Zebra Forest Read online

Rew had no choice. “All right,” he said, taking a step from the door. “Don’t hurt her.”

  We stood there like that for a long time, until I could feel the man’s heart slow, against my back. Gradually, he loosened his grip on my throat. But he didn’t let go. I took a breath, inhaling the sour smell of his sweat and the soft odor of mud that reminded me of the Zebra Forest.

  Rew still stood looking at him, unsure what to do next. Finally, he asked, “Will you go in the morning?”

  I knew he was thinking of Gran. Neither of us wanted to think what she would do if she came down in the morning and found an escaped prisoner holding us hostage.

  “Not in the morning,” the man said, and now I wondered why he still held me, when he would let go. “But as soon as it’s safe. I’m leaving the country. I can’t travel for at least a week, though. Maybe more.”

  If Rew could have gotten any paler, he did just then. His freckles stood out against his suddenly white skin. There was no way to keep this terrible stranger secret from Gran for a week. Not in one of her good spells.

  But as it turned out, we couldn’t even keep him secret for an hour, because while we were all standing there, looking at each other, Gran came halfway down the stairs. And now she stood there in her nightgown, staring at the stranger behind my head. And she said the last thing either Rew or I would have ever expected.

  “Andrew Snow,” she said. “Let go of my Annie B.”

  I’d known Gran to go silent. I’d known her to close her door and not come out for days, not even to eat. But I’d never known her to see things that weren’t there. Now I thought, This strange man has taken Gran’s mind. It’s gone.

  Rew clearly thought the same thing. In a voice so gentle and steady you wouldn’t think a mud-splattered convict had just stormed our house and taken us prisoner, he said, “No, Gran, this isn’t Andrew Snow. This is a man who came from the prison. On the other side of the Zebra.”

  He said it as if the man whose arm still pressed against my throat had come for a friendly visit. A cup of tea.

  But Gran was coming down the stairs. She acted like she hadn’t heard him. She came close to me, to the man, and peered up at him.

  “Andrew,” she said. “Let her go. This is Annie.”

  I was about to try and tell the man that my grandmother wasn’t in her right mind just then. That he ought to go and find some other house to hide out in, because he was only making her worse, and here she’d been having a good spell. But before I could say any of that, before I could say even one word, the man’s arm dropped from my throat. He let me go.

  I stumbled away from him, away from Gran, too, who still stood close to him, looking up into his face. Rew came to help me, and when I was steadier, we turned to look at them. Gran was still staring intently at the man, searching his face for something, but he wasn’t looking back at her. He was looking, instead, at me. At me and Rew.

  “I didn’t know,” he said, and his voice seemed to tremble. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  A buzzing started in my ears just then. Gran once quoted some writer who said, “The blood will out.” I’d never really understood what she meant. But now I think it must mean that your blood knows things before your head does. Because even as I struggled to make sense of Gran’s words, and the man’s, the blood came rushing into my head, making me dizzy.

  Rew, of course, understood right away. And his voice sounded like it came from under water when he said, “You? You’re Andrew Snow?”

  And through my swimming eyes, I saw the man in the muddy prison uniform nod.

  He was Andrew Snow. Andrew Snow. Our father.

  And I realized suddenly, a minute after my blood did, that our father hadn’t been killed by an angry man, like Gran had said.

  He was the angry man.

  “Liar!” Rew screamed. “You’re a liar!”

  For a minute, I couldn’t figure out who he was screaming at, but the man knew.

  “No,” he said. “It’s true.”

  “You’re not Andrew Snow!” Rew yelled again. “Our father’s dead. Gran said it! Somebody killed him. He’s dead.”

  The man looked at Gran, then back at Rew. “Last time I saw you, you were just a baby,” he said wonderingly.

  Rew looked like he had gone mad. His eyes bulged and his face flushed, and he shook his head fast, again and again.

  “Gran! Tell him! Tell him what happened to our father!”

  Gran had begun to shiver. She shook so hard, she had to sit down, and the man helped her to the couch. As for me, I felt like I’d stepped out of my own body. The rushing in my head was so loud, I could only just hear what people said, and Rew’s screaming sounded like it was a million miles away. I looked at the man, and at Gran, and Rew, but they seemed almost as if they stood behind thick glass, acting out a play I could just barely hear.

  “Andrew, Andrew,” Gran was saying, again and again. “You’re back.”

  “He’s not!” Rew shouted. “He’s not! Don’t say that! He’s a bad man! This man ran away from the prison!”

  At that Gran shook harder. “You didn’t, you didn’t,” she said. “Did you, Andrew? Did you?”’

  The man stood there, face whiter and whiter, hands clenching and unclenching, looking down at Gran.

  “I did,” he said. “There was a riot. I — I just ran.”

  Gran put her head in her hands. “No,” she said. “No, you couldn’t have.”

  Rew looked with horror at Gran, rocking there on the couch. “Make him get out!” he screamed at her. “He’s a liar! Make him get out!”

  Gran put her hands over her ears and rocked harder.

  The rushing sound began to die in my head as I watched her. I could hear Rew now, gulping air as if he’d just been running, and the man, Andrew Snow, breathing heavily too, watching Gran, watching us.

  “Get out!” Rew screamed at him. “Both of you! Both of you! Liars! Liars!”

  Gran lifted her head at that. She looked at him, and her lips trembled.

  I yanked at Rew’s arm.

  “Stop it!” I whispered. “Stop it! Be quiet!”

  But Rew wouldn’t be quiet. He rushed at the man and shoved him hard. Though Rew was less than half his size, the man hadn’t been expecting it, and he staggered back.

  “Get out!” Rew screamed at him. “Get out!”

  Gran began to wail. I had never heard her cry before, and after all the things I had seen that night, this sound, more than anything, made me afraid.

  Her wail was jagged and high-pitched, and she rocked back and forth, crying.

  It made Rew pause for a moment, and the man, his face slick now with sweat, rushed at Rew and jerked him off his feet.

  “Stop it,” he said, gripping Rew so tight his knuckles whitened. His voice had gone hard again. “Stop it. I’m not going. I’m here now, and I’m going to stay here. Stop it, or I’ll make you stop.” With each word, he seemed to squeeze Rew tighter, and I ran over and tried to pry his fingers loose, but he just shook me off.

  He’d pulled Rew in close to his face, but at the last word, he shoved him away, sending Rew careening past the overturned end table. I caught my brother by the shoulders just before he fell and helped him right himself.

  He was okay, but Gran wasn’t. Her crying had turned into jagged sobbing, as if she couldn’t get enough air in. I wanted to cover my ears like she did, and run from it. But instead, when I let go of Rew, I turned and took her arm.

  “Gran,” I said. “Gran, come upstairs. It’s okay. No one’s going to hurt us. We’re okay.”

  Gran hunched over so far, her head touched her knees.

  “Gran,” I said again, tugging at her arm. “Come on, now.”

  Her crying grew softer, and after a little bit, she let me pull her from the couch and lead her upstairs. I laid her down in her bed, covered her with her quilts, and left her there, whimpering, curled like a baby and clutching her own hands tight, one to the other.

  When I came d
ownstairs, Andrew Snow and Rew still stood in the front room, glaring at each other. With a sudden shock, I realized that one thing Gran had said was true. Andrew Snow did look something like Rew, with his red hair and his pale face.

  I looked back upstairs, at the closed door of Gran’s room. And I knew that Gran had told me the truth all along. She had always said she was a good liar. Only until that night, I’d never known just how good a lie she could tell. Just how good a liar she was.

  The three of us spent the night in the living room. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke to the sound of a chair toppling. In the night, Andrew Snow had pushed it up against the door. Now he’d just jumped up from it. He stood beside the front window, peering out.

  I could hear an engine outside and got to my feet to look past him, out the window. Down the road, a police car was just turning at the end of the long, muddy drive that led up to our house. Andrew Snow jerked back at the sight of it, then looked wildly at me and Rew. Rew, who had fallen asleep beside me on the couch, was just lifting his head.

  “You have a cellar?” Andrew Snow demanded. “A basement?”

  I couldn’t help looking backward toward the kitchen, where the door to our rarely used basement was tucked between the table and the stove. That was all the answer Andrew Snow needed. He ran at us then, grabbing both me and Rew and dragging us toward the kitchen. Rew didn’t even have a second to get his bearings before Andrew Snow gave him a little shake.

  “Open it!” he said. “Now.”

  Rew wouldn’t. He tried to pull away, but, watching Andrew Snow’s face, I knew it would be better just to listen. So I did it. I didn’t want him pushing Rew.

  We hated going down to the cellar. It smelled of wet, and Rew thought there were rats down there. I was more familiar with it, though, since our washing machine was down there and I used it every week. I’d never seen a rat, but I did hate the bare pipes and the stinky old sofa Gran kept there, plus all the old clothes and other garbage that smelled of mothballs and damp.

  Still, I opened the door — and got a faceful of stale air before Andrew Snow hustled us down into the dark. In the cellar, the only light from outside filtered through a rusted old vent in the wall just over the couch.

  Andrew Snow saw it and pushed us that way. He looked around the room, and I wondered if he was searching for something to tie us with. But instead he whipped us around and pulled us down onto the smelly cushions with him, clamping a firm hand over both our mouths.

  Above us, through the vent, I could hear the police car pull up and the engine cut off. Doors slammed.

  “Just keep quiet, and we’ll all be fine,” Andrew Snow whispered. “No one’s going to bother us down here.”

  I could feel the stubble of his face against the side of my head. He still smelled of mud and sweat. I tried to pull away, but it was no use. Rew squirmed and tried to twist out of Andrew Snow’s grip, but he had us with those arms of his. I took a try at biting the hand over my mouth, but Andrew Snow didn’t even flinch. So I kicked him, and then Rew did, too.

  He grunted, and I felt satisfied for a minute, then scared, thinking he might kick back. Instead, he lifted his legs and wrapped them tight over ours, pressing our feet into the base of the couch. No matter how we wriggled and tried to pull at his arms, he didn’t budge.

  Upstairs, the policemen were ringing the doorbell.

  Gran won’t answer, I thought, and they’ll break down the door.

  Break it down! I thought.

  “You think no one’s home?” one of them said. Their voices came through the vent clearly.

  “This early?” another voice said. “No, ring it again. And knock.”

  The doorbell echoed through the house, followed by a loud banging.

  Break it, I pleaded silently.

  “We’d better call it in,” the first one said. “See if we ought to get in here.”

  “Try it again,” the other one answered. “It’s early yet.”

  Behind me, I could hear Andrew Snow’s harsh breathing.

  What would he do when they came for him? Would he try to run? Would they shoot him?

  I wanted to turn my head and look at Rew, see if he was thinking the same thing. Did he want them to shoot Andrew Snow? Did I?

  But I couldn’t turn my head. Andrew Snow held it too tight. His heart was beating twice as fast as it had the night before. Were they going to break the door down?

  Then we heard someone overhead. Gran. I could tell by the shuffling sound of her footsteps that she was wearing her slippers. And then she was at the door.

  “Yes?” we heard her say.

  The first policeman must have been consulting his notes, because it took a second for him to answer. “Miz Morgan?” he said. “Could you open up? We’d like to talk to you a minute.”

  We heard the door open. “Certainly, come on in,” Gran said. I tried to listen for the strain in her voice but realized with a start that she had her liar’s voice on. The same steady voice she used with Adele Parks on the good days.

  Tell them, I pleaded silently. Tell them to take him and just put him back. No shooting.

  But Gran didn’t say that. Instead, she said, “Would either of you like a drink or something?”

  “No, ma’am,” the first policeman said, and now that they were inside, I had to strain to hear them. “We’re just checking on all the houses in the area. I don’t know if you heard, but there was a prison break last night over at Enderfield.”

  Gran didn’t miss a beat. “Really? No, I don’t get the news much. No TV.”

  “Yes, well, we’re checking on all the neighbors, just to be sure they’re all right.”

  I heard the creak of the sofa overhead. Someone must have sat down. Maybe Gran.

  “Should I be worried?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am, we don’t think so.” It was the second policeman who answered. “In most of these cases, the ones who run want to get as far away as quick as they can. Most of them went up toward the bigger cities, and we’ve got a fugitive alert for them up there.”

  “Well,” Gran said, “that’s good to hear.”

  “Do you mind if we take a look around, ma’am? Just to go over things?”

  Gran didn’t answer right away, and I heard the sofa creak again.

  If I could have held my breath, I would have, but since Andrew Snow’s sweating hand was already nearly smothering me, I couldn’t afford to. Instead, I closed my eyes, to hear better. I wondered if Gran would give the least hint that they ought to look — that things weren’t okay.

  But she answered, “Oh, certainly. Please forgive the mess.”

  “Oh, no, Miz Morgan, we only meant outside. We’ll go around back and take a look.”

  “Oh, certainly,” she said again. “If you want to go through the house, the kitchen door’s that way.”

  They’d pass the cellar door if they went that way. Had Andrew Snow closed it? Rew must have been thinking the same thing, because he started trying to kick again. But the first policeman said, “That’s all right — we’ll go around the house. Thanks for your time, Miz Morgan. And just in case, make sure you keep your doors locked for the next few days. I tell you there’s nothing to worry about, but if you see anything to make you the least bit concerned, you give us a call at this number.”

  I thought for a minute how strange it was that the first time anyone ever told us to worry about locking our doors was when Andrew Snow had already gotten in and locked us in with him.

  We heard footsteps again overhead, and the front door close. Outside, the policemen’s voices grew clearer, near the vent.

  “Well,” the second one said, “three more houses, and then it’s a clean sweep. Every one of them up the highway. What a mess.”

  “Be glad you don’t work at the prison,” the other one said as they moved off.

  I felt sick. Between the taste of Andrew Snow’s sweaty hand against my mouth, the stink of the old couch, and the mothbally basement, I t
hought I might retch. But it must have been Andrew Snow’s lucky day, because I didn’t. Instead, I felt myself going greener and greener as the minutes ticked by. Rew kept squirming every once in a while, but I was too nauseous even to try moving. Finally, we heard the policemen again. They’d made their way back to their car. We listened as the doors creaked open and slammed shut, the engine revved to life, and they drove off, down our muddy front lane.

  The police car had been out of earshot for five full minutes before Andrew Snow let us go. All that time, sick and smothered by his hand, I kept thinking, Where is Gran? But she didn’t come looking. She didn’t even call out to us.

  Andrew Snow marched us upstairs and went straight to rebolt the front door. Then he put his chair against it again. Rew and I stood blinking in the light of the kitchen. Neither of us said a word. My head still felt funny, and my stomach worse. I sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and pressed my cold hands against my forehead, trying to right myself.

  Rew leaned over me, tugging a little at my arm.

  “You okay? Did he choke you too much?”

  I tried to shake my head, but it made my stomach lurch. So I said, “No, it’s just the stink of that old basement. I hate that couch.” I looked at him from the corners of my eyes and tried to smile, but I could see his relief quickly turning to fury again. He looked up, past me, into the living room.

  “She cares more about him than she does us,” he said.

  With an effort, I lifted my head and followed his gaze. Gran was sitting there, still, on the couch. But she hadn’t spoken to Andrew Snow. She looked frozen, staring out the window. As for Andrew Snow, he seemed to find his hands extremely interesting, because he didn’t raise his head once.

  My stomach was beginning to settle, and I took a deep breath. “Maybe she was afraid they’d shoot him or something,” I said quietly.

  But I could see Rew working himself up. His face had gone blotchy. Ever since he was little, Rew’s face would go red and white and his freckles would stand out when he got mad. He’d been white-faced when we’d come from downstairs. Now the red was coming out.