Near the Bone Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  THE GHOST TREE

  “A complex, interesting story that maintains suspense and intrigue page after page after page. . . . Scandalously entertaining.”

  —Sadie Hartmann, Cemetery Dance

  “Henry writes with a keen eye for detail, drawing readers into the disturbing world with pitch-perfect ’80s nostalgia and plenty of eerie atmospherics.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A vividly visceral visit to small-town horror.”

  —Booklist

  “Thrills, terrifies and sends chills up the reader’s spine from start to finish.”

  —Paperback Paris

  PRAISE FOR

  LOOKING GLASS

  “Mesmerizing. . . . These somber, occasionally disturbing novellas offer a mature take on the children’s story but balance the horrors of the City with hope.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fans will delight in discovering the unknown family backgrounds and future fate of Alice and her wild and bloody Hatcher.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  PRAISE FOR

  THE GIRL IN RED

  “An engrossing page-turner that will delight anyone who loves running through thought experiments about the apocalypse.”

  —Paste

  “With The Girl in Red, Christina Henry once again proves that retellings don’t necessarily lack originality.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  PRAISE FOR

  THE MERMAID

  “Beautifully written and daringly conceived, The Mermaid is a fabulous story. . . . Henry’s spare, muscular prose is a delight.”

  —Louisa Morgan, author of A Secret History of Witches

  “There is a current of longing that runs through The Mermaid: longing for the sea, for truth, for love. It is irresistible and will sweep you away.”

  —Ellen Herrick, author of The Sparrow Sisters

  “A captivating tale of an intriguing young woman who finds herself in the world of the greatest showman, P. T. Barnum. Original and magical, this is a novel to dive into and savor.”

  —Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of The Cottingley Secret

  PRAISE FOR

  LOST BOY

  “Christina Henry shakes the fairy dust off a legend; this Peter Pan will give you chills.”

  —Genevieve Valentine, author of Persona

  “Turns Neverland into a claustrophobic world where time is disturbingly nebulous and identity is chillingly manipulated. . . . A deeply impactful, imaginative and haunting story of loyalty, disillusionment and self-discovery.”

  —RT Book Reviews (top pick)

  “Henry keeps the story fresh and energetic with diabolical twists and turns to keep us guessing. Dynamic characterization and narration bring the story to life. . . . Once again, Henry takes readers on an adventure of epic and horrific proportions as she reinvents a childhood classic using our own fears and desires. Her smooth prose and firm writing hooked me up instantly and held me hostage to the very end.”

  —Smexy Books

  “An absolutely addicting read. . . . Psychological, gripping and entertaining, painting a picture of Peter Pan before we came to know him in the film: the darker side of his history. The writing is fabulous, the plot incredibly compelling and the characters entirely enthralling.”

  —Utopia State of Mind

  PRAISE FOR

  ALICE

  “I loved falling down the rabbit hole with this dark, gritty tale. A unique spin on a classic and one wild ride!”

  —Gena Showalter, New York Times bestselling author of The Darkest Promise

  “Alice takes the darker elements of Lewis Carroll’s original, amplifies Tim Burton’s cinematic reimagining of the story and adds a layer of grotesquery from [Henry’s] own alarmingly fecund imagination to produce a novel that reads like a Jacobean revenge drama crossed with a slasher movie.”

  —The Guardian (UK)

  “A psychotic journey through the bowels of magic and madness. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the ride.”

  —Brom, author of The Child Thief

  “A horrifying fantasy that will have you reexamining your love for this childhood favorite.”

  —RT Book Reviews (top pick)

  PRAISE FOR

  RED QUEEN

  “Henry takes the best elements from Carroll’s iconic world and mixes them with dark fantasy elements. . . . [Her] writing is so seamless you won’t be able to stop reading.”

  —Pop Culture Uncovered

  “Alice’s ongoing struggle is to distinguish reality from illusion, and Henry excels in mingling the two for the reader as well as her characters. The darkness in this book is that of fairy tales, owing more to Grimm’s matter-of-fact violence than to the underworld of the first book.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  TITLES BY CHRISTINA HENRY

  Near the Bone

  The Ghost Tree

  The Girl in Red

  The Mermaid

  Lost Boy

  THE CHRONICLES OF ALICE

  Alice

  Red Queen

  Looking Glass

  (novellas)

  THE BLACK WINGS NOVELS

  Black Wings

  Black Night

  Black Howl

  Black Lament

  Black City

  Black Heart

  Black Spring

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Tina Raffaele

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Henry, Christina, 1974– author.

  Title: Near the bone / Christina Henry.

  Description: First Edition. | New York, NY: Berkley, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020032331 | ISBN 9780593199763 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593199770 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Horror fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3608.E568 N43 2021 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032331

  First Edition: April 2021

  Photo of mountain by Sophia Juliette / Stocksy

  Photo of house by Nambi Tang / Stocksy

  Cover design by Spencer Fuller / Faceout Studio

  Title page art: Ladakh Mountains © SIHASAKPRACHUM/Shutterstock.com; abstract grunge texture © Nejron Photo / Shutterstock.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Praise for Christina Henry

  Titles by Christina Henry

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

>   Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  There was a dead fox in her path.

  At first Mattie only saw it as a streak of scarlet across the fresh snowfall. Her initial thought was that some predator had gotten a rabbit from the traps she’d come to check.

  Then she saw the orange fur matted with blood, and the place where something sharp had torn through the fox’s middle. Viscera were strewn over the snow, the scent fresh and strong despite the cold air.

  There weren’t many creatures that would eat a fox—a bear would, of course, a bear would eat anything. Maybe a mountain lion, sometimes an eagle, but almost no creature would take the trouble of killing an animal and then not bother to eat it at all. None, as a matter of fact, except people, but there were no people at the top of the mountain except for Mattie and William.

  Mattie crouched down to get a better look at the animal, but she didn’t see any prints or claw marks that would give her a clue. She stood again, brushing the snow off her heavy wool skirt, and paused for a moment, irresolute.

  Perhaps she ought to go back and tell William about the fox straightaway. Then she decided she ought not to until she checked the traps. That was why he’d sent her down to the creek in the first place, and if she didn’t do as she was told then she would pay for it.

  Mattie stepped around the fox and paused again. There was a strange track in the snow beside the fox’s body. She couldn’t quite make sense of it.

  The track seemed to be from a bear, but if it was a bear then the animal was much larger than any bear Mattie had ever seen—maybe twice as big as the biggest grizzly in the area. The print appeared to be a rear paw—she could make out the curve of the heel and the five toe pads. But the claw marks at the front were much longer and deeper than usual. The size of the print made her think it must be the biggest bear in existence.

  Mattie glanced around the path, checking for more prints. The path she followed wasn’t a man-made one but a deer trail. The trail was flanked by the trunks of tall mountain pines and the remains of scrub from the summer. She found another print—another rear paw, and some distance away from the first. That was strange, too. It was like the bear was up walking on its hind legs like a person. They might do this for a few moments, especially to intimidate another creature, but not as a general practice.

  Mattie shook her head. This wasn’t anything she should worry about. She could practically hear William’s voice saying, “Get a move on, girl. It isn’t any of your concern. You’re always curious when there’s no cause to be.”

  Yes, she should check the traps before William had to come down and find out what was taking her so long.

  Mattie continued on, kicking up some of the powdery snow with her boots as she went. It wasn’t proper winter yet—summer was barely over, in fact—but they’d already had several days of snowfall and unusually cold days. William worried that they might not have enough food set by if the winter was especially harsh. There wouldn’t be very many animals about. They’d all be snug in their dens.

  That made Mattie wonder—what was a grizzly doing, leaving fresh meat behind like that? This time of the year most of them were getting ready to bed down for the winter. Those bears still active wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to put on a little extra winter fat. If the grizzly wanted to save the kill for later it would have cached the fox—though it was hardly worth caching what amounted to a mouthful.

  She had to stop worrying on it. William was waiting.

  They had three snares set apart in the brush by the creek. All three were full, which meant rabbit stew with carrots and potato. William would be pleased.

  Mattie put the rabbits in her canvas sack, carefully reset the snares and started back to the cabin. A few flakes of snow drifted down as she walked and she stuck her tongue out to catch one—

  (holding hands with Heather with our heads tipped toward the sky, catching as many snowflakes as we can, our eyelashes coated white)

  No. She was not to think of that, either. That was only a dream. William had told her many times that it was all something she’d made up in her head and he didn’t want to hear about that nonsense.

  She shouldn’t dwell on the dream or the strange bear print or the dead fox. She should hurry home with the rabbits, because her husband waited for her. He expected her to be a good wife.

  When she reached the dead fox again on the way back, Mattie carefully stepped around the corpse and the prints in the snow. William might want to come and see them later, but she wasn’t going to trouble herself about it anymore. She wasn’t going to think of how strange it was, because William told her what to think and she was sure he wouldn’t like her thinking on this.

  William was outside the cabin chopping wood when Mattie hurried into the clearing.

  The clearing was large enough to accommodate their two-room cabin, a storehouse for meat, an outhouse and a small garden in the summer. William had cleared away extra trees so that there was fifteen or so feet of open ground in front of the cabin before the forest. He said this was so nobody could sneak up to their home without him knowing.

  Her husband was a tall, powerfully built man—more than a foot taller than Mattie, with broad shoulders and large hands and feet. His hair was dark, streaked with gray, but his eyes were bluer than ice on a frozen creek bed. William’s back was to her but he immediately turned as if he’d sensed her presence when she stepped into the clearing, the heavy wood axe in his left hand.

  He said nothing as she approached, only waited with that expectant, impatient look that told her she’d made a mistake.

  “There was a dead fox,” she said by way of explanation. “But the traps were full.”

  Mattie thought the evidence of a good night’s supper would be enough to distract him, but she should have known better. “Why should the fox be any of your concern? I told you to check the snares and come straight back.”

  Mattie bit her lip. This was the trap. If she didn’t answer, he would be angry. If she tried to explain, he would be angry.

  “Well?”

  She should try, at least. Maybe he would understand this time.

  “Something killed the fox and left it there,” she said.

  His gaze sharpened. “A person? Someone in the woods?”

  “No, no,” she said quickly. She knew how careful he was about keeping the location of their home a secret, how upset he got if there was any sign of people nearby. “There was a track, like a bear track, but much bigger than any bear I’ve ever seen.”

  William’s jaw relaxed a fraction. He did seem relieved that she hadn’t found evidence of a person.

  That slight unclenching deceived her, though—she wasn’t braced when he dropped the axe in the snow and his fist flew out.

  Stars shot across her vision and she tasted blood on her tongue. Her bottom felt cold.

  You’re sitting in the snow. Get up before your skirt gets wet, she thought.

  “You know if you find anything unusual you’re supposed to come get me immediately.” William didn’t sound angry, but then he never did. There was never any yelling, any warning that the blow was about to fall.

  “I thought it would be better if I checked the traps first,” she said.

  She knew she ought to stand up, but if she stayed on the ground she was harder to reach.

  “That’s your trouble, Martha,” he
said, using her Christian name—always a bad sign. “It’s not your role to think.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

  He stared down at her, and she could tell he was deciding whether or not he’d punished her sufficiently for her transgression.

  “Take those rabbits inside and skin them,” he said. “When you’re finished you show me this dead fox.”

  “Yes,” she said, pushing out of the snow.

  Her stockings were wet just above the tops of her boots. It would be nice to change them when she went inside but William might come in with the firewood and find her doing something other than the task he assigned.

  Mattie hurried toward the door of the cabin, her shoulders hunched. She didn’t relax until she heard the whistle and thud of the axe again. That meant William wasn’t following her.

  She put her boots away and set about the task of skinning and dressing the rabbits for cooking later. Rabbits were small and not much work, and Mattie knew that William would expect her to finish quickly.

  Don’t make him angry again. Do your job as you’re supposed to.

  But her mind wandered away, as it often did, and she had to call it back so that William wouldn’t find her woolgathering. Her hands made quick work of the rabbits even as her thoughts drifted elsewhere, to that place they weren’t supposed to go.

  William came to the door of the cabin and called in. “Are you finished?”

  Mattie knew he didn’t want to remove his snow-coated boots only to put them on again. This was less about saving her the trouble of wiping up the water on the cabin floor and more about saving himself the effort of lacing and unlacing.

  “Just about,” she called back.

  “Don’t take too long,” he said, and shut the door again.

  In truth she was finished, but she wanted an extra minute or two to wash up and compose herself. She’d been thinking about the dream again, thinking that she heard a song playing (something about a dove, there are these big black things and the music is coming out of them, coming from a silver disc, but that seems silly. Something from a dream like William always says)