The Garden of Darkness

“Try not to touch that blood.”


The dead dog’s teeth, bared in death, were still studded with flesh from the nearby corpse. Despite Tork’s confidence that rabies cooked out, they left its carcass behind. The other two dogs had kept feeding throughout and displayed no interest in Clare or Jem.

When they got back to the shelter, Tork looked at them appraisingly.

“We should go on a romp,” said Tork. “Before you leave.”

“In the houses of the dead?” asked the little one called Leaf.

“In the houses of the dead,” said Tork.

“Yes!” said Stuffo.

“What about the supplies?” asked Jem.

“The supplies,” said Tork. “I think I’m tryin’ to forget you’re leavin’. But the houses of the dead are prime. We find all kinds of stuff in them. We found a music box with a dancing bear on it just a couple days ago. And a bunch of china statues—girls with sheep and princesses and stuff.”

“They were seriously fun to smash,” said Myra.

“Maybe next time,” said Jem.

Tork perked up. “Next time,” he said.

Clare and Jem followed the wild children to what they said was a prime warehouse for what Tork called “things you eat what don’t go bad.”

In a while, Clare noted that they seemed to be on the fringes of Chinatown. Huge Chinese letters, fallen from some of the buildings, lay in the street, and at one end of the road was a structure that looked like a pagoda.

“The warehouse’s not too far from here,” said Myra. “We should be able to fill up your wagon with stuff from there.”

“We thought warehouses might have too much of one thing,” said Jem. “Like a mountain of tires. Or a thousand pounds of beef jerky.”

“This one’s got everything,” said Tork.

The day was warm. Myra helped Clare out of some of her warmer garments, and Jem went sleeveless. One of the children gave Clare some bangles, and soon she jingled as she walked.

“Almost there,” announced Tork. “I’m sayin’—this warehouse is prime. You’ll see.”

And it was. They loaded the cart until the sun was high in the sky.

Afterwards they made their way back to the alley, joking and laughing, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. They turned a corner.

And there was a deer standing utterly still, staring at them.

When it saw Sheba, it snuffed the air before giving a great leap and springing away. It ran down the center of the street. Clare couldn’t hold Bear back. He ran, eating up the ground with his long stride.

Tork yelled “meat!” and the children grabbed their sticks out of the back of the wagon and gave chase.

“They don’t have a chance of catching it,” said Clare.

“Bear might,” said Jem. They could hear shouts and hoots in the distance.

They waited. And then, not so very far away, they heard a huge crash, as if an enormous pane of glass had shattered. There was silence for a moment, and then howls from the children.

Minutes later, Myra came running up the street.

“You got one great dog,” she said. “But we need the wagon.”

“What happened?” asked Jem.

“I think Clare’s dog scairt that deer almost out of his skin; he jumped through a store window, clear through, and then Tork cut its throat with a big piece of glass. Bear’s eatin’ his share. Very messy.” She stopped, meditatively. “Tork cut himself on the glass too. There’s blood everywhere.”

Myra, Clare and Jem got up on the cart, and Myra guided them.

The wild pack was standing around the front of a store; shattered glass gleamed on the road. The deer lay on a display table, and blood dripped from its throat adding to the red pool already on the floor. Tork stood over the deer, a cloth, already soaked through with blood, wrapped around his hand.

“I should have put the cloth on my hand before I kilt the deer with that glass,” he said.

But then they had their hands full, because Sheba, scenting blood, began backing away, and the cart began to twist sideways.

“Easy,” Clare said. “Easy does it.” She turned to the others. “If you want to load up the deer,” she said, “you’ll have to wipe off as much blood as you can.”

“Okay,” said Tork. “But first I got to stop bleeding. That glass just slices right through everything.”

“Let me look,” said Jem.

Clare couldn’t see Tork’s expression, but she heard Myra say, “Go on, let him look. He’s no traitor.”

Jem took Tork’s hand in his own. The cut, Clare could see, was deep and gaping, and Jem bound it tight. “You’ll carry the scar,” he said. “And you need an antibiotic called penicillin. I’ll get it for you at a pharmacy on the way back.”

“Can you remember to take the medication ten days in a row?” asked Clare.

“I can do that,” said Tork. “I’ve took medicine before. When I were little. My mom—” He fell silent.

They wiped as much blood as they could from the deer and then dragged it to the cart. Sheba was skittish, but didn’t try to back away again.