“Mina,” Paul says warningly, but I ignore him. I laugh bluntly.
“A ‘Riddance’ is just more superstition! You might as well cover her in leeches. I came here to offer you proper answers, empirical support. All right, well, you wanted my opinion so here it is—Alice would benefit from some observations and assessments outside of this house. My concern is that she’s being overly influenced by her surroundings and the people in it.”
“The Riddance is a tradition, Mina,” Bert tells me, quietly. “It’s important we follow the old custom. It’s expected.”
I stare around the room in dumb silence. Alice is still wearing the crumpled T-shirt—POBODY’S NERFECT!—and now a tear draws a line down her cheek, followed quickly by another. Her voice is husky and pained.
“I don’t know how to make her stop, Mina.”
“Who? Make who stop, Alice?”
“The witch,” Bert says pleasantly, as if he is talking about the weather. “That’s who she means. She’s spread in Alice like a bad seed and we have to rip her out at the root.”
I wince at how violent the words seem, how brutal.
“There are a lot of Riddance girls in this town,” Bert continues, his hands settling on Alice’s upper arms and working their way up to her fleshy shoulders. “Although they are mostly women now, of course. Lots of girls who needed help to find their way out of the dark.”
“A ‘Riddance girl’? What is that, like a May Queen? Does she get to wear a crown?”
I’m bristling with anger and a sense of keen injustice, sharpened by seeing that tear rolling down Alice’s face. Bert’s gentle, restrained tone makes it worse, makes me want to hit the table with my fist.
“Riddances have been performed here a long time.” Bert’s hand squeezes Alice’s shoulders gently. I feel a wave of something—disgust, fear—that I quickly swallow down. “I’ve seen it described as ‘a noisy ritual to cast out devils.’”
Daemonia eicere,I think to myself. Printed on the handle of that needlelike instrument.The Device.
“But Alice doesn’t need a ritual, Bert. She needs real help. Practical help. Therapy, maybe something on prescription to get some sleep. Am I going mad? Why are you all even considering this?”
“Think of it as a cauterization.” Bert’s voice is heavy, his thick fingers brushing Alice just beneath her collarbone. “Sealing a wound so the infection can’t spread.”
“Alice?” I say, hearing the urgency in my voice, the alarm. Why are they all being sonormalabout this? “Alice, is this something you want to do?”
She stares at me.
“I don’t want to end up in St. Lawrence’s, Mina. I don’t want to be mad.”
“You’re not, I promise you, you’re not.” I hold her gaze with my own. “Alice, if you want, I can get you away from here. Somewhere safe. There are places, you know. For children having problems with their families or their schools or even in their own heads. Places where you can be alone and get better.”
“She’ll follow me,” Alice whispers, her eyes swiveling in their sockets, “and I’m so tired of fighting her.”
“Alice,Ican help you. That’s why I came here.”
“No, you didn’t,” she says simply. “You came here because of Eddie. Because he died and you didn’t.”
That cracking sound again, that rift in the ice—only it’s not in the ice, it’s in me, somewhere where the blood flows thick and dark and sluggish, where secrets stagnate and grow long, fibrous roots. Bad seeds. I feel my face grow hot.
“Alice, my brother died because he got sick.”
“He died because of you.” Her face is pale. “You put your brother in the ground.”
I stutter in shock, turning my gaze to Paul who looks away from me quickly, eyes dark and miserable. I feel suddenly panicky, like the walls are closing in. I think of Alice turning toward the camera and the darkness in the grate, the eyes swiveling in the brickwork. Sam, holding that grimy shoe like a drowning man. I look beseechingly at Lisa, palms held outward, tears coming finally, frustrated, hot, guilty.
“Lisa, please. Let me make this right. We just need a few more days.”
“What youneedis to stay away from my daughter, Mina Ellis.” Lisa sucks on her cigarette and I see how angry she is, vibrating with it almost. She doesn’t seem mousy and downtrodden anymore. Her jaw is stiff and her mouth so sharp I’m surprised her lips aren’t bleeding. “An’ you need to get away from this town. No more. Just leave us be.”
THIRTY-FIVE
I storm upstairs, my head spinning. My jaw is clenched, teeth grinding together until I hear the squeak of enamel in my ears. I shove open the door of Billy’s room and kick it closed so hard it bounces off the frame and swings back open again. Outside, someone is letting off firecrackers. I crawl over the unmade bed and open the window, leaning out on the sill. There are people in the road, clustered together, talking and laughing. The atmosphere seems anticipatory, even excited. Some of them are carrying slabs of timber taller than they are, old knuckled branches, broken wooden pallets. I remember Alice saying“That’s why we have the Riddance with the costume and the bonfires”and wonder if they will build them up on the green, flames so high they lick the tops of the trees. Outside, the air is so heavy you could swim through it. It smells like burning plastic and warm metal and in the east,out toward the hills, dark clouds are massing. Sam had said the weather was going to break, hadn’t he? It’s a long drive back to Baldhu. I hope he’s still talking to me by the end of it.