Tyler St. James didn't want to be anywhere near the house when the priest came by. He wasn't any sort of religious; neither were his parents, for that matter, or at least not his father, so the notion of some man spouting prayers or offering false hope that any God could find his little sister downright turned his stomach. His dad had called the man at his mother's request. Glory had been bothering Lindell for days—a week at least, ever since there'd been that lamb in the crawfish trap—about getting the Catholic priest into the house. Well, Tyler was fairly sure that in the eyes of some "holy" man, he'd be a pretty big sinner, and without even quite formulating the fear in his thoughts, the teen irrationally sensed Father Hugh would somehow see right into him if they ended up crossing paths.

So he decided to work on his car.

Tyler had been attempting to modify his Chevy, saved up for a body kit and everything, but when he went to the shared carport and lot across the street and found a peevish redhead in ripped jeans and a tube top sitting on his hood, he almost stopped short. He'd get no work done today.

"Whaddya want, Bri?"

The girl, looking far older than the sixteen years hidden beneath the layers of foundation and eyeliner and lip gloss, crossed her arms. She looked to have been waiting some time. "Why didn't you call me?"

Tyler's shoulders stiffened. He continued his easy pace toward the lot, unwilling to be deterred. "When?" He reached her, shoved his keys in his jeans pocket.

She dropped her lower lip, looked as if she were trying to read him. "Any time."

"There's been a lot going on."

"Too much to see me?"

The boy narrowed his eyes slightly, looking to read her, as well. He didn't know Brianna much and didn't exactly care to. Sure, it'd been fun getting his head between her legs, making her twitch, but he'd not gotten anything in return for it, not like he'd wanted, and he remembered the fact.

"I mean," he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, "it's been a lot of pressure around here, what with my sister disappearing and my parents falling apart over it. My dad's got shit going on with his traps, and . . . well, I've just been really stressed out."

Brianna slid off the trunk, looked almost close to shy, like she was trying to flirt. Tyler wondered whether she was remembering how much he'd seen of her and smirked at the thought, but the girl's reaction wiped the smile right off his round, puppy-eyed face.

"Fuck you, Tyler St. James. Fuck you!" she cried, shoving him back, causing him to stumble and almost fall.

"Yeah?" he returned, anger replacing any pleasant thoughts of her. "I wish you would, you crazy bitch!"

"You—you fucking asshole." Her breasts heaving out of her tube top, the girl jabbed a finger in Tyler's direction. "You just think any girl should put out for you?"

"If I make em cum like I did you? Yeah! Maybe I appreciate if they return the favor!"

She shook her head of fiery red hair. "I never asked for you to—you just—"

Tyler put up his hands in mock defense. "I sure didn't hear you complaining!"

Brianna lunged at him, claws out, but the boy saw her coming this time and managed to step aside, saving his face but not his tee. The girl gripped the sleeve of her victim's shirt and pulled, tearing the shoulder apart at the seam.

"What the hell—?" Tyler yanked his arm from her grip. "You fucking psychopath! You know, I'm damned lucky I didn't fuck you! Never stick your dick in crazy. Jesus Christ!"

But the girl was crying, now, her frustration and rage and humiliation overcoming her self-control. Some aura of calm descended upon her for a moment, a sort of glaze crossed her red-rimmed eyes. "You wrote me poetry," she whimpered, "said you loved me, said all those—those things. You can't—you can't do that—"

"I copied that shit out of my English textbook. Jesus, just . . . just go, Bri. Just get the fuck out of here."

Much to Tyler's gratification, the girl sniffled, turned, and hurried away. He could hear her sobs; they embarrassed him, especially when he realized ancient Frank Benoit was sitting on his porch a ways down, had probably seen and heard most of the argument. Tyler scowled at the old turtle-necked man. "Don't you ever eat or take a shit?" he yelled, then muttered to himself, "Nosy fucker. Goddam."

Well, that was the morning, spoiled. He had no desire to work on his car, now, especially with Frank over there still craning his head like he smelled a swamp creature.

Tyler crossed the quiet road, took a glance to the left and saw there was, indeed, a car now parked (illegally, technically, as they were supposed to use the lot due to the strip of pavement being so narrow) at his parents' house. Sure as hell he wasn't going home until that black sedan was gone.

Kim. He'd go bother Kim. She was probably off behind the house again.

His sister had been there a lot, lately, probably to avoid people as much as he was. Tyler hadn't been quite as affected as she'd been by Cassidy's disappearance. Sure he'd cared about the little girl in a familial, general sort of sense, but he'd not been particularly close to the child. He'd never been particularly close to any of his siblings beyond Kim, who wasn't really speaking to him, now. So when Cassidy had popped out of existence, Tyler had been perturbed, felt anger—anger that some pervert'd had the audacity to shove into his life—rather than sorrow. He'd taken the ordeal as something of a personal affront. Kim, on the other hand, had stewed in her thoughts. While she and her older brother had never developed much camaraderie beyond their early childhood years, she'd been at least conversational toward him. The past few weeks, she'd steered clear of him entirely, kept away from everyone, it seemed, and Tyler hadn't really cared so much as made note of it; still, it was high time Kim was reminded that he existed and was owed a little attention.

Traipsing off between the houses, Tyler followed the paths he knew his sister took into the cypress forest beyond their street. The St. Jameses lived at the most ragged edge of Luther, where the deep bayou was a mere football field's distance from their back porch and everything else in between was in various stages of swamp, dependent on the weather. Tyler had learned as much as any kid to avoid the duckweed-y water when it crept up close, to watch for alligators and snakes, and while he might have been an asshole, nobody could claim him impetuous when it came to his personal safety. That might've been the only thing he admired in Kim, actually—her imperviousness to the cautions of the surrounding terrain. She'd always been the one to convince the other children, even the youngest ones, to wander off and explore, to look beneath stones for bugs and up into branches for bird nests. Kim loved to get her hands dirty; in fact, she often came into the house nails thick with black earth, palms stained rusty colors, hair frazzled and full of leaves. Tyler had always found her unconventional, his "weird" sister, unattractive and nothing like a girl per se, not like the sorts of girls he saw at school, was interested in feeling up, and not exactly boyish but something else altogether. That was Kim. Just . . . odd.

Still, she held her own. Tyler respected that.

When he came across her, eventually, having wandered deeper than he'd expected to, having wound his way through sheaths of dripping moss and black branches, knobby spears rising from the ground like silent druids, earth moist and spongy beneath his feet, the boy was mildly surprised to find Kim entirely unaware of his arrival, lost in her own world, staring deep into the depths of the layering trees while she swayed and sang some song he couldn't identify.

The girl wove her head side to side as she approached a particularly thick tree; her straight brown hair swished with the faintest rustle. She wore only a long sweatshirt, as far as Tyler could tell. He saw no shorts, but they could've been hiding beneath her top. And on her feet were rainboots, red rainboots—Cassie's rainboots, he thought, the ones she'd left behind.

"Hey," he tried, jumping back a bit when Kim spun about like a startled wild animal. "Whoa, whoa! Kim! It's me! Just me!"

Eyes radiating electricity, Kim bit her thin lower lip with her large front teeth. Her tremulous brow exposed her fear. "I want to be alone, Tyler!" she cried.

"Why? It's creepy back in here."

"Not to me," Kim retorted, huffing, spinning back toward the tree she'd been approaching before Tyler had so rudely interrupted her. "I like it here. I want to be by myself, all right?"

Her brother scrunched his mouth, his nose. Approaching the tree, he got in front of his sister and leaned shoulder-up against the trunk. She offered him a look of supreme annoyance. "What exactly are you doing back here?"

A bird twittered somewhere close by, startling the two teens, and when they found they'd both paused to watch for the creature, their gazes met, and they laughed. Or at least, Tyler laughed; Kim tried her best not to.

Softening, the girl sighed. She turned her back to the massive cypress and leaned up against it, next to her brother. The two of them stared up into the dark, interlocking branches, the hanging vines and plants, picked out the barely visible bits of sky able to make an appearance between the limbs and twigs. "I feel closer to Cassidy, here," Kim admitted, shoulder nearly touching her brother's.

"Why?" he asked. "She wasn't here when she—"

"I don't know," Kim replied. "Something like . . . like she is here. You know what I mean?"

Tyler frowned, pushed off the trunk and faced his sister. "No," he replied, "I don't know what you mean. You saying you feel like she's back in here somewhere?"

"I know it might be a little weird sounding," Kim responded, her voice calm, "but I swear it that I feel like she's still here. Like she wants us to find her. And I didn't tell nobody because I know you'd think I was crazy. Or Mama and Daddy would get the wrong idea, think there's hope or that I'm just making stories, but I just . . . I feel it so strongly. The trees—they're telling me, and the waters, too. She's . . . she's here, I know it, like she's been made a . . . a part of it. And I can find her, Tyler, if I talk to the forest, if I can speak their—their language." Kim's lips quivered as if she'd spoken more than she'd meant to, as if some spell had been cast and caused her to blab on. A heavy pause ensued, pregnant with expectation and unwarranted profundity.

Unable to help himself, Tyler at last filled the silence by snorting, then full on laughing aloud. "Fuck, Kim, you sound insane, you know that?"

Unadulterated humiliation fluttered across the girl's features. She attempted to sputter some sort of answer, but her brother only continued to laugh, to poke fun.

"God damn, you sound worse than the priest probably does!" He sucked in a huge breath, controlled his hysterics, and calmed himself enough to add with a severity that hurt Kim to hear, "Cassidy's dead. Some pervert raped her and killed her, and now she's dead. It's what happens to little kids, Kim, little girls. They get raped and murdered, and there's nothing to do about it."

Kim brought her hands to her face, to shield out her brother, to shield out the forest. "No, no!"

"She's dead, Kim! She's fucking dead!"

"No, no, no . . ."

Tyler repeated himself, growing louder, crueler with each reiteration.

"You see these trees?" Kim suddenly cried, pulling her hands from her eyes, pointing wildly at the tupelos, the cypress fans sweeping across the forest floor.

"What about them, dummy?"

"You see the marks on them?"

"What?" In honest confusion, Tyler shrugged. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Look closer, all right? Someone's been marking them up. Cuts on all of them, like somebody's trying to send messages. You see these, Tyler?"

The boy followed the trajectory of Kim's pointed finger, and as he peered through the gloom, he did indeed begin to notice certain gashes popping out against the dark of the trees' trunks. "Yeah, so? What's that got to do with Cassie?"

"It's all connected," Kim said, lowering her voice to an eerie level. "I know it is. Something we're missing. It's there. And if I can just sense it more, figure it out—"

"I'm getting the fuck outta here," Tyler insisted, shaking his head. "I thought you'd be up for fun, maybe some kind of game. You're as nuts as mom. Fucking crazy."

His sister said nothing to him as he began to walk away, hoping secretly he would be able to find his way back, grumbling harsh and harsher words against the purpling stillness of the forest. Whatever his sister was smoking, he wanted none of it. Sitting there trying to say Cassidy was still around, that they could find her—bullshit, all of it. And she'd been wearing Cassie's boots! Cassie's red rainboots! What the fuck had that been about? No, Kim was not ok. Sure Tyler knew their dad hadn't been any too kind to her, that the kids at school treated Kim like shit even while they put up with him, even kind of appreciated him, but the girl had gone off her head to think she was out there communing with some type of ghosts or something. The swamp was dangerous; Kim was courting peril. Tyler decided he'd tell his parents when he got home, not so much cause he wanted Kim to be punished (although there was a little of that in there) but because he wanted her safer.

A crackle to his side startled Tyler and he spun to the left, narrowed his eyes into the deep gloom of the forest. For a full twenty seconds he stood there, observing no one, nothing but the trees and foliage. He knew better, knew things always lurked, but all he could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. He'd seen nothing at all to give him concern. He needed to get home, and if the priest was still there, he'd wait outside until the man left.

Step, step, step . . . moving through the undergrowth, until the same sound came again, and this time when Tyler zipped about to locate the sure source of the crackle, he caught sight of something—or someone—quite unexpected.

"Y-you!" he managed to croak out. "What're you—what's in your hand?"

The figure gave no answer.

"Put that fucking thing down," Tyler ordered, a bit of a laugh masking his concern. "You don't know what you're doing with—"

But he never completed his words, the shining silvery sliver managing faster than he could speak, cleaving his skull as clean as a sharpened knife slicing a steak.

By the time his body was found, Tyler's feet were bare, and his brains had been picked from the shell of his head and ingested by the various birds and rodents making their dark ways across the forest floor.