CHAPTER 95 SHERIFF ELLIE

95

Sheriff Ellie

AS THEIR SMALL GROUP rounded a large outcropping of granite, the shake roof of the Pickerton house came into view. Faded and stained with age, parts were missing; other sections were covered in moss as the mountain slowly took back what had belonged to it long before people scarred the terrain. The Pickertons had still lived there when Ellie was a child; she'd been ten when their daughter had passed. She heard the rest from her father years later. The daughter had died after a long-lost fight with tuberculosis. On the day of her passing, the girl's mother had committed suicide, and Jeb Pickerton had come home to find them both. It's said he jumped from the cliff out behind their house, the same one her father believed had taken Emily Pridham, but like her body, his remains had never been found. In the years that followed, no one had come forward to claim the property, and as with all abandoned properties, it had gone to ruin. She knew the local teenagers sometimes partied there, same as her generation, and for the most part, she'd let that go. As her father had also told her, it's better to know where the kids are doing what kids will do than not.

Buck held up his arm and stopped them on the trail as he tried to get a better look.

"What is it?" Ellie whispered.

"It ain't right. Not at all."

Robby eased up beside them and pointed. "Is that the tree?"

Buck only stared for a long moment, then said, "That's it, all right."

"Whoa," Mason muttered, resting his weight on the bat like a thick walking stick.

The massive oak had fallen. Its large roots had ripped from the ground and were dripping with dirt, scraping at the night sky from a large hole in the earth where the tree once stood. The trunk of the tree and several branches had sliced through the Pickerton house as if it were made of warm rancid butter; the entire back corner was buried in gnarled branches. But it was the crows that caused death's finger to slip down Ellie's spine, all the birds. Thousands of black bodies writhed and squirmed along every inch of the exposed tree. They covered the back side of the house, too, as if the tree was somehow secreting them. It wasn't just the sight of the crows that made Ellie's skin crawl; it was also the silence. Unlike the story Buck had told them, these birds didn't caw. There was only the sound of their movement, this restless scratching of tiny feet on bark. Thousands of dark eyes facing them.

If Buck and the others had been under any illusion of stealth, it was gone. The birds knew they were there. But it was more than that; they all felt it.

"Why are they all looking at us that way?" Riley said, her voice barely a whisper.

Evelyn pushed closer. "Like what?"

But Ellie knew what she meant. The birds seemed to be moving together, moving as one, rather than the individual thousands that they were. Their heads turned in unison. They faced them together.

"It's not the birds watching us," Robby stated. "It's something watching us through the birds."

Ellie didn't want to believe that—it was crazy—but she did. The boy couldn't be more right.

Craning her neck to get a better view, Riley scratched her arm for the umpteenth time. Ellie had had enough of that. "Did you touch poison ivy or something? What's with the scratching?"

The girl shied away from her, but not before Ellie was able to take her by the arm and pull up her sleeve. She stared at the writing there, all the names, dumbfounded. "Did you do that to yourself?"

Riley shook her head.

Together, the kids quickly told her how the names began to appear earlier in the day. How they continued to appear as the day went on.

Mason Ridler

Roy Buxton

Hannah Hernandez

Sally Davies

Emily Pridham

As Ellie read them, Riley started to scratch again.

"They itch so bad. It won't stop!"

Buck had gone quiet.

Ellie swallowed. "Do you know what it means?"

Buck only shook his head. "I'm not so sure I want to know."

Ellie turned to ask Robby, because he seemed to have it all figured out, but he was no longer there. He had crossed the clearing, stepped around the birds, and was climbing the steps to the porch of the Pickerton house.