Page 15 of Bonepetal
Miles squints at the fog like he could make it less. “Let us drop you?”
“You and your date are going to hold hands and share a donut and talk about how Twix are better than KitKats,” I say. “Do not make me third wheel my own abandonment, please.”
He bites his lip, losing. “Fine. But if you’re not home in forty, I call the FBI, the CIA, and the local Girl Scouts.”
“Great,” I say. “They’re the most dangerous.”
Jamie leans in, warm cider breath at my cheek. “Text. Every block.”
“Yes, Mom,” I say, “I’ll be fine.”
I won’t be. But fine is a thing you say because it’s a spell. Sometimes it works.
I slip away along the fence line while the crowd surges toward sugar and spectacle. The fog drapes itself over the path. The jack-o’-lanterns along the rail burn lower, their faces collapsing a little, grins sagging into something tired. My boots grind on gravel, then hush on packed dirt. The night feels thinner here, like skin over a drum.
The crow leaves the maze sign and takes to the air. I hear the wingbeats before I see the shape. It skims low, then perches on the next post ahead like a guide I didn’t hire. Its head tilts. One glossy eye stares. My heart does a stutter-step but it’s not fear exactly.
“Not tonight,” I tell it. My voice fogs and my breath tastes like pennies.
It cocks its head as if to say, “yeah right.”
I pass under it, and it lifts. Flits to the next post. Perches again. Repeat. A black stitch running the seam of my route. I pretend not to notice while noticing everything—my own footfalls, the high whistle of wind through the corn, the distant tractor grumble sagging off into silence. Closer, a differentsound—A breath that isn’t mine, matched to mine like a mockingbird.
Don’t look back. That’s how you trip. That’s how you die in movies. Besides, if it’s just a guy in a costume, looking back rewards him. If it’s?—
Stop.
The veil is thin, I can feel it on my skin. Smell it in the air. The old stories say the dead can slip a finger through and touch your cheek. The cult had a hundred names for it.
Crossing. Black Hour. Devil’s Breath.
You canfeelit if you grew up in it. The static prickle over your forearms. The way candles drown in their own wax. The metallic taste you can’t swallow away. The sense of angles being watched from above, as if the whole night is a chessboard and you’re a piece that forgot you can only move in straight lines.
The crow croaks once. Not loud. But the sound sinks into the dirt and hums under my boots.
I speed up.
The lights from the farm thin behind me; Main Street is a long, dark throat ahead. The trees along the ditch lean in like gossips. My shadow lengthens, elongates, slips sideways along the shallow river along the path. Another shadow slides after it a beat late.
I tell myself it’s nothing, that it’s me. I tell myself it’s anything buthim.
I want it to be him so badly my teeth hurt.
That’s the worst part. Not the fear. The wanting inside it, pinned like a moth. I can’t tell where one ends and the other starts. I picture his hands on my hips, the softness of his lips against my neck?—
No. Stop.
“Text,” I tell myself out loud, like a parent. I fish my phone out and type.
Me
Leaving the farm, taking main street past the mill
40 mins i’m home or i’m dead
Miles replies instantly.
Miles
