The Bone Forest Page 6

  How they had any money at all, Wren didn’t know. She knew that back at the height of the cult’s popularity, they collected monstrous tithes from the members at the urging of Vivian, but that money had mostly been spent on legal fees when they were all arrested. Did the remaining members of the cult still tithe? How, when none of them seemed functional enough to really hold down a job? She knew that some people sold produce grown on the compound at a roadside stand, and that some people made jewelry and clothing to sell as well, but she couldn’t see how that was keeping everyone afloat.

  Maybe Isaac didn’t need much of a salary, anyway. He wouldn’t have to pay for his lodging, after all.

  She didn’t find Isaac, but she did find the pictures of David Song. In one, he was holding hands with other members of the Children, his hands, clasped in theirs, high over his head. He was grinning like a loon.

  In another, he had a guitar, and his mouth was wide, because he was singing.

  Wren looked at herself in a mirror that was hanging on the wall near the pictures. She tried to look for any similarities between her face and David Song’s, but it wasn’t easy with his shaggy beard and long hair. She could really only see his eyes. Did they have similar eyes?

  She’d never considered it before, because she thought that she knew who her father was. Hayes Delacroix had raised her, and she had been told he was her father all her life. He had gone to her high school graduation and bought her a cake when he found out she was accepted into the FBI Academy. He had always been there for her. But apparently, he wasn’t her biological father.

  It shouldn’t have come as a shock to her.

  Vivian wasn’t exactly the faithful type. Vivian didn’t tend to ascribe to any kind of moral code.

  David Song could be Wren’s biological father. No one would replace her dad, not ever, because even if they didn’t share blood, they were still family. But she had this urge to know where she came from. Maybe that was part of the reason why she was back here.

  She sighed.

  If David Song was her father, had he known it?

  She couldn’t even be sure if David and her mother had been intimate. There were actually whole articles in magazines and debates on online forums about what kind of relationship they had. People liked the idea of blaming David Song for everything. He had passed down the orders to Vivian, the theory went, and she had simply carried them out.

  Wren didn’t believe that. She knew Vivian pretty well, knew Vivian was capable of making it all up on her own.

  But the extent that David Song was involved in the murders, Wren didn’t know. No one did. It could be that he knew nothing about them. That Vivian flattered him and kept him shut up in his luxurious home on the top of the hill and then took control of the cult herself. She used him for her own purposes. It could be that Vivian had talked to him about her plans, and he had approved. Or it could be that he had ordered it all. No one could be sure.

  Wren hadn’t known the man, because he had been separate from all of them. He’d come out on special occasions, usually wrapped in silk robes, his fingers dripping with glittering rings and jewelry. He would come to the meeting hall and give a speech to all of them, usually about brotherhood and loving one another and giving up one’s troubles to the Horned Lord. And then he’d disappear again. People who went to his house to clean or cook for him saw him more often, but they were sworn to secrecy to repeat what went on up there.

  He was a vain and distant man, that was what Wren thought. She didn’t want him to have been her father. She didn’t want to have come from that.

  She already had the legacy of Vivian to contend with. It was worse to make David Song part of it.

  She did remember one meeting with him in particular. Whenever David came out, he would welcome the new initiates and assign their spiritual and romantic partner, something that was apparently communicated to him by divine decree.

  Girls were initiated as soon as they started their first periods. Boys were initiated at thirteen. But boys didn’t get paired off as initiates, only girls did.

  Sometimes David said that the Lord had decreed some twelve-year-old girl to be partnered with a grown man in his thirties. It was despicable and disgusting, in retrospect. It was horrible—a way for him to throw his power around and abuse the people that he forced to worship him.

  When it had been Wren’s turn, she had been terrified.

  But it had turned out all right, because David assigned her to Hawk. Sure, Hawk was too old for her. He was sixteen and she was ten. But he wasn’t so old that it was terrifying. It was a good thing.

  And when she was taken to sleep in the same bed with Hawk, by her mother of all people, Hawk never touched her. They slept next to each other under the covers, but nothing ever happened. No, Hawk was nice to her. He took care of her, but he didn’t take advantage. He treated her like a little sister.

  Not all the other girls were so lucky.

  * * *

  “Hey there, little bird,” said Hawk. He was sitting outside his cabin, on something that couldn’t really be termed a patio, because it had no floor. It was just grass underneath. But old patio furniture had been arranged as if it was a patio, and a blue tarp was rigged above as a roof. Hawk was lounging next to the table, where there was an open bottle of some kind forty ounce of malt liquor. He was day drinking. Great.

  “I don’t know if you should call me that anymore.” She paused in the walkway up to his house. The walkway was overgrown and she had to pick her way around the weeds. He’d mowed lately, but hadn’t bothered to trim around the trees or the walkway or anything.

  “Why not?” Hawk had always called her “little bird” because they both had bird names, and because she was littler than him. It was one thing when he was like a big brother to her, it was quite another now, after everything had gotten…

  “I don’t know.” She twisted her hands together. “Feels wrong.”

  “Because you still think I’m a murderer?” he said.

  “No,” she said, too quickly.

  “Is that why you’re here? Am I being questioned?” he said. “You want an alibi? I probably don’t have one. I spend most of my nights wandering around the compound.”

  “Drunk?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “You and Major are peas in a pod, that’s what Kimora says,” she said. “So, you’re both doing drugs, I guess.”

  “I prefer the term mind-expanding substances,” he said with a grin. His gray eyes twinkled. “You going to stand over there or come sit down?”

  She trudged over under his blue tarp and sat down opposite him at the table. “What about Major? You think he could have done it?”

  “What, the murders?” He furrowed his brow. “No, not Major.”

  “He seemed pretty…”

  “Disturbed? Destroyed?” He chuckled and took a drink of his forty-ounce. “Little bird, there ain’t a person on this compound who didn’t live through all that shit who isn’t messed up in some way. Major self-medicates, as do I, but he’s not exactly a self-starter. I can’t see him mustering the motivation to kill four girls.”

  She sighed. “No, you’re right. I think so, too.”

  “You think I would, though.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.” He glared at her.

  She studied her fingernails. “This isn’t why I came.”

  “No?”

  “I’ve been trying to think about people who were out at those bonfires who don’t live on the compound anymore.”

  “You mean Karen and Terrence Freeman.”

  “No, I mean other people who were at the bonfires.”

  “Well, even if they were there, it doesn’t mean they participated. You and I were both there. We didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Right,” she said. “But they knew things. They saw stuff. And these new murders, they’re connected. So, I thought if you might be able to help me see if there’s anyone I’m missing.”

  “Okay
,” said Hawk. “Well, who you got?”

  “Uh… Devon and Roger Green. Jared Follows.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s about right.”

  “No one else?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He thrust the bottle at her. “You want some?”

  She started to decline, but then took it from him and took a long swig. It was sickeningly sweet. She made a face and handed it back.

  He took it back and took another drink. “Have dinner with me.”

  “What?” She was completely taken aback.

  “Like a date,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “No, that would be…”

  “What?”

  “Weird,” she decided on. “You know, what happened all those years ago, I was just a kid.”

  “Right, and I wasn’t,” he said. “Which is why… I mean, I know you were upset with me, but there was no way that I could…”

  “No, I know.” She bit down on her lip. Except she hadn’t known. She’d never really evaluated this as an adult and tried to think it all through. “So, when you said those things to me, it was because you were trying to chase me off.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But did you actually… I mean… did you want—”

  “Look, what’s important is now,” he said. “And now, I want you to have dinner with me.”

  She reached for the forty-ounce. “Okay, sure. Dinner.”

  * * *

  Wren’s father Hayes Delacroix had always been the perfect sort of dad. He had a great eye for clothing and fabrics and he had no problem sitting up with her and talking about all the woes and trials of high school. He even had a slightly throaty voice and a bit of an affection to the way he spoke. He also crossed his legs and folded his hands over his knees.

  She should have noticed that he was gay, but she didn’t.

  After the murders, it was crazy. Vivian was arrested. David Song disappeared. Everything was in upheaval. In the ensuing chaos, certain things that had been instituted were abolished by mutual agreement of everyone who hadn’t left the compound, which was only a small, core group of people. One of those things was that the partnerships that David had decreed were no longer binding.

  Wren stopped sleeping in a bed with Hawk and came home to her parents’ cabin, even though Vivian was gone, and it was just her dad now. But she and Hawk stayed close. He never sent her away if she came over to his place and wanted to hang out. He never treated her like a dumb kid or an annoyance. He always listened to her when she spoke and treated her like an equal. And he was very, very handsome with his dark hair and the fact that he barely shaved, so that he was always rubbing at some stubble on his chin, and his light gray eyes.

  So, it was obvious that she would have a crush on him. She probably had a crush on him when she was ten, as unformed and childlike as it had all been.

  By the time she was sixteen, however, the crush was all-encompassing.

  She knew that Hawk was too old for her, but she also knew that if she would choose to be with him, the partnership that David Song had created would be honored, because people didn’t necessarily object to the pairings, but the timing. They didn’t like how young the girls had been when David had sent them off to older men.

  Ariah Allen, who had been with her much older husband since she was twelve, had refused to leave him when the disbanding had happened. She was only fifteen at the time, but no one stopped her.

  Wren was pretty sure it could work out. And she was sure Hawk liked her too. Sure, he never made any moves in that direction, but that was because he was trying to be honorable and do the right thing. She was certain that if she gave him permission, he’d confess that he loved her as much as she loved him.

  Well… she wasn’t certain certain. There was just enough doubt and insecurity about herself to keep her from saying anything to him. Like most sixteen-year-old girls, she was blind to her own beauty. She only saw her imperfections, and she thought she was gawky and too fat in some places and too small in others and she was mortified whenever she got a zit.

  Hawk could go to bars. He was twenty-two. He could meet real, grown-up women. She wasn’t sure she would be enough for him.

  But then her father came out of the closet. Not just to her, but to the entire compound.

  The FCL might have played fast and loose with some aspects of Christian doctrine, but they were not open to homosexuals. They were pretty staunchly against such a thing, and they basically told Hayes that he could repent of his sins and go through a cleansing ritual, or he could get out. Hayes decided to leave, and he told Wren that she was coming with him. Because that was what happened to sixteen-year-old girls. If their fathers moved, they had to move too. And Hayes informed her that they were moving to Frederick, Maryland, which was far away, and a big city to a small-town girl like Wren.

  She didn’t want to go.

  She wanted to stay where she was, with the familiar. She was a junior in high school. She didn’t want to be uprooted. She wouldn’t be able to make new friends at a new school, and she would be all alone. Most of all, she didn’t want to leave Hawk.

  If she and Hawk were together, then she could stay. It was practically like a marriage, the partnering that David Song did. That was the way it would be recognized in the Fellowship.

  So, it was this turn of events that finally gave her the courage to go and see Hawk. She remembered that it was winter, and it was cold outside, too cold for snow, ten below zero. She had stood in his living room and stripped off layer after layer of gloves and scarves and hats.

  He’d watched her from his couch, bemused, while he rolled joints.

  When she was done, she’d gone over to his wood stove to rub her hands together. Her cheeks stung from the cold outside. She hadn’t known how to bring it up. She thought of ways to say it and they all sounded stupid.

  She rejected them all.

  Instead, she went over to stand in front of him.

  He looked up at her. “What’s up, little bird?”

  She took a deep breath. And then she climbed into his lap and pressed her lips against his.

  At first, he kissed her back. She remembered that his hands came up and spanned her waist and his tongue pushed its way into her mouth, and she was surprised at how sweet and tingly and good that was. It was her first kiss.

  And then, abruptly, they were on their feet and he was backing away from her, hands up, eyes wide. “What the fuck was that? What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  She was stung by that. “I… I like you, Hawk.”

  “No, you don’t.” He turned his back on her, sinking both of his hands into his hair.

  “I love you,” she said, her voice stronger.

  “Stop, don’t say that.” He turned around, but only to snag one of the joints he’d already rolled. He lit it. His hands were shaking. “You’re a kid. You’re a little girl.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I’m old enough to know what I want, and—”

  “Okay, fine.” He sucked on the joint. “But I don’t want you.”

  She felt it like a blow to her stomach, and she even let out a gust of noisy air.

  “You’re a kid. How could I be into a kid? I couldn’t. That would be disgusting, and I’m not… I’m not wired that way. I don’t think things like that. Not about you. Never about you.” He took another drag on the joint. The smoke escaped in wisps from between his whiskered lips. “You better go, little bird.” His voice was hoarse.

  Her jaw worked. She was fighting tears.

  “I mean it,” he said. “Go away. You better stay away for a while. When you come back, don’t ever say anything like this again. Don’t ever do anything like what you did. And if your father wants to know, you tell him that I never—”

  “My father is making me leave.” And now tears were starting to leak out onto her cheeks. “He wants to move us away to Frederick. I won’t see you anymore.”

  “Frederick?”

&
nbsp; She nodded.

  “Shit.” He offered her the joint.

  She took it. Hit it. Handed it back.

  “Shit,” he said again. Then he swallowed. “That’s probably better. You should go. It’d be good for you to get out of this place. You’re better than this place, little bird. You got a chance. You could get away from all of it. Run far, far away.”

  “Please,” she said. “Let me stay here with you.”

  Hawk stubbed out the joint in an ashtray. He rubbed his thumb over his lower lip and surveyed the floor. He shook his head without looking at her. “No,” he said quietly. “I can’t.”

  * * *

  “Um…” Wren looked around. “I thought we were going to dinner.”

  “Yeah,” said Hawk, who was walking ahead of her, up towards the counter. They were at a bait and tackle shop, and there were signs scrawled in day-glo marker, proclaiming how much it cost to buy worms and grubs. Didn’t sound appetizing. Outside, through the window, she could see that there were picnic tables that looked out over the river, but that was the only nod to eating she noticed.

  She trailed behind Hawk up to the counter.

  Hawk rested his elbows on the counter and leaned in. “Two burgers, two fries.”

  “Onions, tomato, lettuce, mayo?” said the guy behind the counter, who was wearing an apron stained with greasy smeared fingerprints.

  Hawk looked over his shoulder at her.

  “Uh, no tomato,” she said.

  Hawk turned back. “One without tomato.”

  “Eighteen fifty.”

  Hawk got out his wallet.

  She stepped forward. “I can, um, I can pay for mine.” She still wasn’t sure where these burgers were coming from, but now—close to the counter—she could smell something delicious.

  “I got it,” said Hawk, looking annoyed.

  She looked down at her feet.

  Hawk paid the man behind the counter, who then handed them burgers wrapped in wax paper and french fries in red-and-white-checked cardboard boxes.