up in the air above them. He had to scramble out of the way when it came back down. “I knew you had it in you, Nedzo. Next Coke’s on me.”

They went back and forth like that for a while, getting into a comfortable rhythm with the machine-thrown pitches and the weight of the bat in their hands. When he made contact, the wooden crack of the bat was the sweetest sound there was; it cut through the all the noise going on in his brain. The questions, the anxiety—they softened, faded somewhere into the background until he was ready to handle them again.

JD started to feel a little better. A little back-to-normal. He allowed himself to revel in the simplicity of it. The tiny routines he developed every time he approached the plate—brushing the bat against the floor before hoisting it over his shoulder, squinching his face, and adjusting his glasses.

“We should have gone out for baseball,” Ned said after his first decent hit of the day.

“Yeah, we would have fit right in with that crowd,” JD answered, rolling his eyes. But it got him thinking again. “Hey, dude, you ever hear anything about Chase Singer?”

“What do you mean? That he’s dead?” Ned took a swig from his soda bottle.

JD winced. Ned didn’t mean to be a dick, he just had all the subtlety of a Mack truck. “Obviously,” JD said, tapping the bat mindlessly against the metal cage. “I meant
about
his death. About when they found him.”