The Forest of Hands and Teeth (35 page)

I don't hear them as they crash into the water but I don't dare look down.

Jed joins me on my tiny ledge and together we press ourselves into the side of the earth wall, digging our fingers into the mud, grasping at the roots and brush.

The rain still beats on our backs, the thunder mixing with the sound of the rapids and echoing around us. In the flashes of lightning I can see the Unconsecrated thrashing in the water so far below.

I realize that Jed has been talking to me and I have to strain to hear his voice.

“—sorry, Mary.”

“What?” I yell at him.

“I said I'm sorry,” he says. And this time I hear him.

“Why did you come through the gate?” I ask.

“Because I'm your big brother.” He smiles, then laughs. “And I want to believe in hope.” I cannot help but smile a little as well. At the two of us stuck here on the side of a cliff during a storm, unable to see anything around us but Unconsecrated that fall with the rain.

For a moment it's just the two of us, the way it used to be back before there was Beth or Harry or Travis. Before our father and mother turned and we turned on each other.

“Thank you,” I say.

He's about to respond when an Unconsecrated bounces down the cliff, knocks into him and sends him tumbling away from me, out into the nothingness.

“Jed!” I scream. Over and over again I yell for him as I scrabble down the cliff grasping at roots and branches and rocks, sometimes losing my grip and skidding down until I can stop my fall.

Finally, I'm close enough to the water. It churns with branches and bodies. Whitecaps roiling over each other. No order, just chaos.

Sometimes a head will break the surface but never long enough for me to see the face. Arms flail but it's impossible to tell whether the arms belong to Jed or an Unconsecrated. Bodies continue to fall into the water, creating splashes that mix with the waves.

I realize that the current is impossibly fast in places and so I start to move sideways down the cliff, trying to make it downstream. Hoping that Jed was able to find something to grab on to, to pull himself out of the water.

As the night wears on my searches grow more frantic, more desperate. I find a tree that has fallen over the water and I inch my way out onto it, gripping the rough bark with my thighs. The rain continues to pound my back as I move forward, gusts of wind rip down the canyon, making me hug the tree so that I don't fall in.

When I'm out over the water I scan the surface below. The river clogs as a massive log jams into a narrow part of the canyon and the water begins to back up. Waves crash over my position.

I back down the tree, concentrating so hard that I don't see it coming. An arm reaches out of the water. Grabs me. Yanks me in. Pulls me under.

I kick and thrash and turn. Something tugs at my hair. My head breaks the surface and for a heartbeat I believe that my rescuer is Jed. That he's the one who has dragged me to the surface.

But then I see the face, the hunger, the teeth. I lash out, push against the water with all my might. The current slips past me as I fight it. Lightning splits the sky and I can see my surroundings clearly.

See the bodies like so much debris, a part of the swirling mess.

And then nothingness.

In my dream I'm back in the clearing in the Forest, the one Sister Tabitha took me to through the tunnels under the Cathedral. The Forest is silent. No mosquitoes humming, no birds singing and I am alone. Suddenly, everything around me collapses. Sound clamors back and it's my mother screaming as she turned. I see the Unconsecrated rushing at me from the Forest, all of them fast, all of them wearing bright red vests. My mother is there and Jed and Cass and Harry and Jacob. Over and over and over I see the same faces coming at me, hungering for me.

Panic wells inside me until I remember the fences. I am protected by the fences. I scrabble to find the entrance to the tunnel but it's not there. The ground is smooth; I can't find a single stick to use as a weapon. The Unconsecrated hit the metal links of the fence and they push and pull. My head swells with their moans.

They're calling my name. “Mary… Mary… Mary,” like a chant, like a prayer. Blood pools from their mouths. Every Unconsecrated is my mother, Harry, Jed, Cass or Jacob.

They raise their hands toward me, their fingers like claws, pointing at me. I can feel their accusations like a blow, like a ferocious wind pushing against me. And then the fence dissolves. There's nothing between us. They crawl toward me. Crawl like Gabrielle the last time I saw her. My only hope is that their strength will give out before they reach me. But I feel them on my legs, pulling me down. I'm surrounded, smothered. I can't breathe.

Their hands dig into me. It's as if they're all trying to crawl inside me at once.

I can't stop them and they keep coming and coming and coming until I drown under them.

I
wake to the sound of wind rushing through the trees. I'm on my back, water swirling around my toes. The earth feels different. Soggy. Soft. Smooth.

I try to open my eyes but the bright sun blinds me, sending sharp daggers of pain deep into my head. The rest of my body screams in pain as well and I let out a low moan.

For a while I just lie there. Breathing, remembering my dream and allowing the guilt of losing Jed to wash over me. I want to curl in on myself, to tear at my hair. But my body hurts too much and so I let the water tickle my feet, let the sun warm my cheek, let my body stop its throbbing. The air through the trees is calming, soothing, and I almost slip back into nothingness, grateful to forget about the Forest and Jed and hope and the Unconsecrated and my dream.

The sound of someone digging sifts through my head. The sound of a spade breaking through a root, burying itself into the soft earth, being pulled out again.

It's a familiar sound and makes me smile. Harvest season. Time to celebrate the sun and spring. The sound grows closer and its repetition joins the rhythm of the air through the trees like a lullaby.

A shadow falls over my face and I open my eyes just in time to see a man standing over me with a shovel in his hands. He raises the blade above his head.

On instinct I roll to my right. The shovel misses my throat and buries itself in the sand where my neck used to be.

The man stands there slightly off balance, his blade buried very deep in the sand.

I fall back on my heels and as he yanks against the handle I raise my hands. “Wait, wait!” I shout at him, and he stops. His grip loosens and he looks at me with an odd and curious expression.

“You're …” He pauses. “You're not dead,” he finally says.

“I would have been, had you had your way,” I say. I keep my hands up and start to scoot away from him.

Something past his shoulder catches my eye—an Unconsecrated woman with stringy hair is lurching at his back. “Watch out!” I yell. He turns and decapitates her with a practiced stroke. She falls to the ground slowly.

He returns his gaze to me and starts to speak but his words don't penetrate my haze. I'm suddenly dizzy as I take in the world around me. At the expanse of water stretching out forever beside me.

“The ocean,” I whisper. And then the night before breaks fresh into my mind again. “Jed,” I gasp.

I stand, wobble and then start to run down the beach, examining the bodies washed ashore. Most of their heads have been severed, no doubt the handiwork of the man who's calling after me.

“What are you looking for?” he yells.

“My brother!” I shout. “He was with me and now …”

There are hundreds of Unconsecrated littering the beach and I am about to turn one over to see its face when the man catches up with me and pulls me back.

“Whoa there,” he says. “Watch what you're doing. Some of these Mudo are still dangerous.”

He pushes me aside and flips the body with his shovel. I clasp my hands in front of my face, peering around my fingers. But it isn't Jed. We repeat this with all the bodies on the beach. My stomach lurches every time and I pray that I haven't caused my brother's death. The man patiently leads me from body to body, turning them so that I can see and then swiftly cutting their heads as casually as he would dig into the earth.

We look at every body on the beach. We never find Jed.

“There's a lot of shoreline,” the man says finally. “Maybe he washed up somewhere else. It's dangerous to leave this cove but I could take you if you wanted. Or he could still wash up here. Never know, usually after a storm like last night we'll have stuff comin' up for days.”

I walk to the edge of the water and he follows.

“Why do you call them Mudo?” I ask him.

He seems taken aback by my question. Even blushes a little.

“I guess I like it better,” he says, his voice a little mumbled. “It's what the pirates who hunt along the coast call them. It means speechless.” He shrugs. “Seems to fit.”

“Where am I?” I ask, keeping my gaze fixed on the line where the water meets the sky.

“This beach doesn't really have a name. Not since the Return, anyway. “

I dig my toes into the fine sand. Another wave crashes around my ankles, causing my feet to sink into the ground a little. A few cuts on my calves protest as the salty water probes the wounded flesh.

“I have never seen the ocean,” I say. I wonder what Jed would have thought, taking in the expanse of water. If Travis would be proud that I finally made it. That I survived. I collapse onto my knees and the man jumps in alarm.

He turns to squat next to me and together we look out at the way the sun sets the water sparkling.

“It's usually not so full of debris,” the man says. “Storms like the one last night will cause a lot of timber to pour out of the river, will churn things up a bit and make the water cloudy. But I've never seen so many Mudo before.”

I like the sound of his voice. Its depth, its tone. It reminds me of Travis, melts into my memory of Travis's voice, of the way the words slipped from his lips.

“I live in the lighthouse up there,” he says, pointing up the hill past the sand to a tall tower painted with slanted black stripes.

“My job after the storms is to come decapitate all the ones that wash up so they can't get into the town.”

I look around me. At all the bodies of the Unconsecrated littering the beach. “So much carnage,” I say.

He shrugs. “The tide will come in and wash them back out again,” he says. “In about six hours you'd never know there was anything here other than sand and surf. The beach will be what it always is. Just a beach.”

“But there will be more of them,” I say. “There are always more.”

He shrugs. “That's just the way life is. Some days you wake up and the beach is clear and you forget about everything that surrounds us. And some days you wake up and it looks like this. That's the nature of the tides.”

He shifts his weight a little. “That doesn't mean it's not worth being here.”

I sway toward the water and dip my fingers in. “Is it safe?” I ask. “Out in the water?”

He shrugs once more. “Safe enough,” he says. “It's an outgoing tide; it won't be pulling up any more Mudo from the ocean.”

I slip into the water. Waves push me and I fight them to go deeper. Until my feet lift from the ground.

The man stands on the beach and watches, the tip of his shovel buried in the sand in front of him, his hands folded over its handle. Waiting for me to return.

I kick my feet and fall back and allow the water to cradle me. I touch my lips with my fingers, licking the tang of salt from them.

For a while I let the water push and pull me, lift me, hold me as I fall. I watch the sky, the clouds, the sun, the birds darting overhead. I wait for peace and happiness but I can only think of Travis and Harry and Cass and Jacob. About how I have lost everything but this place. I try to think about Jed, shame holding me back from remembering how he came after me. How he died saving me. But a part of me also thinks he could be proud that I made it, that I survived. That he knew what he was doing when he stormed into that Forest after me.

I feel the burden of carrying his hope with me.

I raise my head from the water and realize that I have drifted down the beach. I pull myself against the current, let the waves push me to the sand. I walk back down the beach toward the man, my limbs feeling gangly and heavy out of the water. He smiles at me as I approach and I can't help but smile back.