Chapter Text
Chapter 9
Come up the hill sometime. Bogue had been insistent. No need to wait until midwinter. It’s the first time Billy’s followed the road all the way up Beacon Hill: as far as the logging trails extend it’s wide and well-used, but above that it dwindles to a single track, the trees closing in on either side. The only warning is a square stone marker like he saw at Jack’s, then the road becomes a driveway that runs threading through the close-packed pines until it comes out onto a gravelled forecourt in front of a house he recognises from Sam’s photograph.
It’s big, far bigger than one man could need, a three-storey confection of stucco and stone with a square turret at one side. A lumber-baron’s mansion, Billy remembers as he gets out of the car: certainly it’s a folly suitable for its dramatic setting with its ornate plasterwork and pillars. Was it a Bogue ancestor who built it?
His feet crunch on the gravel as he walks up to the front door: now he’s here it seems to him he should have taken Bogue’s invitation and come up long before, rather than stewing with his suspicions; a few quick questions and explanations will clear the air, he’s certain. But his knock echoes distantly, the house silent. Closer to it’s not in great repair, rain puddled on the boards at his feet and the wooden overhangs sagging; the blind windows make it hard to imagine it being lived in, busy with family and servants. He knocks again, less optimistically, and listens.
From behind the house comes the regular thunk of someone chopping wood, and he follows the sound around, past a long terrace which runs along the back façade, to an outbuilding at the rear. The same burly long-haired man that he saw at Jack’s is standing over a half-split log, axe lifted. As Billy approaches he brings it down with another thunk, apparently unmoved by his sudden appearance. ‘Bogue’s not here.’
‘Mr Denali?’ He’s an imposing figure, hair held back under a bandana and tattoos on his bulging muscles, and an unlikely contrast to his neat and fussy employer. ‘I’m Billy Rocks.’
Denali looks him up and down. ‘The photographer. He said you’d be around.’
Behind him the outbuilding is piled high with uncut logs: Billy can’t imagine the labour to split them all by hand. He jerks his chin. ‘Wouldn’t you be quicker with a chainsaw?’ Denali looks at him impassively, then sets one foot on the iron wedge that’s holding open the crack in the log; he puts his weight on it, leaning slowly, until the log groans and splits clean in two, its pale heartwood exposed. Billy raises an eyebrow: this guy needn’t think he can intimidate him. ‘Bogue be back any time soon?’
Denali shrugs. ‘Probably.’
It’s both dismissal and challenge: ‘I’ll take a walk around,’ says Billy. The chopping starts up again behind him as he crosses back to the terrace and the grounds behind.
To his eye it looks like the remnants of a formal estate carved out of the wooded hillside: immediately beyond the house is an expanse of overgrown grass and ferns which was probably a lawn, bounded by a low stone balustrade. Far more striking, though, is the towering wooden structure at one side on what he guesses is a long-disused tennis-court, its clay surface cracked. The upright spars are easily twice his height, its centre packed with logs and brush – of course, the famous bonfire. Billy circles it, impressed: the glow of something this size must be visible for miles around. He should have brought his camera, there must be something to be made of it... But that’s not what he’s here for, is it? He hasn’t come to admire Bogue’s eccentricities, but to ask questions, sound out what he knows about disappearances, and about his lookalike ancestor-
Crash! The sound jerks him back to attention and he turns to see Denali, a load of logs at his feet. Irritated at being so obviously startled, he nods at the structure. ‘Lot of work to go to for something that’s going to be burned.’
‘Burning’s the point of it.’ Denali starts stacking the logs one by one in the heart of the structure. ‘You’ll see it, you and the bookstore guy.’
Billy grinds his teeth at the show of superior knowledge. ‘If we’re here.’ They’ll be at the opening of his exhibition if he has anything to do with it, not some smalltown bonfire party.
Denali pauses in his work. ‘Whole town comes up.’ There’s an odd element of finality to it; Billy stares him down.
‘So I hear.’ This whole gnomic thing is worse than Red; no wonder Teddy said he didn’t like Denali. ‘A Rose Creek tradition.’
‘That’s right.’ Denali’s smile is somehow more unsettling than his usual impassivity. ‘Always a fire at midwinter. From way back.’
‘In the 1800s?’ asks Billy, thinking of the photograph.
Denali stares at him, unblinking, then goes back to stacking without answering. His task finished, he straightens up and heads back to the stable.
So much for that. Billy stays there picking splinters from one of the uprights of the bonfire and considering. Is this how it’s going to go with Bogue, him asking questions that come out sounding completely irrational? ‘What do you know about children disappearing from around Rose Creek? Where are your family buried? Why do you look just like a man in the picture of the old Civic Council?’ He’s almost convinced himself once more that this is all his imagination spinning out of control, prompted by Sam’s projections of guilt and Alejo’s grief, then the splinter of wood he’s playing with swims into focus. The trees. I didn’t imagine those, and that was where this all started. He drums his fingers against the upright, thinking. Denali’s given him tacit permission to explore, and he’ll certainly hear when Bogue comes back in his rattling old car. The grove was close to the overlook, down from here towards Jack’s: he can find it again, see if it’s as he remembers.
He tosses away the splinter and heads back across the grass, the blank windows of the house uneasy at his back. Sure enough, a well-trodden path among the pines seems to take him in the right direction and he follows it, looping gradually downhill. Not far from the house he spots a flash of stone through the branches and strikes off to see if it’s the missing mausoleum, but it turns out to be an old-fashioned icehouse half-buried in the ground, its roof thick with moss. He picks up what he thinks is the path again just beyond it, the pine needles dense underfoot and the air still and cold so he hunches in his jacket. The path winds on, growing narrower: before long he begins to suspect he’s heading in the wrong direction, and he backtracks, trying different side trails, though it’s difficult to keep a bearing when the straight trunks march away indistinguishable on all sides.
Without warning a pigeon bursts up with a clatter in front of him and he stumbles in surprise, putting a hand to the nearest trunk to steady himself. A sharp stab in the pad of his finger makes him winces and he brings his hand away to see a smear of blood. There’s something bright there, a jag of metal, and he realises that he’s found it, the circle of trunks with their glittering decorations. What was it cut him? He traces it carefully, sucking his finger: it’s a square of silver, stencilled to make an image, a moon and stars dark against the bright metal. The sides are smooth, but the lower edge is uneven, as though it’s been snapped off from something else, leaving a barb. Hasn’t he seen this before?
He gropes for the memory and it rises up, Bogue at the counter, laying the bookmark on top of his purchase, I’ll take one of these too. He raises his head queasily: he’d thought the trees were a folly like the house, but does this mean Bogue is still adding to them? Gathering up little shiny things and bringing them out to tap into the bark up here? The idea of Bogue alone in the woods with a pocketful of treasures is bizarrely creepy.
He scans the surface of the tree, bright with its strange inclusions. Beside Goody’s bookmark there’s a piece of firehouse tile and an enamelled tag for a dog’s collar: is there one from every business down below, some token bought and memorialised up here? He wanders from trunk to trunk, finding a scrap of coloured china that might come from La Huerta, a polished quartz crystal which can only be from Psyche’s Garden and a shiny chrome gasket that must have been scavenged from Faraday’s auto shop. Perhaps it’s a form of collective art, a communal jeu d’esprit, everyone coming up each year to seek out their own.
There are older tokens too – the key of an old-style cash register, a piece of glass with gilded lettering, a stamped tin disc from a company store and, yes, even an early police badge. The whole history of Rose Creek must be up here, from horse-drawn carts to diesel trucks, from the mills to the museum. It becomes a game of recognition, tile and stone, metal and glass, sharp and smooth, flat and rounded. Here’s a smooth depression in the bark, curved and cold to the touch, a dark glint on its surface: tarnished silver. Old, no doubt. He traces it, a shallow oval, and at one end a projection, embossed with a raised design... His fingers read the puzzle before his mind: a teaspoon. Something small and sparkling, a silver teaspoon, picked up from beside a cup, left forgotten at a picnic – or dropped from a bundle as she ran through the trees in the night. The grove spins around him, the bark under his hand his only anchor. A trophy.
It comes crashing in on him with no room for doubt. A toy sheriff’s star. A cheap turquoise ring, its stone cracked with age. A glass marble. One for every time. The broken blade of young Jack Horne’s pocketknife? Duncan Littler’s high school pin? The star of glass from Ginny Coulter’s broken phone screen? He’s cold, cold to the core. What’s here of Riley Gill or of Lily Peretz? A buckle? A barrette? Under his hand, one of the scattered clips of yellow-white … Piano keys, he’d thought, the cracked ivory from a fan or a jewel case, but now in his mind he sees a seven-year-old’s gap-toothed smile and he snatches away his hand as though the touch is an infection, a wave of nausea doubling him over.
He becomes aware of someone standing beside him, a hand patting comfortingly on his shoulder. ‘Take your time, Mr Rocks. You’ve had a shock to the system.’ He straightens to see Bogue, smiling mildly. ‘You’d like an explanation, I’m sure.’ His touch is gentle. ‘Come with me.’
Bogue leads him, kindly and solicitous, down to the viewpoint where the hill falls away above Rose Creek. It’s smaller from up here than he remembered, a toy village he could fit into the palm of his hand. He can see the school, the whitewashed church, the bridge and the treelined square: if he concentrates he can make out the intersection where the bookstore is. Goody’s in there now, reading at the counter with an ear to the door, waiting for him to arrive. Standing at the edge, he feels Bogue’s hand at his back, knows that under his feet there’s a sheer drop. ‘Goody,’ he whispers.
Bogue’s hand stays resting there. ‘He’s down there in his store, isn’t he? The perfect setting, just the way he imagined it. A thriving bookstore in a pretty little town.’ The voice in his ear is insidious. ‘What do you think it takes to keep your husband’s dream alive?’
Billy steals a glance to his side: Bogue’s smile is guileless as he gestures. ‘My town. Just what a place like this should be. Solid jobs with good wages, thriving little businesses, each one someone’s pet project. A hospital with all the latest treatments for everyone in town, a school full of respectful, obedient children who work hard at their studies. Everything you could hope to have.’
‘For a price.’ Billy’s voice husks, barely there.
Bogue nods, calm and serious. ‘Nothing without a price.’
Images dance in Billy’s mind: the girl at the side of the road, the boy wandering in the woods. Do they realise? Do they try to run? Or do they let a friendly old man take their hand and tell them not to be afraid? ‘People know,’ he says, more distinctly. ‘Sam told me it’s you. And Alejo.’
Bogue shakes his head, amused. ‘Oh, they know. Not just young Vasquez and poor Chisolm: everyone in Rose Creek knows.’ He smiles. ‘They all come up here. They give their consent.’
Everyone in Rose Creek. Every family, every business, with their token up here in the grove. He can picture it, the faces in the firelight, the hands around the bonfire, the price agreed for another year. When the first shock has ebbed, leaving behind a dull horror, he asks, ‘How long?’
Bogue nods at his question, looking down to the valley again. ‘I was here when the town was born, no more than a few cabins around the creek. The ones who settled here, they wanted it to prosper, to grow and thrive, they wanted it so badly, prayers for it burning bright in their souls, and they brought me out of the forest to see that it did.’
As he speaks his form seems to waver like a heat mirage: one moment the man speaking to him is a roughcut woodsman, the next a storekeeper in an apron; he’s a blacksmith, soot-stained from the forge, a banker in a top hat. ‘They brought me with them, over the sea; this place isn’t so different from my home. And they lent me form so I could give them what they wanted. Whatever they set their hands to, they prospered, the farms and the mills and the stores; they raised their families and passed their inheritance on to them.’
His voice is hypnotic: all Billy can do is stand and gaze at the town cradled in the wooded hills. ‘Even when the cold winds blew, when the lumber trade started to fail, when the mills had to close, I saw to it that Rose Creek was spared.’ He’s a hippie B&B owner, a sunburnt farmer, a doctor in a white coat.
‘And they paid. All of them.’ It’s not a question.
Bogue stretches out a hand, curled as though to hold and shelter the tiny buildings below. ‘It was easy, in the beginning. Not so terrible a price. Children – parents didn’t expect them all to live, not then, and the ones I took were still young, still carefree. They never had to grow old.’
‘And now?’ The question’s almost silent, but Bogue must understand.
‘The bargain holds. You must have wondered: no national chain to undercut the auto shop, no franchise to run young Teddy’s café out of business.’ Now he’s a town councillor with a chain across his vest, a friendly police officer. ‘No roadhouse with neon signs to lure in passing traffic. No fights, no drugs, no teenage hookers or petty thieves.’ He turns to face Billy, his bright-eyed gaze turning him inside out. ‘What were you looking for when you came here? A smart little town that could support an independent bookstore, a fancy restaurant, a farm shop? A characterful house you could afford, comfort and freedom?’ His voice drops to a purr in Billy’s ear, swaying there on the edge of the precipice. ‘Inspiration? Recognition?’ It’s no more than a whisper. ‘Just one child each year. Is that really so great a price?’
Bogue takes his hand away and Billy lurches dizzily forward, stones beginning to slide under his feet, then he steps back from the edge. Beside him Bogue is his normal cheerful self again, all twinkling eyes and old-fashioned waistcoat. He pats Billy’s shoulder kindly. ‘Think it over. Don’t want to be making any hasty decisions.’
--
After, Billy stands alone, numb to the cold, as the sky darkens and the lights come on in the town below, turning over the pieces in his mind and slotting them together. Why tell him? Why give away his secret so freely? Bogue must want him to know: he told me, he realises, from the very beginning. More to it all than meets the eye. He must feed on it, the recognition, the understanding. The fear. And after all, what can Billy do, now he knows? Who’s going to believe a story like this? Sam has a part of the truth, but even if Billy can convince him, what new evidence do they have?
Some of it still nags at him, things that don’t add up. Every year? Sam had said that sometimes it had gone quiet, for years at a time – there weren’t fifty names on his map. Riley Gill, yes, Ginny Coulter, but if what Bogue says is true there must be scores of missing. In the early years of the town, maybe it wasn’t so hard to hide – children died of typhoid, of diphtheria, of scarlet fever, of diseases still unnamed: Bogue’s toll would barely register. But now? How could so many be like Lily Peretz, just gone?
Down at the school the day is ending, lights turning off in the classrooms and cars driving away. Matt’s down there, gathering up his papers to grade. Emma is finishing her clinic. Teddy’s in the Ba-Q-ry. Such a great new group of friends, adopting them in so effortlessly, him and Goody and Josh and Red. But they know. Matt, prevaricating on Billy’s project because the school in Langston won’t want to work with them. Emma, looking at the Raptors and wishing they could stay fearless. Teddy, telling them so earnestly that Riley left with his dad. They all know.
His gaze drifts over the sign at the auto shop, bright against the twilight, and it’s another hammer blow. Blue. Now he understands why Alejo was so upset when she and her friends attracted Bogue’s attention: Josh couldn’t know, how could he, that his proud father’s chatter might have sealed her fate. A shiver of urgency finally runs through him – Josh needs to leave, to get her away from danger. But if Billy explains it, Josh leave like Alejo wants him to, won’t he? Goody and I will go, and Josh and Red too. And what about the children left behind, asks his conscience, the ones he can name? Donna and Charlie and the other Raptors, Tyler and TV, Luis and David – what about them?
His car is still parked out front of Bogue’s house; though the windows are all dark it’s hard to hold up his head at the creeping sensation of being watched. The feeling doesn’t dissipate as he drops back down the hill, Bogue’s attention seeming to weigh on him like the heavy silence of the forest.
The lights are on at home when he pulls into the driveway: Goody is moving about in the living-room and Billy remembers his promise of coffee, unfulfilled. It’s not until that moment that the true depth of what they’ve lost rings through him – the slow afternoons in the store, their calm comfortable house, the sense of space and ease – and he stands beside the car in the chill dark for longer than he means to, summoning up the courage for what’s to come.
‘There you are.’ Goody’s in the hallway when Billy opens the door, as drawn and concerned as if he already divines his thoughts. ‘Did Casey reach you?’
‘Casey?’ echoes Billy blankly.
‘She’s been trying to get hold of you – she called me in the end.’
Billy’s skin starts to prickle. ‘What’s wrong?’ Goody’s face is creased with sympathy.
‘The show – the gallery’s pulled out. Cher, I’m so sorry – I can’t believe they’d cancel at such short notice.’
‘Cancel?’ Billy feels foolish, standing there parroting his words, but this new turn is too unexpected for him to take in.
‘She wants you to call her.’ Goody holds out his phone. ‘Use mine if you’re out of battery.’
Billy takes the phone through to the living room with a new queasy sinking as he punches the number. He closes his eyes while it rings. This is a shot across the bows, isn’t it? A warning of what can happen. Don’t want to make any hasty decisions. ‘Billy?’ Casey’s voice is tinny, sharp with nerves.
When the conversation’s done he sets the phone down deliberately on the coffee table: if it was his own he’d throw it across the room. Goody appears in the doorway. ‘Can they reschedule it?’ His face falls at Billy’s expression and he comes to wrap him up in a hug. ‘Why would they pull out so suddenly?’
Billy closes his eyes and lets his head rest on Goody’s shoulder, just for a moment; then he straightens, hands on Goody’s arms. ‘You have to let me expl-‘ For the first time he notices the papers spread out over the sofa, columns of figures and official letterheads, and he stops with the beginning of a fresh unease. ‘What’s all that?’
‘Accounts.’ Goody goes to gather them up. ‘Curse of the small business.’ There’s something too brisk in his manner.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Well...’ Goody pauses, reluctant. ‘Today was Black Friday, but I wasn’t exactly besieged by bargain-hunters. Was really counting on good holiday takings –could blow a bit of a hole in the finances.’
Another lesson? Just how much influence can Bogue have? But that’s no question, is it: Billy’s thoughts flicker frantically as Goody stuffs the paperwork back into its file. Jack lost his son and that was part of the bargain, but what about his wife and daughter? An accident, on this very road, Bogue had told him with that sideways glance. Terrible thing. A woman blinded by grief, heedless of her own safety? Or an unwilling partner, an outsider, not ready to stay silent?
Goody lets the file thump onto the coffee table. ‘Can’t say I feel too much like cooking. We could go out-‘
‘No!’ Billy can’t stop himself seizing Goody’s arm: for a split second he sees it, the truck on the dark forest road, too sudden, too close, hears the screeching brakes. But Goody’s right there, warm and live and infinitely precious. ‘No,’ he says more quietly, ‘Let’s just get pizza and icecream, watch a movie, forget it all for a while.’ He swallows it down, the dark bitter secret, swallows it without a second’s hesitation, and when the lines on Goody’s face ease as he pulls him in for a kiss, now at least he understands how easy it can be.
‘I’ll call,’ Goody says, heading to the kitchen. ‘Where were you, anyway?’
Billy takes a breath, testing himself. ‘Scouting for the commercial. Got sidetracked.’
--
Next morning, after Goody’s gone to work, Billy stands at the window of his studio, turning one of his lens filters absently in his hands. The view before him is a swathe of untracked forest rising to the peaks, the sky above still pink-tinged from sunrise. So easy to pretend. So easy to forget. Bogue’s right, Rose Creek is perfect. Not just prosperous and pretty but tolerant and multicultural, its townsfolk neighbourly and civic-minded. In light of day their choice is stark: pack up and leave like Alejo? Break the lease on the store and clear it out, put the house on the market? Start again, somewhere harder? And finally he lets himself stare the truth in the face, the truth that Bogue flushed out of him with his turn of the screw: he’s made out this was all about Goody, about giving him the new life he wanted, but that was self-deception. He might have told himself he chose to move for Goody, being unselfish, but it’s brought more for him than he could have hoped.
Rose Creek has given him space, freedom, the beginnings of a real new vision: it’s been exhilarating, feeding his soul in the way only art can, letting him live the life he was never supposed to have. His family waited years for him to get it out of his system, to turn away from trivia and get a respectable career, but he blazed his own path until he found his tribe, the people creating because they had to, because it came to them like breathing. When he first met the ex-soldier called Goodnight it was recklessness and passion that drew him, but what made him stay was Goody’s belief in him, his validation of a life where art and literature were allowed to rank above money and status. It was never the easier choice, and god knows he’s had as many kicks in the teeth as any artist, but here in Rose Creek he’s found an even keel, stability and comfort, the chance to live the way he always hoped. And in his mind, Bogue’s insidious whisper returns: Is it really so great a price?
Goody’ll be at the store now, opening up, setting out the storybooks in the back room, flicking through the new catalogues and reviews in the mail. Billy wants to be there, sitting on one of the blue windowseats in the early sun, or up on the gallery rearranging his display of prints. He wants to be here, working on his commission and mulling over a proposal for a new book of his art. And there it is at last, the squirming admission he doesn’t want to let out into the sunlight. It won’t be their children. In a town this size it most likely won’t be anyone they know, just a girl or boy they’ve glimpsed a couple of times, a kid who plays softball, a face in the school photograph. The year will turn and some child won’t come home, but the sorrow will stay elsewhere. It’s an old bargain and it’s been made many times: all he has to do is close his eyes and they can still have all this, the peace and the money and the success, the charmed life. Everything can be OK again if he lets it.
He stands there for a long time gazing sightlessly at the forest as Ha-eun winds round his feet. But he’s made his choice, he made it up there on the hillside when he touched the silver spoon dropped by a girl no more than a name on a page to him, all those years ago.
When he sets out for the store the weight of what he has to do is crushing. And of course, Rose Creek is at its perfect best, lively at the start of the holiday season with neighbours putting up decorations and children chasing up and down the street on bikes. He wants desperately to be in Langston, with its rundown cafes and overpriced grocery stores, its empty shopfronts and low-grade franchises: he can’t walk this chic main street without a shuddering hatred. He wants to smash though this skim of flawless ice and reveal the murky depths below: he wants to accuse, How can you live with what you know, to warn, Run, save yourselves. He can see how it would end, raving on the street like a madman, Harp and his officers coming to take him with exaggerated care, Poor Mr Rocks, who would have thought it? Is he imagining Bogue’s insistent attention, his gentle amusement?
Panic begins to press in his chest: is there anywhere here to hide, anywhere Bogue doesn’t have a hand, a presence? It’s all his – the square, the museum, the town hall. The church? As old as the town, a symbol of its tradition and virtue, it’s hardly a refuge – if the citizens of Rose Creek pray, it’s not to the god here. Did he see Bogue as a dog-collared preacher yesterday? But hollow though its promise is, it offers as much shelter as he can hope to find, and he hurries through the churchyard to its door, pulling out his phone.
The white-painted interior is blessedly empty, lined with simple wooden pews and scented faintly with polish and candle wax. The door thuds shut behind him, muffling the sounds from outside; when his phone buzzes a confirmation he pockets it and walks the length of the aisle, thick carpet deadening his steps, to slip into a pew near the front.
He waits, time suspended, watching the dust motes move in the shafts of light from the high windows, until he hears the door open again. He doesn’t turn: there’s a tiny pause, then confident steps come down the aisle and Goody slides into the pew beside him. ‘Want to tell me what’s going on?’ A hand finds his. ‘You know I’ve got your back, and if there’s trouble we’ll haul it out and kick its ass.’
‘We’re in a house of God.’ Despite himself, Billy smiles: Goody’s never let him down. ‘Going to take some explaining.’
Goody settles back. ‘Try me.’
Billy takes a deep breath. ‘You remember when Bogue came in the store? When you’d just opened? He saw the cash register, and told us all the other guys it had belonged to, right the way back?’ Goody looks at him blankly: whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t this. ‘And you asked him if he knew the story of everything in town?’ Goody nods, puzzled. ‘He does.’ And Billy tells him it all, about the photograph and the trees, and about what he saw.
After he’s finished Goody’s silent. ‘It’s a lot to believe,’ admits Billy.
Goody shakes his head. ‘I trust you, you know I do, but – Bogue as some kind of spirit? People letting their children be ... sacrificed?’ Billy can’t blame him for struggling with it. ‘You’re trying to say that everyone here – everyone – knows that a child goes missing every year, and they just let it happen?’
How to explain it, when he can hardly believe it himself? ‘It’s a bargain. A perfect town, where your family will be safe, your job will be secure, where your children will never run away or turn to drugs, where you’ll never want for healthcare or housing, never hear a bigoted comment.’ Goody’s mouth twists. ‘As long as you pay the price.’
‘I guess it makes a kind of sense.’ He’s humouring him, Billy can tell. ‘But how could something like this be covered up? I know Sam suspects, but you said, he’s been searching for years and he never found any evidence.’
‘Because there is none, none except for the trophies he keeps. Bogue’s not a real person, he’s-‘ It’s hard to find the words to convince; he searches Goody’s eyes, willing him to believe. ‘I tried to tell you about his trees. Over and over. Alejo did his best to say, but he couldn’t, not really. I think they can’t – what he has up there, it gives him a hold over them all.’ Billy swallows. ‘And you too. He bought a bookmark, that first day.’ Your first sale. ‘It’s up there with all the other tokens.’
Goody blanches. ‘Seriously?’
Billy shows him his hand. ‘I cut my finger on it. I don’t know what Bogue is, but he’s been here since the very beginning, seeing that everything goes right. Giving people what they want.’ And now they’re at the heart of it. ‘Didn’t all this strike you as too perfect? The ideal place, the store, the custom, the new friends?’
‘No. It didn’t.’ Goody’s stricken look brings a wash of shame. His own new success hadn’t felt too good to be true – it had felt deserved, a recognition long overdue. Had he questioned it, even for a moment?
‘I know it’s impossible. But if you’d seen–’
‘He’s right.’ The new voice makes them both jump: it’s Emma, her face pale in a cloud of red hair, framed in the doorway of one of the side chapels. ‘We pay.’ She’s wrapped up in a thick coat and scarf, arms wrapped around herself protectively. ‘Everyone does.’
The bare admission, the knowledge of how they’ve been deceived, brings Billy’s anger boiling to the surface, their surroundings forgotten. ‘How can you – you know what he has up there, you must have seen it. There are bits of bone, teeth-‘ He chokes on it, remembering, but Emma’s glaring, no trace of guilt or apology in her face.
‘Yes, we know,’ she hisses. ‘You have no idea what it’s like, outsiders like you.’ She faces them down, shaking with rage. ‘I’ve been going up to Beacon Hill since I was a baby, we all have. We’ve lived it, day by day, we’ve grown up with it, in our bones, the fear and the hope.’ Billy steals a glance at Goody, his expression gone tight as the full implications come home. ‘ It’s not something you can speak out loud, not even to each other; when the year turns, every time, the fear grips you so hard you can barely breathe.’ Now her expression’s turned to something closer to despair. ‘It’s almost time. Once you’ve been there at midwinter, you and Josh and Red, you’ll see.’
‘We won’t,’ says Goody, and he believes it now, it’s there in his voice. ‘We won’t be part of this.’
Emma’s laugh seems to be startled out of her. ‘You think you have a choice? Didn’t you hear what Billy just said? Bogue’s strong. We’ve made him strong, generations of belief and obedience and agreement. Whatever you do, whenever he needs to, he turns up, all smiling and helpful. You don’t get to choose.’
‘Alejo left,’ says Goody, but he sounds less certain. ‘And Sam.’
Emma nods, still hugging herself. ‘Alejo left. Swore he’d never come back, but here he is. And how far did Chisolm get? He came circling back again, he’s devoted his life to Bogue just the same.’ Her gaze darts between them, sharp and pitying, and Billy wonders, was Alma Horne’s car packed to leave? Was Ginny Coulter waiting for a ride far away? ‘He’s too strong. If leaving worked...’
Her voice breaks and for the first time Billy glances behind her, into the little chapel where she was alone. It’s as plain and bare as the rest of the church, but around the walls are set little memorial plaques, some with flowers or keepsakes. Janelle, our angel. Sleep well, he reads. Michael, ever in our hearts. A candle flickers pale in front of one: Rowan, always with us.
Emma sees him looking and steps backwards, chin raised defiantly against their sympathy. ‘This chapel is just for babies.’
‘Oh no.’ It’s Goody, beside him, Billy’s own horror mirrored in his face. Emma doesn’t seem to hear; she reaches out a hand to the inscribed name almost unconsciously. ‘Rowan was ours.’ Her touch lingers, sorrowful and loving. ‘I was glad she could have a place here. She was so small, and the graveyard seemed so lonely, so-‘ She chokes off the rest of the sentence.
‘I’m sorry.’ Billy wishes he were better at this. ‘We didn’t know.’
Emma turns back to them; her face is rigid, controlled, yet her pain scores vivid across it. ‘You wouldn’t, we keep it private, Matt and me. It’s – not something to talk about.’
‘Was she...’ He doesn’t know how to ask, or if he should, but Emma seems to understand.
‘She was stillborn. We were so excited, all the way through the pregnancy – she was fine, we both were – but when she was born...’ She closes her eyes, tears finally beginning to spill down her cheeks. ‘I held her. She was perfect.’ Her shoulders heave in a sob and Goody steps forward to pulls her wordlessly into his arms.
As Goody comforts her Billy moves past them, into the chapel, the final piece of the puzzle falling into place. Children don’t just die any more, he’d thought, but of course they do. Allergies, accidents, cot deaths. Stillbirths. Just one of those things. Nothing anyone could have done. Private sorrows kept locked inside, beneath the perfect façade. His anger burns away: Bogue’s shown him what he can do, how hard he is to resist. And wasn’t everyone they met trying to tell them? Alejo had spoken, though the words died in his throat, but hadn’t the others too in their way, Emma and Leni and Matt? Not directly, but any way they could, tiny snags under the surface to catch and warn.
Emma straightens up, exhaling shakily. Her words come out cracked, no more than a whisper. ‘If you can go, if you think you can, you should.’
Billy can’t but admire her, her courage and her despair. ‘Can’t you –‘ he begins, though he knows it’s hopeless.
‘No.’ Goody grips his shoulder, his voice ringing loud. ‘We’re not going to run.’ He bares his teeth, and there, in his bookish storekeeper’s clothes, Billy sees the Goody he met, the man with steel in his eyes and a tiger’s snarl. ‘We’ll stay. And we’ll fight.’