Bag of Bones

Half my swimming float had grounded there, and perhaps I could have impaled myself on its splintered boards and died like a vampire writhing on a stake. What a pleasant thought that was. Ru

She would have taken Ki then if I’d given her the chance, but I didn’t.

I came hurrying back, afraid something was wrong, afraid someone might be trying to get hold of the kid-Had Rogette awakened her? Had Ki seen her and tried to warn me before drifting off again? Was that what had brought me in such a hurry? Maybe. I’d still been in the zone then, we’d still been linked then. Rogette had certainly been in the house when I came back. She might even have been in the north-bedroom closet and peering at me through the crack. Part of me had known it, too. Part of me had felt her, felt something that was not-Sara. Then I’d left again.

Grabbed the carry-bag from Slips ’n Greens and come down here. Turned right, turned north. Toward the birch, the rock, the bag of bones. I’d done what I had to do, and while I was doing it, Rogette carried Kyra down the railroad-tie steps behind me and turned left on The Street. Turned south toward Warrington’s. With a sinking feeling deep in my belly, I realized I had probably heard Ki… might even have seen her. That bird peeking timidly out from cover during the lull had been no bird. Ki was awake by then, Ki had seen me—perhaps had seen Jo, as well—and tried to call out. She had managed just that one little peep before Rogette had covered her mouth. How long ago had that been? It seemed like forever, but I had an idea it hadn’t been long at all—less than five minutes, maybe. But it doesn’t take long to drown a child. The image of Kito’s bare arm sticking straight out of the water tried to come back—the hand at the end of it opening and closing, opening and closing, as if it were trying to breathe for the lungs that couldn’t—and I pushed it away. I also suppressed the urge to simply sprint in the direction of Warrington’s. Panic would take me for sure if I did that. In all the years since her death I had never longed for Jo with the bitter intensity I felt then. But she was gone; there wasn’t even a whisper of her. With no one to depend on but myself, I started south along the tree-littered Street, skirting the blowdowns where I could, crawling under them if they blocked my way entirely, taking the noisy branch-breaking course over the top only as a last resort. As I went I issued what I imagine are all the standard prayers in such a situation, but none of them seemed to get past the image of Rogette Whitmore’s face rising in my mind. Her screaming, merciless face.

I remember thinking This is the outdoor version of the Ghost House.

Certainly the woods seemed haunted to me as I struggled along: trees only loosened in the first grand blow were falling by the score in this follow-up cap of wind and rain. The noise was like great crunching footfalls, and I didn’t need to worry about the noise my own feet were making. When I passed the Batchelders’ camp, a circular prefab construction sitting on an outcrop of rock like a hat on a footstool, I saw that the entire roof had been bashed flat by a hemlock.

Halfa mile south of Sara I saw one of Ki’s white hair ribbons lying in the path. I picked it up, thinking how much that red edging looked like blood. Then I stuffed it into my pocket and went on. Five minutes later I came to an old moss-caked pine that had fallen across the path; it was still co

I saw something else: the second hair ribbon. I tucked it into my pocket with the first. I was halfway under the pine when I heard another tree go over, this one much closer. The sound was followed by a scream—not pain or fear but surprised anger. Then, even over the hiss of the rain and the wind, I could hear Rogette’s voice: “Come back/Don’t go out there, it’s dangerous/” I squirmed the rest of the way under the tree, barely feeling the stump of a branch which tore a groove in my lower back, got to my feet, and sprinted along the path. If the fallen trees I came to were small, I hurdled them without slowing down. If they were bigger, I scrabbled over with no thought to where they might claw or dig in. Thunder whacked. There was a brilliant stroke of lightning, and in its glare I saw gray barnboard through the trees. On the day I’d first seen Rogette I’d only been able to catch glimpses of Warrington’s lodge, but now the forest had been torn open like an old garment—this area would be years recovering. The lodge’s rear half had been pretty well demolished by a pair of huge trees that seemed to have fallen together.

They had crossed like a knife and fork on a diner’s plate and lay on the ruins in a shaggy X. Ki’s voice, rising over the storm only because it was shrill with terror: “Go away! I don’t want you, white nana! Go away!” It was horrible to hear the terror in her voice, but wonderful to hear her voice at all. About forty feet from where Rogette’s shout had frozen me in place, one more tree lay across the path. Rogette herself stood on the far side of it, holding a hand out to Ki. The hand was dripping blood, but I hardly noticed. It was Kyra I noticed. The dock ru