Break The Bodies, Haunt The Bones: A Novel

Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Part I

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Part II

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

Part III

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

Acknowledgments

Read More from John Joseph Adams Books

About the Author

Connect with HMH

First Mariner Books edition 2020

Copyright © 2019 by Micah Dean Hicks

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hicks, Micah Dean, author.

Title: Break the bodies, haunt the bones / Micah Dean Hicks.

Description: Boston : John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2018032618 (print) | LCCN 2018032768 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328566775 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328566454 (hardback) | ISBN 9780358133636 (paperback)

Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Contemporary. | FICTION / Fantasy /

General. | FICTION / Science Fiction / General. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3608.I2825 (ebook) | LCC PS3608.I2825 B74 2019 (print)

| DDC 813/.6—DC23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032618

Title lettering © Chris Thornley

Cover illustration © Raid71

Author photograph © Scot Lerner

v2.0120

For Brenda

Part I

Swine Hill was full of the dead. Their ghosts were thickest near the abandoned downtown, where so many of the town’s hopes had died generation by generation. They lingered in the places that mattered to them, and people avoided those streets, locked those doors, stopped going in those rooms. But you might encounter a ghost unexpectedly—in the high school where Jane had graduated two years ago, curled into the hollow of a tree, hands out and pleading on the side of the road. They could hurt you. Worse, they could change you.

The haunted downtown of Swine Hill had been slowly expanding for years, stretching its long fingers into empty neighborhoods where grass fissured the roads and roofs collapsed into rooms of broken furniture and shattered glass. For the people who’d lived and died on those streets, it was anguish to see the vine-choked houses, to know their descendants had run away from all they’d worked for. Their spirits, most present in the stillness of night, raged in the empty places. Even if she was late for work, Jane knew to drive around those neighborhoods.

It was easy to feel alone. There were more dead than living in Swine Hill. Jane’s aunts and uncles had gone out of state after the collapse of the tire factory and the lumber mill. The town jealously cleaved to the pork-processing plant that had chewed up its sons for generations, hoping that in the end, it would be enough. Most people Jane’s age had already gone, scraping up enough money to start over somewhere else. The only ones left were those so poor that they couldn’t make it out, or so haunted they couldn’t see a world outside their ghosts, or just clinging to a past they couldn’t bear to leave behind. But Jane wasn’t alone. Her ghost flashed bright and quick through her mind.

Her car’s engine coughed as she turned the key, something sputtering under the hood like a laugh, and finally groaned to life. It accelerated slowly, heavy with the weight of spirits. The speedometer and gas gauge waved their orange arms erratically. Her windshield wipers often turned on without warning, and sometimes her horn would scream out of nowhere. She was happy the CD player still worked at all, though sometimes a ghost would settle into the discs, craving the bright sound of music, and then the stereo would play only noise.

Jane flipped open a case of burned CDs and put in one after another until she found one that played, throwing the dead ones onto a pile in her back seat. Music crashed out of the tinny speakers: sticky electronic pop, the lyrics full of secrets, gossip, and drama. The cold weight of her ghost swelled inside her, thrilling in the sound.

Though Jane didn’t know the ghost girl’s name, it had been a part of her ever since she was a child. It was nosy, listening in on other people’s thoughts and telling Jane what they were thinking and feeling. If the ghost didn’t have anyone else to listen to, it would burrow deep into Jane’s mind, unearthing her regrets and fears and making her fixate on them for hours. If it felt unappreciated, it might lie to her, withhold what it knew, or tell her the most vicious things people thought about her. But Jane had learned to manage it over the years, using music to placate it. The ghost had been her first friend, and now that she was still in Swine Hill after her classmates and family had gone away, Jane wondered if the ghost would be her last friend, too.

Something like fog rose as the sun slipped behind the trees. A chain of spirits so wispy and immaterial as to be little more than air, a mass of faces and trudging feet bleeding in and out of one another, drifted up the road to the Pig City meatpacking plant. These ghosts weren’t dangerous. They had somewhere to go, a purpose still. The plant that had employed them all their lives was older than the town, the only reason that Swine Hill hadn’t crumbled back into the earth. The ghosts were the unofficial night shift, still swirling through its rusted doors, crowding its blood-splattered hallways to do their phantom work.

Jane plowed through them like snow, their distorted faces stretching over the windshield. She turned into the grocery store’s cratered parking lot, the sodium lights casting deep shadows at the building’s edges, the storefront murky yellow and cluttered with signs.

Near the front of the store, the specter of a man slowly spun up from the asphalt and took on substance. He lay on the ground, holding his stomach and bleeding, a phantom box of strawberries broken open on the ground beside him. Decades ago, a police officer shot him while he was leaving the store. The cop had been called about another customer, someone yelling at the cashiers. It was a mix-up. A mistake, but one that had happened and would happen again. The ghost looked at every person who entered or left the store, his face a mask of pain and surprise, and mouthed, Why?

Jane, her shoulders tense, tried not to look at him, and jogged through the doors.

There weren’t any cashiers at the front. A flood of customers milled around, waiting for someone to check them out. Jane went straight to her register—just stuffed her bag under the counter instead of taking it to the back—already apologizing as she scanned the first customer’s items.

She felt her ghost move away from her, felt it filter in and out of the minds of the customers, bringing her the avalanche of their thoughts. Everyone who looked up and saw her immediately thought, Black. Whatever else they thought about her, this always came first. Her ghost spoke their minds into Jane’s ear: Probably late. They always are. Lazy. People like her. Must have overslept. Kept us waiting. Why doesn’t someone fire her? I’m going to speak to the manager. Too dark. Such a shame. Might have been pretty otherwise.

The ghost knew that Jane didn’t want to hear all this, but it couldn’t help itself, because its whole tie to the living world was bound up in its hunger for secrets and pain.

Sorry about your wait, Jane said. Have a nice day.

Her register’s phone rang. Jane held it with her neck while punching in produce codes, looking up to see her balding, squint-eyed manager staring at her from his glass-encased office. He was terrified of ghosts and wouldn’t go near Jane or anyone who was possessed. Even when the store was busy, he stayed in his booth, interacting with customers as little as possible. Jane’s ghost had told her that he worried he might already be haunted. He spent hours looking in his mirror, searching his pupils for a flicker of ghost-light. Jane had told him that he was clean, but he didn’t believe her.

One cashier never showed up, and the other called in sick, he said. Kathryn left early. I was alone for a while. Don’t put me in that position again.

Jane wanted to protest that it wasn’t her fault, but the man’s voice was so weak. Her ghost told her how afraid he was, how fixated on the thinness of the glass in the booth. Yes, sir, she said. I’m sorry.

Many shoppers wore stained Pig City coveralls, plant workers picking up hamburger meat and pasta on their way home. Most were old, with silver hair like spun metal under the harsh lights, limbs bruised, eyes half closed in exhaustion. Those few still in their twenties or thirties looked much older, weathered by long days at the plant and too little sleep at home. Jane’s ghost told her what they were feeling: lonely, tired, a slow-burning frustration like a long fuse leading to an explosion still a few decades away. Defeated down to their bones, they would have gone somewhere else, anywhere else, if only they had the money, if only they weren’t eaten up with ghosts and their ghostly needs, if only they didn’t fear that the rest of the world was just like Swine Hill.

Her ghost passed along splinters of worry: crumbling houses, dying marriages, resentful children. Jane asked about their problems, and they answered, grateful to have someone listen. No one questioned how she knew. They had grown used to strangeness, were grateful for the kind that didn’t bite.

The last customer put down four cartons of eggs, a canister of protein powder, and an armload of vitamins. Her ghost told Jane that the young woman was thinking about running down a basketball court, her body thrown forward like a spear, the faces of people in the stands ripping by like confetti. Jane knew it was Bethany before she looked up.

Jane had played basketball all through school. Their team wasn’t the best in the region, but they had a good time playing. That was until Bethany Ortiz came. She was two years younger than Jane, and she’d spent her entire life training, doing drills, lifting weights, and playing every sport from tennis to swimming. She’d begged to play football with the boys, but the principal wouldn’t allow it. As Bethany burned through the trophy cases at the school, she picked up the ghost of every failed athlete who’d wanted to be the best. Now she boiled with them. Even Jane’s ghost couldn’t tell her how many spirits moved under Bethany’s skin.

If there was a game, Bethany played it, and no one could beat her. It was exciting, at first, to win game after game. But soon Jane and the rest of the team realized no one needed them, that they weren’t the ones winning games at all: Bethany was. They, like the rest of the world, were just there to watch.

Bethany looked hard, like a Greek goddess cut from marble or an android that had been built to humiliate humankind, some woman-shaped machine whose skin stretched over steel. Jane’s brother, Henry, was the closest thing Bethany had to a friend. The two of them didn’t have a lot in common, but they were both prodigies in their own ways. Whereas Jane was stuck in Swine Hill with little real hope of leaving, everyone thought that it was only a matter of time before Bethany would burn off across the horizon like a rocket and leave the town far behind.

Hey, Jane said. Good luck with the game tomorrow.

Thanks. Is your brother okay? I haven’t seen him at school all semester.

The ghost pushed past Bethany’s concern and dug deeper, looking for some secret desire or hidden cruelty. Jane flinched, not liking it when the ghost pulled the worst out of people, but she didn’t think the ghost would find much. Every night, Bethany went to bed knowing that she was the best at whatever she’d done that day. Her sleep must be easy.

But there was something. Deep below Bethany’s obsession with times and weights and records, she was angry. She didn’t like that entire sports were off-limits to her and always would be. She didn’t like how people frowned at her when she shouted after sinking a basket or crossing a finish line. Even her parents, loving as they were, wanted her to be more humble and meek, less brash. And if Bethany went on to play professional sports, women didn’t get the kind of money and fame men did. No matter how dominant she was, people would always assume that somewhere there was a man who was better, and she’d never even get the chance to prove them wrong. Bethany resented the entire world. But deeper still, at the core of her, Bethany was afraid that the army of ghosts inside of her would never let her leave Swine Hill.

Jane’s ghost was pleased, fattening itself on Bethany’s secret fear.

Henry’s working on some big project, Jane said. He’s been going to the plant every day for months.

Bethany nodded, used to Henry disappearing. You should come to the game, she said. Almost no one does. You remember.

I have to work during the day tomorrow, Jane said. When her ghost told her how disappointed Bethany felt, she added, But maybe I can head over after and catch the end of it.

Yeah, sure.

As soon as Bethany left and the front was empty, Jane’s manager called again.

A gallon of milk burst in Dairy, he said. Grab a mop, clean it up. He paced inside the small office. Her ghost told her that he had to pee, that he’d been holding it for an hour. He would stand, legs shaking, until he risked darting out to the bathroom or until he pissed himself. Her ghost loved it when that happened, stretched out his self-loathing like a hammock and lay in it.

Jane was halfway through mopping up the milk when the manager called for a cashier over the intercom. She finished, pushed the mop bucket against an endcap, and sprinted back to the front. Her shift went this way for hours, the manager sending her all over the store, calling her back, demanding that she be in three places at once.

As soon as the store seemed empty, Jane buzzed her manager on the phone. I need a break.

Make it quick.

She laid her apron over the register and went to the break room. She kept a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly in the fridge. With things always going out on her car, she had to save money. She made and ate a sandwich, then made another, wrapped it in a paper towel, and carried it to the back of the store.

She pushed through double doors into a dim storage area, the floor wet from a problem with the air conditioning unit, then out through the back door by the loading dock. Here, under the blinking snap of a streetlight, were a pair of dumpsters, a metal folding chair, and a stray tire rim overflowing with cigarette butts. Bottle glass shimmered over the tar and asphalt, and strips of trash in washed-out blues and reds blew over the lot.

Dad? Jane called.

Her ghost couldn’t tell if her father was near. It couldn’t read his mind, didn’t know if he had much of a mind left. He had left their house when Jane was ten. She saw him around town about once a week, hunched under an old sweatshirt, quick and furtive. He didn’t speak, didn’t meet her eyes, ran if she tried to touch him. She tried to make sure that he had clothes and stayed fed. He was the only person she knew who could walk the abandoned city center without being devoured by ghosts. He had disappeared so deep inside himself that the spirits didn’t even know he was there.

Jane had reasons for staying in Swine Hill. One was money. Saving enough to move to a new city and find a place to live, to be stable while she hunted for a job, was almost impossible when she needed new tires or when tooth pain drove her to the dentist or when something broke in the house and her mother needed help paying for it.

Another reason she stayed was that she was afraid she would lose her ghost. The ghosts were tied to what reminded them of their lives. If she left Swine Hill, her ghost might not be able to follow. Most people didn’t like their ghosts and were glad to have them gone, but not Jane. She’d had hers for so long, she couldn’t imagine who she would be without it.

But the biggest reason she stayed, more than all the others, was that she was afraid something would happen to Henry and her father if she wasn’t there.

Jane waited for ten minutes. Finally, she laid the sandwich on the chair and went back inside, hoping that her father was okay.

While it was slow, Jane thought about texting old friends who’d moved away, just to see how they were doing. But having to answer the same question, to say that she was still here, still working the same register, made her slip the phone back into her pocket.

Her ghost swam in Jane’s chest and said, He hurts, he’s sorry, he’s alone.

The sliding glass doors whitened with frost so suddenly that Jane could hear them sheet with ice. A wave of cold moved into the store. It was the kind of dry, deep cold that hurt all on its own, without need for wind.

The ice on the doors broke apart as they gasped open, and someone walked into the store—a stocky guy in a white hazmat suit, a breathing mask hanging around his neck. He was young, with an innocent, sad face. He kept his eyes down and swept past her, going to the deli. The column of cold moved with him. When he was out of sight, blood and warmth came back into her hands.

Jane knew him. Or she used to. Riley Mason. He’d left school in the tenth grade, and Jane hadn’t seen him in years. She asked her ghost what was wrong.

The ghost of his little brother is in him. It’s so angry. It says that it barely got to live at all.

Jane grabbed an old sweater from beneath her register and pulled it on, the sleeves falling to swallow her hands. Soon, the cold moved over her again. There was a faint sound, too, a high-pitched ringing. A smell like gunpowder.

Riley walked to the front, holding an armload of deli sandwiches and sodas. He met Jane’s eyes, recognized her, and looked around to see if there was a different cashier. He remembered sitting in math class with her, his embarrassment when she had to explain a problem to him and he still didn’t understand. He was ashamed that he hadn’t finished school, that she might think less of him. It was such a strange feeling, so unusual for someone to think that Jane was better than them, that she wanted to reach out and touch him, to tell him that everything was okay.

He put everything down, and sores of ice opened on the rubber conveyor belt where his fingers touched.

He’s worried you’ll ask about the cold.

Jane rang him up, rubbing her sleeve hard on the glass scanner to brush away the ice. I haven’t seen you in forever. Did you move away or something?

He gave a weak smile. He thought she was pretty, was afraid to look at her, glanced toward the door instead. No, I’ve always been here. His voice broke, like he wasn’t used to talking to people. Except for work, I just don’t go out much.

You left school at a good time. It was all downhill after Algebra Two.

I’m surprised you’re still here.

Yeah, Jane said. For now. What about you? What’s with the suit?

My dad got me a job at Pig City a few years ago. Night shift. We clean the place once everyone goes home. Spray everything down to sterilize it. That’s why I left school.

No, no it’s not. He left because something happened.

Jane started to ask about his family, but her ghost said, No.

She tried to think of something else to say, not wanting the conversation to end. Working nights, you probably see more ghosts than people.

It’s nice. I like the quiet.

Gratitude that she would talk to him at all, a warm, sweet feeling, bloomed in the boy.

A truck honked in the parking lot. Riley fumbled with his wallet, then handed her his debit card, sharp and cold.

Jane held on to it, not swiping the card right away. She wanted to ask, What the hell happened to you? But that would only scare him off. You going to the game tomorrow?

He looked at her like he didn’t understand.

High school girls’ basketball game. Bethany Ortiz is playing, so no surprise about who’s going to win. You should come, though. Before work.

Her ghost relayed a stream of feelings: surprise, confusion, caution, gratitude. Okay, he said. Maybe.

The truck honked again from the parking lot, three angry blasts.

I should go before I’m late, he said.

Sorry. Jane swiped his card and handed it back. She hugged her sides. It was so cold being close to him. Her breath poured out in a ribbon of white. She wondered what his skin felt like.

Riley angled his body toward the door, sacked groceries in hand, but he didn’t leave. You were really smart in school. I was sure you would have gone off to college somewhere.

Jane started to answer, but her ghost said, Wait. She stared at him, silent, letting a quiet pressure build between them. She wanted to defend herself, to tell him that leaving cost money, that people needed her here, that nothing was wrong with staying. She wanted to turn the question back on him, ask what the town possibly had to offer him.

I’m glad, I mean. That you’re still here.

Oh. She silently thanked her ghost.

The door opened, and an older man in the same white hazmat suit and mask walked in. His eyes flickered across Jane and she felt a blast of contempt. He held his arms out to Riley. We’re late, kid. What’s going on?

It’s my fault, Jane said. I run my mouth sometimes.

The man had a salt-and-pepper beard, long hair, stony eyes. He looked at Jane and dismissed her in an instant. It was unimaginable to him that his son might want to talk to her.

The man put an arm on Riley’s shoulder, and his son tensed. Say bye to your friend, Trigger.

Trigger?

Her ghost filled her ear: Don’t ask about that. If you do, he might not talk to you anymore.

Jane tore the receipt off, but before she handed it back, she wrote her phone number on the back of it, shielded behind the register where his father couldn’t see. She pressed it into Riley’s hand, getting a shock of cold when her fingers met his, like touching frozen glass.

The two men went out the door in their bulky suits, looking more like astronauts than Pig City workers, like they were headed up to rake the dead white surface of the moon. Trigger held the receipt deep in his palm, thinking of her hand.

He and his father don’t like each other.

Even I could tell that, Jane said.

Riley had left a pile of dead leaves on the floor behind him. Jane reached down and picked one up, the point beaded with blood, its veined body crucified by lines of frost.

He’s not bleeding, her ghost said. The leaves are just part of his ghost. They’ll fade away soon.

Jane held the leaf in her hands, watching as it turned glassy and light, until it was gone and the cold with it.

You gave him your number.

He seems like he needs a friend. Jane often spoke out loud when she talked to her ghost. It was the only way to keep the ghost girl from talking over her, breaking up her train of thought, running her in circles.

Maybe you’re the one who needs a friend.

Jane felt a flush of embarrassment, unable to hide anything from the ghost, and it howled around her body in an exulting, invisible wind.

A few minutes until closing time, the manager turned off half the lights, leaving the store dim. Jane leaned back against her counter, palms behind her, staring at the clock.

The door sighed open again. With no warning from her ghost, a giant ducked its head and squeezed through the doors. He wore denim coveralls, oversized black boots, and a blue Pig City cap. But he wasn’t a person. His swollen arms, thicker than Jane’s waist, strained the fabric of his sleeves. Thick gray hair shot from under his cuffs and up from his collar. His hands, resting on the small bar of a grocery cart, had four thick fingers, their nails flinty black. He glanced at her with an inhuman face.

The creature had the head of a pig. Tusks protruded slightly from the sides of his mouth. His eyes were small and sunken, snout wet. Tall triangular ears stood up on either side of his head. His face was a puzzle of scars, like he’d been pieced together rather than born, the seams still showing.

Jane squeezed the lip of her counter, waiting for the spirit to do what it would do. It was so solid, seemed so real. There would be no getting away from it. She hoped it hadn’t come to haunt her.

Her ghost rose in her, sensing her terror. What’s wrong, Jane? It’s only a man.

The hulking pig man pushed his cart toward the meat department.

It can’t just be a man, Jane said softly. What does he want?

Him? Her ghost swirled thoughtfully. Nothing. He’s thinking about work. Thinking about pigs.

"He is a pig," Jane whispered, afraid the man would hear.

Being as close as they were to the haunted downtown, Jane had seen plenty of strange things walk through the door. People so weighed down with ghosts that they could barely speak, bent double over their carts, flinching from sound or light. But a pig—a walking, grocery-shopping, plant-working pig—this was new.

Jane walked down the aisle toward the meat section, letting her ghost get close enough to listen in on the pig man’s thoughts. Is he angry? Is he here for a reason?

He’s just thinking about meat. Prices. Nothing at all.

Jane could feel the spirit’s irritation. There was nothing worse to her ghost than someone calm, in the moment, without a gnawing secret or worry. The pig might as well be a newborn, his flighty thoughts catching on the noise of his cart or the flicker of the lights above. The pig man’s cart creaked closer, and Jane went back to her register.

Her manager waited, a key in his hand. He dropped it onto her counter and backed away, thinking of the pig, but thinking too of Jane’s ghost, of any ghosts that might already be invisibly closing in.

I need to get home, he said. You can lock up tonight.

He fled the store, leaving Jane alone with whatever the pig man was.

He thinks it’s a ghost. He’s afraid it came into the store just for him.

Jane picked up her phone and pressed the intercom button, announcing that the store would close soon. She was pretty sure the pig man was the only one left.

Here he comes. Thinking about sausage, of