In the Vines by Shannon Kirk

Author:Shannon Kirk [Kirk, Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Subject Value
ISBN: 9781503901940
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2018-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

MOP

Present time

There is a woman in black with a nail gun, firing into the sky and screaming at the woman with the hatchet. My companion awakes and vomits on my legs. I can’t take this. I can’t take this. I can’t take this. I try to stand, and all my remaining blood rushes down, throbbing at the part where I tied the cloth tourniquet. This time I crash back down to the ground for what feels like the last time and for good. I slam my head against the soft rock. Feels like with the force, the rock reveals it is not a pillow, but rather a throwing star that slices through my cranium and lodges in my brain.

One week ago, Manny and I landed back in Boston after being in Milan for a week. After I connected who Manny and I saw on the rocks the night of my mother’s disappearance to the woman in Aunty’s barn, I kept my silence, didn’t say a word to Manny. I said I was feeling overcome by the recollection of the woman screaming on the rocks and that I needed to fetch my journal, which I left at Aunty’s the week before. I told Manny I’d meet him back at his home in half an hour and we’d go to Rye to speak to my father about a wedding.

I also called the mechanic who’d towed my red Volvo the week before, and the mechanic said it’d be about another week until I could get my car back. I was going to have to rely on Manny for the driving for another week. So be it. Not having my own car was the least of my worries.

I fixed my intentions on the woman in Aunty’s barn. And I really did leave my journal in the gray-and-green guest room. I didn’t call ahead to Aunty to tell her I was back from Milan and heading over. I had planned on getting the journal and investigating the woman in the barn.

It was high tide when I set off from Manny’s house a week ago, so I skipped plunking into the middle beach and stayed within the higher trails through mounds of bayberry, blackberry, blueberry, and then on into the catbrier and brambles and arthritic trees. When I came to the secret trail that meets upon Aunty’s ring of willows and maples and perennial beds, I stalled to watch her leaving and locking her barn again—I suppose she was attending to her rounds as house nurse for her “friend.” But, I thought, why does she lock her in?

Why the lock on the outside?

I should have screamed this question and forced her into reality. But she again wore no eye patch and she smiled wide to a bird in a tree with her broken teeth. Her wispy gray hair flew about like she was the maddest, oldest witch in the coven, the one the other witches stay away from.

So I waited until she returned to her pink house and her bright kitchen, which glowed yellow and sunny against the flawless blue sky.

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