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  Tyler’s idea of coming out of the closet was antithetical to the town’s puritanical soul. It was an idealistic, rebellious idea, and in a community like Black Spring, which was governed by fear, rebellion was a dangerous thing. Every last grain of idealism would be sacrificed on the altar of safety. And Steve would do anything to keep Tyler from ending up on that altar.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m very proud of you. You’re standing up for your ideals. But nine out of ten people in Black Spring want to keep things just the way they are, because they fear the consequences. A proposal like that wouldn’t stand a chance in the Council. Why in the world would you want to try and fight a lost battle?”

  Tyler twisted uncomfortably. “I dunno. On principle. I want a life. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days out here in the boondocks. Do you?” He seemed to be plucking up his courage, then added in one breath: “And I want to be honest with Laurie.”

  Aha, so there’s the rub, Steve thought. It was all about love. He felt a pang of remorse: Tyler did indeed deserve better than Black Spring. It suddenly struck him that when his son put on his worried gaze, he bore a shocking resemblance to his mother.

  “Dad, if I want to tell Laurie, will you back me up?”

  “You know that’s impossible.”

  “I know, but I’m sick and tired of lying to her. You think she never asks why she’s almost never allowed to sleep over? She thinks you guys are TV evangelists.”

  Steve suppressed his urge to laugh—this matter was far too serious for that. Laurie was a good match for Tyler, bright and outspoken—the kind of girl who wore almost no makeup, but was naturally attractive. Tyler had brought her home for the first time seven or eight months ago. “How serious are you two, anyway?”

  “I love her.”

  Steve sighed. “I warned you about this when you started dating. Laurie is more than welcome here. You can spend all your visiting hours on her, for all I care. But we can’t let her visits overrun the curfew. If they found out, they’d slap us with such a fine we’d have to sell the horses. You should be glad that Matt gives you his hours every now and then.”

  “I know that, but that’s why I thought, if she just knew…”

  “You know that’s never going to happen. This isn’t like telling your girlfriend you’re a vegetarian or bisexual or anything. You’re dealing with the whole town.”

  “I wouldn’t be the first one, you know,” Tyler said in a huff. He jumped up from the table. “Do you really think there’s nobody who hasn’t told their best friend from fucking Outtatown?”

  “Of course there are. But those are the same people who’d yell the loudest if they found out their neighbors were doing the same. They’d go: ‘I can judge whether my friends can be trusted, but my neighbors can’t.’”

  “Do you know how hypocritical that sounds!”

  “Welcome to planet Earth. You—”

  “Welcome to Black Spring!” Tyler screamed suddenly—really screamed—and Steve stepped back in alarm. He realized how sensitive an issue this must be for his son. He had to tread carefully in explaining to Tyler what, in his anger, he was missing—something so obvious it was the elephant in the room.

  “You cannot tell Laurie, Tyler. And believe me: You don’t want to do that to her. The risk is just too great. You don’t know how she’ll react or who she’ll tell in turn. You cannot burden her with this.”

  “But then you’re saying that I can never be honest with her. After finals next year she wants to go to Europe for six months and she asked if I’d like to go with her. What am I supposed to say? ‘I’d rather stay home with my inbred Addams Family’?”

  “Tyler, I’m sorry, but that’s what’s going to happen if you go out with girls from outside. Laurie wants to go to college; she wants to travel—who can blame her? I know it’s unfair, but you cannot leave this place. You can study in the city if you want to spend four hours on a train every day, but how long do you think you’d be able to keep that up? Or her?”

  Tyler’s lips trembled in despair. “So what are you trying to say? That I’d better break up with her?”

  “Absolutely not. But you’re so young. You shouldn’t tie yourself down.…”

  “I love her, and I’m not going to let this fucking town come between us!”

  “So what’s the alternative?” Steve asked. He tried to put his hand on Tyler’s arm, but the boy jerked away. “You know the only way you could tell her would be if she were to move to Black Spring—or, let me rephrase that, after she moved to Black Spring. Again: Do you want to do that to her? You’d be the one deciding how the rest of her life would turn out. Would she ever be able to forgive you?”

  “You decided it for me and Matt!” Tyler hissed, screwing up his eyes.

  He regretted his words immediately, of course, now that it was too late. But Steve felt a shadow darken his face. It was like rubbing salt in his deepest wound: the fact that because of his unfortunate decision to come to Black Spring he had doomed the lives of his sons, doomed them from the crib. Steve looked at Tyler, turned away, and sat down.

  “That’s not fair,” he said softly. The agitation in his voice was supplanted by pain. “What were we supposed to do? Abort you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Tyler muttered uneasily, but in his mind Steve heard Burt Delarosa’s lamentation once again: Why didn’t you try harder to keep us away from here, you sons of bitches? He had actually cried, his face wet with tears, and they wouldn’t be his last tears, either, Steve knew. They were the same tears that he himself had cried eighteen years before. I’m really sorry, he had said. The right thing to do would be to seal Black Spring off hermetically and to let the curse die with the last of us. Sure, our retail vacancy is higher than anywhere on the Hudson, and there are houses where the lights go on and off by time switches to make them look inhabited. Robert Grim works hard with the real estate agent to keep people away. But the Council, led by good ol’ Colton Mathers, is hell-bent on keeping the town healthy and resisting the unavoidable problems of aging. Allowing an influx of new people is the lesser of two evils, they say. It’s a sacrifice, but life here in the boondocks really isn’t that bad. Okay, there are some small inconveniences, such as not being able to take long vacations, or having to register visiting hours (to avoid a Code Red, you see); and a few online restrictions, too; and, oh yes, you’d better settle down because you won’t be leaving here again … but life’s pretty good, if you stick to the rules. And let’s face it, we can’t organize all our politics and community affairs around a supernatural phenomenon, right? In the end, there’s always hope. Hope that somehow, one way or another, the situation will … resolve itself.

  “Listen,” Steve said, unutterably tired. “I had to spend a whole hour tying myself up in knots last night, trying to explain to those new folks why in God’s name we didn’t stop them from buying that house. The town policy makes me cringe, and Robert Grim as well. It’s bad policy. If you really love Laurie, don’t do it to her. There is no alternative.”

  “There is if we come out of the closet.” Tyler pouted stubbornly.

  “Next year you’ll hit legal age. Then you can submit proposals to the Council until you’re blue in the face, for all I care, and recruit as many people as you can find. If you come up with one good plan, I’m prepared to vote in favor. But until that time you will not do anything illegal, and you definitely will not do anything stupid without consulting the Council. No more bullshit with the witch, no YouTube clips, no crazy ideas. Is that clear?”

  Tyler muttered something.

  “You haven’t got something else up your sleeve, I hope?”

  “No,” Tyler said impassively, after a brief hesitation.

  Steve gave Tyler a quick, searching look. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I said no, didn’t I?” He jumped up irritably—they were both tired and irritated. “Jeez, Dad, what are you so afraid of?”

  Steve sighed. “The last time anybody wanted to go p
ublic with this thing was in 1932 during the Great Depression. Some workers lost their jobs after the old tree farm closed. They threatened to start shooting their mouths off unless they were rehired, since of course there were no opportunities to try and find employment elsewhere. The town took a vote to set an example for other blackmailers. They were publicly flogged and killed by firing squad in the town square.”

  “Dad … it’s 2012.”

  “Yes, and they won’t do the firing squad anymore. But corporal punishments are still written into the Emergency Decree, and you’d be a fool to underestimate what they’re capable of if they feel they’ve been driven into a corner.”

  Tyler was quiet for a long time. Finally, he slowly shook his head. “I can’t believe this. We may be fucked up here, but that’s a whole nother level of fucked-upness.”

  “Quote: ‘Welcome to Black Spring,’” Steve said.

  EIGHT

  GRISELDA HOLST, OWNER of Griselda’s Butchery & Delicacies, hurried through the rainy streets of Upper Mineral Valley, the upscale part of town. She was stooped over and clutching a small white bag to her chest, and the poncho she was wearing had a plastic hood from which her prematurely gray hair stuck out in dripping tufts. If the hood had been red, she might have been mistaken for the little girl from that other fairy tale … the one with the wolf, not the witch.

  There was blood on her lip, but she didn’t notice it. If the townsfolk had seen her scuttling along like that, they hardly would have recognized her, for Griselda’s regulars knew her to be a strong woman—moody perhaps, marked by life, but widely respected. For many, Griselda’s Butchery & Delicacies served as the local hangout, even more than the Quiet Man on the other corner of the square. At the Quiet Man, they got drunk and forgot. At Griselda’s, they were sober, with memories written in furrows all over their faces. Maybe it was because Griselda had a face just like theirs that they always found their way to her to rehash the latest town gossip over a plate of something meaty. The people knew her past. They never mentioned it, as if the telling blows and makeup she used to cover her bruises had all been gestures of love. They never mentioned her husband, the real butcher Jim Holst, who couldn’t cope with Black Spring and had vanished without a trace seven years before—except perhaps for an anonymous report in a newspaper found in a Boston gutter: Unknown man throws self in front of train. They all knew, but none broke their conspiracy of silence.

  For Griselda’s part, she knew that most of her loyal customers secretly missed Jim despite her suffering, although they wouldn’t even admit it in front of an inquisition. Jim’s Butchery & Delicacies had been famous for its goose breast pâté, a delicacy that Jim himself had concocted and made fresh every day. Compared with that refined charcuterie, Griselda’s vinegary Holst pâté was more like pulverized head cheese. Yet people had been buying it for a good seven years now, and Griselda kept making it for them. Behold a typical Black Spring ritual of tacit sympathy: The squeeze of the hand, the touch of the cheek, and at night Griselda’s Holst pâté would lie unopened in the garbage can and they’d all think: Would she be crying? Or is she really as strong as she lets on?

  But as Griselda walked up the hill past the luxury farms in Upper Mineral Valley, stocky and skittish, she didn’t look like a strong woman at all. She looked like an exile. She was taunted and she was cursed; she was spat on and she was abused.

  Hey, you filthy whore. How ’bout spreadin’ y’r legs again?

  This from Arthur Roth, who didn’t know her name—not anymore, at least—as she stepped away from the cell beneath Crystal Methodist Church.

  Fuck off, you sick bitch!

  And this from her very own son, Jaydon, half an hour earlier.

  And after every cruel word she told herself that they no longer reminded her of Jim’s callused hands tugging hard on her purple nipples, that his fists no longer caused her any pain, that she could no longer smell his breath, foul with the smell of vodka and goose breast pâté.

  Don’t you like this, Griselda? Isn’t this why you married me?

  Griselda stopped at an orchard on the side of the road and scanned the hillside. There was nobody out there to see her. Everyone was indoors watching the local news or Law & Order, with the heat turned on for the first time that fall. She quickly hoisted her bulky frame over the fence and climbed past the orchard and along the side of the steeply sloping field until she came to the edge of the woods. The ground was soggy and she slipped twice, scraping her hands. When she reached the other side, breathless, she scrambled up the tree-covered moraine and finally relaxed a bit. There were no paths or cameras here, all the way up to Ackerman’s Corner.

  In the woods the air was heavy with the smell of dampness and leaf mold caused by the rainwater leaking down through the thick foliage. Someone else might have found it peculiar that no birds or crickets could be heard and that there were no insects, but not Griselda—not in Black Spring. She stumbled on a bit, panting, with aches flaring up below her rib cage. Finally, she reached a dry streambed, carved into the black bedrock in earlier eons by meltwater. The streambed was spanned by a fallen tree over where it turned sharply to the left, and there she came to a halt.

  Standing under the fallen tree trunk was Katherine.

  She was shrouded in shadows, and her rain-drenched, formless dress stuck to her emaciated body, making her seem even more small and frail than she was. Griselda wasn’t a tall woman, but she was still at least a head taller than the witch, who was unusually delicate, almost like a child. People didn’t get much bigger back then, Griselda supposed. The witch was not moving. The rainwater that leaked through her saturated headscarf gathered between the threads in her shriveled eyelids and dripped down her cheeks from the torn bits of flesh. It looked like she was crying.

  “Hi, Katherine,” Griselda said shyly. She cast her eyes to the ground. “I wanted to bring an umbrella for you, but the rain ain’t bothering you, now, is it?”

  The woman with the sewn-up eyes didn’t stir.

  Griselda dropped to the ground at Katherine’s feet and sat at an angle with her back to her, groaning from the pain in her joints. She didn’t mind getting wet and dirty; she just had to pause a minute to catch her breath. She knew better than to look at the witch when she spoke to her, just as you wouldn’t look at a wild animal when you entered its territory. The witch towered over Griselda like an idol. The whispering from the corner of her mouth was little more than a sigh. And although Griselda was so close to the witch that the heavy, ancient smell overwhelmed her, the rain and the woods drowned out her whispers and there was nothing on earth that could make her move closer yet … or touch her.

  Griselda removed a paper sack from her bag, and from this she took out a paper plate with a slice of Holst pâté on it. This she placed on the ground beside her, in front of Katherine’s bony, dirt-smeared feet. Rainwater dripped from the hem of her dress and onto the pâté, so Griselda pulled the plate forward a bit. There was still the occasional drop from the trees overhead, but at least that wasn’t polluted by the dress.

  Griselda looked around. They were alone.

  “I brought you an extra-thick slice,” she began. “Because I want to apologize for what Jaydon did, Katherine. With those friends he got. You know what I mean. They shamed you.”

  The woman with the sewn-up eyes didn’t stir.

  Suddenly Griselda began pouring her heart out. “It’s terrible what they done to you. What a mean trick! Did you get hurt, dear? I gave him a piece of my mind; you can take my word for that. And he won’t get out of this one easy. I’ll make him pay for his sins, you hear me? I’m just so scared, so awful scared! He was laying low for a little while—my boy Jaydon, I mean—but that’s all changed now. I just can’t get through to him anymore. He won’t talk to me, not even about his fastballs or the girls he’s taking out or all the things he likes. I feel so powerless! I can deal with anger; do it all the time. I’ve had my share of anger, as you know. But not that indifference of his. S
ometimes I wonder if I’m doing it all wrong, but I don’t know if I should get tougher or ease up on him. You know what we’ve been through. It hasn’t been easy for him. And then something like this happens.…”