Crystal Grader - Tag Cavello (reading women .TXT) 📗

to prevent her marching straight up to his front door. Clinging to that thought, Crystal somehow got her legs moving again. Her boots clicked on fresh tar. The trees closed in. She was beyond the sign now. She could legally be arrested for what she was doing. But oh joy of joys, this had to be done. As a way to say goodbye to Jarett, perhaps. Perhaps that was why she had come home in the first place—to say goodbye to Jarett in a right and proper way. It made sense. He hadn’t deserved to die for what had happened here, on the front lawn of his own farmhouse. The time had come to mop his bloodstains from her memories.

“HEY!”

Screaming, Crystal whirled around to find an old man dressed in a checkered shirt and blue jeans. He was snarling through a countenance of baggy, leathery skin.

“What are you doing back here!” the snarl demanded. “Can’t you read signs? Eh? Eh?”

“I’m sorry!”

“I said what are you doing back here?”

Girl, a voice suddenly said at the back of Crystal’s mind, you have gotten yourself into a world of trouble! Pullin’ the fire alarm for no reason! Creatin’ a ruckus!

The woods began to turn, to tilt sideways. Between the trees Crystal could see black flowers coming to full bloom. And why not? This was the season of the dead and dying. Everywhere underfoot were the corpses of things once green.

“Shitty!” she yelled.

The old man stopped. “What?”

“The cigarettes. I’m sorry. It wasn’t you. It was Megan.”

She turned to run. It was an irony. She’d come here to embrace her memories, to learn from them, only to wind up fleeing from them in terror. The wooden bridge, all but lost beneath the Jackson farm’s new and terrible garden of black roses, was still there. Her boots found it, stumbled. If she could get to the other side perhaps the terror would end. Perhaps, in her absence, the farm had become a kind of Sleepy Hollow. Salvation awaited on the back porch. There were apples in the trees, grapes on the vines. If only she could get across.

Crystal stumbled again and fell flat on her face. She heard the ghost approaching. Heavy footsteps clunked on the timber. And then the roses closed in, and her eyes rolled back, and darkness took over the whole world.

28

 

“I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!”

Crystal threw herself onto the bed. Her throat felt ripped open and raw, slit with a rusty dagger. Her bare bottom was engulfed in a furious blaze of agonizing pain. She was afraid to look at it, or worse, touch it. She punched the headboard instead, cracking her knuckles.

“FUCK!”

But it wouldn’t do to lie here panting and screaming. Oh no no. Lucretia had gone downstairs to call the police. Bad trouble for Jarett. Black trouble. The kind that bled into your soul and spoiled the will to live. She couldn’t let that happen another friend.

And Shitty…you mustn’t forget what happened to him…

“Fuck Shitty,” she said, shoving herself back from the sheets.

The closet door hung open. She didn’t remember leaving it that way, but there it was. She stumbled over to it as fast as she could and tossed a hodge-podge of winter clothing onto the bed. Then she snatched her heavy coat off the hook and flung that over the pile as well.

She got dressed in under ten minutes. Bending down to get into her underwear and pants hurt like hell but time was short and the trek ahead long. Over a mile of blizzard-swept terrain stood between her and the Jackson farm. She was by no means certain she could manage journey—but then, if she collapsed and died in the snow, at least her troubles would be over.

“Amen to that,” she told one of her teddy bears through drying tears.

Her dressing mirror showed a girl ready to drive the Iditarod. Her eyes and parts of her cheeks showed. Everything else was covered beneath blue and pink layers of varying thickness. Good enough.

Almost good enough. Beyond her reading nook window, the night beckoned. But there was one last thing she needed to do.

She went back to the headboard and grabbed Hannah’s lipstick lighter. Her thumb clicked the button; a flame popped up. Then she found the book she’d been spanked with and set it ablaze. Once she was certain the pages weren’t going to fizzle out, she crossed the hallway to Lucretia’s room. The door was unlocked. Bad mistake. Crystal opened it and threw the book—a wretched, burning bird by this point—against a picture shelf, where it knocked over several frames with a satisfying smash of breaking glass.

“And fuck you, Mommy-Dearest,” she said. “May all of your shit burn in hell.”

Then she went back to the reading nook, opened the window, and flew into the storm.

***

“Jarett!” her voice pealed into the slanting snow, which had turned Monroeville into a blank nowhere that threatened to swallow anyone foolish enough to venture outdoors whole. Not bothering with the bell crank, she kicked the door over and over, hard as she could. The frame shook. A piece of something, ice or wood, fell from the transom. “Jarett, open up! It’s Crystal!”

All the world was windy white. She could barely see, could barely breathe. Waist-deep snow had made every inch of her journey to the farm into a poker game with hypothermic death. Twice she’d nearly missed the bridge at the mouth of Wye Street and fallen into the creek. On the other side, a gigantic fallen tree blocked her route, forcing her to skirt along the edge of a field of pines that gasped endlessly in the midnight gales.

“Jarett!”

Something howled behind her, deep and cavernous. Crystal whirled around. The woods had becoming a living beast. Its bones rattled as it rocked to and fro. Its throat shrieked. Crystal turned back to the door, raised her boot to kick it again—

And that was when it flew open to reveal Jarett blinking sleepily in his PJs, an oil lamp in his hand. Ignoring him, Crystal all but dove into the anteroom, shouting out a command her frozen ears could barely hear that the door be shut and locked post-haste.

“Was that you kicking?” he asked, still bemused.

Crystal yanked her hood back. “No, Jarett, it was Frosty the fucking Snowman! Of course it was me!”

“Jesus Christ, you look terrible.”

“You try walking a mile and a half through a blizzard at twelve midnight!”

“What the hell did you do that for?”

“Because we’re in trouble that’s why!” She threw her mittens on the floor and kicked off her boots. Jarett continued to blink, to look lost. That would never do. He needed to wake up—like right now. “Jarett,” she said, “my mom called the police. About us. They know everything. We are totally fucked.”

As she spoke his eyes came alight. At first he looked stunned, then scared. And then, finally (and a little off-putting for Crystal), angry.

“No,” he snarled, “you mean I am totally fucked. Just like I told you I would be from the very start of this whole pink princess romance.”

“Oh, is that what it was, Jarett?” she shot back, unzipping her coat. “I don’t remember telling you about pumpkin carriages and pixie dust when I first came here.”

“I guess you didn’t. But then you never were one for dreaming up good stories.”

The remark stung, and for a moment she stared up at him, appalled by his cruelty. Now was not the time for weakness, though. They needed a plan.

“Listen,” she said, “as long as this storm keeps up the police aren’t going to bother with coming back here. That gives us time to think. So let’s do that.”

She walked through to the dining room—which had begun to look untidy again in her absence—without another word. They sat down at the table and listened to the storm for a few minutes. A clock in the hallway struck midnight. Crystal looked at Jarett. His eyes were on the oil lamp, his mouth chewing a thumbnail. It didn’t take much to read what it meant. Terror had him in a vice.

“Jarett, what would you say about the two of us running away together?”

It was a simple idea, one that had leaped to mind not long after she’d set fire to Lucretia’s spank book. They could disappear into the night. Vanish. Get lost. Start writing new names over all the black lines that mattered most. It would take time, of course. Years probably. But then Jarett was a novelist. Didn’t they know all about crafting long term projects?

“Well?” she asked, when he didn’t answer.

Then he grinned. “’Flee into some forgotten night and be Of all dark long my moon-bright company’.”

“Huh?”

“It’s poetry, Crystal. Walter de la Mare. Don’t you—“

Her fist slammed on the table. “Goddammit, Jarett, I asked you a simple question!”

“’Think! in Time’s smallest clock’s minutest beat Might there not rest be found for wandering feet?’”

She blinked at him, mouth gaping. Jarett seemed to have lost his mind. His face glowed in the lamplight like a Halloween pumpkin’s. Shadows flickered on the walls, the ceiling. This house was never easy on the nerves. Even on the prettiest of days Crystal had always doubted the space behind her shoulders. Tonight, with the electricity out and everything black, she could scarcely keep the goose-bumps at bay.

What Jarett said next did nothing to help.

“I have a gun,” the jack-o’-lantern uttered.

For the barest of moments, Crystal’s heart froze. Then she jumped in her seat, almost knocking over the lantern.

“Uh…no thank you,” her mouth gibbered.

“Why not?”

She swallowed hard. “Well…because guns are only used for one thing. To kill.”

“Yeah,” he said, as if relishing the thought. “But sometimes that one thing is the only thing.”

“We’re not even close to being that far gone yet.”

Jarett shook his head. “You’re wrong. And Crystal,” he went on, cutting off her objection, “you’ve been wrong a lot these past few years. Isn’t that true?”

“No,” she blurted.

“Yes it is. You came to my back porch one night with a carton of eggs. That was wrong. Then you came to my front porch wearing a cheerleading outfit. Wrong again.”

“Stop it.”

“You smoke. You play tricks. You plot against people who annoy you.”

“I don’t want to hear this, Jarett. I came here to help.”

“You came here with another plot. Let’s run away together, Jarett. Let’s disappear.”

She glared at him. “You can disappear with me, Jarett, or you can do it with the FBI. Take your pick.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a fact. In another six hours it’s going to be daylight. Not long after that the Monroeville Police Department should be knocking on your front door. If you’re still here when that happens they’re going to arrest you.”

“I have a gun.”

Crystal had to take a deep breath and hold it. Five seconds went by. Ten. The jack-o’-lantern grinned away. Far from the terror he’d initially shown upon sitting down, Jarett now resembled a man who’d stumbled upon an absurdly simple solution to a problem that had vexed him for years. And the hell of it was…maybe he had.

“I really wish we could stop talking about the gun,” she let out.

“Oh, we don’t have to talk about it, baby,” this man with a rusty key to an even rustier lock replied. “The gun has plenty of things to say all on its own.”

“Sit down, Jarett.”

He’d risen from his chair and now turned away from Crystal without listening. A lighter flicked on in his hand. Knowing she had no choice but to follow, Crystal picked up the lantern. Jarett glided back to the hallway and then started up the stairs.

Not there, she thought, not now.

She chased him to the top on quivering knees, spilling protests along the way. Violence wasn’t the answer; killing was wrong. Hadn’t he