Page 16 of The Snake in the Grass: The Prequel

They also call it a copse of trees; one letter difference. So little stands between the living and the dead, just like so little stands between our two sides of town. The laws can be changed, but the river never will be, and neither will the tree and its victims.

As Wally pulled up to the side of the gravel road that was the closest a car could get to the tree, he looked over at me. “We can wait for your mom to show up in her car. She shouldn’t be long. Or... or I can go first.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You stay here. Mom will need help getting up the hill. She isn’t... she isn’t strong.”

“Because of her knee injury.”

I didn’t mean in that way, but it fit as well as anything. My mother’s knee, like whatever strength lived inside her, was flimsy; it buckled easily beneath the littlest weight. Instinctively, I knew that she shouldn’t be the first to see what waited at the top of that hill.

A foolish part of me wanted to believe that I’d find him climbing the branches, or sitting under the shade, waiting for me. He would look up and smile, then walk towards me, shading his eyes with one hand. Pointing towards the sky, he’d saylook, the sun is out; it’ll dry up all the rain.

But like I said, it isn’t that kind of tree.

As I walked through the thick woods, on a path roughly marked by stones in the ground, I knew.

As I reached the foot of the hill and began climbing up it, my thighs burning, I knew.

And so. I was halfway to the top when I saw. In the distance. Far enough away that I could almost pretend it wasn’t.

If I stood there, I thought idly, I could live in the in-between forever, and make denial my peaceful home.

My feet moved anyway.

I climbed, further and further, to the crest of the hill. To the downward slope that the tree set its roots in, sure and steady, unbent and unbroken by the storm’s wind—but just a little crooked in one direction.

That close, I saw. I could not deny. I took a deep breath. I looked at his body as it swayed back and forth. I studied the rope and wondered, in a distant manner, where he’d gotten it, how he’d tied it, what he’d done to get far enough off the ground that it snapped his neck.

Waiting for the tears to come, I realized that the inside of my body was a cruelly hollowed thing, dry now after all the expectation on the ride in Wally’s truck. Nothing came out of me.

There was nowhere to go but forward. The tree branches, low and full of leaves, brushed against me as I walked. Water was still dripping from their trembling edges. It felt like the tree was crying for me.

In the shadows, I stared at him. I took it in: the bit of blood in one corner of the mouth that used to curve upward just for me, the crooked twist of his neck, the feet that dangled when they used to dance. A wind kicked up, enough to shift the edge of his shirt, and I saw the bruise in the shape of four knuckles, the one I put on his skin what seemed like a lifetime ago, when the storm was a distant shape on the horizon.

It didn’t feel real.

I wanted it to feel real. I wanted it tohurt.I wanted to feel something close to what he’d felt, the brother I’d shared a womb and a life with, who was suddenly as far away from me as two people can get.

So I took a step forward, as if that would break the shroud between what was and what I didn’t want to be.

Something moved beneath my foot. Without a whisper of warning or a hiss of alarm, a snake jolted up from the wet grass, twisted its head around, and struck my ankle.

I screamed. The sound was so sudden that it surprised us both; the snake’s fangs dug in deep. Feeling wild and out of my mind, I bent down, grabbed its jaw until it came unhinged, and pulled it off me.

It was just a little thing, a rat snake with dark gleaming scales, wet with rainwater, no doubt forced from the banks of the river by the storm—just like I’d been forced from my house. As I yanked it off my ankle and pulled my foot from its back, it twisted around to bite me again, fangs sinking into the meat of my hand where my thumb met my palm. Its teeth were so big they nearly went through to the other side.

The pain sent something through me that tore my heart into pieces. I looked up at Silas’s body swinging from the tree and sobbed, falling to the ground on my knees, shaking with grief and anger and the knowledge that I’d done it, I’d left those bruises on his rib cage, I’d seen him last before he died, in anger far from me.

At some point Wally came up the hill, out of breath and wild-eyed, and made the kind of sound that a wild animal makes when it’s being skinned alive. He put a hand on my shoulder and leaned down towards me, collapsing in the middle with pain and grief.

We cut him down together.

I don’t remember much of that.

I also don’t remember much of what happened afterwards.

But when my mind wanders off track, when I forget for a moment that I live in a world without my brother in it, I reach over and press my fingers into the small red marks on my right hand, at the place where the thumb meets the palm, and Isqueezeuntil the pain is real.

The snake let go, but I won’t. I never will.

---