Fiendish Read Online Free PDF Page A

and then, a plant that had outgrown its pot, and now the roots were forcing their way between the cracks.
    “I knew things,” I said, trying to put a name to the dreams that weren’t dreams but more of a cross between visions and memories. “Sometimes I lived on old pictures, like looking through a photo album, and sometimes, it was more like I flew out into the real world and floated there. I saw things. I was part of the world, but not
in
it, if that makes sense.”
    Shiny’s face made it plain that it didn’t, but she nodded anyway, frowning to herself. Then she went back to work on my hair.
    I held as still as I could and looked around me. The bedroom was impossibly small and like a carpenter’s mistake, growing straight off the side of the main house.
    I winced, grabbing at the back of my neck to keep her from combing me bald. “I don’t remember this place.”
    Shiny shook her head. “
She
had it built a few years ago. When I finally just about lost my mind and told her that maybe wandering around at all hours was good enough for her, but I needed a bedroom. So, she went out and paid a bunch of the O’Radleys’ cousins two hundred and forty dollars to build me
this
.”
    The room was decorated with a little rug and had a window at the back, but I couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t a lot bigger than the closet I’d been buried in.
    “It doesn’t seem like much,” I said.
    Shiny let her hair fall over her face and looked away. “‘Not Much’ is kind of the name of every damn day around here. Things are—well, they’re not how you remember.”
    But in truth, it seemed that what I mostly remembered were only the recollections of a little girl, overjoyed by dragonflies and Fourth of July sparklers. Every other fact and feature was missing, covered up neatly by that clean white sheet.
    “Where does Myloria sleep?” I said finally, because it seemed better to say anything than to let Shiny keep sitting there with her hair in her eyes and her shoulders slumped. Better than to keep dwelling on all the things I’d lost and could not get back.
    “Are you kidding?” She started picking at my tangles again. “Myloria doesn’t sleep. All she does is wander around like a crazy person, vague as hell and scared of everything.”
    I considered the Myloria I’d known when I was little, tall and proud, full of flash. “She didn’t used to be.”
    Shiny shrugged and looked away. “And the dinosaurs didn’t used to be dead. Do you know that your hair is like trying to put a comb through wire? It’s breaking off the teeth.”
    She set the comb down, and then there was a strange tickling feeling at the back of my head. She was running the tips of her fingers over my hair, but the knots were so matted and thick I could barely feel it.
    When she spoke, her voice was smaller than before, and kind of lost. “It used to be so soft, like a bunny.”
    I reached for the dropped comb, touching the gaps where the teeth had snapped off. “Shiny, how long have I been gone, exactly?”
    She sighed and took her hand away. “You mean how long has it been since the Coalition for Purity flipped their shit and started burning out all the old families before Myloria or your mama or any of the church people could stop them?”
    I nodded, running my finger along the broken comb.
    “Pretty near ten years.”
    “Oh.”
    “I thought you were dead,” she said, keeping her chin down, fiddling with the corner of the crazy quilt.
    “I guess I should have been, right? A long time ago, I should have been.”
    Shiny nodded. The light shining between the boards of the room made thin golden lines on her face. “I thought you were dead, and at the same time, it was like you were this invisible friend I’d had. I believed so hard that you were real, while everyone else just forgot you were ever alive.”
    I reached into the pocket of my dress and held out the tattered trickbag that had been pinned inside the collar of my nightgown.