“Steph,” Case starts, “I think—” She’s cut off by a scream.

  It’s Abby. Case spins in the direction of the sound.

  There’s another scream, and Case is on the move, running as fast as she can, down a path she can barely see. Occasionally, she veers too far to the side, causing the slick soles of her boots to land awkwardly against rocks or tree roots.

  “Abby!” cries Case. “Abby, where?”

  Case is headed toward the chicken house, but when the slumped red shack comes into view, she stops. There’s no Abby and no hog. Just when Case is about to take off in the direction of the main house, she hears Abby shout her name. It comes from the trees, from the path that leads to the burn pile.

  How Abby ended up there, of all places, Case has no idea. It doesn’t really matter. Case heads that way, but she has to slow her pace, because she can barely see the narrow strip of trod grass under her feet. Then, appearing sooner than she remembers from before, she’s faced with the tall stalks of Johnsongrass, which wave in the gentlest of night breezes.

  “Abby!” shouts Case.

  The response is a wet, angry snarl—not human, but hog.

  Case falters. Her legs go weak again, but she steadies herself by gripping the shotgun to her chest with both hands. She listens for Abby. The girl is making a screechy whine, like a drawn-out flat note. Case pushes through the thick grass.

  Abby is standing on the far side of the ash pile. The first thing Case notices are Abby’s bare legs. Their color is strange in the moonlight—a streaky, swirly painted gray. The clouds in the distance flash with lightning.

  “Where?” Case asks.

  Abby barely moves. The fingers on her right hand sort of twitch to the side. She looks so small, so thin, made of air. If the wind blows, Abby will turn to dust, and that dust will rise, then swirl, then return to the circle of ash.

  Case marches forward, stepping through the burn pile. When she gets to the other side, she shifts the gun to her right hand, and then loops her and Abby’s elbows together.

  “Okay,” she says, tugging Abby closer. Then after a moment: “We need to move, get back to the house.”

  Abby nods, and together the girls take one step toward the path. And another. Case reaches out her hand, the one that’s still holding the gun. Her bloody fingers graze the stalks of grass, ready to push them aside, when something tears out of its hiding place from behind, near the place where Abby was standing only seconds ago. The girls turn together. Their elbows come unlocked. Like before, like with Kendall, Case sees a dark blur whipping past.

  Abby cries out, starts to sink, and Case fumbles to grab her and hold her upright. The hog has passed, disappeared again into the grass, but it might circle back. Case drags Abby along.

  “What happened?” Case asks.

  “My leg.” Abby sinks farther, fast losing the ability to stand, even with Case’s help.

  Case braces herself, and glances down. The wound, thank god, isn’t like Kendall’s. It’s not at the thigh but in the meat of Abby’s calf. If it was deep, Case might even be able to see a shine of bone, but all she sees is red muscle and black blood.

  They have to get out of here. Case can use the sleeve of her shirt as a tourniquet, since there’s no more rope. She can sling Abby’s arm over her shoulder and carry her out, even though it’ll be slow going. But then there’s the hog—still out there, hunting them.

  Case wipes her bloody hands on her jeans and looks up. There’s something happening with the sky. The approaching storm is playing tricks with the light. Blowing it up, it seems. There are moments when everything is spotlit, followed by moments when everything is dark.

  It’s in one of those spotlit moments that she can see the hog—standing at the edge of the other side of the small, charred clearing. It’s watching her, patiently, like it’s waiting to be acknowledged. Like Abby, the hog is also streaked with ash, and when it snorts, white dust puffs from its nostrils. Case raises the barrel of the gun to the sky and shoots, hoping the boom will startle the hog away.

  It has the opposite effect. The hog charges forward, and Case has to aim quickly and pray the bullet flies true. As she fires, the butt of the rifle smashes into her shoulder so hard she loses her balance and stumbles to the side.

  There’s a spray of blood, but the hog doesn’t drop—not right away. It lopes forward a few feet, then falls on its front legs. It tries to stand, then falls again, then rubs its face in the ash angrily, like it’s trying to scrape out the shot from its head. Case looks away. The hog is dying, but she can’t just stand there and watch it. She drops the gun and tries to tear off the sleeve of her shirt, which doesn’t really work. She then takes off her boots and strips off both her socks. Knotting them together, she crouches in front of Abby and works to tie the fabric above the girl’s knee.

  “Can you walk?” Case asks, shoving her feet into her boots. “Can you please try?”

  It’s the worst question. Abby can barely stand.

  Still, the girl places her toe on the ground. But when she tries to bear weight, she sobs and collapses. She sits, then leans onto her elbows, then finally lies down, draping her arm across her face as if to shade her eyes from the oddly flashing sky.

  “I hate it here,” Abby mumbles. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Wait,” Case demands. “Just wait.”

  Case grabs the gun from where she dropped it, reloads it with more of the shells she took from Kendall, and shoves it into Abby’s hands.

  “You can’t leave!” One of Abby’s hands releases the gun and whips out to grip Case at the elbow.

  “I’ll be back,” Case insists. “If you see anything, just aim and shoot.”

  Abby tries to huff out a breath, but it comes out shaky with pain. Case doesn’t think she’ll ever forgive Abby for everything she’s done and not done, but she does think that Abby should be saved—that everyone deserves to be dragged out of a shitty situation.

  “I swear I’ll come back,” Case says. “Thank you for Drea’s letter—for giving it to me.”

  Abby doesn’t reply, but her grip loosens enough for Case to pull away. Again, Case runs.

  She passes Abby’s car, then Bryan’s truck, and then skids to a stop when she sees headlights approaching from the end of the lane. It’s an SUV, with sheriff’s dept painted on the front end of the hood, right above the grille. There’s a loud beep that causes Case to jolt, and then, almost immediately, the lights mounted to the top of the SUV start flashing.

  Case can see the deputy inside, shouting something into the radio before opening her door and taking a step forward. One of her hands is extended toward Case, while the other is braced against the holster on her hip. Case puts her hands up, and the deputy’s eyes go wide at the sight of the blood smeared all over Case’s arms.

  “Hogs,” Case rasps. She’s too quiet. The deputy is still too far away. She doesn’t hear her.

  “Andrea?” the deputy calls.

  Case feels dizzy.

  “Are you Andrea Soto?” the deputy asks, approaching.

  Case tries to respond, but nothing comes out.

  “Andrea.” The deputy is trying to be kind, to keep her tone calm and reassuring. “Andrea, it’s okay. You’re all right now. I’m glad we found you. Your mom wants you to know that she misses you.”

  The deputy smiles. Case smiles back.

  PART THREE:

  DAY

  EIGHT

  When the car pulls up, Case is leaning against the back bumper of a state trooper’s cruiser, reading another text from Bryan.

  Been here for hours, he says. Will keep you posted.

  The driver stops the car and frowns. He’s confused, understandably. Case puts her phone in her pocket and gives him a half-hearted wave, which she doubts is reassuring. She’s filthy, exhausted to the point of delirious, and has an itchy blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

  The sun has been up for over an hour, but that doesn’t mean it’s bright. The whole sky is acorn brown and covered by a thin scrim of clouds. It doesn’t smell like ash, though, or burning trash. It smells like grass and earth, the nothing scent of how a summer morning in the country should smell.

  Case is ready to go. She shakes off the blanket, places it on top of the trooper’s trunk, grabs her duffel bag from down by her feet, and heads to the car.

  “Is everything . . . all right?” the driver asks as Case sinks into the back seat. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be leaving?”

  It’s a fair question. There are four police vehicles parked in the lane. They belong to officers from the local sheriff’s department and also troopers from the state. There were even more cars than this earlier, plus ambulances and a fire truck. Case’s head was swirling from all the flashing lights—red and blue and white—and from the blips and static of the radios.

  “It’s fine,” Case replies. “We can go.”

  She’s been here for hours, as rescue workers plucked the roommates from the woods, one at a time. Case directed them to where everyone was. The first one out was Abby. She was in the most serious condition, bleeding and in shock.

  Troy was next, which was a surprise. Case didn’t think she’d ever see him again, that the river might’ve swallowed him up and that his body might’ve been swept all the way into a different county by now. During Troy’s scuffle with Bryan, the water moccasin did bite him, and he did fall into the water. Bryan, of course, because he is kind and brave and a lot like Drea, went in after him and managed to drag him back to shore.

  By the time the medics hauled Troy to where the ambulances were parked, his leg was already wrapped. Case didn’t want to be one of those curious creeps, but she did wish she could see the skin on Troy’s leg, and if his veins were streaked with poison. Maybe there were bite marks—two perfect holes.

  Steph came out with the body of her sister, looking like an awful little wraith in her bloody, mud-strewn clothes. There were a couple of twigs stuck in her hair, with some leaves still attached. Almost like a crown, Case thought.

  Case wondered what would happen to Steph when this was over, imagined her returning to this house in a few days, maybe a week—tending to the chickens, maybe planting a garden. She had to have watched her sister enough to know how to coax sourdough starter into dough, then bake that into bread.

  As Steph passed by on her way to being checked out by the medics, Case asked her if she’d found any more of Drea’s writing.

  The look Steph gave Case was withering.

  “It’s important,” Case insisted, undeterred. “Or you could just tell me where to maybe look.”

  Steph still didn’t say anything, and Case was reminded of what she’d told Bryan back in the truck—something about how the roommates might be terrible, but she wasn’t all that stellar herself.

  Bryan stuck around for a while. His cough had come back, more violently than before, and the paramedics had to hook him up to oxygen for a while before he could give his statement. After that, he took his keys from Case and left in his truck to meet with different investigators at the sheriff’s department.

  Case spent most of the rest of the night sitting at the old table in the kitchen. She talked and waited and talked. At one point, she heard dogs barking, and she knew the police had started searching the property.

  Eventually, Case got light-headed. She reached into her duffel bag, which she’d retrieved earlier from Bryan’s truck, pulled out her empty prescription bottle, and handed it to the detective who was interviewing her. He’d looked confused, but then Case rolled up the sleeve of her shirt, exposing her scars. The man jumped up, went out to the medics, and returned with a couple of pills.

  “They’re not the same,” he said. “But they should work.”

  Case took them gratefully, and chased them with a glassful of water.

  The investigator finally asked if she needed a ride somewhere. Case said no, that she already had one. The investigator told Case to keep her phone close, that they’d be in touch.

  “What will happen to the house?” Case asked.

  “I’m not sure,” the investigator replied. “It’ll probably stay a crime scene for a while. But after that, I don’t know.”

  As Case’s car turns off the lane and onto the county road, she’s still thinking about the house and what might become of it. She can’t take it away from Troy’s family, or pluck the tiles from the bathroom wall one by one, or tear up the floorboards, or rip the ivy from the exterior, but she wishes she could. She thinks, though, that the house is cursed now. The land and animals won’t leave it alone. The air around it will be unbreathable. The nearby river will continue to rise. Vicious birds will swoop in from the skies, and the snakes will slither from the murky water. The ghost of a girl will be there too, making sure everyone gets what they deserve.

  As the car pulls out onto the road, Bryan sends another text: You’ll be happy to know that, as expected, I did not get fired! Come visit next time you’re in town.

  Case grins and then rolls down her window. In the distance, she can hear the search dogs barking, all together, as one. They’ve found something.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful for my teachers, students, friends, family, readers, colleagues, and champions. None of my books would exist without the encouragement and guidance of my editor, Krestyna Lypen. This novel felt particularly nebulous in its early stages, and I appreciate Krestyna’s ability to have seen through the muck. Of course, so many thanks to everyone who has worked on my books at Algonquin Young Readers and Workman, past and present.

  Claire Anderson-Wheeler is my brilliant agent, and I would be lost without her keen eye and support.

  The English department at Southern Methodist University gifted me the opportunity to travel out of state, hunker down in the mountains, and do crucial work on revisions of this novel at their campus in Taos, New Mexico. This time and space was invaluable.

  Kara Thomas, Rory Power, and Nova Ren Suma all read early versions of this novel and generously offered their praise.

  Thank you to my husband, Jeff Schulze, for his unwavering support and for his refusal to let me write bad sentences. Always and forever, I am grateful for and inspired by my young son and bright star, Guy.

  The inspiration for this novel came from a variety of sources and places, in particular the 1955 film Bad Day at Black Rock (in which the protagonist, played by Spencer Tracy, arrives at a small town full of hostile inhabitants looking for an old friend), as well as the novels The Likeness by Tana French (featuring an old house in the woods filled with cagey people) and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (featuring, among so many other amazing things, a river full of snakes). Certainly, I was also inspired by Palo Pinto County, Texas, and the Brazos River.

  The volcanic activity and its immediate aftermath described in this novel were inspired by the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, in what is now Indonesia. The results of the eruption were cataclysmic, causing global environmental disasters such as drought, crop failure, and drastic changes in weather patterns, including, yes, pink snowfall in the summer. This massive event was also said to have shaken some people’s notions of faith and spiritual balance and is known to have inspired the work of writers such as Lord Byron and Mary Shelley.

  Samantha Mabry is the author of A Fierce and Subtle Poison; All the Wind in the World, which was longlisted for a National Book Award; Tigers, Not Daughters; and, most recently, Clever Creatures of the Night. In addition to writing, Samantha teaches college-level composition at Southern Methodist University and is the mother of an energetic young son. Samantha and her family divide their time between Dallas and Mineral Wells, Texas. Visit her online at samanthamabry.com.

  Also by Samantha Mabry

  Tigers, Not Daughters

  All the Wind in the World

  A Fierce and Subtle Poison

 

 

  Samantha Mabry, Clever Creatures of the Night

 

 

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