Long Lost, стр. 8

Pearl pulled back. “I’m tired of waiting for you. I’m tired of you always being the one who decides.”

Hazel only grasped her tighter.

“Let go of me,” Pearl demanded, her voice rising.

“I won’t.” Hazel’s voice stayed low and dangerous. “Because you’re acting like a silly little tattletale who wouldn’t know what to do by herself anyway.”

Pearl wrenched her arm free so suddenly that Hazel’s fingernails left red tracks on her flesh. “I’m not going to do as you say anymore.”

Hazel’s eyes narrowed. “If you leave now, you’ll be sorry.”

After a week of other cruelties, Hazel’s threat struck Pearl like a spark on dry tinder. Anger flared inside Pearl’s chest.

“You’ll be the one who’s sorry.” Pearl whirled around. She broke into a run, hoping to gain a head start.

But Hazel didn’t follow.

Pearl dashed across the dark meadow, its grass trampled by hundreds of departed carnival-goers. The sounds of roustabouts at work and the brays of animals faded away behind her. She reached the edge of the meadow and turned onto the deserted curve of Turnpike Road.

Hazel was so sure of Pearl’s loyalty. She was so sure Pearl would always be there, doing as she was told, tagging right behind. Well, perhaps Hazel was wrong.

Pearl raced along the wide dirt road. This late at night, there were no automobiles and no carts. Pearl was glad of this. No one would see her running alone down the road, far past the hour when young ladies should be safely in bed. But as the road wound into a grove, and the starry sky of the meadow vanished behind the fans of thickening trees, she grew less glad. And as she neared the rolling land of the cemetery, Pearl felt unhappier still.

She was not afraid of cemeteries. The town’s cemetery was like a large private park, with tree-lined avenues and leafy nooks. She and Hazel had often gone there together, playing hide-and-seek among the headstones, picnicking on the family plots. They had even climbed to the roof of one mausoleum and taken turns leaping off onto the emerald moss.

But Pearl had never passed the place alone before, and not in the dark, so near midnight. She had always been with Hazel. And being with Hazel always made her twice as big and brave as she was on her own.

Pearl felt a flash of longing. If her sister were here, she wouldn’t worry. She searched for the flame of her anger, hoping that it could strengthen her, but it had dulled with the lengthening distance from Hazel, like a coal pulled from a fire.

The cemetery gates loomed ahead.

Pearl ran faster.

Behind the stone arch and high iron bars, headstones gleamed a pale gray. Pearl didn’t look at them as she passed. She kept her gaze fixed on the deserted road instead.

When the very corner of Pearl’s eye spotted something moving at the edge of the cemetery grounds, she didn’t look at that either. Looking would mean that she believed it was there, and she knew that it wasn’t. She was imagining things. She was letting silly fears overtake her. And this was all Hazel’s fault.

Pearl ran on.

Turnpike Road rambled past the cemetery, and then along the Millers’ orchard and Edmund Crain’s horse paddocks before reaching the edge of town. Pearl had some distance to go. She ought to come up with a plan in the meantime, something she could tell Mrs. Rawlins that would put everything right. But each time her thoughts began to coalesce, they were scattered by the sense that there was something behind her.

It was something black. It was something quiet. It was following her down a deserted road, still too far from the houses of town for anyone within them to hear.

Half-remembered stories filled Pearl’s mind: tales of the Searcher whispered by Charlie Hobbes, the groundskeeper’s son, the lore the older children traded around the Halloween bonfires, the warnings of a dozen housemaids. Once the Searcher found you, no one else ever would.

Now here she was, alone in the darkness. And this was Hazel’s fault too.

Her shoes made quick, hard clops on the road. Her heart pounded harder still.

She had passed the Millers’ orchard now. The paddocks lay ahead. If she could make it to the end of that fence, she’d be nearly to Rose Lane, and its little cottages would spring up around her. Next, she would cross Lilac Lane, and then she would be just a few streets from home.

If she could only run fast enough.

At the edge of her vision, the shadows flickered.

Something that may have been only a lock of her own hair, or that may have been the edge of a long black sleeve, trailed across the side of her neck. Pearl nearly screamed aloud.

There: the first cottage of Rose Lane stood just ahead, past Edmund Crain’s barn. Pearl flew over the final yards, meeting the intersection of Turnpike Road and Rose Lane like a racer crossing a finish line. She glanced sideways, catching sight of her rushing reflection in the windows of the nearest cottage.

She hadn’t imagined it after all.

There was something just behind her.