Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

screaming at night. The wicked man, the vicious man, cruel and horrible. The man who took everything I ever had from me.

I have dreaded this day, Momma, I prayed it would never come.

It’s him. The Preacher.

“What’s the matter?” says Tommy.

My hands and feet are numb. I feel invisible ants crawl over my body. I’m dizzy. It’s that day all over again, the one from my dream. Only this time I’m captured and Gruff has run off and I have no one and I’m alone in the world. I’m alone and it’s my fault.

“You look like you’re sick,” says Tommy. “You gonna puke in here?”

I hold my finger up to my lips and Tommy gets it now. He gets that I’m scared. I sneak out lightly, hoping my bare feet and the rain will keep me from being heard. The Preacher’s off talking to the blond-headed man who caught me, so now is my chance. My heart knows that I am in great danger and I have to hurry.

I only make it about ten steps before he stops me cold. It’s his voice, rich and full and deep, like your bones hear it even before your ears do.

“What do we have here?”

I’m afraid to turn around. I’m afraid to look into his face. His fingers graze my hair and I shiver all over.

“You look just like your mother.”

I can’t let him know how much I love to hear that. I can’t let the Preacher know how proud that makes me in my heart.

“My momma’s dead,” I say. “She was a baker over in Rawlingsville. You got to be mistaken.”

I don’t dare look up at him. I can’t look past my feet. I let my hair dangle over my eyes so he can’t tell I’m crying.

“I knew it was you,” says the Preacher. “The second that little boy said there was a girl in the woods with them I knew it had to be you. I knew it had to be her daughter.” I glance up at him real fast and I catch his eyes. A smile slides like a snake across his face. “I knew it had to be her daughter causing all this horror. Nobody but one of hers could stir up so much fear and devilment.”

I try to talk high and unscared. I try to sound as little-girly as I can.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.”

But I know he can hear it. I know he knows how scared I am.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” says the Preacher.

“I remember you plenty,” I say, my voice gone fierce. “You burned Momma. You’re the Preacher.”

The blond-headed man grabs at me, but he slips in the mud. I hop on his back and pull the knife out of his belt scabbard. I wave it out in front of me like I know what to do with it.

“Don’t you lay a finger on me,” I growl in my best Gruff voice, “lest you plan on losing it.”

The Preacher laughs. He snatches at me and I swing at his hands and miss and he’s giggling he’s so happy.

“No, I don’t think you do remember me. Not quite. But I remember you, Goldeline,” he says.

How does the Preacher know my name?

Lightning cracks up above us and the animals scatter to the deeper parts of the trees. The rain falls in giant strings straight from heaven and the lightning rips the sky like angel veins. The Preacher lunges at me and my back is to the carriage and I don’t know what to do. But then I remember Tommy, and I open the carriage door and yank him out into the mud. I pull him up by his hair and hold the knife to his throat.

“Take one step closer to me,” I growl, “and I’m opening this kid up.”

The Preacher may be wicked, but he’s still a preacher. Tommy’s just a kid, an innocent, a victim, and it doesn’t do for the Preacher to spill his blood in front of all these people just to capture me. I know he won’t let that happen. The Preacher folds his arms and smiles at me, his hair gone wet and limp and clinging to him where he looks like some rain-soaked death just crawled up out from the river. The huge man takes a step toward me and I needle Tommy’s neck with the knife.

Tommy screams and I whisper Sorry in his ear so quiet not even a bird could hear it.

“Now don’t you come after me,” I say. “Don’t you take one step toward us.”

I know I’m backing the wrong way from the road. I’m not going toward camp. The camp is ruined, Gruff is gone, all his boys are gone or scattered. I can’t go back there. It doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s dead and gone as Momma.

“Follow her,” says the Preacher.

The blond-haired guy and the huge man look back and forth at each other for a moment, but neither of them moves.

“But, Preacher,” says the huge man, “she’s going into them other woods. You know what they say about that place.”

They’re scared, I can tell. They’ve heard the same stories I have.

“Follow her,” growls the Preacher, but he doesn’t move either. I can see it all over his face. Even the Preacher is afraid to come after us. And he darn well should be.

Because we’re going into the unknown parts of the forest, what I don’t have any map for, all the parts where Gruff said never to go because there was people there, people who were worse than us, people who didn’t even know the law we were fighting against. I’m dragging Tommy into the wildest woods, where the strange people are, men with splinters for teeth and women with three eyes, where all the ghosts walk around with skin on and wait to lay hands on you. Where haints wander, the spirits of bandits who never quit walking even after they died. I’ve heard so many stories. These are not the