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  Christ, how long was I standing here? he had asked himself when he woke from the daydream with a shock. Despite the tropical heat, Steve had goose bumps all over his arms and back. He had been standing there with the linens in his hands. He didn’t know what could possibly have possessed him, but the image from behind his own bulging eyes as the sheet cut off the oxygen supply to his brain and the hydrostatic pressure of his cerebrospinal fluid increased had imprinted itself in his mind, vivid and horribly tempting. In the vision, he had still been alive. Looking down, Steve had seen his own dangling feet, and upward, the sea, and behind that—death. What in God’s name was that? he thought, splashing water on his face. I wanted to do it. I really wanted to do it.

  Jocelyn had also had a vision. Not of killing herself. She had mated with a donkey, then stuck a carving knife into her belly to cut out the baby.

  That same evening they had packed their bags, rebooked their flight, and returned home headlong. As soon as they were back in Black Spring, the profound sadness had slid away from them like a veil of tears, and the world had seemed manageable again.

  Never again had it been as bad as it was then. They had carried on intense conversations with Robert Grim and a small group of volunteers from town who had been appointed by the Council, among them Pete VanderMeer. “You’ll get used to it,” Pete had said. “I used to think Black Spring was like death row, but now I see it more like a little stable, with a cage door. You’re allowed to stick your finger through the bars every now and then, but only to show that you’re fattening up nicely.”

  When Steve and Jocelyn had realized there was no point in denying the truth, the powerless feeling had slowly turned into depression and a smoldering sense of guilt, which exacerbated the tension in their marriage. But the baby’s arrival had brought healing. When Tyler was six months old, Steve let go of his desire to not only understand the situation but also to change it, and decided that his move to Black Spring had been a gesture of love. He found a way to move on, but in his heart he bore the scars: Tyler would never grow to become a war correspondent, just as Jocelyn had had to suspend her field research on the Greenland ice caps. Their love was for the desolate and the remote, not for the Hudson Valley sediment. It had broken their hearts, just as every unfulfilled dream breaks the human heart, but that was life. Jocelyn and Matt had learned to love the horses—Matt especially enjoyed riding, and now was in his fifth year of competition—and Tyler had his GoPro and YouTube channel. You adapted, and you made sacrifices. You did it for your children or for love. You did it because of illness or because of an accident. You did it because you had new dreams … and sometimes you did it because of Black Spring.

  Sometimes you did it because of Black Spring.

  A tawny owl screeched in the woods, startled itself, and fell silent. Steve whistled for the dog once again. He began to feel ill at ease. Superstition, of course, even ludicrous, but on a night like this, when he could feel the power of this place in the dark, it was present nonetheless. He didn’t think back on those first years very often. It was all somewhat blurred in his memory; it had that structure of melting snow that dissolves as soon as you squeeze it. He remembered that they had asked themselves whether it was ethical to bring a child into the world in a place like this. Jocelyn had snapped, somewhat caustically, that in times of war and famine children were born under far more difficult circumstances.

  After that, they had lived relatively happily for the most part … but the guilt had never entirely gone away.

  “Fletcher, come here!” he hissed. Finally Fletcher came pattering out of the darkness and walked up to Steve, not directly, but in an arc, to show that he really hadn’t done anything wrong. Steve locked up the stable and followed the dog along the crazy-paved path to the back door.

  Silence reigned in the house, quiet with the sounds of sleep. The only light came from Tyler’s open bedroom door upstairs. The boy was just coming out of the bathroom when Steve got to the top step. Steve hunkered down like a boxer and Tyler parried deftly, their typical Steve-and-Tyler greeting.

  “You ready for tomorrow?”

  “Will we ever be?”

  Steve smiled. “A regular philosopher. Don’t stay up too late, okay?”

  “No, I’m about to turn in. G’night, Dad.”

  But when Steve went to the bathroom half an hour later there was still light shining through the transom above Tyler’s door—the pale radiation from his laptop. He considered saying something, but thought better of it and decided to allow the boy his privacy.

  Just before going to sleep he rose from his side of the bed and looked out the window. Jocelyn didn’t stir. Their room was at the back of the house and it was too dark outside to distinguish shapes, but somewhere in the night Steve thought he could see the red dot of light from the surveillance cam in the oak at the back of their property. Then it was gone. Perhaps a branch had blown in front of it. It made him think of the burning tip of Pete VanderMeer’s cigarette. The screeching tawny owl. The restless sniffing of the horses. Even the light coming from Tyler’s room. They’re standing watch, he thought. They’re all standing watch. Why?

  To guard what’s theirs. It was an incoherent thought, but it was followed by another that was much more lucid, a thought that slipped into his weary mind and trickled through with a cold fluidity: Sometimes you did it because of Black Spring.

  He dismissed it and fell asleep.

  FOUR

  THE ENTRY POSTED the next morning on the website Open Your Eyes: Preachings from the Witch’s Nest read as follows:

  tonight we’re gonna do it!! #awesome

  #mainstream #omfg #lampposttest

  Posted 10:23 a.m. by: Tyler Grant

  Obviously, no one in Black Spring read the entry that day. The five people who were aware of the website’s existence and who knew the password were all between sixteen and nineteen years of age, and would not in a million years think of visiting the OYE website via the town providers.

  The website’s welcome pop-up read as follows:

  OK, here’s a warning that you’re totally thinking you won’t read, just like the I-am-18-or-older bs you click away when you jack off. But this is different: this is a disclaimer you have to memorize word for word, better than the O’Neill Raiders fight song (for the heroes among us) or the Gettysburg Address (for the neonihilists). This warning is COMPLETE SECRECY and NEVER FUCKING EVER LOG IN IN BLACK SPRING, not even on your iPhone or tablet. Big-time 404 message if you do it anyway, but they can still trace the URL with their keylogger. Only discuss content IRL, not via Skype, not even if there’s a cow standing on the cable somewhere between you and HEX. To be clear: we have an Emergency Decree here in BS in which 1) keeping or distributing illegal images of Gramma K. will result in a one-way ticket to Doodletown and 2) leaks are regarded as “a serious threat to municipal public order” and have been dealt with since, like, the Middle Ages with total corporal punishment (“we-have-not-administered-such-punishment-since-1932,” LICGAS*). Take the hint: WHAT WE’RE DOING IS DANGEROUS. The only good thing about a town that gets off on indoctrinating the young is that you all know how to keep a secret. I’m trusting you guys. I don’t wanna bitch about it, but I check the statcounter every other day so I can see exactly who’s logging in and from where. Anyone who breaks the rules will get a lifetime ban from OYE without prior warning. And that’s before Colton & Co. start their freak show. STICK TO THE RULES. That’s our ultimate fuck-you to the system!

  * like I could give a shit

  They stuck to the rules, all right. OYE was probably the one online guerrilla movement that only operated in the full light of day: All its users lived in Black Spring and slept in their own beds at night.

  But not that night. That night they sneaked out of their rooms, climbing down drainpipes and gutters like warriors in occupied territory, and set off with shovels, rope, a black cloth, and a pair of wire cutters. They weren’t what you’d call close friends, not all of them. Of the five
who went out that night, Tyler considered only Lawrence VanderMeer from next door and Burak Şayer his real friends—not just the kind you held textathons with until silly o’clock in the morning, but the kind you told stuff to, private stuff. Yet that wasn’t the whole story, not if you had no one else to depend on. Born in Black Spring, you knew each other from early on and feared the adults, not your allies.

  It was the first night that fall that it rained. Not a summer shower, but a real autumn rain, the kind that seems drowsy and endless. By the time they had completed their mission forty minutes later, they were soaked to the skin. They took each other’s hands and Tyler solemnly said, “For science, guys.”

  “For science,” Lawrence echoed.

  “For science,” Justin Walker and Burak said in chorus.

  Jaydon Holst shot them a glance dipped in liquid acid and said, “Up yours, faggots.”

  The next morning, with bags under their eyes that hung to their feet, they gathered on the patio of Sue’s Highland Diner on the town square—although “square” was probably giving it too much credit. It was more like a gathering of shops and restaurants on Lower Reservoir and Deep Hollow Road surrounding the Little Methodist Church—which they all called Crystal Meth Church on account of the shape of its windows—and the old, sloping Temple Hill Cemetery. There were even those who found “gathering” too strong a word for the feeble excuse for eateries and retail establishments there at the intersection. Among those skeptics were the five boys on the patio at Sue’s, lethargically sipping their cappuccinos and lattes, too worn-out to get overly excited about what was coming.

  “Don’t you kids have to be at school?” Sue asked when she brought them their order. It had stopped raining, but it was chilly, and Sue had had to remove pools of water from the plastic tables and chairs.

  “No, the first two periods were cancelled, so they let us out,” said Burak. The others nodded in agreement or squeezed their eyes shut in the pallid sunlight. Burak held a job as a dishwasher at Sue’s, which earned them a free first round. After that they usually moved on to Griselda’s Butchery & Delicacies on the other side of the square (Griselda was Jaydon’s mom), which meant another free first round.

  Burak wasn’t lying, not entirely. The first two periods really had been cancelled—but no one had let them out.

  “We’ve had an alert, boys,” Sue said.

  “I know, ma’am,” Jaydon said amiably, a sure sign for everyone who knew Jaydon Holst to start seeing the word “BEWARE” in huge blinking neon letters. In fact, as Tyler had once remarked to Lawrence, Jaydon was the reason why the word “beware” existed at all, as well as the words “involuntary commitment” and “disaster waiting to happen.” But they all knew his background, so they tried to be sympathetic. “We figured we’d just sit here, so we can help out in case something happens.”

  “You’re an angel, Jaydon. I’ll tell your mom that when I go pick up the bacon this afternoon.” Burak tried his best not to laugh as Sue put an ashtray down in front of him. “Can I get you boys anything else?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Jaydon said with a smile that rose up like a cloud of carbon monoxide.

  She was about to take the open menu away from the table when Tyler quickly put his hand on it, more forcefully than he had intended. “Can I hold on to this? I might want to order something else later on.”

  “Sure, Tyler,” Sue said. “You just holler, all right? And I’ll let you know if I get any messages. It probably won’t be necessary, though. They have the choir ready and waiting.” She carried the tray back inside.

  All was silent for a moment, a silence in which the awkwardness of the situation seemed to thicken the air. Then, with a dim smile, Jaydon said, “Fucking hell.”

  “Dude, really … d’you want to go to Doodletown or something?” Despite Tyler’s relief, his heart was pounding in his throat. If Sue had discovered the GoPro under the menu they would have been in deep shit. The REC light was on and the sports cam was aimed at Deep Hollow Road to the south, where at that very moment two men were placing a red-and-white barrier across the road near St. Mary’s Church. The same thing was happening to the north, past the place where Old Miners Road, coming in from The Point, opened out onto the main thoroughfare. The GoPro couldn’t see it, but Tyler, Justin, and Lawrence could. And there was something else: Out of the Roseburgh Nursing Home next to Sue’s came eight or nine warmly wrapped elderly women, fiercely scanning the road. They talked among themselves and then, with their arms linked, strolled past the patio and out toward the intersection.

  “Showtime,” Justin remarked. “The crowds are going wild.”

  “What time is it?” Tyler asked.

  Lawrence peeked at his iPhone. “Nine-thirteen. One more minute. Turn your cam, dude.”

  With great care, Tyler slid the GoPro, covered by the menu, to the other side of the small table and aimed the lens at Old Miners Road, which ran up the hill in a sharp S curve past the closed Popolopen Visitor Center. A couple of the old ladies sat down on the bench near the fountain and the bronze washerwoman. Others had ambled into the cemetery—to check out the accommodations, Tyler guessed.

  “Omigod,” Justin said softly, and nodded. “There she is.”

  “Right on time,” Tyler reported, too excited to be cool, calm, and collected. He licked his lips and pushed Lawrence’s iPhone under the menu and held it in front of the lens. “Wednesday morning, nine-fourteen a.m. As usual, at exactly the right spot.”

  From behind Old Miners Road a woman came walking out of the woods.

  Why she follows EXACTLY the same pattern at the square and past the graveyard EVERY Wednesday morning is beyond me, but the Black Rock Witch is like Ms. Autism, unchallenged titleholder for three hundred fifty years running. Which is not, like, at all what witches are famous for. Makes you wonder if she ever gets dehydrated. Well, no. She’s like a Microsoft operating system: designed to sow death and destruction, and every time showing the same error message.

  So this behavioral pattern is mega interesting, of course, because: what’s she doing there, and why is she coming back every week? Behold! I have two theories:

  The first theory is that she’s stuck in some kind of time warp and keeps repeating her past to the point of obsessive-compulsive neurosis (a.k.a. the Windows XP theory). Grim says that, long ago, they had this open market on the square in front of the church (I asked if it was right in front of the cemetery and he said they’re not sure there even was a cemetery back then) and that she may have gone there to get bread and fish (which, like, totally makes no sense, because if the town had cast her off they wouldn’t have been thrilled to let her shop there. Conclusion: Grim is cool, but he’s just guessing). Anyway, it’s not like she was going to church or anything, because heretics don’t go to church (except the kind where they dance around the cross naked and smear themselves with the blood of Christ and chant psalms and stuff), otherwise we wouldn’t be stuck with her now, right?

  And then there’s this: if you’re dead (or should have been), what’s the point of walking the same circuit week in and week out? Didn’t they teach, like, variety in witch school? Makes as little sense as that old-fashioned, lights-on, lights-off poltergeist cliché (I mean, just speak up if you wanna say something, and don’t do it in fucking Latin).

  The second and more likely theory is THAT SHE GOT THIS WAY BECAUSE HER EYES ARE SEWN SHUT. What if we have a witch in Black Spring who JUST COMPLETELY FROZE UP (a.k.a. the Windows Vista theory)?

  (Source: Open Your Eyes website, September 2012)

  They watched as the woman with the sewn-shut eyes crossed Old Miners Road, passed behind the bus shelter, and came closer and closer. Her bare feet made circles in the puddles forming in the gutter. Perhaps it was instinct that propelled her, or perhaps something older and more primitive than instinct, but in any case Tyler knew it was deliberate, something that had no need of her blind eyes. He heard the dull clank of the chains that bound her arms and dress to he
r body. They made her look like one of these supermarket enchiladas rolled up in cellophane you’d rather not eat, wrapped and helpless. Tyler always found her less spooky when she walked, because then you didn’t have to wonder what she was plotting behind those stitched-up eyes of hers. She was just like a rare insect, the kind you could study, but that wouldn’t sting.

  But when she stopped … she got a little freaky.

  “You know what’s funny about her?” Justin mused. “For a fairy-tale character she’s, like, chronically ugly.”

  “She isn’t a friggin’ fairy-tale character,” Burak said. “She’s a supernatural phenomenon.”

  “Hell yeah she is. Witches only appear in fairy tales. So she’s a fairy-tale character.”

  “Dafuq? What stone did your mother get knocked up under? That still doesn’t make her a fairy-tale character. They’re not real, anyway.”

  “So what if Little Red Riding Hood appeared in front of you?” Justin said with a gravity that couldn’t be denied, let alone ridiculed. “Would she suddenly be a supernatural phenomenon? Or a fairy-tale character?”

  “No, just a chick with a sick Kotex fetish,” Jaydon said.

  Burak snorted his cappuccino all over his shirt and Lawrence almost laughed himself into a coma. A tad too much credit, Tyler thought. “Aw, fuck!” Burak dabbed the stain with a stack of napkins. “Dude, you’re sick.”

  “By the way,” Lawrence said after he got himself back under control, “the Blair Witch wasn’t a fairy-tale character, either.”