CHAPTER 14

The Dead Forest

ON THE FIFTH DAY I WOKE UP TO TWO KNOCKS on the door. Wearily, I opened my eyes. In front of me the screen had turned to a scrambled static. Before I could answer, Dustin opened the door, holding a shotgun. I winced at the sudden stream of sunlight. “Miss Winters,” he said. “I was wondering if you might accompany me while I hunt for wild game?”

Rubbing my eyes, I gazed from the screen to the gun. It was a bizarre sight, though after watching almost forty hours of horror movies, it didn’t seem that weird. I pulled myself off the couch. “Okay.”

“Renée,” my grandfather said, delighted to see me at breakfast. “How are you feeling?”

“I could be better.”

“I hear there’s a boy calling for you,” he said over his newspaper.

I shrugged, patting down my hair, which at this point felt like a bird’s nest.

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s no one.”

My grandfather gave me a knowing look. “No one indeed. I once heard that from your mother. Two weeks later she had eloped and moved to California, with nothing but your father and the clothes on her back.”

I stopped chewing. My parents had eloped? They’d never told me that. “Well, I don’t want to talk to him. I’ve already told Dustin.”

“I see,” he said, frowning. “Might this have something do with the films you’ve been watching, and our chat the other night?”

I narrowed my eyes. “No.”

Just in time, Dustin walked into the room, armed with the long-barreled gun, a goose whistle, a bag marked Shells, and two brown paper bags.

“Whenever you’re ready, Miss Winters.”

“I’m ready now,” I said, eager to leave the questioning eyes of my grandfather, who was definitely not going to let Dante go unnoticed.

He clasped his hands over one knee. “What is it today, Dustin?”

“Wild snow geese, sir.”

“Excellent. Excellent. Well, have a good time. Try not to shoot any people, now. And if you do, bury them.” He winked at me, but I didn’t appreciate his humor.

Donning a pair of high rubber boots, a fur-lined parka, and earmuffs, I set out with Dustin to the grounds behind the estate. The sky was a cloudless blue, the branches of the evergreens around us heavy with snow. Dustin showed me how to blow the goose whistle, and we followed the sounds of their response calls until we reached a frozen pond.

“Be very still,” Dustin said, crouching low while looking through his binoculars at a flock of geese pecking at the snow by the edge of the water. Slowly, he took the duck gun from his shoulder and handed it to me. “Now, all you have to do is aim in their general direction and pull the trigger.”

I stared at the gun as if it were a foreign object, not realizing that I was supposed to do the shooting. “I...um... I don’t think I can... I mean, I don’t really want to kill anything.”

“As you wish,” he said, handing me his lunch bag. Putting on his goggles, he squinted along the barrel of the gun and aimed it at the pond. And fired.

The birds scattered into the air, flying frantically toward the trees above us. Without flinching, Dustin aimed again, this time almost directly up. There was a squawk, followed by a cloud of feathers. Dustin ripped off his goggles and searched the sky.

“Call!” he shouted.

I looked up. Suddenly I heard something descend through the air. My arms moved without me, and before I knew it, the dead goose dropped into my arms, a flurry of blood and down.

Dustin turned to me, a smile spreading across his face. I screamed and dropped it, shaking the feathers off my hands in a panic.

“An excellent catch, Miss Winters! Excellent!”

“Just Renée,” I said, correcting him as I wiped my hands on my jacket. “And nice shot.”

“Why, thank you,” he said, slinging the bird over his shoulder. “In my time, I was a great skeet proficient.”

I nodded, having no clue what he was talking about.

We ate lunch by the pond. Since I didn’t want to shoot anything, we ended up sitting by the water, feeding the remaining geese bits of our sandwiches instead.

“Thanks for taking me out here,” I said. “It’s a nice change of scenery.”

“It’s my pleasure. I thought you might need a bit of fresh air after all of those films.”

I let out a laugh. “Yeah. They were pretty bad.” I threw a piece of bread onto the snow.

“Miss Winters—”

“Just Renée,” I interjected.

“Very well, then... Renée. I feel compelled to tell you that movies often do not depict reality. The people in your life are still the same people you knew before.”

“Except they’re not people.”

Dustin gazed out over the lake.

“This Mr. Berlin. Has he offended you in some way?”

“He lied to me about who he was. He made me think I was losing my mind and seeing things, when he knew I wasn’t.”

Dustin frowned and hoisted himself up. “I see. Well, I suppose it’s settled, then. Shall we pack up and head back?”

I let my eyes wander over the geese still grazing by my feet, realizing that I didn’t want it to be settled. “Yeah, I guess so.” And in the dwindling afternoon light we made our way back to the mansion.

“Dustin, did you know about...?” I asked him before we went inside.

“About what?”

“I know you were listening at breakfast. You were there, in the corner. You must know.”

“I have been aware of the existence of the Undead since ...since I was your age,” he said, opening the door for me. “And yet I still trust your grandfather with your safety.”

Wiping my boots on the mat, I stepped inside, peeling off my outerwear piece by piece. Normally, my grandfather worked with talk radio on, but now the house was strangely silent. “Hello?” I called out as Dustin unloaded our gear and brought the goose to the kitchen to be defeathered.

As I took my hat off, my hair wild with static, I noticed a note on the foyer side table. It was on my grandfather’s stationery.

R,

Left on business. Dustin will see you back to school.

—BW

January was blustery and bleak. Dustin drove me back to school, where, against his protests, I dragged my suitcase up to my room. The snow moved like sand dunes in the wind, and icicles hung tenuously from the roof, thick and irregular. Everything was white, even the sky, the clouds blurring the horizon into an endless barren landscape.