The Bitterwine Oath Read online

  But it got campier. Some professed to see a blond girl in the woods, wearing a gown stained with blood from the waist down—Malachi in her baptismal robe. We had the town’s recollection of the particularly eventful Easter Sunday service in 1918 to thank for that imagery. Malachi’s father, Reverend Rivers, had resolved to baptize her in hopes that a public profession of faith would help curb her wild behavior. But when Malachi surfaced, the water in the baptistery filled with blood, and Malachi cackled. The entire congregation witnessed it. Some called it a young girl’s lark that had gone too far. Others believed it to be the work of a demonic spirit that had possessed her. Now it was widely believed to be an incident of mass hysteria and collective false memory.

  I flicked on my desk lamp and shut the blinds as if to put these thoughts to bed. But I found myself drawn to the bookshelf in the corner.

  Amid historical novels and dense biographies, Lillian’s book looked lean and unassuming. It was my grandmother’s first edition. The worn paper jacket was matte black with the silhouette of a pine forest in a sickly hunter green. The outdated, all-caps title always felt like it was screaming at my eyes.

  After briefly riffling through the pages, I reshelved it. As a kid, I’d scoured every word and studied the Malachian mark for hidden meanings beyond what Lillian described, fantasizing that I might be the one to find a secret clue and solve the murders. That morbid fascination—okay, maybe it had been an obsession at one point—could easily engulf me again.

  I didn’t need to dredge up fear like dragging a lake for a body that had already wasted to particles. Nothing would come of this anniversary. Nothing. And then everything could go back to normal.

  Leaving my sweaty clothes in a pile on my bathroom floor, I stepped into the shower and closed my eyes. The water soothed the scrapes from my fall.

  Now that I was alone, the reckoning I’d been dreading since last August finally came. I had to face the fact that the kiss with Levi wasn’t just a delectable memory that would dissolve if I dwelled on it for too long. Levi wasn’t ephemeral, like the last ounce of my grandma’s discontinued perfume in the vial on her dresser, which I feared to open in case the memory of her essence should evaporate forever.

  He was here. In town. For the summer.

  And he was sorry.

  I wouldn’t read into his apology. I would not.

  I skulked back to my room, changed into sleep boxers and a tee, and started typing a group text to Lindsey and the twins about the talismans. But actually seeing the words raised fine hairs on my forearms, so I erased the text and sat crisscross to blow-dry my hair in front of my closet mirror. I’d barely gotten started when I noticed that Pagans of the Pines was sticking out from the top bookshelf as if someone had pulled it to try to access a secret room.

  Through a cascade of dirty-blond strands, I glared at the reflection of the book, feeling oddly powerful, half expecting it to fall off the shelf or fly and hit the wall. It didn’t. It remained there until I pushed it flush with the others, turned off the lights, and fell asleep to an orchestra of crickets and katydids.

  I woke with a strangled gasp.

  Something was clotting my throat, choking me. It tasted like dirt. My helpless, fraught fingers encircled the column of my neck. My pulse thrummed like hummingbird wings.

  Not this again.

  I coughed out the obstruction. It was too dark to see what it was, but as I clutched blindly at the substance on my sheets, clumps of damp soil molded to my grasp. I smelled a cool, earthy aroma, and felt tangling roots sift through my fingers like a freshly turned grave.

  I climbed out of bed and stumbled toward my lamp.

  There was no dirt on my sheets. But a gritty residue remained on my tongue.

  Sometimes, I dreamed that a bloodstain bloomed across my ceiling. Drops would splash onto my forehead, rhythmic and incessant. Other times, my bones strained in their sockets, like some force was trying to dislocate them.

  All my life, I’d had these dreams. They’d gotten more frequent and more vivid since I’d become a teenager. Grandma Kerry had somehow always known about them, even when my parents had no idea. Usually, she was already awake, waiting for me. Sometimes, she was standing over my bed. I used to tell myself that she must have heard me gasping and thrashing in my sleep, but in hindsight, I had to admit it seemed like strange, inexplicable intuition.

  After she was gone, I started trying to rationalize the dreams. You pushed yourself too hard in the heat today, I thought now. You’re having some kind of retroactive heat stroke that’s making you hallucinate.

  But the excuse didn’t work this time. I needed Grandma Kerry.

  I grabbed my pillow and raced my fear down the hall.

  I didn’t feel safe again until I had shut myself in her old room and leaped onto the creaky bed. I bumped my head on the regal, imposing headboard as I nestled under the covers, but I didn’t care. I felt safe.

  Here, nothing could hurt me.

  Morning came. I knew that the episode last night had been nothing more than a dream. That’s all they ever were. But none of the dreams had ever felt so real.

  Rubbing my eyes, I kicked my bare feet over the side of the bed and planted them on the rug. This was a guest room now, but we hadn’t changed much except for the bedding, and we’d packed away the outdated lace doilies and dorky kid pictures of my dad. Everything else was familiar, including the vanity tray on the dresser that held Grandma Kerry’s old jewelry and a creased picture of Grandpa Willie—items that had helped anchor her to a sense of self when she had started to drift. She came to live with us after accidentally burning down the house where she’d lived with Grandpa Willie for decades by leaving a pot unattended on the stove.

  At the vanity tray, I brushed her perfume bottle and plucked her understated twisted vine wedding band from a porcelain dish.

  “Nat, are you up, baby?” Mom called from down the hall. “It’s graduation day!”

  Startled, I dropped the ring. It bounced with a bright ding across the wood planks and onto the rug, settling somewhere under the bed.

  “I’m up!” I called back. I glanced at the clock and realized I had to be gussied up and on the courthouse lawn in less than an hour. I dropped to all fours, saw a glint of gold, and flattened myself to retrieve it. With the ring safely in my grasp, I wriggled back out from under the bed, rucking up the border of the rug—which revealed a deep trench carved into the wood floor.

  Sitting back on my heels, I traced my finger along the rough path.

  A lump formed in my throat. Curiosity overpowered any sense of urgency. Frowning, I stood up, replaced the ring, and shoved the bed frame aside. When I flung away the rug, I gasped.

  The symbol of the cult spanned the space under the bed, frenzied and furious. Unlike the neat lines on the stones, it seemed to have been carved in haste, maybe even in a state of mania.

  Like pressing a tender bruise, I let a horrible memory play through my thoughts. Grandma Kerry’s mental decline had been inconsistent, lurching, riddled with bouts of confusion and embarrassment at her confusion, which caused her to sink into silence. But there had been a few episodes of paranoia and something her doctor had called “catastrophic reactions.” One in particular had given my parents no choice but to hire a live-in caregiver.

  On that day, Grandma Kerry woke up wild-eyed, the gray hair that was still tinged with youthful blond mussed from sleep—or sleeplessness. She had charged into the kitchen and seized my wrists in her surprisingly strong grip while I was preparing to leave for school. Blood streamed down her arm from her elbow, dripping onto her robin’s egg blue nightgown.

  “I can see them,” she said. “I can smell them. They’re growing stronger. It will happen again.”

  Dad had sat her down at the table in the breakfast nook and tried to calm her, pressing a cloth to her wound. But she erupted like a madwoman, screaming that he would never understand and how lucky he was for that. My mom whipped out her phone to call an ambulance
as she ushered me away from the scene.

  Now I stared at a smear of dark brown on the wood planks in her bedroom, right at the heart of the mark. Blood.

  Having witnessed the determination in her stormy eyes and the sinew behind her grip, I wondered if she had spent that sleepless night secretly carving this mark and covering it up.

  Dad couldn’t find out about this. No one could. I would protect him from the pain for as long as possible, and I would protect what was left of my grandmother’s dignity.

  But haunting questions needled me: Was there any chance that the paranoia, the warning, and the mark weren’t just the workings of a broken mind?

  Was there any chance that Grandma Kerry had known more about her own grandmother than she’d let on?

  And most crucially, was there any chance that twelve more people would die?

  EXCERPT:

  PAGANS OF THE PINES: THE UNTOLD STORY OF MALACHI RIVERS

  Lillian Pickard, 1968

  In 1905 Simeon Rivers, a sawmill worker, founded Calvary Baptist Church in San Solano, Texas. His mission was to subvert the liberalism of other protestant churches in the area. As a staunch Fundamentalist Baptist, Simeon was far from popular, but he was a hardworking, resourceful man with a measure of charisma. He purchased an acre of land for twenty-five dollars and built a church.

  At the time of its establishment, Simeon and his wife Ruth had a four-year-old son named Malachi. Ruth was pregnant with their second child. They lived in a small parish house beside the church. But after Simeon had preached only a handful of services, a violent storm blew through town and demolished both structures. Ruth and Malachi were struck by debris. Ruth and her unborn child survived. The boy did not.

  Grieving their beloved son and their church challenged Ruth and Simeon in different ways. Simeon, determined to honor God’s calling upon his life, raised funds to rebuild. Ruth clung to the promise of her unborn child, certain that God would give her another son upon whom she could bestow the name Malachi in honor of her firstborn.

  To her dismay, the second child was a girl. Ruth detached from her daughter but had been calling her Malachi for months. She had no heart to change the name. Simeon attempted to convince his wife to choose any other, but the power of Ruth’s maternal grief swayed him. He wanted her to heal.

  But Ruth did not heal. Since Malachi’s brother had been so young when he died, Ruth mounted him on a pedestal. He was an icon of unattainable innocence and perfection who had not been afforded the chance to develop his own distinguishable traits and flaws. Every time the younger Malachi misbehaved, as children do, she was called sinful. She could never measure up to her God-fearing brother.

  As Malachi grew, she developed strange powers. When she was six years old, her mother mentioned her hope of conceiving another child. Malachi screamed until Ruth’s ears bled. After that, Ruth was afflicted with prolonged, heavy bleeding of a womanly nature. She often read aloud the Biblical tale of the bleeding woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ robe and was healed. But Ruth was not blessed with another child, nor was her hemorrhaging resolved.

  Still, every day, she prayed that the Lord would heal her.

  Moreover, she prayed that the Lord would forgive her for bringing to life an abomination.

  FOUR

  Natalie Colter

  ONE MONTH AND NINE DAYS UNTIL THE CLAIMING

  I did my best to forget about the Malachian mark. But I couldn’t forget about Grandma Kerry on graduation day. When she’d fallen ill, I’d realized she wouldn’t live long enough to attend this ceremony, or any special occasions beyond. That didn’t make it easier.

  While I contended with the stubborn zipper on my graduation gown, Mom sped like a stunt driver toward the limestone courthouse at the center of historic downtown. Dad braced himself, slamming nonexistent brakes from the passenger seat as Victorian and Craftsman homes streaked past.

  Downtown San Solano was the kind of place outsiders would call “quaint” and “charming” if they hadn’t already found other words to describe our town—namely, “creepy” and “cursed.” Venerable oaks provided verdant shade, and pretty, old churches of sundry denominations postured on almost every corner. The town square had a bakery, an art gallery, a hardware store owned by the twins’ family, and a beloved diner with self-serve coffee that tasted like brake fluid. As one of the oldest settlements in the state, San Solano played host to countless historical landmarks, one being the intersection of the El Camino Real de los Tejas trail with the ruins of an eighteenth-century Spanish mission.

  And the most famous landmark? On a quiet, shady street, Calvary Baptist Church loomed large over the town’s reputation, the cross atop its gothic tower casting a long shadow on the jade lawn. The cabin in the clearing where Malachi supposedly performed dark magic was ominous in its own right, but it was tucked away in the woods, down a dead-end road on the outskirts of town. The church where the deaths occurred presided over our daily lives and refused to be forgotten.

  We were nearly late to the ceremony, and I found my place in line right as the graduates began filing into rows of white chairs. Every paper program had already been repurposed into a fan; San Solano High insisted on holding graduation outdoors come hell or high water. When my row stood and shuffled forward to wait by the stage, I searched for Levi amid the sea of oscillating programs. A few of his close friends were graduating, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d come. Before I could spot him, I found Lindsey in the back row, gray circles hanging under her eyes. I cocked my head, wordlessly checking on her. She smiled and waved.

  My name thudded over the sound system, surprising me. I crossed the stage and filed back to my seat with my diploma in hand.

  After the ceremony I found Lindsey’s family immediately. Abuela Sofia showered me with hugs and kisses. Lindsey’s mom, Camila, tucked a strand of Lindsey’s long hair behind her ear, doting on her in Spanish. Even after three years of classes, I could only catch a few phrases.

  Camila glanced at me and then asked Lindsey a question. Lindsey responded sternly, “Todavía no, pero ya pronto.”

  Not yet, but soon.

  Before I could puzzle over Lindsey’s answer to the question I hadn’t understood, I noticed a jagged trio of cuts slashing across her outer forearm. A nasty, purple-black bruise spilled around each mark like blotted ink.

  “What is that?” I demanded.

  Her eyes widened. “You can see that?”

  “It’s kind of hard to miss.”

  Lindsey scowled at the wound. “Um…I thought I covered it with makeup.”

  “Makeup? You’d need latex prosthetic skin. What happened?”

  She shrugged back into her gown, covering the marks. “Um…my cousin Juliana’s Yorkipoo scratched me.”

  “That was from a Yorkipoo?”

  “I think she had a violent reaction to my nondesigner jeans.” Lindsey laughed too loudly at her own joke, told at the expense of her wealthy “influencer” cousin from Los Angeles. “You should watch out. She’s carrying the little demon around in her purse.”

  Nerves and humor? That combination only meant one thing when it came to Lindsey Maria Valenzuela: she was lying.

  But I didn’t have time to call her out. I saw my dad’s square face and broad smile in the crowd. Mom swooped in and went full paparazzi. My cheeks were cramping by the time I managed to steal a moment alone with Lindsey and the twins to tell them about the talismans in my yard the day before.

  “And Lindsey thought I had a morbid sense of humor,” Abbie said when I finished.

  Lindsey didn’t retort. Her sun-kissed brown face went ashen.

  “I bet it was Grayson’s idea,” Faith said, glowering at a mop of sun-bleached hair in the crowd.

  “Did…did anything else happen?” Lindsey asked me.

  I swallowed a sudden bout of nausea. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them about the mark under my grandma’s bed. “No,” I replied.

  Lindsey nodded, satisfied.

&
nbsp; “We have to get revenge on those idiots,” Abbie whispered.

  “We should forge unacceptance letters from their colleges,” Faith suggested, giddy. “We’ll say there was a mistake with their applications and that they’ve been put on a waiting list.”

  “Or we could kidnap them and take them to a ritual,” Abbie said, a dangerous spark in her eyes.

  “I just want to relax this summer, so count me out,” Lindsey said.

  Abbie blew her a raspberry. “Ya boring, Lindsey.”

  “At least I don’t have to stage a fake animal sacrifice to have fun. I’ve got to go hang out with my cousins or they’ll be pissed that they came all this way. Heads up, Juliana is coming to the lake with us tomorrow.”

  Abbie groaned. “She’s so rude!”

  “She thinks you’re rude,” Faith countered. The three of them wandered off, bickering, and my eyes immediately drew to Levi. A six-foot-two, handsome redhead would be hard for anyone to miss, even in a crowd. Our eyes met from a distance and my nerves jittered like a june bug hitting a porch light.

  A slim approaching figure with shoulder-length brunette hair intercepted my gaze: Kate Wilder. Her sage-green eyes met mine and she flashed a smile that emanated more Southern charm than a debutante ball.

  Kate’s four-year-old daughter, Avery, released her mother’s hand to squeeze my waist. I staggered with her weight and grinned. She had green eyes like Kate’s, magnified by flexible prescription glasses.

  “We couldn’t be prouder of you, Nat,” Kate said, her drawl thick enough to shame maple syrup. “You’re off to bigger places and better things.”

  “But I still have a whole summer with this little wildling.” I tousled Avery’s curly cowlick until she lost interest in me and crouched to inspect a ladybug.

  “Speaking of that, what would you think of cutting your hours, with a raise to make up for it?” Kate asked. “It’s your last summer here and you’re already helping out with the Heritage Festival.”