The Creeping (29 page)

His stare drops to the floor. “But only a night into their journey, while they're still navigating the rivers that lead to the sea, they're awakened by whimpering. There, strung up from the mast, is a boy of ten, his hands and feet bloody stumps where all the fingers and toes have been removed, and a Norse man, someone who everyone knew and trusted, is crouched under him, eating the boy's appendages.”

For a second I think I see my breath fog the space in front of me, until I remember that it's June and we're inside. “You see, the Norse were certain that something unnatural was preying on their children. First a magic that didn't exist, and next a beast that wasn't real. They slaughtered an entire tribe. They fled the New World. But all along,
it was one man.” He rolls his neck, making it crackle. “When Berry and I arrived at the Talcotts' that day, you were sitting apart from everyone, staring into the trees. You were so little, and we put you in the back of our car to wait for your parents to arrive. We weren't supposed to ask you anything until they got there, but you looked up at me and started in on chanting that one sentence over and over again.”

There's a bloodlessness to his pale skin. “Stella, I didn't sleep for a week. I know what it is to be terrified by the unknown. You were so little and what you were saying . . .” He hooks his finger in his collar and tugs. “It was my first year here and as a cop. If I hadn't remembered this story, I doubt I'd have stayed on the force . . . or in Savage. It helped me remember that all evil is
human
evil.” He raises an index finger. “There were no monsters or magic, only
one
psychopath, in the story. And there are no monsters, only one bad man who hurt Jeanie.” He straightens up, a steely cop look hardening his features, shadows pooling under his brow.

I cross my arms, my spine stiff. Yeah, it was a grisly story. Yes, I see the parallels he's drawing. But I still want to slap the expression of resolve from his face. “So what?” I ask dubiously. “You thought you'd tell me one story about a sicko who tortured kids and it would change my mind about Jeanie's dad?” A messy half laugh, half sob squeezes out. “Spare me, Shane. You know me better than that.”

He inclines his head slowly, methodically withdrawing the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, whacking its bottom on his palm, and sliding one slender smoke out to tuck behind his ear. All the while he keeps his narrow-set gray eyes locked on mine. I don't blink.

Finally, he says, quietly but firmly, “I'm going to investigate what you told me. But the rest of it is resolved. I know that it's hard to accept after years of not knowing, but you don't get to ignore the truth because you don't like it.” He gives me a look to communicate that he thinks I'm being a willful child. “Mr. Talcott is a bad man, and he hurt his family. You were lucky that he didn't hurt you. What happened to Jeanie doesn't have anything to do with kids who went missing almost a hundred years ago. The bone found was a relic from the park, probably of Chippewa origin. And the rash of animal disappearances is unrelated. Those are separate, and I'll get to the bottom of them.”

I throw my hands up in exasperation, opening my mouth to argue, tongue tingling to howl and fight. His sensible explanations are wrong. He snaps his radio off his belt and speaks into it. His words swim in my head. “Let the judge know that Kent Talcott is ready for sentencing . . . . Bring Zoey Walsh . . . . Yeah, the spirited girl throwing a fit out there . . . No, don't cuff her . . . . Thanks.”

He returns the radio to his belt. “You and Zoey are going to leave out the back door to avoid the press. I'm going to figure out a way to smooth over what you said about remembering. I'll call your father, and we'll figure out a way to spin it so it's forgotten.”

He waits for a response that never comes.

He tries to pat me on the back as he rises, but I push his hand away. “You're going to enjoy the rest of your summer and your last year of high school. You are going to move on from all this. Do you understand, Stella? It's over.” His fist pounds his palm, like if he asserts it with enough force he can make it so.

The room revolves slowly. Everything is muddled. Jeanie's dad confessed. Daniel believes he did it. Jeanie's case is closed. Shane doesn't believe me. But I know.
I know
there's something just under the surface of all this, watching me with alligator eyes, hungry for little girls, leering through the water's skin, but I can't find
it
because my reflection keeps getting in the way.

Zoey gets to the office, and Shane fills her in. Her face is unreadable, even to me; I'm too bogged down in my own head. She takes my hand and leads me through the door, down a dimly lit hallway. Before we turn a corner, I call back to Shane, “Ask Jeanie's dad where he learned to French braid.”

It's probably my imagination, but I think I hear him swear.

B
ack in Zoey's car, we don't talk for a long time. She sends a few texts on her phone and holds up a response from Michaela for me to read.

Meet @ S's in 30 w/backup.

Zoey steers toward my house. The unmarked cop cars are gone by the time we arrive, my bodyguards dismissed because according to the police, the killer has been caught. Moscow greets us, meowing as an angry sentinel at the front door, and Zoey delivers us both to the couch. She bumps around the kitchen for a minute, returning with a pint of Ben & Jerry's and two spoons.

I shovel up a bite with a large chunk of chocolate, but even that doesn't banish the sinking sensation in my stomach.

After a while Zoey lisps with a slightly numb tongue, “I made you choose because I knew you loved each other. We were only ten,
and his whole face would explode with light when he looked at you. I knew you loved him back. And that I'd be the third wheel. It wasn't about being popular.” She spoons up a giant red cherry and chomps down on it. “I thought you'd get over him. There are so many hotter guys. But it was like we were living freshman homecoming on an endless loop.” She shrugs, licking her spoon.

“What do you mean?”

“Sam and that corsage. You sent him away, everyone laughed, and you looked like a puppy run over by a car the whole night. That's what it was like every time you rejected him. It was painful to watch. And out of all the guys you've messed around with or flirted with or gone out with, you haven't wanted any half as much as you wanted Sam when you were ten. I may be mean, but I'm not stupid or blind. Apparently you were.” She stares at me, her eyes growing wet. “I'm sorry. I should have told you, but I figured you knew.”

“No, I didn't,” I say. “It wasn't your fault. You're right.
I chose.
Over and over again.” It's true. I was stupid. I was embarrassed by how Sam acted like every little thing we'd shared as kids was so important. I didn't see that that's what makes Sam important. He understands that things matter. “I didn't think you remembered the corsage.”

“I'm not the one with amnesia,” Zoey deadpans. She looks down at her hands. “I think about it a lot.” She doesn't sound remorseful exactly, just thoughtful.

I want to ask if what she did to the trio of junior girls from the dance—systemically taking their boyfriends and relegating them to the lower castes at school—was her version of reaping revenge on my
behalf. Yes, popularity is a zero-sum game to Zoey. Yes, bringing down girls who claim it for themselves makes her glow like she has radiation poisoning. But she has a code of honor and rarely goes after other girls' boyfriends—that's for leeches and barnacles, as she would say. Those girls we were so eager to impress were served particularly cruel social executions by Zoey. And if we hadn't been with them at the dance, she would have done little more than rolled her eyes at Sam and we would have had no audience to prove ourselves in front of. I don't ask, though; she would have told me if she wanted me to know.

Zoey acts engrossed in shoveling through the pint, mining for cherries. “How was it? Messing around with a guy who isn't just drooling over your snowballs but who actually gives a shit?”

It makes me sad to hear how sad she sounds asking me. “I love you, Zo.”

“I love you, too, Queen of Loserdom.” She needles me in the side with her elbow. “So what are we gonna do?”

“I'm not giving up.” I launch into recounting my memories for her and an explanation of my time line and the pattern of animal disappearances. Zoey loves furry little creatures and predictably thinks whoever hurt them should die a fiery death.

“I'm going to dig up those heaps of dirt in Mrs. Griever's yard tonight. If I can prove they're buried animals, Shane will have to believe that something bigger is going on.”

Zoey salutes. “Aye, aye, Secret Agent Slut. I'm in, but let's not tell Michaela or Cole when they get here. I don't want them to know that we're
both
conspiracy junkies.”

“We have to talk to Caleb. He was there that summer and the cops already know about me investigating, and I'm sure my dad is about to find out. I don't have anything to lose.”

She jabs her spoon in the ice cream and leaves it standing erect. “When your man's teal abomination dropped me off yesterday, Caleb was showering.
Showering
.” She says it like it's the most preposterous thing in the world. “He never showers in the middle of the day. My mom was home from work and said she thought he was getting ready for a date. Call me paranoid, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't with Cole.” Her features pinch together. “He took Mom's car and I tailed him. I was going to catch them in the act.”

I'm pulling myself upright, feeling revived. “Where'd he go?”

“The butt crack of a library. I waited forty-five minutes in that gross parking lot with the windows up, practically suffocating on fumes just to make sure he wasn't trying to trick me or that he wasn't rendezvousing between the shelves with her.”

“What was he doing there?”

“Def not studying, since he screwed up and missed registration for summer classes,” she says, pleased and in an I-told-you-so kind of way.

“Do you think it had something to do with Jeanie? Like, was he researching past disappearances too?”

She flicks her wrist, unimpressed with the coincidence of Caleb at the library mere hours after we left. “Unlikely, 'cause you only knew about other girls since that hag told you, and no one told Caleb.”

“Right,” I say, but somehow I'm not convinced. Caleb was
worried about me hunting a killer. Could he also have been worried what would happen if he didn't do anything?  “He couldn't be digging up stuff without us knowing?”

“Like I said: He doesn't have the balls. Night-light until he was thirteen. It had freaking unicorns on it.” She flourishes her fingers at me. Zoey had the identical night-light.

A moment later there's a knock on the door. “It's about effing time,” Zoey warbles, bounding to answer it.

We spend the next few hours watching lousy reality TV on the couch. The four of us smashed side by side, sipping pink wine—the “backup” Michaela brought. Zoey does a masterful job of filling Michaela and Cole in. She tells them about Jane Doe's scalp and the finger bone found in her hand, about Sam helping me uncover other missing girls from the 1930s, and about Mr. Talcott's arrest and Daniel going on record against his father. She avoids mentioning Mrs. Griever, the animal sacrifices, and anything monster-tastic that makes us sound insane and would only drag Michaela and Cole down the rabbit hole with us. It isn't that I don't trust Michaela; I do. It's that Michaela wasn't here for Jeanie; it isn't her ancient history to survive. By the way Michaela's brow furrows as she listens, she's holding back questions. I'm grateful and guilty that she realizes there are details that Zoey doesn't want to reveal.

Michaela's chin nuzzles my shoulder when Zoey finishes, and Cole squeezes my hand like it's a stunned bird she's pumping life into. I worried I'd feel like a freak show with an audience, but instead it's as if I have more company onstage.

Finally the conversation moves to safer, mundane topics. I try to soak up the warmth of Cole's blush as Zoey says that Taylor's back on the market since I've passed; and Michaela's hiccupy giggle as she dubs pink wine the greatest invention in the universe; and Zoey's vigor as she stands on the coffee table to reenact the Ds' fight over her.

We're closing in on five in the evening when the girls slip on their flip-flops and trudge out to their cars. Zoey kisses me on the cheek and whispers in my ear that she'll return at eleven before joining Cole and Michaela, who are arguing about who is the most sober to drive. Zoey crosses her heart and yells, “I was only pretending to drink that pink swill so Michaela would pluck the stick from her ass and have fun.” Cole whines about leaving her car parked on my street as she climbs into Zoey's backseat. They all wave at me through the windshield as Zoey backs her SUV out of my driveway.

Back on the couch, I stare at the haze of colors on the TV screen, not really watching or following whatever junk is on. After the third time my eyelids droop closed, I stagger upstairs for a nap. With four hours until Sam is off and six until we go grave digging, I curl under my comforter. My head sinks into my pillow, my shoulder into the mattress.

“Stella, are you okay?” Sam whispers close to my ear.

“Mm-hmm,” I murmur.

“Your front door was open,” he says.

I sit bolt upright, throwing Moscow from the crook of my arm. He growls as he pads off the bed. Sam's profile is outlined perfectly
against the brightly lit hallway, but everything else is dark. “What? It's unlocked?”

“Yes, and wide open.”

“Dad isn't here?” I throw my legs over the side of the bed, knees wobbly as I stand, blood rushing to my head.