I pushed the goat and my deception out of my head. Now was the time to be calculating. Alert. “Gloves on,” I said.
Harry withdrew a black beanie from his back pocket. “Masks on at all times. We don’t think there are cameras, but we don’t know for sure.”
“I’m sure,” Graham said testily. “Keep them on in case there are witnesses, though.”
“You.” Harry pointed to Conner. “Carry the goat. Izzie, do you have . . .” His voice trailed off as he noticed the rope coil. I wanted to pull him aside to defend myself. Seven Hills deserved this. They needed to see actual death. Flesh and bone and blood. Harry rolled the beanie down, cutting off his expression from me, turning. The moment gone.
Water bottles of blood were distributed. I wore the rope over my shoulder. Graham took the spray paint. The accelerant, flashlights, and fire starters stayed behind for the tunnel.
Graham checked the time on his wristwatch. “Three ten. Let’s move.”
We jogged down Old Creek Road, its mild slope snatching our bodies forward. My muscles got looser, my gait light as a gazelle’s—no, a predator’s. Stealthy in the night. Prey hooked over the neck in front of me. I paused at the bottom of the slope, listened. Only the savage song of the sea.
The others brushed past me, intent on the knoll. I grinned at the sound of their stampeding footfalls. I felt powerful. They were there for the Order I invented.
Harry slowed to a stop a few yards from me. The square cut of his shoulders, tilt of his head, earnest eyes—obviously him. I shouldn’t have kept the goat from any of them or the camera up at the tunnel from Harry, or that Graham had been fast-forwarding through hours and hours of footage, scanning for a suspect. How could I admit all that to Harry? He was our moral compass. Never pushing. Never urging you over the line.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Asking Conner and Trent to bring the goat—it wasn’t a compliment. I told them to do it because I was too cowardly to do it myself. I would have seen all those goats in their field, kept driving.”
He came closer. “Isadora,” he said and took my hand. “Don’t ever apologize for doing what you believe needs to be done.” Those words, they still rattle my heart in my chest.
We reached the knoll. The lanterns along the square swung in the wind, shifting shadows. The others were phantoms stealing up the pathways that crisscrossed the grass. Halloween decorations were out: bales of hay; an old-timey wooden wagon overflowing with pumpkins and gourds; stuffed scarecrows on pikes in the dirt; the gazebo festooned in shimmery spiderwebs.
They converged onto the gazebo. Leaped up its twin staircases. Climbed its banister that ran above the spindles. They tipped their water bottles against the posts at the roof and the blood seeped down. Harry and I stopped at the plaque affixed to the gazebo. SEVEN HILLS: FOUNDED IN 1898. Viscous red coated it from top to bottom.
Conner dumped the goat on the blood-splattered deck of the gazebo. Harry crouched opposite me and together we wrapped the rope around its neck. Its dull, alien stare bore into me; those rectangular pupils, lifeless, knowing. I’d sent death seeking it.
The rope slid through my hand as I pulled tight, burning my palm, biting through the bandage. I gripped it again, hauled it up. Harry threw one end of the rope over a rafter in the pagoda roof. He caught it as it fell on the other side. Hand over hand, he began to hoist it up.
“Wait,” I said. I grasped the rope between his fists. “Together.” We pulled. The goat dangled at the end of the line, one foot above the deck, two, three, we stopped when its hind hooves were at eye level. Harry anchored the rope around a spindle.
Viv darted from the gazebo to the wood wagon, stepped up its wheel, and rained blood onto the pumpkins. She’d wrapped herself up in the gauzy fake spiderwebs from the eaves. Wore them like a cloak. Queen of the night creatures. The others were blurs of mischief and blood. Jess gave some of the scarecrows slit throats. Campbell squirted others haphazardly. Amanda, short black jumper blowing up in the wind, painted the pyramid of hay bales.
There were shambling footsteps on the roof above us that shook the gazebo. Harry and I jogged down the stairs and onto the grass. Graham stood over the finial of the roof, drizzling the blood from its center, rivulets running over shingles, water falling over its edge. He’d set the goat swinging. Back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. Counting down to when our sleepy town would wake.
I whistled for Graham’s attention. Made a sign like I was spraying something in the air. He tossed down the spray paint.
On the side of the wagon I wrote: One of you killed a girl. Across the wooden steps of the gazebo: IV is coming for you.
Graham swung down from the roof; his sneakers balanced on the banister, set the goat swinging harder. The clock sped forward. Nearly four a.m.
We gathered the initiates up and moved as a herd to the cars. Everyone piled into Viv’s SUV. I shared the front passenger seat with Harry as Viv drove up the hill, the cobwebs batting frantically in the wind off her shoulders. The windows were rolled down so we could listen for sirens. I stared into the rush of air, barely able to breathe, heart pounding against my ribs. Almost there. Almost done. With the car parked in the turnoff—on the asphalt, not the dirt, no chance for tire prints—we switched out the supplies in the trunk and I pulled on my backpack.
Then: the spongy give of the pine needles under my sneakers, bolts of our flashlights swinging, the sloshing of the accelerant in its tank, my backpack jumping with each step, our breath drowning out the ocean as we reached the tunnel. We passed the tree where our camera was concealed, Graham and my little spy that hadn’t yielded any leads yet.
The red IVs on its walls had darkened with moisture. I bounded over the charred remains of a bonfire. Gasps and whoops echoed around me as others followed.
We came up on the train car fast. Its wood and metal walls were corroded and timeworn.
“Will it even make the descent?” I asked.
Graham patted the rust-mottled exterior. “Sure she will.”
“Why do boys always call cars and boats and stuff ‘she?’?” I said.
“Harry named his car Einstein after he bought him,” Viv piped up.
“I can’t believe you remember that,” Harry said, pleased.
Graham was crouched at one of the train car’s four sets of wheels. “I know, I know, Harry is so much nicer and less pervy than Graham. Can we focus? Guys,” he snapped at Trent, Conner, and Campbell, who were standing back looking dazed and overwhelmed. “Remove the blocks from in front of the wheels—the direction we’re taking him. Not the ones behind the wheels. Can’t risk it rolling the wrong way.”