Chapter Text
The strawberry scent on June's pillow grew stronger every night.
At first, Riley told himself it was imagination. But the smell didn't fade.It only deepened. Some mornings, Riley woke up with the taste of strawberries on his tongue, and the indentation on the pillow beside his was still warm.
Carol noticed. Of course she noticed. She stood in the doorway of June's room every morning with her coffee mug and her cigarette, making sure Riley smoothed the floral sheets, straightened the chipped white dresser and arranged the single strand of pale hair back onto the pillowcase.
"Thanks for doing that." Carol said once. Her voice was rough from decades of smoke. "Keep her room like a museum, I mean. She's not coming back."
"I know," Riley said.
But he didn't stop.
November 15th – The Sympathy Card
The school sent a card.
It arrived in a plain white envelope, addressed to "The Family of Phoenix Reyes" in careful guidance-counselor handwriting. Riley opened it at the kitchen table while Carol burned toast in the background.
The front of the card showed a cartoon rainbow and a smiling bear holding a balloon. Inside, a pre-printed message read: "Thinking of you during this difficult time." Below it, signatures from Riley's fourth-grade class, crammed into whatever space was left.
Riley read each one.
"Sorry about your brother." – Sam (Riley forgot his last name)
"You're brave." – Jessica Okonkwo
"I don't know what to say." – Tommy Lin
And then the others. The ones that had been written, without even bothering to write their names. Scratched out with such force that the paper had torn in places. Riley held the card up to the light and deciphered the ghosts of the words beneath:
"Your brother was a jerk."
"He got what he deserved."
"Hope he burns in hell."
Someone (probably Mrs. Alvarez) had taken a black marker to the worst of them. But the scratches couldn't hide the anger.
Riley put the card under June's pillow, next to the strawberry bonbon they'd been saving since Ada gave it to them.
Carol didn't ask what they were doing.
She just lit another cigarette and stared out the window at the falling snow.
November 22nd – The Snowstorm
The weather had stopped pretending.
It snowed every day now, a hard, driving snow that came sideways and never melted. Power lines sagged under the weight. Roads became impassable. The news talked about "historic lows" and "state of emergency," but no one came to help. The town was completely cut off.
Garbage the cat showed up at Carol's back door every evening, his orange fur matted with ice, his bitten ear frozen at the tip. Riley let him in. Carol pretended not to notice. The cat slept at the foot of June's bed, and in the morning, the strawberry scent was always strongest where he'd been lying.
"Do you see her?" Riley asked Garbage one night. The cat blinked slowly, his pupils wide in the dark.
"June, I mean. Do you see her when I'm asleep?"
Garbage purred. It was not a comforting sound.
November 30th – The Forest Beckons
Riley had been having the same dream for a week.
In the dream, he walked through the forest behind Carol's house. The snow was deep, but his feet left no prints. The trees were bare and black, their branches curled into shapes that looked like grasping hands. Somewhere ahead, a bell was ringing, small and tinny, like the bell on a cat's collar.
In the dream, Riley followed the sound.
Every night, the bell got closer.
Every morning, Riley woke up with twigs in his hair and snow on his eyelashes, even though he hadn't left the bed.
"You're sleepwalking," Carol said on December 2nd. She was standing in the kitchen with a butter knife in one hand and a worried expression on her face. "Your socks are wet. You went outside."
"I didn't mean to."
"I know, kid. That's what sleepwalking is." Carol put down the knife and sat across from Riley. For the first time, she looked old.
"What's out there? In the forest? What are you following?"
Riley thought about lying. Thought about protecting Carol from the truth the way Phoenix had tried to protect them; by saying nothing.
But the strawberry scent on June's pillow was stronger than ever, and Riley was so tired of being alone.
"A ghost," Riley said. "Maybe a god. Something old. Something that eats loneliness."
Carol was quiet for a long time. Then she reached across the table and took Riley's hand. Her fingers were calloused from years of rewinding VHS tapes.
"June used to talk about a black sheep," Carol said. "When she was little. Before she disappeared. She said there was a sheep in the forest with bloodshot eyes and a pink bow around its neck. I thought it was imaginary. A kid thing."
"It's not imaginary."
"No." Carol's grip tightened. "I don't think it is."
December 5th – Garbage
The snowstorm reached its peak on a Friday, the power went out by noon. The phones followed an hour later. Carol lit candles and dug out an old battery-powered radio, but all the stations were static. The world had shrunk to the size of Carol's living room. It's hard to imagine a world that's only a floral couch and a stack of VHS tapes.
At dusk, Garbage stood up. Walked to the door. Looked back at Riley.
The bell.
It was the same bell from the dream, small and tinny, coming from somewhere deep in the forest. Riley had never noticed it while awake before. But now it was unmistakable, ringing through the howl of the wind, patient and persistent.
"Don't," Carol said. "Whatever you're thinking, DON'T."
Riley reached into his pocket. The strawberry bonbon was still there, wrapped in crinkly plastic, saved for months. The last thing Ada had given them.
"I have to," Riley said.
"Why?"
Because the chewing sound is back, Riley thought. Because June's pillow smells like strawberries and I don't know if that's good or not. Because Phoenix is fucking dead and Ada is gone and the snow won't stop until someone gives the hungry thing what it wants.
"I have to," Riley said again.
Carol didn't stop them.
Garbage pushed open the door with his head and stepped into the snow. Riley followed.
The Temple
It was about the size of a shed.
Riley had walked past this part of the forest a hundred times. There was nothing here apart from just a small clearing, a few dead pines, a patch of ground where nothing grew. But tonight, the clearing held a building. Old concrete covered in moss and a door that hadn't been there yesterday. Or maybe it had been there all along, and Riley had just never been hungry enough to see it.
Garbage sat in front of the door and meowed.
The bell stopped ringing.
Riley pushed the door open.
Inside, the air was warm. It smelled like wool and old milk and something metallic. Blood, maybe? Or iron Candles lined the walls, burning without melting, casting flickering shadows that moved against the grey walls. The floor was dirt. The ceiling was low. And everywhere, everywhere, there were lambs.
Carved lamb statues. Painted lamb murals. A stained-glass window showing a black sheep with cinnabar red eyes, huge pupils dilated like a prey animal's, a small pink bow wrapped around its neck. The sheep stood in a field of white flowers, and beneath it, a line of text in a language Riley didn't recognize.
Seems like the doomsday cultists had been busy.
An altar stood at the far end of the shed-sized temple. It was made of scavenged wood; pallets, fence posts and what looked like the broken leg of a kitchen table. On top of the altar, a hollowed-out lamb's skull rested in a bed of straw.
Next to the altar, a stack of handwritten journals. Riley opened the top one. The handwriting was cramped and frantic.
"The elder ghost does not want gold. She does not want blood. She wants what was taken from her: the memory of being loved. When the world forgets you, you become hungry. When you become hungry, you become a ghost. And the ghosts feed on those they befriend, leading them to eternal paradise."
Riley flipped pages.
"She appears as a black lamb with red eyes. The bow was her mother's. She was Twenty two when she died. Twenty two and forgotten. No funeral nor grave. Just a field and a hunger that grew for a hundreds of years."
"The offerings must be small. Sweet. Things a child would give. Things given freely, without expectation. That is the only way to appease her."
"We were wrong about everything. She doesn't want to move on. She wants to swallow the world whole so she'll never be alone again."
"If you're reading this, For the love of whatever's truly up there, run."
Riley closed the journal.
Garbage was sitting at the base of the altar, staring at the lamb's skull with his one good ear flat against his head. He wasn't purring anymore. He was waiting.
The strawberry bonbon felt heavy in Riley's pocket.
This is stupid, Riley thought. This is exactly what the journal said not to do. The cultists were wrong. The offering won't help. It'll just make her hungrier.
But the snow wasn't stopping. The chewing sound wasn't stopping. June's pillow smelled like strawberries every morning, and Carol was probably going to die alone in that house, and Phoenix was nailed to a utility pole, and Ada was gone, and Riley was so, so, SO tired of being hungry.
He took out the bonbon.
He placed it inside the lamb's skull.
And the candles went out.
For a moment, there was nothing but darkness and the sound of Garbage's breathing. The black sheep on the window moved. Its huge pupils swivelled to look at Riley. Its pink bow fluttered in a wind that didn't exist.
Thank you, whispered a voice that was not June's, not Phoenix's, not anything human. Now you stay too.
Garbage hissed and fled.
The door slammed shut.
December 6th – The Missing Poster
The snow stopped at dawn.
Carol found Riley's bed empty, the strawberry pillow cold, the front door standing open. She walked to the utility pole at the corner of Maple and Fourth, the same pole where Phoenix had been found, where June's posters still hung. She dropped her cigarette in shock, letting it sizzle out in the snow.
A new poster had been added to the collection.
It showed Riley's school photo, the one from September, before the cold came. The photo where Riley was smiling, really smiling. The smile looked strange now. Out of place. Like a flower growing in a graveyard.
MISSING. RILEY REYES. Age 9. Last seen December 5th.
REWARD FOR ANY INFORMATION.
Below it, another poster. Newer still. The paper was crisp and white, untouched by snow, as if it had been printed that morning and nailed to the wood by hands that left no fingerprints.
WANTED. TEGAN HOLLOWAY. ESCAPED CONVICT.
Considered clinically insane. DO NOT APPROACH.
Last seen: Heading east. Believed to be armed.
The photograph showed a woman with thin, pale hair and wide eyes. She was smiling. It was not a nice smile.
Behind the posters, carved into the wood of the utility pole itself, someone had scratched a small lamb.
It had cinnabar red eyes.
And around its neck, a pink bow.