The Garden of Darkness

“My hand,” said Clare. “That’s all. He shut the door on it.” Jem came over to her and took her hand in his own.

“You’ll need a splint.”

“It’ll be okay.” Bear lunged over to Clare and nudged Jem away. He began licking her injured hand.

“He’s jealous,” said Jem.

“Yes,” said Clare. “Well.”

“I don’t like the way that Cured’s looking at us,” Mirri said, glancing at Clare’s attacker.

“I doubt he likes the way we’re looking at him, either,” Clare said. “We’ll leave him here while we get all the food back to the house.”

“Then what?” Sarai asked.

“Then I don’t know.”

“We have to hurry,” said Mirri. “It’s going to get dark soon, and I don’t like the dark, and I don’t want to be in the dark near him.”

“He’s tied up,” said Clare.

“He’s spooky,” said Mirri.

There was no question that it was going to take more than one journey. Keeping together, they made two trips to the farmhouse, taking not only food supplies, but also blankets, some kerosene that Clare and Jem found in the cellar and the contents of the medicine cabinet—bandaids, surgical tape, cough syrup, Pepto-Bismol, and a bottle of prescription codeine. Clare took one of the pills, and in a little while the pain in her hand was reduced to a manageable ache.

The Cured lay and watched them as they came and went. He didn’t struggle.

Clare thought of the body upstairs. She went over to the bound Cured and looked down at him.

“Who’s that in the bed?”

“My wife.”

“Is that a grave in the cellar?”

“It’s the neighbor. He died of Pest. I didn’t kill him.” He smiled gently. “But I ate most of him.”

“Instead of ham?” Mirri was incredulous.

“Go outside, Mirri,” Clare said, turning to her.

As they approached the gold house on their final trip, Sarai and Mirri stopped chattering. Jem looked grim.

They entered the hallway and Bear’s hackles rose.

The Cured was gone. The yellow cord lay in coils on the floor.

“I want to go home,” Sarai said.

“It looks like he cut the rope,” Jem said.

“He didn’t have a knife,” said Clare. “I’m sure of it.”

“Let’s get home,” Jem said. “We’ll be all right.”

“We have Bear,” said Sarai. “He’s a secret weapon.”

“From what happened in the house,” said Jem wryly, “it would seem that our best secret weapon is Clare.”

On the way back, they skirted the edge of the road, weaving in and out of the woods, and that’s when Clare smelled it. Sweat, stink, something rancid.

“He’s here,” she said.

The sun was low now, and as the trees moved in the wind, their shadows flickered across the road.

“There,” said Jem, pointing.

The Cured was slumped under a tree, unmoving. Clare went and stood right in front of him. Bear was by her side, but he was no longer bristling.

“He’s dead.” Clare looked into the damage of his face. The eyes were open, and the whites of his eyes were marked with pinpricks of blood.

“This is really creepy,” said Mirri.

Jem had joined Clare. “Maybe he just died. Who knows how long the Cured can live?”

Clare leaned forward and touched the patch she had seen before. She gently pulled it off, making sure to use only her fingernails. It was the size of a quarter, and there was a trademark on it in tiny print: ‘SYLVER.’

“Don’t let it come in contact with your skin,” said Jem.

“No,” said Clare. “I don’t think that’d be a good idea.” She threw it next to the body.





“I REMEMBER SOMETHING more about that movie,” said Clare later, as they were headed for home.

“What movie?” asked Jem.

“The one that had the two Nazi brothers in it. I remember that the woman skiing into Switzerland—”

“Austria.”

“The woman skiing into Austria is called Freya.”

“You’re right,” said Jem. “Freya. I would never have remembered that.”

“But I still don’t have the slightest idea of what the title might be.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

They walked for a while in silence.

“You know, Clare,” said Jem finally. “It’s time to move on. It’s time to find the Master. We can’t wait until it’s too late for you.”

“I know.”

But Clare was pre-occupied. She was still wondering about the title of the movie, and then she realized that Jem really was right. Like so many things, it didn’t matter anymore. Perhaps it had never mattered—the idea that in the pre-Pest days she could have googled the title by typing in ‘Nazi brothers Freya’ seemed only decadent. The time to live fully in the new world had come. She remembered from English class, and she had been very good in English, that Faulkner had written that the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past—but Faulkner had been wrong. Things past were best forgotten; they were engaged in the now; they were united in a fight against death; they were caught up in the mortal storm.





CHAPTER TWELVE





THE PIG