the Wykes; they’re luring you into danger!”
Mr. Dreary was not fit, but he was strong enough, in a horizontal sort of way. He tore his sleeve from my grip, fled deeper into the Quicks.
I flew after him, hitching up my skirts. “Stop!” Mr. Dreary puffed, and wheezed, and slipped. I lurched at his coattail, but up he bounced, hurtling toward the cluster of lights. They shone softly, in fair imitation of a village whose inhabitants understood the value of a good fire and a stout door.
“Don’t run!” Eldric bolted after us. A fringe of light caught Mr. Dreary’s coattails. Mr. Dreary screamed. Eldric spun forward, but all he illuminated was the dark heart of the swamp.
“The two o’ you follows him that way,” shouted the constable. “The Reeve an’ me, us’ll come at him from t’other.”
What a fool I was! I should never have come to the swamp. I should have kept my promise to Stepmother. I should have remembered that in the swamp, my wicked energy adds up to disaster and death.
“Don’t look at the lights,” I told Eldric. “The Wykes will trick you just as they did Mr. Dreary. They’ll trick you right into the Quicks.”
“Hell!” said Eldric.
“It may come to that.”
We couldn’t run, not in the dark, not in the Quicks, where speed equals death. I picked along bits of mud, walked tightrope between bog-holes. Eldric followed, holding the lantern high. Starlight swam on the darkness. “We’re looking for grassy bits that will support us,” I said. “They rise from the Quicks, like islands.”
I drew a deep breath. “Mr. Drury!”
“Don’t move, Mr. Drury!” shouted Eldric. “We can save you if you stay put.”
Please, let Mr. Dreary live. Please let him live!
But witchy magic doesn’t listen to please and pretty please, and anyway, I didn’t really care. I only pretended to care because not caring makes me a monster.
The star-dimpled water shone before us. We leapt onto a tussock, which quivered beneath us. Stars floated in the pools, lanterns floated in the pools. Not just one lantern, not just our lantern. Scores of lanterns, hundreds of lanterns, flickering about us.
“The Wykes again,” I said. “You can’t help seeing the reflection of their lights, but don’t look at them straight on.”
“Mr. Drury!” called Eldric.
Black water stretched as far as we could see, black water, grassy tussocks. Maybe we could save him. Maybe. I coiled myself tight as a spring. We jumped to the next tussock. Eldric landed beside me, almost tumbling me into the ooze. He grabbed my elbow.
We leapt from tussock to tussock. We squished the lungs of the bog. It breathed its poisoned breath. We coughed and rubbed our eyes.
“But aren’t we forgetting something?” said Eldric. “He has his Bible Ball.”
“It will protect him from most of the Horrors,” I said. “But it won’t protect him from his own foolishness, from allowing the Wykes to lure him to the most treacherous part of the swamp. No Bible Ball can prevent him from slipping and drowning.”
But it was your own foolishness, wasn’t it, Briony? This is just what Stepmother had been talking about. You, in the swamp, with your witchy jealousies and rages boiling always beneath. You don’t think you mean harm, but harm you do. You’ll kill Mr. Dreary just as you killed Stepmother—or you would have, if the arsenic hadn’t gotten her first.
You have to remember it, remember that you were the one who called the tidal wave. Remember! Surely you remember your witchy rage, how it set the river to boiling?
I know you remember standing beside the river, looking up at the Parsonage. Looking at the back garden, at the apple tree, where the swings had once hung. Looking at Stepmother, bending over the vegetable beds. You remember the boiling river, you remember Mucky Face rising—rising from the river—rising ten feet, fifteen feet, curling over himself.
Curling himself into a wave.
You’d called Mucky Face and he came. He came rearing like a snake, rising to the height of the Parsonage. He was a curl of iron, hard and black, save for his whirlpool eyes, his foaming mouth.
He smashed himself upon the Parsonage, he smashed Stepmother and the vegetable garden. Mucky Face flooded the Parsonage, but nowhere else. Mucky Face injured Stepmother, but no one else.
But it was enough. Mucky Face drowned our books, Mucky Face injured Stepmother’s spine.
“Look!” Eldric raised the lantern.
It shone on a Dreary-shaped space, a black space where no stars shone.
“Don’t move, Mr. Drury!”
Stepmother would have died from her injuries had the arsenic not found her first. Even then, I didn’t understand. I had to ask Stepmother—ask her as she lay in bed—ask her if she was sure about the dangers of my wandering into the swamp. It didn’t make sense: I had, after all, been standing across the river from the swamp when Mucky Face appeared.
Stepmother instructed me to look out the window into the garden. She asked me how wide the river was. I said about thirty feet. She asked me where Mucky Face lived. I said he lived in the river. She asked me whether Mucky Face would be able to hear me calling him from the swamp side of the river. I said he would. She asked me whether Mucky Face would be able to hear me calling from the non-swamp side of the river. I said he would.
Perhaps he’d have come sooner had I been in the swamp itself. Sooner and stronger. I don’t know, and anyway, he was quite strong enough.
“Don’t look at the lights!”
“Hold on to your Bible Ball!”
The swamp slurped and swallowed. The stars rubbed out the Dreary-shaped space. Eldric shifted behind me; the tussock gasped and gurgled.
The swamp plus Briony . . . Briony plus the swamp . . .
Next time, Briony, keep your promise to Stepmother. Don’t pretend you’re interested in doing good. How long can a clever girl trick her own self? It’s been three years since you learned you’re a witch. Perhaps you didn’t kill Stepmother, not technically, but that doesn’t mean St. Peter’s going to wave you through the pearly gates.
Slurp and swallow, slurp and swallow. Mr. Dreary had vanished. Too late to pull him out. The false lights had vanished. Everything had vanished except Eldric and me. Everything had vanished except the two of us, the lantern, the stars, and the swamp, which breathed slowly through its jellied lungs.
7
Girl What Can Hear Ghosts
Rose and I stood in our usual place, facing Father and the headstone. We usually stand beside the grave, but there’d be no grave for this funeral. You need a body for a grave, and Mr. Dreary’s body had been taken by the swamp.
But I could not forget how the swamp slurped and swallowed. Those were not the sounds of falling.
Father had prepared a sermon on the meaning of Mr. Dreary’s life. That’s what stories do, they try to create meaning from nothing. But there’s no meaning to Mr. Dreary’s life. He lived, he smelled of tinned soup, he died.
When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots
