the woods.
The far edge of the same woods crowded Ash House, at this angle blocking her view of the hill. All she could see were twisted trunks, scrub, and glossy green leaves like beetle shells.
The front of Ash House looked down a winding drive. Once, it had been white abalone shell, but now weeds had erupted, turning it into a ribbon of wildflowers and green amid the vines and brush. A bridge at the foot of the drive forded the Acushket River, here just a narrow stream with steep banks and a current that could knock your legs out. The Acushket ran down and widened and powered mills to the south, but here it was just background to the insects and the whispering leaves.
The roof of the porch was sky blue, paint peeling in long fingers, hanging almost down to Jo’s face like Spanish moss.
The door of Ash House was twice as wide as Jo, and it was red. Iron pulls looped through snarling gargoyle mouths in place of knobs.
The door stood open. Not much. Just enough to invite someone in.
Jo put a hand on the door, slid a foot over the threshold. There were dead leaves on the floor inside, and in advance of her footsteps, things scuttled into the shadows.
Before she could think too hard about it, she gave the door a hard shove and let it propel her inside. The hinges shrieked, echoed off the high ceiling, and then everything went silent.
The insects outside stopped humming. The things in the shadow stopped moving. The only sounds were Jo’s own heart and the Acushket, rushing through the iron pilings that held up the bridge, and on over the rocks.
Jo made it six steps into Ash House that day. She had decided to go up the sweeping front stairs, banisters like the winding river outside, carpet rotted like winter moss, and signal Ani and Deirdre from the round stained glass window that rose at the first landing. It was pink and green glass, light like underwater wavering through it, and it was remarkably intact. Like the rest of Ash House, nature had its way, but the local kids didn’t seem to know the place existed.
She walked the six steps, to the center of the entryway. The leaves crunched under her boots, hissing across the tile floor. There was a picture there, but it was too filthy to make out.
When she looked up, there was a shape in front of the window. Tall and thin, at first she took it for another shadow. Then she saw the eyes and the teeth, the dark jacket and tie, the white shirt with black space floating above it. The light bent where it shot through the shape, and hit the floor in front of Jo. The shape cast no shadow.
Jo didn’t distinctly remember running from Ash House, skipping the steps, and thrashing through the grass to the bridge. Deirdre and Ani eventually found her walking down Route 7. She wasn’t hot, even though the sun bounced off the asphalt and made everything shimmer. Jo couldn’t get warm until they’d dropped her off at home, and she’d watched the Dart’s tail lights disappear into the gathering twilight.
2. August
Jo woke up to music. It wasn’t music-box music, or the thump and hum of the world stuff or old-school jazz her mother usually played while she was in her studio. This was loud. Loud enough that it rattled the screen in her open bedroom window.
She rolled out of bed and peeked outside. The Ryan house was one of a pair on a dead-end street. There had been three houses, but the one on the far left had burned down in the 1970s, when Jo’s mom lived in the Ryan house with Grandpa Paul and Grandma Leigh. There was just a chimney now, and a vacant lot.
The three driveways were close together, three lines of shell and sand. In the neighbor’s driveway, a car was parked, stereo blasting.
It was easily the ugliest car Jo had ever seen—the color of a rotten pumpkin where it wasn’t just bubbled primer and rust, the bumper strapped on with plastic zip-ties, the windshield spattered with dead bugs.
Square and lopsided, like an aging pit bull, it crouched facing the street, daring anyone to get too close. She wondered where it had come from—if it ran, she’d be amazed. Unfortunately, there was nothing wrong with the radio.
Jo pulled on shorts and a tank top and walked outside barefoot. Her mom was locked in the back room with the air conditioner, which she needed to cool her computer system. She’d picked up some design work for some big animated movie coming out at Christmas, and she was working nonstop, drawing and rendering a pair of adorable space aliens so that they could be inhabited by the voices of celebrities.
“Hey!” Jo shouted. She could see a pair of legs, and part of a torso, ensconced in the car’s innards. It kind of looked like the car was eating them. “Hey!” she shouted again. She left her porch and crossed the driveway. The song was something old, that you’d hear on an 8-track.
Jo winced as a piece of shell bit into her foot, and thumped on the hood. “Hey!”
The body inside the car jerked upward, slamming his skull into the underside of the hood. “OW!”
Jo drew back. “Oh man,” she said. “Sorry about that.” She wasn’t entirely. The guy reached inside the window and turned down the stereo.
“I know you,” he said. “You’re Mel’s kid.”
Jo realized she knew him, too. “You’re the Powells’ son.”
He grabbed a rag and swiped at his hands, then picked up a beer from the shadow of the car and took a long pull. “Guilty.”
“How do you know my mom?” Jo said. She didn’t think Melanie Ryan, with her smart black clothes and wire- rimmed glasses and her four years of sobriety, would have anything to do with their next-door neighbors beyond yelling at Mrs. Powell to bring her crop of small, yappy dogs inside when it got late. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Mr. Powell. Maybe there wasn’t one.
“I trimmed her roses and did the lawn a few times last summer,” the guy said. Jo knew his name was something short, like something a tough guy in a black-and-white movie would be called.
The guy stuck out his hand. “Drew.”
“Jo,” said Jo. Drew’s hand left a long smear of grease on her palm, picking out all the flaws, all the calluses from playing bass with Ani, and the thin line where she’d cut her hand on a rusty lawn chair as a kid.
“So why’d you come over here?” Drew leaned against the car and finished off the beer. “You lonely?”
“What?” Jo’s voice rose a little more than she would have liked. “No! I mean ... the music. It woke me up.”
He actually smirked at her. “It’s eleven in the morning.”
Jo narrowed her eyes. “Night owl.”
“Fair enough,” said Drew Powell, and turned his music back up. Jo supposed she could try to go back to sleep until Ani came to get her for practice, but she’d woken up twisted in her sheets, sweating even though the day wasn’t humid.
She dreamed a lot, and in the dreams were things that sent her shooting into wakefulness. They were dark shapes standing in front of stained glass, things with dark faces whispering at her from piles of leaves. Thorns the size of her little finger wrapped around pale, naked thighs.
Jo went back to the screened part of the porch and pulled on a pair of sneakers. She got her cell phone and her army surplus pack, which was stuffed with her wallet and her lyrics notebook, a flashlight, and an umbrella. Melanie believed in being prepared, and it was easier to lug the stuff around then get chewed out.
She thought for a second and then went into the kitchen drawer and added Mel’s camping knife. Not a lame little Swiss Army knife like you could buy at a grocery store—Mel’s had a three-inch blade and attachments to open cans and saw through rope.
Grabbing a bottle of water, Jo was back out the door, ignoring Drew Powell even though he stopped working on his eyesore of a car again and stared at her.
It was at least three miles to Ani’s grandmother’s farm, and she was soaked by the time she got there, the water bottle depleted.
Ash House peered at her over the treetops again, and now its slate roof, gables sharp as razor blades, didn’t seem at all mysterious or inviting.
